The Frontiers of Knowledge

The Frontiers of Knowledge PDF

Author: A. C. Grayling

Publisher: Penguin UK

Published: 2021-05-06

Total Pages: 285

ISBN-13: 0241980879

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'Grayling brings satisfying order to daunting subjects' Steven Pinker _________________________ In very recent times humanity has learnt a vast amount about the universe, the past, and itself. But through our remarkable successes in acquiring knowledge we have learned how much we have yet to learn: the science we have, for example, addresses just 5 per cent of the universe; pre-history is still being revealed, with thousands of historical sites yet to be explored; and the new neurosciences of mind and brain are just beginning. What do we know, and how do we know it? What do we now know that we don't know? And what have we learnt about the obstacles to knowing more? In a time of deepening battles over what knowledge and truth mean, these questions matter more than ever. Bestselling polymath and philosopher A. C. Grayling seeks to answer them in three crucial areas at the frontiers of knowledge: science, history and psychology. A remarkable history of science, life on earth, and the human mind itself, this is a compelling and fascinating tour de force, written with verve, clarity and remarkable breadth of knowledge. _________________________ 'Remarkable, readable and authoritative. How he has mastered so much, so thoroughly, is nothing short of amazing' Lawrence M. Krauss, author of A Universe from Nothing 'This book hums with the excitement of the great human project of discovery' Adam Zeman, author of Aphantasia

Frontiers of Science

Frontiers of Science PDF

Author: Cameron B. Strang

Publisher: UNC Press Books

Published: 2018-06-13

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1469640481

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Cameron Strang takes American scientific thought and discoveries away from the learned societies, museums, and teaching halls of the Northeast and puts the production of knowledge about the natural world in the context of competing empires and an expanding republic in the Gulf South. People often dismissed by starched northeasterners as nonintellectuals--Indian sages, African slaves, Spanish officials, Irishmen on the make, clearers of land and drivers of men--were also scientific observers, gatherers, organizers, and reporters. Skulls and stems, birds and bugs, rocks and maps, tall tales and fertile hypotheses came from them. They collected, described, and sent the objects that scientists gazed on and interpreted in polite Philadelphia. They made knowledge. Frontiers of Science offers a new framework for approaching American intellectual history, one that transcends political and cultural boundaries and reveals persistence across the colonial and national eras. The pursuit of knowledge in the United States did not cohere around democratic politics or the influence of liberty. It was, as in other empires, divided by multiple loyalties and identities, organized through contested hierarchies of ethnicity and place, and reliant on violence. By discovering the lost intellectual history of one region, Strang shows us how to recover a continent for science.

Mapping Scientific Frontiers

Mapping Scientific Frontiers PDF

Author: Chaomei Chen

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2013-07-30

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1447151283

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This is an examination of the history and the state of the art of the quest for visualizing scientific knowledge and the dynamics of its development. Through an interdisciplinary perspective this book presents profound visions, pivotal advances, and insightful contributions made by generations of researchers and professionals, which portrays a holistic view of the underlying principles and mechanisms of the development of science. This updated and extended second edition: highlights the latest advances in mapping scientific frontiers examines the foundations of strategies, principles, and design patterns provides an integrated and holistic account of major developments across disciplinary boundaries “Anyone who tries to follow the exponential growth of the literature on citation analysis and scientometrics knows how difficult it is to keep pace. Chaomei Chen has identified the significant methods and applications in visual graphics and made them clear to the uninitiated. Derek Price would have loved this book which not only pays homage to him but also to the key players in information science and a wide variety of others in the sociology and history of science.” – Eugene Garfield “This is a wide ranging book on information visualization, with a specific focus on science mapping. Science mapping is still in its infancy and many intellectual challenges remain to be investigated and many of which are outlined in the final chapter. In this new edition Chaomei Chen has provided an essential text, useful both as a primer for new entrants and as a comprehensive overview of recent developments for the seasoned practitioner.” – Henry Small Chaomei Chen is a Professor in the College of Information Science and Technology at Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA, and a ChangJiang Scholar at Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, China. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Information Visualization and the author of Turning Points: The Nature of Creativity (Springer, 2012) and Information Visualization: Beyond the Horizon (Springer, 2004, 2006).

Information and Interaction

Information and Interaction PDF

Author: Ian T. Durham

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-12-09

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 3319437607

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In this essay collection, leading physicists, philosophers, and historians attempt to fill the empty theoretical ground in the foundations of information and address the related question of the limits to our knowledge of the world. Over recent decades, our practical approach to information and its exploitation has radically outpaced our theoretical understanding - to such a degree that reflection on the foundations may seem futile. But it is exactly fields such as quantum information, which are shifting the boundaries of the physically possible, that make a foundational understanding of information increasingly important. One of the recurring themes of the book is the claim by Eddington and Wheeler that information involves interaction and putting agents or observers centre stage. Thus, physical reality, in their view, is shaped by the questions we choose to put to it and is built up from the information residing at its core. This is the root of Wheeler’s famous phrase “it from bit.” After reading the stimulating essays collected in this volume, readers will be in a good position to decide whether they agree with this view.

Frontiers of Expert Systems

Frontiers of Expert Systems PDF

Author: Chilukuri Krishna Mohan

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1461545099

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The development of modern knowledge-based systems, for applications ranging from medicine to finance, necessitates going well beyond traditional rule-based programming. Frontiers of Expert Systems: Reasoning with Limited Knowledge attempts to satisfy such a need, introducing exciting and recent advances at the frontiers of the field of expert systems. Beginning with the central topics of logic, uncertainty and rule-based reasoning, each chapter in the book presents a different perspective on how we may solve problems that arise due to limitations in the knowledge of an expert system's reasoner. Successive chapters address (i) the fundamentals of knowledge-based systems, (ii) formal inference, and reasoning about models of a changing and partially known world, (iii) uncertainty and probabilistic methods, (iv) the expression of knowledge in rule-based systems, (v) evolving representations of knowledge as a system interacts with the environment, (vi) applying connectionist learning algorithms to improve on knowledge acquired from experts, (vii) reasoning with cases organized in indexed hierarchies, (viii) the process of acquiring and inductively learning knowledge, (ix) extraction of knowledge nuggets from very large data sets, and (x) interactions between multiple specialized reasoners with specialized knowledge bases. Each chapter takes the reader on a journey from elementary concepts to topics of active research, providing a concise description of several topics within and related to the field of expert systems, with pointers to practical applications and other relevant literature. Frontiers of Expert Systems: Reasoning with Limited Knowledge is suitable as a secondary text for a graduate-level course, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

Faith at the Frontiers of Knowledge

Faith at the Frontiers of Knowledge PDF

Author: R. Ross

Publisher: African Books Collective

Published: 2018-05-20

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9996098192

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Unity of knowledge is not easily achieved in todays Africa where often there is little conscious interaction between traditional beliefs, Christian faith and modern secularity. The challenge is taken up in this book as scholars from a variety of disciplines wrestle with the relation of faith and science at the frontiers of knowledge. The results are important alike for the integrity of faith, for scienti?c advance and for the attainment of creative cultural unity in society. Readers with such concerns at heart will ?nd much food for thought as they traverse the broad frontiers explored in these wide-ranging essays.

Human Frontiers

Human Frontiers PDF

Author: Michael Bhaskar

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-08-02

Total Pages: 433

ISBN-13: 0262545101

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Why has the flow of big, world-changing ideas slowed down? A provocative look at what happens next at the frontiers of human knowledge. The history of humanity is the history of big ideas that expand our frontiers—from the wheel to space flight, cave painting to the massively multiplayer game, monotheistic religion to quantum theory. And yet for the past few decades, apart from a rush of new gadgets and the explosion of digital technology, world-changing ideas have been harder to come by. Since the 1970s, big ideas have happened incrementally—recycled, focused in narrow bands of innovation. In this provocative book, Michael Bhaskar looks at why the flow of big, world-changing ideas has slowed, and what this means for the future. Bhaskar argues that the challenge at the frontiers of knowledge has arisen not because we are unimaginative and bad at realizing big ideas but because we have already pushed so far. If we compare the world of our great-great-great-grandparents to ours today, we can see how a series of transformative ideas revolutionized almost everything in just a century and a half. But recently, because of short-termism, risk aversion, and fractious decision making, we have built a cautious, unimaginative world. Bhaskar shows how we can start to expand the frontier again by thinking big—embarking on the next Universal Declaration of Human Rights or Apollo mission—and embracing change.

Aromatic Interactions

Aromatic Interactions PDF

Author: Darren W. Johnson

Publisher: Royal Society of Chemistry

Published: 2016-11-24

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13: 1782624171

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The field of aromatic interactions, the fundamental nature of substituent effects and the identification of contacts between anions and aromatic systems have generated stimulating arguments in recent years. New theoretical frameworks have been developed and tested and aromatic interactions have emerged as potential solutions for varied problems in biology and materials science. This book provides a wide ranging survey of the latest findings and advances surrounding aromatic interactions, stretching from the fundamentals to modern applications in synthesis, biology and materials chemistry. It also discusses computational, experimental and analytical approaches to understanding these interactions, including pi-pi, anion-pi, and cation-pi interactions. Aromatic Interactions: Frontiers in Knowledge and Application is a useful text for advanced students and researchers, and appeals to those working within the fields of supramolecular chemistry, computational chemistry and thermodynamics.

Capitalizing Knowledge

Capitalizing Knowledge PDF

Author: Henry Etzkowitz

Publisher: SUNY Press

Published: 1998-01-01

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9780791439470

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Examines current trends toward increasing links between industry and academia and the resulting commercialization of universities as they seek to capitalize their research.

The Mystery of Economic Growth

The Mystery of Economic Growth PDF

Author: Elhanan Helpman

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-05-01

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 067425435X

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Far more than an intellectual puzzle for pundits, economists, and policymakers, economic growth--its makings and workings--is a subject that affects the well-being of billions of people around the globe. In The Mystery of Economic Growth, Elhanan Helpman discusses the vast research that has revolutionized understanding of this subject in recent years, and summarizes and explains its critical messages in clear, concise, and accessible terms. The tale of growth economics, as Helpman tells it, is organized around a number of themes: the importance of the accumulation of physical and human capital; the effect of technological factors on the rate of this accumulation; the process of knowledge creation and its influence on productivity; the interdependence of the growth rates of different countries; and, finally, the role of economic and political institutions in encouraging accumulation, innovation, and change. One of the leading researchers of economic growth, Helpman succinctly reviews, critiques, and integrates current research--on capital accumulation, education, productivity, trade, inequality, geography, and institutions--and clarifies its relevance for global economic inequities. In particular, he points to institutions--including property rights protection, legal systems, customs, and political systems--as the key to the mystery of economic growth. Solving this mystery could lead to policies capable of setting the poorest countries on the path toward sustained growth of per capita income and all that that implies--and Helpman's work is a welcome and necessary step in this direction.