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Books > Science & Mathematics > Science: general issues > Impact of science & technology on society

Build - An Unorthodox Guide To Making Things Worth Making (Paperback): Tony Fadell Build - An Unorthodox Guide To Making Things Worth Making (Paperback)
Tony Fadell 2
R380 R351 Discovery Miles 3 510 Save R29 (8%) Ships in 5 - 10 working days

A Silicon Valley icon - and inventor of the iPod and iPhone - dispenses valuable tips and life lessons for entrepreneurs at any stage in their careers.

Tony Fadell has spent the last three decades making things and founding companies that have profoundly changed millions of lives. After leading the team that created the iPod and iPhone, products that saved a struggling Apple, Tony founded Nest Labs and revolutionised household electronics. He has worked with everyone from Steve Jobs to Larry Page, advised companies from Impossible Foods to Diamond Foundry, built products that have literally shaped the modern world, and learned a lot of things about business, innovation and solving all manner of problems.

In BUILD, Tony shares stories and valuable lessons from his career, offering advice and solutions for your toughest moments. For anyone striving to grow in their career, start-up founders and start-up dreamers, leaders of businesses big and small, this book will show you how to navigate challenges and take that next big leap.

Wat Moet Ons Met Ons Kerk Doen? (Afrikaans, Paperback): Jurie van den Heever Wat Moet Ons Met Ons Kerk Doen? (Afrikaans, Paperback)
Jurie van den Heever 1
R311 Discovery Miles 3 110 Ships in 2 - 4 working days

Wat Moet Ons Met Ons Kerk Doen? is 'n poging om te probeer verstaan waar ons as Afrikaners teologies vandaan kom, watter kragte en magte ons en ons Kerk gevorm het en hoe ons Kerk tans daar uitsien.

Die N.G.Kerk was 'n belangrike en rigtinggewende rolspele in die opheffing van die Afrikaner na die Britse vergrype tydens en na die Tweede Vryheidsoorlog. Tans word die N.G.Kerk ervaar as 'n instansie wat ongevoelig teenoor die geestelike behoeftes van haar lidmate staan.

Hierdie is 'n moet-lees boek vir:

  • Lidmate wat ons Kerk graag wil help om 'n gesonde, geestelike tuiste vir Suid-Afrikaners van die 21ste eeu te bied.
  • Die klakkelose napraters van die dogma wat dink ons Kerk is steeds op die regte pad.
  • Die plastiekpredikante van die radio en televisie wat met eentonige reëlmaat soetsappige, sogenaamd godsdienstige, pleisters plak.
  • Diegene wat reeds ons Kerk tot die ashoop van die geloof verdoem het.
Fear - An Alternative History Of The World (Paperback): Robert Peckham Fear - An Alternative History Of The World (Paperback)
Robert Peckham
R727 R632 Discovery Miles 6 320 Save R95 (13%) Ships in 9 - 17 working days

It's been said that, after 9/11, the 2008 financial crash and the Covid-19 pandemic, we're a more fearful society than ever before. Yet fear, and the panic it produces, have long been driving forces - perhaps THE driving force - of world history: fear of God, of famine, war, disease, poverty, and other people. In Fear: An Alternative History of the World, Robert Peckham considers the impact of fear in history, as both a coercive tool of power and as a catalyst for social change.

Beginning with the Black Death in the fourteenth century, Peckham traces a shadow history of fear. He takes us through the French Revolution and the social movements of the nineteenth century to modern market crashes, Cold War paranoia and the AIDS pandemic, into a digital culture increasingly marked by uniquely twenty-first-century fears.

What did fear mean to us in the past, and how can a better understanding of it equip us to face the future? As Peckham demonstrates, fear can challenge as well as cement authority. Some crises have destroyed societies; others have been the making of them. Through the stories of the people and the moments that changed history, Fear: An Alternative History of the World reveals how fear and panic made us who we are.

The Four Horsemen - The Discussion That Sparked An Atheist Revolution (Hardcover): Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel C.... The Four Horsemen - The Discussion That Sparked An Atheist Revolution (Hardcover)
Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, Christopher Hitchens; Foreword by Stephen Fry 3
R431 Discovery Miles 4 310 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Known as the `four horsemen' of New Atheism, these four big thinkers of the twenty-first century met only once. Their electrifying examination of ideas on this remarkable occasion was intense and wide-ranging. Everything that was said as they agreed and disagreed with one another, interrogated ideas and exchanged insights - about religion and atheism, science and sense - speaks with urgency to our present age.

Questions they asked of each other included:

  • Is it ever possible to win a war of ideas?
  • Is spirituality the preserve of the religious?
  • Are there any truths you would rather not know?
  • Would you want to see the end of faith?

The dialogue was recorded, and is now transcribed and presented here with new introductions from the surviving three horsemen. With a sparkling introduction from Stephen Fry, it makes essential reading for all their admirers and for anyone interested in exploring the tensions between faith and reason.

Like, Comment, Subscribe - Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise To World Domination (Paperback): Mark Bergen Like, Comment, Subscribe - Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise To World Domination (Paperback)
Mark Bergen
R498 R473 Discovery Miles 4 730 Save R25 (5%) Ships in 9 - 17 working days

The story of YouTube, the global phenomenon which single-handedly upended traditional media and transformed Google into one of the world's most profitable companies.

Since 2005, YouTube has exploded, giving a platform to unique and valuable voices, but also to propaganda, misinformation and illicit videos. The algorithm which determines whether a channel lives or dies - how or when videos are seen, and how much creators earn through advertising - is notoriously secretive, remaining a mystery to consumers and broadcasters alike. At the same time, the site is massively profitable for parent company Google, helping turn it into one of the most influential powers on the planet.

In Like, Comment, Subscribe, Bloomberg tech journalist Mark Bergen delivers the definitive account on YouTube, detailing how it started, how it works and ultimately how it drives Google's success. It can be seen as the story of a technical marvel that has upended traditional media and created stars out of everyday people, or the story of the rise of a ruthless advertising conglomerate with little regard for its impact on the world beyond the bottom line - but in reality, it's the story of both.

Modern Science Proves Intelligent Design - The Information System Worldview (Paperback): Ken Pedersen Modern Science Proves Intelligent Design - The Information System Worldview (Paperback)
Ken Pedersen
R385 Discovery Miles 3 850 Ships in 10 - 17 working days
Exploring Inductive Risk - Case Studies of Values in Science (Hardcover): Kevin C. Elliott, Ted Richards Exploring Inductive Risk - Case Studies of Values in Science (Hardcover)
Kevin C. Elliott, Ted Richards
R3,279 Discovery Miles 32 790 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Science is the most reliable means available for understanding the world around us and our place in it. But, since science draws conclusions based on limited empirical evidence, there is always a chance that a scientific inference will be incorrect. That chance, known as inductive risk, is endemic to science. Though inductive risk has always been present in scientific practice, the role of values in responding to it has only recently gained extensive attention from philosophers, scientists, and policy-makers. Exploring Inductive Risk brings together a set of eleven concrete case studies with the goals of illustrating the pervasiveness of inductive risk, assisting scientists and policymakers in responding to it, and moving theoretical discussions of this phenomenon forward. The case studies range over a wide variety of scientific contexts, including the drug approval process, high energy particle physics, dual-use research, climate science, research on gender disparities in employment, clinical trials, and toxicology. The book includes an introductory chapter that provides a conceptual introduction to the topic and a historical overview of the argument that values have an important role to play in responding to inductive risk, as well as a concluding chapter that synthesizes important themes from the book and maps out issues in need of further consideration.

Science vs Religion - What Scientists Really Think (Hardcover): Elaine Howard Ecklund Science vs Religion - What Scientists Really Think (Hardcover)
Elaine Howard Ecklund
R1,240 Discovery Miles 12 400 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

That the longstanding antagonism between science and religion is irreconcilable has been taken for granted. And in the wake of recent controversies over teaching intelligent design and the ethics of stem-cell research, the divide seems as unbridgeable as ever.
In Science vs. Religion, Elaine Howard Ecklund investigates this unexamined assumption in the first systematic study of what scientists actually think and feel about religion. In the course of her research, Ecklund surveyed nearly 1,700 scientists and interviewed 275 of them. She finds that most of what we believe about the faith lives of elite scientists is wrong. Nearly 50 percent of them are religious. Many others are what she calls "spiritual entrepreneurs," seeking creative ways to work with the tensions between science and faith outside the constraints of traditional religion. The book centers around vivid portraits of 10 representative men and women working in the natural and social sciences at top American research universities. Ecklund's respondents run the gamut from Margaret, a chemist who teaches a Sunday-school class, to Arik, a physicist who chose not to believe in God well before he decided to become a scientist. Only a small minority are actively hostile to religion. Ecklund reveals how scientists-believers and skeptics alike-are struggling to engage the increasing number of religious students in their classrooms and argues that many scientists are searching for "boundary pioneers" to cross the picket lines separating science and religion.
With broad implications for education, science funding, and the thorny ethical questions surrounding stem-cell research, cloning, and other cutting-edge scientific endeavors, Science vs. Religion brings a welcome dose of reality to the science and religion debates.

The Internet, Power and Society - Rethinking the Power of the Internet to Change Lives (Paperback): Marcus Leaning The Internet, Power and Society - Rethinking the Power of the Internet to Change Lives (Paperback)
Marcus Leaning
R1,400 Discovery Miles 14 000 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

An exciting challenge to how the internet and ICT have been understood in academia and popular culture and shows how important cultural assumptions are in how we understand technology. The Internet, Power and Society argues that the way in which we view technology such as the internet owes much to older, historic views of the media and to issues in contemporary society. Such perspectives are deeply rooted in a Western view of technology and the book concludes by offering a radically new perspective as to how the internet can change a society that is truly global in its application.
An original approach to ICT and the Internet that challenges the orthodoxyVery topical subject matter - the book addresses many of the issues regarded of key import in high level political discussions (such as the World Summit on the Information Society); the current understanding of ICT and how to move beyond this interpretationAn approach that moves the debate forward and offers a truly global way of understanding the Internet and ICT"

From Field to Fork - Food Ethics for Everyone (Hardcover): Paul B Thompson From Field to Fork - Food Ethics for Everyone (Hardcover)
Paul B Thompson
R3,748 Discovery Miles 37 480 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

After centuries of neglect, the ethics of food are back with a vengeance. Justice for food workers and small farmers has joined the rising tide of concern over the impact of industrial agriculture on food animals and the broader environment, all while a global epidemic of obesity-related diseases threatens to overwhelm modern health systems. An emerging worldwide social movement has turned to local and organic foods, and struggles to exploit widespread concern over the next wave of genetic engineering or nanotechnologies applied to food. Paul B. Thompson's book applies the rigor of philosophy to key topics in the first comprehensive study explore interconnections hidden deep within this welter of issues. Bringing more than thirty years of experience working closely with farmers, agricultural researchers and food system activists to the topic, he explores the eclipse of food ethics during the rise of nutritional science, and examines the reasons for its sudden re-emergence in the era of diet-based disease. Thompson discusses social injustice in the food systems of developed economies and shows how we have missed the key insights for understanding food ethics in the developing world. His discussions of animal production and the environmental impact of agriculture breaks new ground where most philosophers would least expect it. By emphasizing the integration of these issues, Thompson not only brings a comprehensive philosophical approach to moral issues in the production, processing, distribution, and consumption of food - he introduces a fresh way to think about practical ethics that will have implications in other areas of applied philosophy.

100+ Years of Plastics - Leo Baekeland and Beyond (Hardcover): E. Thomas Strom, Seth Rasmussen 100+ Years of Plastics - Leo Baekeland and Beyond (Hardcover)
E. Thomas Strom, Seth Rasmussen
R5,463 Discovery Miles 54 630 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

This volume consists of written chapters taken from the presentations at the symposium "100+ Years of Plastics: Leo Baekeland and Beyond," held March 22, 2010, at the 239th ACS National Meeting in San Francisco. The symposium celebrates the 100th anniversary of the formation of General Bakelite Corp., which was preceded by Leo Baekland's synthesis of Bakelite in 1907 and the unveiling of the Bakelite process in 1909. It is quite reasonable to use the synthesis of Bakelite as the starting point of the Age of Plastics. Indeed, Time magazine in its June 14, 1999, issue on the 100 most influential people of the 20th century chose Leo Baekeland and his Bakelite synthesis as the sole representative of chemistry.
Leo Baekeland and Bakelite are the topics of the first four chapters of this volume. The first two chapters come from the perspective of Baekeland family members. Carl Kaufmann is related to the Baekeland family through marriage and is the author of the only full-length biography of Baekeland, published as a master's thesis from the University of Delaware. As a family member Kaufmann had access to all of Baekeland's papers. This first chapter (Leo H. Baekeland) is not only a biographical sketch, but an exploration of Baekeland's effect on the chemical industry. Hugh Karraker is Baekeland's great-grandson, and his chapter (A Portrait of Leo H. Baekeland) provides a family picture of the great inventor. Gary Patterson's chapter (Materia Polymerica: Bakelite) goes into the history of Bakelite chemistry, while Burkhard Wagner's contribution (Leo Baekeland's Legacy-100 Years of Plastics) covers the history of Bakelite manufacture through time and space, finishing with a description of another Baekeland legacy, the Baekeland Award given through the North Jersey Section of the ACS.
In later chapters, Les Sperling (History of Interpenetrating Polymer Networks Starting with Bakelite-Based Compositions) covers the improvements in interpenetrating networks. James Economy and Z. Parkar (Historical Perspectives on Phenolic Resins and High-Temperature Aromatic Polyesters of p-Hydroxybenzoic Acid and Their Copolyesters) follow the paths of resoles, novolaks, and related chemicals.

The Civic Organization and the Digital Citizen - Communicating Engagement in a Networked Age (Hardcover): Chris Wells The Civic Organization and the Digital Citizen - Communicating Engagement in a Networked Age (Hardcover)
Chris Wells
R3,566 Discovery Miles 35 660 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The powerful potential of digital media to engage citizens in political actions has now crossed our news screens many times. But scholarly focus has tended to be on "networked," anti-institutional forms of collective action, to the neglect of advocacy and service organizations. This book investigates the changing fortunes of the citizen-civil society relationship by exploring how social changes and innovations in communication technology are transforming the information expectations and preferences of many citizens, especially young citizens. In doing so, it is the first work to bring together theories of civic identity change with research on civic organizations. Specifically, it argues that a shift in "information styles" may help to explain the disjuncture felt by many young people when it comes to institutional participation and politics. The book theorizes two paradigms of information style: a dutiful style, which was rooted in the society, communication system and citizen norms of the modern era, and an actualizing style, which constitutes the set of information practices and expectations of the young citizens of late modernity for whom interactive digital media are the norm. Hypothesizing that civil society institutions have difficulty adapting to the norms and practices of the actualizing information style, two empirical studies apply the dutiful/actualizing framework to innovative content analyses of organizations' online communications-on their websites, and through Facebook. Results demonstrate that with intriguing exceptions, most major civil society organizations use digital media more in line with dutiful information norms than actualizing ones: they tend to broadcast strategic messages to an audience of receivers, rather than encouraging participation or exchange among an active set of participants. The book concludes with a discussion of the tensions inherent in bureaucratic organizations trying to adapt to an actualizing information style, and recommendations for how they may more successfully do so.

Deceitful Media - Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test (Hardcover): Simone Natale Deceitful Media - Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test (Hardcover)
Simone Natale
R2,435 Discovery Miles 24 350 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often discussed as something extraordinary, a dream-or a nightmare-that awakens metaphysical questions on human life. Yet far from a distant technology of the future, the true power of AI lies in its subtle revolution of ordinary life. From voice assistants like Siri to natural language processors, AI technologies use cultural biases and modern psychology to fit specific characteristics of how users perceive and navigate the external world, thereby projecting the illusion of intelligence. Integrating media studies, science and technology studies, and social psychology, Deceitful Media examines the rise of artificial intelligence throughout history and exposes the very human fallacies behind this technology. Focusing specifically on communicative AIs, Natale argues that what we call "AI" is not a form of intelligence but rather a reflection of the human user. Using the term "banal deception," he reveals that deception forms the basis of all human-computer interactions rooted in AI technologies, as technologies like voice assistants utilize the dynamics of projection and stereotyping as a means for aligning with our existing habits and social conventions. By exploiting the human instinct to connect, AI reveals our collective vulnerabilities to deception, showing that what machines are primarily changing is not other technology but ourselves as humans. Deceitful Media illustrates how AI has continued a tradition of technologies that mobilize our liability to deception and shows that only by better understanding our vulnerabilities to deception can we become more sophisticated consumers of interactive media.

Slavery and Sin - The Fight against Slavery and the Rise of Liberal Protestantism (Hardcover, New): Molly Oshatz Slavery and Sin - The Fight against Slavery and the Rise of Liberal Protestantism (Hardcover, New)
Molly Oshatz
R1,998 Discovery Miles 19 980 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

In a groundbreaking examination of the antislavery origins of liberal Protestantism, Molly Oshatz contends that the antebellum slavery debates forced antislavery Protestants to adopt an historicist understanding of truth and morality. Unlike earlier debates over slavery, the antebellum slavery debates revolved around the question of whether or not slavery was a sin in the abstract. Unable to use the letter of the Bible to answer the proslavery claim that slavery was not a sin in and of itself, antislavery Protestants, including William Ellery Channing, Francis Wayland, Moses Stuart, Leonard Bacon, and Horace Bushnell, argued that biblical principles opposed slavery and that God revealed slavery's sinfulness through the gradual unfolding of these principles. Although they believed that slavery was a sin, antislavery Protestants' sympathy for individual slaveholders and their knowledge of the Bible made them reluctant to denounce all slaveholders as sinners. In order to reconcile slavery's sinfulness with their commitments to the Bible and to the Union, antislavery Protestants defined slavery as a social rather than an individual sin. Oshatz demonstrates that the antislavery notions of progressive revelation and social sin had radical implications for Protestant theology. Oshatz carries her study through the Civil War to reveal how emancipation confirmed for northern Protestants the antislavery notion that God revealed His will through history. She describes how after the war, a new generation of liberal theologians, including Newman Smyth, Charles Briggs, and George Harris, drew on the example of antislavery and emancipation to respond to evolution and historical biblical criticism. The theological innovations rooted in the slavery debates came to fruition in liberal Protestantism's acceptance of the historical and evolutionary nature of religious truth.

Left to Our Own Devices - Coping with Insecure Work in a Digital Age (Hardcover): Julia Ticona Left to Our Own Devices - Coping with Insecure Work in a Digital Age (Hardcover)
Julia Ticona
R2,433 Discovery Miles 24 330 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

An examination of the ways that digital technologies play an increasingly important role in the lives of precarious workers, far beyond the gig economy apps like Uber and Lyft. Over the past three decades, digital technologies like smartphones and laptops have transformed the way we work in the US. At the same time, workers at both ends of the income ladder have experienced rising levels of job insecurity and anxiety about their economic futures. In Left to Our Own Devices, Julia Ticona explores the ways that workers use their digital technologies to navigate insecure and flexible labor markets. Through 100 interviews with high and low-wage precarious workers across the US, she explores the surprisingly similar "digital hustles" they use to find work and maintain a sense of dignity and identity. Ticona then reveals how the digital hustle ultimately reproduces inequalities between workers at either end of polarized labor markets. A moving and accessible look at the intimate consequences of contemporary capitalism, Left to Our Own Devices will be of interest to sociologists, communication and media studies scholars, as well as a general audience of readers interested in digital technologies, inequality, and the future of work in the US.

Uncertain Chances - Science, Skepticism, and Belief in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Hardcover, New): Maurice S. Lee Uncertain Chances - Science, Skepticism, and Belief in Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Hardcover, New)
Maurice S. Lee
R2,583 Discovery Miles 25 830 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The role of chance changed in the nineteenth century, and American literature changed with it. Long dismissed as a nominal concept, chance was increasingly treated as a natural force to be managed but never mastered. New theories of chance sparked religious and philosophical controversies while revolutionizing the sciences as probabilistic methods spread from mathematics, economics, and sociology to physics and evolutionary biology. Chance also became more visible in everyday life as Americans struggled to control its power through weather forecasting, insurance, game theory, statistics, military science, and financial strategy. Uncertain Chances shows how the rise of chance shaped the way nineteenth-century American writers faced questions of doubt and belief. Poe in his detective fiction critiques probabilistic methods. Melville in Moby-Dick and beyond struggles to vindicate moral action under conditions of chance. Douglass and other African American authors fight against statistical racism. Thoreau learns to appreciate the play between nature's randomness and order. Dickinson works faithfully to render poetically the affective experience of chance-surprise. These and other nineteenth-century writers dramatize the inescapable dangers and wonderful possibilities of chance. Their writings even help to navigate extremes that remain with us today-fundamentalism and relativism, determinism and chaos, terrorism and risk-management, the rational confidence of the Enlightenment and the debilitating doubts of modernity.

A Biblical Response to Covid-19 (Hardcover): Bishop Harvey Spencer A Biblical Response to Covid-19 (Hardcover)
Bishop Harvey Spencer
R634 R568 Discovery Miles 5 680 Save R66 (10%) Ships in 10 - 17 working days

Bishop Harvey Spencer never thought he'd witness a pandemic-just as he never expected to see the election of a Black president, the election of a female vice president (Black or otherwise), or an insurrection. But all of those things have happened, and our lives have been forever altered. In this book, he seeks to discover what God is trying to reveal to us by letting COVID-19 run rampant. By studying the Bible, he discovered it is not silent when it comes to fighting an infectious disease. He answers questions such as: - How did ancient Israel fight the spread of another infectious disease-leprosy? - What does the Bible tell us about quarantining individuals who are sick or may be sick? - Why do some elected officials continue to display a lack of leadership amid the pandemic? The author also examines what the Bible says about using face coverings, what the world has done to fight other outbreaks of disease, and similarities between COVID-19 and other deadly viruses. Get simple, practical explanations from the Bible that will help you understand the spread of COVID-19-and how to protect yourself-with A Biblical Response to COVID-19.

The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets - A Reproductive History of the Nonhuman (Hardcover): Ruth A. Miller The Biopolitics of Embryos and Alphabets - A Reproductive History of the Nonhuman (Hardcover)
Ruth A. Miller
R3,272 Discovery Miles 32 720 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

In recent decades there has been an explosion in work in the social and physical sciences describing the similarities between human and nonhuman as well as human and non-animal thinking. This work has explicitly decentered the brain as the sole, self-contained space of thought, and it has found thinking to be an activity that operates not only across bodies but also across bodily or cellular membranes, as well as multifaceted organic and inorganic environments. For example, researchers have looked at the replication and spread of slime molds (playfully asking what would happen if they colonized the earth) to suggest that they exhibit 'smart behavior' in the way they move as a potential way of considering the spread of disease across the globe. Other scholars have applied this model of non-human thought to the reach of data mining and global surveillance. In The Biopolitics of Alphabets and Embryos, Ruth Miller argues that these types of phenomena are also useful models for thinking about the growth, reproduction, and spread of political thought and democratic processes. Giving slime, data and unbounded entities their political dues, Miller stresses their thinking power and political significance and thus challenges the anthropocentrism of mainstream democratic theories. Miller emphasizes the non-human as highly organized, systemic and productive of democratic growth and replication. She examines developments such as global surveillance, embryonic stem cell research, and cloning, which have been characterized as threats to the privacy, dignity, and integrity of the rational, maximizing and freedom-loving democratic citizen. By shifting her level of analysis from the politics of self-determining subjects to the realm of material environments and information systems, Miller asks what might happen if these alternative, nonhuman thought processes become the normative thought processes of democratic engagement.

Islamic Biomedical Ethics Principles and Application (Hardcover): Abdulaziz Sachedina Islamic Biomedical Ethics Principles and Application (Hardcover)
Abdulaziz Sachedina
R2,155 Discovery Miles 21 550 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Biomedical ethics is a burgeoning academic field with complex and far-reaching consequences. Whereas in Western secular bioethics this subject falls within larger ethical theories and applications (utilitarianism, deontology, teleology, and the like), Islamic biomedical ethics has yet to find its natural academic home in Islamic studies.
In this pioneering work, Abdulaziz Sachedina - a scholar with life-long academic training in Islamic law - relates classic Muslim religious values to the new ethical challenges that arise from medical research and practice. He depends on Muslim legal theory, but then looks deeper than juridical practice to search for the underlying reasons that determine the rightness or wrongness of a particular action. Drawing on the work of diverse Muslim theologians, he outlines a form of moral reasoning that can derive and produce decisions that underscore the spirit of the Shari'a. These decisions, he argues, still leave room to revisit earlier decisions and formulate new ones, which in turn need not be understood as absolute or final. After laying out this methodology, he applies it to a series of ethical questions surrounding the human life-cycle from birth to death, including such issues as abortion, euthanasia, and organ donation.
The implications of Sachedina's work are broad. His writing is unique in that it aims at conversing with Jewish and Christian ethics, moving beyond the Islamic fatwa literature to search for a common language of moral justification and legitimization among the followers of the Abrahamic traditions. He argues that Islamic theological ethics be organically connected with the legal tradition of Islam to enable it to sit in dialogue with secular and scripture-based bioethics in other faith communities. A breakthrough in Islamic bioethical studies, this volume is welcome and long-overdue reading for anyone interested in facing the difficult questions posed by modern medicine not only to the Muslim faithful but to the ethically-minded at large.

Developing and Maintaining a Successful Undergraduate Research Program (Hardcover): Timothy W. Chapp, Mark a. Benvenuto Developing and Maintaining a Successful Undergraduate Research Program (Hardcover)
Timothy W. Chapp, Mark a. Benvenuto
R5,466 Discovery Miles 54 660 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Professors and research advisors have always endeavored to make the opportunity to gain new knowledge available to their students. However, new knowledge takes different forms. From a student perspective, it comes from reading textbooks and primary literature or attending classes and seminars. Professors share in these activities with their students, but they know that physically taking part in the acquisition of new knowledge through active research is where the true excitement begins. For many, if not all, faculty members research is the source of passion for chemistry, and sharing it with a rising generation of chemists often comprises a substantial part of the decision to pursue a career in the field of undergraduate education. These chapters and additional ones provide starting points for developing such a culture at the department level. In several cases the starting point is redesigning introductory or research methods courses to place a stronger emphasis on authentic research and its associated skills. In other cases the establishment of a thriving research group by one faculty member is the catalyst for initiating the departmental transformation. There are also several examples of how to set up an undergraduate research group in departments that place a heavy emphasis on research, and those that place less emphasis on research. Many of these offer roadmaps for developing interdisciplinary research groups or translating resource-intensive graduate-level research to an environment that is resource-restrictive. In still other cases the research has an experiential learning component. For many of the above examples the departmental/institutional role is not always obvious and may not be influential or important. This is a reminder that undergraduate research need not be "institutional" to be successful.

Young Child In Context - A Psycho-Social Perspective (Paperback, Revised 2nd Edition): Marike de Witt Young Child In Context - A Psycho-Social Perspective (Paperback, Revised 2nd Edition)
Marike de Witt
R756 Discovery Miles 7 560 Ships in 5 - 10 working days

Every child constantly changes and undergoes processes of emotional, cognitive, normative and physical development. At each age and stage of development children need continued support and assurance from adults in order to assimilate the effects of these changes. The pace of the child's development and its outcome are determined by both genetic factors and the influence of the environment. The young child in context: a psycho-social perspective examines the complex yet clearly defined phases in child development and suggests how best to encourage and assist children through the formative first nine years of their lives. In the revised second edition, the case is put more strongly that the context of each child is of crucial importance and that stimulation is essential in enabling the child to reach his or her full potential. The young child in context follows two different perspectives on the development of the young child: psychological and social-educational. Each chapter provides definitions of concepts, self-test questions, field assignments, additional assignments for revision and case studies related to the topics covered. Issues are discussed within a South African context.

Selling Yoga - From Counterculture to Pop Culture (Hardcover): Andrea Jain Selling Yoga - From Counterculture to Pop Culture (Hardcover)
Andrea Jain
R3,837 Discovery Miles 38 370 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

When we think of yoga today, we envision spandex-clad, perspiring, toned people brought together in a room filled with yoga mats and engaged in a fitness ritual set apart from day-to-day life. Their aim is to enhance something they all deem sacred: their bodies. In Selling Yoga, Andrea Jain looks at the development of modern, popular yoga and suggests that its practitioners are strategic participants in the contemporary global market for self-developmental products and services. Pre-colonial and early modern yoga systems comprise esoteric techniques that aim at transcendent states of detachment from ordinary and conventional life. In contrast, contemporary popularized yoga aims at immediate self-development through the enhancement of the mind-body complex according to dominant health and fitness paradigms. Postural yoga is prescribed not as an all-encompassing worldview or system of practice, but as one part of self-development that provides increased beauty and flexibility as well as reduced stress; it can be combined with various other worldviews and practices available in the global marketplace. However, Jain argues that yoga systems cannot be reduced to mere commodities-that yoga is, in fact, a religion of consumer culture. It functions as a social ritual that removes individuals from everyday life for the sake of self-development. Yoga brands destabilize the basic utility of yoga commodities and assign to them new meanings that represent the fulfillment of self-developmental needs deemed sacred in contemporary consumer culture.

Rethinking Reprogenetics - Enhancing Ethical Analyses of Reprogenetic Technologies (Hardcover): Inmaculada De Melo-Martin Rethinking Reprogenetics - Enhancing Ethical Analyses of Reprogenetic Technologies (Hardcover)
Inmaculada De Melo-Martin
R1,764 Discovery Miles 17 640 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Reprogenetic technologies, which combine the power of reproductive techniques with the tools of genetic science and technology, promise prospective parents a remarkable degree of control to pick and choose the likely characteristics of their offspring. Not only can they select embryos with or without particular genetically-related diseases and disabilities but also choose embryos with non-disease related traits such as sex. Prominent authors such as Agar, Buchanan, DeGrazia, Green, Harris, Robertson, Savulescu, and Silver have flocked to the banner of reprogenetics. For them, increased reproductive choice and reduced suffering through the elimination of genetic disease and disability are just the first step. They advocate use of these technologies to create beings who enjoy longer and healthier lives, possess greater intellectual capacities, and are capable of more refined emotional experiences. Indeed, Harris and Savulescu in particular take reprogenetic technologies to be so valuable to human beings that they have insisted that their use is not only morally permissible but morally required. Rethinking Reprogenetics challenges this mainstream view with a contextualised, gender-attentive philosophical perspective. De Melo-Martin demonstrates that you do not have to be a Luddite, social conservative, or religious zealot to resist the siren song of reprogenetics. Pointing out the flawed nature of the arguments put forward by the technologies' proponents, Rethinking Reprogenetics reveals the problematic nature of the assumptions underpinning current evaluations of these technologies and offers a framework for a more critical and sceptical assessment.

Something Old, Something New - Contemporary Entanglements of Religion and Secularity (Hardcover): Wayne Glausser Something Old, Something New - Contemporary Entanglements of Religion and Secularity (Hardcover)
Wayne Glausser
R864 Discovery Miles 8 640 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Something Old, Something New: Contemporary Entanglements of Religion and Secularity offers a fresh perspective on debates surrounding a significant if underappreciated relationship between religious and secular interests. In entanglement, secularity competes with religion, but neither side achieves simple dominance by displacing the other. As secular ideas and practices entangle with their religious counterparts, they interact and alter each other in a contentious but oddly intimate relationship. In each chapter, Wayne Glausser focuses on a topic of contemporary relevance in which something old-e. g., the sacrament of extreme unction, Greek rhetorical tropes, scholastic theology-entangles with something new: psilocybin therapy for the dying, new atheism, cognitive science. As traditional religious knowledge and values come into conflict with their secular counterparts, the old ideas undergo stress and adaptation, but the influence works in both directions. Those with primary allegiance to secular interests find themselves entangled with aspects of religious thinking. Whether they do it intentionally or without knowing, entangled secularists engage with and sometimes borrow from older paradigms they believe they have surpassed. Glausser's approach offers a new perspective in the conversation between believers and secularists. Something Old, Something New is a book that theists, atheists, agnostics, and everyone still searching for the right label will find respectful but provocative.

Abraham's Dice - Chance and Providence in the Monotheistic Traditions (Hardcover): Karl W. Giberson Abraham's Dice - Chance and Providence in the Monotheistic Traditions (Hardcover)
Karl W. Giberson
R3,578 Discovery Miles 35 780 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

Most of us believe everything happens for a reason. Whether it is "God's will," "karma", or "fate," we want to believe that an overarching purpose undergirds everything, and that nothing in the world, especially a disaster or tragedy, is a random, meaningless event. Abraham's Dice explores the interplay between chance and randomness, as well as between providence and divine action in the monotheistic religious traditions, looking at how their interaction has been conceptualized as our understanding of the workings of nature has changed. This lively historical conversation has generated intense and engaging theological debates, and provocative responses from science: what of the history of our universe, where chance and law have played out in complex ways? Or the evolution of life, where random mutations have challenged attempts to find purpose within evolution and convinced many that human beings are a "glorious accident." The enduring belief that everything happens for a reason is examined through a conversation with major scholars, among them holders of prestigious chairs at Oxford and Cambridge universities and the University of Basel, as well as several Gifford lecturers, and two Templeton prize winners. Now, as never before, confident scientific assertions that the world embodies a profound contingency are challenging theological claims that God acts providentially in the world. The random and meandering path of evolution is widely used as an argument that God did not create life. Organized historically, Abraham's Dice provides a wide-ranging scientific, theological, and biblical foundation to address the question of divine action in a world shot through with contingency.

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