Books about Nicolaus from Amazon.com

Written during the winter of 1857-8, the "Grundrisse" was considered by Marx to be the first scientific elaboration of communist theory. A collection of seven notebooks on capital and money, it both develops the arguments outlined in the Communist Manifesto (1848) and explores the themes and theses that were to dominate his great later work "Capital". Here, for the first time, Marx set out his own version of Hegel's dialectics and developed his mature views on labour, surplus value and profit, offering many fresh insights into alienation, automation and the dangers of capitalist society. Yet while the theories in "Grundrisse" make it a vital precursor to "Capital", it also provides invaluable descriptions of Marx's wider-ranging philosophy, making it a unique insight into his beliefs and hopes for the foundation of a communist state..
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For scientist and layman alike this book provides vivid evidence that the Copernican Revolution has by no means lost its significance today. Few episodes in the development of scientific theory show so clearly how the solution to a highly technical problem can alter our basic thought processes and attitudes. Understanding the processes which underlay the Revolution gives us a perspective, in this scientific age, from which to evaluate our own beliefs more intelligently. With a constant keen awareness of the inseparable mixture of its technical, philosophical, and humanistic elements, Mr. Kuhn displays the full scope of the Copernican Revolution as simultaneously an episode in the internal development of astronomy, a critical turning point in the evolution of scientific thought, and a crisis in Western man's concept of his relation to the universe and to God.

The book begins with a description of the first scientific cosmology developed by the Greeks. Mr. Kuhn thus prepares the way for a continuing analysis of the relation between theory and observation and belief. He describes the many functions--astronomical, scientific, and nonscientific--of the Greek concept of the universe, concentrating especially on the religious implications. He then treats the intellectual, social, and economic developments which nurtured Copernicus' break with traditional astronomy. Although many of these developments, including scholastic criticism of Aristotle's theory of motion and the Renaissance revival of Neoplatonism, lie entirely outside of astronomy, they increased the flexibility of the astronomer's imagination. That new flexibility is apparent in the work of Copernicus, whose DE REVOLUTIONIBUS ORBIUM CAELESTIUM is discussed in detail both for its own significance and as a representative scientific innovation.

With a final analysis of Copernicus' life work--its reception and its contribution to a new scientific concept of the universe--Mr. Kuhn illuminates both the researches that finally made the heliocentric arrangement work, and the achievements in physics and metaphysics that made the planetary earth an integral part of Newtonian science. These are the developments that once again provided man with a coherent and self-consistent conception of the universe and of his own place in it.

This is a book for any reader interested in the evolution of ideas and, in particular, in the curious interplay of hypothesis and experiment which is the essence of modern science. Says James B. Conont in his Foreword: "Professor Kuhn's handling of the subject merits attention, for... he points the way to the road which must be followed if science is to be assimilated into the culture of our times."

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Price: $11.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Seventeenth-century scientists were baffled: How did the fossils of seashells find their way to the tops of mountains? Nicolaus Steno, hailed by Stephen Jay Gould as "the founder of geology," solved the puzzle, looking directly at the clues left in the layers of the Earth. Paradoxically, at the same time his ideas were undermining the Bible’s authoritative claim as to the age of the planet, Steno was entering the priesthood and rising to bishop. He would ultimately be venerated as a saint and beatified by the Catholic Church in 1988.

A thrilling tale of scientific investigation and the portrait of an extraordinary genius, The Seashell on the Mountaintop is the story of how a scientist-turned-priest forever changed our understanding of the Earth and created a new field of science..
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In the spring of 1543, as the celebrated astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus lay on his deathbed, his fellow clerics brought him a long-awaited package: the final printed pages of the book he had worked on for many years, De revolutionibus (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres). Though Copernicus would not live to hear of its extraordinary impact, his book-which first posited that the sun, not Earth, was the center of the universe-is recognized as the greatest scientific work of the sixteenth century.

Four and a half centuries later, astrophysicist Owen Gingerich embarked on an extraordinary quest: to see in person all extant copies of the first and second printings of De revolutionibus. He was inspired by two contradictory pieces of information: Arthur Koestler's claim, in his famous book The Sleepwalkers, that nobody had read Copernicus's famous book when it was published; and Gingerich's discovery, at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, of a first edition of De revolutionibus that had been richly annotated in the margins by Erasmus Reinhold, the leading teacher of astronomy in northern Europe in the 1540s-strongly suggesting that Koestler's statement about the book was wrong.

After three decades of investigation, and after traveling hundreds of thousands of miles-from Melbourne to Moscow, Boston to Beijing-to view more than 600 copies of De revolutionibus, Gingerich has written an utterly original book built from his experience and the remarkable insights gleaned from Copernicus's books. Eventually he found copies once owned by saints, heretics, and scalawags, by musicians, movie stars, medicine men, and bibliomaniacs. Most interesting were the copies owned and annotated by astronomers, which even today illuminate the long, reluctant process of accepting the sun-centered cosmos as a physically real description of the world, and the tensions among scientists and between science and the church. Part biography of a book and a man, part scientific exploration, part bibliographic quest, Gingerich's book will offer new appreciation of the history of science and cosmology..
Price: $5.98 [Notify me when price goes down.]

This remarkakble collection of writings provides a wide diversity of answers to one of today's most emotionally charged questions Spanning the whole political spectrum and covering issues from jobs and the economy to race and culture, it includes the strong opinions of writers and critics from Toni Morrison to Francis Fukuyama..
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New to our On the Shoulders of Giants series, this groundbreaking work of astronomy proposed a heliocentric universe in which planets orbited the sun-daring to challenge the Ptolemaic ideal of the earth as the center of the universe. This essay by Copernicus (1473-1543), revolutionized the way we look at the earth's placement in the universe, and paved the way for many great scientists, including Galileo and Isaac Newton, whose theories stemmed from this model. Featuring a biography of Copernicus and an accessible, enlightening introduction, both written by the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres provides a fascinating look at the theories which shaped our modern understanding of astronomy and physics.

Black-and-white illustrations..
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Six-year-old Ludwig was sitting at the table, reading his Bible and praying, when Swedish soldiers stormed through the castle door. Ludwig looked up at the soldiers and then returned to his prayer and reading. The soldiers stopped and stared-then left. They said they could not ransack a place that God watched over.

An unusually mature Christian at a very young age, Count Nicolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf did not follow the course dictated by his noble birth but followed God's call even to the point of being banned from his native Saxony. Once destined for the royal court, the count instead became a spiritual father to millions.

Count Zinzendorf opened his estate to persecuted Moravian Christians, and under his leadership this vibrant community launched the modern missions movement. Beginning at Herrnhut and traveling as far as Africa, America, and Russia, the bold believers of the Moravian Church planted seeds that continue to bear fruit even today..
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Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1976 this historical novel is based on the life of Nicholas Koppernigk, better known as Copernicus, whose ideas and writings shattered the medieval view of the universe "Kepler", also by John Banville, won "The Guardian" Fiction Prize in 1981..
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Politicians of every stripe frequently invoke the Marshall Plan in support of programs aimed at using American wealth to extend the nation's power and influence, solve intractable third-world economic problems, and combat world hunger and disease. Do any of these impassioned advocates understand why the Marshall Plan succeeded where so many subsequent aid plans have not? Historian Nicolaus Mills explores the Marshall Plan in all its dimensions to provide valuable lessons from the past about what America can and cannot do as a superpower..
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