Life, Organisms, and Human Nature

Life, Organisms, and Human Nature PDF Author: Luca Corti
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031415582
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 372

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Book Description
This collection of essays investigates the notions of life, living organisms, and human nature in Classical German Philosophy from a historical and conceptual perspective. Its 19 chapters move from the peculiarities of organic life to the peculiarities of the distinctly human life form and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of naturalistic accounts of life. In light of the growing interest in nature within current philosophical debates, the book provides an overview of what the philosophical epoch of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Humboldt, the Romantics, Hegel, and others can contribute to our understanding of life today. The collection of essays represents a plurality of approaches that reflects the pluralism of the tradition itself – highlighting the liveliness and polyphonic nature of the issues at stake and the ways in which they were approached in post-Kantian thought.In combining historical and philosophical investigation, the collection constitutes a unique resource for scholars and graduate students working in various areas related to the study of nature in philosophy, contemporary theories of science, and the humanities more generally.

Life, Organisms, and Human Nature

Life, Organisms, and Human Nature PDF Author: Luca Corti
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031415582
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 372

Get Book Here

Book Description
This collection of essays investigates the notions of life, living organisms, and human nature in Classical German Philosophy from a historical and conceptual perspective. Its 19 chapters move from the peculiarities of organic life to the peculiarities of the distinctly human life form and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of naturalistic accounts of life. In light of the growing interest in nature within current philosophical debates, the book provides an overview of what the philosophical epoch of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Humboldt, the Romantics, Hegel, and others can contribute to our understanding of life today. The collection of essays represents a plurality of approaches that reflects the pluralism of the tradition itself – highlighting the liveliness and polyphonic nature of the issues at stake and the ways in which they were approached in post-Kantian thought.In combining historical and philosophical investigation, the collection constitutes a unique resource for scholars and graduate students working in various areas related to the study of nature in philosophy, contemporary theories of science, and the humanities more generally.

Embryos Under the Microscope

Embryos Under the Microscope PDF Author: Jane Maienschein
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674725557
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Jane Maienschein examines how understanding of embryos evolved from the speculations of natural philosophers to bioengineering, with its life-enhancing therapies. She shows that research on embryos has always seemed promising to some but frightening to others, and makes the case that public understanding must be informed by scientific findings.

What's Left of Human Nature?

What's Left of Human Nature? PDF Author: Maria Kronfeldner
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262347970
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Book Description
A philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against dehumanization, Darwinian, and developmentalist challenges. Human nature has always been a foundational issue for philosophy. What does it mean to have a human nature? Is the concept the relic of a bygone age? What is the use of such a concept? What are the epistemic and ontological commitments people make when they use the concept? In What's Left of Human Nature? Maria Kronfeldner offers a philosophical account of human nature that defends the concept against contemporary criticism. In particular, she takes on challenges related to social misuse of the concept that dehumanizes those regarded as lacking human nature (the dehumanization challenge); the conflict between Darwinian thinking and essentialist concepts of human nature (the Darwinian challenge); and the consensus that evolution, heredity, and ontogenetic development result from nurture and nature. After answering each of these challenges, Kronfeldner presents a revisionist account of human nature that minimizes dehumanization and does not fall back on outdated biological ideas. Her account is post-essentialist because it eliminates the concept of an essence of being human; pluralist in that it argues that there are different things in the world that correspond to three different post-essentialist concepts of human nature; and interactive because it understands nature and nurture as interacting at the developmental, epigenetic, and evolutionary levels. On the basis of this, she introduces a dialectical concept of an ever-changing and “looping” human nature. Finally, noting the essentially contested character of the concept and the ambiguity and redundancy of the terminology, she wonders if we should simply eliminate the term “human nature” altogether.

The Vital Question

The Vital Question PDF Author: Nick Lane
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781781250372
Category : Cells
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A game-changing book on the origins of life, called the most important scientific discovery 'since the Copernican revolution' in The Observer.

Aristotle's Anthropology

Aristotle's Anthropology PDF Author: Geert Keil
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107192692
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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Book Description
The first collection of essays on Aristotle's philosophy of human nature, covering the metaphysical, biological and ethical works.

The Good Book of Human Nature

The Good Book of Human Nature PDF Author: Carel van Schaik
Publisher:
ISBN: 0465074707
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
"In The Good Book of Human Nature, evolutionary anthropologist Carel van Schaik and historian Kai Michel advance a new view of Homo sapiens' cultural evolution. The Bible, they argue, was written to make sense of the single greatest change in history: the transition from egalitarian hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies. Religion arose as a strategy to cope with the unprecedented levels of epidemic disease, violence, inequality, and injustice that confronted us when we abandoned the bush--and which still confront us today, "--Amazon.com.

Life's Engines

Life's Engines PDF Author: Paul G. Falkowski
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691247684
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The marvelous microbes that made life on Earth possible and support our very existence For almost four billion years, microbes had the primordial oceans all to themselves. The stewards of Earth, these organisms transformed the chemistry of our planet to make it habitable for plants, animals, and us. Life's Engines takes readers deep into the microscopic world to explore how these marvelous creatures made life on Earth possible—and how human life today would cease to exist without them. Paul Falkowski looks "under the hood" of microbes to find the engines of life, the actual working parts that do the biochemical heavy lifting for every living organism on Earth. With insight and humor, he explains how these miniature engines are built—and how they have been appropriated by and assembled like Lego sets within every creature that walks, swims, or flies. Falkowski shows how evolution works to maintain this core machinery of life, and how we and other animals are veritable conglomerations of microbes. A vibrantly entertaining book about the microbes that support our very existence, Life's Engines will inspire wonder about these elegantly complex nanomachines that have driven life since its origin. It also issues a timely warning about the dangers of tinkering with that machinery to make it more "efficient" at meeting the ever-growing demands of humans in the coming century.

Human Nature and the Limits of Science

Human Nature and the Limits of Science PDF Author: John Dupré
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199248060
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Dupré warns that our understanding of human nature is being distorted by two faulty and harmful forms of pseudo-scientific thinking. He claims it is important to resist scientism - an exaggerated conception of what science can be expected to do.

Animals, Animality, and Literature

Animals, Animality, and Literature PDF Author: Bruce Boehrer
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108581161
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 775

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Book Description
Animals, Animality, and Literature offers readers a one-volume survey of the field of literary animal studies in both its theoretical and applied dimensions. Focusing on English literary history, with scrupulous attention to the interplay between English and foreign influences, this collection gathers together the work of nineteen internationally noted specialists in this growing discipline. Offering discussion of English literary works from Beowulf to Virginia Woolf and beyond, this book explores the ways human/animal difference has been historically activated within the literary context: in devotional works, in philosophical and zoological treatises, in plays and poems and novels, and more recently within emerging narrative genres such as cinema and animation. With an introductory overview of the historical development of animal studies and afterword looking to the field's future possibilities, Animals, Animality, and Literature provides a wide-ranging survey of where this discipline currently stands.

A Framework for K-12 Science Education

A Framework for K-12 Science Education PDF Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309214459
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
Science, engineering, and technology permeate nearly every facet of modern life and hold the key to solving many of humanity's most pressing current and future challenges. The United States' position in the global economy is declining, in part because U.S. workers lack fundamental knowledge in these fields. To address the critical issues of U.S. competitiveness and to better prepare the workforce, A Framework for K-12 Science Education proposes a new approach to K-12 science education that will capture students' interest and provide them with the necessary foundational knowledge in the field. A Framework for K-12 Science Education outlines a broad set of expectations for students in science and engineering in grades K-12. These expectations will inform the development of new standards for K-12 science education and, subsequently, revisions to curriculum, instruction, assessment, and professional development for educators. This book identifies three dimensions that convey the core ideas and practices around which science and engineering education in these grades should be built. These three dimensions are: crosscutting concepts that unify the study of science through their common application across science and engineering; scientific and engineering practices; and disciplinary core ideas in the physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences and for engineering, technology, and the applications of science. The overarching goal is for all high school graduates to have sufficient knowledge of science and engineering to engage in public discussions on science-related issues, be careful consumers of scientific and technical information, and enter the careers of their choice. A Framework for K-12 Science Education is the first step in a process that can inform state-level decisions and achieve a research-grounded basis for improving science instruction and learning across the country. The book will guide standards developers, teachers, curriculum designers, assessment developers, state and district science administrators, and educators who teach science in informal environments.