The Half Life Of Facts

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"Samuel Arbesman shows us how knowledge in most fields evolves systematically and predictably, and how this evolution can have a powerful impact on our lives. Arbesman takes us through a wide variety of fields, including those that change quickly, over the course of a few years, or over the span of centuries. He offers intriguing examples about the face of knowledge: what English majors can learn from a statistical analysis of The Canterbury Tales, why it's so hard to measure a mountain, and why, for years, everyone was taught the wrong number of human chromosomes. The Half-Life of Facts can help us find new ways to measure the world while accepting the limits of how much we can know with certainty."--Back cover