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Author: Peter Godfrey-Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521646246
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
This book explains the relationship between intelligence and environmental complexity, and in so doing links philosophy of mind to more general issues about the relations between organisms and environments, and to the general pattern of 'externalist' explanations. The author provides a biological approach to the investigation of mind and cognition in nature. In particular he explores the idea that the function of cognition is to enable agents to deal with environmental complexity. The history of the idea in the work of Dewey and Spencer is considered, as is the impact of recent evolutionary theory on our understanding of the place of mind in nature.
Author: Peter Godfrey-Smith
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521646246
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 332
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Book Description
This book explains the relationship between intelligence and environmental complexity, and in so doing links philosophy of mind to more general issues about the relations between organisms and environments, and to the general pattern of 'externalist' explanations. The author provides a biological approach to the investigation of mind and cognition in nature. In particular he explores the idea that the function of cognition is to enable agents to deal with environmental complexity. The history of the idea in the work of Dewey and Spencer is considered, as is the impact of recent evolutionary theory on our understanding of the place of mind in nature.
Author: Colleen DeBaise
Publisher: AMACOM
ISBN: 0814439195
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
With stories and advice from a fleet of trusted experts, this book is for anyone wishing to get their business off the ground and become the next wildly successful entrepreneur everyone is reading about. For decades, makers, doers, and dreamers have turned to Inc. for help in getting their businesses off the ground. The insanely successful entrepreneurs behind organizations like Skullcandy, Spanx, Elon Musk, and Airbnb learned lessons at every stage, experienced unexpected setbacks, and in the end triumphed wildly. All along, Inc. was there capturing it all so that others could experience even greater successes than these titans of business. From brainstorming to crowdfunding to building partnerships, the book walks new and aspiring founders through seven crucial stages, including: Establishing a brilliant business idea Selecting the best structure and strategy for your startup Getting the word out and building clientele Preparing to go global Learn how Elon Musk stays wildly productive. Discover how Sarah Blakely got the inspiration for Spanx. Read the stories of how a hashtag accelerated Airbnb’s success and how Warby Parker shook up the eyewear industry with its innovative, socially conscious business model. Start a Successful Business gathers these important lessons into a single path-charting guide.
Author: Riel Miller
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351047981
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
People are using the future to search for better ways to achieve sustainability, inclusiveness, prosperity, well-being and peace. In addition, the way the future is understood and used is changing in almost all domains, from social science to daily life. This book presents the results of significant research undertaken by UNESCO with a number of partners to detect and define the theory and practice of anticipation around the world today. It uses the concept of ‘Futures Literacy’ as a tool to define the understanding of anticipatory systems and processes – also known as the Discipline of Anticipation. This innovative title explores: • new topics such as Futures Literacy and the Discipline of Anticipation; • the evidence collected from over 30 Futures Literacy Laboratories and presented in 14 full case studies; • the need and opportunity for significant innovation in human decision-making systems. This book will be of great interest to scholars, researchers, policy-makers and students, as well as activists working on sustainability issues and innovation, future studies and anticipation studies. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781351047999, has been made available under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 IGO (CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO) license.
Author: Shana Lee Hirsch
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 029574748X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 228
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Book Description
Drought. Wildfire. Extreme flooding. How does climate change affect the daily work of scientists? Ecological restoration is often premised on the idea of returning a region to an earlier, healthier state. Yet the effects of climate change undercut that premise and challenge the ways scientists can work, destabilizing the idea of “normalcy” and revealing the politics that shape what scientists can do. How can the practice of ecological restoration shift to anticipate an increasingly dynamic future? And how does a scientific field itself adapt to climate change? Restoration efforts in the Columbia River Basin—a vast and diverse landscape experiencing warming waters, less snowpack, and greater fluctuations in precipitation—may offer answers to some of these questions. Shana Hirsch tells the story of restoration science in the basin, surveying its past and detailing the work of today’s salmon habitat restoration efforts. Her analysis offers critical insight into scientific practices, emerging approaches and ways of thinking, the incorporation of future climate change scenarios into planning, and the ultimate transformation—or adaptation—of the science of ecological restoration. For scientists and environmental managers around the globe, Anticipating Future Environments will shed light on how to more effectively cope with climate change.
Author: Francis Fukuyama
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0815729898
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
A host of catastrophes, natural and otherwise, as well as some pleasant surprises—like the sudden end of the cold war without a shot being fired—have caught governments and societies unprepared many times in recent decades. September 11 is only the most obvious recent example among many unforeseen events that have changed, even redefined our lives. We have every reason to expect more such events in future. Several kinds of unanticipated scenarios—particularly those of low probability and high impact—have the potential to escalate into systemic crises. Even positive surprises can be major policy challenges. Anticipating and managing low-probability events is a critically important challenge to contemporary policymakers, who increasingly recognize that they lack the analytical tools to do so. Developing such tools is the focus of this insightful and perceptive volume, edited by renowned author Francis Fukuyama and sponsored by The American Interest magazine. Bl indside is organized into four main sections. "Thinking about Strategic Surprise" addresses the psychological and institutional obstacles that prevent leaders from planning for low-probability tragedies and allocating the necessary resources to deal with them. The following two sections pinpoint the failures—institutional as well as personal—that allowed key historical events to take leaders by surprise, and examine the philosophies and methodologies of forecasting. In "Pollyana vs. Cassandra," for example, James Kurth and Gregg Easterbrook debate the future state of the world going forward. Mitchell Waldrop explores why technology forecasting is so poor and why that is likely to remain the case. In the book's final section, "What Could Be," internationally renowned authorities discuss low probability, high-impact contingencies in their area of expertise. For example, Scott Barrett looks at emerging infectious diseases, while Gal Luft and Anne Korin discuss energy security. How can we avoid
Author: Alberto F. De Toni
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000216128
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 234
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Book Description
The world changes like the patterns in a kaleidoscope: trends expand, contract, break up, melt, disintegrate and disappear, while others are formed. Change – as opposed to stasis – is our normal condition, the only certainty in our lives, hence the need to create tools that provide organizations with the means to tackle change and navigate complexity. We must accept the reality of constant change and be prepared for a heavy shift in perspective: interconnection versus separation, acceleration versus linearity and discontinuity versus continuity. Anticipating the future requires more than the traditional predictive models (forecasting) based on the forward projection of past experiences. Advanced methods use anticipation logic (foresight) and build probable scenarios taking into account weak signals, emerging trends, coexisting presents and potential paths of evolution. Corporate foresight is fundamental to interpret and lead change. The two cornerstones of foresight are organization and management. As concerns organization, the authors advocate the separation of research (oriented to the market of tomorrow) from development (oriented to the market of today), the establishment of a foresight unit and the concentration of research activities mainly on the acquisition and recombination of external know-how. As regards management, after an overview of state-of-the-art literature on forecasting methods, the authors propose the implementation of a "future coverage" methodology, which enables companies to measure and verify the consistency between trends, strategic vision and offered products. These organizational and managing tools are then tested in a case study: the Italian company Eurotech SpA, a leader in the ICT sector.
Author: William Cheung
Publisher: Elsevier
ISBN: 0128179465
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 584
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Book Description
Predicting Future Oceans: Sustainability of Ocean and Human Systems Amidst Global Environmental Change provides a synthesis of our knowledge of the future state of the oceans. The editors undertake the challenge of integrating diverse perspectives—from oceanography to anthropology—to exhibit the changes in ecological conditions and their socioeconomic implications. Each contributing author provides a novel perspective, with the book as a whole collating scholarly understandings of future oceans and coastal communities across the world. The diverse perspectives, syntheses and state-of-the-art natural and social sciences contributions are led by past and current research fellows and principal investigators of the Nereus Program network. This includes members at 17 leading research institutes, addressing themes such as oceanography, biodiversity, fisheries, mariculture production, economics, pollution, public health and marine policy. This book is a comprehensive resource for senior undergraduate and postgraduate readers studying social and natural science, as well as practitioners working in the field of natural resources management and marine conservation. - Provides a synthesis of our knowledge on the future state of the oceans - Includes recommendations on how to move forwards - Highlights key social aspects linked to ocean ecosystems, including health, equity and sovereignty
Author: Andrew MacLeod
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198725043
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
This book reviews the growing evidence for the link between prospection and well-being. A variety of aspects of prospection are discussed, including prediction and anticipation for future events, judging how we will feel when events do happen to us, and how we feel in the here-and-now when contemplating what will happen in the future.
Author: Giovanni Pezzulo
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 3540877010
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 297
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Book Description
The general idea that brains anticipate the future, that they engage in prediction, and that one means of doing this is through some sort of inner model that can be run of?ine,hasalonghistory. SomeversionoftheideawascommontoAristotle,aswell as to many medieval scholastics, to Leibniz and Hume, and in more recent times, to Kenneth Craik and Philip Johnson-Laird. One reason that this general idea recurs continually is that this is the kind of picture that introspection paints. When we are engaged in tasks it seems that we form images that are predictions, or anticipations, and that these images are isomorphic to what they represent. But as much as the general idea recurs, opposition to it also recurs. The idea has never been widely accepted, or uncontroversial among psychologists, cognitive scientists and neuroscientists. The main reason has been that science cannot be s- is?ed with metaphors and introspection. In order to gain acceptance, an idea needs to be formulated clearly enough so that it can be used to construct testable hypot- ses whose results will clearly supportor cast doubtupon the hypothesis. Next, those ideasthatare formulablein one oranothersortof symbolismor notationare capable of being modeled, and modeling is a huge part of cognitive neuroscience. If an idea cannot be clearly modeled, then there are limits to how widely it can be tested and accepted by a cognitive neuroscience community.
Author: Tirril Harris
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134631863
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 344
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Book Description
This volume studies George Brown's work on psychiatric disorder and its relationship to social context.
