|
Books > Science & Mathematics > General
 |
Domaine Delafaire
(Hardcover)
M D Ironz; Cover design or artwork by Necromancer
|
R948
R837
Discovery Miles 8 370
Save R111 (12%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
|
The role of natural magic in the rise of seventeenth-century
experimental science has been the subject of lively controversy for
several decades. Now Penelope Gouk introduces a new element into
the debate: how music mediated between these two domains. Arguing
that changing musical practice in sixteenth-century Europe affected
seventeenth-century English thought on science and magic, she maps
the various relationships among these apparently separate
disciplines. Gouk explores these relationships in several ways. She
adopts the methods of social geography to discuss the disciplinary,
social, and intellectual overlapping of music, science, and natural
magic. She gives a historical account of the emergence of acoustics
in English science, the harmonically based physics of Robert Hooke,
and the position of harmonics within Newton's transformation of
natural philosophy. And she provides a gallery of images in which
contemporary representations of instruments, practices, and
concepts demonstrate the way in which musical models informed and
transformed those of natural philosophy. Gouk shows that as the
"occult" features of music became subject to the new science of
experimentation, and as their causes became evident, so natural
magic was pushed outside the realms of scientific discourse.
Clements adroitly strips away the comfortable notion that science
and religion can forever be conveniently positioned in their own
domains - the world of empirical analysis occupying the former,
while spiritual concerns hold the attention of the latter. He
effectively illustrates the ways in which those who make knowledge
claims in the name of religion foist themselves upon science, while
they deny reasonable people the right to challenge, evaluate, or
assess the truth of these claims through the use of critical
intelligence and accepted methods of verification.Clements offers
compelling reasons to support the view that the aims of science -
logical compatibility and clarity of explanation based upon
observable data and experience - are preferable to religion's
reliance on tradition, mystery, parable, and revelation. With wit
and insight, Clements exposes the many absurdities inherent in
biblical accounts of such concepts as heaven and hell, the fall of
man, the soul, Christ's resurrection, the Trinity, and Noah's
flood. Fervent fundamentalists are confronted with the unsettling
fact that a literal reading of the Bible would result in complete
nonsense.
America's governing system is unique in the extent to which
scientists and other outside experts participate in the policy
process. No other nation uses these experts so extensively, not
merely for advice on the allocation of resources to science but
also in broad policy issues. This wide-ranging study traces the
rise of scientists in the policy process and shows how outside
experts interrelate with politicians and administrators to produce
a unique and dynamic policy process. It also shows how the very
openness of American government creates the potential for unusual
conflicts of interest. Bruce Smith focuses on the experience of
agency and presidential-level advisory systems over the past
several decades. He chronicles the special complexities and
challenges resulting from the Federal Advisory Committee Act--the
"open meeting" law--to provide a better understanding of the role
of advisory committees and offers valuable lessons to guide their
future use. He looks at science advice in the Departments of
Defense, State, and Energy, the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency, and then
examines how science advisory mechanisms have worked at the White
House. Rather than simply providing a description of structures and
institutions, Smith shows the advisory systems in action--how
advisory systems work or fail to work in practice. He analyzes how
the advisers influence the policymaking process and affect the life
of the agencies they serve. Smith concludes with an assessment of
the relationship between science advice and American democracy. He
explains that the widespread use of outside advisers clearly
reflects America's preference forpluralism. By scrutinizing agency
plans, goals, and operations, advisers and advisory committees
serve a variety of functions and attempt to strike a balance
between openness and citizen access to government and the need for
discipline and sophisticated expertise in policymaking. At the root
of the advisory process is a paradox: scientists are called on
because of their special expertise, but they are useful only if
they learn to play by the rules of the political game. The
challenge to the nation is to reconcile the integrity of science
with the norms of democracy.
The 19th century is known as the modern era of science. Many of
the ideas, theories, and inventions developed during this time are
used everyday in today's society. Windelspecht investigates the
century's tremendous discoveries, inventions, and inquiries in more
than 60 alphabetical entries. This reference presents familiar
subjects, such as the telephone and elevator, as well as those less
frequently studied, such as the spectroscope and Pasteur's
development of the germ theory.
Readers will find a thorough discussion of each entry's
scientific impact and gain an understanding of the lasting social
and political importance of these advancements. Narratives enrich
many of the entries by adding perspective to the century's
fascinating history. Students and researchers will find this
reference book easy to use. An appendix of entries listed by
scientific field, a glossary of terms, and name and subject indexes
make this the perfect, easy-to-use reference for anyone interested
in the scientific revolutions of the 19th.
Duns Scotus, along with Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham, was one of the three most talented and influential of the medieval schoolmen, and a highly original thinker. This book examines the central concepts in his physics, including matter, space, time, and unity.
Arc welding is one of the key processes in industrial
manufacturing, with welders using two types of processes - gas
metal arc welding (GMAW) and gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW). This
new book provides a survey-oriented account of the modeling,
sensing, and automatic control of the GMAW process.
Researchers are presented with the most recent information in the
areas of modeling, sensing and automatic control of the GMAW
process, collecting a number of original research results on the
topic from the authors and colleagues.
Providing an overview of a variety of topics, this book looks at
the classification of various welding processes; the modeling
aspects of GMAW; physics of welding; metal transfer
characteristics; weld pool geometry; process voltages and
variables; power supplies; sensing (sensors for arc length, weld
penetration control, weld pool geometry, using optical and
intelligent sensors); control techniques of PI, PID, multivariable
control, adaptive control, and intelligent control. Finally, the
book illustrates a case study presented by the authors and their
students at Idaho State University, in collaboration with
researchers at the Idaho National Engineering and Environment
Laboratory.
The Catholic theological faculty at the Tubingen school in Germany
in the first half of the 19th century are today widely regarded as
some of the most significant figures in the development of modern
Catholic thought. Up until now, however, little of their work has
been available to non-German readers. This English translation
makes available Johann Sebastian Drey's ""Brief Introduction to the
Study of Theology with Reference to the Scientific Standpoint and
the Catholic System"" (1819). In this text, Drey presented an
encyclopaedic introduction to the study of theology and its
methods, which provided not only a programme for the way Catholic
theology would be studied at Tubingen but also related Catholic
theology to the scientific views of German idealist and romantic
philosophy, especially that of Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling. In the
first part of the book, Drey examines the fundamental concepts of
Christian theology - religion, revelation, Christianity, theology -
and corrects some erroneous notions about them. In the second and
more important part of the book, the ""encyclopaedia"", Drey
focuses on how theology as a whole relates to other fields of
knowledge and how its various subdisciplines relate to and affect
one another. Theology's scholarly growth in the 18th century and
its branching out into many new fields, such as biblical exegesis,
textual criticism, and the new historical methods, has stimulated
interest in works such as this volume. Anyone concerned with the
role of theology and theologians in the Church today should find
this book important because Drey was one of the first to insist
that the theologian must be responsible to the scholarly and
academic world as well as to the Church. In this text he
demonstrated that Catholic thought could open itself without fear
to modernity and profit from the experience.
This book provides an accessible overview of the societal relevance
of contemporary geosciences. Engaging various disciplines from
humanities and social sciences, the book offers philosophical,
cultural, economic, and geoscientific insights into how to
contextualise geosciences in the node of Culture and Nature. The
authors introduce two perspectives of societal geosciences, both
informed by the lens of geoethics. Throughout the text core themes
are explored; human agency, the integrity of place, geo-centricity,
economy and climate justice, subjective sense-making and
spirituality, nationalism, participatory empowerment and leadership
in times of anthropogenic global change. The book concludes with a
discussion on culture, education, or philosophy of science as
aggregating concepts of seemingly disjunct narratives.The diverse
intellectual homes of the authors offer a rich resource in terms of
how they perceive human agency within the Earth system. Two
geoscientific perspectives and fourteen narratives from various
cultural, social and political viewpoints contextualise geosciences
in the World(s) of the Anthropocene.
|
|