Catalog All books
Michel Aglietta
Transforming the Growth System
An essential book for thinking in other ways about the relationships between finance, growth, and the climate, and for situating oneself within a long term perspective.
Marc D. Hauser
Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think
A slender loris comes up to a zoo keeper and hugs him. A dog lowers its head and whines when its master is unhappy. Is such behaviour a sign of affection and empathy or are other mechanisms at work, to explain the animals near-human behaviour? Why do chimps and dolphins form coalitions to defend themselves? How do lions determine, from far away, the number of gazelles calmly watering by a stream? How is it that a few species can recognise their own image in a mirror? Marc D. Hauser is a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Harvard University, where he is a fellow of the Mind, Brain and Behavior Program. Besides performing laboratory research, he has done extensive fieldwork in Kenya, Uganda and Puerto Rico.
Maurice Jacob
At the Heart of the Matter
The study of elementary particle physics and high energies, undertaken in huge laboratories such as the accelerators of Stanford, Chicago, Brookhaven, CERN at Geneva, and Dubna et Serpukhov near Moscow, is one of the most astonishing scientific feats of the last half century. The field not only allows us to understand the composition of matter and the origin and evolution of the universe, but also helps prevent these scientific instruments being used as weapons of war. The Pugwash conferences, held between scientists of the East and West, won a Nobel Prize for this very reason. Maurice Jacob, the honorary director of the division of theoretical physics at CERN, recounts in this book how these objectives have been achieved. Maurice Jacob is a theoretical physician of elementary particles.
Anne Marcovich
What do societies dream of ?
Why do societies change? How, through countless transformations, do they manage to maintain their own identity? With the help of the many resources provided by the social sciences, history, sociology, social psychology, anthropology and economics, Anne Marcovich has tried to identify the principle of change within a framework of continuity that characterises the evolution of societies. Anne Marcovich is a researcher in the social sciences.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, Sandra Blakeslee
Phantoms in the Brain Human Nature and the Architecture of the Mind
How do we make decisions? Why do we deceive ourselves? Why do we dream? Why may we believe in God? Why do we laugh or become depressed? Few scientists have dared address these questions that inform our daily lives with so much acumen and audacity. V.S. Ramachandran is a brilliant Sherlock Holmes of neuroscience. He reveals the strangest case studies he has encountered of patients suffering from serious neurological disorders and the insights they yield about human nature and the workings of the mind. V.S. Ramachandran is professor and director of the Center for Brain and Cognition, at the University of California.
Stanislas Dehaene, Christine Petit
Words and Music Genesis of human dialogue
Speech and music shape social cognition through shared emotional states, intentions, symbols and cultures...
Monique Sicard
The Making of the Image
It was during the Renaissance that images and pictures were first used by anatomists, microscopists, and astronomers as scientific tools. In that era, scientific images served as a kind of inventory of the known world. In the 19th century, the popularization of scientific ideas gave science a new vigor. Photographic images gave science a new reality, explaining and legitimizing scientific concepts--movement, for example--to a fascinated public. In our days, the scientific image is often a construction--helping us to represent objects and ideas that, like fractals or black holes, cannot be defined through actual observation. Monique Sicard is Projects Director at CNRS Images Média.