Scientific Babel

Author : Michael D. Gordin
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022600032X
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Scientific Babel written by Michael D. Gordin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-04-13 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English is the language of science today. No matter which languages you know, if you want your work seen, studied, and cited, you need to publish in English. But that hasn’t always been the case. Though there was a time when Latin dominated the field, for centuries science has been a polyglot enterprise, conducted in a number of languages whose importance waxed and waned over time—until the rise of English in the twentieth century. So how did we get from there to here? How did French, German, Latin, Russian, and even Esperanto give way to English? And what can we reconstruct of the experience of doing science in the polyglot past? With Scientific Babel, Michael D. Gordin resurrects that lost world, in part through an ingenious mechanism: the pages of his highly readable narrative account teem with footnotes—not offering background information, but presenting quoted material in its original language. The result is stunning: as we read about the rise and fall of languages, driven by politics, war, economics, and institutions, we actually see it happen in the ever-changing web of multilingual examples. The history of science, and of English as its dominant language, comes to life, and brings with it a new understanding not only of the frictions generated by a scientific community that spoke in many often mutually unintelligible voices, but also of the possibilities of the polyglot, and the losses that the dominance of English entails. Few historians of science write as well as Gordin, and Scientific Babel reveals his incredible command of the literature, language, and intellectual essence of science past and present. No reader who takes this linguistic journey with him will be disappointed.

Author : Michael D. Gordin
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022600029X
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Scientific Babel written by Michael D. Gordin and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-04-13 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: English is the language of science today. No matter which languages you know, if you want your work seen, studied, and cited, you need to publish in English. But that hasn’t always been the case. Though there was a time when Latin dominated the field, for centuries science has been a polyglot enterprise, conducted in a number of languages whose importance waxed and waned over time—until the rise of English in the twentieth century. So how did we get from there to here? How did French, German, Latin, Russian, and even Esperanto give way to English? And what can we reconstruct of the experience of doing science in the polyglot past? With Scientific Babel, Michael D. Gordin resurrects that lost world, in part through an ingenious mechanism: the pages of his highly readable narrative account teem with footnotes—not offering background information, but presenting quoted material in its original language. The result is stunning: as we read about the rise and fall of languages, driven by politics, war, economics, and institutions, we actually see it happen in the ever-changing web of multilingual examples. The history of science, and of English as its dominant language, comes to life, and brings with it a new understanding not only of the frictions generated by a scientific community that spoke in many often mutually unintelligible voices, but also of the possibilities of the polyglot, and the losses that the dominance of English entails. Few historians of science write as well as Gordin, and Scientific Babel reveals his incredible command of the literature, language, and intellectual essence of science past and present. No reader who takes this linguistic journey with him will be disappointed.

Author : Michael Gordin
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9781781251157
Total Pages : 432 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Scientific Babel written by Michael Gordin and published by . This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, the language of science is English. But the dominance of this particular language is a relatively recent phenomenon - and far from a foregone conclusion.In a sweeping history that takes us from antiquity to the modern day, Michael D. Gordin untangles the web of politics, money, personality and international conflict that created the monoglot world of science we now inhabit. Beginning with the rise of Latin, Gordin reveals how we went on to use (and then lose) Dutch, Italian, Swedish and many other languages on the way, and sheds light on just how significant language is in the nationalistic realm of science - just one word mistranslated into German from Russian triggered an inflammatory face-off between the two countries for the credit of having discovered the periodic table. Intelligent, revealing and full of compelling stories, Scientific Babel shows how the world has shaped science just as much as science has transformed the world.

Author : Robert T. Pennock
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262264056
Total Pages : 452 pages
Book Rating : 4.51/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Tower of Babel written by Robert T. Pennock and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000-02-28 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Creationists have acquired a more sophisticated intellectual arsenal. This book reveals the insubstantiality of their arguments. Creationism is no longer the simple notion it once was taken to be. Its new advocates have become more sophisticated in how they present their views, speaking of "intelligent design" rather than "creation science" and aiming their arguments against the naturalistic philosophical method that underlies science, proposing to replace it with a "theistic science." The creationism controversy is not just about the status of Darwinian evolution—it is a clash of religious and philosophical worldviews, for a common underlying fear among Creationists is that evolution undermines both the basis of morality as they understand it and the possibility of purpose in life. In Tower of Babel, philosopher Robert T. Pennock compares the views of the new creationists with those of the old and reveals the insubstantiality of their arguments. One of Pennock's major innovations is to turn from biological evolution to the less charged subject of linguistic evolution, which has strong theoretical parallels with biological evolution, both in content and in the sort of evidence scientists use to draw conclusions about origins. Of course, an evolutionary view of language does conflict with the Bible, which says that God created the variety of languages at one time as punishment for the Tower of Babel. Several chapters deal with the work of Phillip Johnson, a highly influential leader of the new Creationists. Against his and other views, Pennock explains how science uses naturalism and discusses the relationship between factual and moral issues in the creationism-evolution controversy. The book also includes a discussion of Darwin's own shift from creationist to evolutionist and an extended argument for keeping private religious beliefs separate from public scientific knowledge.

Author : R. F. Kuang
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0063021447
Total Pages : 814 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Babel written by R. F. Kuang and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2022-08-23 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller from the author of The Poppy War “Absolutely phenomenal. One of the most brilliant, razor-sharp books I've had the pleasure of reading that isn't just an alternative fantastical history, but an interrogative one; one that grabs colonial history and the Industrial Revolution, turns it over, and shakes it out.” -- Shannon Chakraborty, bestselling author of The City of Brass From award-winning author R. F. Kuang comes Babel, a thematic response to The Secret History and a tonal retort to Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell that grapples with student revolutions, colonial resistance, and the use of language and translation as the dominating tool of the British empire. Traduttore, traditore: An act of translation is always an act of betrayal. 1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. Babel is the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as its knowledge serves the Empire’s quest for colonization. For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide… Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

Author : Ken Ham
Publisher : New Leaf Publishing Group
ISBN 13 : 1614587892
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Creation to Babel written by Ken Ham and published by New Leaf Publishing Group. This book was released on 2021-11-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It seems we wake each day to a world engulfed in chaos and confusion... a society mired in godlessness and humanism... and families struggling to guide their children in faith. Yet, God gave us the answer... His Holy Word. Begin as He recorded for us to begin, with Genesis. After many years of teaching and speaking on the importance of foundational faith, leading apologetics author Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis has created a clear and powerful study that helps root families and young or struggling believers in biblical truth. He makes it easy to build a vital Genesis-founded worldview in this simple yet profound study that explores the importance and implications of pivotal events, verse by verse, from Creation to Babel. Discover important context to answer relevant faith questions Easy-to-understand exploration of the biblical text The essential guide to laying a faith-foundational view Faith without a strong foundation crumbles in the face of today’s relentless cultural rejections. Christians, young and old, will find the strong foundation they need in the biblical bedrock of Genesis.

Author : Elena Aronova
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022676141X
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Scientific History written by Elena Aronova and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-04-02 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasingly, scholars in the humanities are calling for a reengagement with the natural sciences. Taking their cues from recent breakthroughs in genetics and the neurosciences, advocates of “big history” are reassessing long-held assumptions about the very definition of history, its methods, and its evidentiary base. In Scientific History, Elena Aronova maps out historians’ continuous engagement with the methods, tools, values, and scale of the natural sciences by examining several waves of their experimentation that surged highest at perceived times of trouble, from the crisis-ridden decades of the early twentieth century to the ruptures of the Cold War. The book explores the intertwined trajectories of six intellectuals and the larger programs they set in motion: Henri Berr (1863–1954), Nikolai Bukharin (1888–1938), Lucien Febvre (1878–1956), Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943), Julian Huxley (1887–1975), and John Desmond Bernal (1901–1971). Though they held different political views, spoke different languages, and pursued different goals, these thinkers are representative of a larger motley crew who joined the techniques, approaches, and values of science with the writing of history, and who created powerful institutions and networks to support their projects. In tracing these submerged stories, Aronova reveals encounters that profoundly shaped our knowledge of the past, reminding us that it is often the forgotten parts of history that are the most revealing.

Author : Jorge Luis Borges
Publisher : Pocket Paragon
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 56 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Library of Babel written by Jorge Luis Borges and published by Pocket Paragon. This book was released on 2000 with total page 56 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Not many living artists would be sufficiently brave or inspired to attempt reflecting in art what Borges constructs in words. But the detailed, evocative etchings by Erik Desmazieres provide a perfect counterpoint to the visionary prose. Like Borges, Desmazieres has created his own universe, his own definition of the meaning, topography and geography of the Library of Babel. Printed together, with the etchings reproduced in fine-line duotone, text and art unite to present an artist's book that belongs in the circle of Borges's sacrosanct Crimson Hexagon - "books smaller than natural books, books omnipotent, illustrated, and magical.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author : James Thompson Bixby
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Religion and Science as Allies written by James Thompson Bixby and published by . This book was released on 1889 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Olga A. Pilkington
Publisher : McFarland
ISBN 13 : 1476635609
Total Pages : 196 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Language of Popular Science written by Olga A. Pilkington and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-12-28 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:  If you read (or write) popular science, you might sometimes wonder: how do the authors manage to make subjects that once put you to sleep in science class both so entertaining and approachable? The use of language is key. Based on analyses of popular science bestsellers, this linguistic study shows how expert popularizers use the voices and narratives of scientists to engage readers, demonstrating the power of science and portraying researchers as champions of knowledge. By doing so they often blur the lines between nonfiction and fiction, inviting readers to take part in thought experiments and turn ordinary scientists into omnipotent heroes.