Astronomy 336: Additional Topics

In this book, a group of experts assembled by the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine explain the fundamental methods of science, document the overwhelming evidence in support of biological evolution, and evaluate the alternative perspectives offered by advocates of various kinds of creationism, including "intelligent design." The book also presents the scientific and legal reasons for not teaching creationist ideas in public school science classes. Mindful of school board battles and recent court decisions, Science, Evolution, and Creationism shows that science and religion should be viewed as different ways of understanding the world rather than as frameworks that are in conflict with each other and that the evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith.

The last decade saw the arrival of a new player in the creation/evolution debate--the intelligent design creationism (IDC) movement, whose strategy is to act as "the wedge" to overturn Darwinism and scientific naturalism. This anthology of writings by prominent creationists and their critics focuses on what is novel about the new movement. The discussions cover IDC as a political movement, IDC's philosophical attack on evolution, the theological debate over the apparent conflict between evolution and the Bible, IDC's scientific claims, and philosopher Alvin Plantinga's critique of naturalism and evolution. The book concludes with Pennock's "Why Creationism Should Not Be Taught in the Public Schools."

Almost 80 years after the Scopes trial, the debate over the teaching of evolution continues. It is a complex topic with profound scientific, religious, educational, and legal implications. Written by one of the leading advocates for the teaching of evolution in the United States, this accessible resource provides an introduction to the many facets of the current debate--the scientific evidence for evolution, the legal and educational basis for its teaching, the various religious points of view--as well as a concise history of the evolution-creationism controversy.

Historically, religious scriptures are defined as holy texts that are considered to be beyond the abilities of the layperson to interpret. Their content is most frequently analyzed by clerics who do not question the underlying political or social implications of the text, but use the writing to convey messages to their congregations about how to live a holy existence. In Western society, moreover, what counts as scripture is generally confined to the Judeo-Christian Bible, leaving the voices of minorities, as well as the holy texts of faiths from Africa and Asia, for example, unheard. In this innovative collection of essays, Wimbush leads an in-depth look at the social, cultural, and racial meanings invested in these texts. Purposefully transgressing disciplinary boundaries, this ambitious book opens the door to different interpretations and critical orientations, and in doing so, allows an ultimately humanist definition of scriptures to emerge."

The Mask of Nostradamus is the first in-depth biography of this intriguing sixteenth-century astrologer and physician whose book of prophecies, The Centuries, is claimed by many to have foretold the Great Fire of London, the French Revolution, the rise of Hitler, and other crucial historical events. In his superb study of Nostradamus' life and times, Randi shows the extent to which contemporary beliefs in magic and astrology adulterated sixteenth-century science, and how Nostradamus used his skills as a physician and poet to become a cherished counselor to the courts of Europe. Finally, Randi exposes some of the tricks used by Nostradamus to make his prophecies seem authentic, and the rationalizations of his predictions by his followers through the centuries.

In Why Darwin Matters, bestselling author Michael Shermer explains how the newest brand of creationism appeals to our predisposition to look for a designer behind life's complexity. Shermer decodes the scientific evidence to show that evolution is not "just a theory" and illustrates how it achieves the design of life through the bottom-up process of natural selection. Shermer, once an evangelical Christian and a creationist, argues that Intelligent Design proponents are invoking a combination of bad science, political antipathy, and flawed theology. He refutes their pseudoscientific arguments and then demonstrates why conservatives and people of faith can and should embrace evolution. He then appraises the evolutionary questions that truly need to be settled, building a powerful argument for science itself.

Focusing on the ground-breaking and often controversial science of Charles Darwin, the author seeks to bridge the gulf between science and religion on the subject of human evolution.

Presenting an ardent defence of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, this book offers a clear and comprehensive exposition of Darwin's thinking. Michael Ruse brings the story up to date, examining the origins of life, the fossil record, and the mechanism of natural selection. Rival theories are explored, from punctuated equilibrium to human evolution (including the recently found 'hobbits', Homo floresiensis). The philosophical and religious implications of Darwinism are discussed, including a discussion of Creationism and its modern day offshoot, Intelligent Design Theory.

In God's Mechanics, Brother Guy tells the stories of those who identify with the scientific mindset - so-called "techies" - while practicing religion. Brother Guy shows how he not only believes in God but gives religion an honored place alongside science in his life. This book offers an engaging look at how and why scientists and those with technological leanings can hold profound, "unprovable" religious beliefs while working in highly empirical fields. Through his own experience and interviews with other scientists and engineers who profess faith, Brother Guy explores how religious beliefs and practices make sense to those who are deeply rooted in the world of technology.

Blending memoir, science, history and theology, Guy Consolmagno takes us on this exploration of Vatican science. We tour the Vatican's meteorite collection and learn how astronomy progresses despite its dearth of tactile evidence. It seeks to prove that not all religion is hostile to science.

Despite the ongoing cultural controversy in America, evolution remains a cornerstone of science. In this book, Francisco J. Ayala cuts to the chase in a daring attempt to address, in nontechnical language, six perennial questions about evolution: * Am I a Monkey? * Why Is Evolution a Theory? * What Is DNA? * Do All Scientists Accept Evolution? * How Did Life Begin? * Can One Believe in Evolution and God? Ayala's occasionally biting essays refuse to lend credence to disingenuous ideas and arguments. He lays out the basic science that underlies evolutionary theory, explains how the process works, and soundly makes the case for why evolution is not a threat to religion.

This booklet neatly embodies the John Templeton Foundation's approach to the Big Questions: the contributors are scholars and thinkers of the first rank, they address a perennial and much-disputed subject, and they bring to bear—in civil, elegant prose—a range of different perspectives. By assembling this “conversation” and inviting the public to join in, we intend to promote a dialogue that transcends familiar rhetoric and stock answers. We aim to turn discourse on the Big Questions in a more thoughtful, considered direction. It is our hope that this booklet will be a lasting resource for students, teachers, parents, scientists, clergy, and
anyone else engaged with the great issues of human nature and purpose.

Evolution is often described as a "theory." While this is certainly technically true, it is misleading to dismiss evolution as "just a theory" (an unfounded idea), as opponents of evolution like to do. This illuminating work of popular science amply demonstrates that there are few more well-established facts in the scientific canon than that life evolved on earth. Walking the reader through the steps in the evolutionary process, the author uses plenty of real-world examples to show that not only does evolution happen. The book also covers new discoveries in evolution, many of which have occurred in the last twenty years of the "genomic revolution" and have strengthened Darwin's basic idea.

Robert Jastrow discusses the scientific discoveries that bring science into agreement or conflict with religion and examines the latest evidence for, as well as against the Big Bang theory, which argues that the Universe exploded into being. He explains the evidence for the mysterious Anthropic Principle, which asserts that the Universe was designed for mankind to live in and examines the case for and against Darwin's theory of evolution. This edition examines these issues from the Catholic, Protestant and Jewish viewpoints.

Obsessions and lifelong loves permeate Maureen Hunter's Transit of Venus as the eighteenth-century astronomer, Le Gentil, charts the heavens for Venus and the realm of his heart for his young fiancee. Le Gentil puts off marrying the young and wilful Celeste as he travels around the world in his attempts to plot the course of Venus across the sky, only to be undone at every turn by weather, war, and misfortune, and to find upon his final return a woman undone by his absence and ready to set her own course. Hunter's play explores issues of faith, solitude, and the human spirit.

In 1941 the German physicist Werner Heisenberg made a strange trip to Copenhagen to see his Danish counterpart, Niels Bohr. They were old friends and close colleagues, and they had revolutionised atomic physics in the 1920s with their work together on quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle. But now the world had changed, and the two men were on opposite sides in a world war. The meeting was fraught with danger and embarrassment, and ended in disaster. Why the German physicist Heisenberg went to Copenhagen in 1942 and what he wanted to say to the Danish physicist Bohr are questions which have exercised historians of nuclear physics ever since. In Michael Frayn's new play Heisenberg meets Bohr and his wife Margrethe once again to look for the answers, and to work out, just as they had once worked out the internal functioning of the atom, how we can ever know why we do what we do.

In a large country house in Derbyshire in April 1809 sits Lady Thomasina Coverly, aged thirteen, and her tutor, Septimus Hodge. Through the window may be seen some of the '500 acres inclusive of lake' where Capability Brown's idealized landscape is about to give way to the 'picturesque' Gothic style: 'everything but vampires', as the garden historian Hannah Jarvis remarks to Bernard Nightingale when they stand in the same room 180 years later. Bernard has arrived to uncover the scandal which is said to have taken place when Lord Byron stayed at Sidley Park. Tom Stoppard's absorbing play takes us back and forth between the centuries and explores the nature of truth and time, the difference between the Classical and the Romantic temperament, and the disruptive influence of sex on our orbits in life - 'the attraction', as Hannah says, 'which Newton left out'.

Proof explores the unknowability of love as much as it does the mysteries of science. It focuses on Catherine, a young woman who has spent years caring for her father, Robert, a brilliant mathematician in his youth who was later unable to function without her help. His death has brought into her midst both her sister, Claire, who wants to take Catherine back to New York with her, and Hal, a former student of Catherine's father who hopes to find some hint of Robert's genius among his incoherent scribblings. Catherine has inherited at least a part of her father's brilliance -- and perhaps some of his instability as well. As she and Hal become attracted to each other, they push at the edges of each other's knowledge, considering not only the unpredictability of genius but also the human instinct toward love and trust.

Who knew that quantum electrodynamics could make for a dramatic read? In the hands of the late, great physicist Richard Feynman, it does. Set in Feynman's office on the weekend of his realization that he has terminal cancer, this play is an intellectual tour-de-force that captures the unique, hilarious, and puckish genius that Feynman was. From his work on the Manhattan Project to the death of his beloved first wife, from his mission to reconstruct the Challenger space shuttle tragedy to his Nobel-prize winning physics ideas, the resume of Feynman's life is fascinating. But Parnell gives us more, letting fill in the details of his life. When he reads a letter he wrote to his wife after her death, or flirts with a student, or chillingly recalls walking around Manhattan calculating the damage an atomic bomb could do, we grow to love the man behind the scientist. And we read in fascination as he puzzles out the problem of his own death.

In Lab Coats in Hollywood, David Kirby examines the interaction of science and cinema: how science consultants make movie science plausible, how filmmakers negotiate scientific accuracy within production constraints, and how movies affect popular perceptions of science. Drawing on interviews and archival material, Kirby examines such science consulting tasks as fact checking and shaping visual iconography. Kirby finds that cinema can influence science as well: Depictions of science in popular films can promote research agendas, stimulate technological development, and even stir citizens into political action.

What motivates a scientist? One key factor is the pressure from the competition to be the first to discover something new. The moral consequences of this are the subject of the play "Oxygen", dealing with the discovery of this all-important element. The focus of the play is on chemical and political revolutions, as well as the Nobel Prize. The action takes place in 1777 and 2001; and the play is written for 3 actors and 3 actresses who play a total of 11 characters. Carl Djerassi is known as the "Father of the Pill" and has written several successful novels, while Roald Hoffmann received the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1982 and is renowned for his poetry.

From Victor Frankenstein to Dr. Moreau to Doc Brown in Back to the Future, the scientist has been a puzzling, fascinating, and threatening presence in popular culture. From films we have learned that scientists are either evil maniacal geniuses or bumbling saviors of society. Mad, Bad and Dangerous? puts this dichotomy to the test, offering a wholly engaging yet not uncritical history of the cinematic portrayal of scientists. Frayling traces the genealogy of the scientist in film, showing how the scientist has often embodied the predominant anxieties of a particular historical moment. Mad, Bad and Dangerous? also examines biographical depictions of actual scientists, illuminating how they are often portrayed as social misfits willing to sacrifice everything to the interests of science.

In this book, a scientist and dedicated film enthusiast discusses the portrayal of science in more than one hundred films, including science fiction, scientific biographies, and documentaries. Beginning with early films like Voyage to the Moon and Metropolis and concluding with more recent offerings like The Matrix and An Inconvenient Truth, Sidney Perkowitz questions how much faith we can put into Hollywood's depiction of scientists and their work; how accurately these films capture scientific fact and theory; whether cataclysms like our collision with a comet can actually happen; and to what extent these films influence public opinion about science and the future.

1799--On the eve of a new century, a Northern English house buzzes with scientific experiments, furtive romance, and farcical amateur dramatics. Present Day--In a world of scientific chaos and genetic engineering, the same house reveals a dark secret buried for 200 years.

By 1514, the reclusive cleric Nicolaus Copernicus had written and hand-copied an initial outline of his heliocentric theory. Over the next two decades, Copernicus expanded his theory through hundreds of observations, while compiling in secret a manuscript that tantalized mathematicians and scientists throughout Europe. For fear of ridicule, he refused to publish. In 1539, a young German mathematician, Georg Joachim Rheticus, traveled to Poland to seek out Copernicus. Two years later, he arranged to have Copernicus's manuscript published, in 1543, as De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres) - the book that forever changed humankind's place in the universe. Dava Sobel chronicles the conflicting personalities and extraordinary discoveries that shaped the Copernican Revolution. At the heart of the book is her play And the Sun Stood Still, imagining Rheticus's struggle to convince Copernicus to let his manuscript see the light of day.

Based on more than two hundred personal interviews with current and former Scientologists--both famous and less well known--and years of archival research, Lawrence Wright uses his extraordinary investigative ability to uncover for us the inner workings of the Church of Scientology. We learn about Scientology's complicated cosmology and special language. In Going Clear, Wright examines what fundamentally makes a religion a religion, and whether Scientology is, in fact, deserving of this constitutional protection.

Janet Reitman offers the first full journalistic history of the Church of Scientology, in an evenhanded account that at last establishes the astonishing truth about the controversial religion. She traces Scientology's development from the birth of Dianetics to today, following its metamorphosis from a pseudoscientific self-help group to a worldwide spiritual corporation with profound control over its followers and even ex-followers. Based on five years of research, unprecedented access to Church officials, confidential documents, and extensive interviews with current and former Scientologists, this is the defining book about a little-known world.

Almost one hundred years after Congressmen and lawmakers in every state first debated, ridiculed, and then passionately embraced the possibility of saving an hour of daylight, no one can say for sure why we are required by law to change our clocks twice a year. Who first proposed the scheme? The most authoritative sources agree it was a Pittsburgh industrialist, Woodrow Wilson, a man on a horse in London, a Manhattan socialite, Benjamin Franklin, one of the Caesars, or the anonymous makers of ancient Chinese and Japanese water clocks. Spring Forward is a portrait of public policy in the 20th century, a perennially boiling cauldron of unsubstantiated science, profiteering masked as piety, and mysteriously shifting time-zone boundaries. It is a true-to-life social comedy with Congress in the leading role, surrounded by a supporting cast of opportunistic ministers, movie moguls, stockbrokers, labor leaders, sports fanatics, and railroad execs.