Toward a Science of Man

Toward a Science of Man
Author: Timothy H. Thoresen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2011-06-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3110818914

Toward a Science of Man: Essays in the History of Anthropology.

Toward a Science of Man in Society

Toward a Science of Man in Society
Author: K.W. Kapp
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 9401036608

THIS study is concerned with the search for a new unity of social knowledge and social inquiry. As such it is addressed to all those who see in the present compartmentalization and special ization of the social sciences the reason for the bewildering pro liferation of subject matters, the preoccupation with trivia and the failure to make the maximum use of our knowledge for human welfare. More specifically, I am addressing this book to those who are dealing with "interdisciplinary" problems such as the study of foreign areas, the analysis of sociocultural change, economic development of "backward" economies and the planning and teaching of "integrated" courses in the social sciences. The book suggests an answer to the question, How can our specialized knowledge about man and society be unified? As such the study reflects the conviction that all scientific knowledge, in order to make the greatest possible contribution to human welfare, must become comprehensive in character. In fact, such knowledge differs from popular and common-sense understanding precisely by the fact that it is systematically formulated and held together in terms of a few unifying conceptual frameworks. Indeed, all scientific understanding is, above all, an effort to simplify by unifying what has long appeared as unrelated and disparate. Those who believe that compartmentalization and specialization are the royal road to success in the social sciences may find this an irritating book.

Toward a More Natural Science

Toward a More Natural Science
Author: Leon R. Kass
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 389
Release: 2008-06-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1439105685

Kass shows how the promise and the peril of our time are inextricably linked with the promise and the peril of modern science. The relation between the pursuit of knowledge and the conduct of life—between science and ethics, each broadly conceived—has in recent years been greatly complicated by developments in the science of life. This book examines the ethical questions involved in prenatal screening, in vitro fertilization, artificial life forms, and medical care, and discusses the role of human beings in nature.

Toward a Science of Human Nature

Toward a Science of Human Nature
Author: Daniel N. Robinson
Publisher:
Total Pages: 258
Release: 1982-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780231051750

Robinson unfolds the vision of four influential writers on psychology---J.S. Mill, F. Hegel, Wilhelm Wundt, and William James---who considered the world, its persons and problems, its possibilities and conflicts, its scientific facts and its moral ambiguities, and proceeded to devise a means by which to improve it. Robinson shows how in thinking about psychology, these individuals provided an intellectual context within which the discipline could be refined.

Science And Human Behavior

Science And Human Behavior
Author: B.F Skinner
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 484
Release: 2012-12-18
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1476716153

The psychology classic—a detailed study of scientific theories of human nature and the possible ways in which human behavior can be predicted and controlled—from one of the most influential behaviorists of the twentieth century and the author of Walden Two. “This is an important book, exceptionally well written, and logically consistent with the basic premise of the unitary nature of science. Many students of society and culture would take violent issue with most of the things that Skinner has to say, but even those who disagree most will find this a stimulating book.” —Samuel M. Strong, The American Journal of Sociology “This is a remarkable book—remarkable in that it presents a strong, consistent, and all but exhaustive case for a natural science of human behavior…It ought to be…valuable for those whose preferences lie with, as well as those whose preferences stand against, a behavioristic approach to human activity.” —Harry Prosch, Ethics

The Moral Arc

The Moral Arc
Author: Michael Shermer
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 592
Release: 2015-01-20
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0805096930

The New York Times–bestselling author of The Believing Brains explores how science makes us better people. From Galileo and Newton to Thomas Hobbes and Martin Luther King, Jr., thinkers throughout history have consciously employed scientific techniques to better understand the non-physical world. The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment led theorists to apply scientific reasoning to the non-scientific disciplines of politics, economics, and moral philosophy. Instead of relying on the woodcuts of dissected bodies in old medical texts, physicians opened bodies themselves to see what was there; instead of divining truth through the authority of an ancient holy book or philosophical treatise, people began to explore the book of nature for themselves through travel and exploration; instead of the supernatural belief in the divine right of kings, people employed a natural belief in the right of democracy. In The Moral Arc, Shermer explains how abstract reasoning, rationality, empiricism, skepticism—scientific ways of thinking—have profoundly changed the way we perceive morality and, indeed, move us ever closer to a more just world. “Michael Shermer is a beacon of reason in an ocean of irrationality.” —Neil deGrasse Tyson “A memorable book, a book to recommend and discuss late into the night.” —Richard Dawkins “[A] brilliant contribution . . . Sherman’s is an exciting vision.” —Nature

Toward a Biosocial Science

Toward a Biosocial Science
Author: Alexander Riley
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2021-05-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000376214

Sociology is in crisis. While other disciplines have taken on board the revolutionary discoveries driven by evolutionary biology and psychology, genomics and behavioral genetics, and the neurosciences, sociology has ignored these advances and embraced a biophobia that threatens to drive the discipline into marginality. This book takes its place in a rich tradition of efforts to integrate sociological thinking into the world of the biological sciences that can be traced to the origins of the discipline, and that took on modern form beginning a generation ago in the works of thinkers such as E.O. Wilson, Richard Alexander, Joseph Lopreato, and Richard Machalek. It offers an accessible introduction to rethinking sociological science in consonance with these contemporary biological revolutions. From the standpoint of a biosociology rooted in the single most important scientific theory touching on human life, the Darwinian theory of natural selection, the book sketches an evolutionary social science that would enable us to properly attend to basic questions of human nature, human behavior, and human social organization. Individual chapters take on such topics as: The roots and nature of human sociality; the origins of morality in human social life and an evolutionary perspective on human interests, reciprocity, and altruism; the sex difference in our species and what it contributes to an explanation of sociological facts; the nature of stratification, status, and inequality in human evolutionary history; the question of race in our species; and the contribution evolutionary theory makes to explaining the origins and the importance of culture in human societies.

Toward a Theology of Nature

Toward a Theology of Nature
Author: Wolfhart Pannenberg
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Total Pages: 184
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 9780664253844

Pannenberg poses theological questions to natural scientists that illuminate his personal position on issues dealing with theology and the natural sciences, especially physics, reviewing the relationship between natural law and contingency, the importance of the spirit in the phenomenon of life, field theory, language, and the theological account for the nature of God and God's creative activity.

Neurophilosophy

Neurophilosophy
Author: Patricia Smith Churchland
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 566
Release: 1989
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780262530859

"A Bradford book." Bibliography: p. [491]-523. Includes index.

Beyond Physicalism

Beyond Physicalism
Author: Edward F. Kelly
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 636
Release: 2015-02-19
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1442232404

The rise of modern science has brought with it increasing acceptance among intellectual elites of a worldview that conflicts sharply both with everyday human experience and with beliefs widely shared among the world’s great cultural traditions. Most contemporary scientists and philosophers believe that reality is at bottom purely physical, and that human beings are nothing more than extremely complicated biological machines. On such views our everyday experiences of conscious decision-making, free will, and the self are illusory by-products of the grinding of our neural machinery. It follows that mind and personality are necessarily extinguished at death, and that there exists no deeper transpersonal or spiritual reality of any sort. Beyond Physicalism is the product of an unusual fellowship of scientists and humanities scholars who dispute these views. In their previous publication, Irreducible Mind, they argued that physicalism cannot accommodate various well-evidenced empirical phenomena including paranormal or psi phenomena, postmortem survival, and mystical experiences. In this new theory-oriented companion volume they go further by attempting to understand how the world must be constituted in order that these “rogue” phenomena can occur. Drawing upon empirical science, metaphysical philosophy, and the mystical traditions, the authors work toward an improved “big picture” of the general character of reality, one which strongly overlaps territory traditionally occupied by the world’s institutional religions, and which attempts to reconcile science and spirituality by finding a middle path between the polarized fundamentalisms, religious and scientific, that have dominated recent public discourse. Contributions by: Harald Atmanspacher, Loriliai Biernacki, Bernard Carr, Wolfgang Fach, Michael Grosso, Michael Murphy, David E. Presti, Gregory Shaw, Henry P. Stapp, Eric M. Weiss, and Ian Whicher