Science All books
Rita Levi Montalcini
Your Future A Nobel Prize which speaks to young people
When a great scientist makes a point of getting through to young people and those around them.... When a Nobel prize brings within everyones reach all the key principles of biology.... When an exceptional woman passes down to new generations the values on which she has based her life.... Science with a conscience ! Rita Levi Montalcini recieved the Nobel Prize for Medicine. Born in Turin, but forced from Italy by the Fascism, she has for many years taught in the United States.
Michel Cassé, Marie-Christine Maurel
Xenobiology Xeno-life
When an astrophysicist encounters a specialist in synthetic biology, they discuss the origins of the universe and of life. The first steps of a new science, whose repercussions could shake our conception of the living and of its evolution.
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...
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.
Gerald M. Edelman
Wider than the Sky
The brain is wider than the sky, For, put them side by side, The one the other will include With ease and you beside, wrote the American poet Emily Dickinson in the mid-nineteenth century. The fundamental mechanisms governing mental life are now the subject of scientific study. In this book, Gerald Edelman examines a major aspect of the mind - consciousness. How can the firing of neurons give rise to subjective sensations, thoughts and emotions? How can the disparate domains of mind and body be reconciled? A scientific explanation of consciousness must take into account the causal connections between these two domains. Such a theory must show how the neural bases of consciousness appeared during the evolutionary process and how certain animals developed consciousness. These are some of the key issues that Gerald Edelman examines here. He shows that consciousness cannot be located in a specific area of the brain, because it is a process linked to how the brain functions as a whole, to its wealth of connections and to its great complexity. The brain, he argues, is not a kind of computer. Edelman is regarded as one of the greatest theoreticians of the brain, and his notion of consciousness dominates all discussions on the subject among the international scientific community. This book offers the most accessible version of his theories that is available today. The winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Medicine, Gerald Edelman heads the Institute for Neurosciences, in La Jolla, California.
