Dimensions
131 x 198 x 15mm
The stirrup or stairs; anaesthesia, the computer or quantum theory: what would you say was the greatest invention of the last 2000 years?
Literary agent and editor John Brockman recently challenged many leading scientists and other thinkers to answer this question on his website: www.edge.org. This book is an expanded collection of their news-making responses.
From the obvious to the unimaginably complex - and taking in the downright improbable along the way - this book opens up some of the most astonishing attainments of human creativity and ingenuity. From the printing press to the thermos flask; from calculus to the contraceptive pill, it celebrates the innumerable inventions by which we have transformed the way we live.
It hints too at our limitations at some of the challenges which lie in store: we may have changed our world but are we smart enough to save it? But whatever the risks, whatever the doubts, it's hard to be pessimistic for long with a book packed full from cover to cover with so much energy, so much resource, so much sheer inventiveness.
