Download or read book The Fate of Knowledge written by Helen E. Longino and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Longino seeks to break the current deadlock in the ongoing wars between philosophers of science and sociologists of science--academic battles founded on disagreement about the role of social forces in constructing scientific knowledge. While many philosophers of science downplay social forces, claiming that scientific knowledge is best considered as a product of cognitive processes, sociologists tend to argue that numerous noncognitive factors influence what scientists learn, how they package it, and how readily it is accepted. Underlying this disagreement, however, is a common assumption that social forces are a source of bias and irrationality. Longino challenges this assumption, arguing that social interaction actually assists us in securing firm, rationally based knowledge. This important insight allows her to develop a durable and novel account of scientific knowledge that integrates the social and cognitive. Longino begins with a detailed discussion of a wide range of contemporary thinkers who write on scientific knowledge, clarifying the philosophical points at issue. She then critically analyzes the dichotomous understanding of the rational and the social that characterizes both sides of the science studies stalemate and the social account that she sees as necessary for an epistemology of science that includes the full spectrum of cognitive processes. Throughout, her account is responsive both to the normative uses of the term knowledge and to the social conditions in which scientific knowledge is produced. Building on ideas first advanced in her influential book Science as Social Knowledge, Longino brings her account into dialogue with current work in social epistemology and science studies and shows how her critical social approach can help solve a variety of stubborn problems. While the book focuses on epistemological concerns related to the sociality of inquiry, Longino also takes up its implications for scientific pluralism. The social approach, she concludes, best allows us to retain a meaningful concept of knowledge in the face of theoretical plurality and uncertainty.
Download or read book The Enlightenment and the Fate of Knowledge written by Martin Davies and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Enlightenment is generally painted as a movement of ideas and society lasting from the late seventeenth to the early nineteenth century, but this book argues that the Enlightenment is an essential component of modernity itself. In the course of the study, Martin Davies offers an original world-view and a critique of some recent interpretations of the Enlightenment.
Download or read book Science as Social Knowledge written by Helen E. Longino and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1990-02-21 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom has it that the sciences, properly pursued, constitute a pure, value-free method of obtaining knowledge about the natural world. In light of the social and normative dimensions of many scientific debates, Helen Longino finds that general accounts of scientific methodology cannot support this common belief. Focusing on the notion of evidence, the author argues that a methodology powerful enough to account for theories of any scope and depth is incapable of ruling out the influence of social and cultural values in the very structuring of knowledge. The objectivity of scientific inquiry can nevertheless be maintained, she proposes, by understanding scientific inquiry as a social rather than an individual process. Seeking to open a dialogue between methodologists and social critics of the sciences, Longino develops this concept of "contextual empiricism" in an analysis of research programs that have drawn criticism from feminists. Examining theories of human evolution and of prenatal hormonal determination of "gender-role" behavior, of sex differences in cognition, and of sexual orientation, the author shows how assumptions laden with social values affect the description, presentation, and interpretation of data. In particular, Longino argues that research on the hormonal basis of "sex-differentiated behavior" involves assumptions not only about gender relations but also about human action and agency. She concludes with a discussion of the relation between science, values, and ideology, based on the work of Habermas, Foucault, Keller, and Haraway.
Download or read book The Fate of Reason written by Frederick C. Beiser and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fate of Reason is the first general history devoted to the period between Kant and Fichte, one of the most revolutionary and fertile in modern philosophy. The philosophers of this time broke with the two central tenets of the modem Cartesian tradition: the authority of reason and the primacy of epistemology. They also witnessed the decline of the Aufkldrung, the completion of Kant's philosophy, and the beginnings of post-Kantian idealism. Thanks to Beiser we can newly appreciate the influence of Kant's critics on the development of his philosophy. Beiser brings the controversies, and the personalities who engaged in them, to life and tells a story that has uncanny parallels with the debates of the present.
Download or read book Atlantis written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Rudolf Steiner Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contents: he Continent of Atlantis; The Moving Continents; The History of Atlantis; The Earliest Civilizations; The Beginnings of Thought; Etheric Technology: Atlantean Magical Powers; Twilight of the Magicians; The Divine Messengers; Atlantean Secret Knowledge: Its Betrayal and Subsequent Fate; The Origins of the Mysteries; Atlantis and Spiritual Evolution.
Download or read book The Science of Fate written by Hannah Critchlow and published by Hodder & Stoughton. This book was released on 2019-05-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER** 'A truly fascinating - if unnerving - read' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'Acute, mind-opening, highly accessible - this book doesn't just explain how our lives might pan out, it helps us live better' BETTANY HUGHES 'A humane and highly readable account of the neuroscience that underpins our ideas of free will and fate' PROFESSOR DAVID RUNCIMAN *** So many of us believe that we are free to shape our own destiny. But what if free will doesn't exist? What if our lives are largely predetermined, hardwired in our brains - and our choices over what we eat, who we fall in love with, even what we believe are not real choices at all? Neuroscience is challenging everything we think we know about ourselves, revealing how we make decisions and form our own reality, unaware of the role of our unconscious minds. Did you know, for example, that: * You can carry anxieties and phobias across generations of your family? * Your genes and pleasure and reward receptors in your brain will determine how much you eat? * We can sniff out ideal partners with genes that give our offspring the best chance of survival? Leading neuroscientist Hannah Critchlow draws vividly from everyday life and other experts in their field to show the extraordinary potential, as well as dangers, which come with being able to predict our likely futures - and looking at how we can alter what's in store for us. Lucid, illuminating, awe-inspiring The Science of Fate revolutionises our understanding of who we are - and empowers us to help shape a better future for ourselves and the wider world.
Download or read book Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology written by Ayn Rand and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1990-04-26 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today man's mind is under attack by all the leading schools of philosophy. We are told that we cannot trust our senses, that logic is arbitrary, that concepts have no basis in reality. Ayn Rand opposes that torrent of nihilism, and she provides the alternative in this eloquent presentation of the essential nature--and power--of man's conceptual faculty. She offers a startlingly original solution to the problem that brought about the collapse of modern philosophy: the problem of universals. This brilliantly argued, superbly written work, together with an essay by philosophy professor Leonard Peikoff, is vital reading for all those who seek to discover that human beings can and should live by the guidance of reason.
Download or read book The Evolution of Knowledge written by Jürgen Renn and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-14 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a new way of thinking about the history of science and technology, one that offers a grand narrative of human history in which knowledge serves as a critical factor of cultural evolution. Jürgen Renn examines the role of knowledge in global transformations going back to the dawn of civilization while providing vital perspectives on the complex challenges confronting us today in the Anthropocene, the present geological epoch shaped by humankind. Covering topics ranging from evolution of writing to the profound transformations wrought by modern science, The Evolution of Knowledge offers an entirely new framework for understanding structural changes in systems of knowledge and a bold, innovative approach to the history and philosophy of science.
Download or read book The Crisis of Expertise written by Gil Eyal and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent political debates there has been a significant change in the valence of the word “experts” from a superlative to a near pejorative, typically accompanied by a recitation of experts’ many failures and misdeeds. In topics as varied as Brexit, climate change, and vaccinations there is a palpable mistrust of experts and a tendency to dismiss their advice. Are we witnessing, therefore, the “death of expertise,” or is the handwringing about an “assault on science” merely the hysterical reaction of threatened elites? In this new book, Gil Eyal argues that what needs to be explained is not a one-sided “mistrust of experts” but the two-headed pushmi-pullyu of unprecedented reliance on science and expertise, on the one hand, coupled with increased skepticism and dismissal of scientific findings and expert opinion, on the other. The current mistrust of experts is best understood as one more spiral in an on-going, recursive crisis of legitimacy. The “scientization of politics,” of which critics warned in the 1960s, has brought about a politicization of science, and the two processes reinforce one another in an unstable, crisis-prone mixture. This timely book will be of great interest to students and scholars in the social sciences and to anyone concerned about the political uses of, and attacks on, scientific knowledge and expertise.
Download or read book Putting Science in Its Place written by David N. Livingstone and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We are accustomed to thinking of science and its findings as universal. After all, one atom of carbon plus two of oxygen yields carbon dioxide in Amazonia as well as in Alaska; a scientist in Bombay can use the same materials and techniques to challenge the work of a scientist in New York; and of course the laws of gravity apply worldwide. Why, then, should the spaces where science is done matter at all? David N. Livingstone here puts that question to the test with his fascinating study of how science bears the marks of its place of production. Putting Science in Its Place establishes the fundamental importance of geography in both the generation and the consumption of scientific knowledge, using historical examples of the many places where science has been practiced. Livingstone first turns his attention to some of the specific sites where science has been made—the laboratory, museum, and botanical garden, to name some of the more conventional locales, but also places like the coffeehouse and cathedral, ship's deck and asylum, even the human body itself. In each case, he reveals just how the space of inquiry has conditioned the investigations carried out there. He then describes how, on a regional scale, provincial cultures have shaped scientific endeavor and how, in turn, scientific practices have been instrumental in forming local identities. Widening his inquiry, Livingstone points gently to the fundamental instability of scientific meaning, based on case studies of how scientific theories have been received in different locales. Putting Science in Its Place powerfully concludes by examining the remarkable mobility of science and the seemingly effortless way it moves around the globe. From the reception of Darwin in the land of the Maori to the giraffe that walked from Marseilles to Paris, Livingstone shows that place does matter, even in the world of science.
Download or read book Nursing Knowledge written by Mark Risjord and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2011-08-26 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nurses who conduct research have a longstanding interest in questions of nursing knowledge. Nursing Knowledge is a clear and well-informed exposition of the philosophical background to nursing theory and research. Nursing Knowledge answers such fundamental questions as: How is nursing theory related to nursing practice? What are the core elements of nursing knowledge? What makes nursing research distinctive as nursing research? It examines the history of the philosophical debates within nursing, critiques the arguments, explains the implications and sets out to rethink the philosophical foundation of nursing science. Nursing Knowledge begins with philosophical problems that arise within nursing science. It then considers various solutions with the help of philosophical ideas arguingargues that nurses ought to adopt certain philosophical positions because they are the best solutions to the problems that nurses encounter. The book argues claims that the nursing standpoint has the potential to disclose a more complete understanding of human health than the common disease-and-dysfunction views. Because of the relationship to practice, nursing science may freely draw theory from other disciplines and nursing practice unifies nursing research. By redefining theory and philosophy,With a new philosophical perspective on nursing science, the so-called relevance gap between nursing theory and practice can be closed. The final chapter of the book ‘redraws the map’, to create a new picture of nursing science based on the following principles: Problems of practice should guide nursing research Practice and theory are dynamically related Theory research must provide the knowledge base necessary for nurse interventions, training, patient education, etc. Nursing research should develop midrange theories and its results are nursing theory is strengthened when it uses theories confirmed by is integrated with other disciplines Key features Clear and accessibly written Accurate and philosophically well-informed, Discusses philosophical problems in contexts familiar to nurses Systematically examines the philosophical issues involved in nursing research Examines epistemology (how we know what we know), theory development, and the philosophical foundations of scientific methodology. Develops a new model of nursing knowledge Dr. Mark Risjord is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Emory University, and has a faculty appointment in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. His main research areas have been in the philosophy of social science and the philosophy of medicine. He was invited to has been teaching philosophy of science and theory development in the new PhD program in the Nell Hodgson School of Nursing at Emory University insince 1999. He has been awarded two competitive teaching prizes: Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award (2004) and the Excellence in Teaching Award (1997). He is presently serving as the Masse-Martin/NEH Distinguished Teaching Chair (2006-2010).
Download or read book Key Of Knowledge written by Nora Roberts and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2003-11-25 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts unlocks the dreams of a woman on a quest for the truth in her second Key Trilogy novel. Dana Steele has always found her greatest passion in books. But now her boss is making her job as a librarian a living hell. Luckily, she now has a Plan B… High on a hill overlooking the town of Pleasant Valley, Pennsylvania, sits the Warrior’s Peak estate. It’s where Dana was invited to meet Malory Price and Zoe McCourt—and where they learned that they were destined to find three keys to unlock a box holding the souls of three mythical demigoddesses: one an artist, one a bard, and one a warrior. With the promise of a million dollars each dangled before them, the women couldn’t refuse. And as Malory found the first key, they formed a fast friendship and decided to go into business together. For Dana, that meant her dream of owning a bookstore was about to come true. And now, as Dana finds herself on the threshold of some major life changes, it’s her turn to find a key. She has four weeks to unravel a riddle involving her past, present, and future, and to find the truth hidden among deception and lies—or succumb to her worst nightmare. Don’t miss the other books in the Key Trilogy Key of Light Key of Valor
Download or read book Ars Vitae written by Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the flood of self-help guides and our current therapeutic culture, feelings of alienation and spiritual longing continue to grip modern society. In this book, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn offers a fresh solution: a return to classic philosophy and the cultivation of an inner life. The ancient Roman philosopher Cicero wrote that philosophy is ars vitae, the art of living. Today, signs of stress and duress point to a full-fledged crisis for individuals and communities while current modes of making sense of our lives prove inadequate. Yet, in this time of alienation and spiritual longing, we can glimpse signs of a renewed interest in ancient approaches to the art of living. In this ambitious and timely book, Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn engages both general readers and scholars on the topic of well-being. She examines the reappearance of ancient philosophical thought in contemporary American culture, probing whether new stirrings of Gnosticism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, Cynicism, and Platonism present a true alternative to our current therapeutic culture of self-help and consumerism, which elevates the self’s needs and desires yet fails to deliver on its promises of happiness and healing. Do the ancient philosophies represent a counter-tradition to today’s culture, auguring a new cultural vibrancy, or do they merely solidify a modern way of life that has little use for inwardness—the cultivation of an inner life—stemming from those older traditions? Tracing the contours of this cultural resurgence and exploring a range of sources, from scholarship to self-help manuals, films, and other artifacts of popular culture, this book sees the different schools as organically interrelated and asks whether, taken together, they can point us in important new directions. Ars Vitae sounds a clarion call to take back philosophy as part of our everyday lives. It proposes a way to do so, sifting through the ruins of long-forgotten and recent history alike for any shards helpful in piecing together the coherence of a moral framework that allows us ways to move forward toward the life we want and need.
Download or read book The Fate of Analysis written by Robert Hanna and published by In The Weeds Provocations. This book was released on 2021-10 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Hanna's twelfth book, The Fate of Analysis, is a comprehensive revisionist study of Analytic philosophy from the early 1880s to the present, with special attention paid to Wittgenstein's work and the parallels and overlaps between the Analytic and Phenomenological traditions.By means of a synoptic overview of European and Anglo-American philosophy since the 1880s-including accessible, clear, and critical descriptions of the works and influence of, among others, Gottlob Frege, G.E. Moore, Bertrand Russell, Alexius Meinong, Franz Brentano, Edmund Husserl, The Vienna Circle, W.V.O. Quine, Saul Kripke, Wilfrid Sellars, John McDowell, and Robert Brandom, and, particularly, Ludwig Wittgenstein-The Fate of Analysis critically examines and evaluates modern philosophy over the last 140 years.In addition to its critical analyses of the Analytic tradition and of professional academic philosophy more generally, The Fate of Analysis also presents a thought-provoking, forward-looking, and positive picture of the philosophy of the future from a radical Kantian point of view.
Download or read book The Fate of Place written by Edward Casey and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this imaginative and comprehensive study, Edward Casey, one of the most incisive interpreters of the Continental philosophical tradition, offers a philosophical history of the evolving conceptualizations of place and space in Western thought. Not merely a presentation of the ideas of other philosophers, The Fate of Place is acutely sensitive to silences, absences, and missed opportunities in the complex history of philosophical approaches to space and place. A central theme is the increasing neglect of place in favor of space from the seventh century A.D. onward, amounting to the virtual exclusion of place by the end of the eighteenth century. Casey begins with mythological and religious creation stories and the theories of Plato and Aristotle and then explores the heritage of Neoplatonic, medieval, and Renaissance speculations about space. He presents an impressive history of the birth of modern spatial conceptions in the writings of Newton, Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant and delineates the evolution of twentieth-century phenomenological approaches in the work of Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, and Heidegger. In the book's final section, Casey explores the postmodern theories of Foucault, Derrida, Tschumi, Deleuze and Guattari, and Irigaray.
Download or read book The End of Everything written by Katie Mack and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mack looks at five ways the universe could end, and the lessons each scenario reveals about the most important concepts in cosmology. --From publisher description.
Download or read book Post Truth written by Lee McIntyre and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-02-16 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we arrived in a post-truth era, when “alternative facts” replace actual facts, and feelings have more weight than evidence. Are we living in a post-truth world, where “alternative facts” replace actual facts and feelings have more weight than evidence? How did we get here? In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Lee McIntyre traces the development of the post-truth phenomenon from science denial through the rise of “fake news,” from our psychological blind spots to the public's retreat into “information silos.” What, exactly, is post-truth? Is it wishful thinking, political spin, mass delusion, bold-faced lying? McIntyre analyzes recent examples—claims about inauguration crowd size, crime statistics, and the popular vote—and finds that post-truth is an assertion of ideological supremacy by which its practitioners try to compel someone to believe something regardless of the evidence. Yet post-truth didn't begin with the 2016 election; the denial of scientific facts about smoking, evolution, vaccines, and climate change offers a road map for more widespread fact denial. Add to this the wired-in cognitive biases that make us feel that our conclusions are based on good reasoning even when they are not, the decline of traditional media and the rise of social media, and the emergence of fake news as a political tool, and we have the ideal conditions for post-truth. McIntyre also argues provocatively that the right wing borrowed from postmodernism—specifically, the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth—in its attacks on science and facts. McIntyre argues that we can fight post-truth, and that the first step in fighting post-truth is to understand it.
