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In Seeing Further, New York Times bestseller Bill Bryson takes readers on a guided tour through the great discoveries, feuds, and personalities of modern science. Already a major bestseller in the UK, Seeing Further tells the fascinating story of science and the Royal Society with Bill Bryson’s trademark wit and intelligence, and contributions from a host of well known scientists and science fiction writers, including Richard Dawkins, Neal Stephenson, James Gleick, and Margret Atwood. It is a delightful literary treat from the acclaimed author who previous explored the current state of scientific knowledge in his phenomenally popular book, A Short History of Nearly Everything.
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EDITED & INTRODUCED BY BILL BRYSON CONTRIBUTING EDITOR JON TURNEY SEEING FURTHER THE STORY OF SCIENCE, DISCOVERY, AND THE GENIUS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY Contents Cover Title Page Bill Bryson Introduction Acknowledgments James Gleick At the Beginning: More things in Heaven and Earth Margaret Atwood Of the Madness of Mad Scientists: Jonathan Swift’s Grand Academy Margaret Wertheim Lost Inspace: The Spititual Crisis of Newtonian Cosmology Neal Stephenson Atoms of Cognition: Metaphysics in the Royal Society, 1715–2010 Rebecca Newberger Goldstein What’s in a Name? Rivalries and the Birth of Modern Science Simon Schaffer Charged Atmospheres: Promethean Science and the Royal Society Richard Holmes A New Age of Flight: Joseph Banks Goes Ballooning Richard Fortey Archives of Life: Science and Collections Richard Dawkins Darwin’s Five Bridges: The Way to Natural Selection Henry Petroski Images of Progress: Conferences of Engineers Georgina Ferry X-Ray Visions: Structural Biologists and Social Action in the Twentieth Century Steve Jones Ten Thousand Wedges: Biodiversity, Natural Selection and Random Change Philip Ball Making Stuff: From Bacon to Bakelite Paul Davies Just Typical: Our Changing Place in the Universe Ian Stewart Behind the Scenes: The Hidden Mathematics that Rules our World John D. Barrow Simple, Really: From Simplicity to Complexity – and Back Again Oliver Morton Globe and Sphere, Cycles and Flows: How to see the World Maggie Gee Beyond Ending: Looking into the Void Stephen H. Schneider Confidence, Consensus and the Uncertainty Cops: Tackling Risk Management in Climate Change Gregory Benford Time: The Winged Chariot Martinrees Conclusion: Looking Fifty Years Ahead Further Reading List of Illustrations Index About the Author Also by Bill Bryson Copyright About the Publisher BILL BRYSON INTRODUCTION Bill Bryson is the internationally bestselling author of The Lost Continent, Mother Tongue, Neither Here Nor There, Made in America, Notes from a Small Island, A Walk in the Woods, Notes from a Big Country, Down Under, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid and A Short History of Nearly Everything, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, won the Aventis Prize for Science Books in 2004, and was awarded the Descartes Science Communication Prize in 2005. I CAN TELL YOU AT ONCE THAT MY FAVOURITE FELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY WAS THE REVEREND THOMAS BAYES, FROM TUNBRIDGE WELLS IN KENT, WHO LIVED FROM ABOUT 1701 TO 1761. HE WAS BY ALL ACCOUNTS A HOPELESS PREACHER, BUT A BRILLIANT MATHEMATICIAN. AT SOME POINT – IT IS NOT CERTAIN WHEN – HE DEVISED THE COMPLEX MATHEMATICAL EQUATION THAT HAS COME TO BE KNOWN AS THE BAYES THEOREM, WHICH LOOKS LIKE THIS: People who understand the formula can use it to work out various probability distributions – or inverse probabilities, as they are sometimes called. It is a way of arriving at statistical likelihoods based on partial information. The remarkable feature of Bayes’ theorem is that it had no practical applications in his own lifetime. Alth