Download or read book The End Of Science written by John Horgan and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As staff writer for Scientific American, John Horgan has a window on contemporary science unsurpassed in all the world. Who else routinely interviews the likes of Lynn Margulis, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Chris Langton, Karl Popper, Stephen Weinberg, and E.O. Wilson, with the freedom to probe their innermost thoughts? In The End Of Science, Horgan displays his genius for getting these larger-than-life figures to be simply human, and scientists, he writes, "are rarely so human . . . so at there mercy of their fears and desires, as when they are confronting the limits of knowledge."This is the secret fear that Horgan pursues throughout this remarkable book: Have the big questions all been answered? Has all the knowledge worth pursuing become known? Will there be a final "theory of everything" that signals the end? Is the age of great discoverers behind us? Is science today reduced to mere puzzle solving and adding detains to existing theories? Horgan extracts surprisingly candid answers to there and other delicate questions as he discusses God, Star Trek, superstrings, quarks, plectics, consciousness, Neural Darwinism, Marx's view of progress, Kuhn's view of revolutions, cellular automata, robots, and the Omega Point, with Fred Hoyle, Noam Chomsky, John Wheeler, Clifford Geertz, and dozens of other eminent scholars. The resulting narrative will both infuriate and delight as it mindless Horgan's smart, contrarian argument for "endism" with a witty, thoughtful, even profound overview of the entire scientific enterprise. Scientists have always set themselves apart from other scholars in the belief that they do not construct the truth, they discover it. Their work is not interpretation but simple revelation of what exists in the empirical universe. But science itself keeps imposing limits on its own power. Special relativity prohibits the transmission of matter or information as speeds faster than that of light; quantum mechanics dictates uncertainty; and chaos theory confirms the impossibility of complete prediction. Meanwhile, the very idea of scientific rationality is under fire from Neo-Luddites, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, and New Agers alike. As Horgan makes clear, perhaps the greatest threat to science may come from losing its special place in the hierarchy of disciplines, being reduced to something more akin to literaty criticism as more and more theoreticians engage in the theory twiddling he calls "ironic science." Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world's leading researchers, he offers homage too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well.

Download or read book The End of the World written by John Leslie and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-01-08 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are we in imminent danger of extinction? Yes, we probably are, argues John Leslie in his chilling account of the dangers facing the human race as we approach the second millenium. The End of the World is a sobering assessment of the many disasters that scientists have predicted and speculated on as leading to apocalypse. In the first comprehensive survey, potential catastrophes - ranging from deadly diseases to high-energy physics experiments - are explored to help us understand the risks. One of the greatest threats facing humankind, however, is the insurmountable fact that we are a relatively young species, a risk which is at the heart of the 'Doomsday Argument'. This argument, if correct, makes the dangers we face more serious than we could have ever imagined. This more than anything makes the arrogance and ignorance of politicians, and indeed philosophers, so disturbing as they continue to ignore the manifest dangers facing future generations.

Download or read book The End of Everything written by Katie Mack and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2020-08-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2020 NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY * THE WASHINGTON POST * THE ECONOMIST * NEW SCIENTIST * PUBLISHERS WEEKLY * THE GUARDIAN From one of the most dynamic rising stars in astrophysics, an “engrossing, elegant” (The New York Times) look at five ways the universe could end, and the mind-blowing lessons each scenario reveals about the most important concepts in cosmology. We know the universe had a beginning. With the Big Bang, it expanded from a state of unimaginable density to an all-encompassing cosmic fireball to a simmering fluid of matter and energy, laying down the seeds for everything from black holes to one rocky planet orbiting a star near the edge of a spiral galaxy that happened to develop life as we know it. But what happens to the universe at the end of the story? And what does it mean for us now? Dr. Katie Mack has been contemplating these questions since she was a young student, when her astronomy professor informed her the universe could end at any moment, in an instant. This revelation set her on the path toward theoretical astrophysics. Now, with lively wit and humor, she takes us on a mind-bending tour through five of the cosmos’s possible finales: the Big Crunch, Heat Death, the Big Rip, Vacuum Decay (the one that could happen at any moment!), and the Bounce. Guiding us through cutting-edge science and major concepts in quantum mechanics, cosmology, string theory, and much more, The End of Everything is a wildly fun, surprisingly upbeat ride to the farthest reaches of all that we know.

Download or read book Transhumanism Nature and the Ends of Science written by Robert Frodeman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-03 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a social, political, and aesthetic critique of transhumanism and of the accelerating growth of scientific knowledge generally. Rather than improving our lives, science and technology today increasingly leave us debilitated and infantilized. It is time to restrain the runaway ambitions of technoscientific knowledge. The transhumanist goal of human enhancement encapsulates a range of dangerous social pathologies. Like transhumanism itself, these pathologies are rooted in, or in reaction to, the ethos of ‘more’. It’s a cultural love affair with excess, which is prompted by the libertarian standards of our cultural productions. But the attempt to live at the speed of an electron is destined for failure. In response, the author offers a naturalistic account of human flourishing where we attend to the natural rhythms of life. The interdisciplinary orientation of Transhumanism, Nature, and the Ends of Science makes it relevant to scholars and students across a wide range of disciplines, including social and political philosophy, philosophy of technology, science and technology studies, environmental studies, and public policy.

Download or read book Sociology Science and the End of Philosophy written by Sal Restivo and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a unique analysis of how ideas about science and technology in the public and scientific imaginations (in particular about maths, logic, the gene, the brain, god, and robots) perpetuate the false reality that values and politics are separate from scientific knowledge and its applications. These ideas are reinforced by cultural myths about free will and individualism. Restivo makes a compelling case for a synchronistic approach in the study of these notoriously 'hard' cases, arguing that their significance reaches far beyond the realms of science and technology, and that their sociological and political ramifications are of paramount importance in our global society. This innovative work deals with perennial problems in the social sciences, philosophy, and the history of science and religion, and will be of special interest to professionals in these fields, as well as scholars of science and technology studies.

Download or read book Death from the Skies written by Philip C. Plait and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It's only a matter of time before a cosmic disaster spells the end of the Earth. But how concerned should we about about any of these catastrophic scenarios? And if they do post a danger, can anything be done to stop them?

Download or read book Can Science Make Sense of Life written by Sheila Jasanoff and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-03-05 with total page 110 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the discovery of the structure of DNA and the birth of the genetic age, a powerful vocabulary has emerged to express science’s growing command over the matter of life. Armed with knowledge of the code that governs all living things, biology and biotechnology are poised to edit, even rewrite, the texts of life to correct nature’s mistakes. Yet, how far should the capacity to manipulate what life is at the molecular level authorize science to define what life is for? This book looks at flash points in law, politics, ethics, and culture to argue that science’s promises of perfectibility have gone too far. Science may have editorial control over the material elements of life, but it does not supersede the languages of sense-making that have helped define human values across millennia: the meanings of autonomy, integrity, and privacy; the bonds of kinship, family, and society; and the place of humans in nature.

Download or read book Science Philosophy and Sustainability written by Angela Guimaraes Pereira and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-02-27 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For science to remain a legitimate and trustworthy source of knowledge, society will have to engage in the collective processes of knowledge co-production, which not only includes science, but also other types of knowledge. This process of change has to include a new commitment to knowledge creation and transmission and its role in a plural society. This book proposes to consider new ways in which science can be used to sustain our planet and enrich our lives. It helps to release and reactivate social responsibility within contemporary science and technology. It reviews critically relevant cases of contemporary scientific practice within the Cartesian paradigm, relabelled as 'innovation research', promoted as essential for the progress and well-being of humanity, and characterised by high capital investment, centralised control of funding and quality, exclusive expertise, and a reductionism that is philosophical as well as methodological. This is an accessible and relevant book for scholars in Science and Technology Studies, History and Philosophy of Science, and Science, Engineering and Technology Ethics. Providing an array of concrete examples, it supports scientists, engineers and technical experts, as well as policy-makers and other non-technical professionals working with science and technology to re-direct their approach to global problems, in a more integrative, self-reflective and humble direction.

Download or read book The End of Materialism written by Charles T. Tart and published by New Harbinger Publications. This book was released on 2009 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ideal for scientifically minded individuals curious about life's spiritual side as well as spiritually inclined people seeking to back up their beliefs, this book offers evidence for the existence of telepathy, precognition, and psychic healing.

Download or read book The End of Error written by John L. Gustafson and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-06-26 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Future of Numerical Computing Written by one of the foremost experts in high-performance computing and the inventor of Gustafson’s Law, The End of Error: Unum Computing explains a new approach to computer arithmetic: the universal number (unum). The unum encompasses all IEEE floating-point formats as well as fixed-point and exact integer arithmetic. This new number type obtains more accurate answers than floating-point arithmetic yet uses fewer bits in many cases, saving memory, bandwidth, energy, and power. A Complete Revamp of Computer Arithmetic from the Ground Up Richly illustrated in color, this groundbreaking book represents a fundamental change in how to perform calculations automatically. It illustrates how this novel approach can solve problems that have vexed engineers and scientists for decades, including problems that have been historically limited to serial processing. Suitable for Anyone Using Computers for Calculations The book is accessible to anyone who uses computers for technical calculations, with much of the book only requiring high school math. The author makes the mathematics interesting through numerous analogies. He clearly defines jargon and uses color-coded boxes for mathematical formulas, computer code, important descriptions, and exercises.

Download or read book The End of Life as We Know It written by Michael Guillen and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-10-16 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "It's happening this second. Scientists are re-imagining and re-engineering the world forever. With brutal honesty and engaging story-telling, Michael Guillen gives us a clear-eyed look at a future that is already here. Consider this unsettling, brilliantly written, must-read book your official wake up call." -- ERIC METAXAS, #1 national bestselling author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy "Michael Guillen has tackled an important subject in The End of Life as We Know It... This book is a sobering look at where we could be headed. A fascinating read." -- DAVID LIMBAUGH, bestselling author of Jesus is Risen and The True Jesus In all aspects of life, humans are crossing lines of no return. Modern science is leading us into vast uncharted territory—far beyond the invention of nuclear weapons or taking us to the moon.Today, in labs all over the world, scientists are performing experiments that threaten to fundamentally alter the practical character and ethical color of our everyday lives. In The End of Life as We Know It: Ominous News from the Frontiers of Science, bestselling author and Emmy award winning science journalist Michael Guillen takes a penetrating look at how the scientific community is pushing the boundaries of morality, including: • Scientists who detached the head of a Russian man from his crippled, diseased body, and stitching it onto a healthy new donated body. • Fertility experiments aimed at allowing designer babies to be conceived with the DNA from three or more biological parents. • The unprecedented politicization of science – for example, in the global discussion about climate change that is pitting “deniers” against “alarmists” and inspiring Draconian legislation, censorship, and legal prosecutions. • The integration of Artificial Intelligence into communications and the economy. The End of Life as We Know Ittakes us into labratories and boardrooms where these troubling advances are taking place and asks the question no scientists seem to be asking: What does this mean for the future of humanity? PREVIOUS PRAISE FOR MICHAEL GUILLEN: “Guillen succeeds triumphantly…He writes with extraordinary grace and clarity.” — CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT, The New York Times “Guillen knows how to tell a story.” — Wall Street Journal “Michael Guillen is ‘Winsomely brilliant.’” — ERIC METAXAS, #1 national bestselling author of Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy “Michael Guillen bridges the seeming gap between science and faith better than anyone I know.” — CAL THOMAS, Syndicated and USA Today columnist/Fox News contributor

Download or read book Hollywood Science written by Sidney Perkowitz and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-22 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, a scientist and dedicated film enthusiast discusses the portrayal of science in more than one hundred films, including science fiction, scientific biographies, and documentaries. Beginning with early films like Voyage to the Moon and Metropolis and concluding with more recent offerings like The Matrix, War of the Worlds, A Beautiful Mind, and An Inconvenient Truth, Sidney Perkowitz questions how much faith we can put into Hollywood's depiction of scientists and their work, how accurately these films capture scientific fact and theory, whether cataclysms like our collision with a comet can actually happen, and to what extent these films influence public opinion about science and the future. Bringing together history, scientific theory, and humorous observation, Hollywood Science features dozens of film stills and a list of the all-time best and worst science-fiction movies.

Download or read book The Science of Character written by S. Pearl Brilmyer and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1843, the Victorian political theorist John Stuart Mill outlined a new science, "the science of the formation of character." Although Mill's proposal failed as scientific practice, S. Pearl Brilmyer shows that it survived in the work of Victorian novelists, who cultivated a narrative science of human nature. Brilmyer explores this characterological project in the work of such novelists as George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Olive Schreiner. Bringing to life Mill's unrealized dream of a science of character, Victorian realists used fiction to investigate the nature of embodied experience, how traits and behaviors in human and nonhuman organisms emerge and develop, and how aesthetic features-shapes, colors, and gestures-come to take on cultural meaning through certain categories, such as race and sex. In the hands of these authors, Brilmyer argues, literature became a science, not in the sense that its claims were falsifiable or even systematically articulated, but in its commitment to uncovering, through a fictional staging of realistic events, the universal laws governing human life. The Science of Character offers brilliant insights into important novels of the period, including Eliot's Middlemarch, and a fuller picture of English realism during the crucial span between 1870 and 1920"--

Download or read book End Times written by Bryan Walsh and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this history of extinction and existential risk, a Newsweek and Bloomberg popular science and investigative journalist examines our most dangerous mistakes -- and explores how we can protect and future-proof our civilization. End Times is a compelling work of skilled reportage that peels back the layers of complexity around the unthinkable -- and inevitable -- end of humankind. From asteroids and artificial intelligence to volcanic supereruption to nuclear war, veteran science reporter and TIME editor Bryan Walsh provides a stunning panoramic view of the most catastrophic threats to the human race. In End Times, Walsh examines threats that emerge from nature and those of our own making: asteroids, supervolcanoes, nuclear war, climate change, disease pandemics, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and extraterrestrial intelligence. Walsh details the true probability of these world-ending catastrophes, the impact on our lives were they to happen, and the best strategies for saving ourselves, all pulled from his rigorous and deeply thoughtful reporting and research. Walsh goes into the room with the men and women whose job it is to imagine the unimaginable. He includes interviews with those on the front lines of prevention, actively working to head off existential threats in biotechnology labs and government hubs. Guided by Walsh's evocative, page-turning prose, we follow scientific stars like the asteroid hunters at NASA and the disease detectives on the trail of the next killer virus. Walsh explores the danger of apocalypse in all forms. In the end, it will be the depth of our knowledge, the height of our imagination, and our sheer will to survive that will decide the future.

Download or read book Science at the End of Empire written by Sabine Clarke and published by Studies in Imperialism. This book was released on 2018-09-05 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is open access under a CC BY license. This is the first account of Britain's plans for industrial development in its Caribbean colonies - something that historians have usually said Britain never contemplated. It shows that Britain's remedy to the poor economic conditions in the Caribbean gave a key role to laboratory research to re-invent sugarcane as the raw material for making fuels, plastics and drugs. Science at the end of empire explores the practical and also political functions of scientific research and economic advisors for Britain at a moment in which Caribbean governments operated with increasing autonomy and the US was intent on expanding its influence in the region. Britain's preferred path to industrial development was threatened by an alternative promoted through the Caribbean Commission. The provision of knowledge and expertise became key routes by which Britain and America competed to shape the future of the region, and their place in it.

Download or read book Escape from the Ivory Tower written by Nancy Baron and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2010-08-13 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most scientists and researchers aren’t prepared to talk to the press or to policymakers—or to deal with backlash. Many researchers have the horror stories to prove it. What’s clear, according to Nancy Baron, is that scientists, journalists and public policymakers come from different cultures. They follow different sets of rules, pursue different goals, and speak their own language. To effectively reach journalists and public officials, scientists need to learn new skills and rules of engagement. No matter what your specialty, the keys to success are clear thinking, knowing what you want to say, understanding your audience, and using everyday language to get your main points across. In this practical and entertaining guide to communicating science, Baron explains how to engage your audience and explain why a particular finding matters. She explores how to ace your interview, promote a paper, enter the political fray, and use new media to connect with your audience. The book includes advice from journalists, decision makers, new media experts, bloggers and some of the thousands of scientists who have participated in her communication workshops. Many of the researchers she has worked with have gone on to become well-known spokespeople for science-related issues. Baron and her protégées describe the risks and rewards of “speaking up,” how to deal with criticism, and the link between communications and leadership. The final chapter, ‘Leading the Way’ offers guidance to scientists who want to become agents of change and make your science matter. Whether you are an absolute beginner or a seasoned veteran looking to hone your skills, Escape From the Ivory Tower can help make your science understood, appreciated and perhaps acted upon.

Download or read book Jesuit Science and the End of Nature s Secrets written by Mark A. Waddell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-03-09 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jesuit Science and the End of Nature’s Secrets explores how several prominent Jesuit naturalists - including Niccolò Cabeo, Athanasius Kircher, and Gaspar Schott - tackled the problem of occult or insensible causation in the seventeenth century. The search for hidden causes lay at the heart of the early modern study of nature, and included phenomena such as the activity of the magnet, the marvelous powers ascribed to certain animals and plants, and the hidden, destructive forces churning in the depths of the Earth. While this was a project embraced by most early modern naturalists, however, the book demonstrates that the Jesuits were uniquely suited to the study of nature’s hidden secrets because of the complex methods of contemplation and meditation enshrined at the core of their spirituality. Divided into six chapters, the work documents how particular Jesuits sought to reveal and expose nature’s myriad secrets through an innovative blending of technology, imagery, and experiment. Moving beyond the conventional Aristotelianism mandated by the Society of Jesus, they set forth a vision of the world that made manifest the works of God as Creator, no matter how deeply hidden those works were. The book thus not only presents a narrative that challenges present-day assumptions about the role played by Catholic religious communities in the formation of modern science, but also captures the exuberance and inventiveness of the early modern study of nature.