Science, especially naturalistic science, has come under fire of late. No longer does it command the near universal respect it once held. From the right has come a fresh attack on Darwinism and argume
Exploring the Limits of the Human through Science Fiction examines the genre of science fiction as its own form of critical theory and argues that it proves crucial to understanding the human in the p
Based on recent primary research in anthropology, sociology, history and politics, and on insights from political activism, Gender in Flux addresses gender as a main axis of social organization and cultural practice in China. Covering the impoverished rural 'sending' villages of western China to the big and wealthy Yangzi valley city of Nanjing, the far northeastern village of Huangbaiyu to the major urban centres of Tianjin and Beijing, it examines gendered practices and experiences in socio-economic, political and administrative configurations, family and household organization, education, employment and mobility, and generation. The volume addresses gendered expectations and practices as lived experience within and across different scales, challenging the standard social science division of urban, rural and migrant. Gender in Flux thus sheds important light on how the changing manifestations and articulations of gender across different practices confound any attempt at a uniform ana
Commercial gambling is a recent historical phenomenon. It has developed into a profitable industry that supplies a range of recreational activities to its customers, and is a significant way of collec
Technology Assessment processes can be taken as a paradigm for interdisciplinary research. It is expected that interdisciplinary Technology Assessment is able to find solutions for actual sociopolitic
“The Limits to Growth” (Meadows, 1972) generated unprecedented controversy with its predictions of the eventual collapse of the world's economies. First hailed as a great advance in science, “The Limi
Few approaches in political science have generated so much controversy as rational choice theory. Some claim that the approach has made political science scientific. Its critics argue that it involves
Science fiction is probably the most popular box office genre in movie history and has given filmgoers some of their most memorable cinematic experiences. Outer Limits takes its readers on a tour of t
Ellis (political science and history, Lethbridge Community College, Canada) chronologically examines the evolution of Canada's Reform Party from its founding in the late 1980s to its eventual decommis
William Uttal is concerned that in an effort to prove itself a hard science, psychology may have thrown away one of its most important methodological tools—a critical analysis of the fundamenta
This book challenges the hegemonic view that economic calculation represents the ultimate rationality. The West legitimises its global dominance by the claim to be a rational, democratic, science-base
This lecture explores the limits of politics in three senses: as a subject of study at Cambridge, as an academic discipline, and as a practical activity. Politics did not develop as an independent academic subject in Cambridge in the twentieth century, and only now is this situation being rectified with the creation of the new Department of Politics and International Studies. Politics as an academic discipline was once conceived as the master science. More recently it has become much more limited in its scope and its methods, but it still needs to preserve a tradition of political reasoning which focuses on problems rather than methodology, and is concerned with understanding the limits to politics. The limits of politics as a practical activity are explored through four modes of political reasoning: the sceptical, the idealist, the rationalist and the realist, as exemplified by the writings of Oakeshott, Keynes, Hayek, and Carr.
A collection of essays by Alexander Rosenberg, the distinguished philosopher of science. The essays cover three broad areas related to Darwinian thought and naturalism: the first deals with the solution of philosophical problems such as reductionism, the second with the development of social theories, and the third with the intersection of evolutionary biology with economics, political philosophy, and public policy. Specific papers deal with naturalistic epistemology, the limits of reductionism, the biological justification of ethics, the so-called 'trolley problem' in moral philosophy, the political philosophy of biological endowments, and the Human Genome Project and its implications for policy. Rosenberg's important writings on a variety of issues are here organized into a coherent philosophical framework which promises to be a significant and controversial contribution to scholarship in many areas.
All too often in contemporary discourse, we hear about science overstepping its proper limits—about its brazenness, arrogance, and intellectual imperialism. The problem, critics say, is scientis
All too often in contemporary discourse, we hear about science overstepping its proper limits—about its brazenness, arrogance, and intellectual imperialism. The problem, critics say, is scientis
The best thing about Art Therapy is that it doesn’t ask for you to have the mad skills of Leonardo da Vinci or Picasso to be admitted and reap its benefits. Also, it doesn’t have age limits. So it’s b
From the scorching center of Earth's core to the outer limits of its atmosphere, from the gradual process of erosion that carved the Grand Canyon to the earth-shaking fury of volcanoes and earthquakes
From the scorching center of Earth's core to the outer limits of its atmosphere, from the gradual process of erosion that carved the Grand Canyon to the earth-shaking fury of volcanoes and earthquakes
George Levine is one of the world's leading scholars of Victorian literature and culture. This collection of his essays develops the key themes of his work: the intersection of nineteenth-century British literature, culture and science and the relation of knowledge and truth to ethics. The essays offer perspectives on George Eliot, Thackeray, the Positivists, and the Scientific Naturalists, and reassess the complex relationship between Ruskin and Darwin. In readings of Lawrence and Coetzee, Levine addresses Victorian and modern efforts to push beyond the limits of realist art by testing its aesthetic and epistemological limits in engagement with the self and the other. Some of Levine's most important contributions to the field are reprinted, in revised and updated form, alongside previously unpublished material. Together, these essays cohere into an exploration both of Victorian literature and culture and of ethical, epistemological, and aesthetic problems fundamental to our own times.
