Dreams of Earth and Sky

Freeman Dyson's new collection of pieces from "The New York Review of Books" investigates and celebrates what he calls openness to unconventional ideas in science. His subjects range from the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, to the scientific inquiries of the Romantic generation, to import [...]
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Freeman Dyson's new collection of pieces from "The New York Review of Books" investigates and celebrates what he calls openness to unconventional ideas in science. His subjects range from the seventeenth-century scientific revolution, to the scientific inquiries of the Romantic generation, to important recent works by Daniel Kahneman and Malcolm Gladwell. He discusses twentieth-century giants of physics such as Richard Feynman, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and Paul Dirac, many of whom he knew personally, and explores some of today's most pressing scientific issues, from global warming, to the future of biotechnology, to the flood of information in the digital age. In these essays, Dyson, whom "The New York Times Book Review" called "one of science's most eloquent interpreters," mixes reminiscences, lucid explanations of scientific concepts, and an engagingly imaginative approach to the triumphs, blunders, mysteries, and dreams of scientific inquiry into the natural world.