How to Grow a Human: Reprogramming Cells and Redesigning Life

A cutting-edge examination of what it means to be human and to have a 'self' in the face of new scientific developments in genetic editing, cloning and neural downloading.
After seeing his own cells used to grow clumps of new neurons – essentially mini-brains – Philip Ball begins to examine the concepts of identity and consciousness. Delving into humanity's deep evolutionary past to look at how complex creatures like us emerged from single-celled life, he offers a new perspective on how humans think about ourselves.
In an age when we are increasingly encouraged to regard the 'self' as an abstract sequence of genetic information, or as a pattern of neural activity that might be 'downloaded' to a computer, he return us to the body – to flesh and blood – and anchors a conception of personhood in this unique and ephemeral mortal coil. How to Build a Human brings us back to ourselves – but in doing so, it challenges old preconceptions and values. It asks us to rethink how we exist in the world.

How to Grow a Human: Adventures in Who We Are and How We Are Made

BALL, PHILIP

Health, Fitness & Dieting

William Collins

Two summers ago, scientists removed a tiny piece of flesh from Philip Ball’s arm and turned it into a rudimentary “mini-brain.” The skin cells, removed from his body, did not die but were instead transformed into nerve cells that independently arranged themselves into a dense network and communicated with each other, exchanging the raw signals of thought. This was life—but whose?\nIn his most mind-bending book yet, Ball makes that disconcerting question the focus of a tour through what scientists can now do in cell biology and tissue culture. He shows how these technologies could lead to tailor-made replacement organs for when ours fail, to new medical advances for repairing damage and assisting conception, and to new ways of “growing a human.” For example, it might prove possible to turn skin cells not into neurons but into eggs and sperm, or even to turn oneself into the constituent cells of embryos. Such methods would also create new options for gene editing, with all the attendant moral dilemmas. Ball argues that such advances can therefore never be about “just the science,” because they come already surrounded by a host of social narratives, preconceptions, and prejudices. But beyond even that, these developments raise questions about identity and self, birth and death, and force us to ask how mutable the human body really is—and what forms it might take in years to come.

Chartres Cathedral, south of Paris, is revered as one of the most beautiful and profound works of art in the Western canon. But what did it mean to those who constructed it in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries? And why, during this time, did Europeans begin to build churches in a new style, at such immense height and with such glorious play of light, in the soaring manner we now call Gothic? 
 Universe of Stone shows that the Gothic cathedrals encode a far-reaching shift in the way medieval thinkers perceived their relationship with their world. For the first time, they began to believe in an orderly, rational world that could be investigated and understood. This change marked the beginning of Western science and also the start of a long and, indeed, unfinished struggle to reconcile faith and reason. 
 By embedding the cathedral in the culture of the twelfth centuryits schools of philosophy and science, its trades and technologies, its politics and religious debatesPhilip Ball makes sense of the visual and emotional power of Chartres. Beautifully illustrated and written, filled with astonishing insight, Universe of Stone argues that Chartres is a sublime expression of the originality and vitality of a true "first renaissance," one that occurred long before the birth of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, or Francis Bacon.

Universe of Stone: A Biography of Chartres Cathedral

Reference

Harper

Chartres Cathedral, south of Paris, is revered as one of the most beautiful and profound works of art in the Western canon. But what did it mean to those who constructed it in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries—and why was it built at such immense height and with such glorious play of light, in the soaring manner we now call Gothic? 
In this eminently fascinating work, author Philip Ball makes sense of the visual and emotional power of Chartres and brilliantly explores how its construction—and the creation of other Gothic cathedrals—represented a profound and dramatic shift in the way medieval thinkers perceived their relationship with their world. Beautifully illustrated and written, filled with astonishing insight, Universe of Stone embeds the magnificent cathedral in the culture of the twelfth century—its schools of philosophy and science, its trades and technologies, its politics and religious debates—enabling us to view this ancient architectural marvel with fresh eyes.

Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Invention of the Gothic AKA Universe of Stone: A Biography of Chartres Cathedral

Harper-perennial

Paracelsus was part alchemist, part father of modern chemistry. He was a charlatan and a genius, an adventurer and a model for later versions of the Faust legend, such as Goethe's or Thomas Mann's. His life was as eventful and bizarre as an 18th-century picaresque novel. Philip Ball tells his story.

The Devil's Doctor

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Arrow Books, Ltd.

In the twelfth century, Christians in Europe began to build a completely new kind of church - not the squat, gloomy buildings we now call Romanesque, but soaring, spacious monuments flooded with light from immense windows. The inception of the age of Gothic architecture in the late twelfth century marked a profound change in the way some prominent Western intellectuals and theologians pictured the Universe and humanity's relationship with it. They began to imagine a God who built the cosmos using logical 'rules', based on geometry, that mankind could deduce using the faculty of reason.This faith in an ordered, rational and harmonious universe was given physical expression in the great cathedrals, and more than any other in Chartres Cathedral, an unparalleled feat of craftsmanship in which all the elements of the new style cohered perfectly for the first time. This change in thinking was by no means universal, and it led to furious debates about how far it was 'proper' to enquire into the nature of the universe. These conflicts mark the beginning of the tensions that are still felt today between faith and reason. "Universe of Stone" establishes Chartres Cathedral's iconic role in Europe's history: a revolution in thought embodied in stone and glass, a philosophy made concrete through the cooperation of theologians, craftsmen and engineers. It shows us that there are other ways of seeing the world and reveals, as never before, the complex workings of the medieval mind.

Universe of Stone: Chartres Cathedral and the Triumph of the Medieval Mind

Vintage Books USA

A timely reissue of a brilliant exploration of the science of art and of colour

Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour

Vintage

The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It

Why have all human cultures - today and throughout history - made music? Why does music excite such rich emotion? And how do we make sense of musical sound? These are questions that have, until recently, remained mysterious. Now "The Music Instinct" explores how the latest research in music psychology and brain science is piecing together the puzzle of how our minds understand and respond to music. Ranging from Bach fugues to nursery rhymes to heavy rock, Philip Ball interweaves philosophy, mathematics, history and neurology to reveal why music moves us in so many ways. Without requiring any specialist knowledge, "The Music Instinct" will both deepen your appreciation of the music you love, and open doors to music that once seemed alien, dull or daunting, offering a passionate plea for the importance of music in education and in everyday life.

Humor & Entertainment

Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything

There was a time when curiosity was condemned. To be curious was to delve into matters that didn't concern you - after all, the original sin stemmed from a desire for forbidden knowledge. Through curiosity our innocence was lost. Yet this hasn't deterred us. Today we spend vast sums trying to recreate the first instants of creation in particle accelerators, out of pure desire to know. There seems now to be no question too vast or too trivial to be ruled out of bounds: Why can fleas jump so high? What is gravity? What shape are clouds? Today curiosity is no longer reviled, but celebrated. Examining how our inquisitive impulse first became sanctioned, changing from a vice to a virtue, "Curiosity" begins with the age when modern science began, a time that spans the lives of Galileo and Isaac Newton. It reveals a complex story, in which the liberation - and the taming - of curiosity was linked to magic, religion, literature, travel, trade and empire. By examining the rise of curiosity, we can ask what has become of it today: how it functions in science, how it is spun and packaged and sold, how well it is being sustained and honoured, and how the changing shape of science influences the kinds of questions it may ask.

Science & Math

History & Philosophy

Serving the Reich: The Struggle for the Soul of Physics under Hitler

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