Series: Ponderables

Here is the essential guide to psychology, an authoritative reference book and timeline that examines how we learned to understand ourselves. Psychology - Ponderables is a young science. While great thinkers have pondered the nature of thought itself for centuries, the idea of using scientific experiments to examine the way we think, make decisions, and behave was only arrived at...

Here is the updated essential guide to computers, an authoritative reference book and timeline about the most powerful tools ever devised. Computing has been the sharp end of cutting-edge technology for a generation and it now permeates all our lives. But to many, computer science remains something of a mystery. Our story begins long before the silicon chip, when the...

Here is the essential guide to Biology, an authoritative reference book and timeline that examines how we have uncovered the secrets of life—the most complex process in the Universe. From the workings of molecules to the way entire oceans or continents of lifeforms interact, biology seeks to understand how it is that something can be alive, how it fends off...

Here is the updated essential guide to engineering, an authoritative reference book and timeline about how technology has given shape to our civilisation. Engineering predates humanity; Homo habilis was knapping hand axes from fist-sized flints more than a thousand centuries before the dawn of modern humans. Admittedly, the development of technology was slow back then, but we've made up for...

Here is the updated essential guide to physics, an authoritative reference book and timeline that examines the foundations upon which all scientific knowledge rests. Without physics, everything else—from astronomy to zoology—would be meaningless conjecture. Our journey begins with the first attempts to understand reality, Mother Nature—or as the ancient Greeks called it, physis. Follow the journey through history as great...

Here is the updated essential guide to the Periodic Table, an authoritative reference book and timeline with at-a-glance information for every element. The Periodic Table, set out by Dmitri Mendeleev in 1869, is the result of centuries of accumulated knowledge. It is a powerful yet elegant tool that opens a window onto the very stuff of nature—stars, rocks, life, and...

Here is the updated essential guide to mathematics, an authoritative reference book and timeline that explores the work of history's greatest mathematicians. These include the teasing genius of Pierre de Fermat, who said he knew the answers but rarely gave them up, and the helpful guidance of Fibonacci, whose 13th-century compendium for bookkeepers proved to be a valuable tool for...

Both art and science attempt answers to the big questions—what is truth, how to be good, and where did we come from?—but philosophy is the interpreter we turn to verify it all. We need it to make sense of the simplest maths and the most esoteric of poetry, and it has even created a science of information itself. We begin...

Here is the essential guide to the history of technology, an authoritative reference book and timeline that examines how tools have built our civilisation, changed our environment, and could even alter our species. The term technology is frequently associated with modernity and the possibilities of the future. However, we have been using technologies since before the dawn of history. Even...

Here is the essential guide to physics, an authoritative reference book and timeline that examines the foundations upon which all scientific knowledge rests. Without physics, everything else - from astronomy to zoology - would be a meaningless conjecture. Our journey begins with the first attempts to understand reality, Mother Nature - or as the ancient Greeks called it, physics. Follow...

The brain's cells are wired together with 100 trillion connections. That makes each and every human brain a contender as the most complex system in the universe, a system that endows us with an intellect that far outstrips that of any other creature. However, there is one difficult question remaining: Are we intelligent enough to understand our own brains? Follow...

Legend has it that the first magic square, where all lines and diagonals add up to the same figure, was revealed more than 2,000 years ago when a river turtle appeared to have ancient Chinese numerals inscribed on sections of its shell. Patterns are everywhere in nature, and counting, measuring, and calculating changes are as old as civilisation itself. Here...