Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World Volume 2 of 3
(DVD)

Volume 2 of 3

Professor Steven L. Goldman from Lehigh University.

Why has science so dramatically altered how we live and how we think about ourselves? With characteristic energy and verve, Professor Steven L. Goldman declares, "One is tempted to speak of scientific discoveries as being the source of science's power to be a driver of social change—that scientists have been discovering new truths about nature, and that the change follows from that. But I argue that it is scientific ideas that are responsible for this change. Ideas are the source of science's power—not discoveries." And what is the greatest scientific idea of all? For Professor Goldman, that is surely the very idea of science, for as he puts it, "The idea of science itself is an idea that had to be invented." In Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World, you will explore ideas that—when society has been willing to pursue them—have helped form the foundation of modern life. You'll interpret the term "scientific idea" broadly, so as to include ideas that made science possible at all, as well as ideas that make science immensely powerful. You will discover there is no sharp distinction between ideas that are classified as scientific and those that are classified as philosophical or mathematical, or even between scientific ideas and political, religious, or aesthetic ideas. Alfred North Whitehead, for example, famously linked the emergence of modern science in the Christian West to the belief in a single, law-observing Creator of the universe. -Amazon.com