Seeing Further

Chapters

1. Introduction by Bill Bryson
2. At the beginning: more things in heaven and earth by James Gleick
3. Of the madness of mad scientists: Jonathan Swift’s Grand Academy by Margaret Atwood
4. Lost in space: the spiritual crisis of Newtonian Cosmology by Margaret Wertheim
5. Atoms of cognition: metaphysics in the Royal Society by Neal Stephenson
6. What’s in a name? Rivalries and the birth of modern science by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein
7. Charged Atmospheres: Promethean science and the Royal Society by Simon Schaffer
8. A new age of flight: Richard Banks goes ballooning by Richard Holmes
9. Archives of life: science and collections by Richard Fortey
10. Darwin’s five bridges: the way to natural selection by Richard Dawkins
11. Images of progress: conferences of engineers by Henry Petroski
12. X-ray visions: structural biologists and social action in the twentieth century by Georgina Ferry
13. Ten thousand wedges: biodiversity, natural selection and random change by Steve Jones
14. Making stuff: from Bacon to Bakelite by Philip Ball
15. Just typical: our changing place in the universe by Paul Davies
16. Behind the scenes: the hidden mathematics that rules our world by Ian Stewart
17. Simple, really: from simplicity to complexity – and back again by John D. Barrow
18. Globe and sphere, cycles and flows: how to see the world by Oliver Morton
19. Beyond ending: looking into the void by Maggie Gee
20. Confidence, consensus and the undertainty cops: tackling risk management in climate change by Stephen H. Schneider
21. Time: the winged chariot by Gregory Benford
22. Conclusion: looking fifty years ahead by Martin Rees