Galileo's Commandment - Edited by Edmund Blair Bolles

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Galileo's Commandment

2,500 Years of Great Science Writing

Holt Paperbacks, October 1999
ISBN: 978-0-8050-7349-2, ISBN10: 0-8050-7349-3,
6 1/8 x 9 1/4 inches, 512 pages,
Trade Paperback, $24.00

Praise
Table of Contents
Biography
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See All Categories Science General Science

Here is an anthology of science writing that is as historically far-reaching as it is thematically wide-ranging—"an invaluable resource," as The Christian Science Monitor has observed.

In this collection, Marie Curie reminisces about her and her husband's efforts to isolate the element radium. Herodotus observes the Nile Valley and concludes that it was once under water. Carl Sagan argues against assertions that aliens regularly visit Earth. Einstein presents his two theories of relativity.

Edmund Blair Bolles's Galileo's Commandment is an accessible and riveting treasury of scientific literature that will fascinate anyone interested in learning more about the history, development, and/or processes of science—from ancient to modern times. The authors represented here thus include Stephen Jay Gould, Rachel Carson, Richard Feynman, Primo Levi, Charles Darwin, Isaac Newton, Isaac Asimov, Lucretius, Galileo, Joannes Kepler, John McPhee, Noam Chomsky, and so forth. Galileo's Commandment is an essential compendium of great ideas and compelling writing.

Praise

"Galileo's Commandment comes from Bertolt Brecht's play where his Galileo says, 'Science knows only one commandment: contribute to science.' And it is not too far-fetched to say that the science writer who cares deeply not only about his subject, but also about his readers, who respects their ability to understand, and has the ingenuity to make that possible, is also contributing to science. Here then is a small sample of such work."—Boston Book Review

"Recommended to anyone who enjoys great science writing as well as to those who might not really be interested in science but like to read good prose."—Yale Scientific Magazine

"A joy to browse . . . Provides timely insights for the scientist and teacher."—Choice

"Bolles provides potent evidence of great thinking as he chronicles the cumulative process of doing science in this sampler of excellent historic and contemporary writings."—Library Journal

About the Author(s)

Edmund Blair Bolles

Edmund Blair Bolles has written books on many subjects, usually focusing on their basis in science. He is the author So Much to Say, a book about children's language; Remembering and Forgetting, about the nature of memory; and Second Way of Knowing, about perception. He lives in New York City.

Introduction

Part One
The Scientific Imagination Examined

Chapter One
"Every Real Problem Can and Will Be Solved"

Isaac Asimov: Death in the Laboratory (1965)
Arthur S. Eddington: The Story of Algol (1927)
Ernst Mach: A New Sense (1897)
John B. Watson: The New Science of Animal Behavior (1909)

Chapter Two
"Language of the Sort That Would Have Attracted Gilbert and Sullivan"

Karl Popper: Heroic Science (1974)
John McPhee: Naming the Rocks (1981)
Herbert Butterfield: Chemistry Transformed (1949)
Jean Piaget: Learning to See Through Another's Jean Piaget: Learning to See Through Another's Eyes (1928)

Chapter Three
"The Actual Limits of What Is Known"

Stephen Jay Gould: The Misuse of Darwin (1981)
Noam Chomsky: The Case Against B. F. Skinner (1971)
Francis Bacon: Idols of the Tribe (1620)

Part Two
The Scientific Imagination in Action

Chapter Four
"Brought Near to That Great Fact—That Mystery of Mysteries"

Galileo Galilei: First Look Through a Telescope (1610)
Leonardo da Vinci: Seashells in the Mountains (1480-1515)
Charles Darwin: Birds of the Galapagos (1839)
George B. Schaller: Mating Seasons (1980)

p0Chapter Five
"But What Are They?"

Herodotus: The Creation of Egypt (444 B.C.)
Horace Bénédict de Saussure: The Movement of Glaciers (1796)
James Clerk Maxwell: Molecules (1873)
Robert Kennedy Duncan: Radio-Activity: A New Property of Matter (1902)
I. P. Pavlov: The Atoms of Activity (1924)
Annie J. Cannon: Classifying the Stars (1926)

Chapter Six
"The Demonstration That Cost So Much Effort"

Galileo Galilei: Where Is the Center of the Universe? (1632)
Robert Boyle: Doubting the Four Elements (1661)
Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke: Dispute on the Nature of Light (1672)
Marie Curie: Obtaining Radium (1923)
Alfred Wegener: Jigsaw Continents (1929)
Ernest Rutherford: The Transmutation of the Atom (1933)
James Watson: The Double Bases (1968)
Carl Sagan: Has the Earth Already Been Visited? (1973)
Walter Sullivan: Looking for the Drift (1974)
George Smoot: Looking for the Big Bang (1994)

Chapter Seven
"Those Who Would Judge the Book Must Read It"

Johannes Kepler: I Admit the Moon Has Seas (1610)
Voltaire: The Importance of Isaac Newton (1733)
Thomas H. Huxley: The Darwinian Hypothesis (1859)
William Bateson: Galton's Genetics (1909)
Edmund Blair Bolles: Gestalt Psychology (1991)
Bertrand Russell: What Einstein Did (1925)
J. Robert Oppenheimer: A Science in Change (1953)

Chapter Eight
"Somehow the Wave Had to Exist"

Sir James Jeans: The End of the Universe (1929)
Frederic C. Bartlett: Imagery in Though (1932)
Gordon W. Allport: The Mature Personality (1937)
Fred Hoyle: The Expanding Universe (1950)
Loren C. Eiseley: Little Men and Flying Saucers (1953)
Werner Heisenberg: Atomic Physics and Causal Law (1958)
Richard Feynman: The Distinction of Past and Future (1965)
Edward Harrison: The Golden Walls of Edgar Allan Poe (1987)
Fred Alan Wolf: Waves Without a Breeze (1986)
Heinz R. Pagels: Making the Observer Count (1982)
Paul Davies: Schrödinger's Cats and Wigner's Friends (1980)

Chapter Nine
"Every Intellect Which Strives After Generalization Must Feel the Temptation"

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: Preface to The Elements of Chemistry (1789)
Alfred Wallace: On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type (1859)
Hermann von Helmholtz: The Conservation of Energy (1863)
Albert Einstein: Two Theories of Relatively (1916)

Part Three
Style in the Scientific Imagination

Chapter Ten
"It Is in Some Fashion a History"

Galileo Galilei: The Speed of Falling Bodies (1638)
Lucretius: The Persistence of Atoms (60 B.C.)
J. B. S. Haldane: Food Control in Insect Societies (1928)
Julian Huxley: Animals Courting (1943)
Rachel Carson: The Long Snowfall (1951)
Louise B. Young: How Ice Changed the World (1983)
Richard Preston: Dark Time (1987)
Primo Levi: Carbon (1975)

Acknowledgments
Name Index

Galileo's Commandment

Praise

About the Author(s)

Table of Contents