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Great Feuds in Science: Ten of the Liveliest Disputes Ever (Wiley Popular Science) Book
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Amazon Review
"The facts, even the theories, are history. It is the process that is the living science; that's what makes the activity exciting to those who practice it," science writer Hal Hellman observes. "Often, however, the process of scientific discovery is charged with emotion.... Holders of an earlier idea may not give it up gladly." Hellman describes some of the most emotional, dramatic, and personal debates in scientific history. He rounds up the usual suspects--Galileo versus the pope, Newton versus Leibniz, Cope versus Marsh, evolution versus Creation--but also includes less well known, but no less interesting, conflicts: Wallis versus Hobbes on squaring the circle, Voltaire versus Needham on embryos. And he boldly includes two conflicts in which (some) of the combatants are still alive: Don Johanson versus the Leakeys on human origins and Derek Freeman versus the ghost of Margaret Mead on Samoa. Never a dull moment. --Mary Ellen Curtin
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Product Description
In Great Feuds in Science, Hal Hellman tells the lively stories of ten of the most outrageous and intriguing disputes from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. Bringing the cataclysmic clash of ideas and personalities to colorful life, Hellman explores both the science and the spirit of the times. Along the way, he reveals that scientific feuds are often fueled not only by the purest of intellectual disagreements, but also by intransigence, ambition, jealousy, politics, faith, and the irresistible human urge to be right.
Defending the merits of their science before the misguided arguments of fellow scientists, dogmatic perspectives of religious believers, and the outright envy and contempt of fierce competitors, scientists from Galileo to Darwin and from Margaret Mead to Richard Leakey have found themselves and their work at the center of storms that have raged into remarkable furies.
Hellman selects a delightful mix of famous and lesser-known clashes. We learn about the possibly unintended personal slight that may have prompted Pope Urban VIII's anger at Galileo in their famous battle over the evidence that Earth revolves around the Sun. The surprising role of remarkable coincidences in the history of science is revealed in the story of the raging battle between Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz over their simultaneous invention of calculus. The astonishing power of reputation is brought to light in the account of the decades-long battle between Lord Kelvin, a titan of science in his time, and the proponents of the new field of geology over Kelvin's drastic underestimate of the age of Earth (he proved to be billions of years off the mark). The stunning vitriol to which competition between ambitious scientists can sometimes lead is demonstrated by the saga of the infamous "fossil feud" between the two great fossil hunters Edward Drinker Cope and Othniel Charles Marsh.
In each engaging story, Hellman offers fresh insights into the very human drama of the real process of scientific discovery. Great Feuds in Science is an eye-opening look at the high-stakes, rough and tumble battle between ideas and ambition, evidence and egos, emotion and reason that characterizes scientific advancement, revealing that controversies are not only typical of, but often necessary to, the progress of science.
The dramatic stories of ten historic feuds and how they altered the course of discovery and shaped the modern world
Pope Urban VIII versus Galileo
- An Unequal Contest Wallis versus Hobbes
- Squaring the Circle Newton versus Leibniz
- A Clash of Titans Voltaire versus Needham
- The Generation Controversy Darwin's Bulldog versus Soapy Sam
- Evolution Wars Lord Kelvin versus Geologists and Biologists
- The Age of the Earth Cope versus Marsh
- The Fossil Feud Wegener versus Everybody
- Continental Drift Johanson versus the Leakeys
- The Missing Link Derek Freeman versus Margaret Mead
- Nature versus Nurture
- 0471169803
- 9780471169802
- Hal Hellman
- 17 July 1998
- John Wiley & Sons
- Hardcover (Book)
- 256
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