Download or read book Nature Human Nature and Human Difference written by Justin E. H. Smith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People have always been xenophobic, but an explicit philosophical and scientific view of human racial difference only began to emerge during the modern period. Why and how did this happen? Surveying a range of philosophical and natural-scientific texts, dating from the Spanish Renaissance to the German Enlightenment, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference charts the evolution of the modern concept of race and shows that natural philosophy, particularly efforts to taxonomize and to order nature, played a crucial role. Smith demonstrates how the denial of moral equality between Europeans and non-Europeans resulted from converging philosophical and scientific developments, including a declining belief in human nature's universality and the rise of biological classification. The racial typing of human beings grew from the need to understand humanity within an all-encompassing system of nature, alongside plants, minerals, primates, and other animals. While racial difference as seen through science did not arise in order to justify the enslavement of people, it became a rationalization and buttress for the practices of trans-Atlantic slavery. From the work of François Bernier to G. W. Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and others, Smith delves into philosophy's part in the legacy and damages of modern racism. With a broad narrative stretching over two centuries, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference takes a critical historical look at how the racial categories that we divide ourselves into came into being.
Download or read book The Human Difference written by Alan Wolfe and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1994-08-26 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "An eloquent and exquisitely reasoned plea for a social science based on what is distinctively human about human beings-their capacity to create meaning by the forms of interpretation that make human culture possible. This book is a lively attack on the growing antihumanism of so much contemporary social science, and it deserves a wide audience." -Jerome Bruner, New York University "Wolfe's style of argument is of enormous scope, virtuosity, clarity, and grace. In The Human Difference he will force both his sympathizers and his detractors to reflect profoundly upon the proper meaning and purpose of the social sciences." -Neil J. Smelser, University of California "There is much to be learned from his cognitive map which locates sociology in its relations to the other social sciences, literary theory, and the biological and physical sciences." -Robert Merton, Columbia University "Argued with the intensity and skill of a defense attorney for the human species, Wolfe takes on sociobiology, artificial intelligence research, ecology and post-modernism .... [This book) will generate discussion. The analyses of contemporary theoretical thought are accessible and well-documented." -Diane Miller, The Great Plains Sociologist "Wolfe calls for a return to the works of Ourkheim, Weber, Mead, and Marx as a means of resurrecting a sociology capable of responding to human difference and reflecting the ambiguity and ambivalence that arises from it. ... Compelling and provocative." -Choice
Download or read book Quality of Life and Human Difference written by David Wasserman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-05-09 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study brings together two important literatures together in the one volume. One concerns the role of quality assessments in social policy, especially health policy. The second concerns ethical and social issues raised by prenatal testing for disability. Hitherto, these two literatures have had little contact with each other: few scholars have written about both, or have compared the two domains in a systematic way, while people with disabilities and disability scholars are underrepresented in recent discussion on health policy and quality of assessment. This book turns the perspectives of disability scholars on issues that have largely been the province of health methodology, policy and philosophy, while angling philosophical policy analysis on problems that have largely been the province of disability scholarship. This volume will be sought after by bioethicists, philosophers, and specialists in disability studies and healthcare economics.
Download or read book The Human Difference written by Alan Wolfe and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-04-28 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are we losing touch with our humanity? Yes, contends Alan Wolfe in this provocative critique of modern American intellectual life. From ecology, sociobiology, and artificial intelligence to post-modernism and the social sciences, Wolfe examines the antihumanism underlying many contemporary academic trends. Animal rights theorists and "ecological extremists" too often downplay human capacities. Computers are smarter than we are and will soon replace us as the laws of evolution continue to unfold. Even the humanities, held in sway by imported theories that are explicitly antihumanistic in intention, have little place for human beings. Against this backdrop, Wolfe calls for a return to a moral and humanistic social science, one in which the qualities that distinguish us as a species are given full play. Tracing the development of modern social theory, Wolfe explores the human-centered critical thinking of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars, now eclipsed by post-modern and scientistic theorizing. In the work of Durkheim, Marx, Weber, and Mead, human beings are placed on the center stage, shaping and interpreting the world around them. Sociology in particular emerged as a distinct science because the species it presumed to understand was distinct as well. Recent intellectual trends, in contrast, allow little room for the human difference. Sociobiology underlines the importance of genetics and mathematically governed evolutionary rules while downplaying the unique cognitive abilities of humans. Artificial intelligence heralds the potential superiority of computers to the human mind. Post-modern theorizing focuses on the interpretation of texts in self-referential modes, rejecting humanism in any form. And mainstream social science, using positivist paradigms of human behavior based on the natural sciences, develops narrow and arid models of social life. Wolfe eloquently makes a case for a new commitment to humanistic social science based on a realistic and creative engagement with modern society. A reconstituted social science, acknowledging our ability to interpret the world, will thrive on a recognition of human difference. Nurturing a precious humanism, social science can celebrate and further refine our unique capacity to create morality and meaning for ourselves. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993. Are we losing touch with our humanity? Yes, contends Alan Wolfe in this provocative critique of modern American intellectual life. From ecology, sociobiology, and artificial intelligence to post-modernism and the social sciences, Wolfe examines the antihu
Download or read book The Human Difference written by Michael Robbins and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-02 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a multidisciplinary perspective grounded in psychoanalysis, this book explores the manifestations of mind that distinguish humans from other species, culture, civilization, and destructiveness. Psychoanalysis was created by Freud in an effort to understand neurosis and psychosis, the names he gave to individual human destructiveness. His understanding was limited and incorrect because the science of evolution and the disciplines of sociology and cultural anthropology were in their infancy when he formulated his ideas. He did not comprehend that destructiveness is qualitatively different in humans than in other species and he ignored the problem of how biological instincts become mental processes. These limitations left psychoanalysis with one of its most perplexing unsolved problems, the mysterious leap from mind to body. This book explains how neoteny, the prolonged period of postnatal immaturity that distinguishes humans from other animals, requires and enables complex learning from caregivers. It is the knowledge acquired from this learning and its intergenerational transmission that links the biological theory of evolution with the psychosocial theory of psychoanalysis and explains how the human species is unique. This book will be of interest to those who want to learn about how integrating the findings of evolutionary science, primatology, sociology, and cultural anthroplogy with the theory of psychoanalysis expands our understanding of what makes humans unique and its implications for the future of our species, and how it empowers us to influence the destiny of humankind.
Download or read book Uniqueness written by C.R. Snyder and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My Red Shirt and Me The red shirt incident begins with a rather ordinary red shirt. Not a brightly colored red shirt, not a dramatic cherry or firehouse red, more like a faded burgundy. But, for several days, my very iden tity was bound up in its redness. It was me, and I wore it with the pride a matador takes in his splendid cape, a hero in his medals of bravery, or a nun in her religious habit. I'll never forget the bound less joy I felt wearing that simple, pullover, short-sleeved red shirt in the hospital--or the rush of relief that I experienced when, at last, I decided to surrender it. However, we are getting ahead of our story, which starts a short time earlier with a most unfortunate accident. A light flurry of wet snow had begun to fall as the university limousine turned the corner on its way from the Bronx campus of New York University to the downtown campus. Although eight of us were packed into the car and had resigned ourselves to the usual boring faculty meeting awaiting us, somehow a spontaneous air of joviality was created.
Download or read book The Nature of Race written by Ann Morning and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2011-06-24 with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-303) and index.
Download or read book The Sublime Terror and Human Difference written by Christine Battersby and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-01-11 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christine Battersby is a leading thinker in the field of philosophy, gender studies and visual and literary aesthetics. In this important new work, she undertakes an exploration of the nature of the sublime, one of the most important topics in contemporary debates about modernity, politics and art. Through a compelling examination of terror, transcendence and the ‘other’ in key European philosophers and writers, Battersby articulates a radical ‘female sublime’. A central feature of The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference is its engagement with recent debates around ‘9/11’, race and Islam. Battersby shows how, since the eighteenth century, the pleasures of the sublime have been described in terms of the transcendence of terror. Linked to the ‘feminine’, the sublime was closed off to flesh-and-blood women, to ‘Orientals’ and to other supposedly ‘inferior’ human types. Engaging with Kant, Burke, the German Romantics, Nietzsche, Derrida, Lyotard, Irigaray and Arendt, as well as with women writers and artists, Battersby traces the history of these exclusions, while finding resources within the history of western culture for thinking human differences afresh The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference is essential reading for students of continental philosophy, gender studies, aesthetics, literary theory, visual culture, and race and social theory.
Download or read book The Trouble with Human Nature written by Elizabeth D. Whitaker and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-02-03 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- CONTENTS -- PART I Pathways to the present -- 1 Envisioning evolution: representations of humanness and causation -- 2 Origin stories: the co-evolution of human anatomy and sociality -- 3 Losses and gains: economic and health transitions since the Neolithic Revolution -- PART II Plasticity, identity, and health -- 4 Thicker than water: blood and milk in human evolution -- 5 Risk and responsibility: power and danger in individualized approaches to preventive health -- 6 Difference as destiny: race, sex, and culture -- PART III Sex and gender -- 7 Choosers and cheaters: the sexual/reproductive conflict hypothesis -- 8 Hoe and plow, pig and cow: work, family, and gender stratification -- 9 Tale of two-spirits: constructing gender and sexuality, aptitudes and inclinations -- PART IV Conflict and violence -- 10 Savage empathy: sources of competitiveness and cooperativeness, greed and generosity -- 11 Why stratify? Inequality and interpersonal violence -- 12 Peace and war: patterns and prevention of violent intergroup conflict -- Appendix: Life expectancy rate calculations -- Index.
Download or read book The Nature of Difference written by George Ellison and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2006-04-19 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unprecedented advances in genetics and biotechnology have brought profound new insights into human biological variation. These present challenges and opportunities for understanding the origins of human nature, the nature of difference, and the social practices these sustain. This provides an opportunity for cooperation between the biological and s
Download or read book Human Difference written by Andrew Barron and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Living in proximity to human disability, with a son who has Down Syndrome, Andrew Barron has come to understand that not only do we live in a world of human difference, but that God wants us to live in this kind of world, for our own flourishing. Human Difference is an extended meditation on that experience and a reflection on the nature of human care and hospitality. Barron seeks to understand and embrace the uncertainty that comes with living in proximity to difference and disability and reflects on how we might better cope with and ultimately be enriched by its ambiguity. He undertakes a new approach to difference: we must be ready to venture into uncomfortable territory, to "put out into the deep water" and to actively seek out an intimate and open closeness with difference and disability.
Download or read book Health and Difference written by Alexandra Widmer and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2016-09-01 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human variation represented a central research topic for life scientists and posed challenging administrative issues for colonial bureaucrats in the first half of the 20th century. By following scientists’ and administrators’ interests in innovating styles and tools for making and circulating documents, in reshaping landscapes and environments, and in fixing distances between humans, the book advances new understandings of the materiality of colonial institutional life and governance.
Download or read book The Third Chimpanzee written by Jared M. Diamond and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2006-01-03 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Development of an Extraordinary Species We human beings share 98 percent of our genes with chimpanzees. Yet humans are the dominant species on the planet -- having founded civilizations and religions, developed intricate and diverse forms of communication, learned science, built cities, and created breathtaking works of art -- while chimps remain animals concerned primarily with the basic necessities of survival. What is it about that two percent difference in DNA that has created such a divergence between evolutionary cousins? In this fascinating, provocative, passionate, funny, endlessly entertaining work, renowned Pulitzer Prize–winning author and scientist Jared Diamond explores how the extraordinary human animal, in a remarkably short time, developed the capacity to rule the world . . . and the means to irrevocably destroy it.
Download or read book Universal Human Rights in a World of Difference written by Brooke A. Ackerly and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-06-26 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the diverse work and often competing insights of women's human rights activists, Brooke Ackerly has written a feminist and a universal theory of human rights that bridges the relativists' concerns about universalizing from particulars and the activists' commitment to justice. Unlike universal theories that rely on shared commitments to divine authority or to an 'enlightened' way of reasoning, Ackerly's theory relies on rigorous methodological attention to difference and disagreement. She sets out human rights as at once a research ethic, a tool for criticism of injustice and a call to recognize our obligations to promote justice through our actions. This book will be of great interest to political theorists, feminist and gender studies scholars and researchers of social movements.
Download or read book In the Light of Evolution written by National Academy of Sciences and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia of the National Academy of Sciences address scientific topics of broad and current interest, cutting across the boundaries of traditional disciplines. Each year, four or five such colloquia are scheduled, typically two days in length and international in scope. Colloquia are organized by a member of the Academy, often with the assistance of an organizing committee, and feature presentations by leading scientists in the field and discussions with a hundred or more researchers with an interest in the topic. Colloquia presentations are recorded and posted on the National Academy of Sciences Sackler colloquia website and published on CD-ROM. These Colloquia are made possible by a generous gift from Mrs. Jill Sackler, in memory of her husband, Arthur M. Sackler.
Download or read book The Invention of Humanity written by Siep Stuurman and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-20 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For much of history, strangers were routinely classified as barbarians and inferiors, seldom as fellow human beings. The notion of a common humanity was counterintuitive and thus had to be invented. Siep Stuurman traces evolving ideas of human equality and difference across continents and civilizations from ancient times to the present. Despite humans’ deeply ingrained bias against strangers, migration and cultural blending have shaped human experience from the earliest times. As travelers crossed frontiers and came into contact with unfamiliar peoples and customs, frontier experiences generated not only hostility but also empathy and understanding. Empires sought to civilize their “barbarians,” but in all historical eras critics of empire were able to imagine how the subjected peoples made short shrift of imperial arrogance. Drawing on the views of a global mix of thinkers—Homer, Confucius, Herodotus, the medieval Muslim scholar Ibn Khaldun, the Haitian writer Antenor Firmin, the Filipino nationalist Jose Rizal, and more—The Invention of Humanity surveys the great civilizational frontiers of history, from the interaction of nomadic and sedentary societies in ancient Eurasia and Africa, to Europeans’ first encounters with the indigenous peoples of the New World, to the Enlightenment invention of universal “modern equality.” Against a backdrop of two millennia of thinking about common humanity and equality, Stuurman concludes with a discussion of present-day debates about human rights and the “clash of civilizations.”
Download or read book Critical Anthropological Engagements in Human Alterity and Difference written by Bjørn Enge Bertelsen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-01-03 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how one measures and analyzes human alterity and difference in an interconnected and ever-globalizing world. This book critically assesses the impact of what has often been dubbed ‘the ontological turn’ within anthropology in order to provide some answers to these questions. In doing so, the book explores the turn’s empirical and theoretical limits, accomplishments, and potential. The book distinguishes between three central strands of the ontological turn, namely worldviews, materialities, and politics. It presents empirically rich case studies, which help to elaborate on the potentiality and challenges which the ontological turn’s perspectives and approaches may have to offer.
