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Beyond Measure
- The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants
- Narrated by: James Vincent
- Length: 10 hrs and 1 min
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Publisher's summary
A vibrant account of how measurement has invisibly shaped our world, from ancient civilizations to the modern day.
From the cubit to the kilogram, the humble inch to the speed of light, measurement is a powerful tool that humans invented to make sense of the world. In this revelatory work of science and social history, James Vincent dives into its hidden world, taking listeners from ancient Egypt, where measuring the annual depth of the Nile was an essential task, to the intellectual origins of the metric system in the French Revolution, and from the surprisingly animated rivalry between metric and imperial, to our current age of the "quantified self." At every turn, Vincent is keenly attuned to the political consequences of measurement, exploring how it has also been used as a tool for oppression and control.
Beyond Measure reveals how measurement is not only deeply entwined with our experience of the world, but also how its history encompasses and shapes the human quest for knowledge.
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A witty and inventive satire of "men of science" and their thinking, as a team of scientists races to decode a mysterious message from space. "I had the feeling that I was standing at the cradle of a new mythology. A last will and testament...we as the posthumous heirs of Them...."
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Excelent and entertaining
- By Jakub on 01-10-12
By: Stanislaw Lem
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Isaac Newton
- By: James Gleick
- Narrated by: Allan Corduner
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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James Gleick has long been fascinated by the making of science: how ideas order visible appearances, how equations can give meaning to molecular and stellar phenomena, how theories can transform what we see. In Chaos, he chronicled the emergence of a new way of looking at dynamic systems; in Genius, he portrayed the wondrous dimensions of Richard Feymnan's mind.
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BRUTAL
- By Andrew on 05-25-05
By: James Gleick
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The Most Powerful Idea in the World
- A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention
- By: William Rosen
- Narrated by: Michael Prichard
- Length: 13 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Award-winning author William Rosen tells the story of the men responsible for the Industrial Revolution and the machine that drove it: the steam engine.
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A Revelation about a Revolution
- By Roy on 08-01-10
By: William Rosen
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About Time
- Cosmology, Time and Culture at the Twilight of the Big Bang
- By: Adam Frank
- Narrated by: David Drummond
- Length: 13 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
The Big Bang is all but dead, and we do not yet know what will replace it. Our universe's "beginning" is at an end. What does this have to do with us here on Earth? Our lives are about to be dramatically shaken again - as altered as they were with the invention of the clock, the steam engine, the railroad, the radio and the Internet.
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More fluff than science
- By Ivan the Reviewer on 04-15-13
By: Adam Frank
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The Invention of Air
- By: Steven Johnson
- Narrated by: Mark Deakins
- Length: 6 hrs and 6 mins
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Best-selling author Steven Johnson recounts - in dazzling, multidisciplinary fashion - the story of the brilliant man who embodied the relationship between science, religion, and politics for America's Founding Fathers. The Invention of Air is a title of world-changing ideas wrapped around a compelling narrative, a story of genius and violence and friendship in the midst of sweeping historical change that provokes us to recast our understanding of the Founding Fathers.
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Good scientific history
- By Roger on 05-03-10
By: Steven Johnson
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The Problem of Increasing Human Energy
- By: Nikola Tesla
- Narrated by: Ryan Jarvis
- Length: 2 hrs and 27 mins
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Written in 1900 by Nikola Tesla, this book gives great ideas on automation, agriculture, energy, and increasing human output to improve the human condition.
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boring
- By Amazon Customer nutbutter on 09-10-17
By: Nikola Tesla
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The Seashell on the Mountaintop
- By: Alan Cutler
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 5 hrs and 39 mins
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A thrilling scientific investigation and the portrait of an extraordinary genius, The Seashell on the Mountaintop gives us new insight into our planet, revealing how we learned to read the story told to us by the Earth itself, written in rock and stone.
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Not to be missed
- By Vanessa on 10-22-03
By: Alan Cutler
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The Dawn of Everything
- A New History of Humanity
- By: David Graeber, David Wengrow
- Narrated by: Mark Williams
- Length: 24 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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A trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the emergence of "the state", political violence, and social inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.
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exactly what I've been looking for
- By DankTurtle on 11-10-21
By: David Graeber, and others
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When Einstein Walked with Gödel
- Excursions to the Edge of Thought
- By: Jim Holt
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Does time exist? What is infinity? Why do mirrors reverse left and right but not up and down? In this scintillating collection, Holt explores the human mind, the cosmos, and the thinkers who’ve tried to encompass the latter with the former. With his trademark clarity and humor, Holt probes the mysteries of quantum mechanics, the quest for the foundations of mathematics, and the nature of logic and truth. Along the way, he offers intimate biographical sketches of celebrated and neglected thinkers, from the physicist Emmy Noether to the computing pioneer Alan Turing and the discoverer of fractals, Benoit Mandelbrot.
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A good overview of scientific theory
- By MJ Walters on 09-11-18
By: Jim Holt
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The Invention of Yesterday
- A 50,000-Year History of Human Culture, Conflict, and Connection
- By: Tamim Ansary
- Narrated by: Tamim Ansary
- Length: 17 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Traveling across millennia, weaving the experiences and world views of cultures both extinct and extant, The Invention of Yesterday shows that the engine of history is not so much heroic (battles won), geographic (farmers thrive), or anthropogenic (humans change the planet) as it is narrative. Many thousands of years ago, when we existed only as countless small autonomous bands of hunter-gatherers widely distributed through the wilderness, we began inventing stories - to organize for survival, to find purpose and meaning, to explain the unfathomable.
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Relaxed but packed with insight
- By Tad Davis on 02-14-20
By: Tamim Ansary
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Nonzero
- The Logic of Human Destiny
- By: Robert Wright
- Narrated by: Kevin T. Collins
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
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At the beginning of Nonzero, Robert Wright sets out to "define the arrow of the history of life, from the primordial soup to the World Wide Web." Twenty-two chapters later, after a sweeping and vivid narrative of the human past, he has succeeded and has mounted a powerful challenge to the conventional view that evolution and human history are aimless.
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Non-Zero (but pretty close to zero)
- By Douglas on 02-06-14
By: Robert Wright
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Read this book!
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sometimes less is more
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What listeners say about Beyond Measure
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Evan Greenwald
- 02-24-23
Great book!
I learned a lot & had a great time doing it. When I was doing my year abroad at University of Sussex in Brighton, UK, I met up with James Vincent & his partner at the time, both friends of mine. We had a great time, although it is the only time in my life that I have ever had a hangover. A great thing about this book is, fun as it is, there is no hangover afterward.
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- Rob
- 01-25-23
An enjoyable meter of history
I'm a huge fan of exploring the obscure corners of our history. At first glance most would see the topic of metrology & run in the other direction out of fear of dry content. James keeps the content insightful & entertaining through the course of the book. My only issue is with the recording. The author does a superb delivery, however, the ends of chapters 4 & 9 are clipped; resulting in an incomplete thought.
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- Spiderbeach
- 11-17-23
Impressive Cultural Deepthinking About Measurement
Much better than anticipated since it covers the development of ideas of measurement over history to help development a current understanding of modern surveillance systems.
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- James
- 10-12-23
Interesting and informative
This was an interesting book about the history of measurement and how different measures are derived, from the crudest (cubit, hand, etc.) to the most precise meters calculated as fractions of the speed of light.
It was a pretty compelling tale, but did drag a bit in a few places.
The author also got into completely unnecessary politics a couple times, but not terribly so.
I learned a fair bit and it was interesting. The discussion of NIST was particularly interesting.
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- Mark Laskow
- 01-08-24
Leftist Take on Science.
You know where you are headed when the author of a science book manages to work Horkheimer and Adorno into the first few pages. I did enjoy the bits where he wrote about the history of scientific measurement.
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- Janet D.
- 12-27-22
Will alter your understanding of history
This book was fascinating. Understanding how measurement became á crucial element in the the development of larger systems and having some insight into the metric vs imperial measurement battle were especially enlightening for me.
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1 person found this helpful
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- A Z A R
- 06-26-23
Hoped for more information
Was hoping for more about how various measurements came to be. It covered a couple and ended philosophically in the last 2 hours.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Elliott Wolfe, M.D.
- 12-08-22
Why we Measure
Measuring has evolved through centuries. We learn how and why, beyond the obvious. Facts are intermingled with philosophy. Social networks now measure us every day. Are we better off?
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- Annie
- 06-09-23
Measured with five stars
A very enjoyable listen that approaches measurement from many angles-scientific, sociological, political, and historical. Highly recommend.
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