Download or read book Emergence and Convergence written by Mario Bunge and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2003-01-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two problems continually arise in the sciences and humanities, according to Mario Bunge: parts and wholes and the origin of novelty. In Emergence and Convergence, he works to address these problems, as well as that of systems and their emergent properties, as exemplified by the synthesis of molecules, the creation of ideas, and social inventions. Along the way, Bunge examines further topical problems, such as the search for the mechanisms underlying observable facts, the limitations of both individualism and holism, the reach of reduction, the abuses of Darwinism, the rational choice-hermeneutics feud, the modularity of the brain vs. the unity of the mind, the cluster of concepts around 'maybe,' the uselessness of many-worlds metaphysics and semantics, the hazards posed by Bayesianism, the nature of partial truth, the obstacles to correct medical diagnosis, and the formal conditions for the emergence of a cross-discipline. Bunge is not interested in idle fantasies, but about many of the problems that occur in any discipline that studies reality or ways to control it. His work is about the merger of initially independent lines of inquiry, such as developmental evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, and socio-economics. Bunge proposes a clear definition of the concept of emergence to replace that of supervenience and clarifies the notions of system, real possibility, inverse problem, interdiscipline, and partial truth that occur in all fields.

Download or read book Emergence and Convergence written by Mario Bunge and published by Toronto Studies in Philosophy. This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A "Two problems continually arise in the sciences and humanities, according to Mario Bunge: parts and wholes and the origins of novelty. In Emergence and Convergence, he addresses these problems, as well as those of systems and their emergent properties, as exemplified by the synthesis of molecules, the creation of ideas, and social invention. Along the way, Bunge examines other topical problems, such as the search for the mechanisms that underlie observable facts, the limitations of both individualism and holism, the abuses of Darwinism, the modularity of the brain versus the unity of the mind, the nature of partial truth, and the obstacles to improving medical diagnosis."--Jacket.

Download or read book Holistic Anthropology written by David J. Parkin and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Given the broad reach of anthropology as the science of humankind, there are times when the subject fragments into specialisms and times when there is rapprochement. Rather than just seeing them as reactions to each other, it is perhaps better to say that both tendencies co-exist and that it is very much a matter of perspective as to which is dominant at any moment. The perspective adopted by the contributors to this volume is that some anthropologists have, over the last decade or so, been paying considerable attention to developments in the study of social and biological evolution and of material culture, and that this has brought social, material cultural and biological anthropologists closer to each other and closer to allied disciplines such as archaeology and psychology. A more eclectic anthropology once characteristic of an earlier age is thus re-emerging. The new holism does not result from the merging of sharply distinguished disciplines but from among anthropologists themselves who see social organization as fundamentally a problem of human ecology, and, from that, of material and mental creativity, human biology, and the co-evolution of society and culture. It is part of a wider interest beyond anthropology in the origins and rationale of human activities, claims and beliefs, and draws on inferential or speculative reasoning as well as 'hard' evidence. The book argues that, while usefully borrowing from other subjects, all such reasoning must be grounded in prolonged, intensive and linguistically-informed fieldwork and comparison.

Download or read book Emergence and Convergence written by Mario Bunge and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2015-01-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two problems continually arise in the sciences and humanities, according to Mario Bunge: parts and wholes and the origin of novelty. In Emergence and Convergence, he works to address these problems, as well as that of systems and their emergent properties, as exemplified by the synthesis of molecules, the creation of ideas, and social inventions. Along the way, Bunge examines further topical problems, such as the search for the mechanisms underlying observable facts, the limitations of both individualism and holism, the reach of reduction, the abuses of Darwinism, the rational choice-hermeneutics feud, the modularity of the brain vs. the unity of the mind, the cluster of concepts around 'maybe,' the uselessness of many-worlds metaphysics and semantics, the hazards posed by Bayesianism, the nature of partial truth, the obstacles to correct medical diagnosis, and the formal conditions for the emergence of a cross-discipline. Bunge is not interested in idle fantasies, but about many of the problems that occur in any discipline that studies reality or ways to control it. His work is about the merger of initially independent lines of inquiry, such as developmental evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, and socio-economics. Bunge proposes a clear definition of the concept of emergence to replace that of supervenience and clarifies the notions of system, real possibility, inverse problem, interdiscipline, and partial truth that occur in all fields.

Download or read book Social Theory Re Wired written by Wesley Longhofer and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-06-22 with total page 943 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This third edition of Social Theory Re-Wired is a significantly revised edition of this leading text and its unique web learning interactive programs that "allow us to go farther into theory and to build student skills than ever before," according to many teachers. Vital political and social updates are reflected both in the text and the online supplements. "System updates" to each section offer an expanded set of contemporary theory readings that focus on the impacts of information/digital technologies on each of the text’s five big themes: 1) the Puzzles of Social Order, 2) the Social Consequences of Capitalism, 3) the Darkside of Modernity, 4) Subordinated/Alternative Knowledges, and 5) Self-Identity and Society. New to this edition: The "big ideas/questions" thematic structure of the text as well as the connections between classical and contemporary theorists continues to be popular with instructors. This feature is enhanced in the new edition An expanded "Podcast Companions" series now pairs at least one podcast to every reading in the book Many new updates to the exercise platform allow students to theorize and build theory on their own New readings excerpts include such important recent work as: Shoshana Zuboff’s "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism," Ruha Benjamin’s "Race After Technology," David Graeber’s "Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit," Sherry Turkle’s “Always-On/Always-on-You.”

Download or read book Corporate Criminal Liability written by Mark Pieth and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-04-20 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With industrialization and globalization, corporations acquired the capacity to influence social life for good or for ill. Yet, corporations are not traditional objects of criminal law. Justified by notions of personal moral guilt, criminal norms have been judged inapplicable to fictional persons, who ‘think’ and ‘act’ through human beings. The expansion of new corporate criminal liability (CCL) laws since the mid-1990s challenges this assumption. Our volume surveys current practice on CCL in 15 civil and common law jurisdictions, exploring the legal conditions for liability, the principles and options for sanctioning, and the procedures for investigating, charging and trying corporate offenders. It considers whether municipal CCL laws are converging around the notion of ‘corporate culture’, and, in any case, the implications of CCL for those charged with keeping corporations, and other legal entities, out of trouble.

Download or read book Impact Networks written by David Ehrlichman and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This practical guide shows how to facilitate collaboration among diverse individuals and organizations to navigate complexity and create change in our interconnected world. The social and environmental challenges we face today are not only complex, they are also systemic and structural and have no obvious solutions. They require diverse combinations of people, organizations, and sectors to coordinate actions and work together even when the way forward is unclear. Even so, collaborative efforts often fail because they attempt to navigate complexity with traditional strategic plans, created by hierarchies that ignore the way people naturally connect. By embracing a living-systems approach to organizing, impact networks bring people together to build relationships across boundaries; leverage the existing work, skills, and motivations of the group; and make progress amid unpredictable and ever-changing conditions. As a powerful and flexible organizing system that can span regions, organizations, and silos of all kinds, impact networks underlie some of the most impressive and large-scale efforts to create change across the globe. David Ehrlichman draws on his experience as a network builder; interviews with dozens of network leaders; and insights from the fields of network science, community building, and systems thinking to provide a clear process for creating and developing impact networks. Given the increasing complexity of our society and the issues we face, our ability to form, grow, and work through networks has never been more essential.

Download or read book The Great Convergence written by Kishore Mahbubani and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2013-02-05 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An influential policy thinker and "muse of the Asian Century" ("Foreign Policy") illuminates the contours of our new global civilization, and shows why power must shift to reflect the new reality.

Download or read book Engaging Emergence written by Peggy Holman and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2010-09-06 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work, change specialist Holman reframes how we deal with chaos and change, and explains to leaders how to turn upheaval into opportunity and renewal.

Download or read book Metaphysical Emergence written by Jessica M. Wilson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-04 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Both the special sciences and ordinary experience suggest that there are metaphysically emergent entities and features: macroscopic goings-on (including mountains, trees, humans, and sculptures, and their characteristic properties) which depend on, yet are distinct from and distinctively efficacious with respect to, lower-level physical configurations and features. These appearances give rise to two key questions. First, what is metaphysical emergence, more precisely? Second, is there any metaphysical emergence, in principle and moreover in fact? Metaphysical Emergence provides clear and systematic answers to these questions. Wilson argues that there are two, and only two, forms of metaphysical emergence of the sort seemingly at issue in the target cases: 'Weak' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a proper subset of the powers of the feature upon which it depends, and 'Strong' emergence, whereby a dependent feature has a power not had by the feature upon which it depends. Weak emergence unifies and illuminates seemingly diverse accounts of non-reductive physicalism; Strong emergence does the same as regards seemingly diverse anti-physicalist views positing fundamental novelty at higher levels of compositional complexity. After defending the in-principle viability of each form of emergence, Wilson considers whether complex systems, ordinary objects, consciousness, and free will are actually metaphysically emergent. She argues that Weak emergence is quite common, and that there is Strong emergence in the important case of free will.

Download or read book Convergence of Knowledge Technology and Society written by Mihail C. Roco and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume aims to document the most important worldwide accomplishments in converging knowledge and technology, including converging platforms, methods of convergence, societal implications, and governance in the last ten years. Convergence in knowledge, technology, and society is the accelerating, transformative interaction among seemingly distinct scientific disciplines, technologies, and communities to achieve mutual compatibility, synergism, and integration, and through this process to create added value for societal benefit. It is a movement that is recognized by scientists and thought leaders around the world as having the potential to provide far-reaching solutions to many of today’s complex knowledge, technology, and human development challenges. Four essential and interdependent convergence platforms of human activity are defined in the first part of this report: nanotechnology-biotechnology-information technology and cognitive science (“NBIC”) foundational tools; Earth-scale environmental systems; human-scale activities; and convergence methods for societal-scale activities. The report then presents the main implications of convergence for human physical potential, cognition and communication, productivity and societal outcomes, education and physical infrastructure, sustainability, and innovative and responsible governance. As a whole, the report presents a new model for convergence. To effectively take advantage of this potential, a proactive governance approach is suggested. The study identifies an international opportunity to develop and apply convergence for technological, economic, environmental, and societal benefits. The panel also suggests an opportunity in the United States for implementing a program aimed at focusing disparate R and D energies into a coherent activity - a "Societal Convergence Initiative”. This study received input from leading academic, industry, government, and NGO experts from the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Download or read book Convergence written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2014-06-16 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Convergence of the life sciences with fields including physical, chemical, mathematical, computational, engineering, and social sciences is a key strategy to tackle complex challenges and achieve new and innovative solutions. However, institutions face a lack of guidance on how to establish effective programs, what challenges they are likely to encounter, and what strategies other organizations have used to address the issues that arise. This advice is needed to harness the excitement generated by the concept of convergence and channel it into the policies, structures, and networks that will enable it to realize its goals. Convergence investigates examples of organizations that have established mechanisms to support convergent research. This report discusses details of current programs, how organizations have chosen to measure success, and what has worked and not worked in varied settings. The report summarizes the lessons learned and provides organizations with strategies to tackle practical needs and implementation challenges in areas such as infrastructure, student education and training, faculty advancement, and inter-institutional partnerships.

Download or read book Network Design for IP Convergence written by Yezid Donoso and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2009-02-23 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence of quality-of-service (QoS) mechanisms continues to propel the development of real-time multimedia services such as VoIP and videoconferencing. However, many challenges remain in achieving optimized standardization convergence. Network Design for IP Convergence is a comprehensive, global guide to recent advances in IP network implementation. Providing an introduction to basic LAN/WAN/MAN network design, the author covers the latest equipment and architecture, addressing, QoS policies, and integration of services, among other topics. The book explains how to integrate the different layers of reference models and various technological platforms to mirror the harmonization that occurs in the real world of carrier networks. It furnishes appropriate designs for traditional and critical services in the LAN and carrier networks (both MAN and WAN), and it clarifies how a specific layer or technology can cause those services to malfunction. This book lays a foundation for understanding with concepts and applicability of QoS parameters under the multilayer scheme, and a solid explanation of service infrastructure. It goes on to describe integration in both real time and "not real time," elaborating on how both processes can co-exist within the same IP network and concluding with the designs and configurations of service connections. Learn How to Overcome Obstacles to Improve Technology This sweeping analysis of the implementation of IP convergence and QoS mechanisms helps designers and operators get past key obstacles, such as integrating platform layers and technologies and implementing various associated QoS concepts, to improve technology and standards.

Download or read book Convergence and Diversity in the Governance of Higher Education written by Giliberto Capano and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-11-19 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores convergence and divergence in the governance of higher education systems from a global and comparative perspective.

Download or read book Smart Cities and Artificial Intelligence written by Christopher Grant Kirwan and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Smart Cities and Artificial Intelligence offers a comprehensive view of how cities are evolving as smart ecosystems through the convergence of technologies incorporating machine learning and neural network capabilities, geospatial intelligence, data analytics and visualization, sensors, and smart connected objects. These recent advances in AI move us closer to developing urban operating systems that simulate human, machine, and environmental patterns from transportation infrastructure to communication networks. Exploring cities as real-time, living, dynamic systems, and providing tools and formats including generative design and living lab models that support cities to become self-regulating, this book provides readers with a conceptual and practical knowledge base to grasp and apply the key principles required in the planning, design, and operations of smart cities. Smart Cities and Artificial Intelligence brings a multidisciplinary, integrated approach, examining how the digital and physical worlds are converging, and how a new combination of human and machine intelligence is transforming the experience of the urban environment. It presents a fresh holistic understanding of smart cities through an interconnected stream of theory, planning and design methodologies, system architecture, and the application of smart city functions, with the ultimate purpose of making cities more liveable, sustainable, and self-sufficient.

Download or read book Microbial Threats to Health written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-08-25 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Infectious diseases are a global hazard that puts every nation and every person at risk. The recent SARS outbreak is a prime example. Knowing neither geographic nor political borders, often arriving silently and lethally, microbial pathogens constitute a grave threat to the health of humans. Indeed, a majority of countries recently identified the spread of infectious disease as the greatest global problem they confront. Throughout history, humans have struggled to control both the causes and consequences of infectious diseases and we will continue to do so into the foreseeable future. Following up on a high-profile 1992 report from the Institute of Medicine, Microbial Threats to Health examines the current state of knowledge and policy pertaining to emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases from around the globe. It examines the spectrum of microbial threats, factors in disease emergence, and the ultimate capacity of the United States to meet the challenges posed by microbial threats to human health. From the impact of war or technology on disease emergence to the development of enhanced disease surveillance and vaccine strategies, Microbial Threats to Health contains valuable information for researchers, students, health care providers, policymakers, public health officials. and the interested public.

Download or read book Emergence written by C. J. Cherryh and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The 19th book in Cherryh's beloved Foreigner space opera series begins a new era for diplomat Bren Cameron, as he navigates the tenuous peace he has struck between human refugees and the alien "atevi."