Expanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History and Cosmic Perspectives

Expanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History and Cosmic Perspectives PDF Author: Ian Crawford
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030704823
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

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Book Description
This book collates papers presented at two international conferences (held at the Australian National University in 2018 and Birkbeck College London in 2019) exploring the relationships between big history and astrobiology and their wider implications for society. These two relatively new academic disciplines aim to integrate human history with the wider history of the universe and the search for life elsewhere. The book will show that, despite differences in emphasis, big history and astrobiology share much in common, especially their interdisciplinary approaches and the cosmic and evolutionary perspectives that they both engender. Specifically, the book addresses the unified, all-embracing, nature of knowledge, the impact of big history on humanity and the world at large, the possible impact of SETI on astrobiology and big history, the cultural signature of Earth’s inhabitants beyond our own planet, and the political implications of a planetary worldview. The principal readership is envisaged to comprise scholars working in the fields of astrobiology, big history and space exploration interested in forging interdisciplinary links between these diverse topics, together with educators, and a wider public, interested in the societal implications of the cosmic and evolutionary perspectives engendered by research in these fields.

Expanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History and Cosmic Perspectives

Expanding Worldviews: Astrobiology, Big History and Cosmic Perspectives PDF Author: Ian Crawford
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030704823
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 376

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book collates papers presented at two international conferences (held at the Australian National University in 2018 and Birkbeck College London in 2019) exploring the relationships between big history and astrobiology and their wider implications for society. These two relatively new academic disciplines aim to integrate human history with the wider history of the universe and the search for life elsewhere. The book will show that, despite differences in emphasis, big history and astrobiology share much in common, especially their interdisciplinary approaches and the cosmic and evolutionary perspectives that they both engender. Specifically, the book addresses the unified, all-embracing, nature of knowledge, the impact of big history on humanity and the world at large, the possible impact of SETI on astrobiology and big history, the cultural signature of Earth’s inhabitants beyond our own planet, and the political implications of a planetary worldview. The principal readership is envisaged to comprise scholars working in the fields of astrobiology, big history and space exploration interested in forging interdisciplinary links between these diverse topics, together with educators, and a wider public, interested in the societal implications of the cosmic and evolutionary perspectives engendered by research in these fields.

Imagined Futures

Imagined Futures PDF Author: Max Saunders
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198829450
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
The first substantial history and analysis of the To-Day and To-Morrow series which published 110 books from 1923 to 1931 and included works by J. B. S. Haldane, Bertrand Russell, Vernon Lee, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, Sylvia Pankhurst, Hugh MacDiarmid, James Jeans, J. D. Bernal, Winifred Holtby, and Andre Maurois.

The To-day and To-morrow Reader

The To-day and To-morrow Reader PDF Author: Max Saunders
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1040115004
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
The To-day and To-morrow book series (1923–1931) was a unique publishing phenomenon – over 100 short, often brilliant, books choosing a particular subject, outlining its present state, and then speculating about its future. This Reader brings together some of the best work in the series, including eleven complete volumes and substantial extracts from ten more. To-day and To-morrow is one of the key documents of modernity. It contains some of the best writing of the twentieth century, and some of the most visionary predictions. The contributors were creative writers, scientists, inventors, philosophers, lawyers, doctors, and teachers. Included here are Bertrand Russell, Vera Brittain, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Robert Graves, and the scientists J. B. S. Haldane, J. D. Bernal, and Sir James Jeans. The topics range from emerging technologies such as the talkies, television, robotics, and drones, to speculations about future technologies like test-tube babies, artificial wombs, cyborgs, genetic modification, hormone replacement therapy, space exploration, the internet, and the possibility of hive minds. The books consider how societies will respond to such developments; how the transformations will impact on lives, relationships, beliefs, politics. To-day and To-morrow brings new perspectives to the literature and culture of modernism and modernity for general readers, students, and scholars. It sheds new light on twentieth-century literature, culture, and society. It offers resources for teachers and students of creative writing – and everyone – facing the challenge of thinking about our future.

Knowledge and Opinion

Knowledge and Opinion PDF Author: John Gneisenau Neihardt
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803283817
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
How important were Sioux authors such as Charles Eastman in the opinion of the writer responsible for Black Elk Speaks? What will be the legacy of modern poetry according to the poet behind The Cycle of the West? Knowledge and Opinion offers an unparalleled glimpse into the social and literary thought of John G. Neihardt (1881?1973), one of America's most celebrated poets and authors. A wealth of little-known essays and reviews deepen and round out our appreciation for the accomplishments of Neihardt by revealing his no-nonsense opinions about noted literary figures and trends, events, and social issues of his day. Featured in these pages are Neihardt's views of such literary giants as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Robert Frost, H. G. Wells, e. e. Cummings, Dorothy Parker, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Eugene O'Neill, and Upton Sinclair. The contributions of Sigmund Freud, anthropologist Paul Radin, and modern philosophers like Bertrand Russell do not escape his sweeping gaze. In their entirety, these essays showcase Neihardt's perspectives and opinions on a wide range of subjects and issues, including modern poetry, the qualities of great literature, twentieth-century trends in writing and literary criticism, the defining characteristics of Western civilization, the literatures and cultures of Native Americans, the lost world of the Old West, economic turmoil in the Great Depression, and the enduring power of classical thought. This rich archive of essays and reviews will surprise, delight, and provoke those who thought they already knew John G. Neihardt.

The Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space

The Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space PDF Author: Juan Francisco Salazar
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000890643
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 778

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Book Description
The Routledge Handbook of Social Studies of Outer Space offers state-of-the-art overview of contemporary social and cultural research on outer space. International in scope, the thirty-eight contributions by over fifty leading researchers and artists across a variety of disciplines and fields of knowledge, present a range of debates and pose key questions about the crafting of futures in relation to outer space. The Handbook is a call to attend more carefully to engagements with outer space, empirically, affectively, and theoretically, while characterizing current research practices and outlining future research agendas. This recalibration opens profound questions of intersectional politics, race, equity, and environmental justice around the contested topics of space exploration and life off-Earth. Among the many themes included in the volume are the various infrastructures, networks and systems that enable and sustain space exploration; space heritage; the ethics of outer space; social and environmental justice; fundamental debates about life in outer space as it pertains to both astrobiology and SETI; the study of scientific communities; the human body and consciousness; Indigenous astronomical systems of Knowledge; contemporary space art; and ongoing critical interventions to overcome the legacies of colonialism and dismantle hegemonic narratives of outer space.

Michael Oakeshott Selected Writings Collection

Michael Oakeshott Selected Writings Collection PDF Author: Michael Oakeshott
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited
ISBN: 1845407814
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 2193

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Book Description
A collection of 6 volumes of Oakeshott's work: Notebooks, 1922-86, Early Political Writings 1925-30, The Concept of a Philosophical Jurisprudence, Vocabulary of a Modern European State, Lectures in the History of Political Thought, and What is History?

X-Risk

X-Risk PDF Author: Thomas Moynihan
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1913029840
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
How humanity came to contemplate its possible extinction. From forecasts of disastrous climate change to prophecies of evil AI superintelligences and the impending perils of genome editing, our species is increasingly concerned with the prospects of its own extinction. With humanity's future on this planet seeming more insecure by the day, in the twenty-first century, existential risk has become the object of a growing field of serious scientific inquiry. But, as Thomas Moynihan shows in X-Risk, this preoccupation is not exclusive to the post-atomic age of global warming and synthetic biology. Our growing concern with human extinction itself has a history. Tracing this untold story, Moynihan revisits the pioneers who first contemplated the possibility of human extinction and stages the historical drama of this momentous discovery. He shows how, far from being a secular reprise of religious prophecies of apocalypse, existential risk is a thoroughly modern idea, made possible by the burgeoning sciences and philosophical tumult of the Enlightenment era. In recollecting how we first came to care for our extinction, Moynihan reveals how today's attempts to measure and mitigate existential threats are the continuation of a project initiated over two centuries ago, which concerns the very vocation of the human as a rational, responsible, and future-oriented being.

A Study of History: Volume I: Abridgement of Volumes I-VI

A Study of History: Volume I: Abridgement of Volumes I-VI PDF Author: Arnold J. Toynbee
Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780195050806
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 638

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Book Description
Toynbee's analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations has been acknowledged as an achievement without parallel in modern scholarship. This abridgement, while reducing the work to one-sixth of its original size, preserves its method, atmosphere, texture, and for the most part, the author's very words.

Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow

Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow PDF Author: Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 820

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Book Description
Includes complete texts or abstracts of lectures delivered before the Society, minutes of meetings, directory of members, and annual accounts.

Hearts of Darkness

Hearts of Darkness PDF Author: Jane Marcus
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813542510
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 237

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Book Description
In this book, one of modernism's most insightful critics, Jane Marcus, examines the writings of novelists such as Virginia Woolf, Nancy Cunard, Mulk Raj Anand, and Djuna Barnes-artists whose work coincided with the end of empire and the rise of fascism before the Second World War. All these writers delved into the "dark hearts" of imperialism and totalitarianism, thus tackling some of the most complex cultural issues of the day. Marcus investigates previously unrecognized ways in which social and political tensions are embodied by their works. The centerpiece of the book is Marcus's dialogue with one of her best-known essays, "Britannia Rules The Waves." In that piece, she argues that The Waves makes a strong anti-imperialist statement. Although many already support that argument, she now goes further in order to question the moral value of such a buried critique on Woolf's part. In "A Very Fine Negress" she analyzes the painful subject of Virginia Woolf's racism in A Room of One's Own. Other chapters traverse the connected issues of modernism, race, and imperialism. In two of them, we follow Nancy Cunard through the making of the Negro anthology and her appearance in a popular novel of the freewheeling Jazz Age. Elsewhere, Marcus delivers a complex analysis of A Passage to India, in a reading that interrogates E. M. Forster's displacement of his fear of white Englishwomen struggling for the vote. Marcus, as always, brings considerable gifts as both researcher and writer to this collection of new and reprinted essays, a combination resulting in a powerful interpretation of many of modernism's most cherished figures.