This collection explores whether and how religious and secular worldviews and political ideologies held by scientists, citizens, decision-makers and politicians influence science as practiced and understood today. Contributors explore the social and scientific repercussions of 'customizing' science to fit the needs and interests of various groups.

This book provides new critical and methodological approaches to digital humanities, intended to guide technical development as well as critical analysis. Informed by the history of technology and culture and new perspectives on modernity, Smithies grounds his claims in the engineered nature of computing devices and their complex entanglement with our communities, our scholarly traditions, and our sense of self. The distorting mentalite of the digital modern informs our attitudes to computers and computationally intensive research, leading scholars to reject articulations of meaning that admit the interdependence of humans and the complex socio-technological systems we are embedded in. By framing digital humanities with the digital modern, researchers can rebuild our relationship to technical development, and seek perspectives that unite practical and critical activity. This requires close attention to the cyber-infrastructures that inform our research, the software-intensive methods that are producing new knowledge, and the ethical issues implicit in the production of digital humanities tools and methods. The book will be of interest to anyone interested in the intersection of technology with humanities research, and the future of digital humanities.

On March 26th, 1923, in a formal ceremony, construction of the Milan-Alpine Lakes autostrada officially began, the preliminary step toward what would become the first European motorway. That Benito Mussolini himself participated in the festivities indicates just how important the project was to Italian Fascism. Driving Modernity recounts the twisting fortunes of the autostrada, which-alongside railways, aviation, and other forms of mobility-Italian authorities hoped would spread an ideology of technological nationalism. It explains how Italy ultimately failed to realize its mammoth infrastructural vision, addressing the political and social conditions that made a coherent plan of development impossible.

In this consideration of religious and scientific beliefs, Keith Simpson offers a provocative challenge to Darwinian thinking through conversations with a close friend.

"An important tool for parenting and college preparation. Having taught on all levels of academia, I am convinced that it takes great wisdom to take complex and sophisticated issues and present them in a way that the non-expert can comprehend and evaluate. Simpson has done a masterful job of synthesizing, exposing, and presenting-in an understandable and engaging way for our evaluation-the embedded philosophies of Darwinism that intertwine our cultural thinking."
-David P. Ferreira, Ph.D.

"Keith Simpson provides an enjoyable and highly personal account of how respectful and well-informed interactions with atheists can change hearts and minds for the better."
-Casey Luskin, Discovery Institute

At a time when there is increasing need to offer psychotherapeutic approaches that accommodate clients' religious and spiritual beliefs, and acknowledge the potential for healing and growth offered by religious frameworks, this book explores psychology from an Islamic paradigm and demonstrates how Islamic understandings of human nature, the self, and the soul can inform an Islamic psychotherapy. Drawing on a qualitative, grounded theory analysis of interviews with Islamic scholars and clinicians, this unique volume distils complex religious concepts to reconcile Islamic theology with contemporary notions of psychology. Chapters offer nuanced explanations of relevant Islamic tradition and theological sources, consider how this relates to Western notions of psychotherapy and common misconceptions, and draw uniquely on first-hand data to develop a new theory of Islamic psychology. This, in turn, informs an innovative and empirically driven model of practice that translates Islamic understandings of human psychology into a clinical framework for Islamic psychotherapy. An outstanding scholarly contribution to the modern and emerging discipline of Islamic psychology, this book makes a pioneering contribution to the integration of the Islamic sciences and clinical mental health practice. It will be a key resource for scholars, researchers, and practicing clinicians with an interest in Islamic psychology and Muslim mental health, as well as religion, spirituality and psychology more broadly.

For most professions, a code of ethics exists to promote positive behavior among practitioners in order to enrich others within the field as well as the communities they serve. Similar to the medical, law, and business fields, the engineering discipline also instills a code of ethical conduct. Contemporary Ethical Issues in Engineering highlights a modern approach to the topic of engineering ethics and the current moral dilemmas facing practitioners in the field. Focusing on key issues, theoretical foundations, and the best methods for promoting engineering ethics from the pre-practitioner to the managerial level, this timely publication is ideally designed for use by engineering students, active professionals, and academics, as well as researchers in all disciplines of engineering.

Managing identity through biometric technology has become a routine and ubiquitous practice in recent years. From border control and asylum regulation to the management of social services and medical records, various fields are increasingly deploying biometric systems as a means of identity verification and authentication. The scope and nature of these systems are raising a host of concerns regarding the intensification of surveillance practices and the reduction of identity to a series of bio-data and algorithms.By analysing biometric systems as a biopolitical practice within the domain of borders, immigration and citizenship management, this book interrogates what is at stake in the merging of the body and technology for security and governance purposes. It draws on a number of critical theories, philosophies and empirical examples, offering a multi-level and timely analysis of the socio-political and ethical implications of biometric identity systems.

This book explores how the design, construction, and use of robotics technology may affect today's legal systems and, more particularly, matters of responsibility and agency in criminal law, contractual obligations, and torts. By distinguishing between the behaviour of robots as tools of human interaction, and robots as proper agents in the legal arena, jurists will have to address a new generation of "hard cases." General disagreement may concern immunity in criminal law ("e.g.," the employment of robot soldiers in battle), personal accountability for certain robots in contracts ("e.g.," robo-traders), much as clauses of strict liability and negligence-based responsibility in extra-contractual obligations ("e.g.," service robots in tort law). Since robots are here to stay, the aim of the law should be to wisely govern our mutual relationships.

This book aims to be a reference for researchers studying the promotion of scientific literacy in China, as well as a guide for those interested in promoting scientific awareness. It covers advances in science and technology, communication and popularization practice, and research (STCP) both in China and abroad. Theoretical issues are discussed, and important problemsin promoting scientific and technological awareness are identified (e.g.: basic principles, structures, channels of communication and current needs) This bookprovides a summary of the advances in STCP in China in recent years (especially after the issuing of the National Scientific Literacy Outline ) including STCP resource and capacity building, science popularization policies, practitioner development, infrastructure construction, and the development of the science popularization industry as a whole. At the same time, this book also reviews thedesign, organization, monitoring and evaluation of science and technology communication and popularization programs. It also highlights current STCP trends and developments in China and calls for a greater emphasis to be placed on research into promoting scientific literacy. It is hoped that this book will be useful to readers both in China and abroad by familiarizing them with the history and theory of STCP as well as its development over time. The 1st chapter briefly reviews the history of STCP. The 2nd through 5th chapters discuss the conceptual framework, basic structure, methods of communication, and current STCP needs. The 6th chapter introduces the principle content of programs aimed at improving Chinese citizens scientific literacy, while the 7th and 8th chapters analyze the resources, capacities and conditions that have been developed for STCP in China. The 9th chapter investigates the organization, monitoring and evaluation of science popularization practices, and the final chapter summarizes important STCP topics and trends in contemporary China.

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Young Earth vs.Old Earth. The debate has gone on for centuries, with most modern Christians disputing the scientific claim of an ancient earth. But is an old earth truly inconsistent with Scripture? Dr. Mark Whorton seeks to give biblically based answers and challenge the modern thinking that to be an evangelical Christian is to believe in a young earth. Using evidence as diverse as the bombardier beetle and St. Augustine, Dr. Whorton, a Christian apologist and genuine rocket scientist, provides a compelling answer to one of the most difficult and heated issues for modern Christians.

For much of the twentieth century, mainstream economists have treated human agents in their models as if they were rational beings of unbounded computational capacity - the notorious 'Homo Economicus' of much economic theory. However, the patent inadequacies of this understanding of human nature have become increasingly apparent, and economists have begun looking for more realistic models, incorporating the insights of evolutionary theory. The authors address the question of human nature in economics, examining not only some of the recent writing on this subject in evolutionary psychology and related disciplines, but also the ideas of important thinkers in the Western intellectual tradition. Beginning with the ancient Greeks and progressing to the modern day, the contributors explore the works of such thinkers as Augustine, Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, Alfred Marshall and Kenneth Boulding. Many of these works are placed in a Darwinian, evolutionary perspective, with the imperative that the study of human nature must be consistent with our understanding of human evolution, and should consider how human beings are moulded by cultural and institutional influences. Naturally, Darwin's own view of human nature is also explored, undermining the mistaken notion that Darwinism promotes human nature as greedy, uncooperative and self-seeking. This enlightening, original and highly readable work will be of great interest to professional economists and students, researchers and teachers of evolutionary economics.

Albert Einstein and Max Born were great friends. Their letters span 40 years and two world wars. In them they argue about quantum theory, agree about Beethoven's heavenly violin and piano duets (that they played together when they met) and chat about their families. Equally important, the men commiserate over the tragic plight of European Jewry and discuss what part they should play in the tumultuous politics of the time.
Fascinating historically, The Born-Einstein Letters is also highly topical: scientists continue to struggle with quantum physics, their role in wartime and the public's misunderstanding. First published by Macmillan in 1971, this book is re-issued, with a substantial new preface by leading US physicists Kip Thorne and Diana Buchwald, as part of 2005's Relativity Centenary celebrations.

Technologies and Practices for Constructing Knowledge in Online Environments: Advancements in Learning discusses how aspects of technology can facilitate and provide advancements in e-collaborative knowledge construction. This reference collection gives an impression about scenarios of e-collaborative knowledge construction and the technology applied in these scenarios while focusing on technologies that enable collaborative knowledge construction processes and how they can be framed to support e-collaborative knowledge construction.

This book demonstrates principles of Ancestor Veneration Avatars (AVAs), by running avatars based on eleven deceased members of one family through ten highly diverse virtual worlds from the violent Defiance to the intellectual Uru: Myst Online, from the early EverQuest to the recent Elder Scrolls Online.

This volume provides an in-depth discussion on the central question - how can people express and survive dissent and disagreement in confined habitats in space? The discussion is an important one because it could be that the systems of inter-dependence required to survive in space are so strong that dissent becomes impossible. John Locke originally said that people have a right to use revolution to overthrow a despotic regime. But if revolution causes violence and damage that causes depressurisation with the risk of killing many people, is it even permissible to have a revolution? How then are people to express their liberty or dissatisfaction with their rulers? The emergence of structures of dissent and disagreement is an essential part of the construction of a framework of liberty in space (revolution is just the extreme example) and thus the topic deserves in-depth and immediate attention. Even today, the way in which we assemble organisations and corporations for the government and private exploration of space must take into account the need for mechanisms to allow people to express dissent.

Throughout the chapters, the authors take readers through the various uses of technology. They discuss archifact analysis, usability and cognitive engineering, as well as motivation and emotion in user interface design. The book also crucially introduces a new, holistic approach to designing human-technology interaction. The book is suitable for researchers, postgraduate and undergraduate students of cognitive and social psychology as well as all those who are interested in technological design and its societal impact.

Science has development from a self-evident public good to being highly valued in other contexts for different reasons: strengthening the economic competitiveness and, especially in high-tech fields, as a financial investment for future gains. This has been accompanied by a shift from public to private funding with intellectual property rights gaining importance. But in contemporary democracies citizens have also begun to voice their concerns about science and technology related risks, demanding greater participation in decision-making and in the setting of research priorities. The book examines the legal issues and responses vis-A -vis these transformations of the nature of public science. It discusses their normative content as well as the inherent limitations of the law in meeting these challenges.

This volume seeks to leverage academic interdisciplinarity to develop insight into how Artificial intelligence (AI), the latest GPT to emerge, may influence or radically change socio-political norms, practices, and institutions. AI may best be understood as a predictive technology. "Prediction is the process of filling in missing information. Prediction takes information you have, often called 'data', and uses it to generate information you don't have" (Agrawal, Gans, and Goldfarb 2018, 13; also see Mayer-Schonberger and Ramge 2018). AI makes prediction cheap because the cost of information is now close to zero. Cheap prediction through AI technologies are radically altering how we govern ourselves, interact with each other, and sustain society. Contributors to this volume represent the academic disciplines of Sociology and Political Science working within a diverse set of intra-disciplinary fields that when combined, yield novel insights into the following questions guiding this volume: How might AI transform people? How might AI transform socio-political practices? How might AI transform socio-political institutions?

The digital age we now live in is fundamentally changing how we relate to our perceptions and images. Daniel O'Shiel provides the first comprehensive phenomenology of virtual technology in order to show how the previously well-established experiential lines and structures between three basic categories of phenomenal experience - our everyday perceptions of reality; our everyday fantasies of irreality; and our everyday engagements with external images, not least digital ones - are becoming blurred, inverted or are even collapsing in a new era where a specific type of virtuality is coming to the fore. O'Shiel examines in depth just what this means for the phenomenology behind it, as well as the concrete practical consequences going forward. The work is divided into two main parts. In the first O'Shiel fully investigates the phenomenological natures of perception and imagination through close textual analyses of the relevant works by Edmund Husserl, Eugen Fink and Jean-Paul Sartre. In each phenomenologist perception and imagination are ultimately seen as different in kind, although the dividing line differs, especially with reference to a middle category of 'image-consciousness' (Bildbewusstsein). This first part argues for basic phenomenological differences between perceptions; physical and external images; and more mental imagery, while also allowing for a more general gradation between them. The second part then applies these theoretical findings to some of the most influential 'virtual technologies' today - social media; online gaming; and some virtual, augmented and mixed reality technologies - in order to show how previously clear categories of real and irreal, present and absent, genuine and fake, and even true and false, are becoming less so.

Digital Communities in a Networked Society: e-Commerce, e-Business and e-Government deals with the accelerating evolution in the computerization of society. This evolution, or should we call it a revolution, is dominantly driven by the Internet, and documented by the novelties introduced, year by year, by Information and Communication Technologies.
The book contains recent results of research and development in the areas of:
-E-government,
-Business models of e-applications,
-Innovative structures in the internet,
-Auctions and e-payment,
-Future aspects of communication,
-Internet and the web,
-Advanced platforms and grid computing,
-Cooperation and integration,
-Modeling and construction of e-services.

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.