Philosophy & Social Aspects

Evolutionary ethics - the application of evolutionary ideas to moral thinking and justification - began in the nineteenth century with the work of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, but was subsequently criticized as an example of the naturalistic...

2019 NAUTILUS GOLD WINNER In a time of rapid climate change and species extinction, what role have the world's religions played in ameliorating-or causing-the crisis we now face? Religion in general, and Christianity in particular, appears to bear a...

Thinking about self-control takes us to the heart of practical decision-making, human agency, motivation, and rational choice. Psychologists, philosophers, and decision theorists have all brought valuable insights and perspectives on how to model...

Ockham's razor, the principle of parsimony, states that simpler theories are better than theories that are more complex. It has a history dating back to Aristotle and it plays an important role in current physics, biology, and psychology. The razor also...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780974144351Author Robert ZubrinFormat PaperbackPage Count 102Imprint Polaris BooksPublisher Polaris BooksWeight(grams) 68gDimensions(mm) 152mm * 102mm * 6mm

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsCommended for Cundill Prize 2012.Book InformationISBN 9780143122012Author Steven PinkerFormat PaperbackPage Count 832Imprint Penguin USAPublisher Penguin Putnam...

What fundamental account of the world is implicit in physical theory? Physics straightforwardly postulates quarks and electrons, but what of the more intangible elements, such as laws of nature, universals, causation and the direction of time? Do they...

Why are we here? Human beings have asked themselves this question for centuries. Modern science largely argues that human beings are chance products of a purposeless universe, but other traditions believe humanity has an essential role and responsibility...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780060975197Author R.C. LewontinFormat PaperbackPage Count 112Imprint HarperPerennialPublisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc

Over the coming decades, Artificial Intelligence will profoundly impact the way we live, work, wage war, play, seek a mate, educate our young, and care for our elderly. It is likely to greatly increase our aggregate wealth, but it will also upend our...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780063096363Author Paul BloomFormat PaperbackPage Count 464Imprint CollinsPublisher HarperCollins Publishers IncWeight(grams) 327g

Do all questions have answers? How much can we know about the world? Is there such a thing as an ultimate truth?To be human is to want to know, but what we are able to observe is only a tiny portion of what's out there." In The Island of Knowledge ,...

In 1956, the New York Times prophesied that once global warming really kicked in, we could see parrots in the Antarctic. In 2010, when science deniers had control of the climate story, Senator James Inhofe and his family built an igloo on the Washington...

Beginning in the nineteenth century, mathematics' traditional domains of 'number and figure' became vigorously displaced by altered settings in which former verities became discarded as no longer sacrosanct. And these innovative recastings appeared...

As we navigate through life we instinctively model time as having a flowing present that divides a fixed past from open future. This model develops in childhood and is deeply saturated within our language, thought and behavior, affecting our conceptions...

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is most famous for his work on colour theory, but he was also an accomplished all-round scientist, studying and writing on anatomy, geology, botany, zoology and meteorology. This book draws together, in Goethe's own words, his...

What does it mean to be an expert? In "Rethinking Expertise", Harry Collins and Robert Evans offer a radical new perspective on the role of expertise in the practice of science and the public evaluation of technology. Collins and Evans present a Periodic...

Recent polls suggest that fewer than 40 percent of Americans believe in Darwin's theory of evolution, despite it being one of science's best-established findings. Parents still refuse to vaccinate their children for fear it causes autism, though this...

Causation is a central topic in many areas of philosophy. In metaphysics, philosophers want to know what causation is, and how it is related to laws of nature, probability, action, and freedom of the will. In epistemology, philosophers investigate how...

How a writer who investigated scientific anomalies inspired a factious movement and made a lasting impact on American culture. Flying saucers. Bigfoot. Frogs raining from the sky. Such phenomena fascinated Charles Fort, the maverick writer who scanned...

A compelling biography of Mark Weiser, a pioneering innovator whose legacy looms over the tech industry's quest to connect everything-and who hoped for something better. When developers and critics trace the roots of today's Internet of Things-our smart...

Modern physics is heady stuff. It seems that barely a week goes by without some new astounding science story; some revelation about hidden dimensions, multiple universes, the holographic principle or incredible cosmic coincidences. But is it true? What...

On the Modern Cult of the Factish Gods continues the project that the influential anthropologist, philosopher, and science studies theorist Bruno Latour advanced in his book We Have Never Been Modern. There he redescribed the Enlightenment idea of...

Dawkin's militant atheism is well known; his profound faith less well known In this book, atheist philosopher Eric Steinhart explores the spiritual dimensions of Richard Dawkins' books, which are shown to encompass:* the meaning and purpose of...

Nicholas Carr's bestseller The Shallows has become a foundational book in one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the internet's bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? This 10th-anniversary edition includes...

This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real Artificial Intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed,...

"All art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one." Friedrich Schlegel's words perfectly capture the project of the German Romantics, who believed that the aesthetic approaches of art and literature could reveal...

This timely and engaging book argues that technoscientific advances are radically transforming the woman-machine relationship. However, it is feminist politics rather than the technologies themselves that make the difference. TechnoFeminism fuses the...

Ikhwan al-Safa' (The Brethren of Purity) were the anonymous adepts of a tenth-century esoteric fraternity of lettered urbanites that was principally based in Basra and Baghdad. This brotherhood occupied a prominent station in the history of science and...

This text offers an understanding of the nature of scientific, mathematical and engineering practice, and the production of scientific knowledge. The author presents an approach to the unpredictable nature of change in science, taking into account the...

AN INTRIGUING AND BEAUTIFUL ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF YORICK WILKS' INSIDERS GUIDE TO AIThe benefits and potential nightmares of artificial intelligence have long inspired science-fiction writers, but in a world where most of us carry a portable device that...

Our national leaders have drifted into treating the pandemic as though it were an unavoidable natural catastrophe, repeating a depressing cycle of panic followed by neglect. So a remarkable group of practitioners and scholars from many backgrounds came...

In "Unsimple Truths", Sandra D. Mitchell argues that the long-standing scientific and philosophical deference to reductive explanations founded on simple universal laws, linear causal models, and predict-and-act strategies fails to accommodate the kinds...

In this book Gadamer discusses the transformations in human self-understanding, focusing on the achievements of modern medicine.Reviews"The Enigma of Health is a thoroughly wise book and should be compulsory reading for anyone with a direct or passing,...

This book provides an accessible and authoritative biography of the Welsh man of science, William Robert Grove. Grove was an important and highly influential figure in Victorian science. His career as both man of science and leading barrister and judge...

Bringing together important writings not easily available elsewhere, this volume provides a convenient and stimulating overview of recent work in the philosophy of science. The contributors include Paul Feyerabend, Ian Hacking, T.S. Kuhn, Imre Lakatos,...

This book offers a thorough technical elaboration and philosophical defense of an objectivist informational interpretation of quantum mechanics according to which its novel content is located in its kinematical framework, that is, in how the theory...

How do we come to trust our knowledge of the world? What are the means by which we distinguish true from false accounts? Why do we credit one observational statement over another? This study engages these universal questions through a recreation of a...

Applying the methodology of science to the search for the soul, the winner of the Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA explores the fundamental questions of human consciousness, challenging science, philosophy, and religion. Reprint. 25,000 first...

In the past century, nearly all of the biological sciences have been directly affected by discoveries and developments in genetics, a fast-evolving subject with important theoretical dimensions. In this rich and accessible book, Paul Griffiths and Karola...