By Design Or by Chance


Book Description

O'Leary provides by far the broadast overview yet of the ID movement. she quotes ID leaders such as Phillip Johnson, William Dembski and Michael Behe. she also quotes their sternest critics, including Richard Dawkins, Stephen J. Gould and Michael Ruse. She writes about the Wedge movement, DNA, the age of the Earth, the search for extraterrestrial life, the teaching of ID in schools, and the monarch butterfly. She anticipates the culmination of the ID revolution by writing that Darwinism "was part of our folklore." Yet the evolutionary tales she relates are still widely taught as fact in many schools. This well organized guidebook of O'Leary's journey through the world of Intelligent Design has the potential to lead many of the next generation away from the evolutionary fables that now pass for science. Her book is must reading for anyone who wants to understand the history and significance of the Intelligent Design movement. It also belongs in college and even high school classrooms. Forrest M. Mims III, U.S. science journalist Denyse O'Leary has been a freelance writer since 1971. She specializes in science news of interest to faith communities for such publications as Christianity Today, Faith Today, and the Christian Times. She is the author of several titles including Faith@Science: Why Science Needs Faith in the Twenty-First Century, and it the Faith and Science columnist for ChristianWeek. She has written for newspapers, magazines, book publishers, and trade jounals, including the Globe & Mail, the Toronto Star, and Canadian Living.





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Oracles of Science


Book Description

Oracles of Science examines the popular writings of the six scientists who have been the most influential in shaping our perception of science, how it works, and how it relates to other fields of human endeavor, especially religion. Biologists Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson, and physicists Carl Sagan, Stephen Hawking, and Steven Weinberg, have become public intellectuals, articulating a much larger vision for science and what role it should play in the modern worldview. The scientific prestige and literary eloquence of each of these great thinkers combine to transform them into what can only be called oracles of science. Their controversial, often personal, sometimes idiosyncratic opinions become widely known and perceived by many to be authoritative. Curiously, the leading 'oracles of science' are predominantly secular in ways that don't reflect the distribution of religious beliefs within the scientific community. Many of them are even hostile to religion, creating a false impression that science as a whole is incompatible with religion. Karl Giberson and Mariano Artigas offer an informed analysis of the views of these six scientists, carefully distinguishing science from philosophy and religion in the writings of the oracles. This book will be welcomed by many who are disturbed by the tone of the public discourse on the relationship between science and religion and will challenge others to reexamine their own preconceptions about this crucial topic.







Science in Latin America


Book Description

Science in Latin America has roots that reach back to the information gathering and recording practices of the Maya, Aztec, and Inca civilizations. Spanish and Portuguese conquerors and colonists introduced European scientific practices to the continent, where they hybridized with local traditions to form the beginnings of a truly Latin American science. As countries achieved their independence in the nineteenth century, they turned to science as a vehicle for modernizing education and forwarding "progress." In the twentieth century, science and technology became as omnipresent in Latin America as in the United States and Europe. Yet despite a history that stretches across five centuries, science in Latin America has traditionally been viewed as derivative of and peripheral to Euro-American science. To correct that mistaken view, this book provides the first comprehensive overview of the history of science in Latin America from the sixteenth century to the present. Eleven leading Latin American historians assess the part that science played in Latin American society during the colonial, independence, national, and modern eras, investigating science's role in such areas as natural history, medicine and public health, the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, politics and nation-building, educational reform, and contemporary academic research. The comparative approach of the essays creates a continent-spanning picture of Latin American science that clearly establishes its autonomous history and its right to be studied within a Latin American context.




Ciencias y sociedad


Book Description

Las ciencias y las técnicas han formado parte, desde el principio de la civilización, del desarrollo de la sociedad. Los cambios que han caracterizado las diferentes etapas del pensamiento científico se han producido dentro del marco de determinadas formaciones sociales y en condiciones específicas de producción del conocimiento. En este libro se aborda la manera en que se relacionan ciencia y sociedad: las formas de valorización social de las investigaciones, el sistema de trabajo en el interior de los laboratorios, las razones ideológicas de las teorías científicas, los mecanismos de financiación de la indagaciones científicas, las luchas jerárquicas entre los sabios y académicos, etc. Un conjunto de problemas que están más que nunca implicados en nuestros grandes problemas sociales. La explosión de las nanotecnologías, la controversia sobre los OGM, el cambio climático, etc., tantas temáticas cuya comprensión y control implican también conocer mejor las dinámicas sociales que forman parte de la producción de conocimientos y de las innovaciones. La presente obra, refundición de Sociología de las ciencias, publicada en 1995, muestra un planteamiento completo de todos estos problemas, con numerosos ejemplos y una muy amplia documentación. Presenta las diferentes formas de articulación ciencia/sociedad (emergencia de las ciencias, dinámica de innovación y democracia técnica) y los principales mecanismos sociales que hacen vivir a las ciencias (instituciones, organizaciones, intercambios entre investigadores, elaboración de contenidos, etc.). Este libro permite aprehender tanto la cultura material y cognitiva de un laboratorio como el funcionamiento del mercado de empleo científico. Más allá de la referencia a los grandes autores, corrientes de pensamiento y debates, ayuda a comprender mejor qué la sociedad y aquellas personas que tiene el poder decisorio fuerzan el desarrollo de las ciencias y de las técnicas, y qué los artesanos de estas últimas imponen a cambio sus lógicas propias. Habla así sobre la sociología de "la sociedad de los conocimientos”.




Water Works Engineering


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Cuba


Book Description

Written by some of the best-known independent scholars, citizen journalists, cyber-activists, and bloggers living in Cuba today, this book presents a critical, complete, and unbiased overview of contemporary Cuba. In this era of ever-increasing globalization and communication across national borders, Cuba remains an isolated island oddly out of step with the rest of the world. And yet, Cuba is beginning to evolve via the important if still insufficient changes instituted by Raul Castro, who became president in 2008. This book supplies a uniquely independent, accurate, and critical perspective in order to evaluate these changes in the context of the island's rich and complex history and culture. Organized into seven topical chapters that address geography, history, politics and government, economics, society, culture, and contemporary issues, readers will gain a broad, insightful understanding of one of the most unusual, fascinating, and often misunderstood nations in the Western Hemisphere.




Un Tal Alfonso


Book Description

Un tal Alfonso, es una semiautobiografía de pocas páginas donde el autor pretende encajonar el tiempo ido y el tiempo presente, manejando las ideas sin dramatismo. Las anécdotas apocalíptica de la consumación de los siglos, que desentona la razón. Un buen lector, puede digerir el sensacionalismo de una información; pero hay otro público que le es difícil entender lo que puede, o no puede suceder. Es de nobleza que haya alguien que le baje la "nota" a la sintonía apocalíptica; para seguir viviendo en fe. Ciertamente, hay un nuevo amanecer.




HISTORIA DE LA IGLESIA - I


Book Description

Esta historia de la iglesia, que habla de ella como comunidad e institución, abarca el camino recorrido por la iglesia durante los primeros siete siglo de la era cristiana, en los cuales esta misma comunidad comenzó su devenir histórico superando muchos obstáculos hasta convertirse en una institución que tenía una palabra para decir a la sociedad de aquel tiempo.