Science in an Age of Unreason

Science in an Age of Unreason PDF Author: John Staddon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684513235
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 163

Get Book

Book Description
Science is undergoing an identity crisis! A renown psychologist and biologist diagnoses our age of wishful, magical thinking and blasts out a clarion call for a return to reason and the search for objective knowledge and truth. Fans of Matt Ridley and Nicholas Wade will adore this trenchant meditation and call to action. Science is in trouble. Real questions in desperate need of answers—especially those surrounding ethnicity, gender, climate change, and almost anything related to ‘health and safety’—are swiftly buckling to the fiery societal demands of what ought to be rather than what is. These foregone conclusions may be comforting, but each capitulation to modernity’s whims threatens the integrity of scientific inquiry. Can true, fact-based discovery be redeemed? In Science in an Age of Unreason, legendary professor of psychology and biology, John Staddon, unveils the identity crisis afflicting today’s scientific community, and provides an actionable path to recovery. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Staddon answers pressing questions, including: Is science, especially the science of evolution, a religion? Can ethics be derived from science at all? How sound is social science, particularly surrounding today’s most controversial topics? How can passions be separated from facts? Informed by decades of expertise, Science in an Age of Unreason is a clarion call to rebirth academia as a beacon of reason and truth in a society demanding its unconditional submission.

Science in an Age of Unreason

Science in an Age of Unreason PDF Author: John Staddon
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1684513235
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 163

Get Book

Book Description
Science is undergoing an identity crisis! A renown psychologist and biologist diagnoses our age of wishful, magical thinking and blasts out a clarion call for a return to reason and the search for objective knowledge and truth. Fans of Matt Ridley and Nicholas Wade will adore this trenchant meditation and call to action. Science is in trouble. Real questions in desperate need of answers—especially those surrounding ethnicity, gender, climate change, and almost anything related to ‘health and safety’—are swiftly buckling to the fiery societal demands of what ought to be rather than what is. These foregone conclusions may be comforting, but each capitulation to modernity’s whims threatens the integrity of scientific inquiry. Can true, fact-based discovery be redeemed? In Science in an Age of Unreason, legendary professor of psychology and biology, John Staddon, unveils the identity crisis afflicting today’s scientific community, and provides an actionable path to recovery. With intellectual depth and literary flair, Staddon answers pressing questions, including: Is science, especially the science of evolution, a religion? Can ethics be derived from science at all? How sound is social science, particularly surrounding today’s most controversial topics? How can passions be separated from facts? Informed by decades of expertise, Science in an Age of Unreason is a clarion call to rebirth academia as a beacon of reason and truth in a society demanding its unconditional submission.

Science Under Attack

Science Under Attack PDF Author: Ralph B. Alexander
Publisher: Algora Publishing
ISBN: 1628943653
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book

Book Description
Evidence and logic are lacking in many areas of public debate today on hot-button issues ranging from dietary fat to vaccination. In Science Under Attack, Dr. Alexander shows how science is being abused, sidelined or ignored, making it difficult or impossible for the public to form a reasoned opinion about important issues. Readers will learn why science is becoming more corrupt, and also how it is being abused for political and economic gain, support of activism, or the propping up of religious beliefs. To illustrate how science is being ignored and abused, the author examines six different issues and the way they are currently discussed: evolution, dietary fat, climate change, vaccination, GMO crops and continental drift. In his research, he has gone back to the original source wherever possible rather than quoting second-hand sources, adding a degree of accuracy and nuance often missing. The controversial assertion that science does not support the conventional wisdom on climate change should be of particular interest. Alexander shows that the scientific evidence for a substantial human contribution to climate change is actually flimsy, and he demonstrates the fallacy of comparing the strong link between smoking and lung cancer to the much weaker connection between human activity and global warming.

The Age of American Unreason

The Age of American Unreason PDF Author: Susan Jacoby
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1400096383
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 386

Get Book

Book Description
A scathing indictment of American modern-day culture examines the current disdain for logic and evidence fostered by the mass media, religious fundamentalism, poor public education, a lack of fair-minded intellectuals, and a lazy, credulous public, condemning our addiction to infotainment, from TV to the Web, and assessing its repercussions for the country as a whole. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.

The Genesis of Science

The Genesis of Science PDF Author: James Hannam
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1596982055
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Get Book

Book Description
The Not-So-Dark Dark Ages What they forgot to teach you in school: People in the Middle Ages did not think the world was flat The Inquisition never executed anyone because of their scientific ideologies It was medieval scientific discoveries, including various methods, that made possible Western civilization’s “Scientific Revolution” As a physicist and historian of science James Hannam debunks myths of the Middle Ages in his brilliant book The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution. Without the medieval scholars, there would be no modern science. Discover the Dark Ages and their inventions, research methods, and what conclusions they actually made about the shape of the world.

The Twilight of the Scientific Age

The Twilight of the Scientific Age PDF Author: Martín López Corredoira
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
ISBN: 1612336345
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210

Get Book

Book Description
This book gives a challenging point of view about science and its history/philosophy/sociology. Science is in decline. After centuries of great achievements, the exhaustion of new forms and fatigue have reached our culture in all of its manifestations including the pure sciences. Our society is saturated with knowledge which does not offer people any sense in their lives. There is a loss of ideals in the search for great truths and a shift towards an anodyne specialized industry whose main goal is the sustenance and procreation of an endogamic professional caste. A wide audience of educated people interested in these topics will most likely respond to the ideas expressed here as things they have thought about or observed, but have not dared to say out loud.

The Age of Unreason

The Age of Unreason PDF Author: Greg Keyes
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504049632
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 1323

Get Book

Book Description
Ben Franklin must save the world when Isaac Newton unleashes dark magic in this “ambitious” alternate history series by a New York Times–bestselling author (Library Journal). Greg Keyes reimagines the eighteenth-century as an era of apocalyptic sorcery in which a young printer’s apprentice named Benjamin Franklin joins forces with a host of historical personages to prevent humankind’s annihilation by demons and black magic inadvertently released by the great British alchemist, Sir Isaac Newton. Newton’s Cannon: Isaac Newton’s discovery of philosopher’s mercury threatens to destroy all human life on Earth, unless he and his new American protégé, young Benjamin Franklin, can keep the substance out of the malevolent hands of France’s King Louis XIV. “An intricately crafted, elegantly delivered story filled with idealism and betrayal, adventure, and philosophy . . . fascinating” (Library Journal). A Calculus of Angels: A demonic conspiracy has destroyed England while unleashing chaos and terror upon the world. A possessed Peter the Great marches his conquering armies across a devastated Europe. And Newton and Franklin prepare for Armageddon. Empire of Unreason: As eternal winter descends upon Earth, Franklin returns to the American colonies to hone his alchemical skills and ready his secret cabal of scientists, Native Americans, and former slaves for the upcoming battle for humankind’s survival. “The most original fantasy I have read in years” (Kevin K. Anderson, New York Times–bestselling author). The Shadows of God: Angels and demons watch and wait as the last warriors of dead Europe invade the New World intent on defeating Ben Franklin’s American alliance and conquering the colonies. “Inventive and exciting, filled with clever details and high adventure” (Science Fiction Chronicle).

Global Warming False Alarm

Global Warming False Alarm PDF Author: Ralph B. Alexander
Publisher: Canterbury Publishing
ISBN: 9780984098910
Category : Carbon dioxide
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book

Book Description
This revised edition of Ralph Alexander's 2009 book features approximately 50% new or updated material, including an expanded chapter on alternative explanations to CO2 as the main source of global warming. Newly added sections in the 2nd edition cover temperature tampering by the three major custodians of the world's temperature data, so as to exaggerate the global warming rate; the Climategate scandal; the use of peer review as an alarmist weapon; the neglected influence of the sun on our climate, including the amplification of solar activity by the oceans; heat that is suppposedly hiding in the deep ocean, but can't be found; and more. The new book also describes how the UN's IPCC and other alarmists manipulate climate data, discusses the lack of warming for more than a decade - about which alarmists are in denial, and explains the folly of carbon pricing schemes for regulating CO2. Finally, the author reflects on the reasons that so many people erroneously believe recent climate change comes from human activity, when there's ample evidence to the contrary.

A Calculus of Angels

A Calculus of Angels PDF Author: Greg Keyes
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504026578
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 373

Get Book

Book Description
In an alternate eighteenth-century Europe devastated by alchemical disaster, Sir Isaac Newton and his able assistant, Benjamin Franklin, confront enemies who seek humankind’s destruction Sir Isaac Newton’s discovery of philosopher’s mercury in 1681 gave rise to a remarkable new branch of alchemical science. Forty years later, the world stands poised on the brink of a new dark age . . . England is in ruins, crushed by an asteroid called to Earth by the very alchemy Newton unleashed. France is in chaos following the long-delayed death of Louis XIV. Cotton Mather, Blackbeard, and the Choctaw shaman Red Shoes set sail from the American colonies to investigate the silence lying over the Old World. And in Russia, Tsar Peter the Great, now host to the evil entity that kept the Sun King alive, seizes a golden opportunity for conquest as he marches his unstoppable army across a devastated continent. Meanwhile Newton and his young apprentice, Ben Franklin, hide out in Prague, awaiting the inevitable violent collision of all these disparate elements—human and demonic alike—while a fugitive Adrienne de Mornay de Montchevreuil pursues the secrets of the malakim and her own role in their conspiracy to obliterate humankind. The second volume of the Age of Unreason series, Greg Keyes’s masterwork of alternate history, A Calculus of Angels brilliantly expands the scope of the world he introduced in Newton’s Cannon as an unforgettable cast of historical heavyweights collide on a different Earth where magic and science coexist.

Dark Ages

Dark Ages PDF Author: Lee McIntyre
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262263874
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 165

Get Book

Book Description
Why the prejudice against adopting a scientific attitude in the social sciences is creating a new 'Dark Ages' and preventing us from solving the perennial problems of crime, war, and poverty. During the Dark Ages, the progress of Western civilization virtually stopped. The knowledge gained by the scholars of the classical age was lost; for nearly 600 years, life was governed by superstitions and fears fueled by ignorance. In this outspoken and forthright book, Lee McIntyre argues that today we are in a new Dark Age—that we are as ignorant of the causes of human behavior as people centuries ago were of the causes of such natural phenomena as disease, famine, and eclipses. We are no further along in our understanding of what causes war, crime, and poverty—and how to end them—than our ancestors. We need, McIntyre says, another scientific revolution; we need the courage to apply a more rigorous methodology to human behavior, to go where the empirical evidence leads us—even if it threatens our cherished religious or political beliefs about human autonomy, race, class, and gender. Resistance to knowledge has always arisen against scientific advance. Today's academics—economists, psychologists, philosophers, and others in the social sciences—stand in the way of a science of human behavior just as clerics attempted to block the Copernican revolution in the 1600s. A scientific approach to social science would test hypotheses against the evidence rather than find and use evidence only to affirm a particular theory, as is often the practice in today's social sciences. Drawing lessons from Galileo's conflict with the Catholic church and current debates over the teaching of "creation science," McIntyre argues that what we need most to establish a science of human behavior is the scientific attitude—the willingness to hear what the evidence tells us even if it clashes with religious or political pieties—and the resolve to apply our findings to the creation of a better society.

The War on the West

The War on the West PDF Author: Douglas Murray
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0063162040
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book

Book Description
An Instant New York Times Bestseller! China has concentration camps now. Why do Westerners claim our sins are unique? It is now in vogue to celebrate non-Western cultures and disparage Western ones. Some of this is a much-needed reckoning, but much of it fatally undermines the very things that created the greatest, most humane civilization in the world. In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows how many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric. After all, if we must discard the ideas of Kant, Hume, and Mill for their opinions on race, shouldn’t we discard Marx, whose work is peppered with racial slurs and anti-Semitism? Embers of racism remain to be stamped out in America, but what about the raging racist inferno in the Middle East and Asia? It’s not just dishonest scholars who benefit from this intellectual fraud but hostile nations and human rights abusers hoping to distract from their own ongoing villainy. Dictators who slaughter their own people are happy to jump on the “America is a racist country” bandwagon and mimic the language of antiracism and “pro-justice” movements as PR while making authoritarian conquests. If the West is to survive, it must be defended. The War on the West is not only an incisive takedown of foolish anti-Western arguments but also a rigorous new apologetic for civilization itself.