Understanding the emergence of a scientific culture - one in which cognitive values generally are modelled on, or subordinated to, scientific ones - is one of the foremost historical and philosophical problems with which we are now confronted.
In this scientific 'Credo', Peter Atkins considers the universal questions of origins, endings, birth, and death to which religions have claimed answers.
In 1859 Darwin described a deceptively simple mechanism that he called "e;natural selection,"e; a combination of variation, inheritance, and reproductive success.
This book presents the life and personality, the scientific and philosophical work of Ludwig Boltzmann, one of the great scientists who marked the passage from 19th- to 20th-Century physics.
In the follow-up to his acclaimed Science in the Looking Glass, Brian Davies discusses deep problems about our place in the world, using a minimum of technical jargon.
From the sheep, dog, and cockerel that were sent aloft in Montgolfier's balloon, to Galvani's frog's legs, Dolly the Sheep, the finches of the Galapagos, and even imaginary cats and simulated life forms, Pavlov's Dogs and Schrodinger's Cat explores the fascinating history of the role of living things in science.
Peter Byrne tells the story of Hugh Everett III (1930-1982), whose "e;many worlds"e; theory of multiple universes has had a profound impact on physics and philosophy.
In 1859 Darwin described a deceptively simple mechanism that he called "e;natural selection,"e; a combination of variation, inheritance, and reproductive success.
As the study of time has flourished in the physical and human sciences, the philosophy of time has come into its own as a lively and diverse area of academic research.
Geoffrey Lloyd engages in a wide-ranging exploration of what we can learn from the study of ancient civilisations that is relevant to fundamental problems, both intellectual and moral, that we still face today.
From the sheep, dog, and cockerel that were sent aloft in Montgolfier's balloon, to Galvani's frog's legs, Dolly the Sheep, the finches of the Galapagos, and even imaginary cats and simulated life forms, Pavlov's Dogs and Schrodinger's Cat explores the fascinating history of the role of living things in science.
In Embodied Minds in Action, Robert Hanna and Michelle Maiese work out a unified treatment of three fundamental philosophical problems: the mind-body problem, the problem of mental causation, and the problem of action.
John Cottingham explores central areas of Descartes's rich and wide-ranging philosophical system, including his accounts of thought and language, of freedom and action, of our relationship to the animal domain, and of human morality and the conduct of life.
Our lives, states of health, relationships, behaviour, experiences of the natural world, and the technologies that shape our contemporary existence are subject to a superfluity of competing, multi-faceted and sometimes incompatible explanations.
