The borderlands of science : where sense meets nonsense / Michael Shermer.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-352) and index.

The knowledge filter : reality must take precedence in the search for truth -- Theories of everything : nonsense in the name of science -- Only God can do that? : cloning tests the moral borderlands of science -- Blood, sweat, and fears : racial differences and what they really mean -- The paradox of the paradigm : punctuated equilibrium and the nature of revolutionary science -- The day the earth moved : Copernicus's heresy and Sulloway's theory -- Heretic-personality : Alfred Russel Wallace and the nature of borderlands science -- A scientist among the spiritualists : crossing the boundary from science to pseudoscience -- Pedestals and statues : Freud, Darwin, and the hero-myth in science -- The exquisite balance : Carl Sagan and the difference between orthodoxy and heresy in science -- The Beautiful People Myth : why the grass is always greener in the other century -- The Amadeus Myth : Mozart and the myth of the miracle of genius -- A gentlemanly arrangement : science at its best in the great evolution priority dispute -- The great bone hoax : Piltdown and the self-correcting nature of science.

As author of the bestselling Why People Believe Weird Things and How We Believe, and Editor-in-Chief of Skeptic magazine, Michael Shermer has emerged as the nation's number one scourge of superstition and bad science. Now, in The Borderlands of Science, he takes us to the place where real science (such as the big bang theory), borderland science (superstring theory), and just plain nonsense (Big Foot) collide with one another. Shermer argues that science is the best lens through which to view the world, but he recognizes that it's often difficult for most of us to tell where valid science leav.

Print version record.

English.

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