Reading the Shape of Nature

Reading the Shape of Nature PDF Author: Mary P. Winsor
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226902080
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Reading the Shape of Nature vividly recounts the turbulent early history of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and the contrasting careers of its founder Louis Agassiz and his son Alexander. Through the story of this institution and the individuals who formed it, Mary P. Winsor explores the conflicting forces that shaped systematics in the second half of the nineteenth century. Debates over the philosophical foundations of classification, details of taxonomic research, the young institution's financial struggles, and the personalities of the men most deeply involved are all brought to life. In 1859, Louis Agassiz established the Museum of Comparative Zoology to house research on the ideal types that he believed were embodied in all living forms. Agassiz's vision arose from his insistence that the order inherent in the diversity of life reflected divine creation, not organic evolution. But the mortar of the new museum had scarcely dried when Darwin's Origin was published. By Louis Agassiz's death in 1873, even his former students, including his son Alexander, had defected to the evolutionist camp. Alexander, a self-made millionaire, succeeded his father as director and introduced a significantly different agenda for the museum. To trace Louis and Alexander's arguments and the style of science they established at the museum, Winsor uses many fascinating examples that even zoologists may find unfamiliar. The locus of all this activity, the museum building itself, tells its own story through a wonderful series of archival photographs.

Reading the Shape of Nature

Reading the Shape of Nature PDF Author: Mary P. Winsor
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226902080
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 345

Get Book

Book Description
Reading the Shape of Nature vividly recounts the turbulent early history of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and the contrasting careers of its founder Louis Agassiz and his son Alexander. Through the story of this institution and the individuals who formed it, Mary P. Winsor explores the conflicting forces that shaped systematics in the second half of the nineteenth century. Debates over the philosophical foundations of classification, details of taxonomic research, the young institution's financial struggles, and the personalities of the men most deeply involved are all brought to life. In 1859, Louis Agassiz established the Museum of Comparative Zoology to house research on the ideal types that he believed were embodied in all living forms. Agassiz's vision arose from his insistence that the order inherent in the diversity of life reflected divine creation, not organic evolution. But the mortar of the new museum had scarcely dried when Darwin's Origin was published. By Louis Agassiz's death in 1873, even his former students, including his son Alexander, had defected to the evolutionist camp. Alexander, a self-made millionaire, succeeded his father as director and introduced a significantly different agenda for the museum. To trace Louis and Alexander's arguments and the style of science they established at the museum, Winsor uses many fascinating examples that even zoologists may find unfamiliar. The locus of all this activity, the museum building itself, tells its own story through a wonderful series of archival photographs.

What Shape is a Snowflake?

What Shape is a Snowflake? PDF Author: Ian Stewart
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780297607236
Category : Mathematics in nature
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
An enlightening vision of how the laws of mathematics find organic expression in the beauty and patterns of nature, written by an acclaimed mathematician and science writer.

Shapes in Nature

Shapes in Nature PDF Author: Oona Gaarder-Juntti
Publisher: ABDO
ISBN: 1617834149
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 26

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Book Description
Shapes are everywhere! Shapes in Nature helps introduce young readers to various shapes found in daily life, from a cone on a rhino horn to a hexagon honeycomb. Simple sentences along with large eye-catching photographs help illustrate the 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes found in nature. Prompts for recognizing shapes at the beginning and end of the book help strengthen vocabulary, math comprehension, and critical thinking skills. Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Super SandCastle is an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company.

Shapes in Nature

Shapes in Nature PDF Author: Jennifer Marino Walters
Publisher: Nature Is All Around Me (Look!
ISBN: 163440355X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 15

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Book Description
The shape of the moon, the shapes of the stones all around. Let's see what other shapes we can discover in nature.

Shape

Shape PDF Author: Jordan Ellenberg
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984879065
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
An instant New York Times Bestseller! “Unreasonably entertaining . . . reveals how geometric thinking can allow for everything from fairer American elections to better pandemic planning.” —The New York Times From the New York Times-bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong—himself a world-class geometer—a far-ranging exploration of the power of geometry, which turns out to help us think better about practically everything. How should a democracy choose its representatives? How can you stop a pandemic from sweeping the world? How do computers learn to play Go, and why is learning Go so much easier for them than learning to read a sentence? Can ancient Greek proportions predict the stock market? (Sorry, no.) What should your kids learn in school if they really want to learn to think? All these are questions about geometry. For real. If you're like most people, geometry is a sterile and dimly remembered exercise you gladly left behind in the dust of ninth grade, along with your braces and active romantic interest in pop singers. If you recall any of it, it's plodding through a series of miniscule steps only to prove some fact about triangles that was obvious to you in the first place. That's not geometry. Okay, it is geometry, but only a tiny part, which has as much to do with geometry in all its flush modern richness as conjugating a verb has to do with a great novel. Shape reveals the geometry underneath some of the most important scientific, political, and philosophical problems we face. Geometry asks: Where are things? Which things are near each other? How can you get from one thing to another thing? Those are important questions. The word "geometry"comes from the Greek for "measuring the world." If anything, that's an undersell. Geometry doesn't just measure the world—it explains it. Shape shows us how.

The Parsimonious Universe

The Parsimonious Universe PDF Author: Stefan Hildebrandt
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9780387979915
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Why does nature prefer some shapes and not others? The variety of sizes, shapes, and irregularities in nature is endless. Skillfully integrating striking full-color illustrations, the authors describe the efforts by scientists and mathematicians since the Renaissance to identify and describe the principles underlying the shape of natural forms. But can one set of laws account for both the symmetry and irregularity as well as the infinite variety of nature's designs? A complete answer to this question is likely never to be discovered. Yet, it is fascinating to see how the search for some simple universal laws down through the ages has increased our understanding of nature. The Parsimonious Universe looks at examples from the world around us at a non-mathematical, non-technical level to show that nature achieves efficiency by being stingy with the energy it expends.

The Shape of Inner Space

The Shape of Inner Space PDF Author: Shing-Tung Yau
Publisher: Il Saggiatore
ISBN: 0465020232
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 398

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Book Description
The leading mind behind the mathematics of string theory discusses how geometry explains the universe we see. Illustrations.

A Shape in the Dark

A Shape in the Dark PDF Author: Bjorn Dihle
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
ISBN: 1680513109
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
In A Shape in the Dark, wilderness guide and lifelong Alaskan Bjorn Dihle weaves personal experience with historical and contemporary accounts to explore the world of brown bears--from encounters with the Lewis and Clark Expedition, frightening attacks including the famed death of Timothy Treadwell, the controversies related to bear hunting, the animal’s place in native cultures, and the impacts on the species from habitat degradation and climate change. Much more than a report on human-bear interactions, this compelling story intimately explores our relationship with one of the world’s most powerful predators. An authentic and thoughtful work, it blends outdoor adventure, history, and elements of memoir to present a mesmerizing portrait of Alaska’s brown bears and grizzlies, informed by the species’ larger history and their fragile future.

Shape and Structure, from Engineering to Nature

Shape and Structure, from Engineering to Nature PDF Author: Adrian Bejan
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521793889
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Seemingly universal geometric forms unite the flow systems of engineering and nature. For example, tree-shaped flows can be seen in computers, lungs, dendritic crystals, urban street patterns, and communication links. In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan considers the design and optimization of engineered systems and discovers a deterministic principle of the generation of geometric form in natural systems. Shape and structure spring from the struggle for better performance in both engineering and nature. This idea is the basis of the new constructal theory: the objective and constraints principle used in engineering is the same mechanism from which the geometry in natural flow systems emerges. From heat exchangers to river channels, the book draws many parallels between the engineered and the natural world. Among the topics covered are mechanical structure, thermal structure, heat trees, ducts and rivers, turbulent structure, and structure in transportation and economics. The numerous illustrations, examples, and homework problems in every chapter make this an ideal text for engineering design courses. Its provocative ideas will also appeal to a broad range of readers in engineering, natural sciences, economics, and business.

Shapes in Nature

Shapes in Nature PDF Author: Pete Jenkins
Publisher: Carson-Dellosa Publishing
ISBN: 1643693174
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Book Description
Nature is amazing and filled with different shapes. Learn about the different shapes found in nature. Paired to the fiction title What Can I Make?.