The Limits Of Science

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Publisher : University of Pittsburgh Pre
ISBN 13 : 0822972069
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (229 download)

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Book Synopsis The Limits Of Science by : Nicholas Rescher

Download or read book The Limits Of Science written by Nicholas Rescher and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2014-08-12 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perfected science is but an idealization that provides a useful contrast to highlight the limited character of what we do and can attain. This lies at the core of various debates in the philosophy of science and Rescher's discussion focuses on the question: how far could science go in principle—what are the theoretical limits on science? He concentrates on what science can discover, not what it should discover. He explores in detail the existence of limits or limitations on scientific inquiry, especially those that, in principle, preclude the full realization of the aims of science, as opposed to those that relate to economic obstacles to scientific progress. Rescher also places his argument within the politics of the day, where "strident calls of ideological extremes surround us," ranging from the exaggeration that "science can do anything"—to the antiscientism that views science as a costly diversion we would be well advised to abandon. Rescher offers a middle path between these two extremes and provides an appreciation of the actual powers and limitations of science, not only to philosophers of science but also to a larger, less specialized audience.

The End Of Science

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Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 0465050859
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis The End Of Science by : John Horgan

Download or read book The End Of Science written by John Horgan and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2015-04-14 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Human Nature and the Limits of Science

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199248060
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (992 download)

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Book Synopsis Human Nature and the Limits of Science by : John Dupré

Download or read book Human Nature and the Limits of Science written by John Dupré and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dupré warns that our understanding of human nature is being distorted by two faulty and harmful forms of pseudo-scientific thinking. He claims it is important to resist scientism - an exaggerated conception of what science can be expected to do.

The Limits of Science

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Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004325409
Total Pages : 232 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (43 download)

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Book Synopsis The Limits of Science by : Wenceslao J. Gonzalez

Download or read book The Limits of Science written by Wenceslao J. Gonzalez and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2016-10-05 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The problem of the limits of science is twofold. First, there is the problem of demarcation, i.e., the boundaries or “barriers” between what is science and what is not science. Second, there is the problem of the ceiling of scientific activity, which leads to the “confines” of this human enterprise. These two faces of the problem of the limits — the “barriers” and the “confines” of science — require a new analysis, which is the task of this book. The authors take into account the Kantian roots but they are focused on the current stage of the philosophical and methodological analyses of science. This vision looks to supersede the Kantian approach in order to reach a richer conception of science.

The Limits of Science

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780192177445
Total Pages : 108 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (774 download)

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Book Synopsis The Limits of Science by : Peter Brian Medawar

Download or read book The Limits of Science written by Peter Brian Medawar and published by . This book was released on 1984 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Space-perception and the Philosophy of Science

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Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520046115
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (461 download)

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Book Synopsis Space-perception and the Philosophy of Science by : Patrick A. Heelan

Download or read book Space-perception and the Philosophy of Science written by Patrick A. Heelan and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1983 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Reproducibility and Replicability in Science

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Publisher : National Academies Press
ISBN 13 : 0309486165
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (94 download)

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Book Synopsis Reproducibility and Replicability in Science by : National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Download or read book Reproducibility and Replicability in Science written by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2019-10-20 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the pathways by which the scientific community confirms the validity of a new scientific discovery is by repeating the research that produced it. When a scientific effort fails to independently confirm the computations or results of a previous study, some fear that it may be a symptom of a lack of rigor in science, while others argue that such an observed inconsistency can be an important precursor to new discovery. Concerns about reproducibility and replicability have been expressed in both scientific and popular media. As these concerns came to light, Congress requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine conduct a study to assess the extent of issues related to reproducibility and replicability and to offer recommendations for improving rigor and transparency in scientific research. Reproducibility and Replicability in Science defines reproducibility and replicability and examines the factors that may lead to non-reproducibility and non-replicability in research. Unlike the typical expectation of reproducibility between two computations, expectations about replicability are more nuanced, and in some cases a lack of replicability can aid the process of scientific discovery. This report provides recommendations to researchers, academic institutions, journals, and funders on steps they can take to improve reproducibility and replicability in science.

Clashes of Knowledge

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Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1402055552
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Clashes of Knowledge by : Peter Meusburger

Download or read book Clashes of Knowledge written by Peter Meusburger and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-04-15 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do traditional distinctions between "belief" and "knowledge" still make sense? How are differences between knowledge and belief understood in different cultural contexts? This book explores conflicts between various types of knowledge, especially between orthodox and heterodox knowledge systems, ranging from religious fundamentalism to heresies within the scientific community itself. Beyond addressing many fields in the academy, the book discusses learned individuals interested in the often puzzling spatial and cultural disparities of knowledge and clashes of knowledge.

The Limits of Scientific Reasoning

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Publisher : U of Minnesota Press
ISBN 13 : 0816613591
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (166 download)

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Book Synopsis The Limits of Scientific Reasoning by : David Faust

Download or read book The Limits of Scientific Reasoning written by David Faust and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1984 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Limits of Scientific Reasoning was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions. The study of human judgment and its limitations is essential to an understanding of the processes involved in the acquisition of scientific knowledge. With that end in mind, David Faust has made the first comprehensive attempt to apply recent research on human judgment to the practice of science. Drawing upon the findings of cognitive psychology, Faust maintains that human judgment is far more limited than we have tended to believe and that all individuals - scientists included—have a surprisingly restricted capacity to interpret complex information. Faust's thesis implies that scientists do not perform reasoning tasks, such as theory evaluation, as well as we assume they do, and that there are many judgments the scientist is expected to perform but cannot because of restrictions in cognitive capacity. "This is a very well-written, timely, and important book. It documents and clarifies, in a very scholarly fashion, what sociologists and psychologists of science have been flirting with for several decades—namely, inherent limitations of scientific judgment," –Michael Mahoney, Pennsylvania State University David Faust is director of psychology at Rhode Island Hospital and a faculty member of the Brown University Medical School. He is co-author of Teaching Moral Reasoning: Theory and Practice.

Francis Bacon and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge

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Publisher : A&C Black
ISBN 13 : 1847143725
Total Pages : 237 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (471 download)

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Book Synopsis Francis Bacon and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge by : Dennis Desroches

Download or read book Francis Bacon and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge written by Dennis Desroches and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2006-09-15 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Francis Bacon continues to be considered the 'father' of modern experimental science, his writings are no longer given close attention by most historians and philosophers of science, let alone by scientists themselves. In this new book Dennis Desroches speaks up loudly for Bacon, showing how we have yet to surpass the fundamental theoretical insights that he offered towards producing scientific knowledge. The book first examines the critics who have led many generations of scholars - in fields as diverse as literary criticism, science studies, feminism, philosophy and history - to think of Bacon as an outmoded landmark in the history of ideas rather than a crucial thinker for our own day. Bacon's own work is seen to contain the best responses to these various forms of attack. Desroches then focuses on Bacon's Novum Organum, The Advancement of Learning and De Augmentis, in order to discern the theoretical - rather than simply the empirical or utilitarian - nature of his programme for the 'renovation' of the natural sciences. The final part of the book draws startling links between Bacon and one of the twentieth century's most important historians/philosophers of science, Thomas Kuhn, discerning in Kuhn's work a reprise of many of Bacon's fundamental ideas - despite Kuhn's clear attempt to reject Bacon as a significant contributor to the way we think about scientific practice today. Desroches concludes, then, that Bacon was not simply the 'father' of modern science - he is still in the process of 'fathering' it.

The Island of Knowledge

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Publisher : Civitas Books
ISBN 13 : 0465031714
Total Pages : 370 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis The Island of Knowledge by : Marcelo Gleiser

Download or read book The Island of Knowledge written by Marcelo Gleiser and published by Civitas Books. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

The Outer Limits of Reason

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026252984X
Total Pages : 419 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis The Outer Limits of Reason by : Noson S. Yanofsky

Download or read book The Outer Limits of Reason written by Noson S. Yanofsky and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-11-04 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

The Limits of Scientific Reason

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1538157799
Total Pages : 301 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (381 download)

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Book Synopsis The Limits of Scientific Reason by : John McIntyre

Download or read book The Limits of Scientific Reason written by John McIntyre and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Critically and comprehensively examining the works of Habermas and Foucault, two giants of 20th century continental philosophy, this book illuminates the effects of scientific reason as it migrates from its specialized institutions into society. It explores how science permeates shared human consciousness, to produce effects that ripple through the entire social body to restructure relations between persons, discourses, institutions, and power in ways which we are barely conscious of. The book shows how science, through its entwinement with power, discourses, and practices, presents certain social arrangements as natural and certain courses of action as beyond question. By arguing for a non-reductive, liberal scientific naturalism that sees science as one form of rationality amongst others, it opens possibilities for thought and action beyond scientific knowledge. Examining the shifting relations between science and other social institutions, discourses and power, the book addresses the narrowing of freedom by the instrumental modes of thinking that accompany scientific and technological change. McIntyre simultaneously raises the question of the good life and the question of a philosophical critique both directed towards science and, at the same time, shaped by, and responsive to it. By analysing the works of Foucault and Habermas in terms of their social, political, and historical contexts it reveals the two thinkers as linked by a commitment to the Enlightenment tradition and its emancipatory telos. The significant differences between the two are seen to result from Foucault’s radicalization of this tradition, a radicalization which is, at the same time, implicit within the Enlightenment project itself.

The Limits of a Limitless Science

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Publisher : Intercollegiate Studies Institute
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis The Limits of a Limitless Science by : Stanley L. Jaki

Download or read book The Limits of a Limitless Science written by Stanley L. Jaki and published by Intercollegiate Studies Institute. This book was released on 2000 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science

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Publisher : Liveright Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1631491385
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (314 download)

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Book Synopsis The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science by : Michael Strevens

Download or read book The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science written by Michael Strevens and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Knowledge Machine is the most stunningly illuminating book of the last several decades regarding the all-important scientific enterprise.” —Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, author of Plato at the Googleplex A paradigm-shifting work, The Knowledge Machine revolutionizes our understanding of the origins and structure of science. • Why is science so powerful? • Why did it take so long—two thousand years after the invention of philosophy and mathematics—for the human race to start using science to learn the secrets of the universe? In a groundbreaking work that blends science, philosophy, and history, leading philosopher of science Michael Strevens answers these challenging questions, showing how science came about only once thinkers stumbled upon the astonishing idea that scientific breakthroughs could be accomplished by breaking the rules of logical argument. Like such classic works as Karl Popper’s The Logic of Scientific Discovery and Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, The Knowledge Machine grapples with the meaning and origins of science, using a plethora of vivid historical examples to demonstrate that scientists willfully ignore religion, theoretical beauty, and even philosophy to embrace a constricted code of argument whose very narrowness channels unprecedented energy into empirical observation and experimentation. Strevens calls this scientific code the iron rule of explanation, and reveals the way in which the rule, precisely because it is unreasonably close-minded, overcomes individual prejudices to lead humanity inexorably toward the secrets of nature. “With a mixture of philosophical and historical argument, and written in an engrossing style” (Alan Ryan), The Knowledge Machine provides captivating portraits of some of the greatest luminaries in science’s history, including Isaac Newton, the chief architect of modern science and its foundational theories of motion and gravitation; William Whewell, perhaps the greatest philosopher-scientist of the early nineteenth century; and Murray Gell-Mann, discoverer of the quark. Today, Strevens argues, in the face of threats from a changing climate and global pandemics, the idiosyncratic but highly effective scientific knowledge machine must be protected from politicians, commercial interests, and even scientists themselves who seek to open it up, to make it less narrow and more rational—and thus to undermine its devotedly empirical search for truth. Rich with illuminating and often delightfully quirky illustrations, The Knowledge Machine, written in a winningly accessible style that belies the import of its revisionist and groundbreaking concepts, radically reframes much of what we thought we knew about the origins of the modern world.

Beyond Reason

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Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0471652423
Total Pages : 234 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (716 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond Reason by : A. K. Dewdney

Download or read book Beyond Reason written by A. K. Dewdney and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2004-05-10 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A mind-bending excursion to the limits of science and mathematics Are some scientific problems insoluble? In Beyond Reason, internationally acclaimed math and science author A. K. Dewdney answers this question by examining eight insurmountable mathematical and scientific roadblocks that have stumped thinkers across the centuries, from ancient mathematical conundrums such as "squaring the circle," first attempted by the Pythagoreans, to G?del's vexing theorem, from perpetual motion to the upredictable behavior of chaotic systems such as the weather. A. K. Dewdney, PhD (Ontario, Canada), was the author of Scientific American's "Computer Recreations" column for eight years. He has written several critically acclaimed popular math and science books, including A Mathematical Mystery Tour (0-471-40734-8); Yes, We Have No Neutrons (0-471-29586-8); and 200% of Nothing (0-471-14574-2).

Are There Limits to Science?

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Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN 13 : 1527500411
Total Pages : 205 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (275 download)

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Book Synopsis Are There Limits to Science? by : Gillian Straine

Download or read book Are There Limits to Science? written by Gillian Straine and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2017-08-21 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the result of the 2016 conference of the UK’s Science and Religion Forum which brings together leading scientific and theological thinkers to reflect together on key issues. The focus was a timely one: Are there limits to Science? Both inside and outside of the academy, the questions of where we seek knowledge and how to discern truth remain high on the agenda. By asking this key question, the conference brought together philosophers, theologians, practitioners and scientists to discuss how they judge these boundary areas and the lay of the land ahead. The resulting conversation is wide-ranging, touching on the discernment of God in nature, the boundary between the physical and mental in human identity, and the importance of taking history seriously. There can be no doubt that the questions and the insights offered in this book are invaluable to anyone seeking to explore the limits of the field of science and religion, and to reflect on its wider implications.