Stem Cells: Promises and Reality will tell you everything you have always wanted to know about stem cells, but could not understand the field from elsewhere.Stem cells are the great therapeutic promise of the century, and this evolving field of research and medicine brings with it many legal, ethical and psychological issues that must be discussed by society as a whole.Written so as to be accessible to general readers as well as specialists, this book explains what stem cells are, and the different aspects of stem cell research and applications. The book will enable the reader to understand the field sufficiently to critically participate in the public debates regarding stem cell research and society and ethics. By the end of the book, the reader will also be able to judge news on the stem cells field, and to discern what are real advances and what are phony treatments.The main advantage of this book in comparison with other 'stem cells for the general public' books is that it assumes the reader knows NOTHING about biology, except what is already common knowledge (for example, that we are made of cells). The book constructs step by step the required basic biology knowledge in order for the reader to understand all the different aspects of stem cells. At the same time that it is thorough in its stem cells-based content, and will keep the reader engaged with its narrative.

In Unsettled Borders Felicity Amaya Schaeffer examines the ongoing settler colonial war over the US-Mexico border from the perspective of Apache, Tohono O'odham, and Maya who fight to protect their sacred land. Schaeffer traces the scientific and technological development of militarized border surveillance across time and space from Spanish colonial lookout points in Arizona and Mexico to the Indian wars, when the US cavalry hired Native scouts to track Apache fleeing into Mexico, to the occupation of the Tohono O'odham reservation and the recent launch of robotic bee swarms. Labeled "Optics Valley," Arizona builds on a global history of violent dispossession and containment of Native peoples and migrants by branding itself as a profitable hub for surveillance. Schaeffer reverses the logic of borders by turning to Indigenous sacredsciences: ancestral land-based practices that are critical to reversing the ecological and social violence of surveillance, extraction, and occupation.

This book presents a pragmatic response to arguments against religion made by the New Atheism movement. The author argues that analytic and empirical philosophies of religion-the mainstream approaches in contemporary philosophy of religion-are methodologically unequipped to address the "Threefold Challenge" made by popular New Atheist thinkers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett. The book has three primary motivations. First, it provides an interpretation of the New Atheist movement that treats their claims as philosophical arguments and not just rhetorical exercises or demagoguery. Second, it assesses and responds to these claims by elaborating four distinct contemporary philosophical perspectives- analytic philosophy, empirical philosophy, continental philosophy, and pragmatism-as well as contextualizing these perspectives in the history of the philosophy of religion. Finally, the book offers a metaphilosophical critique, returning again and again to the question of method. In the end, the author settles upon a modified version of pragmatism that he concludes is best suited for articulating the terms and stakes of the God Debate. Challenging the New Atheism will be of interest to scholars and students of American philosophy and philosophy of religion.

To properly understand the nature of the digital economy we need to investigate the phenomenon of a "ubiquitous computing system" (UCS). As defined by Robin Milner, this notion implies the following characteristics: (i) it will continually make decisions hitherto made by us; (ii) it will be vast, maybe 100 times today's systems; (iii) it must continually adapt, on-line, to new requirements; and, (iv) individual UCSs will interact with one another. This book argues that neoclassical approaches to modelling economic behaviour based on optimal control by "representative-agents" are ill-suited to a world typified by concurrency, decentralized control, and interaction. To this end, it argues for the development of new, process-based approaches to analysis, modelling, and simulation. The book provides the context-both philosophical and mathematical-for the construction and application of new, rigorous, and meaningful analytical tools. In terms of social theory, it adopts a Post-Cognitivist approach, the elements of which include the nature philosophy of Schelling, Marx's critique of political economy, Peircean Pragmatism, Whitehead's process philosophy, and Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology of the flesh, along with cognitive scientific notions of embodied cognition and neural Darwinism, as well as more questionable notions of artificial intelligence that are encompassed by the rubric of "perception-and-action-without-intelligence".

As society becomes more concerned with the future of our planet, the study of apocalypse and eschatology become increasingly pertinent. Whether religious or not, peoples' views on this topic can have a profound effect on their attitudes to issues such as climate change and social justice and so it cannot be ignored. This book investigates how different approaches in historical and contemporary Christian theology make sense in reflecting about the final things, or the eschata, and why it is so important to consider their multi-faceted impact on our lives. A team of Nordic scholars analyse historical and contemporary eschatological thinking in a broad range of sources from theology and other related disciplines, such as moral philosophy, art history and literature. Specific social and environmental challenges, such as the Norwegian Breivik massacre in 2011, climatic change narratives and the ambiguity of discourses about euthanasia are investigated in order to demonstrate the complexity and significance of modes of thinking about the end times. This book addresses the theology of the end of the world in a more serious academic tone than it is usually afforded. As such, it will be of great interest to academics working in eschatology, practical theology, religious studies and the philosophy of religion.

How did pious medieval Muslims experience health and disease? Rooted in the prophet's experiences with medicine and healing, Muslim pietistic literature developed cosmologies in which physical suffering and medical interventions interacted with religious obligations and spiritual health. This book traces the development of prophetic medical literature and religious writings around health and disease to give a new perspective on how patienthood was conditioned by the intersection of medicine and Islam. The author investigates the early and foundational writings on prophetic medicine and related pietistic writings on health and disease produced during the Islamic Classical Age. Looking at attitudes from and towards clerics, physicians and patients, sickness and health are gradually revealed as a social, gendered, religious, and cultural experience. Patients are shown to experience certain sensoria that are conditioned not only by medical knowledge, but also by religious and pietistic attitudes. This is a fascinating insight into the development of Muslim pieties and the traditions of medical practice. It will be of great interest to scholars interested in Islamic Studies, history of religion, history of medicine, science and religion and the history of embodied religious practice, particularly in matters of health and medicine.

A thorough update to a classic in the field of privacy and big data. We have a global privacy problem. The average person provides more information about themselves to more outsiders than any time in history. Corporations, governments and even our neighbors can know where we are at times, can quickly learn our preferences and priorities and see who we meet. The past decade has brought deep changes in the collection of our private information, the regulation of that collection, and in people's sensitivity to loss of privacy. The nascent privacy-threatening technology trends of a decade ago have blossomed into relentless data-capturing systems that police and companies have come to rely on. To address the expansion of personal data capture, entire data regulatory regimes have arisen throughout the world, with new regulations added each year. People are more concerned, regulators are more aggressive, yet data collection continues to increase with consequences around the world. Social media use has fragmented in the past five years, spreading personal information over dozens of platforms. Even most of our new televisions have started collecting second-by-second information about our households recently, and some of those televisions can recognize the individuals watching and the devices they carry. Amazon just activated a new worldwide network using bandwidth from personal wifi of Echo devices and Ring security systems. The beat of new intrusions never seems to end. These data trends are relentless, and yet response to the pandemic accelerated them. Rapid development of "contactless everything" became the norm. Contact tracing apps became acceptable. QR codes for everything from menus to contact information were created quickly. Businesses are faced with hybrid in office and remote workforces. More people are dependent on online and mobile technologies for food, medicine, and even human connection. And each of these contacts can be captured somewhere and logged in a file for marketing or surveillance. People want to keep their lives private, but they don't know how. The second edition of Privacy in the Age of Big Data addresses the significant advances in data-driven technology, their intrusion deeper in our lives, the limits on data collection newly required by governments in North America and Europe, and the new security challenges of world rife with ransomware and hacking. This thoroughly updated edition demonstrates personal privacy vulnerabilities and shows ways to live a safer, more private life. Other privacy books tend to focus deeply on the evils of large tech companies or more academic and technical concerns. But Privacy in the Age of Big Data, second edition, helps regular people understand the privacy threats and vulnerabilities in their daily lives and will provide solutions for maintaining better privacy while enjoying a modern life. Unlike other books, this one shows what you can do to make a difference to understand your current digital footprint and what you need to do to claw back your privacy and secure it in the future. While PRIVACY IN THE AGE OF BIG DATA will have cross-sectional appeal to many demographics, working adults 25-60 and CEOs and Boards of businesses are the primary demographic--young enough to know we need to do something to protect privacy and old enough to remember what happens when we haven't in the past. With down-to-earth prose and examples pulled from daily life, the writing style will attract buyers of all education levels.

Navigating Post-Truth and Alternative Facts: Religion and Science as Political Theology is an edited volume that explores the critical intersection of "religion-and-science" and our contemporary political and social landscape with a tailored eye towards the epistemological and hermeneutical impact of the "post-truth society." The rise of the post-truth society has specific importance and inherent risk for nearly all academic disciplines and researchers. When personal beliefs regarding climate change trump scientific consensus, research projects are defunded, results are hidden or undermined, and all of us are at a greater vulnerability to extreme weather patterns. When expertise itself becomes suspect, we become a nation lead by fools. When data is overcome by alternative facts and truth in any form is suspect, where is the space for religious and/or scientific scholarship? The central curiosity of this volume is "what is the role of religion and science scholarship in a post-truth society?" This text explores truth, lies, fear, populism, politics, faith, the environment, post modernity, and our shared public life.

First published in 1970. This book is concerned with the examination and assessment of the impact of changes in technology on companies in three selected industries: printing, steel and chemicals. Its main focus is on the employment and associated labour market effects of technological change; but part of the rationale for the study as a whole has been to relate these effects to the technological environment of each industry. Accordingly, a good deal of attention has been paid to the character of the innovations themselves and to their implications for the industries in general terms. This title will be of interest to students of Business Studies and Economics.

In the face of limited time and escalating impacts, some scientists and politicians are talking about attempting "grand technological interventions" into the Earth's basic physical and biological systems ("geoengineering") to combat global warming. Early ideas include spraying particles into the stratosphere to block some incoming sunlight, or "enhancing" natural biological systems to withdraw carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at a higher rate. Such technologies are highly speculative and scientific development of them has barely begun. Nevertheless, it is widely recognized that geoengineering raises critical questions about who will control planetary interventions, and what responsibilities they will have. Central to these questions are issues of justice and political legitimacy. For instance, while some claim that climate risks are so severe that geoengineering must be attempted, others insist that the current global order is so unjust that interventions are highly likely to be illegitimate and exacerbate injustice. Such concerns are rarely discussed in the policy arena in any depth, or with academic rigor. Hence, this book gathers contributions from leading voices and rising stars in political philosophy to respond. It is essential reading for anyone puzzled about how geoengineering might promote or thwart the ends of justice in a dramatically changing world. The chapters in this book were originally published in the journals: Ethics, Policy & the Environment and Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

"What is the relevance of traditional religion in the world described by contemporary science? Is scientific knowledge a satisfactory ground for the religious experience? Can the language of traditional religion constitute an appropriately modern language of praise?" -from Honey from Stone Framing his meditations as a Book of Hours, scientist Chet Raymo exercises the languages of theology and science to express the majesty of Ireland's remote Dingle Peninsula. As he wanders the land year upon year, Raymo gathers the revelations embedded in the geological and cultural history of this wild and ancient place. "When I called out for the Absolute, I was answered by the wind," Raymo writes. "If it was God's voice in the wind, then I heard it." In poetic prose grounded in a mind trained to discover fact, Honey from Stone enters the wonder of the material world in search of our deepest nature.

An explosive new vision of geopolitics from two trail-blazing political scientists Deep beneath our feet, vast and sprawling, lies one of the most sophisticated empires the world has ever known. At first glance, it might not look like much - it is made up of fibre optic cables and obscure payment systems. But according to prominent political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, the United States has turned the most vital pathways of the world economy into tools of domination over foreign businesses and countries, whether they are rivals or allies, allowing it to maintain global supremacy. Drawing on original reporting and ground-breaking research, Farrell and Newman explain how this underground empire has allowed the United States to eavesdrop on other countries and isolate its enemies. Now, efforts by countries such as China and Russia to untether themselves from this coercive US-led system are turning the global economy into a battle zone. Today's headlines about trade wars, sanctions, and controls on technology exports are merely tremors hinting at far greater seismic shifts beneath the surface, as we sleepwalk into a dangerous new struggle for empire. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how power is wielded today, Underground Empire weaves together tales of economic conflict, shadowy surveillance and covert infrastructure projects to explain how the world order has been brought to the brink of chaos - and how we might find a way back from the edge.

The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781472453983, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative 4.0 license. Experiences of hearing the voice of God (or angels, demons, or other spiritual beings) have generally been understood either as religious experiences or else as a feature of mental illness. Some critics of traditional religious faith have dismissed the visions and voices attributed to biblical characters and saints as evidence of mental disorder. However, it is now known that many ordinary people, with no other evidence of mental disorder, also hear voices and that these voices not infrequently include spiritual or religious content. Psychological and interdisciplinary research has shed a revealing light on these experiences in recent years, so that we now know much more about the phenomenon of "hearing voices" than ever before. The present work considers biblical, historical, and scientific accounts of spiritual and mystical experiences of voice hearing in the Christian tradition in order to explore how some voices may be understood theologically as revelatory. It is proposed that in the incarnation, Christian faith finds both an understanding of what it is to be fully human (a theological anthropology), and God's perfect self-disclosure (revelation). Within such an understanding, revelatory voices represent a key point of interpersonal encounter between human beings and God.

Is the legal protection that is given to the expression of Abrahamic religious belief adequate or appropriate in the context of English medical law? This is the central question that is explored in this book, which develops a framework to support judges in the resolution of contentious cases that involve dissension between religious belief and medical law, developed from Alan Gewirth's Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC). This framework is applied to a number of medical law case studies: the principle of double effect, ritual male circumcision, female genital mutilation, Jehovah's Witnesses (adults and children) who refuse blood transfusions, and conscientious objection of healthcare professionals to abortion. The book also examines the legal and religious contexts in which these contentious cases are arbitrated. It demonstrates how human rights law and the proposed framework can provide a gauge to measure competing rights and apply legitimate limits to the expression of religious belief, where appropriate. The book concludes with a stance of principled pragmatism, which finds that some aspects of current legal protections in English medical law require amendment.

Psychoanalysis and Digital Culture offers a comprehensive account of our contemporary media environment-digital culture and audiences in particular-by drawing on psychoanalysis and media studies frameworks. It provides an introduction to the psychoanalytic affect theories of Sigmund Freud and Didier Anzieu and applies them theoretically and methodologically in a number of case studies. Johanssen argues that digital media fundamentally shape our subjectivities on affective and unconscious levels, and he critically analyses phenomena such as television viewing, Twitter use, affective labour on social media, and data-mining. How does watching television involve the body? Why are we so drawn to reality television? Why do we share certain things on social media and not others? How are bodies represented on social media? How do big data and data mining influence our identities? Can algorithms help us make better decisions? These questions amongst others are addressed in the chapters of this wide-ranging book. Johanssen shows in a number of case studies how a psychoanalytic angle can bring new insights to audience studies and digital media research more generally. From audience research with viewers of the reality television show Embarrassing Bodies and how they unconsciously used it to work through feelings about their own bodies, to a critical engagement with Hardt and Negri's notion of affective labour and how individuals with bodily differences used social media for their own affective-digital labour, the book suggests that an understanding of affect based on Freud and Anzieu is helpful when thinking about media use. The monograph also discusses the perverse implications of algorithms, big data and data mining for subjectivities. In drawing on empirical data and examples throughout, Johanssen presents a compelling analysis of our contemporary media environment.

Attitudes towards science, medicine and the body are all profoundly shaped by people's worldviews. When discussing issues of bioethics, religion often plays a major role. In this volume, the role of genetic manipulation and neurotechnology in shaping human identity is examined from multiple religious perspectives. This can help us to understand how religion might affect the impact of the initiatives such as the UNESCO Declaration in Bioethics and Human Rights. The book features bioethics experts from six major religions: Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism. It includes a number of distinct religious and cultural views on the anthropological, ethical and social challenges of emerging technologies in the light of human rights and in the context of global bioethics. The contributors work together to explore issues such as: cultural attitudes to gene editing; neuroactive drugs; the interaction between genes and behaviours; the relationship between the soul, the mind and DNA; and how can clinical applications of these technologies benefit the developing world. This is a significant collection, demonstrating how religion and modern technologies relate to one another. It will, therefore, be of great interest to academics working in bioethics, religion and the body, interreligious dialogue, and religion and science, technology and neuroscience.

Digital worlds and cultures-social media, web 2.0, youtube, wearable technologies, health and fitness apps-dominate, if not order, our everyday lives. We are no longer 'just' consumers or readers of digital culture but active producers through facebook, twitter, Instagram, youtube and other emerging technologies. This book is predicated on the assumption that out understanding of our everyday lives should be informed by what is taking place in and through emerging technologies given these (virtual) environments provide a crucial context where traditional, categorical assumptions about the body, identity and leisure may be contested. Far from being 'virtual', the body is constituted within and through emerging technologies in material ways. Recent 'moral panics' over the role of digital cultures in teen suicide, digital drinking games, an endless array of homoerotic images of young bodies being linked with steroid use, disordered eating and body dissatisfaction, facebook games/fundraising campaigns (e.g. for breast cancer), movements devoted to exposing 'everyday sexism' / metoo, twitter abuse (of feminists, of athletes, of racist nature to name but a few), speak to the need for critical engagement with digital cultures. While some of the earlier techno-utopian visions offered the promise of digitality to give rise to participatory, user generator collaborations, within this book we provide critical engagement with digital technologies and what this means for our understandings of leisure cultures. The chapters originally published in a special issue in Leisure Studies.

Since its development as a field over the last part of the twentieth century, scholars in science and religion have been heavily concerned with methodological issues. Following the lead of Thomas Kuhn, many scholars in this interdisciplinary field have offered proposals that purport to show how theology and science are compatible by appropriating theories of scientific methodology or rationality. Arguing against this strategy, this book shows why much of this methodological work is at odds with recent developments in the history and philosophy of science and should be reconsidered. Firstly, three influential methodological proposals are critiqued: Lakatosian research programs, Alister McGrath's "Scientific Theology" and the Postfoundationalist project of Wentzel van Huyssteen. Each of these approaches is shown to have a common failing: the idea that science has an essential nature, with features that unite "scientific" or even "rational" inquiry across time or disciplines. After outlining the issues this failing could have on the viability of the field, the book concludes by arguing that there are several ways scholarship in science and religion can move forward, even if the terms "science" and "religion" do not refer to something universally valid or philosophically useful. This is a bold study of the methodology of science and religion that pushes both subjects to consider the other more carefully. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars in religious studies, theology and the philosophy of science.

The essays in this collection explore our reliance on experts within a historical context and across a wide range of fields, including agriculture, engineering, health sciences and labour management. Contributors argue that experts were highly aware of their audiences and used performance to gain both scientific and popular support.

This book addresses how our revisionary practices account for relations between texts and how they are read. It offers an overarching philosophy of revision concerning works of fiction, fact, and faith, revealing unexpected insights about the philosophy of language, the metaphysics of fact and fiction, and the history and philosophy of science and religion. Using the novels of J.R.R. Tolkien as exemplars, the authors introduce a fundamental distinction between the purely physical and the linguistic aspects of texts. They then demonstrate how two competing theories of reference-descriptivism and referentialism-are instead constitutive of a single semantic account needed to explain all kinds of revision. The authors also propose their own metaphysical foundations of fiction and fact. The next part of the book brings the authors' philosophy of revision into dialogue with Thomas Kuhn's famous analysis of factual, and specifically scientific, change. It also discusses a complex episode in the history of paleontology, demonstrating how scientific and popular texts can diverge over time. Finally, the authors expand their philosophy of revision to religious texts, arguing that, rather than being distinct, such texts are always read as other kinds, that faith tends to be more important as evidence for religious texts than for others, and that the latter explains why religious communities tend to have remarkable historical longevity. Revising Fiction, Fact, and Faith offers a unique and comprehensive account of the philosophy of revision. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and advanced students working in philosophy of language, metaphysics, philosophy of literature, literary theory and criticism, and history and philosophy of science and religion.

A social robot is a robot that interacts and communicates with humans or other autonomous physical agents by following social behaviors and rules attached to its role. We seem to accept the use of robots that perform dull, dirty, and dangerous jobs. But how far do we want to go with the automation of care for children and the elderly, or the killing of terrorists? Would we be setting humanity aside if we accepted such automation? Just Ordinary Robots: Automation from Love to War provides a socially involved, yet sober, view into the new age of robots. It supplies a cutting-edge look at robot technologies, including what these technologies are capable of and the ethical and regulatory questions they raise. The book surveys the various types of social robots and examines their social significance in homes, health care, traffic, the police, and the military. Considering the technical characteristics and societal expectations of robots in these areas, it explores what is possible right now in terms of robot technologies. It also looks into the social, ethical, and regulatory issues future robot technologies will create. The text provides authoritative insights into the social significance of robots for the medium and long term. Illustrating the political, administrative, and regulatory consequences related to each area, it highlights key points that need to be publicly discussed or put on the agenda by today's politicians and policy makers.

Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this 'attention economy', we need to recognise the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order to take back control. Drawing on insights ranging from Diogenes to contemporary tech leaders, Williams's thoughtful and impassioned analysis is sure to provoke discussion and debate. Williams is the inaugural winner of the Nine Dots Prize, a new Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access.

China is surging in the tech race - and will continue to outperform the United States. The rising power has done exceptionally in Super Apps, bullet trains, 5G, electric vehicles, digital currency, smart cities, blockchain applications, and quantum communications in space, among others. Its payment platforms are increasingly adopted along the entire Silk Road.The genesis of this book was to discover an 'Apollo Program' for the US to catch up in these areas, but we discovered a much deeper need for a social/mental health Apollo Program for millennials who are bogged down by a host of under-appreciated and intertwined issues which cause anxiety and alienation and lead to massive losses in workplace productivity. This book proposes two Apollo programs - one for tech and one for millennials - by a millennial. Strategies for cracking the highly competitive Chinese Super App ecommerce market are also revealed.Related Link(s)

China is surging in the tech race - and will continue to outperform the United States. The rising power has done exceptionally in Super Apps, bullet trains, 5G, electric vehicles, digital currency, smart cities, blockchain applications, and quantum communications in space, among others. Its payment platforms are increasingly adopted along the entire Silk Road.The genesis of this book was to discover an 'Apollo Program' for the US to catch up in these areas, but we discovered a much deeper need for a social/mental health Apollo Program for millennials who are bogged down by a host of under-appreciated and intertwined issues which cause anxiety and alienation and lead to massive losses in workplace productivity. This book proposes two Apollo programs - one for tech and one for millennials - by a millennial. Strategies for cracking the highly competitive Chinese Super App ecommerce market are also revealed.Related Link(s)

Much has been written on the relationship between the nature of temporal reality and the God of Classical Theism. Despite the popularity of this general area, what the physics and metaphysics of spacetime might mean for specific theological doctrines has received less attention. Recently, however, interest in this rich and dynamic interplay of ideas has seen rapid growth. This Element provides both an introduction to the physics and metaphysics of spacetime and a jumping-off point for understanding how these can - and in fact should - inform both Christian theology and the philosophy of religion more generally. The author will argue that the nature of spacetime raises particular and pressing problems for Christianity, specifically the interrelated doctrines of salvation and eschatology, and explore whether adequate solutions to these problems are available.