Nature S Laboratory

"The author argues that Chicago--a city of rapid growth and severe labor unrest as well as a gateway to the West--offers the clearest lens for analyzing the history of the intellectual divide between countryside and city in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. She shows that Chicago served as a kind of urban laboratory where numerous public intellectuals experimented with various strains of environmental thinking"--

Natural nanomaterials and nanotechnologies are all around us, which inevitably leads to these questions: What are these natural nanomaterials made of? Where can we find them? What can they do? Answering these questions will facilitate new and environmentally friendly ways of creating and manipulating nanoscale materials for the next generation of n

"This book has an international broad scope. It should be of interest to a wide multi-disciplinary audience in USA, European countries and other countries"--

Thought experiments are performed in the laboratory of the mind. Beyond this metaphor it is difficult to say just what these remarkable devices for investigating nature are or how they work. Though most scientists and philosophers would admit their great importance, there has been very little serious study of them. This volume is the first book-length investigation of thought experiments. Starting with Galileo's argument on falling bodies, Brown describes numerous examples of the most influential thought experiments from the history of science. Following this introduction to the subject, some substantial and provocative claims are made, the principle being that some thought experiments should be understood in the same way that platonists understand mathematical activity: as an intellectual grasp of an independently existing abstract realm. With its clarity of style and structure, The Laboratory of the Mind will find readers among all philosophers of science as well as scientists who have puzzled over how thought experiments work.

Explores the theory of evolution, from before Darwin to the present day.