Philosophy & Social Aspects

What is life? This is among the most difficult open problems in science, right up there with the nature of consciousness and the existence of matter. All the definitions we have fall short. None help us understand how life originates or the full range of...

To care can feel good, or it can feel bad. It can do good, it can oppress. But what is care? A moral obligation? A burden? A joy? Is it only human? In Matters of Care, Maria Puig de la Bellacasa presents a powerful challenge to conventional notions of...

Why do we seem stuck in a culture of violence and injustice? How is it that we can recognize the transcendent ideal represented by figures such as Jesus, Lao-tzu, and many others who have walked among us and yet not seem to reach the same state? In The...

Steven Johnson's Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software is a fascinating look at how self-organising systems are changing the world. Why do people cluster together in neighborhoods? How do internet communities spring up from...

A brilliant young neuroscientist explains how to preserve our minds indefinitely, enabling future generations to choose to revive usJust as surgeons once believed pain was good for their patients, some argue today that death brings meaning to life. But...

We are living in a world full of games.More than 31 million people in the UK are gamers. The average young person will spend 10,000 hours gaming by the age of twenty-one. The future belongs to those who play games.In this ground-breaking book, visionary...

In this landmark new book, Iain McGilchrist addresses some of the oldest and hardest questions humanity faces - ones that, however, have a practical urgency for all of us today. Who are we? What is the world? How can we understand consciousness, matter,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780307473509Author Henry PetroskiFormat PaperbackPage Count 288Imprint Random House IncPublisher Random House USA IncWeight(grams) 264gDimensions(mm) 203mm...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780262538190Author Mark CoeckelberghFormat PaperbackPage Count 248Imprint MIT PressPublisher MIT Press LtdDimensions(mm) 178mm * 127mm * 16mm

It is often supposed that the spectacular successes of our modern mathematical sciences support a lofty vision of a world completely ordered by one single elegant theory. In this book Nancy Cartwright argues to the contrary. When we draw our image of the...

We live an information-soaked existence - information pours into our lives through television, radio, books, and of course, the Internet. Some say we suffer from 'infoglut'. But what is information? The concept of 'information' is a profound one, rooted...

Analogy is the core of all thinking. This is the simple but unorthodox premise that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas Hofstadter and French psychologist Emmanuel Sander defend in their new work. Hofstadter has been grappling with the mysteries of...

This Element provides an accessible introduction to the contemporary philosophy of causation. It introduces the reader to central concepts and distinctions (type vs token causation, probabilistic vs deterministic causation, difference-making,...

We love to imagine the future. But why are groundbreaking future technologies always just around the corner, and never a reality?For decades we've delighted in dreaming about a sci-fi utopia, from flying cars and bionic humans to hyperloops and smart...

Can psychedelic drugs help us tackle the biggest problems we face globally? Can they heal the cultural, spiritual, and political wounds we're wrestling with?Psychedelics have hit the mainstream as powerful new mental health treatments. But as clinicians...

Patrice Flichy offers a profound analysis of the social shaping and impact of the major communication technologies of the last 200 years. From the semaphore and telegraph to contemporary information technologies, Dynamics of Modern Communication...

Throughout our history, humans have been captivated by mythic beasts and legendary creatures. Tales of Bigfoot, the Yeti, and the Loch Ness monster are part of our collective experience. Now comes a book from two dedicated investigators that explores and...

The book provides a novel account of laws of nature via dispositions. Laws of nature play a paramount role in philosophy, science and everyday life. Understanding laws of nature is philosophically interesting on its own right but also many important...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9788367583480Author Oswald SpenglerFormat PaperbackPage Count 84Imprint Legend Books Sp. Z O.O.Publisher Legend Books Sp. Z O.O.Weight(grams)...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781582702650Author PH D Gary E SchwartzFormat PaperbackPage Count 368Imprint Atria BooksPublisher Atria BooksWeight(grams) 408g

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.AwardsCommended for Benjamin Franklin Award (Nature/Environment) 2020.Book InformationISBN 9781683837046Author Louis SchwartzbergFormat HardbackPage Count 160Imprint Earth Aware...

Just what is the "participatory condition"? It is the situation in which taking part in something with others has become both environmental and normative. The fact that we have always participated does not mean we have always lived under the...

"Introducing Aristotle" guides the reader through an explosion of theories, from the establishment of systematic logic to the earliest rules of science. Aristotle's authority extended beyond his own lifetime to influence fundamentally Islamic philosophy...

This book is the first comprehensive critical study of the work of Paul Feyerabend, one of the foremost twentieth-century philosophers of science. The book traces the evolution of Feyerabend's thought, beginning with his early attempt to graft insights...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780890515099Author Ken HamFormat PaperbackPage Count 378Imprint Master BooksPublisher Master BooksWeight(grams) 408gDimensions(mm) 230mm * 155mm * 26mm

Many scientists regard mass and energy as the primary currency of nature. In recent years, however, the concept of information has gained importance. Why? In this book, eminent scientists, philosophers and theologians chart various aspects of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781788361187Author Galen StrawsonFormat PaperbackImprint Imprint AcademicPublisher Imprint AcademicWeight(grams) 450gDimensions(mm) 235mm * 156mm * 20mm

Suppressed for centuries, the ideas of French philosopher Emilie Du Chatelet's are ever relevant today... Just as the Enlightenment was gaining momentum throughout Europe, philosopher Emilie Du Chatelet broke through the many barriers facing women at...

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...

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Can octopuses feel...

Models and theories are of central importance in science, and scientists spend substantial amounts of time building, testing, comparing and revising models and theories. It is therefore not surprising that the nature of scientific models and theories has...

On December 16, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, physicists at Bell Laboratories, jabbed two electrodes into a sliver of germanium. The power flowing from the germanium far exceeded what went in; in that moment the transistor was invented and the...

Hacking, espionage, war and cybercrime as you've never read about them beforeFancy Bear was hungry. Looking for embarrassing information about Hillary Clinton, the elite hacking unit within Russian military intelligence broke into the Democratic National...

One of the most persistent concerns about the future is whether it will be dominated by the predictive algorithms of AI - and, if so, what this will mean for our behaviour, for our institutions and for what it means to be human. AI changes our experience...

Classical physics states that physical reality is local-a point in space cannot influence another point beyond a relatively short distance. However, In 1997, experiments were conducted in which light particles (photons) originated under certain...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781788361088Author Frederick SteierFormat PaperbackImprint Imprint AcademicPublisher Imprint AcademicWeight(grams) 300gDimensions(mm) 250mm * 175mm * 9mm

How did our relationship with nature become broken, why does it matter and how can we fix it? From a past in which we were embedded in the natural world, revolutions in farming, science and industry have seen the human bond with nature eroded with the...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781913029937Author Laura TripaldiFormat PaperbackPage Count 160Imprint Urbanomic Media LtdPublisher Urbanomic Media Ltd

What's wrong with the world today and how might it become better (or worse)? These are the questions pursued in this book, which explores the hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares of the 21st century. Through architecture, fiction, theory, film and...

'The god wanted everything to be good, marred by as little imperfection as possible.' Timaeus, one of Plato's acknowledged masterpieces, is an attempt to construct the universe and explain its contents by means of as few axioms as possible. The result...