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1949stone

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[资源] MODERN GENETICS: Engineering Life

The Milestones in Science and Discovery set is based on a simple but
powerful idea—that science and technology are not separate from
eople’s daily lives. Rather, they are part of seeking to
understand and reshape the world, an activity that virtually defines
being human.
More than a million years ago, the ancestors of modern humans
began to shape stones into tools that helped them compete with the
specialized predators around them. Starting about 35,000 years
ago, the modern type of human, Homo sapiens, also created elaborate
cave paintings and finely crafted art objects, showing that technology
had been joined with imagination and language to compose
a new and vibrant world of culture. Humans were not only shaping
their world but representing it in art and thinking about its nature
and meaning.
Technology is a basic part of that culture. The mythologies of
many peoples include a trickster figure, who upsets the settled
order of things and brings forth new creative and destructive possibilities.
In many myths, for instance, a trickster such as the Native
Americans’ Coyote or Raven steals fire from the gods and gives it
to human beings. All technology, whether it harnesses fire, electricity,
or the energy locked in the heart of atoms or genes, partakes of
the double-edged gift of the trickster, providing power to both hurt
and heal.
An inventor of technology is often inspired by the discoveries of
scientists. Science as we know it today is younger than technology,
dating back about 500 years to a period called the Renaissance.
During the Renaissance, artists and thinkers began to explore
nature systematically, and the first modern scientists, such as
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) and Galileo Galilei (1564–1642),
used instruments and experiments to develop and test ideas about
how objects in the universe behaved. A succession of revolutions
followed, often introduced by individual geniuses: Isaac Newton
(1643–1727) in mechanics and mathematics, Charles Darwin
(1809–82) in biological evolution, Albert Einstein (1879–1955)
in relativity and quantum physics, James Watson (1928– ) and
Francis Crick (1916–2004) in modern genetics. Today’s emerging fields of
science and technology, such as genetic engineering,
nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence, have their own inspiring leaders.
The fact that particular names such as Newton, Darwin, and
Einstein can be so easily associated with these revolutions suggests
the importance of the individual in modern science and technology.
Each book in this set thus focuses on the lives and achievements of
eight to 10 individuals who together have revolutionized an aspect
of science or technology. Each book presents a different field:
marine science, genetics, astronomy and space science, forensic science,
communications technology, robotics, artificial intelligence,
and mathematical simulation. Although early pioneers are included
where appropriate, the emphasis is generally on researchers who
worked in the 20th century or are still working today.
The biographies in each volume are placed in an order that reflects
the flow of the individuals’ major achievements, but these life stories are
often intertwined. The achievements of particular men and
women cannot be understood without some knowledge of the times
they lived in, the people they worked with, and developments that
preceded their research. Newton famously remarked, “If I have seen
further [than others], it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Each scientist or inventor builds upon—or wrestles with—the work
that has come before. Individual scientists and inventors also interact
with others in their own laboratories and elsewhere, sometimes
even partaking in vast collective efforts, such as the government and
private projects that raced at the end of the 20th century to complete
the description of the human genome. Scientists and inventors
affect, and are affected by, economic, political, and social forces
as well. The relationship between scientific and technical creativity
and developments in social institutions is another important facet
of this series.

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