Natural Science in Western History

Natural Science in Western History

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  • Author: Frederick Gregory
  • Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing Company
  • ISBN: 9780618224104
  • Category : History
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 625

Natural Science in Western History provides an up-to-date and comprehensive survey of western science from ancient times through the Enlightenment to the present. Author Frederick Gregory, past president of the History of Science Society, applies his expertise in teaching the history of science to this thorough and visually interesting survey. Numerous photographs and line drawings throughout this dynamic text illustrate some of the more complex scientific principles. Every chapter discusses a philosophical topic in the history of western science, including such topics as science vs. magic, mathematics vs. nature, and evolution vs. natural selection.


The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition

The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition

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  • Author: Gary B. Ferngren
  • Publisher: Routledge
  • ISBN: 9781138867833
  • Category :
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 608

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.


Magic, Mystery, and Science

Magic, Mystery, and Science

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  • Author: Dan Burton
  • Publisher: Indiana University Press
  • ISBN: 9780253216564
  • Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 414

"[P.D. Ouspensky's] yearning for a transcendent, timeless reality—one that cancels out physical disintegration and death—figures into science at some fundamental level. Einstein found solace in his theory of relativity, which suggested to him that events are ever-present in the space-time continuum. When his friend Michele Besso passed on shortly before his own death, he wrote: 'For us believing physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, even if a stubborn one.'" —from Magic, Mystery, and Science The triumph of science would appear to have routed all other explanations of reality. No longer does astrology or alchemy or magic have the power to explain the world to us. Yet at one time each of these systems of belief, like religion, helped shed light on what was dark to our understanding. Nor have the occult arts disappeared. We humans have a need for mystery and a sense of the infinite. Magic, Mystery, and Science presents the occult as a "third stream" of belief, as important to the shaping of Western civilization as Greek rationalism or Judeo-Christianity. The occult seeks explanations in a world that is living and intelligent—quite unlike the one supposed by science. By taking these beliefs seriously, while keeping an eye on science, this book aims to capture some of the power of the occult. Readers will discover that the occult has a long history that reaches back to Babylonia and ancient Egypt. It proceeds alongside, and frequently mingles with, religion and science. From the Egyptian Book of the Dead to New Age beliefs, from Plato to Adolf Hitler, occult ways of knowing have been used—and hideously abused—to explain a world that still tempts us with the knowledge of its dark secrets.


Human Life and the Natural World

Human Life and the Natural World

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  • Author: Owen Goldin
  • Publisher: Broadview Press
  • ISBN: 9781551111070
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 276

Human concern over the urgency of current environmental issues increasingly entails wide-ranging discussions of how we may rethink the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world. In order to provide a context for such discussions this anthology provides a selection of some of the most important, interesting and influential readings on the subject from classical times through to the late nineteenth century. Included are such figures as Xenophon, Plato, Aristotle, Hildegard of Bingen, St Francis of Assisi, Bacon, Descartes, Kant, Mill, Emerson and Thoreau. As the collection as a whole amply demonstrates, the history of western philosophical accounts of nature can help us to better understand current attitudes and problems. Human Life and the Natural World may also be of interest to a broad range of philosophers and students of philosophy, and more generally to those with a concern for the environment that engages the intellect as well as the heart.


The Idea of Nature

The Idea of Nature

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  • Author: Robin George Collingwood
  • Publisher: Oxford University Press
  • ISBN: 0198020015
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 194

Collingwood's theory of philosophical method applied to the problem of the philosophy of nature.


Before Nature

Before Nature

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  • Author: Francesca Rochberg
  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN: 022640627X
  • Category : Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 380

In the modern West, we take for granted that what we call the “natural world” confronts us all and always has—but Before Nature explores that almost unimaginable time when there was no such conception of “nature”—no word, reference, or sense for it. Before the concept of nature formed over the long history of European philosophy and science, our ancestors in ancient Assyria and Babylonia developed an inquiry into the world in a way that is kindred to our modern science. With Before Nature, Francesca Rochberg explores that Assyro-Babylonian knowledge tradition and shows how it relates to the entire history of science. From a modern, Western perspective, a world not conceived somehow within the framework of physical nature is difficult—if not impossible—to imagine. Yet, as Rochberg lays out, ancient investigations of regularity and irregularity, norms and anomalies clearly established an axis of knowledge between the knower and an intelligible, ordered world. Rochberg is the first scholar to make a case for how exactly we can understand cuneiform knowledge, observation, prediction, and explanation in relation to science—without recourse to later ideas of nature. Systematically examining the whole of Mesopotamian science with a distinctive historical and methodological approach, Before Nature will open up surprising new pathways for studying the history of science.


Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization

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  • Author: Samuel Gregg
  • Publisher: Simon and Schuster
  • ISBN: 1621579069
  • Category : Political Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 195

"Gregg's book is the closet thing I've encountered in a long time to a one-volume user's manual for operating Western Civilization." —The Stream "Reason, Faith, and the Struggle for Western Civilization offers a concise intellectual history of the West through the prism of the relationship between faith and reason." —Free Beacon The genius of Western civilization is its unique synthesis of reason and faith. But today that synthesis is under attack—from the East by radical Islam (faith without reason) and from within the West itself by aggressive secularism (reason without faith). The stakes are incalculably high. The naïve and increasingly common assumption that reason and faith are incompatible is simply at odds with the facts of history. The revelation in the Hebrew Scriptures of a reasonable Creator imbued Judaism and Christianity with a conviction that the world is intelligible, leading to the flowering of reason and the invention of science in the West. It was no accident that the Enlightenment took place in the culture formed by the Jewish and Christian faiths. We can all see that faith without reason is benighted at best, fanatical and violent at worst. But too many forget that reason, stripped of faith, is subject to its own pathologies. A supposedly autonomous reason easily sinks into fanaticism, stifling dissent as bigoted and irrational and devouring the humane civilization fostered by the integration of reason and faith. The blood-soaked history of the twentieth century attests to the totalitarian forces unleashed by corrupted reason. But Samuel Gregg does more than lament the intellectual and spiritual ruin caused by the divorce of reason and faith. He shows that each of these foundational principles corrects the other’s excesses and enhances our comprehension of the truth in a continuous renewal of civilization. By recovering this balance, we can avoid a suicidal winner-take-all conflict between reason and faith and a future that will respect neither.


The Restless Clock

The Restless Clock

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  • Author: Jessica Riskin
  • Publisher: University of Chicago Press
  • ISBN: 022630292X
  • Category : Philosophy
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 571

A core principle of modern science holds that a scientific explanation must not attribute will or agency to natural phenomena. "The Restless Clock" examines the origins and history of this, in particular as it applies to the science of living things. This is also the story of a tradition of radicals--dissenters who embraced the opposite view, that agency is an essential and ineradicable part of nature. Beginning with the church and courtly automata of early modern Europe, Jessica Riskin guides us through our thinking about the extent to which animals might be understood as mere machines. We encounter fantastic robots and cyborgs as well as a cast of scientific and philosophical luminaries, including Descartes and Leibnitz, Lamarck and Darwin, whose ideas gain new relevance in Riskin's hands. The book ends with a riveting discussion of how the dialectic continues in genetics, epigenetics, and evolutionary biology, where work continues to naturalize different forms of agency. "The Restless Clock "reveals the deeply buried roots of current debates in artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology.


The Epigenetics Revolution

The Epigenetics Revolution

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  • Author: Nessa Carey
  • Publisher: Columbia University Press
  • ISBN: 0231530714
  • Category : Science
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 353

Epigenetics can potentially revolutionize our understanding of the structure and behavior of biological life on Earth. It explains why mapping an organism's genetic code is not enough to determine how it develops or acts and shows how nurture combines with nature to engineer biological diversity. Surveying the twenty-year history of the field while also highlighting its latest findings and innovations, this volume provides a readily understandable introduction to the foundations of epigenetics. Nessa Carey, a leading epigenetics researcher, connects the field's arguments to such diverse phenomena as how ants and queen bees control their colonies; why tortoiseshell cats are always female; why some plants need cold weather before they can flower; and how our bodies age and develop disease. Reaching beyond biology, epigenetics now informs work on drug addiction, the long-term effects of famine, and the physical and psychological consequences of childhood trauma. Carey concludes with a discussion of the future directions for this research and its ability to improve human health and well-being.


The Republic of Nature

The Republic of Nature

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  • Author: Mark Fiege
  • Publisher: University of Washington Press
  • ISBN: 0295804149
  • Category : History
  • Languages : en
  • Pages : 601

In the dramatic narratives that comprise The Republic of Nature, Mark Fiege reframes the canonical account of American history based on the simple but radical premise that nothing in the nation's past can be considered apart from the natural circumstances in which it occurred. Revisiting historical icons so familiar that schoolchildren learn to take them for granted, he makes surprising connections that enable readers to see old stories in a new light. Among the historical moments revisited here, a revolutionary nation arises from its environment and struggles to reconcile the diversity of its people with the claim that nature is the source of liberty. Abraham Lincoln, an unlettered citizen from the countryside, steers the Union through a moment of extreme peril, guided by his clear-eyed vision of nature's capacity for improvement. In Topeka, Kansas, transformations of land and life prompt a lawsuit that culminates in the momentous civil rights case of Brown v. Board of Education. By focusing on materials and processes intrinsic to all things and by highlighting the nature of the United States, Fiege recovers the forgotten and overlooked ground on which so much history has unfolded. In these pages, the nation's birth and development, pain and sorrow, ideals and enduring promise come to life as never before, making a once-familiar past seem new. The Republic of Nature points to a startlingly different version of history that calls on readers to reconnect with fundamental forces that shaped the American experience. For more information, visit the author's website: http://republicofnature.com/