“There is presented here for the first time a scientific explanation of how the self effectively acts on the brain to bring about voluntary movements, an ability that each of us has.” Chapters include: “New Light on the Mind-Brain Problem: How Mental Events Could Influence Neural Events”; “Do Mental Events Cause Neural Events Analogously to the Probability Fields of Quantum Mechanics?”; “Quantum Aspects of Brain Activity and the Role of Consciousness”; and “The Self and Its Brain: The Ultimate Synthesis.”

Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Hardback: 198 pages
Illustrated

This book explores the connections between art and physics. A study that takes the reader through the philosophy of mind and language, cognitive science and neurophysiology in search of the origins and meaning of visual imagery.

Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Hardback: 250 pages
Illustrated

“A classic in its field, analyzes objective, physical properties of sound and their relationship with psychological sensations of music. Furthermore, it describes how these sound patterns are generated in musical instruments, how they propagate through the environment, and how they are detected by the ear and interpreted by the brain.”

Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Paperback: 221 pages
Illustrated

“Is consciousness a purely physical phenomenon or does it transcend the material world? Offers a new perspective based exclusively on evidence from the natural sciences in which materialism and dualism co-exist.”

Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Hardback: 229 pages
Illustrated

“The chance acquisition of George, a very rare male calico kitten” sends the author on an odyssey into the history of genetics. “In this story,” the author opens up “an unrecognized chapter in the history of science… from ancient theories about inheritance and sex determination, through Mendel’s famous experiments with his round and wrinkled peas, to speculations by Darwin and others about the rare male calicos. The struggles of early 20th-century scientists to find and study rare male calicos in the hope of answering fundamental questions in the newly emerging field of genetics are explored in amusing detail.”

Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Hardback: 228 pages
Illustrated

The former director of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum writes an exhaustive account of the museum’s fight to present a large-scale exhibition dealing with the decision to use the A-bomb against Japan. When the proposed original exhibit was seen by many as top-heavy regarding American guilt, Congress and veterans’ groups raised such an outcry that when the exhibit was finally approved, it consisted of little more than the Enola Gay and brief hints that the bomb it dropped over Hiroshima was effective, to a degree. Harwit describes in convincing detail what happens when history runs headlong into the politics of emotion, and both are sent reeling. A fascinating study of a successful fight against perceived political correctness results in offering up for public appreciation a viewpoint no less, and often more, distorted. JW

Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Hardback: 477 pages

An entertaining layman’s guide to quantum physics, illustrated by the author. It’s Alice’s adventures revisited, only this time around, her guides through Quantumland come in the guise of Quantum Mechanic, the Three Quark Brothers and the State Agent. Instead of undergoing changes in height, this Alice experiences quantum effects on a much more radical scale. The author pares away the mathematics and makes such theories as the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, wave functions, the Pauli Exclusion Principle, virtual particles, atoms, nuclei and high energy particle physics accessible to those among us challenged by higher math and sciences. CP

Publisher: Springer-Verlag
Hardback: 184 pages
Illustrated