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DREAMS OF EARTH AND SKY
By: Freeman Dyson
New York Review Books
May 2015
On Sale: April 21, 2015
312 pages
ISBN: 1590178548
EAN: 9781590178546
Kindle: B00N6PBDPC
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction
In this sequel to The Scientist as Rebel (2006), Freeman Dysonβwhom The Times of London calls βone of the worldβs most original mindsββcelebrates openness to unconventional ideas and βthe spirit of joyful dreamingβ in which he believes that science should be pursued. Throughout these essays, which range from the creation of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century to the scientific inquiries of the Romantic generation to recent books by Daniel Kahneman and Malcolm Gladwell, he seeks to βbreak down the barriers that separate science from other sources of human wisdom.β
Dyson discusses twentieth-century giants of physics such as Richard Feynman, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Paul Dirac, and Steven Weinberg, many of whom he knew personally, as well as Winston Churchillβs pursuit of nuclear weapons for Britain and Wernher von Braunβs pursuit of rockets for space travel. And he takes a provocative, often politically incorrect approach to some of todayβs most controversial scientific issues: global warming, the current calculations of which he thinks are probably wrong; the future of biotechnology, which he expects to dominate our lives in the next half-century as the tools to design new living creatures become available to everyone; and the flood of information in the digital age. Dyson offers fresh perspectives on the history, the philosophy, and the practice of scientific inquiryβand even on the blunders, the wild guesses and wrong theories that are also part of our struggle to understand the wonders of the natural world.
 Media BuzzWeekend Edition Saturday - May 2, 2015
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