New Books in Science

By New Books NetworkScience Natural Sciences

New Books in Science episodes

March 29, 2017 Raz Chen-Morris, “Measuring Shadows: Kepler’s Optics of Invisibility” (Penn State UP, 2016)
Raz Chen-Morris‘s new book traces a significant and surprising notion through the work of Johannes Kepler: in order to account for real physical motions, one has to investigate artificially produced shadows and reflections. Measuring Shadows: Kepler’s Optics of Invisibility (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016) beautifully places Kepler’s optics into...
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1 hr 3 min
March 29, 2017 Colleen Derkatch, “Bounding Biomedicine: Evidence and Rhetoric in the New Science of Alternative Medicine” (U of Chicago Press, 2016)
What makes for new science? What happens to the evidentiary basis of the medical profession when patients demand treatments beyond the range of their conception of human biology? Are the criteria of the sciences amenable to healing practices that are touted for their focus on singularity, rather than uniformity? Colleen...
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1 hr 5 min
March 21, 2017 Kathleen McAuliffe, “This is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society” (Mariner Books, 2017)
Kathleen McAuliffe‘s This is Your Brain on Parasites: How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society (Mariner Books, 2017) unveils the world of parasites. From the influence of parasites on the ability to transform rats brains to be easily susceptible to cat predation to altering web formation structures in...
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40 min
March 15, 2017 Stephanie Ruphy, “Scientific Pluralism Reconsidered: A New Approach to the (Dis)unity of Science (U. Pittsburgh Press, 2017)
The idea that the sciences can’t be unified–that there will never be a single ‘theory of everything’–is the current orthodoxy in philosophy of science and in many sciences as well. But different versions of pluralism present very different views of what exactly they are pluralistic about, why sciences cannot be...
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1 hr 6 min
February 15, 2017 Carl Gillett, “Reduction and Emergence in Science and Philosophy” (Cambridge UP, 2016)
Are complex phenomena “nothing but the sum of their parts”, or are they “more than the sum of their parts”? Physicists, chemists, and biologists as well as philosophers have long argued on both sides of this debate between the idea of reduction and that of emergence. At this point, argues...
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1 hr 9 min
February 13, 2017 Berit Brogaard, “On Romantic Love: Simple Truths about a Complex Emotion” (Oxford UP, 2015)
Why is falling in love so exciting and painful at the same time? And what explains our longing for people who are bad for us or no longer love us back? In her book On Romantic Love: Simple Truths about a Complex Emotion (Oxford University Press, 2015), philosopher and cognitive...
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52 min
February 04, 2017 Randy Olson, “Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story” (U. Chicago Press, 2015)
Randy Olson, author of Houston, We Have a Narrative: Why Science Needs Story (University of Chicago Press, 2015), has an unusual background. He is a Harvard-trained biologist and former tenured professor who resigned from his academic post to earn a degree from the world-renowned University of Southern California film school....
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1 hr 4 min
January 16, 2017 Projit Bihari Mukharji, “Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies, and Braided Science: (University of Chicago Press, 2016)
Projit Bihari Mukharji’s new book explores the power of small, non-spectacular, and everyday technologies as motors or catalysts of change in the history of science and medicine. Focusing on practices of Ayurveda in British Bengal between about 1870-1930, Doctoring Traditions: Ayurveda, Small Technologies, and Braided Science (University of Chicago Press,...
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1 hr 7 min
January 10, 2017 Joshua Howe, “Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming” (U. Washington Press, 2016)
The year 2016 was the hottest year on record, and in recent months, drought and searing heat have fanned wildfires in Fort McMurray Alberta and in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Meanwhile, the Arctic has had record high temperatures, leading one climate researcher to warn the region is unraveling. Yet for the most...
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35 min
January 04, 2017 Brian Clegg, “Are Numbers Real? The Uncanny Relationship of Mathematics and the Physical World (St. Martin’s Press, 2016)
Brian Clegg’s Are Numbers Real? The Uncanny Relationship of Mathematics and the Physical World (St. Martin’s Press, 2016) is a compact, very readable, and highly entertaining history of the development and use of mathematics to answer the important practical questions involved in advancing civilization. The question “Are Numbers Real?” is...
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53 min

About New Books in Science

From the publisher's feed

This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field.