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Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
by Steven Pinker<P> If you think the world is coming to an end, think again. Steven Pinker presents the big picture of human progress: people are living longer, healthier, freer, and happier lives, and while our problems are formidable, the solutions lie in the Enlightenment ideal of using reason and science.Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? <P> In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. <P>Instead, follow the data: In seventy-five jaw-dropping graphs, Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West, but worldwide. This progress is not the result of some cosmic force. It is a gift of the Enlightenment: the conviction that reason and science can enhance human flourishing.Far from being a naïve hope, the Enlightenment, we now know, has worked. But more than ever, it needs a vigorous defense. <P>The Enlightenment project swims against currents of human nature--tribalism, authoritarianism, demonization, magical thinking--which demagogues are all too willing to exploit. Many commentators, committed to political, religious, or romantic ideologies, fight a rearguard action against it. The result is a corrosive fatalism and a willingness to wreck the precious institutions of liberal democracy and global cooperation. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Enlightenment Now makes the case for reason, science, and humanism: the ideals we need to confront our problems and continue our progress. <P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden: Empire, Science, and Intellectual Culture in British New York
by John M. DixonWas there a conservative Enlightenment? Could a self-proclaimed man of learning and progressive science also have been an agent of monarchy and reaction? Cadwallader Colden (1688-1776), an educated Scottish emigrant and powerful colonial politician, was at the forefront of American intellectual culture in the mid-eighteenth century. While living in rural New York, he recruited family, friends, servants, and slaves into multiple scientific ventures and built a transatlantic network of contacts and correspondents that included Benjamin Franklin and Carl Linnaeus. Over several decades, Colden pioneered colonial botany, produced new theories of animal and human physiology, authored an influential history of the Iroquois, and developed bold new principles of physics and an engaging explanation of the cause of gravity. The Enlightenment of Cadwallader Colden traces the life and ideas of this fascinating and controversial "gentleman-scholar." John M. Dixon's lively and accessible account explores the overlapping ideological, social, and political worlds of this earliest of New York intellectuals. Colden and other learned colonials used intellectual practices to assert their gentility and establish their social and political superiority, but their elitist claims to cultural authority remained flimsy and open to widespread local derision. Although Colden, who governed New York as an unpopular Crown loyalist during the imperial crises of the 1760s and 1770s, was brutally lampooned by the New York press, his scientific work, which was published in Europe, raised the international profile of American intellectualism.
The Enlightenment of Thomas Beddoes: Science, medicine, and reform (Science, Technology and Culture, 1700-1945)
by Trevor Levere Larry Stewart Hugh Torrens Joseph WachelderThomas Beddoes (1760-1808) lived in ‘decidedly interesting times’ in which established orders in politics and science were challenged by revolutionary new ideas. Enthusiastically participating in the heady atmosphere of Enlightenment debate, Beddoes' career suffered from his radical views on politics and science. Denied a professorship at Oxford, he set up a medical practice in Bristol in 1793. Six years later - with support from a range of leading industrialists and scientists including the Wedgwoods, Erasmus Darwin, James Watt, James Keir and others associated with the Lunar Society - he established a Pneumatic Institution for investigating the therapeutic effects of breathing different kinds of ‘air’ on a wide spectrum of diseases. The treatment of the poor, gratis, was an important part of the Pneumatic Institution and Beddoes, who had long concerned himself with their moral and material well-being, published numerous pamphlets and small books about their education, wretched material circumstances, proper nutrition, and the importance of affordable medical facilities. Beddoes’ democratic political concerns reinforced his belief that chemistry and medicine should co-operate to ameliorate the conditions of the poor. But those concerns also polarized the medical profession and the wider community of academic chemists and physicians, many of whom became mistrustful of Beddoes’ projects due to his radical politics. Highlighting the breadth of Beddoes’ concerns in politics, chemistry, medicine, geology, and education (including the use of toys and models), this book reveals how his reforming and radical zeal were exemplified in every aspect of his public and professional life, and made for a remarkably coherent program of change. He was frequently a contrarian, but not without cause, as becomes apparent once he is viewed in the round, as part of the response to the politics and social pressures of the late Enlightenment.
The Enlightenment Vision
by Stuart JordanIn the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a major cultural shift took place in western Europe. Leading thinkers began to emphasize the use of reason to tackle the challenges of material and social life, and they questioned the tenets of Christianity concerning the existence of God, the purpose of life, and the needs of the individual. Instead of religion, intellectuals put their faith in science and humanistic ethics in the hope of improving the secular lives of people everywhere. Today we call this development the Enlightenment. Contemporary society is the principal beneficiary of Enlightenment discoveries. This thought-provoking analysis evaluates the progress that global society has made since the Enlightenment. The author begins by pointing out features of present-day society that are the direct descendants of the Enlightenment's discoveries and advances: our technology, modern medicine, science-based worldview, democratic political institutions, and concepts of human rights are all an outgrowth of the pioneering efforts of Enlightenment reformers. But along with these benefits, the author notes that we are also the inheritors of some significant problems produced in the wake of these advances; overpopulation, nuclear proliferation, and global climate change are just some of the recent developments that seem to threaten the whole Enlightenment project. Other great concerns include the continuing economic disparity between prosperous and impoverished nations, the persistence of widespread ignorance, and destructive reactionary forces bent on provoking new conflicts. Despite these and other daunting challenges of the twenty-first century, the author concludes on a cautiously optimistic note, predicting that the Enlightenment vision of prosperity, security, justice, and good health for all will eventually be achieved.
Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age
by Bill MckibbenWe are on the verge of crossing the line from born to made, from created to built. Sometime in the next few years, a scientist will reprogram a human egg or sperm cell, spawning a genetic change that could be passed down into eternity. We are sleepwalking toward the future, argues Bill McKibben, and it's time to open our eyes. In "The End of Nature", nearly fifteen years ago, McKibben demonstrated that humanity had begun to irrevocably alter--and endanger--our environment on a global scale. Now he turns his eye to an array of technologies that could change our relationship not with the rest of nature but with ourselves. He explores the frontiers of genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology--all of which we are approaching with astonishing speed--and shows that each threatens to take us past a point of no return. We now stand at a critical threshold, poised between the human past and a post-human future. Ultimately, McKibben offers a celebration of what it means to be human, and a warning that we risk the loss of all meaning if we step across the threshold. His wise and eloquent book argues that we cannot forever grow in reach and power--that we must at last learn how to say, 'Enough.'
Enough
by John NaishFor millions of years, humankind has used a brilliantly successful survival strategy. If we like something, we chase after more of it: more status, more food, more info, more stuff. Then we chase again. Its how we survived famine, disease and disaster to colonise the world. But now, thanks to technology, weve suddenly got more of everything than we can ever use, enjoy or afford. That doesnt stop us from striving though and its making us sick, tired, overweight, angry and in debt. It burns up our personal ecologies and the planets ecology too. We urgently need to develop a sense of enough. Our culture keeps telling us that we dont yet have all we need to be happy, but in fact we need to nurture a new skill the ability to bask in the bounties all around us. ENOUGH explores how our Neolithic brain-wiring spurs us to build a world of overabundance that keeps us hooked on more. John explains how, through adopting the art of enoughness, we can break from this wrecking cycle. With ten chapters on topics such as Enough food, Enough stuff, Enough hurry and Enough information, he explores how we created the problem and gives us practical ways to make our lives better.
Enough
by John NaishFor millions of years, humankind has used a brilliantly successful survival strategy. If we like something, we chase after more of it: more status, more food, more info, more stuff. Then we chase again. Its how we survived famine, disease and disaster to colonise the world. But now, thanks to technology, weve suddenly got more of everything than we can ever use, enjoy or afford. That doesnt stop us from striving though and its making us sick, tired, overweight, angry and in debt. It burns up our personal ecologies and the planets ecology too. We urgently need to develop a sense of enough. Our culture keeps telling us that we dont yet have all we need to be happy, but in fact we need to nurture a new skill the ability to bask in the bounties all around us. ENOUGH explores how our Neolithic brain-wiring spurs us to build a world of overabundance that keeps us hooked on more. John explains how, through adopting the art of enoughness, we can break from this wrecking cycle. With ten chapters on topics such as Enough food, Enough stuff, Enough hurry and Enough information, he explores how we created the problem and gives us practical ways to make our lives better.
Enriched Methane
by Angelo Basile Marcello FalcoThis book brings together recent research from across the world on enriched methane, and examines the production, distribution and use of this resource in internal combustion engines and gas turbines. It aims to provide readers with an extensive account of potential technological breakthroughs which have the capacity to revolutionize energy systems. Enriched methane, a gas mixture composed by methane and hydrogen (10-30%vol), constitutes the first realistic step towards the application of hydrogen as an energy vector. It provides strong benefits in terms of emissions reduction, that is -11% of CO2, eq emission with the combustion of a 30%vol H2 mixture, if hydrogen is produced from renewable energy sources. Enriched methane offers the following advantages: * it can be produced at competitive costs; * it can be distributed by means of the medium pressure natural gas grid; * it can be stored in traditional natural gas storage systems; This book is intended for academics in chemical engineering and energy production, distribution and storage. It is also intended for energy producers, engineering companies and R&D organizations.
Enriching Psychoanalysis: Integrating Concepts from Contemporary Science and Philosophy (Philosophy and Psychoanalysis)
by John Turtz Gerald J. GargiuloThis compelling collection illuminates new models and metaphors taken from the contemporary sciences and philosophical thought to revitalize and recontextualize psychoanalysis for the 21st century. The exploration of quantum mechanics, chaos and complexity theory, epigenetics, and neuropsychoanalysis provides the reader with new layers of meaning and understanding that in turn lead to an enriching of psychoanalytic theory and a deepening of experience in the consulting office. The intersection of psychoanalysis, contemporary sciences, and philosophy leads the reader to new worlds that can transform the lens from which one views the psychoanalytic process. Written for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists, as well as scholars of psychoanalysis that are interested in the intersection of psychoanalysis, contemporary science, and philosophy, Enriching Psychoanalysis: Integrating Concepts from Contemporary Science and Philosophy expands the focus and meaning of current psychoanalytic theory and practice.
Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production
by Vaclav SmilThe industrial synthesis of ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen has been of greater fundamental importance to the modern world than the invention of the airplane, nuclear energy, space flight, or television. The expansion of the world's population from 1. 6 billion people in 1900 to today's six billion would not have been possible without the synthesis of ammonia. In Enriching the Earth, Vaclav Smil begins with a discussion of nitrogen's unique status in the biosphere, its role in crop production, and traditional means of supplying the nutrient. He then looks at various attempts to expand natural nitrogen flows through mineral and synthetic fertilizers. The core of the book is a detailed narrative of the discovery of ammonia synthesis by Fritz Haber -- a discovery scientists had sought for over one hundred years -- and its commercialization by Carl Bosch and the chemical company BASF. Smil also examines the emergence of the large-scale nitrogen fertilizer industry and analyzes the extent of global dependence on the Haber-Bosch process and its biospheric consequences. Finally, it looks at the role of nitrogen in civilization and, in a sad coda, describes the lives of Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch after the discovery of ammonia synthesis.
Enriching the Young Naturalist: The Nature of a Science Classroom
by Jeff Danielianscience education
Enrico Fermi
by Giuseppe BruzzanitiThis biography explores the life and career of the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, which is also the story of thirty years that transformed physics and forever changed our understanding of matter and the universe: nuclear physics and elementary particle physics were born, nuclear fission was discovered, the Manhattan Project was developed, the atomic bombs were dropped, and the era of "big science" began. It would be impossible to capture the full essence of this revolutionary period without first understanding Fermi, without whom it would not have been possible. Enrico Fermi: The Obedient Genius attempts to shed light on all aspects of Fermi's life - his work, motivation, influences, achievements, and personal thoughts - beginning with the publication of his first paper in 1921 through his death in 1954. During this time, Fermi demonstrated that he was indeed following in the footsteps of Galileo, excelling in his work both theoretically and experimentally by deepening our understanding of the Pauli exclusion principle, winning the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the fundamental properties of slow neutrons, developing the theory of beta decay, building the first nuclear reactor, and playing a central role in the development of the atomic bomb. Interwoven with this fascinating story, the book details the major developments in physics and provides the necessary background material to fully appreciate the dramatic changes that were taking place. Also included are appendices that provide a timeline of Fermi's life, several primary source documents from the period, and an extensive bibliography. This book will enlighten anyone interested in Fermi's work or the scientific events that led to the physics revolution of the first half of the twentieth century.
Enrico Fermi: And The Revolutions Of Modern Physics (Oxford Portraits In Science Ser.)
by Dan CooperIn 1938, at the age of 37, Enrico Fermi was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. That same year he emigrated from Italy to the United States and, in the course of his experiments, discovered nuclear fission--a process which forms the basis of nuclear power and atomic bombs. Soon the brilliant physicist was involved in the top secret race to produce the deadliest weapon on Earth. He created the first self-sustaining chain reaction, devised new methods for purifying plutonium, and eventually participated in the first atomic test. This compelling biography traces Fermi's education in Italy, his meteoric career in the scientific world, his escape from fascism to America, and the ingenious experiments he devised and conducted at the University of Rome, Columbia University, and the Los Alamos laboratory. The book also presents a mini-course in quantum and nuclear physics in an accessible, fast-paced narrative that invokes all the dizzying passion of Fermis brilliant discoveries. Oxford Portraits in Science is an on-going series of scientific biographies for young adults. Written by top scholars and writers, each biography examines the personality of its subject as well as the thought process leading to his or her discoveries. These illustrated biographies combine accessible technical information with compelling personal stories to portray the scientists whose work has shaped our understanding of the natural world.
Enrico Fermi, Atomic Physics Lectures (History of Physics)
by Aldo Treves Pasquale TucciIn autumn of 1949, Enrico Fermi returned to Italy after an eleven-year absence to deliver nine lectures, six in Rome and three in Milan. Apart from subsequent limited publication, this material has been little seen by the larger scientific community. This volume represents the first time that these nine lectures have been published in English. The nine lectures collected in this book represent a precious document of Fermi’s view on topics with which he had engaged in the previous decades. They were addressed to the young Italian physicists and to a more general audience only then beginning to recover from the physical and moral disruption of the war. Published in collaboration with the Italian Physical Society (SIF), the book includes a presentation of the president of SIF, an introduction written by the editors, and two substantial essays: one on Fermi’s life, and a second on Fermi’s skill in talking about Physics in a clear and sparkling manner. The volume appears as a contribution to the 70th anniversary of Fermi's death, and should appeal not only to students of physics, but to both those with an interest in the history of science in general and those who wish for a clearer picture of the life and mind of this pioneering physicist.
Ensembles on Configuration Space
by Michael J. W. Hall Marcel ReginattoThis book describes a promising approach to problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics, including the measurement problem. The dynamics of ensembles on configuration space is shown here to be a valuable tool for unifying the formalisms of classical and quantum mechanics, for deriving and extending the latter in various ways, and for addressing the quantum measurement problem. A description of physical systems by means of ensembles on configuration space can be introduced at a very fundamental level: the basic building blocks are a configuration space, probabilities, and Hamiltonian equations of motion for the probabilities. The formalism can describe both classical and quantum systems, and their thermodynamics, with the main difference being the choice of ensemble Hamiltonian. Furthermore, there is a natural way of introducing ensemble Hamiltonians that describe the evolution of hybrid systems; i. e. , interacting systems that have distinct classical and quantum sectors, allowing for consistent descriptions of quantum systems interacting with classical measurement devices and quantum matter fields interacting gravitationally with a classical spacetime.
Las enseñanzas secretas de las plantas: La inteligencia del corazón en la percepción directa de la naturaleza
by Stephen Harrod BuhnerRevela el uso de la percepción directa en la comprensión de la naturaleza, las plantas medicinales, y la sanación de las enfermedades humanas • Explora las técnicas utilizadas por los pueblos aborígenes y occidentales para aprender directamente de las propias plantas, incluidas las técnicas de Henry David Thoreau, Goethe, y Masanobu Fukuoka, autor de The One Straw Revolution [La revolución de una brizna de paja] Todos los pueblos antiguos y aborígenes afirman que sus conocimientos sobre remedios botánicos provienen de las propias plantas y no de la experimentación a través de pruebas y errores. El autor Stephen Harrod Buhner explora minuciosamente esta modalidad de cognición holística basada en el corazón a través de la obra de Luther Burbank, quien cultivó la mayoría de las plantas alimenticias que ahora consumimos sin pensar en su procedencia, y del gran poeta y científico alemán Goethe. Los lectores obtendrán los medios necesarios para recopilar información directamente del corazón de la naturaleza, aprender los usos medicinales de las plantas diagnosticar enfermedades, y comprender el proceso de creación de alma que se engendra mediante esa profunda conexión con el mundo.
Ensuring Competent Performance in Forensic Practice: Recovery, Analysis, Interpretation, and Reporting
by Keith Hadley Michael J. FeredayThis is the first book of its kind to encourage a common understanding of competence and demonstrate the application of standards and practice in all aspects of forensic science including collection of evidence, interpretation of scientific analysis, and appropriate methods of testimony. The authors stress the standardization of proper training and testing procedures and give clear guidelines for effective training programs based on occupational standards. The book examines the importance of workplace assessments of competence and emphasizes the role of those involved in the assessment process. The authors include several case studies demonstrating competence in practice and the methods to ensure consistent high standards in the future.
Ensuring Environmental Health in Postindustrial Cities: Workshop Summary
by Roundtable on Environmental Health Sciences Research MedicineInformation on Ensuring Environmental Health in Postindustrial Cities
Ensuring Quality in Professional Education Volume II: Engineering Pedagogy and International Knowledge Structures
by Tara Newman Karen Trimmer Fernando F. PadróThis book examines quality teaching in professional education in the fields of engineering and international knowledge structures. The second of a two-volume series, the editors and contributors structure the book around case studies which highlight the elements constituting good practice within professional education. While there is no one specific route to prepare well-qualified professionals, this volume explores the decisions the academics responsible for delivering this education make to ensure quality curricula. Ultimately, the key to effective preparations rests with the value employers place on the focus, emphasis and balance between the academic and practical in relation to their own expectations for skills that graduates must have. The second volume in this collection will appeal to students and scholars of professional pedagogy, and engineering pedagogy more specifically.
Ensuring Sustainability: New Challenges for Organizational Engineering (Lecture Notes in Management and Industrial Engineering)
by Carmen Avilés-Palacios Miguel GutierrezThis book presents a selection of the best papers given at the XXIV International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Industrial Management. The conference is promoted by ADINGOR (Asociación para el Desarrollo de la Ingeniería de Organización) and organized by the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. It took place at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (Leganés, Spain) in July 2020. Ensuring Sustainability embodies the latest advances in research and cutting-edge analyses of real case studies in industrial engineering and operations management from diverse international contexts. It also identifies business applications for the latest findings and innovations in operations management and the decision sciences.
Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age
by Institute of MedicineAs digital technologies are expanding the power and reach of research, they are also raising complex issues. These include complications in ensuring the validity of research data; standards that do not keep pace with the high rate of innovation; restrictions on data sharing that reduce the ability of researchers to verify results and build on previous research; and huge increases in the amount of data being generated, creating severe challenges in preserving that data for long-term use. Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age examines the consequences of the changes affecting research data with respect to three issues - integrity, accessibility, and stewardship-and finds a need for a new approach to the design and the management of research projects. The report recommends that all researchers receive appropriate training in the management of research data, and calls on researchers to make all research data, methods, and other information underlying results publicly accessible in a timely manner. The book also sees the stewardship of research data as a critical long-term task for the research enterprise and its stakeholders. Individual researchers, research institutions, research sponsors, professional societies, and journals involved in scientific, engineering, and medical research will find this book an essential guide to the principles affecting research data in the digital age.
The Entangled Brain: How Perception, Cognition, and Emotion Are Woven Together
by Luiz PessoaA new vision of the brain as a fully integrated, networked organ.Popular neuroscience accounts often focus on specific mind-brain aspects like addiction, cognition, or memory, but The Entangled Brain tackles a much bigger question: What kind of object is the brain? Neuroscientist Luiz Pessoa describes the brain as a highly networked, interconnected system that cannot be neatly decomposed into a set of independent parts. One can&’t point to the brain and say, &“This is where emotion happens&” (or any other mental faculty). Pessoa argues that only by understanding how large-scale neural circuits combine multiple and diverse signals can we truly appreciate how the brain supports the mind. Presenting the brain as an integrated organ and drawing on neuroscience, computation, mathematics, systems theory, and evolution, The Entangled Brain explains how brain functions result from cross-cutting brain processing, not the function of segregated areas. Parts of the brain work in a coordinated fashion across large-scale distributed networks in which disparate parts of the cortex and the subcortex work simultaneously to bring about behaviors. Pessoa intuitively explains the concepts needed to formalize this idea of the brain as a complex system and how to unleash powerful understandings built with &“collective computations.&”
Entangled Ecologies as Metaphors of State Design
by Mathew A. VargheseThis book takes a unique approach to the ethnographic and analytical explorations of ecologies in the making. The core theme of the work will be the emerging anthropocene contexts that simultaneously bring unprecedented human interactions with the non-human as well as the emergence of hybrid ecologies. There will be dependence on existing literature, own ethnographic work that has already went into this, the closer introspection of immediate geographies as well as the pertinent debates. There has been a reconfiguration of meaning and nature of spaces in the context of social relations produced by neo-liberal globalization. States as they have been are transforming and are influenced by policies made beyond borders. This work is marked out by careful enquiry on ecologies in the making with the backdrop of distinct regional developmentalist trajectories as well as specific ethnography from Kerala, South-West India.
The Entangled God: Divine Relationality and Quantum Physics (Routledge Studies in Religion)
by Kirk Wegter-McNellyIn The Entangled God, Kirk Wegter-McNelly addresses the age-old theological question of how God is present to the world by constructing a novel, scientifically informed account of the God–world relation. Drawing on recent scientific and philosophical work in "quantum entanglement," Wegter-McNelly develops the metaphor of "divine entanglement" to ground the relationality and freedom of physical process in the power of God’s relational being. The Entangled God makes a three-fold contribution to contemporary theological and religious discourse. First, it calls attention to the convergence of recent theology around the idea of "relationality." Second, it introduces theological and religious readers to the fascinating story of quantum entanglement. Third, it offers a robust "plerotic" alternative to kenotic accounts of God’s suffering presence in the world. Above all, this book takes us beyond the view of theology and science as adversaries and demonstrates the value of constructively relating these two important areas of intellectual investigation.
Entangled Life: Organism and Environment in the Biological and Social Sciences
by Gillian Barker Eric Desjardins Trevor PearceThis volume explores the interactions between organisms and their environments and how this "entanglement" is a fundamental aspect of all life. It brings together the work and ideas of historians, philosophers, biologists, and social scientists, uniting a range of new perspectives, methods, and frameworks for examining and understanding the ways that organisms and environments interact. The volume is organized into three main sections: historical perspectives, contested models, and emerging frameworks. The first section explores the origins of the modern idea of organism-environment interaction in the mid-nineteenth century and its development by later psychologists and anthropologists. In the second section, a variety of controversial models--from mathematical representations of evolution to model organisms in medical research--are discussed and reframed in light of recent questions about the interplay between organisms and environment. The third section investigates several new ideas that have the potential to reshape key aspects of the biological and social sciences. Populations of organisms evolve in response to changing environments; bodies and minds depend on a wide array of circumstances for their development; cultures create complex relationships with the natural world even as they alter it irrevocably. The chapters in this volume share a commitment to unraveling the mysteries of this entangled life.