The End of Theory

The End of Theory PDF Author: Richard Bookstaber
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191859
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book

Book Description
An in-depth look at how to account for the human complexities at the heart of today’s financial system Our economy may have recovered from the Great Recession—but not our economics. The End of Theory discusses why the human condition and the radical uncertainty of our world renders the standard economic model—and the theory behind it—useless for dealing with financial crises. What model should replace it? None. At least not any version we’ve been using for the past two hundred years. Richard Bookstaber argues for a new approach called agent-based economics, one that takes as a starting point the fact that we are humans, not the optimizing automatons that standard economics assumes we are. Sweeping aside the historic failure of twentieth-century economics, The End of Theory offers a novel perspective and more realistic framework to help prevent today's financial system from blowing up again.

The End of Theory

The End of Theory PDF Author: Richard Bookstaber
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691191859
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book

Book Description
An in-depth look at how to account for the human complexities at the heart of today’s financial system Our economy may have recovered from the Great Recession—but not our economics. The End of Theory discusses why the human condition and the radical uncertainty of our world renders the standard economic model—and the theory behind it—useless for dealing with financial crises. What model should replace it? None. At least not any version we’ve been using for the past two hundred years. Richard Bookstaber argues for a new approach called agent-based economics, one that takes as a starting point the fact that we are humans, not the optimizing automatons that standard economics assumes we are. Sweeping aside the historic failure of twentieth-century economics, The End of Theory offers a novel perspective and more realistic framework to help prevent today's financial system from blowing up again.

Critical Social Theory and the End of Work

Critical Social Theory and the End of Work PDF Author: Edward Granter
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317157036
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book

Book Description
Critical Social Theory and the End of Work examines the development and sociological significance of the idea that work is being eliminated through the use of advanced production technology. Granter’s engagement with the work of key American and European figures such as Marx, Marcuse, Gorz, Habermas and Negri, focuses his arguments for the abolition of labour as a response to the current socio-historical changes affecting our work ethic and consumer ideology. By combining history of ideas with social theory, this book considers how the 'end of work' thesis has developed and has been critically implemented in the analysis of modern society. This book will appeal to scholars of sociology, history of ideas, social and cultural theory as well as those working in the fields of critical management and sociology of work.

The End of Progress

The End of Progress PDF Author: Amy Allen
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231540639
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Get Book

Book Description
While post- and decolonial theorists have thoroughly debunked the idea of historical progress as a Eurocentric, imperialist, and neocolonialist fallacy, many of the most prominent contemporary thinkers associated with the Frankfurt School—Jürgen Habermas, Axel Honneth, and Rainer Forst—have defended ideas of progress, development, and modernity and have even made such ideas central to their normative claims. Can the Frankfurt School's goal of radical social change survive this critique? And what would a decolonized critical theory look like? Amy Allen fractures critical theory from within by dispensing with its progressive reading of history while retaining its notion of progress as a political imperative, so eloquently defended by Adorno. Critical theory, according to Allen, is the best resource we have for achieving emancipatory social goals. In reimagining a decolonized critical theory after the end of progress, she rescues it from oblivion and gives it a future.

String Theory and the Scientific Method

String Theory and the Scientific Method PDF Author: Richard Dawid
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107067588
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages :

Get Book

Book Description
String theory has played a highly influential role in theoretical physics for nearly three decades and has substantially altered our view of the elementary building principles of the Universe. However, the theory remains empirically unconfirmed, and is expected to remain so for the foreseeable future. So why do string theorists have such a strong belief in their theory? This book explores this question, offering a novel insight into the nature of theory assessment itself. Dawid approaches the topic from a unique position, having extensive experience in both philosophy and high-energy physics. He argues that string theory is just the most conspicuous example of a number of theories in high-energy physics where non-empirical theory assessment has an important part to play. Aimed at physicists and philosophers of science, the book does not use mathematical formalism and explains most technical terms.

The End of Art Theory

The End of Art Theory PDF Author: Victor Burgin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1349182028
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book

Book Description
Art theory', understood as those forms of aesthetics, art history and criticism which began in the Enlightenment and culminated in 'high modernism', is now at an end. These essays, examining the interdependencies of advertising, film, painting and photography, constitute a call for a 'new art theory' - a practice of writing whose end is to contribute to a general 'theory of representations': an understanding of the modes and means of symbolic articulation of our forms of sociality and subjectivity.

The End of Literary Theory

The End of Literary Theory PDF Author: Stein Haugom Olsen
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521333261
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book

Book Description
The essays in this collection are concerned with the philosophical problems that arise in connection with the understanding and evaluation of literature - such problems as the relationship between the work and the author (authorial intention), between the work and the world (reference and truth), the definition of a literary work, and the nature of literary theory itself. Professor Olsen attacks many of the orthodoxies of modern literary theory, in particular the enterprise to build a comprehensive systematic literary theory. His own work is informed by a consistent perspective: the assumption that literature is a social institution governed by conventions, and that answers to problems of interpretation and appreciation can be found only through an analysis of these conventions. This is an important book for scholars and students of literary theory and philosophy, especially for those who see an ever-increasing cross-fertilization between the two disciplines.

The End of Organization Theory?

The End of Organization Theory? PDF Author: Øyvind Pålshaugen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027299412
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 157

Get Book

Book Description
Organizational theorists talk a lot about organizational development. Although they can express themselves eloquently, too often the practitioner is not convinced by their talk. The authors of The End of Organization Theory? are in favor of the ‘doers’ doing most of the talking themselves. Thus, in this book, Øyvind Pålshaugen tells the story of an action research project in which a reorganization of the discourse between management and workers serves as the basis for an organizational development process. Björn Gustavsen, Dag Østerberg and John Shotter add critical comments.

Apocalypse Theory and the Ends of the World

Apocalypse Theory and the Ends of the World PDF Author: Malcolm Bull
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631190820
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book

Book Description
In this volume, leading historians, critics and theorists review 3,000 years of apocalyptic theory. Tracing the history of millenarianism, they investigate the modern and postmodern debates. (Philosophy)

End of History and the Last Man

End of History and the Last Man PDF Author: Francis Fukuyama
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416531785
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 464

Get Book

Book Description
Ever since its first publication in 1992, The End of History and the Last Man has provoked controversy and debate. Francis Fukuyama's prescient analysis of religious fundamentalism, politics, scientific progress, ethical codes, and war is as essential for a world fighting fundamentalist terrorists as it was for the end of the Cold War. Now updated with a new afterword, The End of History and the Last Man is a modern classic.

The End Of Science

The End Of Science PDF Author: John Horgan
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465050859
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 368

Get Book

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.