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Author: Noson S. Yanofsky
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026252984X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 419
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Book Description
This exploration of the scientific limits of knowledge challenges our deep-seated beliefs about our universe, our rationality, and ourselves. “A must-read for anyone studying information science.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own intuitions about the world—including our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Yanofsky describes simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve: • perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense • different levels of infinity • the bizarre world of the quantum • the relevance of relativity theory • the causes of chaos theory • math problems that cannot be solved by normal means • statements that are true but cannot be proven Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there.
Author: Noson S. Yanofsky
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 026252984X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 419
Get Book Here
Book Description
This exploration of the scientific limits of knowledge challenges our deep-seated beliefs about our universe, our rationality, and ourselves. “A must-read for anyone studying information science.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review Many books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own intuitions about the world—including our ideas about space, time, and motion, and the complex relationship between the knower and the known. Yanofsky describes simple tasks that would take computers trillions of centuries to complete and other problems that computers can never solve: • perfectly formed English sentences that make no sense • different levels of infinity • the bizarre world of the quantum • the relevance of relativity theory • the causes of chaos theory • math problems that cannot be solved by normal means • statements that are true but cannot be proven Moving from the concrete to the abstract, from problems of everyday language to straightforward philosophical questions to the formalities of physics and mathematics, Yanofsky demonstrates a myriad of unsolvable problems and paradoxes. Exploring the various limitations of our knowledge, he shows that many of these limitations have a similar pattern and that by investigating these patterns, we can better understand the structure and limitations of reason itself. Yanofsky even attempts to look beyond the borders of reason to see what, if anything, is out there.
Author: John Horgan
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465050859
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368
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Book Description
As staff writer for Scientific American, John Horgan has a window on contemporary science unsurpassed in all the world. Who else routinely interviews the likes of Lynn Margulis, Roger Penrose, Francis Crick, Richard Dawkins, Freeman Dyson, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Stephen Hawking, Thomas Kuhn, Chris Langton, Karl Popper, Stephen Weinberg, and E.O. Wilson, with the freedom to probe their innermost thoughts? In The End Of Science, Horgan displays his genius for getting these larger-than-life figures to be simply human, and scientists, he writes, "are rarely so human . . . so at there mercy of their fears and desires, as when they are confronting the limits of knowledge."This is the secret fear that Horgan pursues throughout this remarkable book: Have the big questions all been answered? Has all the knowledge worth pursuing become known? Will there be a final "theory of everything" that signals the end? Is the age of great discoverers behind us? Is science today reduced to mere puzzle solving and adding detains to existing theories? Horgan extracts surprisingly candid answers to there and other delicate questions as he discusses God, Star Trek, superstrings, quarks, plectics, consciousness, Neural Darwinism, Marx's view of progress, Kuhn's view of revolutions, cellular automata, robots, and the Omega Point, with Fred Hoyle, Noam Chomsky, John Wheeler, Clifford Geertz, and dozens of other eminent scholars. The resulting narrative will both infuriate and delight as it mindless Horgan's smart, contrarian argument for "endism" with a witty, thoughtful, even profound overview of the entire scientific enterprise. Scientists have always set themselves apart from other scholars in the belief that they do not construct the truth, they discover it. Their work is not interpretation but simple revelation of what exists in the empirical universe. But science itself keeps imposing limits on its own power. Special relativity prohibits the transmission of matter or information as speeds faster than that of light; quantum mechanics dictates uncertainty; and chaos theory confirms the impossibility of complete prediction. Meanwhile, the very idea of scientific rationality is under fire from Neo-Luddites, animal-rights activists, religious fundamentalists, and New Agers alike. As Horgan makes clear, perhaps the greatest threat to science may come from losing its special place in the hierarchy of disciplines, being reduced to something more akin to literaty criticism as more and more theoreticians engage in the theory twiddling he calls "ironic science." Still, while Horgan offers his critique, grounded in the thinking of the world's leading researchers, he offers homage too. If science is ending, he maintains, it is only because it has done its work so well.
Author: Willy Østreng
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 0761848304
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 331
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Book Description
Annotation Science without Boundaries discusses the many issues involved in going beyond disciplinary research practices in science, politics and society, and addresses the complexities of their interface. Governments and politicians are increasingly calling upon the scientific community to deal with global challenges such as climate change, poverty, international governance, peace-making et cetera. These are calls for interdisciplinary research - calls to deal with the interaction of parts in complex systems. The book addresses questions like these: -Does interdisciplinary research fit into the overall disciplinary organization of the sciences? -Does interdisciplinary research meet the high scientific standards of the research community? -How does the science community adopt to changing circumstances? -How responsive is the science community to social and political needs? -To what extent do governments intervene to influence science? -What pattern of interaction exists between politics, society and research? Polar research is used to show how politics may intermingle with science to safeguard national interests in times of dramatic international change.
Author: Stanley L. Jaki
Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
This new collection of writings from America's foremost authority on the relationship between science and religion, Templeton Prize-winner Stanley L. Jaki, is an incisive overview of the intersection of science with the most fundamental areas of human culture.
Author: Maddie Witter
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118483758
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 341
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Book Description
Imagine a classroom where all students are engaged in highly rigorous and fun learning every single day. That classroom can be yours starting tomorrow. You don’t have to be a reading specialist to pick up this book. Anyone who wants to dramatically improve reading achievement will find helpful suggestions. You might be a third grade teacher whose students have mastered decoding, and you are ready to build their comprehension. Or you might be a high school science teacher whose students aren’t yet reading on level with deep critical thinking. This book is for you. It doesn’t matter whether you are a public, charter, private, or alternative education teacher: the Reading Without Limits program works in each one. Along with hundreds of ready-to-use teaching strategies, Reading Without Limits comes with a supplemental website where teachers can download even more resources for free! Reading Without Limits is the first book offered in the KIPP Educator Series. KIPP, or the Knowledge is Power Program, began in 1994. As of Fall 2012, there are 125 KIPP schools in 20 states and the District of Columbia serving nearly 40,000 students climbing the mountain to and through college.
Author: Hart, Susan
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
ISBN: 033521259X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
This book explores ways of teaching that are free from determinist beliefs about ability. In a detailed critique of the practices of ability labelling and ability-focussed teaching, Learning without Limits examines the damage these practices can do to young people, teachers and the curriculum. Drawing on a research project at the University of Cambridge, the book features nine vivid case studies (from Year 1 to Year 11) that describe how teachers have developed alternative practices despite considerable pressure on them and on their schools and classrooms.
Author: Marcelo Gleiser
Publisher: Civitas Books
ISBN: 0465031714
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
Why discovering the limits to science may be the most powerful discovery of allHow much can we know about the world? In this book, physicist Marcelo Gleiser traces our search for answers to the most fundamental questions of existence, the origin of the universe, the nature of reality, and the limits of knowledge. In so doing, he reaches a provocative conclusion: science, like religion, is fundamentally limited as a tool for understanding the world. As science and its philosophical interpretations advance, we face the unsettling recognition of how much we don't know. Gleiser shows that by aband.
Author: Patrick A. Heelan
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520046115
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 404
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Book Description
Drawing on the phenomenological tradition in the philosophy of science and philosophy of nature, Patrick Heelan concludes that perception is a cognitive, world-building act, and is therefore never absolute or finished.
Author: John C. Sparks
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 1418441244
Category : Calculus
Languages : en
Pages : 394
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Book Description
First time author Ledesma sets his adventure tale in early America. Antonios' travels and adventures carry him across two continents, Europe and America in his quest for a new life. He leaves the safety and love of his family in Italy for uncertain life in a far off land. His dreams, anxieties and fears are borne out as he encounters and conquers the harsh strange and challenging world that surrounds him. Each tantalizing adventure brings our hero closer to maturity, self-esteem and the molding of his character. He experiences love; fear and death on his long journey and witnesses the history that shaped early America. 1n 1846 he becomes an early pioneer by joining a wagon train bound for California. During the trip he experiences encounters with Indians, death, accidents and newly establishes a long lasting friendship. He wanders around California finding romance and land. He eventually starts a grape vineyard and establishes himself as a rancher, husband and father. His life in early California is entwined with such history making events as the Gold Rush, statehood, the Pony Express, building of the Transcontinental Railroad and many more historical events. Reading this heart warming young mans story will enrich the readers to understand the personal triumphs, hardships and the west's rich history
Author: Jason F. Brennan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317815629
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 376
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Book Description
May you sell your vote? May you sell your kidney? May gay men pay surrogates to bear them children? May spouses pay each other to watch the kids, do the dishes, or have sex? Should we allow the rich to genetically engineer gifted, beautiful children? Should we allow betting markets on terrorist attacks and natural disasters? Most people shudder at the thought. To put some goods and services for sale offends human dignity. If everything is commodified, then nothing is sacred. The market corrodes our character. Or so most people say. In Markets without Limits, Jason Brennan and Peter Jaworski give markets a fair hearing. The market does not introduce wrongness where there was not any previously. Thus, the authors claim, the question of what rightfully may be bought and sold has a simple answer: if you may do it for free, you may do it for money. Contrary to the conservative consensus, they claim there are no inherent limits to what can be bought and sold, but only restrictions on how we buy and sell.
