Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Philosophy & Social Aspects

Evolutionary biology rests on the assumption that although events are fundamentally random, some are selected because they are better adapted than others to the...

Almost universally recognized as the modern watershed in the philosophy of science, Kuhn's relativistic...

Naming his theory after the ancient Greek earth goddess, Lovelock's "Gaia hypothesis" argued that...

Organ transfer is rich terrain to investigate--especially in the American context, where sophisticated technological interventions have significantly shaped understandings of health and well-being,...

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

"This fine collection of essays from a diverse group of authors expounding on a wide variety of subjects presents a generous sampling of the new philosophy of technology." Choice

..". informative, original, and provocative.... Many of the writers are major players in defining the contested political terrain of cultural, science, and technology studies as well as critical theory and Heidegger studies." Gerald Doppelt

Introduces contemporary American philosophy of technology through six of its leading figures. The six American philosophers of technology whose work is profiled in this clear and concise introduction to the field Albert Borgmann, Hubert Dreyfus, Andrew Feenberg, Donna Haraway, Don Ihde, and Langdon Winner represent a new, empirical direction in the philosophical study of technology that has developed mainly in North America. In place of the grand philosophical schemes of the classical generation of European philosophers of technology (including Martin Heidgger, Jacques Ellul, and Hans...

Movement into academic science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields has been slow for women and minorities. Not only are women and minorities underrepresented in STEM careers, there is strong evidence that many academic departments are resistant to addressing the concerns that keep them from entering careers in these fields. In light of recent controversies surrounding these issues, this volume, examining reasons for the persistence of barriers that block the full participation and advancement of underrepresented groups in the sciences and addressing how academic...

..". are dinosaurs social constructs? Do we really know anything about dinosaurs? Might not all of our beliefs about dinosaurs merely be figments of the paleontological imagination? A few years ago such questions would have seemed preposterous, even nonsensical. Now they must have a serious answer."

At stake in the "Science Wars" that have raged in academe and in the media is nothing less than the standing of science in our culture. One side argues that science is a "social construct," that it does not discover facts about the world, but rather constructs artifacts disguised as...

Emergence, largely ignored just thirty years ago, has become one of the liveliest areas of research in both philosophy and science. Fueled by advances in complexity theory, artificial life, physics, psychology, sociology, and biology and by the parallel development of new conceptual tools in philosophy, the idea of emergence offers a way to understand a wide variety of complex phenomena in ways that are intriguingly different from more traditional approaches. This reader collects for the first time in one easily accessible place classic writings on emergence from contemporary philosophy...

Progress in the neurosciences is profoundly changing our conception of ourselves. Contrary to time-honored intuition, the mind turns out to be a complex of brain functions. And contrary to the wishful thinking of some philosophers, there is no stemming the revolutionary impact that brain research will have on our understanding of how the mind works.

Brain-Wise is the sequel to Patricia Smith Churchland's Neurophilosophy, the book that launched a subfield. In a clear, conversational manner, this book examines old questions about the nature of the mind within the new...

How did the United States become the world's largest consumer of energy? David Nye shows that this is less a question about the development of technology than it is a question about the development of culture. In Consuming Power, Nye uses energy as a touchstone to examine the lives of ordinary people engaged in normal activities. He looks at how these activities changed as new energy systems were constructed, from colonial times to recent years. He also shows how, as Americans incorporated new machines and processes into their lives, they became ensnared in power systems that were...

For the last forty years, two claims have been at the core of disputes about scientific change: that scientists reason rationally and that science is progressive. For most of this time discussions were polarized between philosophers, who defended traditional Enlightenment ideas about rationality and progress, and sociologists, who espoused relativism and constructivism. Recently, creative new ideas going beyond the polarized positions have come from the history of science, feminist criticism of science, psychology of science, and anthropology of science. Addressing the traditional...