Science and the Myth of Progress

Science and the Myth of Progress PDF Author: Mehrdad M. Zarandi
Publisher: World Wisdom, Inc
ISBN: 9780941532471
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
In the wake of the fall / Frithjof Schuon -- Sacred and profane science / René Guénon -- Traditional cosmology and the modern world / Titus Burckhardt -- Religion and science / Lord Northbourne -- Contemporary man, between the rim and the axis / Seyyed Hossein Nasr -- Christianity and the religious thought of C.G. Jung / Philip Sherrard - - On earth as it is in heaven / James S. Cutsinger -- The nature and extent of criticism of evolutionary theory / Osman Bakar -- Knowledge and knowledge / D.M. Matheson -- Knowledge and its counterfeits / Gai Eaton -- Ignorance / Wendell Berry -- The plague of scientistic belief / Wolfgang Smith -- Scientism: the bedrock of the modern worldview / Huston Smith -- Life as non-historical reality / Giuseppe Sermonti -- Man, creation and the fossil record / Michael Robert Negus -- The act of creation: bridging transcendence and immanence / William A. Dembski.

Science and the Myth of Progress

Science and the Myth of Progress PDF Author: Mehrdad M. Zarandi
Publisher: World Wisdom, Inc
ISBN: 9780941532471
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
In the wake of the fall / Frithjof Schuon -- Sacred and profane science / René Guénon -- Traditional cosmology and the modern world / Titus Burckhardt -- Religion and science / Lord Northbourne -- Contemporary man, between the rim and the axis / Seyyed Hossein Nasr -- Christianity and the religious thought of C.G. Jung / Philip Sherrard - - On earth as it is in heaven / James S. Cutsinger -- The nature and extent of criticism of evolutionary theory / Osman Bakar -- Knowledge and knowledge / D.M. Matheson -- Knowledge and its counterfeits / Gai Eaton -- Ignorance / Wendell Berry -- The plague of scientistic belief / Wolfgang Smith -- Scientism: the bedrock of the modern worldview / Huston Smith -- Life as non-historical reality / Giuseppe Sermonti -- Man, creation and the fossil record / Michael Robert Negus -- The act of creation: bridging transcendence and immanence / William A. Dembski.

The Myth of Progress

The Myth of Progress PDF Author: Tom Wessels
Publisher: UPNE
ISBN: 1611684161
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 175

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Book Description
A provocative critique of Western progress from a scientific perspective

The Glass Half-Empty

The Glass Half-Empty PDF Author: Rodrigo Aguilera
Publisher: Watkins Media Limited
ISBN: 1912248816
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
Despite the doom and gloom of financial crises, global terrorism, climate collapse, and the rise of the far-right, a number of leading intellectuals (Steven Pinker, Hans Rosling, Johan Norberg, and Matt Ridley, among others) have been arguing in recent years that the world is getting better and better. But this “progress narrative” is little more than a very conservative defence of the capitalist status quo. At a time when liberal democracy appears incapable of stemming the tide of the far-right populism, and when laissez-faire capitalism is ill-equipped to deal with socio-economic problems like climate change, inequality, and the future of wok, the real advocates of progress are those willing to challenge these established paradigms. The Glass Half-Empty argues that, without criticising the systems of capitalism, the changes needed to make a better world will always fall short of our expectations. The "progress narrative" needs to be challenged before we stumble into a potentially catastrophic future, despite having the means to build a truly better world.

The End of Progress

The End of Progress PDF Author: Amy Allen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231540639
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School—Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst—have defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like? Amy Allen fractures critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resource we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future.

The Myth of Scientific Literacy

The Myth of Scientific Literacy PDF Author: Morris Herbert Shamos
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 9780813521961
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
Shamos argues that a meaningful scientific literacy cannot be achieved in the first place, and the attempt is a misuse of human resources on a grand scale. He is skeptical about forecasts of "critical shortfalls in scientific manpower" and about the motives behind crash programs to get more young people into the science pipeline.

The Silence of Animals

The Silence of Animals PDF Author: John Gray
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0374229171
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
"An exploration of the failures of reason in human life and the enduring role of myth in science, politics, and morality"--

Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science

Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science PDF Author: Ronald L. Numbers
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674967984
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A Guardian “Favourite Reads—as Chosen by Scientists” Selection “Tackles some of science’s most enduring misconceptions.” —Discover A falling apple inspired Isaac Newton’s insight into the law of gravity—or did it really? Among the many myths debunked in this refreshingly irreverent book are the idea that alchemy was a superstitious pursuit, that Darwin put off publishing his theory of evolution for fear of public reprisal, and that Gregor Mendel was ahead of his time as a pioneer of genetics. More recent myths about particle physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity are discredited too, and a number of dubious generalizations, like the notion that science and religion are antithetical, or that science can neatly be distinguished from pseudoscience, go under the microscope of history. Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science brushes away popular fictions and refutes the widespread belief that science advances when individual geniuses experience “Eureka!” moments and suddenly grasp what those around them could never imagine. “Delightful...thought-provoking...Every reader should find something to surprise them.” —Jim Endersby, Science “Better than just countering the myths, the book explains when they arose and why they stuck.” —The Guardian

The World As It Is

The World As It Is PDF Author: Chris Hedges
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568586612
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Drawing on two decades of experience as a war correspondent and based on his numerous columns for Truthdig, Chris Hedges presents The World As It Is, a panorama of the American empire at home and abroad, from the coarsening effect of America's War on Terror to the front lines in the Middle East and South Asia and the continuing Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Underlying his reportage is a constant struggle with the nature of war and its impact on human civilization. "War is always about betrayal," Hedges notes. "It is about betrayal of the young by the old, of cynics by idealists, and of soldiers and Marines by politicians. Society's institutions, including our religious institutions, which mold us into compliant citizens, are unmasked."

The Myth of Artificial Intelligence

The Myth of Artificial Intelligence PDF Author: Erik J. Larson
Publisher: Belknap Press
ISBN: 0674983513
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
“Exposes the vast gap between the actual science underlying AI and the dramatic claims being made for it.” —John Horgan “If you want to know about AI, read this book...It shows how a supposedly futuristic reverence for Artificial Intelligence retards progress when it denigrates our most irreplaceable resource for any future progress: our own human intelligence.” —Peter Thiel Ever since Alan Turing, AI enthusiasts have equated artificial intelligence with human intelligence. A computer scientist working at the forefront of natural language processing, Erik Larson takes us on a tour of the landscape of AI to reveal why this is a profound mistake. AI works on inductive reasoning, crunching data sets to predict outcomes. But humans don’t correlate data sets. We make conjectures, informed by context and experience. And we haven’t a clue how to program that kind of intuitive reasoning, which lies at the heart of common sense. Futurists insist AI will soon eclipse the capacities of the most gifted mind, but Larson shows how far we are from superintelligence—and what it would take to get there. “Larson worries that we’re making two mistakes at once, defining human intelligence down while overestimating what AI is likely to achieve...Another concern is learned passivity: our tendency to assume that AI will solve problems and our failure, as a result, to cultivate human ingenuity.” —David A. Shaywitz, Wall Street Journal “A convincing case that artificial general intelligence—machine-based intelligence that matches our own—is beyond the capacity of algorithmic machine learning because there is a mismatch between how humans and machines know what they know.” —Sue Halpern, New York Review of Books

The Myth of the Framework

The Myth of the Framework PDF Author: Karl Popper
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113597473X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
In a career spanning sixty years, Sir Karl Popper has made some of the most important contributions to the twentieth century discussion of science and rationality. The Myth of the Framework is a new collection of some of Popper's most important material on this subject. Sir Karl discusses such issues as the aims of science, the role that it plays in our civilization, the moral responsibility of the scientist, the structure of history, and the perennial choice between reason and revolution. In doing so, he attacks intellectual fashions (like positivism) that exagerrate what science and rationality have done, as well as intellectual fashions (like relativism) that denigrate what science and rationality can do. Scientific knowledge, according to Popper, is one of the most rational and creative of human achievements, but it is also inherently fallible and subject to revision. In place of intellectual fashions, Popper offers his own critical rationalism - a view that he regards both as a theory of knowlege and as an attitude towards human life, human morals and democracy. Published in cooperation with the Central European University.