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Author: Erik Rifkin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387485724
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
This book provides an understanding and appreciation of the risk assessment process and the ability to objectively interpret health risk values. Included is an explanation of the uncertainty inherent in the assessment of risks as well as an explanation of how the communication and characterization of risks can dramatically alter the perception of those risks. Case studies illustrate the strengths and limitations of characterizing certain risks. Using the accepted risk assessment paradigm proposed by the National Research Council, these case studies illustrate which risk values have merit and why other assessments fail to meet basic criteria.
Author: Erik Rifkin
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 0387485724
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
This book provides an understanding and appreciation of the risk assessment process and the ability to objectively interpret health risk values. Included is an explanation of the uncertainty inherent in the assessment of risks as well as an explanation of how the communication and characterization of risks can dramatically alter the perception of those risks. Case studies illustrate the strengths and limitations of characterizing certain risks. Using the accepted risk assessment paradigm proposed by the National Research Council, these case studies illustrate which risk values have merit and why other assessments fail to meet basic criteria.
Author: Ilya Prigogine
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684837056
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 248
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Book Description
Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine discusses the irreversibility of time and his findings impact on the laws of physics.
Author: Greg Messel
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781936750528
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
"The Illusion of Certainty" follows two parallel storylines. Marc is a successful businessman who seems to have everything-a great job, a beautiful wife, a house in an upscale neighborhood of Portland, Oregon and two great kids who are preparing for college. But something is not right. Marc is unsettled by the sudden change in his wife, Aimee, who seems distant and unhappy. What is going on with her? The second storyline involves a successful young attorney Alexandra Mattson. Alex, as she is called by her friends, meets a handsome young cop, Sean, during an unexpected crisis in her neighborhood. Sean and Alex seem made for each other and begin to merge their futures in a world of uncertainty. The only certainty in life is that we will face uncertainty. Despite all of the technology and controls available in the modern world, sometimes the only comfort comes from the human touch.
Author: Genia Schönbaumsfeld
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198783949
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 178
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Book Description
'The Illusion of Doubt' confronts one of the most important questions in philosophy - what can we know? The radical sceptic's answer is 'not very much' if we cannot prove that we are not subject to (permanent) deception, and shows that the radical sceptical problem is an illusion created by a mistaken picture of our evidential situation.
Author: James Titus Houk
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 163388323X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
In this examination of religion's influence on society, an anthropologist critiques fundamentalism and all mindsets based on rigid cultural certainties. The author argues that the future can only be safeguarded by a global humanistic outlook that recognizes and respects differing cultural perspectives and endorses the use of critical reason and empiricism. Houk coins the term "culturalism" to describe dogmatic viewpoints governed by culture-specific values and preconceived notions. Culturalism gives rise not only to fundamentalism in religion but also stereotypes about race, gender, and sexual orientation. Turning specifically to Christian fundamentalism, the author analyzes the many weaknesses of what he calls a faith-based epistemology, particularly as such thinking is displayed in young-earth creationism, the reliance on revelation and subjective experiences as a source of religious knowledge, and the reverence accorded the Bible despite its obvious flaws. As he points out, the problem with such cultural knowledge generally is that it is non-falsifiable and ultimately has no lasting value in contrast to the data-based and falsifiable knowledge produced by science, which continues to prove its worth as a reliable source of accurate information. Concluding that there is no future to the fundamentalist mindset in a diverse world where religion often exacerbates conflicts, he makes a strong case for reason and mutual tolerance.
Author: Mark Burgess
Publisher: "O'Reilly Media, Inc."
ISBN: 1491923377
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 473
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Book Description
Quite soon, the world’s information infrastructure is going to reach a level of scale and complexity that will force scientists and engineers to approach it in an entirely new way. The familiar notions of command and control are being thwarted by realities of a faster, denser world of communication where choice, variety, and indeterminism rule. The myth of the machine that does exactly what we tell it has come to an end. What makes us think we can rely on all this technology? What keeps it together today, and how might it work tomorrow? Will we know how to build the next generation—or will we be lulled into a stupor of dependence brought about by its conveniences? In this book, Mark Burgess focuses on the impact of computers and information on our modern infrastructure by taking you from the roots of science to the principles behind system operation and design. To shape the future of technology, we need to understand how it works—or else what we don’t understand will end up shaping us. This book explores this subject in three parts: Part I, Stability: describes the fundamentals of predictability, and why we have to give up the idea of control in its classical meaning Part II, Certainty: describes the science of what we can know, when we don’t control everything, and how we make the best of life with only imperfect information Part III, Promises: explains how the concepts of stability and certainty may be combined to approach information infrastructure as a new kind of virtual material, restoring a continuity to human-computer systems so that society can rely on them.
Author: Paul F. Kisak
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781523809868
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
Certainty is perfect knowledge that has total security from error, or the mental state of being without doubt. Objectively defined, certainty is total continuity and validity of all foundational inquiry, to the highest degree of precision. Something is certain only if no skepticism can occur. Philosophy (at least, historical Cartesian philosophy) seeks this state. It is widely held that certainty about the real world is a failed historical enterprise (that is, beyond deductive truths, tautology, etc.). This is in large part due to the power of David Hume's problem of induction. Physicist Carlo Rovelli adds that certainty, in real life, is useless or often damaging (the idea is that "total security from error" is impossible in practice, and a complete "lack of doubt" is undesirable). This book discusses the issues that surround claims of certainty and the illusion of absolute truth and perfection.
Author: Gerd Gigerenzer
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143127101
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
A new eye-opener on how we can make better decisions—by the author of Gut Feelings In this age of big data we often trust that expert analysis—whether it’s about next year’s stock market or a person’s risk of getting cancer—is accurate. But, as risk expert Gerd Gigerenzer reveals in his latest book, Risk Savvy, most of us, including doctors, lawyers, and financial advisors, often misunderstand statistics, leaving us misinformed and vulnerable to exploitation. Yet there’s hope. In Risk Savvy, Gigerenzer gives us an essential guide to the science of good decision making, showing how ordinary people can make better decisions for their money, their health, and their families. Here, Gigerenzer delivers the surprising conclusion that the best results often come from considering less information and listening to your gut.
Author: Denis Flannery
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351930915
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
The success of a work of art, to my mind, may be measured by the degree to which it produces a certain illusion; that makes it appear to us that we have lived another life, that we have had a miraculous enlargement of experience. Henry James A concept of 'illusion' was fundamental to the theory and practice of literary representation in Henry James. This book offers readings of James' fictional and critical texts that are informed by the certainty of illusion, and links James' mode of illusion with a number of concerns that have marked novel criticism in both the recent and not-so-recent past: gender, publicity, realism, aesthetics and passion, cults of authorial personality, the narrative construction of the future, and absorption. Flannery addresses each of these concerns through close engagement with particular texts: The Portrait of a Lady, The Tragic Muse, The Wings of the Dove, and some other less familiar texts. Although cognizant of debates that have raged around James as he is read both by 'radical' and 'traditional' critics, this book's primary focus is on the specific nuances of James’ texts and the interpretive challenges and pleasures they offer.
Author: Bernard John Warnick
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780645370508
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
This book condemns the certainties which pervade Western societies, whether about innate rights, ethics or socially acceptable behavior, because a close examination of our powers of reasoning shows all such certainties to be illusory; and because illusions, like mirages, lead us astray. It asks what constitutes the acts of thinking and reasoning and examines the neurobiology involved, subjectivity - its origins and unavoidability - objectivity and its limited achievability - and the pervasive ambiguity of the language of ideas. It highlights flaws in the concept of truth; shows how deductive logic itself contains the seeds of failure to produce certainty, how inductive logic yields only probabilities and that neither pattern of logic is how we generally reason. The book demonstrates that undue certainty spawns evils which threaten social stability. A new list of what constitutes logical thought emerges. We consider approaches, of which logic is part, but not the entirety - common sense, pragmatism, judgment and wisdom. We ask, to whom might we listen - philosophers, the wise, or ourselves. Finally, the survival instinct is identified as the biological basis of our ideas about morality, political systems and the like. How a secular morality might be constructed and what an ideology-free society might be like, are considered.
