Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Philosophy & Social Aspects

Ever since President George W. Bush limited federal funding for stem cell research, the topic has been top of mind for many, including the organized patient population representing every major disease now afflicting approximately 100 million Americans. In May 2005, the president vowed to veto a compromise that 50 Republicans and 188 Democrats in the House of Representatives supported. The compromise, if matched by a Senate measure, would have repealed the 2001 limits on funding. Action at the federal level remains stalled, but states have stepped into the void to do what they can to...

The influence of scientific paradigms is much more widespread than usually realized. According to Harris, it permeates the whole of the culture of which science is an integral part. The paradigm of Newtonian science was essentially mechanistic and atomistic, and thinking in these terms not only penetrated philosophy, economics, morals and politics for the next three centuries, but remains latent in 20th century ways of thought.

As Harris illustrates, the Newtonian paradigm is obsolete in confronting today's global problems. While Planck and Einstein introduced a new scientific...

In 2010, an outbreak of whooping cough in California infected more than 8,000 people, resulting in the hospitalization of more than 800 people and the death of 10 infants. In 2015, an outbreak of the measles in Disneyland infected more than 125 people. Both the whooping cough and the measles are vaccine-preventable diseases (VPDs) that have been largely nonexistent in the United States for decades. As these cases demonstrate, individuals who prioritize ideology or personal beliefs above scientific consensus can impinge on society at large--and they illustrate how rejecting science has...

Computer simulation was first pioneered as a scientific tool in meteorology and nuclear physics in the period following World War II, but it has grown rapidly to become indispensible in a wide variety of scientific disciplines, including astrophysics, high-energy physics, climate science, engineering, ecology, and economics. Digital computer simulation helps study phenomena of great complexity, but how much do we know about the limits and possibilities of this new scientific practice? How do simulations compare to traditional experiments? And are they reliable? Eric Winsberg seeks to...

Smith's argument brings together historical and contemporary debates concerning materialism and human nature...

Chimeras and Consciousness begins the inquiry into the evolution of the collective sensitivities of life. Scientist-scholars from a range of fields -- including biochemistry, cell biology, history of science, family therapy, genetics, microbial ecology, and primatology -- trace the emergence and evolution of consciousness. Complex behaviors and the social imperatives of bacteria and other life forms during 3,000 million years of Earth history gave rise to mammalian cognition. Awareness and sensation led to astounding activities; millions of species incessantly interacted to form...

Durbin, history and philosophy of science scholar and writer, has created a volume that includes about 100 terms from the natural and social sciences. For each term there is an extended definition and discussion of related philosophic issues. Each entry, about three and one-half pages, also provides a bibliography of some six to a dozen sources. A thorough index includes all terms and people discussed in the entries. This is an excellent source for an entree to the scholarly literature on basic topics such as chance, gender, history, indeterminism, instrumentalism, paradigm, scientific...

The emergence of modern sciences in the seventeenth century profoundly renewed our understanding of nature. For the last three centuries new ideas of nature have been continually developed by theology, politics, economics, and science, especially the sciences of the material world.

The situation is even more unstable today, now that we have entered an ecological mutation of unprecedented scale. Some call it the Anthropocene, but it is best described as a new climatic regime. And a new regime it certainly is, since the many unexpected connections between human activity and the...