A new book covering the history of scientific inquiry invites us to marvel at the elegance of experimentation. Some philosophers have argued that “beauty” in science stands as a proxy for truth. Many ...

In 1769 Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier observed how water, evaporating in a dish, left behind a gritty residue. He made a fantastic conjecture: Earth must be made from water. Poetic thinking, even if ...

Last week over in Twitter-land, Philip Ball asked an interesting question: I’ve written a fair bit about historical science, and read more than I’ve written, so this question stuck with me, and seems ...

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. In a mind-warping milestone experiment, scientists have been able to ...

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but for the science writer Philip Ball it emerges from within. In “Beautiful Experiments: An Illustrated History of Experimental Science” Mr. Ball argues that ...

BioScience, the monthly journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, has asked the presidents of 86 scientific societies to invite their members to submit nominations for an unusual ...

The Matter of Everything tells the history of physics through experiments. Any book about the history of science for a general audience will, of necessity, be something of a distortion. The question ...