Author : Stephen Henry Schneider
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 412 pages
File Size : 24,50 MB
Release : 2004
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780262194983
Leading scientists bring the controversy over Gaia up to date by exploring a broad range of recent thinking on Gaia theory.
Author : Madsen Pirie
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 35,10 MB
Release : 2015-03-12
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 147252697X
In the second edition of this witty and infectious book, Madsen Pirie builds upon his guide to using - and indeed abusing - logic in order to win arguments. By including new chapters on how to win arguments in writing, in the pub, with a friend, on Facebook and in 140 characters (on Twitter), Pirie provides the complete guide to triumphing in altercations ranging from the everyday to the downright serious. He identifies with devastating examples all the most common fallacies popularly used in argument. We all like to think of ourselves as clear-headed and logical - but all readers will find in this book fallacies of which they themselves are guilty. The author shows you how to simultaneously strengthen your own thinking and identify the weaknesses in other people arguments. And, more mischievously, Pirie also shows how to be deliberately illogical - and get away with it. This book will make you maddeningly smart: your family, friends and opponents will all wish that you had never read it. Publisher's warning: In the wrong hands this book is dangerous. We recommend that you arm yourself with it whilst keeping out of the hands of others. Only buy this book as a gift if you are sure that you can trust the recipient.
Author : Roy Harris
Publisher : Paradigm
Page : 154 pages
File Size : 23,87 MB
Release : 2010
Category : Art
ISBN :
In this lucid and insightful essay, renowned linguist Roy Harris reflects on the early nineteenth-century doctrine of "art for art's sake." This was attacked by Proudhon and Nietzsche, but defended by Théophile Gautier and E. M. Forster. It influenced movements as diverse as futurism and Dada. Over the past two centuries, three main positions have emerged. The "institutional" view declares art to be a status conferred upon certain works by the approval of influential institutions. The "idiocentric" view gives absolute priority to the judgment of the individual. The third is the "conceptual" view of art, which insists that what counts is the idea that inspired a work, not the physical execution. But as Harris shows, the tacit assumptions which once supported this Debate and these positions have now collapsed. "Art" as a coherent category has imploded, leaving behind a historical residue of empty questions that contemporary society can no longer answer. The Great Debate about Art provides much needed signposts for understanding this sorry state of affairs.
Author : Mark Pagel
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 431 pages
File Size : 38,52 MB
Release : 2012-02-07
Category : Science
ISBN : 0393065871
A fascinating, far-reaching study of how our species' innate capacity for culture altered the course of our social and evolutionary history. A unique trait of the human species is that our personalities, lifestyles, and worldviews are shaped by an accident of birth—namely, the culture into which we are born. It is our cultures and not our genes that determine which foods we eat, which languages we speak, which people we love and marry, and which people we kill in war. But how did our species develop a mind that is hardwired for culture—and why? Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel tracks this intriguing question through the last 80,000 years of human evolution, revealing how an innate propensity to contribute and conform to the culture of our birth not only enabled human survival and progress in the past but also continues to influence our behavior today. Shedding light on our species’ defining attributes—from art, morality, and altruism to self-interest, deception, and prejudice—Wired for Culture offers surprising new insights into what it means to be human.
Author : Harold Varmus
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 31,70 MB
Release : 2010-05-24
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0393073564
A Nobel Prize–winning cancer biologist, leader of major scientific institutions, and scientific adviser to President Obama reflects on his remarkable career. A PhD candidate in English literature at Harvard University, Harold Varmus discovered he was drawn instead to medicine and eventually found himself at the forefront of cancer research at the University of California, San Francisco. In this “timely memoir of a remarkable career” (American Scientist), Varmus considers a life’s work that thus far includes not only the groundbreaking research that won him a Nobel Prize but also six years as the director of the National Institutes of Health; his current position as the president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; and his important, continuing work as scientific adviser to President Obama. From this truly unique perspective, Varmus shares his experiences from the trenches of politicized battlegrounds ranging from budget fights to stem cell research, global health to science publishing.
Author : Laura J. Snyder
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 397 pages
File Size : 49,96 MB
Release : 2010-11-15
Category : Science
ISBN : 0226767353
The Victorian period in Britain was an “age of reform.” It is therefore not surprising that two of the era’s most eminent intellects described themselves as reformers. Both William Whewell and John Stuart Mill believed that by reforming philosophy—including the philosophy of science—they could effect social and political change. But their divergent visions of this societal transformation led to a sustained and spirited controversy that covered morality, politics, science, and economics. Situating their debate within the larger context of Victorian society and its concerns, Reforming Philosophy shows how two very different men captured the intellectual spirit of the day and engaged the attention of other scientists and philosophers, including the young Charles Darwin. Mill—philosopher, political economist, and Parliamentarian—remains a canonical author of Anglo-American philosophy, while Whewell—Anglican cleric, scientist, and educator—is now often overlooked, though in his day he was renowned as an authority on science. Placing their teachings in their proper intellectual, cultural, and argumentative spheres, Laura Snyder revises the standard views of these two important Victorian figures, showing that both men’s concerns remain relevant today. A philosophically and historically sensitive account of the engagement of the major protagonists of Victorian British philosophy, Reforming Philosophy is the first book-length examination of the dispute between Mill and Whewell in its entirety. A rich and nuanced understanding of the intellectual spirit of Victorian Britain, it will be welcomed by philosophers and historians of science, scholars of Victorian studies, and students of the history of philosophy and political economy.
Author : William R. Newman
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 351 pages
File Size : 17,65 MB
Release : 2004
Category : Art
ISBN : 0226575241
In an age when the nature of reality is complicated daily by advances in bioengineering, cloning, and artificial intelligence, it is easy to forget that the ever-evolving boundary between nature and technology has long been a source of ethical and scientific concern: modern anxieties about the possibility of artificial life and the dangers of tinkering with nature more generally were shared by opponents of alchemy long before genetic science delivered us a cloned sheep named Dolly. In Promethean Ambitions, William R. Newman ambitiously uses alchemy to investigate the thinning boundary between the natural and the artificial. Focusing primarily on the period between 1200 and 1700, Newman examines the labors of pioneering alchemists and the impassioned—and often negative—responses to their efforts. By the thirteenth century, Newman argues, alchemy had become a benchmark for determining the abilities of both men and demons, representing the epitome of creative power in the natural world. Newman frames the art-nature debate by contrasting the supposed transmutational power of alchemy with the merely representational abilities of the pictorial and plastic arts—a dispute which found artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Bernard Palissy attacking alchemy as an irreligious fraud. The later assertion by the Paracelsian school that one could make an artificial human being—the homunculus—led to further disparagement of alchemy, but as Newman shows, the immense power over nature promised by the field contributed directly to the technological apologetics of Francis Bacon and his followers. By the mid-seventeenth century, the famous "father of modern chemistry," Robert Boyle, was employing the arguments of medieval alchemists to support the identity of naturally occurring substances with those manufactured by "chymical" means. In using history to highlight the art-nature debate, Newman here shows that alchemy was not an unformed and capricious precursor to chemistry; it was an art founded on coherent philosophical and empirical principles, with vocal supporters and even louder critics, that attracted individuals of first-rate intellect. The historical relationship that Newman charts between human creation and nature has innumerable implications today, and he ably links contemporary issues to alchemical debates on the natural versus the artificial.
Author : Edwin Du Bois Shurter
Publisher : Theclassics.Us
Page : 62 pages
File Size : 37,27 MB
Release : 2013-09
Category :
ISBN : 9781230238432
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IX PERSUASION So far as we have been considering chiefly that part of debating which has to do with the reasoning processes, which is directed primarily to the mind, and results in conviction. But an argument which appeals only to the understanding may be barren of results. The cold logic of Brutus was easily overcome by the persuasive appeals of Antony. For the hearer to accept your reasoning is one thing, but for him to cast aside his prejudices and inertia is another thing. You want him to accept your argument in fact as well as in theory; in other words, to act upon it, be the action expressed in the verdict of a jury, by a vote in a deliberative body, or by any other line of conduct. It would take little argument, for instance, to convince the ordinary citizen that he should exercise his right of suffrage; but something more might be needed to impel him to go to the polls on a particular election day. That part of debating which wins the disposition of the hearers, directs motives, arouses emotions, and touches the springs of action is called persuasion. The importance of Persuasion in debate cannot be overestimated, for it is the climax of all argument proper. "Is it not," says Emerson, " the end of eloquence, to alter in a pair of hours, perhaps in a half-hour's discourse, the convictions and habits of years?" And yet, unlike the processes of pure conviction, the sources of persuasion are too ill-defined and elusive for any systematic treatment. All reasonable men reason substantially alike. But men act from different motives; and in the use of persuasion in debate much must depend upon the individual debater's tact in appreciating the particular motives that appertain to a particular audience. Generally considered, ...
Author : Michael S. Evans
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 250 pages
File Size : 22,8 MB
Release : 2016-02-16
Category : History
ISBN : 0520285085
"Religion and science often appear to cause conflict in American public life. But why? This book reports the results from the first study to combine large-scale empirical analysis of multiple "religion and science" debates with in-depth research into what Americans actually want from public life. The surprising finding is that apparent conflicts involving religion and science reflect a more fundamental conflict between media elites and ordinary Americans over what good debate should be, raising profound questions about the future of the public sphere and American democracy"--Provided by publisher.
Author : Bret Stephens
Publisher :
Page : pages
File Size : 36,1 MB
Release : 2017-12-17
Category :
ISBN : 9780648018902
2017 Lowy Institute Media Lecture
