Showing titles in Philosophy

The pandemic, climate change, poverty, conflict and violence, and the refugee emergency: global crises that have an unsuspected silver lining. They bring us to a tipping point where we can choose our destiny. This book outlines the nature of that crucial point and suggests what you—as each and every conscious and responsible human being—can and must do to choose a future of thriving for the human family, rather than one of crises and chaos.

En près de cinq heures, cet audio retrace l'histoire de France de 1715 à 1815, incarnée par Olivier Coquard, spécialiste d'histoire moderne.

Twentieth century science completely revolutionized human understanding of the world, rewriting the story of the universe with exciting discoveries and theories—the big bang, the relativity of space and time, the accelerating expansion of the universe, along with increasingly refined ideas of evolution and the origin of life.

What is it that helps both scorpions and cyclists to survive? What do raw eggs and gyroscopes have in common? And why does it matter? In an age of string theory, fluid dynamics and biophysics, it can seem as if the science of our world is for only specialists and academics. Not so, insists Helen Czerski - and in this sparkling new audiobook she explores the patterns and connections that illustrate the grandest theories in the smallest everyday objects and experiences.

Women working in the sciences face obstacles at virtually every step along their career paths. From subtle slights to blatant biases, deep systemic problems block women from advancing or push them out of science and technology entirely. Women in Science Now examines solutions to this persistent gender gap, offering new perspectives on how to make science more equitable and inclusive for all.

The complexity of mathematics - its abstract rules and obscure symbols - can seem very distant from the everyday. There are those things that are real and present, it is supposed, and then there are mathematical concepts: creations of our mind, mysterious tools for those unengaged with the world. Yet, from its most remote history and deepest purpose, mathematics has served not just as a way to understand and order, but also as a foundation for the reality it describes.

The human dilemma is that we have an innate tendency to conflate our current brain state with how reality apart from ourselves really is, forgetting, in the process, that our subjective experiences may be inaccurate or misleading representations of our objective surroundings. There are, of course, good evolutionary reasons for why this is the case, since in our struggle for survival, we have to rely on our mental maps (and take them seriously) in order to find food, ward or fight off enemies, secure housing, find mates, protect offspring, and so on.

Filosofía: el término suena fascinante, hermoso, de algún modo romántico y armonioso y, al mismo tiempo, como un gran esfuerzo intelectual. Sin embargo, en realidad la filosofía no es ni especialmente romántica ni especialmente agotadora. Es cierto que hay que utilizar el cerebro, y quizá algunas cosas excedan el sentido común normal, pero básicamente la filosofía sólo significa interesarse por las personas y el mundo.

In Life Finds a Way, biologist Andreas Wagner reveals the deep symmetry between innovation in biological evolution and human cultural creativity. Rarely is either a linear climb to perfection - instead, "progress" is typically marked by a sequence of peaks, plateaus, and pitfalls. For instance, in Picasso's 40-some iterations of Guernica, we see the same combination of small steps, incessant reshuffling, and large, almost reckless, leaps that characterize the way evolution transformed a dinosaur's grasping claw into a condor's soaring wing.

It is not too often that a brilliant scientist is also a wonderfully gifted writer. Sir Arthur Eddington was both. Brought up as a Quaker (he was a pacifist during World War One), Eddington was by all accounts a brilliant mathematician and physicist, who eventually became a professor of astronomy at Cambridge University. Sir Arthur Eddington is perhaps most famous for partially confirming Albert Einstein's theory of relativity back in 1919.

In this fascinating exploration of the changing status of dogs and cats in society, pet lover and award-winning journalist David Grimm explores the rich and surprising history of our favorite companion animals. He treks the long and often torturous path from their wild origins to their dark days in the middle ages to their current standing as the most valued animals on Earth. For pet lovers or anyone interested in how we decide who gets to be a “person” in today’s world, Citizen Canine is a must-have. It is a pet tale like no other.

Thanks to recent advances in AI, humans have entered a world where we are no longer the sole custodians of knowledge. A new wave of disarmingly human-like chatbots, such as ChatGPT, Claude and Bard, appear to be able to talk and reason like us - and are beginning to transform everything we do. It is vital we understand how they work. Can AI ‘think’, 'know' and ‘understand’? What are its values? Whose biases is it perpetuating? Can it lie and if so, could we tell? Does their arrival threaten our very existence?

From poverty and policing, homelessness and overrun prisons to Grenfell and hostile environments, Britain has long been failing those who need our help the most. There is arguably one unifying theme that links all these afflictions: proximity. Proximity is how close we are to the action and how that affects how we assess, relate to and address whatever that action happens to be. Almost every job requires a level of experience and training with the notable exception of the most powerful people in the country—our political class.

Una mirada crítica a los discursos reaccionarios surgidos al calor de la crisis; una invitación abierta a actualizar la herencia ilustrada. Autoritarismo, fanatismo, catastrofismo, terrorismo… son algunas de las caras de una poderosa reacción antiilustrada que domina los relatos de nuestro presente. Ante la actual crisis de civilización, solo parece haber dos salidas: o condena o salvación. Lo que esconde esta disyuntiva es una rendición.

Evolutions brings to life the latest scientific thinking on the birth of the universe and the solar system, the journey from a single cell all the way to our human minds. Reawakening our sense of wonder and terror at the world around us and within us, Oren Harman uses modern science to create new and original mythologies.

Can scientific explanation ever make reference to God or the supernatural? The present consensus is no; indeed, a naturalistic stance is usually taken to be a distinguishing feature of modern science. Science Without God?: Rethinking the History of Scientific Naturalism shows that the history of Western science presents us with a more nuanced picture.

En près de cinq heures, ce livre audio retrace l'histoire de France aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles.

Regarding your life and your brief existence on Earth, is that all there is? If you have ever felt that there is more here than an exclusively physical reality, you may be surprised to discover that scientific data from astronomy, quantum physics, biology, neuropsychology and cosmology actually confirms your intuition. With unusual clarity and humor, Dr. Shawn Adair Johnston reveals the utter failure of current science, based on an exclusively physical model of the universe, to account for the origin of the cosmos, human DNA, consciousness, free will or criminal behavior.

In the wake of a divorce, science writer and single mother Kayt Sukel made herself a guinea pig in the labs of some unusual love experts to find out. This Is Your Brain on Sex is her lively and hilarious examination of the big questions about love and sex, previously published in hardcover as Dirty Minds. Each chapter of this edgy romp through the romantic brain looks at a different aspect of love above the belt.

Written in 1791 as a response to Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, Thomas Paine's Rights of Man is a seminal work on human freedom and equality. Using the French Revolution and its ideals as an example, he demonstrates his belief that any government must put the inherent rights of its citizens above all else, especially politics.