Debating Science

The nineteenth century was, for many societies, a period of coming to grips with the growing, and seemingly unstoppable, domination of the world by the ?Great Powers” of Europe. The Ottoman Empire was

In order to increase the quality of the debate over the proper role of science in society, scholars of philosophy, social sciences, and environmental sciences explain the practice of cooperative delib

Advancements in computing, instrumentation, robotics, digital imaging, and simulation modeling have changed science into a technology-driven institution. Government, industry, and society increasingly

Taking on questions of scientific rationality, the social construction of scientific truth, and the authority and cultural biases of scientific practice, this reader offers arguments from both sides o

Throughout distressing cultural battles and disputes over child care, each side claims to have the best interests of children at heart. While developmental scientists have concrete evidence for this debate, their message is often lost or muddied by the media. To demonstrate why this problem matters, this book examines the extensive media coverage of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development – a long-running government-funded study that provides the most comprehensive look at the effects of early child care on American children. Analyses of newspaper articles and interviews with scientists and journalists reveal what happens to science in the public sphere and how children's issues can be used to question parents' choices. By shining light on these issues, the authors bring clarity to the enduring child care wars while providing recommendations for how scientists and the media can talk to – rather than past – each other.

Throughout distressing cultural battles and disputes over child care, each side claims to have the best interests of children at heart. While developmental scientists have concrete evidence for this debate, their message is often lost or muddied by the media. To demonstrate why this problem matters, this book examines the extensive media coverage of the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development – a long-running government-funded study that provides the most comprehensive look at the effects of early child care on American children. Analyses of newspaper articles and interviews with scientists and journalists reveal what happens to science in the public sphere and how children's issues can be used to question parents' choices. By shining light on these issues, the authors bring clarity to the enduring child care wars while providing recommendations for how scientists and the media can talk to – rather than past – each other.

Scholars of philosophy debate a version of hermeneutical philosophy called cognitive existentialism, in particular its application to the natural sciences. They cover the status of theoretical objects

Institutionalism has become one of the dominant strands of theory within contemporary political science. Beginning with the challenge to behavioural and rational choice theory issued by March and Olse

Harmsen (political science, U. of Luxemburg) and Schild (political science, U. of Trier, Germany) present the results of a research project examining the 2009 European Parliament elections. Contributo

Institutionalism has become one of the dominant strands of theory within contemporary political science. Beginning with the challenge to behavioral and rational choice theory issued by March and Olsen

Can science explain powerful human emotions such as love and happiness? Or, are these emotions something more than the action of biochemicals and electrical impulses? Science is constantly uncovering

...attempts to substitute reason and scholarship for diatribe.—The Washington Post Are gay rights equal rights or special rights? Is homosexuality immoral? While contributors to Same Sex, including th

Are gay rights "equal rights" or "special rights?" Is homosexuality immoral? While contributors to Same Sex, including the late John Boswell, David Halperin, and George Chauncey, often clash in opinio

Debating Human Genetics is based on ethnographic research focusing primarily on the UK publics who are debating and engaging with human genetics, and related bio and techno-science. Drawing on recent

Debating Human Genetics is based on ethnographic research focusing primarily on the UK publics who are debating and engaging with human genetics, and related bio and techno-science. Drawing on recent

Bringing together contributors from the fields of law, political science, sociology, and political philosophy, Kohler-Koch (European integration, U. of Mannheim, Germany) and Rittberger (political sci

Drawing upon an extensive review of the literature as well as interviews with key stakeholders, Goulding (information science, Loughborough U.) analyzes the current position of the public library syst

Pointing out that they lack the hindsight later historians will enjoy, Crothers and Lind (both political science, Illinois State U.) provide primary position statements and arguments on the issues, in

In 1875, in a small apartment in New York City, a handful of freemasons and spiritualists met in secret. After hours spent debating advances in science and the spiritual mysteries of the Orient, the assembled guests settled on an idea. What the 19th century needed most, they concluded, was an institution dedicated to exploring the untamed borderlands between scientific and religious thought. Two weeks later, the Theosophical Society was born, inspiring a trans-continental occult revival that fundamentally transformed the religious margins of Western society. The movement that followed was an explosive mix of creativity, spiritual longing, and pseudo-scientific mischief. Piggybacking on the idealist zeal of the fin de si鋃le, major occult sodalities grew like ripples: the Hermetic Order of Golden Dawn, a magical order created by Rev. A. F. A Woodford, William Wynn Westcott and Samuel Mathers; the Anthroposophical Society, created by the Austrian clairvoyant, Rudolf Steiner; and the Ordo

Visions of utopia – some hopeful, others fearful – have become increasingly prevalent in recent times. This groundbreaking, timely book examines expressions of the utopian imagination with a focus on the pressing challenge of how to inhabit a climate-changed world. Forms of social dreaming are tracked across two domains: political theory and speculative fiction. The analysis aims to both uncover the key utopian and dystopian tendencies in contemporary debates around the Anthropocene; as well as to develop a political theory of radical transformation that avoids not only debilitating fatalism but also wishful thinking. This book juxtaposes theoretical interventions, from Bruno Latour to the members of the Dark Mountain collective, with fantasy and science fiction texts by N. K. Jemisin, Kim Stanley Robinson and Margaret Atwood, debating viable futures for a world that will look and feel very different from the one we live in right now.

Most people assume that climate change is recent news. A Temperate Empire shows that we have been debating the science and politics of climate change for a long time, since before the age of industria

The collection is for courses in the history of science and technology, or science and society courses. The 28 essays cover thinking about technology, debating technology 1960s style and 21st-century

Darwin, Dharma, and the Divine is the first book in English on the history of evolutionary theory in Japan. Bringing to life more than a century of ideas, G. Clinton Godart examines how and why Japanese intellectuals, religious thinkers of different faiths, philosophers, biologists, journalists, activists, and ideologues engaged with evolutionary theory and religion. How did Japanese religiously think about evolution? What were their main concerns? Did they reject evolution on religious grounds, or—as was more often the case—how did they combine evolutionary theory with their religious beliefs?Evolutionary theory was controversial and never passively accepted in Japan: It took a hundred years of appropriating, translating, thinking, and debating to reconsider the natural world and the relation between nature, science, and the sacred in light of evolutionary theory. Since its introduction in the nineteenth century, Japanese intellectuals—including Buddhist, Shinto, Confucian, and Christ

Seventeen articles center on the question of whether the collected fragments of Aristotle's student Theophrastus add up to a whole way of looking at his work in philosophy and science. Debating whethe