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Galileo's Finger : The Ten Great Ideas of Science
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Galileo's Finger : The Ten Great Ideas of Science Paperback - 2004

by Atkins, Peter

  • Used

Description

Oxford University Press, Incorporated. Used - Good. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages.
Used - Good
NZ$11.98
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Details

  • Title Galileo's Finger : The Ten Great Ideas of Science
  • Author Atkins, Peter
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition New Ed
  • Condition Used - Good
  • Pages 388
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher Oxford University Press, Incorporated, Oxford
  • Date July 22, 2004
  • Illustrated Yes
  • Features Bibliography, Illustrated, Index, Table of Contents
  • Bookseller's Inventory # GRP14272532
  • ISBN 9780198609414 / 0198609418
  • Weight 0.61 lbs (0.28 kg)
  • Dimensions 7.66 x 5.08 x 0.84 in (19.46 x 12.90 x 2.13 cm)
  • Library of Congress subjects Discoveries in science, Science
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 2003545347
  • Dewey Decimal Code 500

From the publisher

Why Galileo's finger? Galileo, one of whose fingers is preserved in a vessel displayed in Florence, provided much of the impetus for modern science, pointing the way out of medieval ignorance. In this brilliant account of the central ideas of contemporary science, Peter Atkins celebrates the effectiveness of Galileo's symbolic finger for revealing the nature of our universe, our world, and ourselves.
Galileo's Finger takes the reader on an extraordinary journey that embraces the ten central ideas of current science. "By a great idea," writes Peter Atkins, "I mean a simple concept of great reach, an acorn of an idea that ramifies into a great oak tree of application, a spider of an idea that can spin a great web and draw in a feast of explanation and elucidation." With wit, charm, and patience, Atkins leads the reader to an understanding of the essence of the whole of science, from evolution and the emergence of complexity, to entropy, the spring of all change in the universe; from energy, the universalization of accountancy, to symmetry, the quantification of beauty; and from cosmology, the globalization of reality, to spacetime, the arena of all action.
"My intention is for us to travel to the high ridges of science," Atkins tells us. "As the journey progresses and I lead you carefully to the summit of understanding, you will experience the deep joy of illumination that science alone provides."
Galileo's Finger breaks new ground in communicating science to the general reader. Here are the essential ideas of today's science, explained in magical prose.

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About the author

Peter Atkins is Professor of Chemistry and Fellow of Lincoln College at Oxford University. He is the author of several world-famous chemistry textbooks. One reason why these continue to be leaders throughout the world after more than two decades is his remarkable gift for being able to explain things--especially challenging concepts--memorably and with great clarity. This gift has regularly been deployed in his books for the general reader (Richard Dawkins has described one of them, The Creation, as 'the most beautifully written popular science book ever'), but never to better effect than now, in Galileo's Finger.