In this visionary look into the future, Freeman Dyson argues that technological changes fundamentally alter our ethical and social arrangements and that three rapidly advancing new technologies — solar energy, genetic engineering, and worldwide communication — together have the potential to create a more equal distribution of the world's wealth.
Dyson begins by rejecting the idea that scientific revolutions are primarily concept driven. He shows rather that new tools are more often the sparks that ignite scientific discovery. Such tool-driven revolutions have profound social consequences: the invention of the telescope turning the medieval view of the world upside down, the widespread use of household appliances in the 1950s replacing servants, to cite just two examples. In looking ahead, Dyson suggests that solar energy, genetics, and the Internet will have similarly transformative effects, with the potential to produce a more just and equitable society. Solar power could bring electricity to even the poorest, most remote areas of third-world nations, allowing everyone access to the vast stores of information on the Internet and effectively ending the cultural isolation of the poorest countries. Similarly, breakthroughs in genetics may well enable us to give our children healthier lives and grow more efficient crops, thus restoring the economic and human vitality of village cultures devalued and dislocated by the global market.
Written with passionate conviction about the ethical uses of science, The Sun, The Genome, and The Internet is both a brilliant reinterpretation of the scientific process and a challenge to use new technologies to close, rather than widen, the gap between rich and poor.

An illuminating collection of essays by an award-winning scientist whom the London Times calls “one of the world’s most original minds.” From Galileo to today’s amateur astronomers, scientists have been rebels, writes Freeman Dyson. Like artists and poets, they are free spirits who resist the restrictions their cultures impose on them. In their pursuit of Nature’s truths, they are guided as much by imagination as by reason, and their greatest theories have the uniqueness and beauty of great works of art.Dyson argues that the best way to understand science is by understanding those who practice it. He tells stories of scientists at work, ranging from Isaac Newton’s absorption in physics, alchemy, theology, and politics, to Ernest Rutherford’s discovery of the structure of the atom, to Albert Einstein’s stubborn hostility to the idea of black holes. His descriptions of brilliant physicists like Edward Teller and Richard Feynman are enlivened by his own reminiscences of them. He looks with a skeptical eye at fashionable scientific fads and fantasies, and speculates on the future of climate prediction, genetic engineering, the colonization of space, and the possibility that paranormal phenomena may exist yet not be scientifically verifiable.Dyson also looks beyond particular scientific questions to reflect on broader philosophical issues, such as the limits of reductionism, the morality of strategic bombing and nuclear weapons, the preservation of the environment, and the relationship between science and religion. These essays, by a distinguished physicist who is also a lovely writer, offer informed insights into the history of science and fresh perspectives on contentious current debates about science, ethics, and faith.

《普通高等教育"十一五"国家级规划教材·科学通识系列丛书·数学与人类文明》跨越了不同的地域和种族，依次探讨了数学与不同文明之间的关系，并各有侧重，包括埃及、巴比伦、希腊、中国、印度、阿拉伯；至于近代文明，我们考察了文艺复兴的艺术与几何学、工业革命与微积分、法国大革命与应用数学的关系。
对现代数学与现代文明进行阐述和比较，是《化学与人类文明》的一个特色。至于古典部分，也着力发现有现代意义的亮点。19世纪，数学和艺术同时从古典进入现代；20世纪以来，抽象化成为数学和人文学科的共性；哲学与数学的再次交汇产生了维特根斯坦和哥德尔定理。

本书由十七篇随笔和一则访谈组成，主要探讨了数学史上各个时期的代表性人物，他们的内心世界、成长经历和成材环境，他们的贡献、思想、个性和生活观念。这些伟大的数学家，有的在人文领域也有杰出贡献，如毕达哥拉斯、海亚姆、笛卡尔、帕斯卡尔、莱布尼茨、庞加莱，有的则个人经历富有传奇色彩，如费尔马、牛顿、欧拉、高斯、希尔伯特、拉曼纽扬、爱多士。此外，本书选取东西方两个民族——法兰西人和阿拉伯人加以探讨，前者在数学史上做出了极其重要的贡献，后保存、传播并发扬了东方和古希腊数学的精华。至于数学与文学、政治的关系，这是两个非常让人感兴趣的话题，尤其针对当前中学就已文理分科的情况，本书提出一些全新的观点，其中一篇入选上海市中学语文读本。最后两篇也是关于数学的外延，一篇是为数学家撰写的悬疑小说所作的导读，另一篇则是答应届大学毕业生问。
所有文章均曾发表在《读书》《万象》《书城》《书屋》《科学》《自然》《数学通报》《中国数学会育讯》《南方周末》和《中华读书报》，此次修订结集，配有多幅照片，作者曾抵达拍摄书中每个主角生活过的国度。

Scientific discovery is often regarded as romantic and creative - and hence unanalyzable - whereas the everyday process of verifying discoveries is sober and more suited to analysis. Yet this fascinating exploration of how scientific work proceeds argues that however sudden the moment of discovery may seem, the discovery process can be described and modeled.
Using the methods and concepts of contemporary information-processing psychology (or cognitive science) the authors develop a series of artificial-intelligence programs that can simulate the human thought processes used to discover scientific laws. The programs - BACON, DALTON, GLAUBER, and STAHL - are all largely data-driven, that is, when presented with series of chemical or physical measurements they search for uniformities and linking elements, generating and checking hypotheses and creating new concepts as they go along.
Scientific Discovery examines the nature of scientific research and reviews the arguments for and against a normative theory of discovery; describes the evolution of the BACON programs, which discover quantitative empirical laws and invent new concepts; presents programs that discover laws in qualitative and quantitative data; and ties the results together, suggesting how a combined and extended program might find research problems, invent new instruments, and invent appropriate problem representations. Numerous prominent historical examples of discoveries from physics and chemistry are used as tests for the programs and anchor the discussion concretely in the history of science.
Pat Langley is an Associate Professor in the Department of Information and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine. Herbert Simon is a Professor in the Departments of Psychology, Computer Science, and Philosophy at Carnegie-Mellon University. Gary L. Bradshaw is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology and Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Jan M. Zytkow is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at Wichita State University.

《农政全书》的主导思想是“富国必以本业”，所以他把《农事》三卷放在全书之前。其中《经史典故》引经据典阐明农业立国之本；《诸家杂论》则引诸子百家言证明古来以农为重；此外兼收冯应京《国朝重农考》，其意皆在“重农”。徐光启的“农本”思想，不但符合泱泱农业大国既往之历史，而且未必无补于今时。当前，农业问题和农民问题仍然是国家决策的重要内容。从这一点出发，徐光启的“农本”思想仍有合理素可取用于现时。
《农政全书》是一部很有价值的古农书，尤如一座含金量很高的富矿有待进一步开发和利用，所以，岳麓书社适应形势发展之需要。决定刊行以简体字排版的新校注本《农政全书》。为广大读者提供一个既便于阅读与研究，又便于收藏的古典名著新版本，为弘扬优秀的优统文化做实实在在的工作，这无疑是有益于社会的事。

本书是传统型的医学史著作，融医学思想史、医学状况史和医学人物史为一体，内容丰富而精湛。书中汇集了医学史上关于古代传说、重要人物、医学发现和基本事实的翔实资料，深刻地阐明了医学进步与文明进化之间的密切关系。在这部巨著中，卡斯蒂廖尼为我们留下了珍贵的至理名言：“医 学是随着 人类痛苦的最初表达和减轻这份痛苦的最初愿望而诞生的。”在他看来，医学史不仅是一部技术成就史，还是一部艺术与精神追求史；医学史不只是事实的历史，也是人物的历史，更是观念的历史。
本次再版对上一版进行了诸多校订，并增加了上一版所删去的《远东的医学》（中国医学史）一章，使这本著作能够以全貌展现在中国读者面前。

John Theodore Merz (1840-1922) was an industrial chemist and philosopher who came to Britain from his native Germany in 1867. His life-long work was dominated by the desire to contribute towards the unification of knowledge. Uniting the two cultures of science and the arts, Merz's "History of European Thought in the Nineteenth Century" is an extended survey of the development of scientific (volumes 1 and 2) and philosophical (volumes 3 & 4) thought. It is not a history of science, but a history of scientific thinking, not a history of philosophy, but a survey of the main philosophical ideas. It was perceived by his contemporaries as a continutation of Whewell's "History of Inductive Science" (1837). As the only study which examines the whole range of continental 19th-century intellect it is an important and essential sourcebook for scholars. Divided into two sections, each containing extensive bibliographic footnotes and an index, it refers to the key works and theories of the major European scientists and philosophers. Volume 2 also contains one of the first attempts by a historian to include the subject of mathematical thought in a general history of intellectual progress. Merz's work was originally published in four volumes between 1896 and 1914. Subsequent unaltered editions followed and it has remained a classic study of the history of European scientific and philosophical debate.

It is the end of an historical epoch, but to an old professor of physics, Victor Jakob, sitting in his unlighted study, eating dubious bread with jam made from turnips, it is the end of a way of thinking in his own subject. Younger men have challenged the classical world picture of physics and are looking forward to observational tests of Einstein's new theory of relativity as well as the creation of a quantum mechanics of the atom. It is a time of both apprehension and hope. In this remarkable book, the reader literally inhabits the mind of a scientist while Professor Jakob meditates on the discoveries of the past fifty years and reviews his own life and career--his scientific ambitions and his record of small successes. He recalls the great men who taught or inspired him: Helmholtz, Hertz, Maxwell, Planck, and above all Paul Drude, whose life and mind exemplified the classical virtues of proportion, harmony, and grace that Jakob reveres. In Drude's shocking and unexpected suicide, we see reflected Jakob's own bewilderment and loss of bearings as his once secure world comes to an end in the horrors of the war and in the cultural fragmentation wrought by twentieth-century modernism. His attempt to come to terms with himself, with his life in science, and with his spiritual legacy will affect deeply everyone who cares about the fragile structures of civilization that must fall before the onrush of progress.

This widely acclaimed book, first published in 1974, was a classic from its first day in print. Written in a direct, inviting way by Harry Braverman, whose years as an industrial worker gave him rich personal insight into work, Labor and Monopoly Capital overturned the reigning ideologies of academic sociology.
This new edition features an introduction by John Bellamy Foster that sets the work in historical and theoretical context, as well as two rare articles by Braverman, "The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century" (1975) and "Two Comments" (1976), that add much to our understanding of the book.

At the core of Einstein’s general theory of relativity are a set of equations that explain the relationship among gravity, space, and time—possibly the most perfect intellectual achievement of modern physics. For over a century, physicists have been exploring, debating, and at times neglecting Einstein’s theory in their quest to uncover the history of the universe, the origin of time, and the evolution of solar systems, stars, and galaxies.
In this sweeping narrative of science and culture, Pedro Ferreira explains the theory through the human drama surrounding it: the personal feuds and intellectual battles of the biggest names in twentieth-century physics, from Einstein and Eddington to Hawking and Penrose.
We are in the midst of a momentous transformation in modern physics. As scientists look farther and more clearly into space than ever before, The Perfect Theory engagingly reveals the greater relevance of general relativity, showing us where it started, where it has led, and where it can still take us.

《未来10年中国学科发展战略:总论》内容简介：“未来10年中国学科发展战略”丛书是国家自然科学基金委员会和中国科学院学部历时两年多联合开展研究的重要成果，凝聚着600多位院士、专家的智慧和心血，对广大科技工作者洞悉学科发展规律、了解前沿领域和重点方向及开展科技创新等有重要的参考价值，对促进我国学科均衡、协调、可持续发展必将发挥积极作用。
《未来10年中国学科发展战略•总论》深刻分析了学科发展规律和趋势，以大跨度的历史视角阐释了战略性新兴产业与学科发展的关系，提出了面向培育战略性新兴产业的学科战略思路，对新科技革命的学科基础与准备作了论述，并针对我国学科发展存在的主要问题提出了一些具有重要参考价值的意见和建议。
《未来10年中国学科发展战略:总论》不仅对相关领域科技工作者和高校师生有重要的参考价值，同时也是科技管理者和社会公众了解学科发展现状及趋势的权威读本。

我作为常务主编，与查尔斯・辛格(Chales Singer)、DJ．霍姆亚德(E. J. Holmyard)和A-R-霍尔(A. R. Hall)一起与这部著作发生关系，至今已有35年了。这部著作是按照英国一家领先的化学公司―帝国化学工业有限公司（简称ICI）――赞助的一项雄心勃勃的计划，由牛津大学出版社出版的。其最初构思为5卷本，旨在最宽泛的意义上囊括从人类文明发端至19世纪末的整个技术史。继而，作为唯一的主编，我负责 1978年出版的涵盖1900-1950年的后续两卷本的工作。牛津大学出版社作为学术著作的出版者，把这两卷本看作它成立500周年庆典的一部分。最后，包括整部著作的综合索引的最后一卷第皿卷于1984年问世。可见，这部《技术史》占据了我的大部分工作生涯。就我而言，对我在过去岁月里观察到的一些变化进行反思也许并无不妥。
帝国化学工业有限公司对于这部厚重之作头5卷的支持，是具有卓识远见的赞助的一例。作为一家国际性的、以科学为基础的公司，它的活动是过去许多代人的成就促成的。它开始有些意外地意识到，一旦产生了需求，居然没有一本能供学者们在进行更专业的工作之前作为首选参考书的综合技术史。这部《技术史》恰如其分地用事实填补了这个空白，以至于除去一例之外，没有一部堪与其媲美的替代性著作出版过，这个例外就是李约瑟（Joseph Needham）的不朽之作《中国的科学与文明》（Science and Civilisation in China），它向西方和东方学者同样揭示了新的世界。虽然这部书的第一卷在1954年问世，却仍然未完成，不过已经胜利在望了。极其遗憾的是，原来的5卷《技术史》完成之前，很少有这类发人深思的著作可以援用。也许我们将会在21世纪看到东西方的贡献都整合在其中的一部全球视野的技术史。然而必须承认，这样一种可能性不单单是学术上的，欲使此类计划得以成功，管理人员的素养也是至关重要的。作为这部及其他著作的主编，我始终明白在多大的程度上应归于作者们，正是他们贡献了自己的专业知识来创作一个个章节。但是，像音乐家一样，他们的努力之所以能够创造出和谐的音乐，完全是建立在他们齐心协力的基础上的。
《技术史》这部著作分两批问世的原因曾招致人们的评论。当1950年着手筹划这部书时，在时间上，世纪的更替似乎剔罗辑上的终点。早年的经验主义为牛顿（Newton）的物理学、拉瓦锡（Lavosier）和道尔顿（Dalton）的新化学及工业革命所遵循。但是，19世纪后半叶不断有新的现象被发现（尤其在电学领域内），这种本质上机械的经典观点是不合时宜的。20世纪伊始，人们看到相对论的出现，随后不久是量子力学的创立。那时，人们发觉这不仅说明了难以与早期的研究相调和的态度变化，而且还要求向普通的读者引进难以掌握的艰深的理论概念。然而到1970年，局面有了一些改观。1945年原子弹戏剧性的突然出现，促使公众注意到原子物理中产生的理论和实用两方面的重大发展，并且新一代的读者已然成长起来，他们所受的教育至少对于这些新的发展给予了关注。因此，把《技术史》从1900年推进到1950年是与时俱进的。意味深长的是，在保持实质上同等研究水平的条件下，这半个世纪需要两整卷的篇幅，而至1900年的技术史则有5卷就够了。自1950年以来，技术演进的步伐进一步加快了，预期补充的两卷将把《技术史》延伸至今。可以想见，不仅对于当时存在的各个领域的重大进展，而且在微电子和计算机、遗传工程和生物技术、空间探索和研究、核动力、机器人等新领域，人们都必定会发现新的天地。
尽管这部《技术史》迄今未遇到竞争对手，它的一个主要目的是成功的，即作为更细致的研究的基础，它提供了一份易于了解的文献来源，从而在技术史方面激起了人们的兴趣。有趣的是，这些研究已经显示出地域上的区分。在英国和欧洲其他大部分地方，在技术上注重的是1922年建立的纽科门学会传统―所谓的具体细节进路。社会、政治和经济等因素的重要性得到充分的认识，但却是与技术创新直接相关的。然而在美国，近30年来，人们认为社会、政治和经济这些因素具有压倒一切的重要性；毫无疑问，其部分原因是许多美国的科技史学家有着大学文科的背景和少许的工艺知识。然而，说得更严重些，在美国，20世纪的技术被广泛地看作美国的技术的同义语，却把世界其余地方的贡献大大抹煞了。值得高兴的是近一二年内有证据表明，年轻一代的美国技术史学家正在质疑这种内省的、狭隘的态度，而提倡一种更开明的研究方法。
这部《技术史》长期以来一直是标准的参考书，无疑反映了这样的事实：英语已经变成世界上最广泛接受的语言。此外，它的流传因为日文版、意大利文版的出现而增加了。我与T"K-德里（T. K. Derry）在1960年出版的《技术史》头5卷节本《技术简史》（A Short History of Technology），已经用这些文字和西班牙文、荷兰文面世。很荣幸，中国的科技史学家们现在认为应当把这部《技术史》译成他们自己的文字。我十分清楚这需要巨大的工作量，因此我感谢所有为此勇于合作的人。我衷心地希望，这部书在他们这个有着几千年不断的技术创新史的国家中所激发起的研究，将是无可匹敌的。

A comprehensive yet concise chronicle of scientific inquiries ranges from the early Greeks (c. 600 BC) to the reaction to the 19th-century publication of "The Origin of Species." Maps, charts and diagrams illustrate the development of the idea of a rational and interconnected material world in this fascinating and highly readable history.