Throughout its long history, and not just as the key aesthetic category for the Romantic Movement, the sublime has created the necessary link between aesthetic and moral judgment, offering the prospect of transcending the limits of measurement, even imagination. The best of science makes genuine claims to the sublime. For in science, as in art, every day brings the entirely new, the extreme, and the unrepresentable. How does one depict negative mass, for example, or the folding of a protein that is contagious? Can one capture emergent phenomena as they emerge? Science is continually faced with describing that which is beyond. This book, through contributions from nine prominent scholars, tackles that challenge. The explorations within Beyond the Finite range from the images taken by the Hubble Telescope to David Bohm's quantum romanticism, from Kant and Burke to a "downward spiraling infinity" of the 21st century sublime, all lucid yet transcendent. Squarely positioned at the interface between science and art, this volume's chapters capture a remarkable variety of perspectives, with neuroscience, chemistry, astronomy, physics, film, painting and music discussed in relation to the sublime experience, topics surely to peak the interest of academics and students studying the sublime in various disciplines.

Beyond the Finite: The Sublime in Art and Science

Hoffmann, Roald

Boyd Whyte, Iain

Arts & Photography

Oxford University Press

Positioned at the crossroads of the physical and biological sciences, chemistry deals with neither the infinitely small, nor the infinitely large, nor directly with life. So it is sometimes thought of as dull, the way things in the middle often are. But this middle ground is precisely where human beings exist. As Hoffmann shows in his inspired prose, the world observed at its molecular level is complex and agitated, as are the emotions of the supposedly dispassionate scientists who explore it. In The Same and Not the Same the vital tensions of chemistry are revealed; with down-to-earth explanations, Hoffmann uncovers the polarities that power, rend, and reform the world of molecules. When we wash an apple before eating it, we are thinking not merely of the dirt that may still be on it but of the pesticides used in agricultural production. When we take medication, we expect relief for our pain but also fear side effects. The Same and Not the Same shows this ambivalence to be only one of a number of dualities pervading the world of molecules. The theme of identity, reflected in the title of the book, is central to the story. Other dualities, from stasis and dynamics, to creation and discovery to the rich complexity of revealing and concealing, are lucidly delineated for nonscientist and scientist alike. The Same and Not the Same also offers a rare and compelling personal statement of the social responsibility of scientists. Unabashedly confronting some of the major ethical controversies in chemistry today, the book strives for balance in facing the pressing ecological and environmental concerns of our time.

The Same and Not the Same

Science & Math

Chemistry

Columbia University Press

Solids and Surfaces: A Chemist's View of Bonding in Extended Structures

This unique book shows how chemistry and physics come together in the solid state and on surfaces. Using a lively, graphic, descriptive approach, it teaches chemists the language that is necessary to understand the electronic structure of extended systems. And, at the same time, it demonstrates how a chemical, frontier-orbital, approach to solid state and surface bonding and reactivity may be constructed. The book begins with the language of crystal orbitals, band structures and densities of states. The tools for moving back from the highly delocalized orbitals of the solid are then built up in a transparent manner; they include decompositions of the densities of states and crystal orbital overlap populations. Using these tools, the book shapes a meeting ground between detailed quantum mechanical calculations and a chemical frontier orbital perspec- tive. Applications include a general picture of chemisorption, bond-breaking and making in the solid state, bonding in metals, the electronic structure of selected conducting and supercon- ducting structures, dissociation, migration and coupling on surfaces and the forces controlling deformation of extended systems.

Wiley-VCH

Exploring the fundamental harmony along the continuum between scientific inquiry and religion, the authors of this text examine a series of encompassing issues such as purity, perception, authority, precision, and the supernatural comparing how each is handled in the realm of science, art/poetry and Jewish scholarship. The result of the study provides a range of contemporary values that arrive at a respect and appreciation for the underlying unity of all knowledge.

Old Wine New Flasks: Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition

Religion & Spirituality

Schmidt, Shira Leibowitz

Judaism

W.H.Freeman & Co.

Memory Effects

Calhoun Press

This unique book shows how chemistry and physics come together in the solid state and on surfaces. Using a lively, graphic, descriptive approach, it teaches chemists the language that is necessary to understand the electronic structure of extended systems. And, at the same time, it demonstrates how a chemical, frontier-orbital, approach to solid state and surface bonding and reactivity may be constructed. The book begins with the language of crystal orbitals, band structures and densities of states. The tools for moving back from the highly delocalized orbitals of the solid are then built up in a transparent manner; they include decompositions of the densities of states and crystal orbital overlap populations. Using these tools, the book shapes a meeting ground between detailed quantum mechanical calculations and a chemical frontier orbital perspec- tive. Applications include a general picture of chemisorption, bond-breaking and making in the solid state, bonding in metals, the electronic structure of selected conducting and supercon- ducting structures, dissociation, migration and coupling on surfaces and the forces controlling deformation of extended systems.

A Nobel Prize-winning chemist uses collages, short essays, personal commentary, and poems to show the magic and mysteries of his field and stress the social, literary, and psychological aspects of chemistry.

Chemistry Imagined: Reflections on Science

Torrence, Vivian

Smithsonian

A Nobel Prize-winning chemist uses collages, short essays, personal commentary, and poems to show the magic and mysteries of his field and stress the social, literary, and psychological aspects of chemistry.

Chemistry Imagined Reflections on Science

In Roald Hoffmann's fourth collection of poetry, 'Soliton', we face the full scope and power of his outlook -- he writes of nature and bittersweet love, Jewish themes and his Holocaust survival. His poems build on phrases and words under stress, with great respect for the power of the language. Sometimes they are funny, and always carefully observed and reflective. His work is intriguing, mysterious, ambitious, and accomplished.

Soliton: Poems (New Odyssey Series)

Literature & Fiction

Poetry

Truman State Univ Pr

Drama. Poetry. Jewish Studies. In 38 short scenes, alternating between 1992 in Philadelphia and 1943-1944 in Gribniv, Ukraine, there emerges in SOMETHING THAT BELONGS TO YOU a story of survival and memory, of complex Ukrainian-Jewish relations, of struggles to remember and forgive. The language of this autobiographical play is poetic (especially in the wartime scenes!) and there are in it flashes of humor, even burlesque. The underlying themes are of coming to term with great loss, of the importance of both remembering and forgetting on the way to forgiving, and of the choices, always there, that human beings must make between good and evil in terrible times.

Something That Belongs To You

Dramas & Plays

Dos Madres Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hoffmann, Roald. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hoffmann, Roald

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hoffmann, Roald. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Beyond the Finite: The Sublime in Art and Science

The Same and Not the Same

Solids and Surfaces: A Chemist's View of Bonding in Extended Structures

Old Wine New Flasks: Reflections on Science and Jewish Tradition

Memory Effects

Solids and Surfaces: A Chemist's View of Bonding in Extended Structures

Chemistry Imagined: Reflections on Science

Chemistry Imagined Reflections on Science

Soliton: Poems (New Odyssey Series)

Something That Belongs To You