The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2000 Years

by JohnBrockman (Editor)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2000

  $3.72

  Literary agent John Brockman challenged the array of scientists that he hosts on his website by asking: What is the most important invention of the past two thousand years? . This book provides a showcase for more than a hundred of their responses, which are as varied as the participants themselves. Gutenberg's printing press wins the most endorsements, but the neuroscientist Colin Blakemore argues for the birth-control pill, biologist Richard Dawkins nominates the spectroscope and physicist Freeman Dyson makes a case for hay! An eclectic collection of ideas from some of the foremost thinkers of our age.

• Used

  Paperback
  2001

  $3.26

  The editor and literary agent John Brockman recently challenged the salon of scientists that he hosts on his website by asking: 'What is the most important invention of the past two thousand years?' Not content to be merely right, his contributors vied for originality, provocativeness and intellectual panache. This book provides a showcase for more than a hundred of their responses, which are as varied, and in some cases strange, as the participants themselves. Gutenberg's printing press wins the most endorsements and passing nods. But the neuroscientist Colin Blakemore and others argue for the birth-control pill. The biologist Richard Dawkins nominates the spectroscope. The physicist Freeman Dyson makes a case for hay. John Maddox, the former editor of Nature, favours the calculus.