アインシュタインの幸運<br>Einstein's Luck

アインシュタインの幸運
Einstein's Luck

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  • 製本 Hardcover:ハードカバー版／ページ数 320 p.
  • 言語 ENG
  • 商品コード 9780198607199
  • DDC分類 509

基本説明

New in paperback. Hardcover was published in 2003. Reveals the truth behind many myths in the history of science.

Full Description

The great biologist Louis Pasteur suppressed data that didn't support the case he was making. Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity was only "confirmed" in 1919 because an eminent British scientist massaged his figures. Joseph Lister's famously spotless hospital wards were actually notoriously dirty. Gregor Mendel, supposed father of the science of heredity, never grasped the fundamental principles of "Mendelian" genetics. The history of science used to be presented as a heroic saga, in which a few far-seeing geniuses overcame the petty opposition of lesser minds to establish new scientific truths. But over recent decades, historians of science have cast a much more critical eye over their subject. Delving into laboratory notebooks and reconstructing once-fierce debates, they have challenged many of our basic assumptions about the nature of science and the roles its greatest heroes played. "Einstein's Luck" reveals many of these findings to the general reader.

Contents

List of illustrations. Acknowledgements. Introduction: what is history for?. Part 1: Right for the wrong reasons. 1: The pasteurization of spontaneous generation. 2: 'The battle over the electron'. 3: The eclipse of Isaac Newton: Arthur Eddington's 'proof' of general relativity. 4: Very unscientific management. 5: The Hawthorne studies: finding what you are looking for. Conclusion to Part 1: sins against science?. Part 2: Telling science as it was. 6: Myth in the time of cholera. 7: 'The priest who held the key': Gregor Mendel and the ratios of fact and fiction. 8: Was Joseph Lister Mr Clean?. 9: The Origin of Species by means of use-inheritance. 10: 'A is for ape, B is for Bible': science, religion, and melodrama. 11: Painting yourself into a corner: Charles Best and the discovery of insulin. 12: Alexander Fleming's dirty dishes. 13: 'A decoy of Satan'. Conclusion to Part 2: sins against history?. Notes on sources. Index