He brings together recent scientific developments such as Fuzzy logic and Chaos theory to create a new synthesis of mind and matter.

In the first comprehensive biography of Erwin Schrödinger--a brilliant and charming Austrian, a great scientist, and a man with a passionate interest in people and ideas--the author draws upon recollections of Schrödinger's friends, family and colleagues, and on contemporary records, letters and diaries. Schrödinger led a very intense life, both in his research and in the personal realm. This book portrays his life against the backdrop of Europe at a time of change and unrest. His best known scientific work was (...) the discovery of wave mechanics, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1933. In Dublin, he wrote his most famous and influential book What is Life?, which attracted some of the brightest minds of his generation into molecular biology. This highly readable biography of a fascinating and complex man will appeal to anyone interested in the history of our times, and in the life and thought of one of the great men of twentieth-century science. (shrink)

This edition includes new essays by philosopher Michael Williams and literary scholar David Bromwich, as well as Rorty's previously unpublished essay "The ...

Author Max Black argues that language should conform to the discovered regularities of experience it is radically mistaken to assume that the conception of language is a mirror of reality.

... Difficulty of distinguishing between Varieties and Species — Origin of Domestic ... and Origin— Principle of Selection anciently followed, its Effects— ...

Author Max Black argues that language should conform to the discovered regularities of experience it is radically mistaken to assume that the conception of language is a mirror of reality.

ORIGIN OF SPECIES. INTRODUCTION. When on board HMS 'Beagle,' as naturalist, I was ranch struck with certain facts in the distribution of the organic beings ...

Like his earlier Language and Philosophy. and Problems of Analysis, Models and Metaphors is a collection of Black's papers unified by the belief that linguistic considerations can play an important part in framing and solving philosophical problems. Broadly speaking, the linguistic approach takes two forms: examining the uses of a word, or of a set of related words, frequently occurring in philosophical inquiries, either for the general purposes of clarification or as a useful aid to the solution, or dissolution, of (...) a specific philosophical problem ; considering questions about language, meaning, and related subjects. Obviously, given that the concepts involved are of language or meaning, the former approach can be readily incorporated in the latter. (shrink)

The Study of Sociology, by English philosopher, biologist, anthropologist, and sociologist, Herbert Spencer, was originally published in 1873. Spencer was known for his contributions to evolutionary theory and for applying it outside of biology, to the fields of philosophy, psychology, and within sociology. In particular, this work is a survey of the foundations of sociology, by one of its founders. Within which he applies the idea of natural selection to the group survival and institutional structures.

An historian and cultural critic explores the relationships between psychology, ecology, and new scientific insights into systems in nature. Drawing on our understanding of the evolutionary, self-organizing universe, Roszak discusses our rootedness in the greater web of life and explores the relationship between our own sanity and the larger-than-human world.

Both science and theology have lately faced a crisis of authority. Their shared realization of the extent to which knowledge is underdetermined by the data and socially constructed provides a kind of common ground for reconsideration of their respective methods of inquiry as well as of the status of the claims they have warrant to make. Both fields are now consciously and critically employing a models approach. This article proposes criteria for assessing models and applies the criteria to one model (...) from each field. The model of understanding evolution as a struggle for existence is considered from the field of science, and the traditional model for understanding the God‐world relation as that of a king's relation to his kingdom is considered from the field of theology. Each of these models is evaluated with respect to its credibility, religious viability, and moral adequacy. In each case an alternative analogy is proposed and argued for. (shrink)

Describes how the economic growth today is benefiting only a small proportion of the global population. Distinguishes between the symptom as and the causes of the economic malaise, and analyses the flawed bases for many deeply-held orthodoxies.