Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything - Hardcover

Ball, Philip

 
9781847921727: Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1847921728 ISBN 13: 9781847921727
Publisher: The Bodley Head Ltd, 2012

Synopsis

There was a time when curiosity was condemned. To be curious was to delve into matters that didn't concern you - after all, the original sin stemmed from a desire for forbidden knowledge. Through curiosity our innocence was lost.

Yet this hasn't deterred us. Today we spend vast sums trying to recreate the first instants of creation in particle accelerators, out of pure desire to know. There seems now to be no question too vast or too trivial to be ruled out of bounds: Why can fleas jump so high? What is gravity? What shape are clouds? Today curiosity is no longer reviled, but celebrated.

Examining how our inquisitive impulse first became sanctioned, changing from a vice to a virtue, Curiosity begins with the age when modern science began, a time that spans the lives of Galileo and Isaac Newton. It reveals a complex story, in which the liberation – and the taming – of curiosity was linked to magic, religion, literature, travel, trade and empire.

By examining the rise of curiosity, we can ask what has become of it today: how it functions in science, how it is spun and packaged and sold, how well it is being sustained and honoured, and how the changing shape of science influences the kinds of questions it may ask.

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About the Author

Philip Ball writes regularly in the scientific and popular media and worked for many years as an editor for physical sciences at Nature. His books cover a wide range of scientific and cultural phenomena, and include Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads To Another (winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books), The Music Instinct, Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything, Serving The Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Science Under Hitler and Invisible: The History of the Unseen from Plato to Particle Physics.

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Publisher
The Bodley Head Ltd
Publication date
2012
Language
English
ISBN 10 
1847921728
ISBN 13 
9781847921727
Binding
Hardcover
Edition number
1
Number of pages
480

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780226045795: Curiosity – How Science Became Interested in Everything

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  022604579X ISBN 13:  9780226045795
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2013
Hardcover