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Author: John Long
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
ISBN: 0465021417
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
A director of biorobotics research at Vassar College demonstrates how applying principles of natural selection to robot design is revolutionizing ideas in both technology and evolution, identifying the potential capabilities of a practice that combines experimental science, engineering and natural process. 14,000 first printing.
Author: John Long
Publisher: Soft Skull Press
ISBN: 0465021417
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Get Book Here
Book Description
A director of biorobotics research at Vassar College demonstrates how applying principles of natural selection to robot design is revolutionizing ideas in both technology and evolution, identifying the potential capabilities of a practice that combines experimental science, engineering and natural process. 14,000 first printing.
Author: John Long
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465029280
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
What happens when we let robots play the game of life?br Darwin's Devices, Long tells the story of these evolving biorobots -- how they came to be, and what they can teach us about the biology of living and extinct species. Evolving biorobots can replicate creatures that disappeared from the earth long ago, showing us in real time what happens in the face of unexpected environmental challenges. Biomechanically correct models of backbones functioning as part of an autonomous robot, for example, can help us understand why the first vertebrates evolved them.But the most impressive feature of these robots, as Long shows, is their ability to illustrate the power of evolution to solve difficult technological challenges autonomously -- without human input regarding what a workable solution might be. Even a simple robot can create complex behavior, often learning or evolving greater intelligence than humans could possibly program. This remarkable idea could forever alter the face of engineering, design, and even warfare. An amazing tour through the workings of a fertile mind, Darwin's Devices will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about evolution, robot intelligence, and life itself.
Author: Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439126291
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 596
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Book Description
In a book that is both groundbreaking and accessible, Daniel C. Dennett, whom Chet Raymo of The Boston Globe calls "one of the most provocative thinkers on the planet," focuses his unerringly logical mind on the theory of natural selection, showing how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of humanity's place in the universe. Dennett vividly describes the theory itself and then extends Darwin's vision with impeccable arguments to their often surprising conclusions, challenging the views of some of the most famous scientists of our day.
Author: Richard G. Delisle
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030172031
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 279
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Book Description
This book offers a thorough reanalysis of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, which for many people represents the work that alone gave rise to evolutionism. Of course, scholars today know better than that. Yet, few resist the temptation of turning to the Origin in order to support it or reject it in light of their own work. Apparently, Darwin fills the mythical role of a founding figure that must either be invoked or repudiated. The book is an invitation to move beyond what is currently expected of Darwin's magnum opus. Once the rhetorical varnish of Darwin's discourses is removed, one discovers a work of remarkably indecisive conclusions. The book comprises two main theses: (1) The Origin of Species never remotely achieved the theoretical unity to which it is often credited. Rather, Darwin was overwhelmed by a host of phenomena that could not fit into his narrow conceptual framework. (2) In the Origin of Species, Darwin failed at completing the full conversion to evolutionism. Carrying many ill-designed intellectual tools of the 17th and 18th centuries, Darwin merely promoted a special brand of evolutionism, one that prevented him from taking the decisive steps toward an open and modern evolutionism. It makes an interesting read for biologists, historians and philosophers alike.
Author: Stephen C. Meyer
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062071491
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 605
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Book Description
When Charles Darwin finished The Origin of Species, he thought that he had explained every clue, but one. Though his theory could explain many facts, Darwin knew that there was a significant event in the history of life that his theory did not explain. During this event, the “Cambrian explosion,” many animals suddenly appeared in the fossil record without apparent ancestors in earlier layers of rock. In Darwin’s Doubt, Stephen C. Meyer tells the story of the mystery surrounding this explosion of animal life—a mystery that has intensified, not only because the expected ancestors of these animals have not been found, but because scientists have learned more about what it takes to construct an animal. During the last half century, biologists have come to appreciate the central importance of biological information—stored in DNA and elsewhere in cells—to building animal forms. Expanding on the compelling case he presented in his last book, Signature in the Cell, Meyer argues that the origin of this information, as well as other mysterious features of the Cambrian event, are best explained by intelligent design, rather than purely undirected evolutionary processes.
Author: Ilse Nina Bulhof
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9789004096448
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
In modern times science has avoided rhetorical and poetical forms. Its hallmarks were brevity and exactitude, with disdain for "non-functional" ornamentation. This book shows that the language of scientists does remain language and that a skillful use of its rhetorical and poetic aspects often determines the "facts" and the transmission of information. The exceptional literary qualities of Darwin's The Origin of Species are taken as a point in case. The importance of language in science has ontological implications: science can no longer be considered an action performed by a speaking subject on a mute object. Does the creative role of language in science mean that human beings "create" the world? The author emphatically rejects a conclusion which would degrade nature to mere malleable material at the mercy of human beings. A hermeneutical model for the relationship between knower and known is suggested: creative interaction between reader and text. The reader's responses actualise a text's meaning; in like manner, scientists give their responses to reality by actualising one of many possibilities. The hermeneutical ontology proposed in this book steers away from the rocks of realism and anti-realism.
Author: Gillian Beer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521783927
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
New edition of highly acclaimed book examining Darwin's work in a literary/cultural context.
Author: Brian D. Smith
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 131715472X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296
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Book Description
Darwin’s Medicine is the sequel to Brian D. Smith’s influential and critically acclaimed Future of Pharma (Gower, 2011). Whereas the earlier book predicted the evolution of the pharmaceutical market and the business models of pharmaceutical companies, Darwin’s Medicine goes much deeper into the drivers of industry change and how leading pharmaceutical and medical technology companies are adapting their strategies, structures and capabilities in practice. Through the lens of evolutionary science, Professor Smith explores the speciation of new business models in the Life Sciences Industry. This sophisticated and highly original approach offers insights into: The mechanisms of evolution in this exceptional industry; The six great technological and social shifts that are shaping its landscape; The emergence of 26 distinct, new business models; and The lessons that enable firms to direct and accelerate their own evolution. These insights map out the industry’s complex, changing landscape and provide an invaluable guide to those firms seeking to survive and thrive in this dynamic market. The book is essential reading for anyone working in or studying the pharmaceutical, medical technology and related sectors. It provides a unique and novel way of making sense of the transformation we can see going on around us and a practical, focused approach to managing a firm’s evolutionary trajectory.
Author: Matthew Crippen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 023154880X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 214
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Book Description
Pragmatism—a pluralistic philosophy with kinships to phenomenology, Gestalt psychology, and embodied cognitive science—is resurging across disciplines. It has growing relevance to literary studies, the arts, and religious scholarship, along with branches of political theory, not to mention our understanding of science. But philosophies and sciences of mind have lagged behind this pragmatic turn, for the most part retaining a central-nervous-system orientation, which pragmatists reject as too narrow. Matthew Crippen, a philosopher of mind, and Jay Schulkin, a behavioral neuroscientist, offer an innovative interdisciplinary theory of mind. They argue that pragmatism in combination with phenomenology is not only able to give an unusually persuasive rendering of how we think, feel, experience, and act in the world but also provides the account most consistent with current evidence from cognitive science and neurobiology. Crippen and Schulkin contend that cognition, emotion, and perception are incomplete without action, and in action they fuse together. Not only are we embodied subjects whose thoughts, emotions, and capacities comprise one integrated system; we are living ecologies inseparable from our surroundings, our cultures, and our world. Ranging from social coordination to the role of gut bacteria and visceral organs in mental activity, and touching upon fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, and plant cognition, Crippen and Schulkin stress the role of aesthetics, emotions, interests, and moods in the ongoing enactment of experience. Synthesizing philosophy, neurobiology, psychology, and the history of science, Mind Ecologies offers a broad and deep exploration of evidence for the embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended nature of mind.
Author: John Reiss
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520944402
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 441
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Book Description
More than two centuries ago, William Paley introduced his famous metaphor of the universe as a watch made by the Creator. For Paley, the exquisite structure of the universe necessitated a designer. Today, some 150 years since Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published, the argument of design is seeing a revival. This provocative work tells how Darwin left the door open for this revival--and at the same time argues for a new conceptual framework that avoids the problematic teleology inherent in Darwin's formulation of natural selection. In a wide-ranging discussion of the historical and philosophical dimensions of evolutionary theory from the ancient Greeks to today, John Reiss argues that we should look to the principle of the conditions for existence, first formulated before On the Origin of Species by the French paleontologist Georges Cuvier, to clarify the relation of adaptation to evolution. Reiss suggests that Cuvier's principle can help resolve persistent issues in evolutionary biology, including the proper definition of natural selection, the distinction between natural selection and genetic drift, and the meaning of genetic load. Moreover, he shows how this principle can help unite diverse areas of biology, ranging from quantitative genetics and the theory of the levels of selection to evo-devo, ecology, physiology, and conservation biology.
