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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 world-wide communication--together have the potential to create a ...

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 world-wide 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 world view 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.

There are new methods of learning, new concepts to be tried, but the basic core of physics remains a constant in an ever-changing world. Mathematical Methods for Physics is the bridge that brings these two worlds together. With supplemental material such as graphs and equations, Mathematical Methods ...

There are new methods of learning, new concepts to be tried, but the basic core of physics remains a constant in an ever-changing world. Mathematical Methods for Physics is the bridge that brings these two worlds together. With supplemental material such as graphs and equations, Mathematical Methods for Physics comes together to create a strong, solid anchor for first year students. Dr. H. W. Wyld has lectured on this subject for years and has put together his first-year graduate physics course in this accessible book so students, eager to venture down this road, may be well equipped to learn the basics of physics.

This book introduces the concepts of tensor algebras and differentiable manifolds. It describes analytical and geometrical structures built on these basic concepts. Those structures - which include differential forms and their integration, flows, Lie derivatives, distributions and their ...

This book introduces the concepts of tensor algebras and differentiable manifolds. It describes analytical and geometrical structures built on these basic concepts. Those structures - which include differential forms and their integration, flows, Lie derivatives, distributions and their integrability conditions, connections, and pseudo-Riemannian and symplectic manifolds - are then applied to the description of the fundamental ideas and Hamiltonian and Lagrangian mechanics, and special and general relativity. This book is designed to be accessible to the mathematics or physics student with a good standard undergraduate background, who is interested in obtaining a broader perspective of the rich interplay of mathematics and physics before deciding on a specialty.

Generations have grown up knowing that the equation E=mc2 changed the shape of our world, but never understanding what it actually means, why it was so significant, and how it informs our daily lives today—governing, as it does, everything from the atomic bomb to a television’s cathode ...

Generations have grown up knowing that the equation E=mc2 changed the shape of our world, but never understanding what it actually means, why it was so significant, and how it informs our daily lives today—governing, as it does, everything from the atomic bomb to a television’s cathode ray tube to the carbon dating of prehistoric paintings. In this book, David Bodanis writes the “biography” of one of the greatest scientific discoveries in history—that the realms of energy and matter are inescapably linked—and, through his skill as a writer and teacher, he turns a seemingly impenetrable theory into a dramatic human achievement and an uncommonly good story.