Faith, Reason, & Earth History


Book Description

Faith, Reason, and Earth History presents Leonard Brand¿s argument for constructive thinking about origins and earth history in the context of Scripture, showing readers how to analyze available scientific data and approach unsolved problems. Faith does not need to fear the data, but can contribute to progress in understanding earth history within the context of God¿s Word while still being honest about unanswered questions. In this patient explanation of the mission of science, the author models his conviction that ¿above all, it is essential that we treat each other with respect, even if we disagree on fundamental issues.¿ The original edition of this work (1997) was one of the first books on this topic written from the point of view of an experienced research scientist. A career biologist, paleontologist, and teacher, Brand brings to this well-illustrated book a rich assortment of practical scientific examples. This thoughtful and rigorous presentation makes Brand¿s landmark work highly useful both as a college-level text and as an easily accessible treatment for the educated lay person.




A Paradigm of Earth


Book Description

"A dozen or more humanoid alien infants have been brought to Earth to be given into the care of major Earth governments. This is stunning but distant news - until Morgan is hired to raise one of them, named Blue. When Blue confounds everyone by insisting on coming, with all the attendant government surveillance, to live in Morgan's house, conflict is inevitable and a murder is committed. But the mysteries of the alien boy ( or is it a girl?) in their midst are more profound than the mystery of the crime. Through it all, Morgan's ideals never waver, she truly believes that all beings, human and alien, can live in harmony. Dorsey's skill with characters, both human and alien, and with their complex relationships, will evoke comparisons with the SF classics of Theodore Sturgeon."--BOOK JACKET.




New Theory of the Earth


Book Description

Theory of the Earth is an interdisciplinary advanced textbook on the origin, composition, and evolution of the Earth's interior: geophysics, geochemistry, dynamics, convection, mineralogy, volcanism, energetics and thermal history. This is the only book on the whole landscape of deep Earth processes which ties together all the strands of the subdisciplines. It is a complete update of Anderson's Theory of the Earth (1989). It includes many new sections and dozens of new figures and tables. As with the original book, this new edition will prove to be a stimulating textbook on advanced courses in geophysics, geochemistry, and planetary science, and supplementary textbook on a wide range of other advanced Earth science courses. It will also be an essential reference and resource for all researchers in the solid Earth sciences.




Beyond Heaven and Earth


Book Description

An approach to understanding religion that draws on both humanities and natural science but rejects approaches that employ simple monisms and radical dualisms. In Beyond Heaven and Earth, Gabriel Levy argues that collective religious narratives and beliefs are part of nature; they are the basis for the formation of the narratives and beliefs of individuals. Religion grows out of the universe, but to make sense of it we have to recognize the paradox that the universe is both mental and material (or neither). We need both humanities and natural science approaches to study religion and religious meaning, Levy contends, but we must also recognize the limits of these approaches. First, we must make the dominant metaphysics that undergird the various disciplines of science and humanities more explicit, and second, we must reject those versions of metaphysics that maintain simple monisms and radical dualisms. Bringing Donald Davidson’s philosophy—a form of pragmatism known as anomalous monism—to bear on religion, Levy offers a blueprint for one way that the humanities and natural sciences can have a mutually respectful dialogue. Levy argues that in order to understand religions we have to take their semantic content seriously. We need to rethink such basic concepts as narrative fiction, information, agency, creativity, technology, and intimacy. In the course of his argument, Levy considers the relation between two closely related semantics, fiction and religion, and outlines a new approach to information. He then applies his theory to discrete cases: ancient texts, modern media, and intimacy.




Being Ecological


Book Description

A book about ecology without information dumping, guilt inducing, or preaching to the choir. Don't care about ecology? You think you don't, but you might all the same. Don't read ecology books? This book is for you. Ecology books can be confusing information dumps that are out of date by the time they hit you. Slapping you upside the head to make you feel bad. Grabbing you by the lapels while yelling disturbing facts. Handwringing in agony about “What are we going to do?” This book has none of that. Being Ecological doesn't preach to the eco-choir. It's for you—even, Timothy Morton explains, if you're not in the choir, even if you have no idea what choirs are. You might already be ecological. After establishing the approach of the book (no facts allowed!), Morton draws on Kant and Heidegger to help us understand living in an age of mass extinction caused by global warming. He considers the object of ecological awareness and ecological thinking: the biosphere and its interconnections. He discusses what sorts of actions count as ecological—starting a revolution? going to the garden center to smell the plants? And finally, in “Not a Grand Tour of Ecological Thought,” he explores a variety of current styles of being ecological—a range of overlapping orientations rather than preformatted self-labeling. Caught up in the us-versus-them (or you-versus-everything else) urgency of ecological crisis, Morton suggests, it's easy to forget that you are a symbiotic being entangled with other symbiotic beings. Isn't that being ecological?







The Blueprint


Book Description

From climate change to land degradation to fossil fuel shortages, we are faced with an impending calamity that threatens to bankrupt the planetary ecosystem and with it much of the manmade world. This book offers a plan that truly goes the distance: a highly detailed, planetary-wide blueprint that lays out a new course for our technological and industrial engines. It calls for sweeping adjustments in the way every person thinks and lives.--Inside front cover.




Making Peace with the Earth


Book Description

Making Peace with the Earth outlines how a paradigm shift to earth-centred politics and economics is our only chance of survival and how collective resistance to corporate exploitation can open the way to a new environmentalism."--pub. desc.




Gaia


Book Description

Gaia, in which James Lovelock puts forward his inspirational and controversial idea that the Earth functions as a single organism, with life influencing planetary processes to form a self-regulating system aiding its own survival, is now a classic work that continues to provoke heated scientific debate.




The Paradigm


Book Description