The Cunning Of Uncertainty

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The Cunning of Uncertainty

Author : Helga Nowotny
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 0745687652
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (456 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cunning of Uncertainty by : Helga Nowotny

Download or read book The Cunning of Uncertainty written by Helga Nowotny and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uncertainty is interwoven into human existence. It is a powerful incentive in the search for knowledge and an inherent component of scientific research. We have developed many ways of coping with uncertainty. We make promises, manage risks and make predictions to try to clear the mists and predict ahead. But the future is inherently uncertain - and the mist that shrouds our path an inherent part of our journey. The burning question is whether our societies can face up to uncertainty, learn to embrace it and whether we can open up to a constantly evolving future. In this new book, Helga Nowotny shows how research can thrive at the cusp of uncertainty. Science, she argues, can eventually transform uncertainty into certainty, but into certainty which remains always provisional. Uncertainty is never completely static. It is constantly evolving. It encompasses geological time scales and, at the level of human experience, split-second changes as cells divide. Life and death decisions are taken in the blink of the eye, while human interactions with the natural environment may reveal their impact over millennia. Uncertainty is cunning. It appears at unexpected moments, it shuns the straight line, takes the oblique route and sometimes the unexpected short-cut. As we acknowledge the cunning of uncertainty, its threats retreat. We accept that any scientific inquiry must produce results that are provisional and uncertain. This message is vital for politicians and policy-makers: do not be tempted by small, short-term, controllable gains to the exclusion of uncertain, high-gain opportunities. Wide-ranging in its use of examples and enriched by the author’s experience as President of the European Research Council, one of the world’s leading funding organisations for fundamental research. The Cunning of Uncertainty is a must-read for students and scholars of all disciplines, politicians, policy-makers and anyone concerned with the fundamental role of knowledge and science in our societies today.

The Uncertainty Mindset

Author : Vaughn Tan
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231551878
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis The Uncertainty Mindset by : Vaughn Tan

Download or read book The Uncertainty Mindset written by Vaughn Tan and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Innovation is how businesses stay ahead of the competition and adapt to market conditions that change in unpredictable and uncertain ways. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, high-end cuisine underwent a profound transformation. Once an industry that prioritized consistency and reliability, it turned into one where constant change was a competitive necessity. A top restaurant’s reputation and success have become so closely bound up with its ability to innovate that a new organizational form, the culinary research and development team, has emerged. The best of these R&D teams continually expand the frontiers of food—they invent a constant stream of new dishes, new cooking processes and methods, and even new ways of experiencing food. How do they achieve this nonstop novelty? And what can culinary research and development teach us about how organizations innovate? Vaughn Tan opens up the black box of elite culinary R&D to provide essential insights. Drawing on years of unprecedented access to the best and most influential culinary R&D teams in the world, he reveals how they exemplify what he calls the uncertainty mindset. Such a mindset intentionally incorporates uncertainty into organization design rather than simply trying to reduce risk. It changes how organizations hire, set goals, and motivate team members and leads organizations to work in highly unconventional ways. A revelatory look at the R&D kitchen, The Uncertainty Mindset upends conventional wisdom about how to organize for innovation and offers practical insights for businesses trying to become innovative and adaptable.

The Attributes

Author : Rich Diviney
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0593133943
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (931 download)

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Book Synopsis The Attributes by : Rich Diviney

Download or read book The Attributes written by Rich Diviney and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do you have what it takes to succeed in any situation? According to a retired commander who ran training for Navy SEALs, true optimal performance goes beyond just skill. It’s all about THE ATTRIBUTES. “Diviney’s incredible book explains why some people thrive—even when things get hard.”—Charles Duhigg, New York Times bestselling author of The Power of Habit During his twenty years as a Navy officer and SEAL, Rich Diviney was intimately involved in a specialized SEAL selection process, which whittled a group of hundreds of extraordinary candidates down to a handful of the most elite performers. Diviney was often surprised by which candidates washed out and which succeeded. Some could have all the right skills and still fail, while others he might have initially dismissed would prove to be top performers. The seemingly objective criteria weren’t telling him what he most needed to know: Who would succeed in one of the world’s toughest military assignments? It is similarly hard to predict success in the real world. It happens often enough that underdog students accomplish exceptional achievements while highly skilled, motivated employees fail to meet expectations. Dark-horse companies pull away from the pack while dream teams flush with talent and capital go under. In working with and selecting top special operators for decades, Diviney saw that beneath obvious skills are hidden drivers of performance, surprising core attributes—including cunning, adaptability, courage, even narcissism—that determine how resilient or perseverant we are, how situationally aware and how conscientious. These attributes explain how we perform as individuals and as part of a team. The same methodology that Diviney used in the military can be applied by anyone in their personal and professional lives, and understanding these attributes can allow readers and their teams to perform optimally, at any time, in any situation. Diviney defines the core attributes in fresh and practical ways and shares stories from the military, business, sports, relationships, and even parenting to show how understanding your own attributes and those of the people around you can create optimal performance in all areas of your life.

In AI We Trust

Author : Helga Nowotny
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509548823
Total Pages : 125 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

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Book Synopsis In AI We Trust by : Helga Nowotny

Download or read book In AI We Trust written by Helga Nowotny and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-08-19 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most persistent concerns about the future is whether it will be dominated by the predictive algorithms of AI – and, if so, what this will mean for our behaviour, for our institutions and for what it means to be human. AI changes our experience of time and the future and challenges our identities, yet we are blinded by its efficiency and fail to understand how it affects us. At the heart of our trust in AI lies a paradox: we leverage AI to increase our control over the future and uncertainty, while at the same time the performativity of AI, the power it has to make us act in the ways it predicts, reduces our agency over the future. This happens when we forget that that we humans have created the digital technologies to which we attribute agency. These developments also challenge the narrative of progress, which played such a central role in modernity and is based on the hubris of total control. We are now moving into an era where this control is limited as AI monitors our actions, posing the threat of surveillance, but also offering the opportunity to reappropriate control and transform it into care. As we try to adjust to a world in which algorithms, robots and avatars play an ever-increasing role, we need to understand better the limitations of AI and how their predictions affect our agency, while at the same time having the courage to embrace the uncertainty of the future.

Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History

Author : Owen Davies
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 082644279X
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (264 download)

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Book Synopsis Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History by : Owen Davies

Download or read book Popular Magic: Cunning-folk in English History written by Owen Davies and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2007-06-01 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cunning-folk were local practitioners of magic, providing small-scale but valued service to the community. They were far more representative of magical practice than the arcane delvings of astrologers and necromancers. Mostly unsensational in their approach, cunning-folk helped people with everyday problems: how to find lost objects; how to escape from bad luck or a suspected spell; and how to attract a lover or keep the love of a husband or wife. While cunning-folk sometimes fell foul of the authorities, both church and state often turned a blind eye to their existence and practices, distinguishing what they did from the rare and sensational cases of malvolent witchcraft. In a world of uncertainty, before insurance and modern science, cunning-folk played an important role that has previously been ignored.

An Orderly Mess

Author : Helga Nowotny
Publisher : Central European University Press
ISBN 13 : 9633862310
Total Pages : 100 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (338 download)

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Book Synopsis An Orderly Mess by : Helga Nowotny

Download or read book An Orderly Mess written by Helga Nowotny and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book was triggered by the recent geopolitical shifts and the turn towards an allegedly post-factual era. An Orderly Mess is a timely diagnosis of the current dissolution of the modern order, while highlighting the opportunities of messiness. The essay focuses on the temporal and spatial dimensions in which messiness becomes apparent today: broken time lines and fragmented spaces. Messiness is framed by a blurring of the world orderings inherited from modernity. Against the backdrop of rapid digitalization, we may find ourselves again in a phase of transition toward new ways of world ordering. The focus on messiness reveals the different patterns of order and disorder that underpin the current process of transition. In the second half of the volume the author revisits her 1989 book on Eigenzeit, which explored how moderns experience time, or are exposed to it. A quarter century later she finds that the new inventions of technology have challenged the traditional meaning of time (and also of space) even more, increasing the non-simultaneity of human existence. Today, small devices channel into one?s fingertips medial eigenzeit: the time that one has to oneself in order to spend it with those who are absent. The past has shrunk and the present extends to the future: ?there is no pre?determined future, only a future that is as radically open as it is inherently uncertain?. ÿ

Unsettled

Author : Steven E. Koonin
Publisher : BenBella Books
ISBN 13 : 195329524X
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (532 download)

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Book Synopsis Unsettled by : Steven E. Koonin

Download or read book Unsettled written by Steven E. Koonin and published by BenBella Books. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Unsettled is a remarkable book—probably the best book on climate change for the intelligent layperson—that achieves the feat of conveying complex information clearly and in depth." —Claremont Review of Books "Surging sea levels are inundating the coasts." "Hurricanes and tornadoes are becoming fiercer and more frequent." "Climate change will be an economic disaster." You've heard all this presented as fact. But according to science, all of these statements are profoundly misleading. When it comes to climate change, the media, politicians, and other prominent voices have declared that "the science is settled." In reality, the long game of telephone from research to reports to the popular media is corrupted by misunderstanding and misinformation. Core questions—about the way the climate is responding to our influence, and what the impacts will be—remain largely unanswered. The climate is changing, but the why and how aren't as clear as you've probably been led to believe. Now, one of America's most distinguished scientists is clearing away the fog to explain what science really says (and doesn't say) about our changing climate. In Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, Steven Koonin draws upon his decades of experience—including as a top science advisor to the Obama administration—to provide up-to-date insights and expert perspective free from political agendas. Fascinating, clear-headed, and full of surprises, this book gives readers the tools to both understand the climate issue and be savvier consumers of science media in general. Koonin takes readers behind the headlines to the more nuanced science itself, showing us where it comes from and guiding us through the implications of the evidence. He dispels popular myths and unveils little-known truths: despite a dramatic rise in greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures actually decreased from 1940 to 1970. What's more, the models we use to predict the future aren't able to accurately describe the climate of the past, suggesting they are deeply flawed. Koonin also tackles society's response to a changing climate, using data-driven analysis to explain why many proposed "solutions" would be ineffective, and discussing how alternatives like adaptation and, if necessary, geoengineering will ensure humanity continues to prosper. Unsettled is a reality check buoyed by hope, offering the truth about climate science that you aren't getting elsewhere—what we know, what we don't, and what it all means for our future.

The Far Right Today

Author : Cas Mudde
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 150953685X
Total Pages : 129 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

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Book Synopsis The Far Right Today by : Cas Mudde

Download or read book The Far Right Today written by Cas Mudde and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2019-10-25 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The far right is back with a vengeance. After several decades at the political margins, far-right politics has again taken center stage. Three of the world’s largest democracies – Brazil, India, and the United States – now have a radical right leader, while far-right parties continue to increase their profile and support within Europe. In this timely book, leading global expert on political extremism Cas Mudde provides a concise overview of the fourth wave of postwar far-right politics, exploring its history, ideology, organization, causes, and consequences, as well as the responses available to civil society, party, and state actors to challenge its ideas and influence. What defines this current far-right renaissance, Mudde argues, is its mainstreaming and normalization within the contemporary political landscape. Challenging orthodox thinking on the relationship between conventional and far-right politics, Mudde offers a complex and insightful picture of one of the key political challenges of our time.

Multireal

Author : David Louis Edelman
Publisher : Prometheus Books
ISBN 13 : 1591028353
Total Pages : 373 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis Multireal by : David Louis Edelman

Download or read book Multireal written by David Louis Edelman and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2009-09-18 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natch has just won his first battle with the Defense and Wellness Council for control of MultiReal technology. But now the Council has unleashed the ruthless cunning of Lieutenant Executive Magan Kai Lee. Lee decides that if Natch's company can't be destroyed from without, it must be destroyed from within. As black code continues to eat away at Natch's sanity, he faces a mutiny from his own apprentices, a legal onslaught from the government, and the return of enemies old and new. In desperation, the entrepreneur turns to some unlikely allies: a radical politician with an agenda of his own, and a childhood enemy to whom he has done a terrible wrong. Natch's struggle will take him from the halls of power in Melbourne to the ruined cities of the diss. Hanging in the balance is the fate of MultiReal, a technology that could end the tyranny of the Council forever—or give the Council the ultimate weapon of oppression.

The 48 Laws of Power

Author : Robert Greene
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0670881465
Total Pages : 481 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis The 48 Laws of Power by : Robert Greene

Download or read book The 48 Laws of Power written by Robert Greene and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2023-10-31 with total page 481 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this multi-million-copy New York Times bestseller is the definitive manual for anyone interested in gaining, observing, or defending against ultimate control – from the author of The Laws of Human Nature. In the book that People magazine proclaimed “beguiling” and “fascinating,” Robert Greene and Joost Elffers have distilled three thousand years of the history of power into 48 essential laws by drawing from the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, and Carl Von Clausewitz and also from the lives of figures ranging from Henry Kissinger to P.T. Barnum. Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

Impossible Exchange

Author : Jean Baudrillard
Publisher : Verso Books
ISBN 13 : 1789600391
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (896 download)

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Book Synopsis Impossible Exchange by : Jean Baudrillard

Download or read book Impossible Exchange written by Jean Baudrillard and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2020-05-05 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Working his way through the various spheres and systems of everyday life-the political, the juridical, the economical, the aesthetic, the biological, among others-he finds that they are all characterized by the same non-equivalence, and hence the same eccentricity. Literally, they have no meaning outside themselves and cannot be exchanged for anything. Politics is laden with signs and meanings, but seen from the outside it has no meaning. Schemes for genetic experimentation and investigation are becoming infinitely ramified, and the more ramified they become the more the crucial question is left unanswered: who rules over life? Who rules over death? Baudrillard's conclusion is that the true formula of contemporary nihilism lies here: the nihilism of value itself. This is our fate, and from this stem both the happiest and the most baleful consequences. This book might be said to be the exploration, first, of the 'fateful' consequences, and subsequently-by a poetic transference of situation-of the fortunate, happy consequences of impossible exchange.

When We Cease to Understand the World

Author : Benjamin Labatut
Publisher : New York Review of Books
ISBN 13 : 1681375664
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (813 download)

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Book Synopsis When We Cease to Understand the World by : Benjamin Labatut

Download or read book When We Cease to Understand the World written by Benjamin Labatut and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of The New York Times Book Review’s 10 Best Books of 2021 Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize and the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature A fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining. When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction. Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger—these are some of luminaries into whose troubled lives Benjamín Labatut thrusts the reader, showing us how they grappled with the most profound questions of existence. They have strokes of unparalleled genius, alienate friends and lovers, descend into isolation and insanity. Some of their discoveries reshape human life for the better; others pave the way to chaos and unimaginable suffering. The lines are never clear. At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible.

Thirteen Cents

Author : K. Sello Duiker
Publisher : Ohio University Press
ISBN 13 : 0821444549
Total Pages : 227 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis Thirteen Cents by : K. Sello Duiker

Download or read book Thirteen Cents written by K. Sello Duiker and published by Ohio University Press. This book was released on 2013-04-15 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every city has an unspoken side. Cape Town, between the picture postcard mountain and sea, has its own shadow: a place of dislocation and uncertainty, dependence and desperation, destruction and survival, gangsters, pimps, pedophiles, hunger, hope, and moments of happiness. Living in this shadow is Azure, a thirteen-year-old who makes his living on the streets, a black teenager sought out by white men, beholden to gang leaders but determined to create some measure of independence in this dangerous world. Thirteen Cents is an extraordinary and unsparing account of a coming of age in Cape Town. Reminiscent of some of the greatest child narrators in literature, Azure’s voice will stay with the reader long after this short novel is finished. Based on personal experiences, Thirteen Cents is Duiker’s debut novel, originally published in 2000. This first edition to be published outside South Africa includes an introduction by Shaun Viljoen and a special glossary of South African words and phrases from the text translated into English.

The Book of Mirrors

Author : E. O. Chirovici
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 1501141562
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis The Book of Mirrors by : E. O. Chirovici

Download or read book The Book of Mirrors written by E. O. Chirovici and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-02-21 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An elegant, page-turning thriller in the vein of Night Film and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, this tautly crafted novel is about stories: the ones we tell, the ones we keep hidden, and the ones that we’ll do anything to ensure they stay buried. When literary agent Peter Katz receives a partial book submission entitled The Book of Mirrors, he is intrigued by its promise and original voice. The author, Richard Flynn, has written a memoir about his time as an English student at Princeton in the late 1980s, documenting his relationship with the protégée of the famous Professor Joseph Wieder. One night just before Christmas 1987, Wieder was brutally murdered in his home. The case was never solved. Now, twenty-five years later, Katz suspects that Richard Flynn is either using his book to confess to the murder, or to finally reveal who committed the violent crime. But the manuscript ends abruptly—and its author is dying in the hospital with the missing pages nowhere to be found. Hell-bent on getting to the bottom of the story, Katz hires investigative journalist John Keller to research the murder and reconstruct the events for a true crime version of the memoir. Keller tracks down several of the mysterious key players, including retired police detective Roy Freeman, one of the original investigators assigned to the murder case, but he has just been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s. Inspired by John Keller’s investigation, he decides to try and solve the case once and for all, before he starts losing control of his mind. A trip to the Potosi Correctional Centre in Missouri, several interviews, and some ingenious police work finally lead him to a truth that has been buried for over two decades...or has it? Stylishly plotted, elegantly written, and packed with thrilling suspense until the final page, The Book of Mirrors is a book within a book like you’ve never read before.

Another Science is Possible

Author : Isabelle Stengers
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1509521828
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (95 download)

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Book Synopsis Another Science is Possible by : Isabelle Stengers

Download or read book Another Science is Possible written by Isabelle Stengers and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2018-03-16 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like fast food, fast science is quickly prepared, not particularly good, and it clogs up the system. Efforts to tackle our most pressing issues have been stymied by conflict within the scientific community and mixed messages symptomatic of a rushed approach. What is more, scientific research is being shaped by the bubbles and crashes associated with economic speculation and the market. A focus on conformism, competitiveness, opportunism and flexibility has made it extremely difficult to present cases of failure to the public, for fear that it will lose confidence in science altogether. In this bold new book, distinguished philosopher Isabelle Stengers shows that research is deeply intertwined with broader social interests, which means that science cannot race ahead in isolation but must learn instead to slow down. Stengers offers a path to an alternative science, arguing that researchers should stop seeing themselves as the 'thinking, rational brain of humanity' and refuse to allow their expertise to be used to shut down the concerns of the public, or to spread the belief that scientific progress is inevitable and will resolve all of society's problems. Rather, science must engage openly and honestly with an intelligent public and be clear about the kind of knowledge it is capable of producing. This timely and accessible book will be of great interest to students, scholars and policymakers in a wide range of fields, as well anyone concerned with the role of science and its future.

Naked Genes

Author : Helga Nowotny
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262294990
Total Pages : 155 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (622 download)

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Book Synopsis Naked Genes by : Helga Nowotny

Download or read book Naked Genes written by Helga Nowotny and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-02-04 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The interaction between new forms of biological life and new forms of social life in modern democracies. The molecular life sciences are making visible what was once invisible. Yet the more we learn about our own biology, the less we are able to fit this knowledge into an integrated whole. Life is divided into new sub-units and reassembled into new forms: from genes to clones, from embryonic stages to the building-blocks of synthetic biology. Extracted from their scientific and social contexts, these new entities become not only visible but indeed “naked”: ready to assume an essential status of their own and take on multiple values and meanings as they pass from labs to courts, from patent offices to parliaments and back. In Naked Genes, leading science scholar Helga Nowotny and molecular biologist Giuseppe Testa examine the interaction between these dramatic advances in the life sciences and equally dramatic political reconfigurations of our societies. Considering topics ranging from assisted reproduction and personalized medicine to genetic sports doping, they reveal both surprising continuities and radical discontinuities between the latest advances in the life sciences and long-standing human traditions.

Why Niebuhr Now?

Author : John Patrick Diggins
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226148866
Total Pages : 149 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (261 download)

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Book Synopsis Why Niebuhr Now? by : John Patrick Diggins

Download or read book Why Niebuhr Now? written by John Patrick Diggins and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-06-15 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Barack Obama has called him “one of my favorite philosophers.” John McCain wrote that he is “a paragon of clarity about the costs of a good war.” Andrew Sullivan has said, “We need Niebuhr now more than ever.” For a theologian who died in 1971, Reinhold Niebuhr is maintaining a remarkably high profile in the twenty-first century. In Why Niebuhr Now? acclaimed historian John Patrick Diggins tackles the complicated question of why, at a time of great uncertainty about America’s proper role in the world, leading politicians and thinkers are turning to Niebuhr for answers. Diggins begins by clearly and carefully working through Niebuhr’s theology, which focuses less on God’s presence than his absence—and the ways that absence abets the all-too-human sin of pride. He then shows how that theology informed Niebuhr’s worldview, leading him to be at the same time a strong opponent of fascism and communism and a leading advocate for humility and caution in foreign policy. Turning to the present, Diggins highlights what he argues is a misuse of Niebuhr’s legacy on both the right and the left: while neoconservatives distort Niebuhr’s arguments to support their call for an endless war on terror in the name of stopping evil, many liberal interventionists conveniently ignore Niebuhr’s fundamental doubts about power. Ultimately, Niebuhr’s greatest lesson is that, while it is our duty to struggle for good, we must at the same time be wary of hubris, remembering the limits of our understanding. The final work from a distinguished writer who spent his entire career reflecting on America’s history and promise, Why Niebuhr Now? is a compact and perceptive book that will be the starting point for all future discussions of Niebuhr.