Flattening The Earth

Download or read book Flattening the Earth written by John P. Snyder and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1997-12-05 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cartographers have long grappled with the impossibility of portraying the earth in two dimensions. To solve this problem, mapmakers have created map projections. This work discusses and illustrates the known map projections from before 500BC to the present, with facts on their origins and use.

Download or read book The World Is Flat [Further Updated and Expanded; Release 3.0] written by Thomas L. Friedman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2007-08-07 with total page 682 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores globalization, its opportunities for individual empowerment, its achievements at lifting millions out of poverty, and its drawbacks--environmental, social, and political.

Download or read book Map Projections written by L M Bugayevskiy and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 1995-06-28 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Map projection concerns the science of mathematical cartography, the techniques by which the Earth's dimensions, shape and features are translated in map form, be that two-dimensional paper or two- or three- dimensional electronic representations. The central focus of this book is on the theory of map projections. Mathematical cartography also takes in map scales and their variation, the division of maps into sets of sheets and nomenclature, and addresses the problems of making measurements and conducting investigations which make use of geodetic measurements and the development of graphical methods for solving problems of spherical trigonometry, marine- and aeronavigation, astronomy and even crystallography.

Download or read book The Man Who Flattened the Earth written by Mary Terrall and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2006-05-05 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Self-styled adventurer, literary wit, philosopher, and statesman of science, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) stood at the center of Enlightenment science and culture. Offering an elegant and accessible portrait of this remarkable man, Mary Terrall uses the story of Maupertuis's life, self-fashioning, and scientific works to explore what it meant to do science and to be a man of science in eighteenth-century Europe. Beginning his scientific career as a mathematician in Paris, Maupertuis entered the public eye with a much-discussed expedition to Lapland, which confirmed Newton's calculation that the earth was flattened at the poles. He also made significant, and often intentionally controversial, contributions to physics, life science, navigation, astronomy, and metaphysics. Called to Berlin by Frederick the Great, Maupertuis moved to Prussia to preside over the Academy of Sciences there. Equally at home in salons, cafés, scientific academies, and royal courts, Maupertuis used his social connections and his printed works to enhance a carefully constructed reputation as both a man of letters and a man of science. His social and institutional affiliations, in turn, affected how Maupertuis formulated his ideas, how he presented them to his contemporaries, and the reactions they provoked. Terrall not only illuminates the life and work of a colorful and important Enlightenment figure, but also uses his story to delve into many wider issues, including the development of scientific institutions, the impact of print culture on science, and the interactions of science and government. Smart and highly readable, Maupertuis will appeal to anyone interested in eighteenth-century science and culture. “Terrall’s work is scholarship in the best sense. Her explanations of arcane 18th-century French physics, mathematics, astronomy, and biology are among the most lucid available in any language.”—Virginia Dawson, American Historical Review Winner of the 2003 Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society

Download or read book The Power of Place written by Harm J. De Blij and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harm de Blij contends in this book that geography continues to hold us all in an unrelenting grip and that we are all born into natural and cultural environments that shape what we become, individually and collectively.

Download or read book When Maps Become the World written by Rasmus Grønfeldt Winther and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-06-29 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Map making and, ultimately, map thinking is ubiquitous across literature, cosmology, mathematics, psychology, and genetics. We partition, summarize, organize, and clarify our world via spatialized representations. Our maps and, more generally, our representations seduce and persuade; they build and destroy. They are the ultimate record of empires and of our evolving comprehension of our world. This book is about the promises and perils of map thinking. Maps are purpose-driven abstractions, discarding detail to highlight only particular features of a territory. By preserving certain features at the expense of others, they can be used to reinforce a privileged position. When Maps Become the World shows us how the scientific theories, models, and concepts we use to intervene in the world function as maps, and explores the consequences of this, both good and bad. We increasingly understand the world around us in terms of models, to the extent that we often take the models for reality. Winther explains how in time, our historical representations in science, in cartography, and in our stories about ourselves replace individual memories and become dominant social narratives—they become reality, and they can remake the world.

Download or read book Inventing the Flat Earth written by Jeffrey B. Russell and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1997-01-30 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals the facts behind the deceiving myths that have been professed about Columbus and his time.