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Author: Alan Wolfe
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520089413
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 263
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Book Description
"An eloquent and exquisitely reasoned plea for a social science based on what is distinctively human about human beings-their capacity to create meaning by the forms of interpretation that make human culture possible. This book is a lively attack on the growing antihumanism of so much contemporary social science, and it deserves a wide audience." -Jerome Bruner, New York University "Wolfe's style of argument is of enormous scope, virtuosity, clarity, and grace. In The Human Difference he will force both his sympathizers and his detractors to reflect profoundly upon the proper meaning and purpose of the social sciences." -Neil J. Smelser, University of California "There is much to be learned from his cognitive map which locates sociology in its relations to the other social sciences, literary theory, and the biological and physical sciences." -Robert Merton, Columbia University "Argued with the intensity and skill of a defense attorney for the human species, Wolfe takes on sociobiology, artificial intelligence research, ecology and post-modernism .... [This book) will generate discussion. The analyses of contemporary theoretical thought are accessible and well-documented." -Diane Miller, The Great Plains Sociologist "Wolfe calls for a return to the works of Ourkheim, Weber, Mead, and Marx as a means of resurrecting a sociology capable of responding to human difference and reflecting the ambiguity and ambivalence that arises from it. ... Compelling and provocative." -Choice
Author: Alan Wolfe
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520089413
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 263
Get Book Here
Book Description
"An eloquent and exquisitely reasoned plea for a social science based on what is distinctively human about human beings-their capacity to create meaning by the forms of interpretation that make human culture possible. This book is a lively attack on the growing antihumanism of so much contemporary social science, and it deserves a wide audience." -Jerome Bruner, New York University "Wolfe's style of argument is of enormous scope, virtuosity, clarity, and grace. In The Human Difference he will force both his sympathizers and his detractors to reflect profoundly upon the proper meaning and purpose of the social sciences." -Neil J. Smelser, University of California "There is much to be learned from his cognitive map which locates sociology in its relations to the other social sciences, literary theory, and the biological and physical sciences." -Robert Merton, Columbia University "Argued with the intensity and skill of a defense attorney for the human species, Wolfe takes on sociobiology, artificial intelligence research, ecology and post-modernism .... [This book) will generate discussion. The analyses of contemporary theoretical thought are accessible and well-documented." -Diane Miller, The Great Plains Sociologist "Wolfe calls for a return to the works of Ourkheim, Weber, Mead, and Marx as a means of resurrecting a sociology capable of responding to human difference and reflecting the ambiguity and ambivalence that arises from it. ... Compelling and provocative." -Choice
Author: Justin Smith-Ruiu
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691176345
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
People have always been xenophobic, but an explicit philosophical and scientific view of human racial difference only began to emerge during the modern period. Why and how did this happen? Surveying a range of philosophical and natural-scientific texts, dating from the Spanish Renaissance to the German Enlightenment, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference charts the evolution of the modern concept of race and shows that natural philosophy, particularly efforts to taxonomize and to order nature, played a crucial role. Smith demonstrates how the denial of moral equality between Europeans and non-Europeans resulted from converging philosophical and scientific developments, including a declining belief in human nature's universality and the rise of biological classification. The racial typing of human beings grew from the need to understand humanity within an all-encompassing system of nature, alongside plants, minerals, primates, and other animals. While racial difference as seen through science did not arise in order to justify the enslavement of people, it became a rationalization and buttress for the practices of trans-Atlantic slavery. From the work of François Bernier to G. W. Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and others, Smith delves into philosophy's part in the legacy and damages of modern racism. With a broad narrative stretching over two centuries, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference takes a critical historical look at how the racial categories that we divide ourselves into came into being.
Author: Alan Wolfe
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520915615
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263
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Book Description
Are we losing touch with our humanity? Yes, contends Alan Wolfe in this provocative critique of modern American intellectual life. From ecology, sociobiology, and artificial intelligence to post-modernism and the social sciences, Wolfe examines the antihumanism underlying many contemporary academic trends. Animal rights theorists and "ecological extremists" too often downplay human capacities. Computers are smarter than we are and will soon replace us as the laws of evolution continue to unfold. Even the humanities, held in sway by imported theories that are explicitly antihumanistic in intention, have little place for human beings. Against this backdrop, Wolfe calls for a return to a moral and humanistic social science, one in which the qualities that distinguish us as a species are given full play. Tracing the development of modern social theory, Wolfe explores the human-centered critical thinking of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars, now eclipsed by post-modern and scientistic theorizing. In the work of Durkheim, Marx, Weber, and Mead, human beings are placed on the center stage, shaping and interpreting the world around them. Sociology in particular emerged as a distinct science because the species it presumed to understand was distinct as well. Recent intellectual trends, in contrast, allow little room for the human difference. Sociobiology underlines the importance of genetics and mathematically governed evolutionary rules while downplaying the unique cognitive abilities of humans. Artificial intelligence heralds the potential superiority of computers to the human mind. Post-modern theorizing focuses on the interpretation of texts in self-referential modes, rejecting humanism in any form. And mainstream social science, using positivist paradigms of human behavior based on the natural sciences, develops narrow and arid models of social life. Wolfe eloquently makes a case for a new commitment to humanistic social science based on a realistic and creative engagement with modern society. A reconstituted social science, acknowledging our ability to interpret the world, will thrive on a recognition of human difference. Nurturing a precious humanism, social science can celebrate and further refine our unique capacity to create morality and meaning for ourselves. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993. Are we losing touch with our humanity? Yes, contends Alan Wolfe in this provocative critique of modern American intellectual life. From ecology, sociobiology, and artificial intelligence to post-modernism and the social sciences, Wolfe examines the antihu
Author: Michael Robbins
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000968170
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 196
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Book Description
From a multidisciplinary perspective grounded in psychoanalysis, this book explores the manifestations of mind that distinguish humans from other species, culture, civilization, and destructiveness. Psychoanalysis was created by Freud in an effort to understand neurosis and psychosis, the names he gave to individual human destructiveness. His understanding was limited and incorrect because the science of evolution and the disciplines of sociology and cultural anthropology were in their infancy when he formulated his ideas. He did not comprehend that destructiveness is qualitatively different in humans than in other species and he ignored the problem of how biological instincts become mental processes. These limitations left psychoanalysis with one of its most perplexing unsolved problems, the mysterious leap from mind to body. This book explains how neoteny, the prolonged period of postnatal immaturity that distinguishes humans from other animals, requires and enables complex learning from caregivers. It is the knowledge acquired from this learning and its intergenerational transmission that links the biological theory of evolution with the psychosocial theory of psychoanalysis and explains how the human species is unique. This book will be of interest to those who want to learn about how integrating the findings of evolutionary science, primatology, sociology, and cultural anthroplogy with the theory of psychoanalysis expands our understanding of what makes humans unique and its implications for the future of our species, and how it empowers us to influence the destiny of humankind.
Author: David Wasserman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521832012
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 287
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Book Description
This study brings together two important literatures together in the one volume. One concerns the role of quality assessments in social policy, especially health policy. The second concerns ethical and social issues raised by prenatal testing for disability. Hitherto, these two literatures have had little contact with each other: few scholars have written about both, or have compared the two domains in a systematic way, while people with disabilities and disability scholars are underrepresented in recent discussion on health policy and quality of assessment. This book turns the perspectives of disability scholars on issues that have largely been the province of health methodology, policy and philosophy, while angling philosophical policy analysis on problems that have largely been the province of disability scholarship. This volume will be sought after by bioethicists, philosophers, and specialists in disability studies and healthcare economics.
Author: Ann Morning
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520270312
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 326
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Book Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 279-303) and index.
Author: Christine Battersby
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134753799
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
Christine Battersby is a leading thinker in the field of philosophy, gender studies and visual and literary aesthetics. In this important new work, she undertakes an exploration of the nature of the sublime, one of the most important topics in contemporary debates about modernity, politics and art. Through a compelling examination of terror, transcendence and the ‘other’ in key European philosophers and writers, Battersby articulates a radical ‘female sublime’. A central feature of The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference is its engagement with recent debates around ‘9/11’, race and Islam. Battersby shows how, since the eighteenth century, the pleasures of the sublime have been described in terms of the transcendence of terror. Linked to the ‘feminine’, the sublime was closed off to flesh-and-blood women, to ‘Orientals’ and to other supposedly ‘inferior’ human types. Engaging with Kant, Burke, the German Romantics, Nietzsche, Derrida, Lyotard, Irigaray and Arendt, as well as with women writers and artists, Battersby traces the history of these exclusions, while finding resources within the history of western culture for thinking human differences afresh The Sublime, Terror and Human Difference is essential reading for students of continental philosophy, gender studies, aesthetics, literary theory, visual culture, and race and social theory.
Author: C.R. Snyder
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1468436597
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 235
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Book Description
My Red Shirt and Me The red shirt incident begins with a rather ordinary red shirt. Not a brightly colored red shirt, not a dramatic cherry or firehouse red, more like a faded burgundy. But, for several days, my very iden tity was bound up in its redness. It was me, and I wore it with the pride a matador takes in his splendid cape, a hero in his medals of bravery, or a nun in her religious habit. I'll never forget the bound less joy I felt wearing that simple, pullover, short-sleeved red shirt in the hospital--or the rush of relief that I experienced when, at last, I decided to surrender it. However, we are getting ahead of our story, which starts a short time earlier with a most unfortunate accident. A light flurry of wet snow had begun to fall as the university limousine turned the corner on its way from the Bronx campus of New York University to the downtown campus. Although eight of us were packed into the car and had resigned ourselves to the usual boring faculty meeting awaiting us, somehow a spontaneous air of joviality was created.
Author: Elizabeth D. Whitaker
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315451727
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 312
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Book Description
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- CONTENTS -- PART I Pathways to the present -- 1 Envisioning evolution: representations of humanness and causation -- 2 Origin stories: the co-evolution of human anatomy and sociality -- 3 Losses and gains: economic and health transitions since the Neolithic Revolution -- PART II Plasticity, identity, and health -- 4 Thicker than water: blood and milk in human evolution -- 5 Risk and responsibility: power and danger in individualized approaches to preventive health -- 6 Difference as destiny: race, sex, and culture -- PART III Sex and gender -- 7 Choosers and cheaters: the sexual/reproductive conflict hypothesis -- 8 Hoe and plow, pig and cow: work, family, and gender stratification -- 9 Tale of two-spirits: constructing gender and sexuality, aptitudes and inclinations -- PART IV Conflict and violence -- 10 Savage empathy: sources of competitiveness and cooperativeness, greed and generosity -- 11 Why stratify? Inequality and interpersonal violence -- 12 Peace and war: patterns and prevention of violent intergroup conflict -- Appendix: Life expectancy rate calculations -- Index.
Author: Alexandra Widmer
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 1785332724
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
Human variation represented a central research topic for life scientists and posed challenging administrative issues for colonial bureaucrats in the first half of the 20th century. By following scientists’ and administrators’ interests in innovating styles and tools for making and circulating documents, in reshaping landscapes and environments, and in fixing distances between humans, the book advances new understandings of the materiality of colonial institutional life and governance.
