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EBookClubs

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Book Studies on the Conceptual Foundations

Download or read book Studies on the Conceptual Foundations written by Ervin Laszlo and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Goals in a Global Community: The Original Background Papers for Goals for Mankind: A Report to the Club of Rome expounds on the idea of a global community by analyzing the human predicament in terms of the diverse images of possibility that drive our differing national and social behaviors. More specifically, it asks whether humanity can create a global community with apparently conflicting, and yet so fundamentally similar, goals. This volume is comprised of 12 chapters and opens with a discussion on long-term trends and the evolution of complexity, suggesting that socioeconomic systems may be more effectively understood in light of dissipative systems. The following chapters explore the historical evolution of mankind's inner and outer dimensions; how to make sustainable economic growth a global possibility; the possibilities of changing motivation as well as finding motivation to change; and why social motives are the strongest driving forces behind change of goals for the global community. The book also proposes solar energy as a permanent clean source of abundant energy in a fully ordered and economically feasible global transition. The final section argues that the Club of Rome must continue to risk advocacy and recognize that human values are a fact of human existence. This monograph will be a useful resource for sociologists, social scientists, and psychologists.

Book The Objectives of the New International Economic Order

Download or read book The Objectives of the New International Economic Order written by Ervin Laszlo and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2017-05-10 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Objectives of the New International Economic Order focuses on the role of the New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the resolution of issues in world economy, international trade, economic policies, trade relations, and business practices. The manuscript first offers information on the objectives of the NIEO in historical and global perspectives, as well as the political relevance of the NIEO, historical factors in the emergence of the NIEO, and contrary perceptions and vicious circles. The book also takes a look at the objectives of the NIEO regarding issues in world economy. Concerns include renegotiating the debts of developing countries, attaining United Nations development assistance targets, and using funds from disarmament for development. The publication discusses international trade and world economy issues. Topics include adjusting the economic policies of developed countries to facilitate the expansion and diversification of the exports of developing countries; improving and intensifying trade relations between countries having different social and economic systems; and increasing the transfer of resources through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The text also elaborates on industrialization issues, technology transfer, and business practices and social issues. The book is a vital source of information for readers interested in the role of NIEO in the resolution of issues in world economy, international trade, economic policies, trade relations, and business practices.

Book States of Disorder  Ecosystems of Governance

Download or read book States of Disorder Ecosystems of Governance written by Adam Day and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today's vision of world order is founded upon the concept of strong, well-functioning states, in contrast to the destabilizing potential of failed or fragile states. This worldview has dominated international interventions over the past 30 years as enormous resources have been devoted to developing and extending the governance capacity of weak or failing states, hoping to transform them into reliable nodes in the global order. But with very few exceptions, this project has not delivered on its promise: countries like Somalia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) remain mired in conflict despite decades of international interventions. States of Disorder addresses the question, 'Why has UN state-building so consistently failed to meet its objectives?'. It proposes an explanation based on the application of complexity theory to UN interventions in South Sudan and DRC, where the UN has been tasked to implement massive stabilization and state-building missions. Far from being ''ungoverned spaces, these settings present complex, dynamical systems of governance with emergent properties that allow them to adapt and resist attempts to change them. UN interventions, based upon assumptions that gradual increases in institutional capacity will lead to improved governance, fail to reflect how change occurs in these systems and may in fact contribute to underlying patterns of exclusion and violence. Based on more than a decade of the author's work in peacekeeping, this book offers a systemic mapping of how governance systems work, and indeed work against, UN interventions. Pursuing a complexity-driven approach instead helps to avoid unintentional consequences, identifies meaningful points of leverage, and opens the possibility of transforming societies from within.

Book System Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception

Download or read book System Theories and A Priori Aspects of Perception written by J.S. Jordan and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 1998-04-21 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book takes as a starting point, John Dewey's article, The Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology, in which Dewey was calling for, in short, the utilisation of systems theories within psychology, theories of behaviour that capture its nature as a vastly-complex dynamic coordination of nested coordinations. This line of research was neglected as American psychology migrated towards behaviourism, where perception came to be thought of as being both a neural response to an external stimulus and a mediating neural stimulus leading to, or causing a muscular response. As such, perception becomes a question of how it is the perceiver creates neural representations of the physical world. Gestalt psychology, on the other hand, focused on perception itself, utilising the term Phenomenological Field; a term that elegantly nests perception and the organism within their respective, as well as relative, levels of organisation. With the development of servo-mechanisms during the second world war, systems theory began to take on momentum within psychology, and then in the 1970s William T Powers brought the notion of servo-control to perception in his book, Behavior: The Control of Perception. Since then, scientists have come to see nature not as linear chain of contingent cause-effect relationships, but rather, as a non linear, unpredictable nesting of self referential, emergent coordinations, best described as Chaos theory. The implications for perception are astounding, while maintaining the double-aspect nature of perception espoused by the Gestalt psychologists. In short, system theories model perception within the context of a functioning organism, so that objects of experience come to be seen as scale-dependent, psychophysically-neutral, phenomenological transformations of energy structures, the dynamics of which are the result of evolution, and therefore, a priori to the individual case. This a priori, homological unity among brain perception and world is revealed through the use of systems theories and represents the thrust of this book. All the authors are applying some sort of systems theory to the psychology of perception. However, unlike Dewey we have close to a century of technology we can bring to bear upon the issue. This book should be seen as a collection of such efforts.

Book The Forever Crisis

Download or read book The Forever Crisis written by Adam Day and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-08-01 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an introduction to complex systems thinking at the global governance level. It offers concepts, tools, and ways of thinking about how systems change that can be applied to the most wicked problems facing the world today. More than an abstract argument for complexity theory, the book offers a targeted critique of today’s highest-profile proposals for improving the governance of our environment, security, finance, health, and digital space. It suggests that we should spend less effort and resources on upgrading existing institutions, and more on understanding how they (and we) relate to each other. The volume will be essential reading for public policymakers, NGOs and think tanks, foreign policy experts, government officials, and global decision-makers.

Book No Limits to Learning

Download or read book No Limits to Learning written by J. W. Botkin and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2014-05-19 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book reconsiders global problems such as energy and the arms race, as well as more recent issues like cultural identity, communications and information. Attention is primarily focused on human problems and potential, rather than on material constraints to growth. The analysis places particular importance on new forms of learning and education, for individuals and especially for society, as indispensable for laying the groundwork to deal with global issues, and for bridging the gap between the complexity and risks of current global issues and our presently inadequately developed capacity to face up to them. This is the first Club of Rome report to authors from socialist and Third World countries as well as from the West

Book Psychological and Social Structures

Download or read book Psychological and Social Structures written by Sandor B. Brent and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2020-09-10 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1984, this work is organised in three parts. Each part consists of several related chapters. Each chapter explores the assumptions and implications of a closely related group of concepts in depth. Part 1 explores what a structure is. It considers such notions as content, context, constraint, unity, integrity, and the hierarchical and nucleate forms of organization. Part 2 critically explores the dynamic (energic) conceptualization of psychological and social phenomena. Thus, this part considers such notions as energy, entropy, activity, confirmation, discrepancy, and resistance, as they apply to and affect the stability, activity, and changes observed in psychological and social structures. The relationship among the biological (metabolic), psychological, and social levels of analysis are explored from a rather simplified thermodynamic point of view. In Part 3 brings all these earlier considerations to bear upon the processes by which these structures grow and develop. It explores the concept of development itself, and such related issues as the levels-by-stages model of development, the distinction between intrastructural and intergenerational development, the orthogenic principles, the process of primordial differentiation and integration, development as a dialectical process, and the relationship between growth and development. The Epilogue indicates briefly some of the implications of the present thesis for future empirical and theoretical investigations.

Book Cybernetics and Society

Download or read book Cybernetics and Society written by A. F. G. Hanken and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 1981 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Good,No Highlights,No Markup,all pages are intact, Slight Shelfwear,may have the corners slightly dented, may have slight color changes/slightly damaged spine.

Book Embracing Complexity

Download or read book Embracing Complexity written by Jean G. Boulton and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book describes what it means to say the world is complex and explores what that means for managers, policy makers and individuals. The first part of the book is about the theory and ideas of complexity. This is explained in a way that is thorough but not mathematical. It compares differing approaches, and also provides a historical perspective, showing how such thinking has been around since the beginning of civilisation. It emphasises the difference between a complexity worldview and the dominant mechanical worldview that underpins much of current management practice. It defines the complexity worldview as recognising the world is interconnected, shaped by history and the particularities of context. The comparison of the differing approaches to modelling complexity is unique in its depth and accessibility. The second part of the book uses this lens of complexity to explore issues in the fields of management, strategy, economics, and international development. It also explores how to facilitate others to recognise the implications of adopting a complex rather than a mechanical worldview and suggests methods of research to explore systemic, path-dependent emergent aspects of situations. The authors of this book span both science and management, academia and practice, thus the explanations of science are authoritative and yet the examples of changing how you live and work in the world are real and accessible. The aim of the book is to bring alive what complexity is all about and to illustrate the importance of loosening the grip of a modernist worldview with its hope for prediction, certainty and control.

Book Genesis of the Cosmos

    Book Details:
  • Author : Paul A. LaViolette
  • Publisher : Inner Traditions / Bear & Co
  • Release : 2004-04-15
  • ISBN : 9781591430346
  • Pages : 390 pages

Download or read book Genesis of the Cosmos written by Paul A. LaViolette and published by Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. This book was released on 2004-04-15 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Paul LaViolette reveals astonishing parallels between cutting edge scientific thought and early creation myths, and how these myths encode a theory of cosmology in which matter is continually growing from seeds of order that emerge spontaneously from chaos. Exposing the contradictions of the Big Bang theory, LaViolette leads us beyond the restrictive metaphors of modern science and into a new science for the 21st century.

Book A Developing Discipline

    Book Details:
  • Author : Margaret A. Newman
  • Publisher : Jones & Bartlett Learning
  • Release : 1995
  • ISBN : 9780887376382
  • Pages : 344 pages

Download or read book A Developing Discipline written by Margaret A. Newman and published by Jones & Bartlett Learning. This book was released on 1995 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Margaret Newman is one of the most influential forces in nursing theory and practice today. Here is the definitive collection of her articles, papers, and lectures. This remarkable resource showcases the progression of her ideas, capturing her revolutionary impact on nursing and health care. The book included now-famous articles on nursing's shift away from subordination to medicine, a vision for a professional doctorate in nursing, the growth of nursing science, health as the expansion of consciousness, and much more.

Book Systemics of Emergence

Download or read book Systemics of Emergence written by Gianfranco Minati and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-01-16 with total page 743 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Systemics of Emergence: Research and Development is a volume devoted to exploring the core theoretical and disciplinary research problems of emergence processes from which systems are established. It focuses on emergence as the key point of any systemic process. This topic is dealt with within different disciplinary approaches, indicated by the organization in sections: 1) Applications; 2) Biology and human care; 3) Cognitive Science; 4) Emergence; 5) General Systems; 6) Learning; 7) Management; 8) Social Systems; 9) Systemic Approach and Information Science; 10) Theoretical issues in Systemics. The Editors and contributing authors have produced this volume to help, encourage and widen the work in this area of General Systems Research.

Book The Working Mind

    Book Details:
  • Author : Juan Pascual-Leone
  • Publisher : MIT Press
  • Release : 2021-04-13
  • ISBN : 0262045559
  • Pages : 515 pages

Download or read book The Working Mind written by Juan Pascual-Leone and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-04-13 with total page 515 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A general organismic-causal theory that explicates working memory and executive function developmentally, clarifying the nature of human intelligence. In The Working Mind, Juan Pascual-Leone and Janice M. Johnson propose a general organismic-causal theory that explicates working memory and executive function developmentally and by doing so clarifies the nature of human intelligence. Pascual-Leone and Johnson explain "from within" (that is, from a subject's own processing perspective) cognitive developmental stages of growth, describing key causal factors that can account for the emergence of the working mind as a functional totality. Among these factors is a maturationally growing mental attention.

Book Is Future Given

    Book Details:
  • Author : Ilya Prigogine
  • Publisher : World Scientific
  • Release : 2003-10-30
  • ISBN : 9814485330
  • Pages : 163 pages

Download or read book Is Future Given written by Ilya Prigogine and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2003-10-30 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, after discussing the fundamental problems of current science and other philosophic concepts, beginning with controversies between Heraclitus and Parmenides, Ilya Prigogine launches into a message of great hope: the future has not been determined. Contrary to globalisation and the apparent contemporary mass culture society, individual behaviour is beginning to increasingly become the key factor which governs the evolution of both the world and society as a whole. It is a message that challenges existing widespread views, implicitly or explicitly, through mass communication; moreover the importance of the individual's actions implies a reflection of each person on the responsibilities that each one assumes when taking or acting upon a decision. This responsibility is associated with the freedom of thought as well as a critical analysis of fashions, customs, preconceived ideas, and ideologies, externally imposed: exactly contrary to the ideas of those who wish us to be “perfect consumers” in a world dominated only by monetary wealth.Challenging this drive towards the elimination of freedom of thought in the individual is now imperative if we are to save man and his planet from catastrophe, which seems to be ever imminent and (unfortunately) irreversible.This last book of Ilya Prigogine provides a small, disputable, but nonetheless valuable contribution towards that end.

Book Community Health and Wellness

Download or read book Community Health and Wellness written by Anne McMurray and published by Elsevier Health Sciences. This book was released on 2015-02-10 with total page 588 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Community Health & Wellness: Primary health care in practice, 5th Edition represents contemporary thinking and research in community health and wellness from Australia, New Zealand and the global community. It challenges students and health professionals to become more aware of the primary health care (PHC) environments in which they work in order to gain an understanding of what is socially determining the health of the individuals, families and communities within their care. Provides a focus on primary health care practice in Australia and New Zealand Research and evidence-based practice throughout each chapter Group exercises that can be used in practice or tutorial groups Reflective questions to challenge the understanding of key principles and practice Additional resources for lecturers via Evolve. Two new chapters: Chapter 3 Assessing the Community Chapter 6 Working in groups The SDH Assessment Circle - a new model for community assessment Stronger emphasis on working with migrant and refugee families A new continuous case study - The Mason and Smith families