Philosophy & Social Aspects

A critical examination of the figure of the neural network as it mediates neuroscientific and computational discourses and technical practicesNeural Networks proposes to reconstruct situated practices, social histories, mediating techniques, and...

We often instinctively feel that our lives would be better if we lived closer to nature. In this unique book, Craig Holdrege offers a specific, practical way of taking that step which, he argues, will signficantly benefit ourselves and our world:...

This is the first interdisciplinary exploration of the philosophical foundations of the Web, a new area of inquiry that has important implications across a range of domains. Contains twelve essays that bridge the fields of philosophy, cognitive science,...

Ask a scientist about Hollywood, and you'll probably get eye rolls. But ask someone in Hollywood about science, and they'll see dollar signs: moviemakers know that science can be the source of great stories, with all the drama and action that...

No study in the philosophy of science created such controversy in the seventies as Paul Feyerabend's Against Method. In this work, Feyerabend reviews that controversy, and extends his critique beyond the problem of scientific rules and methods, to the...

Thomas Kuhn's shadow hangs over almost every field of intellectual inquiry. His book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions has become a modern classic. His influence on philosophy, social science, historiography, feminism, theology, and (of course) the...

Public health has never been more important, or more controversial. What states do, and fail to do, makes a significant difference to the lives we are able to lead. Putting public health first would allow improvements to the health of everyone,...

Take a front row seat with Professor Luke O'Neill on a high-octane year. Luke has become one of the most well-known and trusted voices of Ireland's COVID-19 pandemic. A world-renowned immunologist, he was thrust into the spotlight as we struggled to make...

Conventional wisdom has it that the sciences, properly pursued, constitute a pure, value-free method of obtaining knowledge about the natural world. In light of the social and normative dimensions of many scientific debates, Helen Longino finds that...

The idea of elegance in science is not necessarily a familiar one, but it is an important one. The use of the term is perhaps most clear-cut in mathematics - the elegant proof - and this is where Ian Glynn begins his exploration. Scientists often share a...

Uncertainty is interwoven into human existence. It is a powerful incentive in the search for knowledge and an inherent component of scientific research. We have developed many ways of coping with uncertainty. We make promises, manage risks and make...

Can the internet solve the problem of mass education, and bring human beings to a new level of community? Drawing on a diverse array of thinkers from Plato to Kierkegaard, On the Internet argues that there is much in common between the disembodied, free...

The threat of social-environmental destruction is a fundamental challenge for those who are interested in creating and maintaining liveable worlds. This volume will bring together international scholars in science and technology studies, environmental...

Many people today experience the climate crisis with a divided state of mind: aware of the extreme effects, but living everyday life as if the crisis is not actually happening. This book argues that this structure of feeling has roots that can be traced...

Longlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize 2021 An anthropologist visits the frontiers of genetics, medicine, and technology to ask: whose values are guiding gene-editing experiments, and what are the implications for humanity? At a conference in Hong...

Climate warming and disorder are the consequence of a free trade economic growth model that has failed to anticipate its physical impact on the environment. This failure reveals a lack of interaction between economists and scientists, long separated from...

The design inference uncovers intelligent causes by isolating their key trademark: specified events of small probability. Just about anything that happens is highly improbable, but when a highly improbable event is also specified (i.e. conforms to an...

The Political Sociology of Emotions articulates the political sociology of emotions as a sub-field of emotions sociology in relation to cognate disciplines and sub-disciplines. Far from reducing politics to affectivity, the political sociology of...

While it is generally accepted that animal welfare matters morally, it is less clear how to morally evaluate the ending of an animal's life. It seems to matter for the animal whether it experiences pain or pleasure, or enjoyment or suffering. But does it...

The central insight of Darwin's Origin of Species is that evolution is an ecological phenomenon, arising from the activities of organisms in the 'struggle for life'. By contrast, the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution, which rose to prominence in the...

The nanotechnology revolution that will transform human health and longevityNano Comes to Life opens a window onto the nanoscale-the infinitesimal realm of proteins and DNA where physics and cellular and molecular biology meet-and introduces readers to...

Providing readers with the confidence needed to debate key issues in bioethics, this introductory text clearly explains bioethical theories and their philosophical foundations. Over 250 activities introduce topics for personal reflection, and discussion...

Two books have been particularly influential in contemporary philosophy of science: Karl R. Popper's Logic of Scientific Discovery, and Thomas S. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Both agree upon the importance of revolutions in science, but...

"Is Google making us stupid?" When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our...

We need a new philosophy of the earth. Geological time used to refer to slow and gradual processes, but today we are watching land sink into the sea and forests transform into deserts. We can even see the creation of new geological strata made of...

The world didn't end on 10 September 2008, but the possibility may have got you thinking: was it worth the risk? What is the point of science actually? Geoffrey Gorham considers these questions and explores the social and ethical implications of science...

The Covid-19 pandemic was, and remains, a global disaster - claiming countless lives and wreaking economic havoc that still reverberates today. But it could have been worse. Much worse. Author Stephen Davies contends the planet 'dodged a bullet' this...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780998187167Author Richard L ThompsonFormat PaperbackPage Count 266Imprint Institute for Vaishnava StudiesPublisher Institute for Vaishnava...

This book is an attempt to get to the bottom of an acute and perennial tension between our best scientific pictures of the fundamental physical structure of the world and our everyday empirical experience of it. The trouble is about the direction of time...

Authored by an acclaimed teacher of quantum physics and philosophy, this textbook pays special attention to the aspects that many courses sweep under the carpet. Traditional courses in quantum mechanics teach students how to use the quantum formalism to...

How the Einsteinian revolution can be understood as the result of a long-term evolution of science The revolution that emerged from Albert Einstein's work in the early twentieth century transformed our understanding of space, time, motion, gravity,...

As a writer for SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, John Horgan has an unsurpassed window on contemporary science, routinely interviewing the scientific geniuses of our times, scientists such as Richard Dawkins, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Hawking, Karl Popper and Noam...

The twentieth century has witnessed an unprecedented 'crisis in the foundations of mathematics', featuring a world-famous paradox (Russell's Paradox), a challenge to 'classical' mathematics from a world-famous mathematician (the 'mathematical...

How did life start? Is the evolution of life describable by any physics-like laws? Stuart Kauffman's latest book offers an explanation-beyond what the laws of physics can explain-of the progression from a complex chemical environment to molecular...

Essays on the history of psychedelics, the present renaissance, and visions for an inclusive and equitable future.As psychedelics and psychedelic-assisted therapies explode into the popular consciousness, what does it mean to cultivate and embody a...

For Wittgenstein mathematics is a human activity characterizing ways of seeing conceptual possibilities and empirical situations, proof and logical methods central to its progress. Sentences exhibit differing 'aspects', or dimensions of meaning,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781476757070Author Patricia PearsonFormat PaperbackPage Count 272Imprint Atria BooksPublisher Atria BooksWeight(grams) 227gDimensions(mm) 211mm * 140mm *...

The world is changing fast, and digital technology fastest of all. The growth of social media and increasingly innovative digital advancements raises questions for every Christian. How should we understand the new digital age? And how can we live...

Abstract Sex investigates the impact of advances in contemporary science and information technology on conceptions of sex. Evolutionary theory and the technologies of viral information transfer, cloning and genetic engineering are changing the way we...

What human qualities are needed to make scientific discoveries, and which to make great art? Many would point to 'imagination' and 'creativity' in the second case but not the first. This book challenges the assumption that doing science is in any sense...