Download or read book A Humanist Science written by Philip Selznick and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-08 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing a capstone to Philip Selznick's influential body of scholarly work, A Humanist Science insightfully brings to light the value-centered nature of the social sciences. The work clearly challenges the supposed separation of fact and value, and argues that human values belong to the world of fact and are the source of the ideals that govern social and political institutions. By demonstrating the close connection between the social sciences and the humanities, Selznick reveals how the methods of the social sciences highlight and enrich the study of such values as well-being, prosperity, rationality, and self-government. The book moves from the animating principles that make up the humanist tradition to the values that are central to the social sciences, analyzing the core teachings of these disciplines with respect to the moral issues at stake. Throughout the work, Selznick calls attention to the conditions that affect the emergence, realization, and decline of human values, offering a valuable resource for scholars and students of law, sociology, political science, and philosophy.
Download or read book Giving the Devil his Due written by Michael Shermer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-09 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Who is the 'Devil'? And what is he due? The Devil is anyone who disagrees with you. And what he is due is the right to speak his mind. He must have this for your own safety's sake because his freedom is inextricably tied to your own. If he can be censored, why shouldn't you be censored? If we put barriers up to silence 'unpleasant' ideas, what's to stop the silencing of any discussion? This book is a full-throated defense of free speech and open inquiry in politics, science, and culture by the New York Times bestselling author and skeptic Michael Shermer. The new collection of essays and articles takes the Devil by the horns by tackling five key themes: free thought and free speech, politics and society, scientific humanism, religion, and the ideas of controversial intellectuals. For our own sake, we must give the Devil his due.
Download or read book The Humanistic Background of Science written by Philipp Frank and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2021-10-01 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philipp Frank (1884–1966) was an influential philosopher of science, public intellectual, and Harvard educator whose last book, The Humanistic Background of Science, is finally available. Never published in his lifetime, this original manuscript has been edited and introduced to highlight Frank's remarkable but little-known insights about the nature of modern science—insights that rival those of Karl Popper and Frank's colleagues Thomas Kuhn and James Bryant Conant. As a leading exponent of logical empiricism and a member of the famous Vienna Circle, Frank intended his book to provide an accessible, engaging introduction to the philosophy of science and its cultural significance. The book is steadfastly true to science; to aspirations of peace, unity, and human flourishing after World War II; and to the pragmatic philosophies of Charles S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey that Frank embraced in his new American home. Amidst the many recent surveys and retrospective analyses of midcentury philosophy of science, The Humanistic Background of Science offers an original, first-hand view of Frank's post-European life and of intellectual dramas then unfolding in Chicago, New York City, and Boston.
Download or read book The Scientist and the Humanist written by Marti Hope Gonzales and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2011-01-07 with total page 587 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elliot Aronson is among the 100 most influential psychologists of the 20th Century. He is best known for his theorizing and research on cognitive dissonance theory -- one of the most provocative and enduring theories in contemporary psychology -- and for his design of the "jigsaw classroom," an applied method of reducing conflict and prejudice in multiethnic schools. Throughout his illustrious career, he has championed the application of social-psychological theory and methods for solving such pressing social problems as prejudice, energy efficiency, conflict and miscommunication in relationships, and the reasons why many people justify their mistakes rather than learn from them. Aronson is the only psychologist in the history of the American Psychological Association to have won all three of its top awards: for research, teaching, and writing. In this Festschrift, friends, colleagues, and former students write with warmth, clarity, and humor about Aronson’s enduring influence on the field of social psychology and on their own professional lives as researchers, writers, and teachers. Topics covered include contemporary research on cognitive dissonance theory; the changing face of experimentation in social psychology; and applied research on energy policy, education, the legal system, intergroup conflict, and prejudice and discrimination.
Download or read book Heavens on Earth written by Michael Shermer and published by Henry Holt. This book was released on 2018-01-09 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In his most ambitious work yet, Shermer sets out to discover what drives humans' belief in life after death, focusing on recent scientific attempts to achieve immortality by radical life extentionists, extropians, transhumanists, cryonicists, and mind-uploaders, along with utopians who have attempted to create heaven on earth. For millennia, religions have concocted numerous manifestations of heaven and the afterlife, the place where souls go after the death of the physical body. Religious leaders have toiled to make sense of this place that a surprising 74% of Americans believe exists, but from which no one has ever returned to report what it is really like. Heavens on Earth concludes with an uplifting paean to purpose and progress and what we can do in the here-and-now, whether or not there is a hereafter" --
Download or read book In Defense of Secular Humanism written by Paul Kurtz and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2010-09-09 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spirited defense of secular humanism against fundamentalist critics.
Download or read book The Digital Humanist written by Domenico Fiormonte and published by punctum books. This book was released on 2015 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a critical introduction to the core technologies underlying the Internet from a humanistic perspective. It provides a cultural critique of computing technologies, by exploring the history of computing and examining issues related to writing, representing, archiving and searching. The book raises awareness of, and calls for, the digital humanities to address the challenges posed by the linguistic and cultural divides in computing, the clash between communication and control, and the biases inherent in networked technologies. A common problem with publications in the Digital Humanities is the dominance of the Anglo-American perspective. While seeking to take a broader view, the book attempts to show how cultural bias can become an obstacle to innovation both in the methodology and practice of the Digital Humanities. Its central point is that no technological instrument is culturally unbiased, and that all too often the geography that underlies technology coincides with the social and economic interests of its producers. The alternative proposed in the book is one of a world in which variation, contamination and decentralization are essential instruments for the production and transmission of digital knowledge. It is thus necessary not only to have spaces where DH scholars can interact (such as international conferences, THATCamps, forums and mailing lists), but also a genuine sharing of technological know-how and experience. "This is a truly exceptional work on the subject of the digital....Students and scholars new to the field of digital humanities will find in this book a gentle introduction to the field, which I cannot but think would be good and perhaps even inspirational for them....Its history of the development of machines and programs and communities bent on using computers to advance science and research merely sets the stage for an insightful analysis of the role of the digital in the way both scholars and everyday people communicate and conceive of themselves and "others" in written forms - from treatises to credit card transactions." Peter Shillingsburg The Digital Humanist is not simply a translation of the Italian book L'umanista digitale (il Mulino 2010), but a new version tailored to an international audience through the improvement and expansion of the sections on social, cultural and ethical problems of the most widely used methodologies, resources and applications. TABLE OF CONTENTS // Preface: Digital Humanities at a Political Turn? by Geoffrey Rockwell / PART I: The Socio-Historical Roots - Chap. 1: Technology and the Humanities: A History of Interaction - Chap. 2: Internet, or The Humanistic Machine / PART II: Theoretical and Practical Dimensions - Chap. 3: Writing and Content Production - Chap. 4: Representing and Archiving - Chap. 5: Searching and Organizing / Conclusions: DH in a Global Perspective
Download or read book Enlightenment Now written by Steven Pinker and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 578 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2018 ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BOOKS OF THE YEAR "My new favorite book of all time." --Bill Gates If you think the world is coming to an end, think again: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science. By the author of the new book, Rationality. Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing. Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress.
Download or read book Mortal Gods written by Ted H. Miller and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Argues against the accepted idea that Thomas Hobbes turned away from humanism to pursue the scientific study of politics. Reconceptualizes Hobbes's thought within early modern humanist pedagogy and the court culture of the Stuart regimes"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book The Humanist Alternative written by Paul Kurtz and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 1973 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Marketing Blurb
Download or read book Humanism written by Peter Cave and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-04-07 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life does not become empty and meaningless in a godless universe. This is the contention at the heart of humanism, the philosophy concerned with making sense of the world through reason, experience and shared human values. In this thought-provoking introduction, Peter Cave explores the humanist approach to religious belief, ethics and politics, and addresses key criticisms. Revised and updated to confront today’s great crises – the climate emergency and global pandemics – and the future of humanism in the face of rapid technological advancement, this is for anyone wishing to better understand what it means to be human in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book The History of Science and the New Humanism written by George Sarton and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 1988 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this classic work, the foremost historian of science in our time, George Sarton, sums up his reflections on the role of science and of the humanities in our culture. Voicing his opposition to the old-fashioned humanists on the one hand, and to the 'uneducated' men of science and technicians on the other, Sarton points out to the former that the humanities without scientific are essentially incomplete. He warns the latter that without history, without philosophy, without arts and letters, without a living religion, human life on this planet would cease to be worthwhile.After outlining his 'Faith of a Humanist' in the opening section, Sarton goes on to analyze 'The History of Science and the History of Civilization, ' to discuss the progress of scientific thought since ancient times in 'East and West, ' and to propose the solution for the educational and cultural crisis of our time in 'The New Humanism' and in 'The History of Science and the Problems of Today.' He concludes not only that science is a source of technological development that has changed the face of the earth and has convulsed our lives for good and evil, but that it nonetheless affords the best means of understanding the world, its people, and the multitude of their relationships. 'Science is the conscience of mankind.'Included in this edition is Robert M. Merton's address before the Sarton Centennial meeting of November 1984. It is a stunning tour de force in its own right, providing insights into Sarton, teaching and research at Harvard in the 1930s, and the personal interaction between Sarton the mentor, and Merton the pupil. The essay supplements May Sarton's earlier 'Informal Portrait of George Sarton.'
Download or read book Humanism written by Tony Davies and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-10-19 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanism offers students a clear and lucid introductory guide to the complexities of Humanism, one of the most contentious and divisive of artistic or literary concepts. Showing how the concept has evolved since the Renaissance period, Davies discusses humanism in the context of the rise of Fascism, the onset of World War II, the Holocaust, and their aftermath. Humanism provides basic definitions and concepts, a critique of the religion of humanity, and necessary background on religious, sexual and political themes of modern life and thought, while enlightening the debate between humanism, modernism and antihumanism through the writings and works of such key figures as Pico Erasmus, Milton, Nietzsche, and Foucault.
Download or read book Humanism A Very Short Introduction written by Stephen Law and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-01-27 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion is currently gaining a much higher profile. The number of faith schools is increasingly, and religious points of view are being aired more frequently in the media. As religion's profile rises, those who reject religion, including humanists, often find themselves misunderstood, and occasionally misrepresented. Stephen Law explores how humanism uses science and reason to make sense of the world, looking at how it encourages individual moral responsibility and shows that life can have meaning without religion. Challenging some of the common misconceptions, he seeks to dispute the claims that atheism and humanism are 'faith positions' and that without God there can be no morality and our lives are left without purpose. Looking at the history of humanism and its development as a philosophical alternative, he examines the arguments for and against the existence of God, and explores the role humanism plays in moral and secular societies, as well as in moral and religious education. Using humanism to determine the meaning of life, he shows that there is a positive alternative to traditional religious belief. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Download or read book The Little Book of Humanism written by Alice Roberts and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2020-08-27 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER We all want to lead a happy life. Traditionally, when in need of guidance, comfort or inspiration, many people turn to religion. But there has been another way to learn how to live well - the humanist way - and in today's more secular world, it is more relevant than ever. In THE LITTLE BOOK OF HUMANISM, Alice Roberts and Andrew Copson share over two thousand years of humanist wisdom through an uplifting collection of stories, quotes and meditations on how to live an ethical and fulfilling life, grounded in reason and humanity. With universal insights and beautiful original illustrations, THE LITTLE BOOK OF HUMANISM is a perfect introduction to and a timeless anthology of humanist thought from some of history and today's greatest thinkers.
Download or read book God s Philosophers written by James Hannam and published by Icon Books Ltd. This book was released on 2009-08-07 with total page 551 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a powerful and a thrilling narrative history revealing the roots of modern science in the medieval world. The adjective 'medieval' has become a synonym for brutality and uncivilized behavior. Yet without the work of medieval scholars there could have been no Galileo, no Newton and no Scientific Revolution. In "God's Philosophers", James Hannam debunks many of the myths about the Middle Ages, showing that medieval people did not think the earth is flat, nor did Columbus 'prove' that it is a sphere; the Inquisition burnt nobody for their science nor was Copernicus afraid of persecution; no Pope tried to ban human dissection or the number zero. "God's Philosophers" is a celebration of the forgotten scientific achievements of the Middle Ages - advances which were often made thanks to, rather than in spite of, the influence of Christianity and Islam. Decisive progress was also made in technology: spectacles and the mechanical clock, for instance, were both invented in thirteenth-century Europe. Charting an epic journey through six centuries of history, "God's Philosophers" brings back to light the discoveries of neglected geniuses like John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Thomas Bradwardine, as well as putting into context the contributions of more familiar figures like Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Download or read book Humanist Voices in Unitarian Universalism written by Kendyl L. R. Gibbons and published by Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. This book was released on 2016 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this highly anticipated collection, Unitarian Universalist Humanists present their faith perspectives in 23 engaging and thought-provoking essays. The contributors, both lay and ordained, demonstrate why Humanism has been one of the bedrock theologies of Unitarian Universalism for the last hundred years. They reflect on what it means to be a religious Humanist today and how they see the movement evolving in the twenty-first century. They explore Humanist history, beliefs, approach to life, social justice, community, and religious education. Together, these voices proclaim a passionate affirmation of a rich and dynamic tradition within Unitarian Universalism.
