Now available in paperback, "Images of the Human" addresses the questions human beings have been asking for centuries. Each chapter focuses on the writings of a different philosopher--from Plato to Nietzsche, St. Augustine to Simone de Beauvior. As a distinctive feature, commentaries explore the unique relationship between what philosophers say and what religion teaches.

There are many how-to books on scientific and technical writing, and most of them devote a chapter or two to the subject of gathering information. The Elements of Information Gathering is the first to describe in detail the necessary steps in gathering scientific and technical information.Created as a working reference for scientific and technical professionals, as well as a textbook for technical communication courses, the book is organized into four main sections that lead the reader from the basic principles of information gathering to the more sophisticated methods of locating and organizing scientific data.

In this dramatic reconstruction of the daily lives of the earliest tool-making humans, two leading anthropologists reveal how the first technologies-- stone, wood, and bone tools-- forever changed the course of human evolution.

Drawing on two decades of fieldwork around the world, authors Kathy Schick and Nicholas Toth take readers on an eye-opening journey into humankind's distant past-- traveling from the savannahs of East Africa to the plains of northern China and the mountains of New Guinea-- offering a behind-the-scenes look at the discovery, excavation, and interpretation of early prehistoric sites.

Based on the authors' unique mix of archaeology and practical experiments, ranging from making their own stone tools to theorizing about the origins of human intelligence, "Making Silent Stones Speak" brings the latest ideas about human evolution to life.

"Thoughtfully compiled, current, and reasonably priced.... Recommended as a 'one-stop-shopping' source..". -- Library Journal

"This work is an essential purchase for libraries with collections in the four designated areas". -- ARBA

Both print and nonprint sci-tech information sources can be quickly located, and their uses evaluated, with this new resource -- the only sourcebook to cover all four major branches of science. More than 2,400 entries of complete bibliographic information are accompanied by a brief description of each work.

Every source is indexed by author, subject, and title. Special chapters cover how technology is changing the way scientists communicate, and how to build a viable collection in specific disciplines.

Even as you read these words, a tiny portion of your brain is physically changing. New connections are being sprouted--a circuit that will create a jab of recognition if you encounter the words again. That is one of the theories of memory presented in this intriguing and splendidly readable book, which distills three researchers' inquiries into the processes that enable us to recognize a face that has aged ten years or remember a melody for decades.

In this book, Cuban scholar, journalist and author Gonzalez-Manet demystifies the information age. With his unique vision on technology, global politics, and social change, he provides readers with a critical analysis of new communications technologies and their largely unavoidable consequences. Whether the dazzling array of high-tech hardware and software are to benefit humanity or serve the needs of transnational corporations depends upon the social character of their application and the adoption of coherent policies concerning communications, culture and education. The author forcefully argues that much of the Third World lacks such policies and the results are devastating. Among other areas of exploration, he outlines the major characteristics of informatics in an age of global markets and transnational networks and, in the process, reflects on the politics of data flows, cultural integrity, and national sovereignty. Special attention is paid to the impact of computers on teaching and learning, as well as related trends in worldwide publishing. Several chapters focus specifically on Cuba's policies with regard to new communications technologies such as video and trends in Cuban film. This book builds on the author's previous work, expands the scope of reflection, and provides the reader with a lucid Third World perspective enriched by the urgency of the analysis and the substantial documentation of the argument.

In the vein of The Soul of a New Machine, a dramatic chronicle of a new revolution in brain-mind science comes this accessible book on the scientists who are creating startling new theories of how the mind works as the forge a new kind of artificial intelligence called neural networks--or, the first thinking machines

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.

From the author of "Perceiving Ordinary Magic, " this book proposes that both science and Buddhism offer powerful insights into human nature that can help to bring about profound changes in our lives and our society.
Jeremy Hayward argues that a radical uprooting of our beliefs about reality is necessary if we are to resolve our confusion about our world and ourselves. Only a profound examination of human perception--a process by which worlds and selves are created and re-created ever moment--will provide the clarity and confidence we seek.
"Shifting Worlds, Changing Minds " is an in-depth, non-technical analysis of the perceptual process, drawing on the latest data from cognitive science--the "new science of mind." Added to these are insights gained from the Buddhist practice of mindfulness-awareness meditation. The results of this analysis and practice can free us from dependence on belief systems. We are presented with a genuine revolution in the understanding of consciousness, and the possibilities for awareness and compassion are revealed.

In 1500 few Europeans considered nature an object worthy of study, yet within fifty years the first museums of natural history had appeared, chiefly in Italy. Vast collections of natural curiosities - including living human dwarves, "toad-stones", and unicorn horns - were gathered by Italian patricians as a means of knowing their world. The museums built around these collections became the center of a scientific culture that over the next century and a half served as a microcosm of Italian society and as the crossroads where the old and new sciences met. In Possessing Nature, Paula Findlen vividly recreates the lost world of late Renaissance and Baroque Italian museums and demonstrates its significance in the history of science and culture. Based on exhaustive research into natural histories, letters, travel journals, memoirs, and pleas for patronage, Findlen describes collections and collectors great and small, beginning with Ulisse Aldrovandi, professor of natural history at the University of Bologna. Aldrovandi, whose museum was known as the "eighth wonder" of the world, was a great popularizer of collecting among the upper classes. From the universities, Findlen traces the spread of natural history in the seventeenth century to other learned sectors of society: religious orders, scientific societies, and princely courts. There was, as Findlen shows, no separation between scientific culture and general political culture in Renaissance and Baroque Italy. The community of these early naturalists was, in many ways, a mirror of the humanist "republic of letters". Archival documents point to the currying of patrons and the hierarchical nature of the scientific professions, characteristicscommon to the larger world around them. Examining anew the society and accomplishments of the first collectors of nature, Findlen argues that the accepted distinction between the "old" Aristotelian, text-based science and the "new" empirical science during the period is false. Rather, natural history as a discipline blurred the border between the ancients and the moderns, between collecting in order to recover ancient wisdom and collecting in order to develop new scholarship. In this way, as in others, the Scientific Revolution grew from the constant mediation between the old form of knowledge and the new. Possessing Nature is a unique cross-disciplinary study. Not only does its detailed description of the earliest natural history collections make an important contribution to museum studies and cultural history, but by placing these museums in a continuum of scientific inquiry, it also adds to our understanding of the history of science.

In a fast-moving world, the necessity of making decisions, and preferably good ones, has become even more difficult. One reason is the variety and number of choices perhaps available which often are not presented or understood. Alternatives are often unclear and complex paths to them confusing and misleading. Thus the process of decision making itself requires analysis on an ongoing basis. Decision making is often made based on cultural factors whereas the best alternative might be quite different. The subject touches ethical aspects as well as psychological considerations. This book presents important research on the psychology of decision making related to law and law enforcement, health care and science.

Reputed to have performed miraculous feats in New England-restoring the hair and teeth to an aged lady, bringing a withered peach tree to fruit-Eirenaeus Philalethes was also rumored to be an adept possessor of the alchemical philosophers' stone. That the man was merely a mythical creation didn't diminish his reputation a whit-his writings were spectacularly successful, read by Leibniz, esteemed by Newton and Boyle, voraciously consumed by countless readers. Gehennical Fire is the story of the man behind the myth, George Starkey. Though virtually unknown today and little noted in history, Starkey was America's most widely read and celebrated scientist before Benjamin Franklin. Born in Bermuda, he received his A.B. from Harvard in 1646 and four years later emigrated to London, where he quickly gained prominence as a "chymist." Thanks in large part to the scholarly detective work of William Newman, we now know that this is only a small part of an extraordinary story, that in fact George Starkey led two lives. Not content simply to publish his alchemical works under the name Eirenaeus Philalethes, "A Peaceful Lover of Truth," Starkey spread elaborate tales about his alter ego, in effect giving him a life of his own.