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Description
From the acclaimed New York Times science writer George Johnson, an irresistible book on the ten most fascinating experiments in the history of science—moments when a curious soul posed a particularly eloquent question to nature and received a crisp, unambiguous reply. Johnson takes us to... read more
Memorable Quotes
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“"It would be years before physiologists laid out the details of what Galvani, egged on by Volta, had glimpsed with his frogs: how, in an organism, each microscopic cell acts like a little battery, with membranes behaving like cardboard spacers and charged ions playing the role of zinc and copper coins. What results is a standoff between positive and negative, the electromotive force called voltage. When a muscle moves or a finger feels the surface of a stone, a current flows through the nervous system. There is no ethereal "vital force." Life is electrochemistry." p. 74”
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“"Michelson's confidence was unshakable. 'I have a very high respect for his abilities,' Bell would later write, adding: 'though I rather suspect from his manner that he has too.'" - p. 115”
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“"'Every material system can exist as an entity only so long as its internal forces, attraction, cohesion, etc. balance the external forces acting upon it,' he <Pavlov> later wrote. "This is true for an ordinary stone just as much as for the most complex chemical substances, and its truth should be recognized also for the animal organism…. Reflexes are the elemental units in the mechanism of perpetual equilibration..'" - pp. 126-127”
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“"'The movement of plants toward the light and the seeking of truth through a mathematical analysis -- are these not phenomena belonging to the same order? Are they not the last links in an almost endless chain of adaptabilities which appear everywhere in living creatures?'" - <Pavlov> pp. 134-135”
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“"More interesting that the unfounded allegations is the question of how you keep from confusing your instincts with your suppositions, unconsciously nudging the apparatus, like a Ouija board, to come up with the hoped-for reply. It's something every experimenter must struggle with. The most temperamental piece of laboratory equipment will always be the human brain." p. 156”
- Show all quotations from this book (warning: contains spoilers)
First Sentence
"On a clear winter morning several years ago, I drop up the hill to St. John's College to play with electrons."
Table of Contents
Prologue - ix
1. Galileo: The Way Things Really Move - 3
2. William Harvey: Mysteries of the Heart - 17
3. Issac Newton: What a Color Is - 31
4. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier: The Farmer's Daughter - 45
5. Luigi Galvani: Animal Electricity - 60
6. Michael Faraday: Something Deeply Hidden - 75
7. James Joule: How the World Works - 88
8. A.A. Michelson: Lost in Space - 104
9. Ivan Pavlov: Measuring the Immeasurable - 121
10. Robert Millikan: In the Borderland -138
Afterword: The eleventh Most Beautiful Experiment - 157
Notes and Bibliography - 159
Acknowledgments - 179
Index - 181
Authors & Contributors
- George Johnson (Author)
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