Real Science Experiments

Concerned with the aspects of human behaviour which have been traditionally described as cultural or social, the author draws on his background in physics to suggest a scientific approach involving a reconceptualization of many of our assumed concepts. Are culture, society and similar concepts from anthropology and sociology of any real use in making sense of human social life? How can we understand the relationship between the social group and the individual human beings, with their self-awareness and sense of personal identity, who make it up? Drawing on his background in physics, Dr Samuel suggests a scientific approach involving a reconceptualization of many of the concepts we take for granted. The multimodal framework, or MMF, derives from this approach. It incorporates many of the insights of social and cultural anthropology, particularly the work of Gregory Bateson and Victor Turner, as well as being influenced by recent developments in the philosophy of science and related fiel

Do economics and statistics succeed in explaining human social behaviour? To answer this question. Leland Gerson Neuberg studies some pioneering controlled social experiments. Starting in the late 1960s, economists and statisticians sought to improve social policy formation with random assignment experiments such as those that provided income guarantees in the form of a negative income tax. This book explores anomalies in the conceptual basis of such experiments and in the foundations of statistics and economics more generally. Scientific inquiry always faces certain philosophical problems. Controlled experiments of human social behaviour, however, cannot avoid some methodological difficulties not evident in physical science experiments. Drawing upon several examples, the author argues that methodological anomalies prevent microeconomics and statistics from explaining human social behaviour as coherently as the physical sciences explain nature. He concludes that controlled social exper

In this book a scientist and a literary critic combine their talents in order to assess the impact of the revolution in physical theory on literature. How did quantum theory and the general theory of relativity influence creative writers in the first half of this century? Beyond the community of scientists there was and still is much misunderstanding of Einstein and his achievements. Friedman and Donley review the impact of his theories on major contemporary writers, and particularly how writers have viewed the material (or 'real') world since the 1920s. The central thesis is that modern science does indeed have a deep influence on other aspects of culture, even those far removed, such as serious literature.

An aid to thinking quantitatively offers real-world situations and worked-out solutions about such environmental concerns as food production, acid rain, and indoor air pollution.

An idea-packed catalog of projects, activities, and science fun sure to inspire future "Edisons" . The Thomas Edison Book of Easy and Incredible Experiments The Thomas Alva Edison Foundation Thomas Ed

This textbook is an introduction to the design and writing of computer programs. It leads the reader through all the stages of program construction from the original specifications through to the final program. The formal verification of intermediate versions of the program is studied in considerable detail. The authors show how, given the formal specification of a program, data structure and program structure diagrams are drawn and then converted into a procedural program in a program design language (PDL). They demonstrate the conversion of PDL into a variety of real programming languages including Pascal, FORTRAN, COBOL, and Assembler. The book also includes chapters on abstract data types, analysing existing programs, and a small case study. First-year undergraduates in computer science and graduates taking courses in computing will find this a comprehensive introduction to program construction.

Herbals deal primarily with medicinal and culinary herbs, their real and supposed properties and virtues, and in origin they go back at least to the Ancient Greeks. During the 16th and 17th centuries they developed into attractively illustrated printed books, the forerunners of modern botanical and pharmaceutical textbooks. Agnes Arber's Herbals (first published in 1912, much revised in 1938) stands as the major survey of the period 1470 to 1670 when botany evolved into a scientific discipline separate from herbalism, a development reflected in contemporary herbals. Every work on herbals since 1912 has been indebted to Arber's classic. The present volume in the Cambridge Science Classics series, while retaining her main text unaltered, supplements this with two of her later writings on herbals, provides a biographical introduction, greatly extends the bibliography and has annotations modifying the original text through later enquiry. This added material will make this re-issue invaluab

To perform computer simulation successfully, two rather different sets of skills are required. One of these relates to programming: a simulation program should do what its author intends and do it efficiently. The other is concerned with the collection and analysis of data: statistical tools have to be used in order to obtain with a minimum of effort, accurate and reliable estimates for the desired performance measures. Dr Mitrani covers both of these aspects of the simulation method. The important topics of point and interval estimation, simulation efficiency and the analysis of simulation experiments are discussed in detail. This book, first published in 1982, will be useful to both undergraduate and postgraduate students taking courses on simulation in departments of computer science, operations research and statistics in universities and polytechnics. It will be of benefit also to practitioners in the field.

Social experimentation is a tool that enables economists and policy makers to test proposed economic policies in the real world. Instead of testing policies by analytical methods or by laboratory simulation, the policies are tested on people who would be affected were these policies implemented. The authors describe how such social experiments are set up and carried out, and consider the advantages and disadvantages of social experimentation relative to other means of evaluating economic and social policies. The main part of the book is a review and a critical evaluation of the principal social experiments in economics that have been carried out in the United States, where this method has been used most extensively. The authors examine in detail the first large-scale experiment in the United States (the New Jersey Income Maintenance Experiment) and subsequent experiments with the labour force, electricity rates, and cash housing allowances. A consideration of the social utility of soci

In this 1976 volume, Professor Ziman paints a broad picture of science, and of its relations to the world in general. He sets the scene by the historical development of scientific research as a profession, the growth of scientific technologies out of the useful arts, the sources of invention and technical innovation, and the advent of Big Science. He then discusses the economics of research and development, the connections between science and war, the nature of science policy and the moral dilemmas of social responsibility in science. Each topic is introduced by reference to easily understandable particular examples, with a large number of illustrations chosen to bring out the concreteness and reality of science as a human activity. Professor Ziman gives a chapter-by-chapter list of suggested topics for oral and written discussion, intended to provoke critical, sceptical attitudes to simplified solutions to real issues, and comments briefly on relevant books and other sources.

This extremely readable, highly regarded, and widely adopted text present innovative ways for applying calculus to real-world situations in the business, economics, life science, and social science di

Subjects range from the purely imaginative vistas of the wildest fantasy and science fiction to the meticulously recreated landscapes and cities of real-world games. Within each subsection, a major cu

Human Biology: Concepts and Current Issues, Fourth Edition sparks interest among non-science students by encouraging them to connect basic biology concepts to real-world issues that are relevant

One of the most readable of all the great classics of physical science, Opticks presents a comprehensive survey of 18th-century knowledge of light. Newton describes his experiments with spectroscopy,