Sub Specie Historiae


Book Description

Consists of a series of related essays that deal with a new approach to historical-mindedness and a new way of understanding the distinguishing characteristics of Western civilization.







California Studies


Book Description




Scientific and Technological Thinking


Book Description

At the turn of the 21st century, the most valuable commodity in society is knowledge--particularly new knowledge that may give a culture, company, or laboratory an adaptive advantage. Knowledge about the cognitive processes that lead to discovery and invention can enhance the probability of making valuable new discoveries and inventions. Such knowledge needs to be made widely available to ensure that no particular interest group "corners the market" on techno-scientific creativity. Knowledge can also facilitate the development of business strategies and social policies based on a genuine understanding of the creative process. Furthermore, through an understanding of principles underlying the cognitive processes related to discovery, educators can utilize these principles to teach students effective problem-solving strategies as part of their education as future scientists. This book takes the reader out onto the cutting edge of research in scientific and technological thinking. The editors advocate a multiple-method approach; chapters include detailed case studies of contemporary and historical practices, experiments, computational simulations, and innovative theoretical analyses. The editors attempt a provocative synthesis of this work at the end. In order to achieve true scientific and technological progress, an understanding of the process by which species are transforming the world is needed. This book makes an important step in that direction by leading to breakthroughs in the understanding of discovery and invention.




International Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning


Book Description

The Routledge International Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning is an authoritative reference work providing a balanced overview of current scholarship spanning the full breadth of the rapidly developing and expanding field of thinking and reasoning. It contains 35 chapters written by leading international researchers, covering foundational issues as well as state-of-the-art developments in thinking and reasoning research. Topics covered range across all sub-areas of thinking and reasoning, including deduction, induction, abduction, judgment, decision making, argumentation, problem solving, expertise, creativity and rationality. The contributors engage with cutting-edge debates such as the status of dual-process theories of thinking, the role of unconscious, intuitive, emotional and metacognitive processes in thinking, and the importance of probabilistic conceptualisations of thinking and reasoning. Authors also examine the importance of neuroscientific findings in informing theoretical developments, and explore the situated nature of thinking and reasoning across a range of real-world contexts such as mathematics, medicine and science. The Handbook provides a clear sense of the way in which contemporary ideas are challenging traditional viewpoints as "new paradigm of the psychology of reasoning" emerges. This paradigm-shifting research is paving the way toward a richer and more inclusive understanding of thinking and reasoning, where important new questions drive a forward-looking research agenda. It is essential reading for both established researchers in the field of thinking and reasoning as well as advanced students wishing to learn more about both the historical foundations and latest developments in this rapidly growing field.




The Sense of Creation


Book Description

What kind of experience might help to confirm and make sense of the puzzling belief in divine creation, so central to the main monotheistic religions? Anselm and Aquinas developed a philosophical understanding of 'Creation' as an asymmetrical relationship between the world and God, that is, that the world is really related to God in a relationship of total dependence but God is in no way really related to or modified by this created world. This idea of an asymmetrical relationship is the key concept unifying all aspects of this book which discusses the three main inter-related questions in a philosophical discussion about God -- the question of meaning, the question of existence, and the question of co-existence. The book explores various 'ciphers' of this asymmetrical relationship in our pre-philosophical lived experience. These are experiences such as that of the relationship between our knowledge and what we know, or our sense of obligation to our vulnerable neighbour. It argues that deciphering such experiences helps to make sense of the 'asymmetrical' relation of creation and that it in turn makes sense of them. Masterson argues further that this idea of asymmetrical relationship provides insight into the main questions of philosophy of religion and is an illuminating source of critical dialogue with contemporary Anglo/American and Phenomenological approaches in philosophy of religion.




Groundwork for the Practice of the Good Life


Book Description

What makes for good societies and good lives in a global world? In this landmark work of political and ethical philosophy, Omedi Ochieng offers a radical reassessment of a millennia-old question. He does so by offering a stringent critique of both North Atlantic and African philosophical traditions, which he argues unfold visions of the good life that are characterized by idealism, moralism, and parochialism. But rather than simply opposing these flawed visions of the good life with his own set of alternative prescriptions, Ochieng argues that it is critically important to step back and understand the stakes of the question. Those stakes, he suggests, are to be found only through a social ontology – a comprehensive and in-depth account of the political, economic, and cultural structures that mark the boundaries and limits of life in the twenty-first century. It is only in light of this social ontology that Ochieng then proffers an alternative normative account of the good society and the good life – which he spells out as emergent from ecological embeddedness; social entanglement; embodied encounter; and aesthetic engenderment. At once sweeping and rigorous, incisive and subtle, original and revisionary, this book does more than just appeal to intellectuals and scholars across the humanities and social sciences – rather, it opens up the academic disciplines to a whole new landscape of exploration into the biggest and most pressing questions animating the human experience.




Natural Law


Book Description




Liberation Theology


Book Description

In the past twenty-five years, liberation theology has emerged as one of the most influential, challenging, and controversial movements in modern theology. Whether in its Asian, African, Latin American, or African-American forms, liberation theology has undertaken to reexamine the dimensions of Christian faith from the perspective of the marginalized and oppressed. Here, at last, is a collection of readings from a cross-section of the world's leading exponents of liberation theology, designed to offer an overview of liberation theology and its central themes. Topics included are methodology, christology, ecclesiology, and spirituality. Each chapter includes a helpful introduction and questions for discussion, making this an ideal introductory text for students, as well as scholars and other general readers. Contributors: Maria Pilar Aquino Tissa Balasuriya Dominique Barbe Clodovis Boff Leonardo Boff Ernesto Cardenal Chung Hyun Kyung James H. Cone Jean-Marc Ela Ivone Gebara Gustavo Gutierrez Mary Hunt Sallie McFague Mary John Mananzan Carlos Mesters Anne Nasimiyu-Wasike Sun Ai Park Jon Sobrino Charles Villa-Vicencio Yong Ting Jin




Questioning God


Book Description

In 15 insightful essays, Jacques Derrida and an international group of scholars of religion explore postmodern thinking about God and consider the nature of forgiveness in relation to the paradoxes of the gift. Among the themes addressed by contributors are the possibilities of imagining God as unthinkable, imagining God as non-patriarchal, imagining a return to Augustine, and imagining an age in which praise is far more important than narrative. Questioning God moves readers beyond the parameters of metaphysical reason and modernist rationality as it attempts to think the questions of God and forgiveness in a postmodernist context. Contributors include John D. Caputo, Jacques Derrida, Mark Dooley, Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Robert Gibbs, Jean Greisch, Kevin Hart, Richard Kearney, Cleo McNelly Kearns, John Milbank, Regina M. Schwartz, Michael J. Scanlon, and Graham Ward. Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion--Merold Westphal, general editor