Coined barely two decades ago, the Anthropocene has become one of the most influential and controversial terms in environmental policy. Yet it remains an ambivalent and contested formulation, giving rise to a multitude of unexpected, and often uncomfortable, conversations. This book traces in detail a broad variety of such 'Anthropocene encounters': in science, philosophy and literary fiction. It asks what it means to 'think green' in a time when nature no longer offers a stable backdrop to political analysis. Do familiar political categories and concepts, such as democracy, justice, power and time, hold when confronted with a world radically transformed by humans? The book responds by inviting more radical political thought, plural forms of engagement, and extended ethical commitments, making it a fascinating and timely volume for graduate students and researchers working in earth system governance, environmental politics and studies of the Anthropocene. This is one of a series of pub
Do we need to reconsider scientific methodology in light of modern physics? Has the traditional scientific method become outdated, does it need to be defended against dangerous incursions, or has it always been different from what the canonical view suggests? To what extent should we accept non-empirical strategies for scientific theory assessment? Many core aspects of contemporary fundamental physics are far from empirically well-confirmed. There is controversy on the epistemic status of the corresponding theories, in particular cosmic inflation, the multiverse, and string theory. This collection of essays is based on the high profile workshop 'Why Trust a Theory?' and provides interdisciplinary perspectives on empirical testing in fundamental physics from leading physicists, philosophers and historians of science. Integrating different contemporary and historical positions, it will be of interest to philosophers of science and physicists, as well as anyone interested in the foundatio
Supranational governance is being challenged by politicians and citizens around the EU as over-centralized and undemocratic. This book is premised on the idea that polycentric governance, developed by Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, is a fruitful place to start for addressing this challenge. Assessing the presence of, and potential for, polycentric governance within the EU means approaching established principles and practices from a new perspective. While the debate on these issues is rich, longstanding and interdisciplinary, it has proven difficult to sidestep the 'renationalisation/federalisation' dichotomy. The aim of this volume is not to reject the EU's institutional structure but provide a different benchmark for the assessment of its functioning. Polycentric theory highlights the importance of multilevel horizontal relationships within the EU - between states, but also between many sub-state actors, all the way down to individuals. This helps us answer the question: how do we achiev
In this book Steven Levine explores the relation between objectivity and experience from a pragmatic point of view. Like many new pragmatists he aims to rehabilitate objectivity in the wake of Richard Rorty's rejection of the concept. But he challenges the idea, put forward by pragmatists like Robert Brandom, that objectivity is best rehabilitated in communicative-theoretic terms - namely, in terms that can be cashed out by capacities that agents gain through linguistic communication. Levine proposes instead that objectivity is best understood in experiential-theoretic terms. He explains how, in order to meet the aims of the new pragmatists, we need to do more than see objectivity as a norm of rationality embedded in our social-linguistic practices; we also need to see it as emergent from our experiential interaction with the world. Innovative and carefully argued, this book redeems and re-actualizes for contemporary philosophy a key insight developed by the classical pragmatists.
In recent years, law and religion scholarship has increasingly emphasized the need to study the interaction of legal and religious ideas and institutions, norms and practices. The overall question that this scholarship explores may be stated as follows: how do legal and religious ideas and institutions, methods and mechanisms, beliefs and believers influence each other, for better and for worse, in the past, present and future? This volume engages this area of scholarship by examining how law regulates religion, and how religion responds to such regulations. It examines underlying norms influencing state regulation of religion, and challenges emerging from such regulation. Importantly, this volume will go beyond the conventional enquiries that draw upon the Anglo-European approaches and experiences, and emphasize instead Asian perspectives in order to expand and build upon existing understandings about the complex relationship between law and religion.
How do the spaces of the past stay with us through representations—whether literary or photographic? How has the Holocaust registered in our increasingly globally connected consciousness? What does it
Society at large tends to misunderstand what safety is all about. It is not just the absence of harm. When nothing bad happens over a period of time, how do you know you are safe? In reality, safety i
How does the EU function, and why does it function in this fashion? Why do States in Europe choose to co-operate, and how does the EU enable this co-operation? These key questions of EU law and more a
Justice and the Ethics of Legal Interpretation addresses how it is that legal texts -laws, statutes and regulations – can, and do have meaning. Conventionally, legal decisions are justified with refer
Soonil Hwang studies the doctrinal development of nirvana in the Pali Nikaaya and subsequent tradition and compares it with the Chinese aagama and its traditional interpretation. He clarifies early do
This second edition extends the rigorous, self-contained exposition of the theory for viscoelastic wave propagation in layered media to include head waves and general ray theory. The theory, not published elsewhere, provides solutions for fundamental wave-propagation and ray-theory problems valid for any media with a linear response, elastic or anelastic. It explains measurable variations in wave speed, particle motion, and attenuation of body waves, surface waves, and head waves induced at anelastic material boundaries that do not occur for elastic waves. This book may be used as a textbook for advanced university courses and as a research reference in seismology, exploration geophysics, engineering, solid mechanics, and acoustics. It provides computation steps for ray-tracing computer algorithms to develop a variety of tomography inferred anelastic models, such as those for the Earth's deep interior and petroleum reserves. Numerical results and problem sets emphasize important aspect
What is the purpose of a work of art? What drives us to make art? Why do we value art and consume it? Nick Zangwill argues that we cannot understand the nature of art without first having answers to t
This quick yet detailed introduction to set theory and forcing builds the reader's intuition about it as much as the mathematical detail. Intuition, rather absent from the existing literature on the subject, here plays a large role. The reader will not only learn the facts, but will understand why they are true and will be brought to ask: what else could be true? Having presented forcing in Part I, the second part of the book discusses contemporary issues in the theory of forcing. It includes known and some previously unpublished results as well as many open questions. This is ideal for those who want to start a research career in forcing but do not have a personal interlocutor. Obviously, not everything about forcing is in this book. Many references are included to help the reader further explore the vast amount of research literature available on the subject.
How many times have you heard the phrase: `it’s all political correctness gone mad!’Do you ever wonder whether colleges and universities are really awash with trivial concerns about the us
Previously published as a special issue of Social Semiotics, this book grapples with such questions as: What does it mean to be a citizen in contemporary societies? What role do mass media play in the
What sort of thing is a theatre image? How is it produced and consumed? Who is responsible for the images? Why do the images stay with us when the performance is over? How do we learn to speak of what
What sort of thing is a theatre image? How is it produced and consumed? Who is responsible for the images? Why do the images stay with us when the performance is over? How do we learn to speak of what
How does popular music produce its subject? How does it produce us as subjects? More specifically, how does it do this through voice--through "giving voice"? And how should we understand this subject-
Oceanic islands are storehouses for unique creatures. Zoologists have long been fascinated by island animals because they break all the rules. Speedy, nervous, little birds repeatedly evolve to become plump, tame and flightless on islands. Equally strange and wonderful plants have evolved on islands. However, plants are very poorly understood relative to animals. Do plants repeatedly evolve similar patterns in dispersal ability, size and defence on islands? This volume answers this question for the first time using a modern quantitative approach. It not only reviews the literature on differences in defence, loss of dispersal, changes in size, alterations to breeding systems and the loss of fire adaptations, but also brings new data into focus to fill gaps in current understanding. By firmly establishing what is currently known about repeated patterns in the evolution of island plants, this book provides a roadmap for future research.
Integer linear programming (ILP) is a versatile modeling and optimization technique that is increasingly used in non-traditional ways in biology, with the potential to transform biological computation. However, few biologists know about it. This how-to and why-do text introduces ILP through the lens of computational and systems biology. It uses in-depth examples from genomics, phylogenetics, RNA, protein folding, network analysis, cancer, ecology, co-evolution, DNA sequencing, sequence analysis, pedigree and sibling inference, haplotyping, and more, to establish the power of ILP. This book aims to teach the logic of modeling and solving problems with ILP, and to teach the practical 'work flow' involved in using ILP in biology. Written for a wide audience, with no biological or computational prerequisites, this book is appropriate for entry-level and advanced courses aimed at biological and computational students, and as a source for specialists. Numerous exercises and accompanying soft
