Download or read book The March of Unreason written by Dick Taverne and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2006-11-29 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our daily news bulletins bring us tales of the wonder of science, from Mars rovers and intelligent robots to developments in cancer treatment, and yet often the emphasis is on the potential threats posed by science. It appears that irrationality is on the rise in western society, and public opinion is increasingly dominated by unreflecting prejudice and unwillingness to engage with factual evidence. From genetically modified crops and food, organic farming, the MMR vaccine, environmentalism, the precautionary principle and the new anti-capitalist and anti-globalisation movements, the rejection of the evidence-based approach nurtures a culture of suspicion, distrust, and cynicism, and leads to dogmatic assertion and intolerance. In this compelling and timely examination of science and society, Dick Taverne argues that science, with all the benefits it brings, is an essential part of civilised and democratic society: it offers the most hopeful future for mankind.
Download or read book The Age of American Unreason written by Susan Jacoby and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-02-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scathing indictment of American modern-day culture examines the current disdain for logic and evidence fostered by the mass media, religious fundamentalism, poor public education, a lack of fair-minded intellectuals, and a lazy, credulous public, condemning our addiction to infotainment, from TV to the Web, and assessing its repercussions for the country as a whole. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.
Download or read book Science and Unreason written by Daisie Radner and published by Wadsworth Publishing Company. This book was released on 1982 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Seduction of Unreason written by Richard Wolin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the shocking revelations of the fascist ties of Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man, postmodernism has been haunted by the specter of a compromised past. In this intellectual genealogy of the postmodern spirit, Richard Wolin shows that postmodernism’s infatuation with fascism has been extensive and widespread. He questions postmodernism’s claim to have inherited the mantle of the Left, suggesting instead that it has long been enamored with the opposite end of the political spectrum. Wolin reveals how, during in the 1930s, C. G. Jung, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot were seduced by fascism's promise of political regeneration and how this misapprehension affected the intellectual core of their work. The result is a compelling and unsettling reinterpretation of the history of modern thought. In a new preface, Wolin revisits this illiberal intellectual lineage in light of the contemporary resurgence of political authoritarianism.
Download or read book A Lover of Unreason written by Yehuda Koren and published by Robson. This book was released on 2014-06-04 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Assia was my true wife, and the best friend I ever had', wrote Ted Hughes, after his lover surrendered her life and that of their young daughter in 1969, six years after Sylvia Plath had suffered a similiar fate. Diva, she-devil, enchantress, muse, Lillith, Jezebel - Assia inspired many epithets during her life. The tragic story of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes has always been related from one of two points of view: hers or his. Missing for over four decades had been a third: that of Hughes's mistress. This first biography of Assia Wevill views afresh the Plath-Hughes relationship and at the same time, recounts the journey that shaped her life. Wevill's is a complex story, formed as it is by the pull of often contrary forces.
Download or read book Songs of Unreason written by Jim Harrison and published by Copper Canyon Press. This book was released on 2012-12-18 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of America's leading novelists and poets, "Jim Harrison is a writer with immortality in him."-The Sunday Times
Download or read book The Psychoanalytic Movement written by Ernest Gellner and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The aim of this book is the understanding of how psychoanalysis came to be so generally accepted by the public at large. The author, a sociologist, focuses on reconstructing the system of ideas upon which the theory and practice of psychoanalysis rests.
Download or read book Empire of Unreason written by Greg Keyes and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-12-22 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On an eighteenth-century Earth crippled by alchemical disaster, a secret American cabal led by Benjamin Franklin strives to prevent the annihilation of humankind The dark magic that the great alchemist Sir Isaac Newton inadvertently unleashed with his discovery of philosopher’s mercury has taken a devastating toll on Earth: The destruction of Europe and the advent of eternal winter have aided the mysterious malakim in their apparent quest for the annihilation of the human race. In the American colonies, Benjamin Franklin hones his alchemical skills and prepares the Junto—his secret cabal of scientists, Native American tribesmen, former slaves, and fugitive European intellectuals—for the upcoming battle for humankind’s survival as the army of the Scottish “pretender” king James Stuart invades the continent to reestablish British dominion. Meanwhile, on the other side of a shockingly diminished world, in the court of the mysteriously vanished Peter the Great, the missing tsar’s chief alchemist, Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil, prepares to depart Russia in search of her lost son, who may well be at the heart of the conspiracy of malevolent angels to eliminate the human scourge. The third volume in author Greg Keyes’s ingenious Age of Unreason alternate history series, Empire of Unreason broadens the story, elevates the action, and reveals secrets within secrets as the surviving inhabitants of this different, endangered world race frantically toward a climactic confrontation.
Download or read book The Threat to Reason written by Dan Hind and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Today, media commentators, intellectuals and politicians declare that western science and rationality are threatened by irrational enemies. Evangelicals, postmodernists, and Islamists are on the march, they say. The Rome that science built is under siege. But there's a problem with these stirring attempts to defend the truth. They aren't true. In this urgent new book, Dan Hind confronts the great machinery of deception in which we live, and which now threatens to destroy our civilization. In particular, he takes to task a group of prominent intellectuals who have exaggerated the threat posed by the so-called forces of unreason-religion, postmodernism and other "mumbo-jumbo." The commentators, says Hind, distract us from much more pressing threats to an open democratic society based on freedom of speech and inquiry. This book shows that the real threats to reason aren't wacky or foreign or stupid; they reside in our state and corporate bureaucracies - and, one way or another, they probably pay your salary. In recovering the idea of Enlightenment, Hind explores its vital importance and reveals how it can help us to achieve a truly democratic politics, in which we have a genuine say in the decisions that are taken on our behalf.
Download or read book Nervous States Democracy and the Decline of Reason written by William Davies and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Wide-ranging yet brilliantly astute. . . . Davies is a wild and surprising thinker who also happens to be an elegant writer.” — Jennifer Szalai, New York Times Hailed as a “masterpiece” (Mark Green, New York Times Book Review), Nervous States offers an astute diagnosis for why our politics has become so fractious and warlike. In this bold and far- reaching book, political economist William Davies argues that our increasing reliance on feeling over fact has transformed democracies. The spread of media technology and the intrusion of mass shootings and terrorist attacks into everyday life has reduced a world of logic and fact into one driven by fear and anxiety. As emotions supplant facts in our politics, we lose the basis for consensus among people who otherwise have little in common. Nervous States “sits at the intersection of ongoing debates about post-truth, the assault on reason, the privileging of personal feelings and the rise of populism” (Financial Times) and provides an essential guide to the turbulent times in which we now live. “An insightful and well- written book that explores the deep roots of the current crisis of expertise.” — Yuval Noah Harari, New York Times best-selling author of Sapiens
Download or read book Science and Anthropology in a Post Truth World written by H. Sidky and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-11-12 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the end of 2019, Americans were living in an era of post-truth characterized by fake news, weaponized lies, alternative facts, conspiracy theories, magical thinking, and irrationalism. While many complex interconnected factors were at work, this post-truth era was partly the culmination of a cadre of anthropologists and other academics in American universities and colleges during the 1980’s and 1990’s. In Science and Anthropology in a Post-Truth World, H. Sidky examines how their untoward dalliance with problematic and dangerous ideas by Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, Bruno Latour, and Jean Baudrillard informed and empowered a forceful assault on science and truth in the following decades by corporate organizations, politicians, religious extremists, and right-wing populists.
Download or read book A Reason to Believe written by Governor Deval Patrick and published by Crown. This book was released on 2011-04-12 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Deval Patrick, “an inspirational figure guided by optimism and hope who presaged the rise of President Obama” (The Boston Globe), recounts his extraordinary journey from the South Side of Chicago to the governorship of Massachusetts. “I’ve simply seen too much goodness in this country—and have come so far in my own journey—not to believe in those ideals, and my faith in the future is sometimes restored under the darkest clouds.”—Governor Deval Patrick In January 2007, Deval Patrick became the first black governor of the state of Massachusetts, one of only two black governors elected in American history. But that was just one triumphant step in an improbable life that began in a poor tenement on the South Side of Chicago, taking Patrick from a chaotic childhood to an elite boarding school in New England, from a sojourn doing relief work in Africa to the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, and then to a career in politics. In this heartfelt and inspiring memoir, he pays tribute to the family, friends, and strangers who, through words and deeds, have instilled in him transcendent lessons of faith, perseverance, and friendship. In doing so, he reminds us of the power of community and the imperative of idealism. With humility, humor, and grace, he offers a road map for attaining happiness, empowerment, and success while also making an appeal for readers to cultivate those achievements in others, to feel a greater stake in this world, and to shape a life worth living. Warm, nostalgic, and inspirational, A Reason to Believe is destined to become a timeless tribute to a uniquely American odyssey and a testament to what is possible in our lives and our communities if we are hopeful, generous, and resilient. Governor Deval Patrick is donating a portion of the proceeds from A Reason to Believe to A Better Chance, a national organization dedicated to opening the doors to greater educational opportunities for young people of color.
Download or read book Religion and Science as Forms of Life written by Carles Salazar and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The relationships between science and religion are about to enter a new phase in our contemporary world, as scientific knowledge has become increasingly relevant in ordinary life, beyond the institutional public spaces where it traditionally developed. The purpose of this volume is to analyze the relationships, possible articulations and contradictions between religion and science as forms of life: ways of engaging human experience that originate in particular social and cultural formations. Contributions expound on this theoretical and ethnographic research into different manifestations of scientific and religious cultures in the contemporary world.
Download or read book Land of Unreason written by L. Sprague deCamp and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2011-09-29 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On Midsummer's Eve, as everybody knows, you should leave a bowl of milk out for the fairies. Unfortunately - or fortunately - Fred Barber, an American diplomat convalescing in Yorkshire, didn't take the obligation with proper seriousness. He swapped the milk for a stiff dose of Scotch. So he had only himself to blame if the fairies got a bit muddled. Barber found himself in an Old English Fairyland. At the Court of King Oberon, to be precise. The natural - or supernatural - laws there were, to say the least of it, distinctly odd. Things kept changing. This made the mssion with which he was entrusted, as the price of his return to the normal world, even harder than he expected. He had to penetrate the Kobold Hills, where it was said that swords were being made, and discover if an ancient enemy had returned. He was given a magic wand - but not told how to use it. Through the fields and forests he went, meeting dryads and sprites, ogres and two-headed eagles, on the way. Danger, seduction and magic lay all around him. And, as the adventure continued, somehow it darkened and became more seriousness. At the end of Fred Barber's quest lay a shattering revelation.
Download or read book Newton s Cannon written by J. Gregory Keyes and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2004 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this amalgam of fantasy and alternative history, Sir Isaac Newton turns his mind to alchemy and successfully unleashes Philosopher's Mercury, the key to manipulating the four elements. Powerful kings will battle to control it, until London itself is threatened with destruction by a hellish device.
Download or read book Plough Sword and Book written by Ernest Gellner and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elucidates and argues for the author's concept of human history from the past to the present.
Download or read book The Shadows of God written by Greg Keyes and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2006 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As ruthless Russian forces lay waste to the New World, English troops in the east are determined to reconquer the colonies. Benjamin Franklin and his allies are trapped in between the Russian and English forces. But balance of power rests with a French woman whose secret may reveal where her true allegiance lies. This edition features a new prologue.
