From one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world, a rousing defense of the role of science in our lives The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven’s Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science. There could be no better guide than Lisa (...) Randall. The bestselling author of Warped Passages is an expert in both particle physics (the study of the smallest objects we know of) and cosmology (the study of the largest). In Knocking on Heaven’s Door, she explores how we decide which scientific questions to study and how we go about answering them. She examines the role of risk, creativity, uncertainty, beauty, and truth in scientific thinking through provocative conversations with leading figures in other fields (such as the chef David Chang, the forecaster Nate Silver, and the screenwriter Scott Derrickson), and she explains with wit and clarity the latest ideas in physics and cosmology. Randall describes the nature and goals of the largest machine ever built: the Large Hadron Collider, the enormous particle accelerator below the border of France and Switzerland—as well as recent ideas underlying cosmology and current dark matter experiments. The most sweeping and exciting science book in years, Knocking on Heaven’s Door makes clear the biggest scientific questions we face and reveals how answering them could ultimately tell us who we are and where we came from. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:F. H. Bradley and the Working-out of Absolute Idealism* JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. FRANCIS HERBERTBRADLEY (1846-1924) 1 agreed with the other English idealists that the real world is the experienced world. But he started with the fundamental conviction that "experience" is more than "thought," as Green had maintained. Bradley's basic drive is the refusal to abolish "feeling" in favor of knowledge and intelligibility. "Feeling" is a fundamental and (...) ineradicable aspect of "reality"m more fundamental, in fact, than thinking. In the immediately experienced world, all intelligible distinctions and relations are merged in a "whole of feeling" which is the ultimate subject-matter of philosophy. "Thought" arises out of feeling, out of "immediacy," as an interpretation of immediate experience by distinguishing relations and aspects in it. "Knowledge " is only one aspect of the experienced world; it needs blending with "feeling" and will to include all the experienced aspects. "Feeling" starts for Bradley, in his Principles of Logic (1883), in pretty much the empiricist sense, as isolated sensations, and as subjective (in flavor at least). It then becomes neutral: "feeling" is identified with "the felt"; and it grows richer, attempting to include the whole wealth of immediate experience. Thus Bradley gets very close to Dewey's conception of "direct experience," "non-reflective experience," without, however, Dewey's biological analysis. It is through this conception of experience that Bradley approaches the naturalism to which his thinking almost arrived at the end. Thought, that is, has a setting in experience " it is relational, and by its analysis it breaks up experienced and felt wholes. There is a double insistence in Bradley. On the one hand, reality is experienced, but is not adequately expressed in thought. On the other, reality/s accessible to knowledge. What has often been called Bradley's "skepticism" is really an objective relativism. Thought, logical structure, is not ultimate. In Appearance and *This study of F. It. Bradley is based on one of five chapters on post-ttegehan philosophical Ideahsm in Britain and America to be included in my forthcoming Career oJ Philosophy in Modem Times, Vol.III: The Hundred Years Since Darwin. ISee Bradley ed. of Mind, XXXIV (1925); A. E. Taylor, "F. H. Bradley"; J. H. Muirhead, "Bradley's Place in Philosophy." See also T. M. Forsyth, English Philosophy (London: 1910), chap. VII, 2rid part; Rudolf Kagey, F. H. Bradley's Logic (New York: 1931). The best philosophical analyses of Bradley are Robert D. Mack, The Appeal to Immediate Experience (New York: 1945),and Richard Wollheim,F. H. Bradley (Pelican Books, 1959). [245] 246 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Reality, he insists it is really self-contradictory; then later he emphasizes rather that it is always relative to its particular subiect-matter. The real, experienced world is never identical with the intelligible world, yet it is also never "extraneous " to it. The relation of the two can be said to be, in Aristotelian terms, that of substance to form, that of what is to its intelligible aspect. The intelligible world, the system of science and knowledge, thus fundamentally needs criticism in the light of its setting in the experienced world. This is not only the entire drive of Dewey's Experience and Nature; it is the expression of that whole current of thought on the Continent which began with the criticism of Hegel's "panlogism" in the 1840's and is today called "Existentialism." Bradley is the British counterpart of all those who have criticized philosophies of logical structure like T. H. Green's, or like the other contemporary forms of Neo-Kantianism in Germany and France. The "known world" is a world of relations distingflished in the richer "real world." These distinctions are ultimately relative to their particular setting, but in that setting they are valid enough. Bradley's celebrated doctrine of the "degrees of truth and reality" means that practically knowledge is "true"; any idea which fulfills its purpose of rendering some portion or aspect of experience intelligible and significant and meaningful, and which is not ousted by a better idea, Bradley is willing to say is "so far true." It is valid, in its own sphere and purpose, despite its ultimate inconsistency; the wave-theory... (shrink)

When is industry self-regulation (ISR) a legitimate form of governance? In principle, ISR can serve the interests of participating companies, regulators and other stakeholders. However, in practice, empirical evidence shows that ISR schemes often under-perform, leading to criticism that such schemes are tantamount to firms marking their own homework. In response, this paper explains how current management theory on ISR has failed to separate the pragmatic legitimacy of ISR based on self-interested calculations, from moral legitimacy based on normative approval. The (...) paper traces three families of management theory on ISR and uses these to map the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of ISR schemes. It identifies tensions between the pragmatic and moral legitimacy of ISR schemes, which the current ISR literature does not address, and draws implications for the future theory and practice of ISR. (shrink)

Businesses promote their environmental awareness through green buildings, eco-labels, sustainability reports, industry pledges and clean technologies. When are these symbols wasteful corporate spin, and when do they signal authentic environmental improvements? Based on twenty years of research, three rich case studies, a strong theoretical model and a range of practical applications, this book provides the first systematic analysis of the drivers and consequences of symbolic corporate environmentalism. It addresses the indirect cost of companies' symbolic actions and develops a new concept (...) of the 'social energy penalty' - the cost to society when powerful corporate actors limit the social conversation on environmental problems and their solutions. This thoughtful book develops a set of tools for researchers, regulators and managers to separate useful environmental information from empty corporate spin, and will appeal to researchers and students of corporate responsibility, corporate environmental strategy and sustainable business, as well as environmental practitioners. (shrink)

Asserts the need for Americans to reclaim their traditional values of freedom, democracy and fairness and offers alternatives to accepting political and economic absolutes.

What personal truths reside in biological ties that are absent in adoptive ties? And why do we think adoptive and biological ties are essentially different when it comes to understanding who we are? At a time when interest in DNA and ancestry is exploding, Frances Latchford questions the idea that knowing one's bio-genealogy is integral to personal identity or a sense of family and belonging. Upending our established values and beliefs about what makes a family, Steeped in Blood examines (...) the social and political devaluation of adoptive ties. It takes readers on an intellectual journey through accepted wisdom about adoption, twins, kinship, and incest, and challenges our naturalistic and individualistic assumptions about identity and the biological ties that bind us, sometimes violently, to our families. Latchford exposes how our desire for bio-genealogical knowledge, understood as it is by family and adoption experts, pathologizes adoptees by posing the biological tie as a necessary condition for normal identity formation. Rejecting the idea that a love of the self-same is fundamental to family bonds, her book is a reaction to the wounds families suffer whenever they dare to revel in their difference. A rejoinder to rhetoric that defines adoptees, adoptive kin, and their family intimacies as inferior and inauthentic, Steeped in Blood's view through the lens of critical adoption studies decentres our cultural obsession with the biological family imaginary and makes real the possibility of being family in the absence of blood. (shrink)

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Taste and of the Origin of Our Ideas of Beauty (1785) was written by the portrait artist Frances Reynolds (1729-1807).

In this provocative work, Frances E. Gill argues that self-determination is a universal goal of correctional counseling. Gill leads the reader through a rigorous philosophical justification of the paternalism of state punishment in service of this goal.

How do you know anything is true? What relation is there between my psyche and your psyche, does one exist? Can we doubt everything or are some things indubitable? What does Jung have to say about body and psyche, body and mind? Cartesian Philosophy and the Flesh is an analysis and critique of interpretations of Cartesian philosophy in analytical psychology. It focuses on readings of Descartes that have important implications for understanding Jung, and analytical and existential psychology generally. Frances (...) Gray's book raises questions about the 'place' of the body in a theory of the human psyche and about what kind of psyche, if any, is essential to concepts of human being. Gray claims that the debates around Descartes and metaphysical dualism have been oversimplified and that this has had a profound effect on conceptualizing an on-going relation between psyche and body. The book also explores the relationship between Jung's conception of the phenomenological standpoint and that of Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Cartesian Philosophy and Flesh brings together Descartes’ idea of self-interrogation and self-reflection and Jung's project in The Red Book, the practice of spiritual exercises is the underpinning orientation of both men. It recommends similar practices to anyone interested in the truths of their own living. Gray’s book will be of interest to Jung scholars, and those with an interest in Jungian studies, Analytical Psychologists and Philosophers. (shrink)

Nicholas Shea offers Varitel Semantics as a naturalistic account of mental content. I argue that the account secures determinate content only by appeal to pragmatic considerations, and so it fails to respect naturalism. But that is fine, because representational content is not, strictly speaking, necessary for explanation in cognitive science. Even in Shea’s own account, content serves only a variety of heuristic functions.

As interest in aesthetic experience evolved in the eighteenth century, discussions of the sublime located two opposed accounts of its place and use. Ferguson traces these two positions - the Burkean empiricist account and the Kantian formalist one - to argue that they had significance of aesthetics, including recent deconstructive and New Historicist criticism.

Connections are drawn here between the writings of Mexico's most important seventeenth-century poet, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz and the development of the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe, still today a dominant feature of Catholic worship in Latin America. Techniques of conversion used by the Spanish missions are examined as background to the apparition of the Virgin, in 1531, and to clarify Sor Juana's response in her public verse. Later uses of the synecdoche are set out to illustrate (...) the Guadalupe's shape-shifting powers besides those of other legendary women in Mexican myth and history. A final section looks at the possibilities for new, creative aspects of feminist spirituality and liberation theology challenging Latin American Catholicism, and suggests ways in which women worshipping, and the worship of woman, are evolving in modem Mexico. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Prayer in Greek ReligionFrances Hickson–HahnSimon Pulleyn. Prayer in Greek Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. xvi + 245 pp. Cloth, $75.The study of prayer in ancient Greece faces rather daunting obstacles. Only four brief texts remain which scholars agree may represent authentic examples of cultic prayer: the twoword prayer of Eleusinian initiates, the Athenian [End Page 632] prayer to Zeus for rain, a prayer to Demeter for the barley (...) sheaf, and the dithyramb of Elis, for a grand total of forty words. In addition, there are three fifth–century hymns from Epidaurus, a form not universally agreed to be prayer. In the area of epigraphic evidence, the largest body of prayer–like addresses derives from curse tablets which mostly postdate the classical period and which arguably belong not to the study of religion but to that of magic. Votive inscriptions, while plentiful, are rarely in prayer form. Thus, of necessity, the scholar is largely dependent on literary evidence, most of which is poetic.Thus it is a challenging task which Simon Pulleyn took on in this revised version of his doctoral thesis: to describe and interpret the mentality of all types of prayer in archaic and classical Greece in a relatively slight volume (216 pages plus appendices, etc.). The resulting monograph, "the first book–length study of Greek prayer to appear in English" (jacket), will prove a useful introduction to the body of evidence and major lines of research on Greek prayer. His work will be especially welcome to those not competent in the ancient languages, for Pulleyn translates all of the prayers proffered as examples, as well as modern foreign–language quotations. He also includes a brief glossary of fifteen Greek words especially important in the study of prayers. While he quotes an abundance of illustrative prayers, both literary and epigraphic, and devotes considerable space to lexicographic discussions, nevertheless he produces a quite readable text.Rejecting the broader definition of prayer as any address or appeal to supernatural powers, used by Aubriot–Sevin (Prière et conceptions religieuses en Grèce ancienne, Lyon, 1992), Pulleyn defines Greek prayers as "articulate requests directed toward the gods" and proposes a four–part classification of (1) prayers based on ξενία (2) curses (), (3) entreaties (λιταί), and (4) supplications ().While there is considerable ancient evidence to support the association of prayer with petition, such a narrow description leaves in limbo other types of address to the gods, such as thanksgivings and greetings, which are too important to be left out of this or any comprehensive study of prayer. And so Pulleyn is forced to devote much space to the discussion of material which he does not technically consider prayer. In fact, he himself varies between the technical use of the term "prayer" and the more common modern definition, a practice which naturally leads to some confusion. On occasion, he resorts to the term "prayer–like" to describe nonpetitionary addresses to gods.Perhaps the reason for this emphasis on petition is the author's main thesis that is the primary characteristic of the relationship between the ancient Greeks and their gods, and thus of prayer as well. Pulleyn explains thus: "it refers to a whole nexus of related ideas that we would call reciprocity. When one gives something to a god, one is giving in the sense that the offering is pleasing; but equally one is storing up for oneself a feeling of gratitude on the part of the god, which is also The whole two–way relationship can be called one of " (4). [End Page 633]This thesis, which is prominent in the first half of the book, is most fully developed in the second chapter, where Pulleyn examines prayers of the type, known particularly from the Homeric epics. He is especially concerned with the da quia dedi(t) model, which presents an argument for fulfillment of the accompanying request based on sacrifices previously offered. Numerically, in Homer and elsewhere, this is not a common prayer type. Although it would seem to violate the typical pattern of sacrifice offered in conjunction with prayer requests, Pulleyn argues convincingly for interpretation of this prayer type within the context of reciprocity. The connection with... (shrink)