Science Without Limits

In this fascinating volume, scientist and teacher James S. Perlman shows us that science is not a dry, mechanistic process but a dynamic interplay between human beings and their surroundings, embodying their attempts to understand, anticipate, and cope with natural events. The interactive nature of science requires the use of our minds, imaginations, and sense-extending apparatus, such as telescopes and microscopes. We are reminded that scientists do not merely observe; they form ideas and images which they then project back upon nature to explain what they see. And these ideas and images are themselves influenced by the limitations of the observer as well as by prevailing social, intellectual, and technological conditions. In Science without Limits, Dr. Perlman takes us on an extraordinary voyage through history as he demonstrates the ways in which science developed as a distinctly human and evolving enterprise from early man to the present. On our journey Perlman introduces us to the great figures of Western science and how their discoveries modified existing ways of viewing the world.