Download or read book Astonishment and Science written by Paul Tyson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2022-12-27 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science can reveal or conceal the breathtaking wonders of creation. On one hand, knowledge of the natural world can open us up to greater love for the Creator, give us the means of more neighborly care, and fill us with ever-deepening astonishment. On the other hand, knowledge feeding an insatiable hunger for epistemic mastery can become a means of idolatry, hubris, and damage. Crucial to world-respecting science is the role of wonder: curiosity, perplexity, and astonishment. In this volume, philosopher William Desmond explores the relation of the different modes of wonder to modern science. Responding to his thought are twelve thinkers across the domains of science, theology, philosophy, law, poetry, medicine, sociology, and art restoration. Introduction --Paul Tyson The Dearth of Astonishment: On Curiosity, Scientism, and Thinking as Negativity --William Desmond Preparing to Paint the Virgin's Robe --Spike Bucklow Cultivating Wonder --Steven Knepper The Astonishment of Philosophy: William Desmond and Isabelle Stengers --Simone Kotva Astonishment and the Social Sciences --Paul Tyson Curiosity, Perplexity, and Astonishment in the Natural Sciences --Andrew Davison Scientism as the Dearth of the Nothing --Richard J. Colledge The Determinations of Medicine and the Too-Muchness of Being --Jeffrey Bishop Attending to Infinitude: Law as in-between the Overdeterminate and Practical Judgment --Jonathan Horton Life's Wonder --Simon Oliver Being in Control --Michael Hanby Wondering about the Science/Scientism Distinction --D. C. Schindler Basil and Desmond on Wonder and the Astonishing Return of Christian Metaphysics --Isidoros C. Katsos The Children of Wonder: On Scientism and Its Changelings --William Desmond
Download or read book Astonishing Hypothesis written by Francis Crick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1995-07 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readers will come to appreciate the strength and dignity of Berneta Ringer, a true Western heroine as Doig celebrates his mother's life after finding a cache of her letters, photographs, and childhood writings. It begins with her first winter living in a tent in Montana's Crazy Mountains to the ravages of the Depression on a ranch on Falkner Creek.
Download or read book Eurekas and Euphorias written by Walter Gratzer and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004 with total page 374 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of fascinating stories, entertainingly told, revealing the human face of science. Eurekas and Euphorias encompasses some 200 anecdotes brilliantly illustrating scientists in all their shapes: the obsessive and the dilettantish, the genial, the envious, the preternaturally brilliant and the slow-witted who sometimes see further in the end, the open-minded and the intolerant, recluses and arrivistes. Told with wit and relish by Walter Gratzer, here are stories to delight, astonish, instruct, and most especially, entertain the general reader, scientist and non-scientist alike.
Download or read book Astonishment and Evocation written by Ivo Strecker and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-06-01 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All societies are shaped by arts, media, and other persuasive practices that can awe, captivate, enchant or otherwise seem to cast a spell on the audience. Likewise, scholarship itself often is driven by a sense of wonder and a willingness to be open to what lies beyond the obvious. This book broadens and deepens this perspective. Inspired by Stephen Tyler’s view of ethnography as an art of evocation, international scholars from the fields of aesthetics, anthropology, and rhetoric explore the spellbinding power of elusive meanings as people experience them in daily life and while gazing at works of art, watching films or studying other cultures. The book is divided into three parts covering the evocative power of visual art, the immersion in ritual and performance, and the reading, writing, and interpretation of texts. Taken as a whole, the contributions to the book demonstrate how astonishment and evocation deserve an important place in the conceptual repertoire of the human sciences.
Download or read book Death by Astonishment written by Andrew Gallimore and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2025-07-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Being You written by Anil Seth and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A Best Book of 2021—Bloomberg Businessweek; A Best Science Book of 2021—The Guardian; A Best Science Book of 2021—Financial Times; A Best Philosophy Book of 2021—Five Books; A Best Book of 2021—The Economist Anil Seth's quest to understand the biological basis of conscious experience is one of the most exciting contributions to twenty-first-century science. What does it mean to “be you”—that is, to have a specific, conscious experience of the world around you and yourself within it? There may be no more elusive or fascinating question. Historically, humanity has considered the nature of consciousness to be a primarily spiritual or philosophical inquiry, but scientific research is now mapping out compelling biological theories and explanations for consciousness and selfhood. Now, internationally renowned neuroscience professor, researcher, and author Anil Seth is offers a window into our consciousness in BEING YOU: A New Science of Consciousness. Anil Seth is both a leading expert on the neuroscience of consciousness and one of most prominent spokespeople for this relatively new field of science. His radical argument is that we do not perceive the world as it objectively is, but rather that we are prediction machines, constantly inventing our world and correcting our mistakes by the microsecond, and that we can now observe the biological mechanisms in the brain that accomplish this process of consciousness. Seth has been interviewed for documentaries aired on the BBC, Netflix, and Amazon and podcasts by Sam Harris, Russell Brand, and Chris Anderson, and his 2017 TED Talk on the topic has been viewed over 11 million times, a testament to his uncanny ability to make unimaginably complex science accessible and entertaining.
Download or read book Ice written by Mariana Gosnell and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2011-04-27 with total page 793 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like the adventurer who circled an iceberg to see it on all sides, Mariana Gosnell, former Newsweek reporter and author of Zero Three Bravo, a book about flying a small plane around the United States, explores ice in all its complexity, grandeur, and significance.More brittle than glass, at times stronger than steel, at other times flowing like molasses, ice covers 10 percent of the earth’s land and 7 percent of its oceans. In nature it is found in myriad forms, from the delicate needle ice that crunches underfoot in a winter meadow to the massive, centuries-old ice that forms the world’s glaciers. Scientists theorize that icy comets delivered to Earth the molecules needed to get life started, and ice ages have shaped much of the land as we know it.Here is the whole world of ice, from the freezing of Pleasant Lake in New Hampshire to the breakup of a Vermont river at the onset of spring, from the frozen Antarctic landscape that emperor penguins inhabit to the cold, watery route bowhead whales take between Arctic ice floes. Mariana Gosnell writes about frostbite and about the recently discovered 5,000-year-old body of a man preserved in an Alpine glacier. She discusses the work of scientists who extract cylinders of Greenland ice to study the history of the earth’s climate and try to predict its future. She examines ice in plants, icebergs, icicles, and hail; sea ice and permafrost; ice on Mars and in the rings of Saturn; and several new forms of ice developed in labs. She writes of the many uses humans make of ice, including ice-skating, ice fishing, iceboating, and ice climbing; building ice roads and seeding clouds; making ice castles, ice cubes, and iced desserts. Ice is a sparkling illumination of the natural phenomenon whose ebbs and flows over time have helped form the world we live in. It is a pleasure to read, and important to read—for its natural science and revelations about ice’s influence on our everyday lives, and for what it has to tell us about our environment today and in the future.
Download or read book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom written by Andrew Dickson White and published by . This book was released on 1897 with total page 570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Age of Astonishment written by Bill Morris and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-04-05 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An acclaimed journalist and novelist makes history personal, painting a rich and vivid portrait of the time when America become modern by tracing the life of one man who lived through it. It all began with a black-and-white family snapshot of a distinguished elderly gentleman with a fine head of spun-sugar hair. He was wearing round, tortoise-shell glasses, a three-piece suit and an expression of delight mixed with terror, for on his right knee he was balancing a swaddled infant with a bewildered look. The baby is Bill morris, the man is his father’s father, John Morris. That photo, taken in November 1952, the month the United States detonated the first hydrogen bomb, a weapon a thousand times more powerful than the atom bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Three years later, John Morris died at the age of 92. Bill has no memories of the man, but even as a boy he found himself marveling at the changes John must have witnessed and experienced in his long lifetime. He was born into a slave-owning Virginia family during the Civil War, and he died at the peak of the Cold War. At the time of his birth, the dominant technologies were the steam engine and the telegraph. He grew up in a world lit by kerosene and candles, he traveled by foot and horseback and wagon and drank water hauled from a well. He would live through Reconstruction, women’s suffrage, Prohibition, the Great Depression, two world wars, the Korean War and the advent of nuclear weapons. Though he was from a slave-owning family, he changed his views as he grew into adulthood, and would unhappily witnessed the horrors of Jim Crow and work against it. Fluent in German, he would witness Hitler’s rise to power, just one of the unimaginable occurrences of his time that suddenly became all-too-real. Deep in the Bible Belt, John was agnostic, perhaps even atheist, and held remarkably progressive beliefs on race relations, child rearing, women’s rights and religious freedom. He married an Irish Catholic from upstate New York at a time when Catholics, Jews and Yankees were not warmly welcomed in the South. And in that traditionally bellicose region, he was a life-long pacifist. He was, in a word, a misfit, but one whose story embodies a pivotal generation in American history. An acclaimed journalist and novelist, Bill Morris makes history personal in The Age of Astonishment, painting a rich and vivid portrait of the time when America become modern by tracing the life of one man who lived through it.
Download or read book World of Wonders written by Aimee Nezhukumatathil and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A poet celebrates the wonders of nature in a collection of essays that could almost serve as a coming-of-age memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted—no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape—she was able to turn to our world’s fierce and funny creatures for guidance. “What the peacock can do,” she tells us, “is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life.” The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world’s gifts. Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy. Praise for World of Wonders Barnes & Noble 2020 Book of the Year An NPR Best Book of 2020 An Esquire Best Book of 2020 A Publishers Weekly “Big Indie Book of Fall 2020” A BuzzFeed Best Book of Fall 2020 “Hands-down one of the most beautiful books of the year.” —NPR “A timely story about love, identity and belonging.” —New York Times Book Review “A truly wonderous essay collection.” —Roxane Gay, The Audacity
Download or read book Ask a Science Teacher written by Larry Scheckel and published by The Experiment. This book was released on 2013-12-17 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fun and fascinating science is everywhere, and it’s a cinch to learn—just ask a science teacher! We’ve all grown so used to living in a world filled with wonders that we sometimes forget to wonder about them: What creates the wind? Do fish sleep? Why do we blink? These are common phenomena, but it’s a rare person who really knows the answers—do you? All too often, the explanations remain shrouded in mystery—or behind a haze of technical language. For those of us who should have raised our hands in science class but didn’t, Larry Scheckel comes to the rescue. An award-winning science teacher and longtime columnist for his local newspaper, Scheckel is a master explainer with a trove of knowledge. Just ask the students and devoted readers who have spent years trying to stump him! In Ask a Science Teacher, Scheckel collects 250 of his favorite Q&As. Like the best teachers, he writes so that kids can understand, but he doesn’t water things down— he’ll satisfy even the most inquisitive minds. Topics include: •The Human Body •Earth Science •Astronomy •Chemistry Physics •Technology •Zoology •Music and conundrums that don’t fit into any category With refreshingly uncomplicated explanations, Ask a Science Teacher is sure to resolve the everyday mysteries you’ve always wondered about. You’ll learn how planes really fly, why the Earth is round, how microwaves heat food, and much more—before you know it, all your friends will be asking you!
Download or read book God and the New Physics written by P. C. W. Davies and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1984-10-16 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the discoveries of twentieth-century physics--relativity and the quantum theory--demand a radical reformulation of the fundamentals of reality and a way of thinking, that is closer to mysticism than materialism.
Download or read book Science and Culture written by Hermann von Helmholtz and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1995-10-15 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hermann von Helmholtz was a leading figure of nineteenth-century European intellectual life, remarkable even among the many scientists of the period for the range and depth of his interests. A pioneer of physiology and physics, he was also deeply concerned with the implications of science for philosophy and culture. From the 1850s to the 1890s, Helmholtz delivered more than two dozen popular lectures, seeking to educate the public and to enlighten the leaders of European society and governments about the potential benefits of science and technology to a developing modern society. David Cahan has selected fifteen of these lectures, which reflect the wide range of topics of crucial importance to Helmholtz and his audiences. Among the subjects discussed are the origins of the planetary system, the relation of natural science to science in general, the aims and progress of the physical sciences, the problems of perception, and academic freedom in German universities. This collection also includes Helmholtz's fascinating lectures on the relation of optics to painting and the physiological causes of harmony in music, which provide insight into the relations between science and aesthetics. Science and Culture makes available again Helmholtz's eloquent arguments on the usefulness, benefits, and, intellectual pleasures of understanding the natural world. With Cahan's Introduction to set these essays in their broader context, this collection makes an important contribution to the philosophical and intellectual history of Europe at a time when science played an increasingly significant role in social, economic, and cultural life.
Download or read book De Quincey s Writings written by Thomas De Quincey and published by . This book was released on 1853 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Rocks of Ages written by Stephen Jay Gould and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2011-07-20 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "People of good will wish to see science and religion at peace. . . . I do not see how science and religion could be unified, or even synthesized, under any common scheme of explanation or analysis; but I also do not understand why the two enterprises should experience any conflict." So states internationally renowned evolutionist and bestselling author Stephen Jay Gould in the simple yet profound thesis of his brilliant new book. Writing with bracing intelligence and elegant clarity, Gould sheds new light on a dilemma that has plagued thinking people since the Renaissance. Instead of choosing between science and religion, Gould asks, why not opt for a golden mean that accords dignity and distinction to each realm? At the heart of Gould's penetrating argument is a lucid, contemporary principle he calls NOMA (for nonoverlapping magisteria)--a "blessedly simple and entirely conventional resolution" that allows science and religion to coexist peacefully in a position of respectful noninterference. Science defines the natural world; religion, our moral world, in recognition of their separate spheres of influence. In elaborating and exploring this thought-provoking concept, Gould delves into the history of science, sketching affecting portraits of scientists and moral leaders wrestling with matters of faith and reason. Stories of seminal figures such as Galileo, Darwin, and Thomas Henry Huxley make vivid his argument that individuals and cultures must cultivate both a life of the spirit and a life of rational inquiry in order to experience the fullness of being human. In his bestselling books Wonderful Life, The Mismeasure of Man, and Questioning the Millennium, Gould has written on the abundance of marvels in human history and the natural world. In Rocks of Ages, Gould's passionate humanism, ethical discernment, and erudition are fused to create a dazzling gem of contemporary cultural philosophy. As the world's preeminent Darwinian theorist writes, "I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving concordat between . . . science and religion."
Download or read book Kierkegaard s Theological Sociology written by Paul Tyson and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-03-29 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kierkegaard developed a distinctive type of sociology in the 1840s—a theological sociology. Looking at society through the lens of analysis categories such as worship, sin, and faith, Kierkegaard developed a profoundly insightful way of understanding how, for example, the modern mass media works. He gets right inside the urban world of Golden Age Denmark, and its religion, and analyses “the present age” of consumption, comfort, competition, distraction, and image-construction with astonishing depth. To Kierkegaard worship centers all individuals and all societies; hence his sociology is doxological. This book argues that we also live in the present age Kierkegaard described, and our way of life can be understood much better through Kierkegaard’s lens than through the methodologically materialist categories of classical sociology. As social theory itself has moved beyond classical sociology, the social sciences are increasingly open to post-methodologically-atheist approaches to understanding what it means to be human beings living in social contexts. The time is right to recover the theological resources of Christian faith in understanding the social world we live in. The time has come to pick up where Kierkegaard left off, and to start working towards a prophetic doxological sociology for our times.
