Philosophy & Social Aspects

In Darwinism's Struggle for Survival Jean Gayon offers a philosophical interpretation of the history of theoretical Darwinism. He begins by examining the different forms taken by the hypothesis of natural selection in the nineteenth century (Darwin,...

Leviathan and the Air-Pump examines the conflicts over the value and propriety of experimental methods between two major seventeenth-century thinkers: Thomas Hobbes, author of the political treatise Leviathan and vehement critic of systematic...

This volume presents two closely related essays by Thomas Nagel: "Gut Feelings and Moral Knowledge" and "Moral Reality and Moral Progress." Both essays are concerned with moral epistemology and our means of access to moral truth; both are concerned with...

What is epidemiology? What are the causes of a new disease? How can pandemics be prevented? Epidemiology is the study of the changing patterns of disease and its main aim is to improve the health of populations. It's a vital field, central to the...

In his monumental 1687 work, Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, known familiarly as the Principia, Isaac Newton laid out in mathematical terms the principles of time, force, and motion that have guided the development of modern physical...

'The most sheerly enjoyable history of science of recent years' The Spectator'This is one of the best science books I have read in a decade' Paul DaviesLife is Simple tells the remarkable story of how a thirteenth century monk's search for simplicity led...

It's back. And it's more awkward than ever. Ever been screwed over by predictive text on your smart phone? You are not alone.Damn You, Autocorrect! 2 brings together more of the laugh-out-loud funny and painfully embarrassing posts from the hit website,...

In the future, we'll all be having sex with robots... won't we? Roboticists say they're a distracting science fiction, yet endless books, films and articles are written on the subject. Campaigns are even mounted against them. So why are sex robots...

A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas...

How do we get to know air? Aeropolis: Queering Air in Toxicpolluted Worlds offers a speculative and interdisciplinary framework to reorient common understandings of air and air pollution as matter "out there." Aeropolis contests regimes of managing air...

International scholars shed new light on the work of renowned French philosopher, Michel Serres.About the AuthorThe work of Michel Serres - including the books Hermes, The Parasite, The Natural Contract, Genesis, The Troubadour of Knowledge, and...

Half a century ago Adorno and Horkheimer argued, with great prescience, that our increasingly rationalized world was witnessing the emergence of a new kind of barbarism, thanks in part to the stultifying effects of the culture industries. What they could...

CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 BY WATERSTONES AND THE TIMES'Entertaining and original.' Guardian'Accessible and insightful, it's a thought-provoking read.' Observer' Highly readable.' The Times'Nothing less than brilliant.' Wall Street JournalWhat if...

This book is a long-awaited major statement by a pre-eminent analytic philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, on one of our biggest debates -- the compatibility of science and religion. The last twenty years has seen a cottage industry of books on this divide, but...

Historical records show that there was no real concept of probability in Europe before the mid-seventeenth century, although the use of dice and other randomizing objects was commonplace. Ian Hacking presents a philosophical critique of early ideas about...

Probability is increasingly important for our understanding of the world. What is probability? How do we model it, and how do we use it? Timothy Childers presents a lively introduction to the foundations of probability and to philosophical issues it...

A short, provocative book about why "useless" science often leads to humanity's greatest technological breakthroughs A forty-year tightening of funding for scientific research has meant that resources are increasingly directed toward applied or...

In this accessible analysis, a philosopher and a science educator look at biological theory and society through a synthesis of mechanistic and organicist points of view to best understand the complexity of life and biological systems. The search for a...

Paul Feyerabend is one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century and his book Against Method is an international bestseller. In this new book he masterfully weaves together the main elements of his mature philosophy into a gripping...

This book focuses on the phenomena of inertia and gravitation, one objective being to shed some new light on the basic laws of gravitational interaction and the fundamental nature and structures of spacetime. Chapter 1 is devoted to an extensive, partly...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781250798725Author George DysonFormat PaperbackPage Count 336Imprint Picador USAPublisher Picador USAWeight(grams) 426gDimensions(mm) 224mm * 147mm * 27mm

Albert Einstein is an icon of the twentieth century. Born in Ulm, Germany, in 1879, he is most famous for his theory of relativity, which is considered the founding principle of modern physics. He also made enormous contributions to quantum mechanics and...

Everywhere we turn, a startling new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the...

There is an underlying assumption in the social sciences that consciousness and social life are ultimately classical physical/material phenomena. In this ground-breaking book, Alexander Wendt challenges this assumption by proposing that consciousness is,...

What can fashionable ideas, blind faith, or pure fantasy possibly have to do with the scientific quest to understand the universe? Surely, theoretical physicists are immune to mere trends, dogmatic beliefs, or flights of fancy? In fact, acclaimed...

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched...

A New Yorker Best Book of the Year"It is a radiantly original contribution to a conversation gravely in need of new thinking."-Ben Tarnoff, The New YorkerA visionary reexamination of the value of privacy in today's hypermediated world-not just as a...

The modern world is passing through a time of critical change on many levels: cultural, political, ecological and spiritual. We are witnessing the decline and dissolution of the old order, the tumult and uncertainty of a new birth. Against this...

'Dripping with delicious detail' - Aditya Chakrabortty Taking the reader on a journey through North East Scotland, Merseyside, South Wales, the Thames Estuary and London, this is the story of Britain's oil-soaked past, present and future. Travelling...

Knowing or feeling that we are all connected to each other and to the cosmos by more than our eyes and ears is not a new notion but one as old as humanity. Traditional indigenous societies were fully aware of nonmaterial connections and incorporated them...

The first thing children ask about sex is typically, "Where do babies come from?" This, the most perplexing scientific question of all time, was hailed by the ancient Greeks as "the mystery of mysteries". Throughout history the most intelligent and...

Nautilus Award Gold Medal Winner, Ecology & Environment In Matter and Desire, internationally renowned biologist and philosopher Andreas Weber rewrites ecology as a tender practice of forging relationships, of yearning for connections, and of...

What should a vet do when a client can't pay for their animal's treatment? Or when asked their opinion on the killing of wildlife for disease control? Or when observing an animal welfare problem whilst off duty? Ethical problems are an everyday part...

The experience of illness is a universal and substantial part of human existence. Like death, illness raises important philosophical issues. But unlike death, illness, and in particular the experience of being ill, has received little philosophical...

Our gadgets are getting smarter. Technology can log what we buy, customize what we consume and enable us to save and share every aspect of our existence. In the future, we're told, it will even make public life - from how we're governed to how we record...

From Amazon to Tinder, from Google to Deliveroo, there is no facet of human life which the digital revolution has not streamlined and dematerialised. Its objective was to reduce the cost of physical interactions by forgoing face-to-face interactions, a...

Bonnie Steinbock presents The Oxford Handbook of Bioethics - an authoritative, state-of-the-art guide to current issues in bioethics. Thirty-four contributors reflect the interdisciplinarity that is characteristic of bioethics, and its increasingly...

This exploration of the newly emerging, diverse, and controversial area of animal lawpresents a basic survey of the laws designed to protect animals, analyzing and critiquing them, and proposing a future where the legal regime properly recognizes and...

In The One, particle physicist Heinrich Pas presents a bold idea: fundamentally, everything in the universe is an aspect of one unified whole.This idea, called monism, has a rich 3,000-year history: Plato believed that 'all is one', but monism was later...

Building on the influential book The Social Construction of Technological Systems, this volume carries forward the project of creating a theory of technological development and implementation that is strongly grounded in both sociology and history...