The Knowledge Illusion

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Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 0399184341
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (991 download)

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Book Synopsis The Knowledge Illusion by : Steven Sloman

Download or read book The Knowledge Illusion written by Steven Sloman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “The Knowledge Illusion is filled with insights on how we should deal with our individual ignorance and collective wisdom.” —Steven Pinker We all think we know more than we actually do. Humans have built hugely complex societies and technologies, but most of us don’t even know how a pen or a toilet works. How have we achieved so much despite understanding so little? Cognitive scientists Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach argue that we survive and thrive despite our mental shortcomings because we live in a rich community of knowledge. The key to our intelligence lies in the people and things around us. We’re constantly drawing on information and expertise stored outside our heads: in our bodies, our environment, our possessions, and the community with which we interact—and usually we don’t even realize we’re doing it. The human mind is both brilliant and pathetic. We have mastered fire, created democratic institutions, stood on the moon, and sequenced our genome. And yet each of us is error prone, sometimes irrational, and often ignorant. The fundamentally communal nature of intelligence and knowledge explains why we often assume we know more than we really do, why political opinions and false beliefs are so hard to change, and why individual-oriented approaches to education and management frequently fail. But our collaborative minds also enable us to do amazing things. The Knowledge Illusion contends that true genius can be found in the ways we create intelligence using the community around us.

Lessons from an Optical Illusion

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Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674525412
Total Pages : 298 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (254 download)

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Book Synopsis Lessons from an Optical Illusion by : Edward M. Hundert

Download or read book Lessons from an Optical Illusion written by Edward M. Hundert and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a bold, modern recasting of the age-old nature-nurture debate, informed by revolutionary insights from brain science, artificial intelligence, psychiatry, linguistics, evolutionary biology, child development, ethics, and even cosmology.

Citizen Spectator

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Publisher : UNC Press Books
ISBN 13 : 080783890X
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (78 download)

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Book Synopsis Citizen Spectator by : Wendy Bellion

Download or read book Citizen Spectator written by Wendy Bellion and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2012-12-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this richly illustrated study, the first book-length exploration of illusionistic art in the early United States, Wendy Bellion investigates Americans' experiences with material forms of visual deception and argues that encounters with illusory art shaped their understanding of knowledge, representation, and subjectivity between 1790 and 1825. Focusing on the work of the well-known Peale family and their Philadelphia Museum, as well as other Philadelphians, Bellion explores the range of illusions encountered in public spaces, from trompe l'oeil paintings and drawings at art exhibitions to ephemeral displays of phantasmagoria, "Invisible Ladies," and other spectacles of deception. Bellion reconstructs the elite and vernacular sites where such art and objects appeared and argues that early national exhibitions doubled as spaces of citizen formation. Within a post-Revolutionary culture troubled by the social and political consequences of deception, keen perception signified able citizenship. Setting illusions into dialogue with Enlightenment cultures of science, print, politics, and the senses, Citizen Spectator demonstrates that pictorial and optical illusions functioned to cultivate but also to confound discernment. Bellion reveals the equivocal nature of illusion during the early republic, mapping its changing forms and functions, and uncovers surprising links between early American art, culture, and citizenship.

The Illusion of Doubt

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0198783949
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (987 download)

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Book Synopsis The Illusion of Doubt by : Genia Schönbaumsfeld

Download or read book The Illusion of Doubt written by Genia Schönbaumsfeld and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'The Illusion of Doubt' confronts one of the most important questions in philosophy - what can we know? The radical sceptic's answer is 'not very much' if we cannot prove that we are not subject to (permanent) deception, and shows that the radical sceptical problem is an illusion created by a mistaken picture of our evidential situation.

Epidemic Illusions

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262045605
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Epidemic Illusions by : Eugene T Richardson

Download or read book Epidemic Illusions written by Eugene T Richardson and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A physician-anthropologist explores how public health practices--from epidemiological modeling to outbreak containment--help perpetuate global inequities. In Epidemic Illusions, Eugene Richardson, a physician and an anthropologist, contends that public health practices--from epidemiological modeling and outbreak containment to Big Data and causal inference--play an essential role in perpetuating a range of global inequities. Drawing on postcolonial theory, medical anthropology, and critical science studies, Richardson demonstrates the ways in which the flagship discipline of epidemiology has been shaped by the colonial, racist, and patriarchal system that had its inception in 1492. Deploying a range of rhetorical tools and drawing on his clinical work in a variety of epidemics, including Ebola in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo, leishmania in the Sudan, HIV/TB in southern Africa, diphtheria in Bangladesh, and SARS-CoV-2 in the United States, Richardson concludes that the biggest epidemic we currently face is an epidemic of illusions—one that is propagated by the coloniality of knowledge production.

The Illusion of Conscious Will

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Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262290553
Total Pages : 725 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (622 download)

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Book Synopsis The Illusion of Conscious Will by : Daniel M. Wegner

Download or read book The Illusion of Conscious Will written by Daniel M. Wegner and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2003-08-11 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A novel contribution to the age-old debate about free will versus determinism. Do we consciously cause our actions, or do they happen to us? Philosophers, psychologists, neuroscientists, theologians, and lawyers have long debated the existence of free will versus determinism. In this book Daniel Wegner offers a novel understanding of the issue. Like actions, he argues, the feeling of conscious will is created by the mind and brain. Yet if psychological and neural mechanisms are responsible for all human behavior, how could we have conscious will? The feeling of conscious will, Wegner shows, helps us to appreciate and remember our authorship of the things our minds and bodies do. Yes, we feel that we consciously will our actions, Wegner says, but at the same time, our actions happen to us. Although conscious will is an illusion, it serves as a guide to understanding ourselves and to developing a sense of responsibility and morality. Approaching conscious will as a topic of psychological study, Wegner examines the issue from a variety of angles. He looks at illusions of the will—those cases where people feel that they are willing an act that they are not doing or, conversely, are not willing an act that they in fact are doing. He explores conscious will in hypnosis, Ouija board spelling, automatic writing, and facilitated communication, as well as in such phenomena as spirit possession, dissociative identity disorder, and trance channeling. The result is a book that sidesteps endless debates to focus, more fruitfully, on the impact on our lives of the illusion of conscious will.

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.

The Self Illusion

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199969892
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (999 download)

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Book Synopsis The Self Illusion by : Bruce Hood

Download or read book The Self Illusion written by Bruce Hood and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-15 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most of us believe that we are unique and coherent individuals, but are we? The idea of a "self" has existed ever since humans began to live in groups and become sociable. Those who embrace the self as an individual in the West, or a member of the group in the East, feel fulfilled and purposeful. This experience seems incredibly real but a wealth of recent scientific evidence reveals that this notion of the independent, coherent self is an illusion - it is not what it seems. Reality as we perceive it is not something that objectively exists, but something that our brains construct from moment to moment, interpreting, summarizing, and substituting information along the way. Like a science fiction movie, we are living in a matrix that is our mind. In The Self Illusion, Dr. Bruce Hood reveals how the self emerges during childhood and how the architecture of the developing brain enables us to become social animals dependent on each other. He explains that self is the product of our relationships and interactions with others, and it exists only in our brains. The author argues, however, that though the self is an illusion, it is one that humans cannot live without. But things are changing as our technology develops and shapes society. The social bonds and relationships that used to take time and effort to form are now undergoing a revolution as we start to put our self online. Social networking activities such as blogging, Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter threaten to change the way we behave. Social networking is fast becoming socialization on steroids. The speed and ease at which we can form alliances and relationships is outstripping the same selection processes that shaped our self prior to the internet era. This book ventures into unchartered territory to explain how the idea of the self will never be the same again in the online social world.

Empire of Illusion

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Publisher : Knopf Canada
ISBN 13 : 0307398587
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (73 download)

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Book Synopsis Empire of Illusion by : Chris Hedges

Download or read book Empire of Illusion written by Chris Hedges and published by Knopf Canada. This book was released on 2009-07-28 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pulitzer prize–winner Chris Hedges charts the dramatic and disturbing rise of a post-literate society that craves fantasy, ecstasy and illusion. Chris Hedges argues that we now live in two societies: One, the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world, that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other, a growing majority, is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. In this “other society,” serious film and theatre, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins. In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Hedges navigates this culture — attending WWF contests as well as Ivy League graduation ceremonies — exposing an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion.

Impossible is an Illusion

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Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1532672209
Total Pages : 334 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (326 download)

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Book Synopsis Impossible is an Illusion by : Paul Semendinger

Download or read book Impossible is an Illusion written by Paul Semendinger and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Impossible is an Illusion is a collection of Dr. Paul Semendinger’s motivational writings on many topics including hard work, determination, positivity, family, and love. Using his experiences in education as a teacher and school leader as well as his knowledge of history, sports, running, and human nature, Dr. Semendinger delivers a book that will inspire readers to set goals and work hard to achieve them. Dr. Semendinger truly believes that anything is possible . . . after all, impossible is an illusion.

Inevitable Illusions

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Publisher : Wiley
ISBN 13 : 9780471159629
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (596 download)

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Book Synopsis Inevitable Illusions by : Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini

Download or read book Inevitable Illusions written by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini and published by Wiley. This book was released on 1996-11-18 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Fascinating and insightful. . . . I cannot recall a book that has made me think more about the nature of thinking." -- Richard C. Lewontin Harvard University Everyone knows that optical illusions trick us because of the way we see. Now scientists have discovered that cognitive illusions, a set of biases deeply embedded in the human mind, can actually distort the way we think. In Inevitable Illusions, distinguished cognitive researcher Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini takes us on a provocative, challenging, and thoroughly entertaining exploration of the games our minds play. He opens the doors onto the newly charted realm of the cognitive unconscious to reveal the full range of illusions, showing how they inhibit our ability to reason--no matter what our educational background or IQ. Inevitable Illusions is stimulating, eye-opening food for thought.

The Illusion of Knowledge: The Paradigm Shift in Aging Research that Shows the Way to Human Rejuvenation

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9788554106058
Total Pages : 222 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis The Illusion of Knowledge: The Paradigm Shift in Aging Research that Shows the Way to Human Rejuvenation by : Harold Katcher

Download or read book The Illusion of Knowledge: The Paradigm Shift in Aging Research that Shows the Way to Human Rejuvenation written by Harold Katcher and published by . This book was released on 2021-09-04 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In May 2020, the publication of a scientific paper on the rejuvenation of rats shook the foundations of the community that studies the possibility of undoing aging. An average epigenetic rejuvenation of 54% of the animals was reported in the article, in addition to the reversal of dozens of biochemical markers of old rats to values typical of young rats. The main developer of the treatment that led to these results was Dr. Harold Katcher, author of The Illusion of Knowledge. The reception of the specialized scientific community to the experiment was shock, with the phrase "it's too good to be true" repeated almost instinctively. Thus, Dr. Katcher decided to write this book, explaining in detail the foundations of his theory of aging and the evolutionary and biochemical bases of the mechanisms that determine the lifespan of different species. However, in this book, Dr. Katcher has done much more than address the strictly scientific part. By also conducting an in-depth analysis of the history of scientific ideas and humanity's relationship with the idea of immortality, he shows that it is no accident that he may have made the greatest discovery in human history.

Denying to the Grave

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199396604
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (993 download)

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Book Synopsis Denying to the Grave by : Sara E. Gorman

Download or read book Denying to the Grave written by Sara E. Gorman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do some parents refuse to vaccinate their children? Why do some people keep guns at home, despite scientific evidence of risk to their family members? And why do people use antibiotics for illnesses they cannot possibly alleviate? When it comes to health, many people insist that science is wrong, that the evidence is incomplete, and that unidentified hazards lurk everywhere. In Denying to the Grave, Gorman and Gorman, a father-daughter team, explore the psychology of health science denial. Using several examples of such denial as test cases, they propose six key principles that may lead individuals to reject accepted health-related wisdom: the charismatic leader; fear of complexity; confirmation bias and the internet; fear of corporate and government conspiracies; causality and filling the ignorance gap; and the nature of risk prediction. The authors argue that the health sciences are especially vulnerable to our innate resistance to integrate new concepts with pre-existing beliefs. This psychological difficulty of incorporating new information is on the cutting edge of neuroscience research, as scientists continue to identify brain responses to new information that reveal deep-seated, innate discomfort with changing our minds. Denying to the Grave explores risk theory and how people make decisions about what is best for them and their loved ones, in an effort to better understand how people think when faced with significant health decisions. This book points the way to a new and important understanding of how science should be conveyed to the public in order to save lives with existing knowledge and technology.

The Illusion of God's Presence

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Publisher : Prometheus Books
ISBN 13 : 1633880745
Total Pages : 464 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (338 download)

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Book Synopsis The Illusion of God's Presence by : John C. Wathey

Download or read book The Illusion of God's Presence written by John C. Wathey and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2016 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An essential feature of religious experience across many cultures is the intuitive feeling of God's presence. More than any rituals or doctrines, it is this experience that anchors religious faith, yet it has been largely ignored in the scientific literature on religion.Starting with a vivid narrative account of the life-threatening hike that triggered his own mystical experience, biologist John Wathey takes the reader on a scientific journey to find the sources of religious feeling and the illusion of God's presence. His book delves into the biological origins of this compelling feeling, attributing it to innate neural circuitry that evolved to promote the mother-child bond. Dr. Wathey argues that evolution has programmed the infant brain to expect the presence of a loving being who responds to the child's needs. As the infant grows into adulthood, this innate feeling is eventually transferred to the realm of religion, where it is reactivated through the symbols, imagery, and rituals of worship. The author interprets our various conceptions of God in biological terms as illusory supernormal stimuli that fill an emotional and cognitive vacuum left over from infancy. These insights shed new light on some of the most vexing puzzles of religion, like the popular belief in a god who is judgmental and punishing, yet also unconditionally loving; the extraordinary tenacity of faith; the greater religiosity of women relative to men; religious obsessions with sex; the mysterious compulsion to pray; the seemingly irrepressible feminine attributes of God, even in traditionally patriarchal religions; and the strange allure of cults. Finally, Dr. Wathey considers the hypothesis that religion evolved to foster reproductive success, arguing that, in an age of potentially ruinous overpopulation, magical thinking has become a luxury we can no longer afford, one that distracts us from urgent threats to our planet.Deeply researched yet elegantly written in a jargon-free and accessible style, this book presents a compelling interpretation of the evolutionary origins of spirituality and religion.

The Harmony of Illusions

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400821932
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis The Harmony of Illusions by : Allan Young

Download or read book The Harmony of Illusions written by Allan Young and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1997-10-27 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As far back as we know, there have been individuals incapacitated by memories that have filled them with sadness and remorse, fright and horror, or a sense of irreparable loss. Only recently, however, have people tormented with such recollections been diagnosed as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder." Here Allan Young traces this malady, particularly as it is suffered by Vietnam veterans, to its beginnings in the emergence of ideas about the unconscious mind and to earlier manifestations of traumatic memory like shell shock or traumatic hysteria. In Young's view, PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomenon newly discovered. Rather, it is a "harmony of illusions," a cultural product gradually put together by the practices, technologies, and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, and treated and by the various interests, institutions, and moral arguments mobilizing these efforts. This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in the treatment of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. To illustrate his points, Young presents a number of fascinating transcripts of the group therapy and diagnostic sessions that he observed firsthand over a period of two years. Through his comments and the transcripts themselves, the reader becomes familiar with the individual hospital personnel and clients and their struggle to make sense of life after a tragic war. One observes that everyone on the unit is heavily invested in the PTSD diagnosis: boundaries between therapist and patient are as unclear as were the distinctions between victim and victimizer in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

The Conquest of Illusion

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (89 download)

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Book Synopsis The Conquest of Illusion by : Jacobus Johannes Leeuw

Download or read book The Conquest of Illusion written by Jacobus Johannes Leeuw and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Illusion of Reality

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Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1461234743
Total Pages : 348 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (612 download)

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Book Synopsis The Illusion of Reality by : Howard L. Resnikoff

Download or read book The Illusion of Reality written by Howard L. Resnikoff and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Illusion of Reality was conceived during my tenure as director of the newly established Division of Information Science and Technology at the National Science Foundation in 1979-1981 as a partial response to the need for a textbook for students, both in and out of government, that would pro vide a comprehensive view of information science as a fundamental constitu ent of other more established disciplines with a unity and coherence distinct from computer science, cognitive science, and library science although it is related to all of them. Driven by the advances of information technology, the perception of information science has progressed rapidly: today it seems well understood that information processing biological organisms and informa tion processing electronic machines have something basic in common that may subsume the theory of computation, as well as fundamental parts of physics. This book is primarily intended as a text for an advanced undergraduate or a graduate introduction to information science. The multidisciplinary nature of the subject has naturally led to the inclusion of a considerable amount of background material in various fields. The reader is likely to fmd the treat ment relatively oversimplified in fields with which he is familiar and, perhaps, somewhat heavier sailing in less familiar waters. The theme of common principles among seemingly unrelated applications provides the connective tissue for the diverse topics covered in the text and, I hope, justifies the variable level of presentation. Some of the material appears here for the first time.