Kategoria BISAC: Science >> Philosophy & Social Aspects

It's happened to all of us at some point. You walk into the kitchen, or flip open your laptop, or stride confidently up to a lectern, filled with purpose--and suddenly haven't the foggiest idea what you're doing. Welcome to your idiot brain.

Yes, it is an absolute marvel in some respects--the seat of our consciousness, the pinnacle (so far) of evolutionary progress, and the engine of all human experience--but your brain is also messy, fallible, and about 50,000 years out-of-date. We cling to superstitions, remember faces but not names, miss things sitting right in front of us, and...

Over the last fifty years, humanity has developed an extraordinary shared utility: the Global Positioning System. Even as it guides us across town, GPS helps land planes, route mobile calls, anticipate earthquakes, predict weather, locate oil deposits, measure neutrinos, grow our food, and regulate global finance. It is as ubiquitous and essential as another Cold War technology, the Internet. In Pinpoint, Greg Milner takes us on a fascinating tour of a hidden system that touches almost every aspect of our modern life.

While GPS has brought us breathtakingly accurate...

Truth has always been a thorny topic. How does it work? Who decides what it is? And why is it seen as so important? In this lucid introduction to the topic, leading scholar Simon Blackburn describes the main approaches to the notion of truth and considers how these relate to different perspectives on belief, interpretation, facts, knowledge and action. He then looks at how these ideas can be applied to:

- aesthetics, taste and the judgement of art;
- ethics and how people decide how they should (or should not) live;
-...

In this volume Pierre Duhem first gives an overview of 19^th century electricity and magnetism. Next, he applies his keen historical, philosophical, and physical intuition to critiquing Maxwell's theories, especially his electromagnetic theory of light and the ad hoc introduction of displacement current, which he considers too much a product of the "esprit de geometrie" than the "esprit de finesse," as Pascal calls it.

In this book, Duhem is guided by the principle that a theory that offers contradictions, even if the theory is posed by a genius,...

This combination of historiography and theory offers the growing Anglophone readership interested in the ideas of Gilbert Simondon a thorough and unprecedented survey of the French philosopher's entire oeuvre. The publication, which breaks new ground in its thoroughness and breadth of analysis, systematically traces the interconnections between Simondon's philosophy of science and technology on the one hand, and his political philosophy on the other.

The author sets Simondon's ideas in the context of the epistemology of the late 1950s and the 1960s in France, the milieu...

The original words announcing great scientific discoveries, from the first 'Eureka ' to the cloning of Dolly the sheep, can all be found in this fascinating addition to the world-famous 'Oxford Quotations' range. An essential reference tool, put together over 15 years with the assistance of a distinguished team of specialist advisers, it includes full author...

Abū'l-Barakāt is a renowned philosopher of the Arabic-Jewish milieu who composed in his magnum opus the Kitāb al-Mu'tabar, a comprehensive metaphysics which challenged the accepted notions of the traditional metaphysical philosophy.

'Abū'l-Barakāt al-Baghdādī's Metaphysical Philosophy' examines the novel philosophical conceptions of the first book of the Metaphysics of the Kitāb al-Mu'tabar. The aim is to present a developed conception of Abū'l-Barakāt's systematic metaphysics. This is...

This book explores the limits of our knowledge. The author shows how uncertainty and indefiniteness not only define the borders confining our understanding, but how they feed into the process of discovery and help to push back these borders. Starting with physics the author collects examples from economics, neurophysiology, history, ecology and philosophy.

The first part shows how information helps to reduce indefiniteness. Understanding rests on our ability to find the right context, in which we localize a problem as a point in a network of connections. New elements must be combined...

The Writing of Spirit sets out to demonstrate, through a new history of language science, that we do not know what we think we know about this pivotal juncture in our intellectual...

The Writing of Spirit sets out to demonstrate, through a new history of language science, that we do not know what we think we know about this pivotal juncture in our intellectual...