The Nature of the Future

The Nature of the Future PDF

Author: Emily Pawley

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-06-07

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 0226820025

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"In the seemingly mundane Northern farm of early America and the people who sought to improve its productivity and efficiency, Emily Pawley finds a world rich with innovative practices and marked by a developing interrelationship between scientific knowledge, industrial methods, and capitalism. Agricultural "improvers" became increasingly scientistic, driving tremendous increases in the range and volume of agricultural output-and transforming American conceptions of expertise, success, and exploitation. Pawley's focus on soil, fertilizer, apples, mulberries, agricultural fairs, and experimental stations shows each nominally dull subject to have been an area of intellectual ferment and sharp contestation: mercantile, epistemological, and otherwise"--

The Future of Nature

The Future of Nature PDF

Author: Libby Robin

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2013-10-22

Total Pages: 585

ISBN-13: 0300188471

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This anthology provides an historical overview of the scientific ideas behind environmental prediction and how, as predictions about environmental change have been taken more seriously and widely, they have affected politics, policy, and public perception. Through an array of texts and commentaries that examine the themes of progress, population, environment, biodiversity and sustainability from a global perspective, it explores the meaning of the future in the twenty-first century. Providing access and reference points to the origins and development of key disciplines and methods, it will encourage policy makers, professionals, and students to reflect on the roots of their own theories and practices.

The Nature and Future of Philosophy

The Nature and Future of Philosophy PDF

Author: Michael Dummett

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2010-04-29

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 0231522185

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Philosophy is a discipline that makes no observations, conducts no experiments, and needs no input from experience. It is an armchair subject, requiring only thought. Yet that thought can advance knowledge in unexpected directions, not only through the discovery of new facts but also through the enhancement of what we already know. Philosophy can clarify our vision of the world and provide exciting ways to interpret it. Of course, philosophy's unified purpose hasn't kept the discipline from splintering into warring camps. Departments all over the world are divided among analytical and continental schools, Heidegger, Hegel, and other major thinkers, challenging the growth of the discipline and obscuring its relevance and intent. Having spent decades teaching in American, Asian, African, and European universities, Michael Dummett has felt firsthand the fractured state of contemporary practice and the urgent need for reconciliation. Setting forth a proposal for renewal and reengagement, Dummett begins with the nature of philosophical inquiry as it has developed for centuries, especially its exceptional openness and perspective-which has, ironically, led to our present crisis. He discusses philosophy in relation to science, religion, morality, language, and meaning and recommends avenues for healing around a renewed investigation of mind, language, and thought. Employing his trademark frankness and accessibility, Dummett asks philosophers to resolve theoretical difference and reclaim the vital work of their practice.

The Future of Human Nature

The Future of Human Nature PDF

Author: Jürgen Habermas

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2014-10-15

Total Pages: 136

ISBN-13: 074569411X

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Recent developments in biotechnology and genetic research are raising complex ethical questions concerning the legitimate scope and limits of genetic intervention. As we begin to contemplate the possibility of intervening in the human genome to prevent diseases, we cannot help but feel that the human species might soon be able to take its biological evolution in its own hands. ‘Playing God’ is the metaphor commonly used for this self-transformation of the species, which, it seems, might soon be within our grasp. In this important new book, Jürgen Habermas – the most influential philosopher and social thinker in Germany today – takes up the question of genetic engineering and its ethical implications and subjects it to careful philosophical scrutiny. His analysis is guided by the view that genetic manipulation is bound up with the identity and self-understanding of the species. We cannot rule out the possibility that knowledge of one’s own hereditary factors may prove to be restrictive for the choice of an individual’s way of life and may undermine the symmetrical relations between free and equal human beings. In the concluding chapter – which was delivered as a lecture on receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for 2001 – Habermas broadens the discussion to examine the tension between science and religion in the modern world, a tension which exploded, with such tragic violence, on September 11th.

Under a White Sky

Under a White Sky PDF

Author: Elizabeth Kolbert

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2022-04-05

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0593136284

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Sixth Extinction returns to humanity’s transformative impact on the environment, now asking: After doing so much damage, can we change nature, this time to save it? RECOMMENDED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA AND BILL GATES • SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR WRITING • ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, Esquire, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews • “Beautifully and insistently, Kolbert shows us that it is time to think radically about the ways we manage the environment.”—Helen Macdonald, The New York Times With a new afterword by the author That man should have dominion “over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth” is a prophecy that has hardened into fact. So pervasive are human impacts on the planet that it’s said we live in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene. In Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert takes a hard look at the new world we are creating. Along the way, she meets biologists who are trying to preserve the world’s rarest fish, which lives in a single tiny pool in the middle of the Mojave; engineers who are turning carbon emissions to stone in Iceland; Australian researchers who are trying to develop a “super coral” that can survive on a hotter globe; and physicists who are contemplating shooting tiny diamonds into the stratosphere to cool the earth. One way to look at human civilization, says Kolbert, is as a ten-thousand-year exercise in defying nature. In The Sixth Extinction, she explored the ways in which our capacity for destruction has reshaped the natural world. Now she examines how the very sorts of interventions that have imperiled our planet are increasingly seen as the only hope for its salvation. By turns inspiring, terrifying, and darkly comic, Under a White Sky is an utterly original examination of the challenges we face.

AI

AI PDF

Author: Margaret A. Boden

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-05-19

Total Pages: 156

ISBN-13: 0191083496

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The applications of Artificial Intelligence lie all around us; in our homes, schools and offices, in our cinemas, in art galleries and - not least - on the Internet. The results of Artificial Intelligence have been invaluable to biologists, psychologists, and linguists in helping to understand the processes of memory, learning, and language from a fresh angle. As a concept, Artificial Intelligence has fuelled and sharpened the philosophical debates concerning the nature of the mind, intelligence, and the uniqueness of human beings. Margaret A. Boden reviews the philosophical and technological challenges raised by Artificial Intelligence, considering whether programs could ever be really intelligent, creative or even conscious, and shows how the pursuit of Artificial Intelligence has helped us to appreciate how human and animal minds are possible.

Nature, Action and the Future

Nature, Action and the Future PDF

Author: Katrina Forrester

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-01-25

Total Pages: 253

ISBN-13: 110719928X

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Leading scholars of political thought demonstrate how the history of political ideas makes sense of environmental politics and climate change.

The Nature of Tomorrow

The Nature of Tomorrow PDF

Author: Michael Rawson

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0300255195

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"A history of the stories that have been told in Western culture about the future. These predictions generally look forward to all the ways humans will transform the earth using advanced science and technology, and they frequently anticipate endless growth on a finite planet. The global environmental crisis now reflects these centuries-old ingrained expectations. Only by understanding how these stories developed can we hope to create new ones that can guide us to a truly sustainable civilization"--

Nurture Your Nature for a Better Future

Nurture Your Nature for a Better Future PDF

Author: Jayaraj Dakshinamoorthy

Publisher: Notion Press

Published: 2016-10-18

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1946129151

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What does one want? If this simple question can be answered clearly; half the battle is won. A lack of understanding of the question will bring forth answers that lead to further questions. In all our activities, if we know the why of it, the how of it would be a lot easier. Involvement not imposition, inclination not inducement, selection not seduction, are the key ingredients to get things right. There are plenty of perspectives but a lack of clarity comes along with it. Is it possible to enjoy disappointments? Read to find out. Decision-making, risk-taking and being at crossroads are some of life challenges that need to be faced squarely, confidently and substantively. Why do we miss the obvious? Is it because we are oblivious to what is happening around us? If all our efforts address the core question of what we really want, we shall have taken the bull of perpetual dissatisfaction by its horns.