This open access book examines how the social sciences can be integrated into the praxis of engineering and science, presenting unique perspectives on the interplay between engineering and social science. Motivated by the report by the Commission on Humanities and Social Sciences of the American Association of Arts and Sciences, which emphasizes the importance of social sciences and Humanities in technical fields, the essays and papers collected in this book were presented at the NSF-funded workshop 'Engineering a Better Future: Interplay between Engineering, Social Sciences and Innovation', which brought together a singular collection of people, topics and disciplines. The book is split into three parts: A. Meeting at the Middle: Challenges to educating at the boundaries covers experiments in combining engineering education and the social sciences; B. Engineers Shaping Human Affairs: Investigating the interaction between social sciences and engineering, including the cult of innovation, politics of engineering, engineering design and future of societies; and C. Engineering the Engineers: Investigates thinking about design with papers on the art and science of science and engineering practice.

The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) represents one of the most significant crossroads at which the assumptions and methods of scientific inquiry come into direct contact with-and in many cases conflict with-those of religion. Indeed, at the core of SETI is the same question that motivates many interested in religion: What is the place of humanity in the universe? Both scientists involved with SETI (and in other areas) and those interested in and dedicated to some religious traditions are engaged in contemplating these types of questions, even if their respective approaches and answers differ significantly. This book explores this intersection with a focus on three core points: 1) the relationship between science and religion as it is expressed within the framework of SETI research, 2) the underlying assumptions, many of which are tacitly based upon cultural values common in American society, that have shaped the ways in which SETI researchers have conceptualized the nature of their endeavor and represented ideas about the potential influence contact might have on human civilization, and 3) what sort of empirical evidence we might be able to access as a way of thinking about the social impact that contact with alien intelligence might have for humanity, from both religious and cultural perspectives. The book developed as a result of a course the author teaches at the University of Texas at Austin: Religion, Science, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

Our social, educational, professional, and political ethics play a significant role in every aspect of our life. As technology continues to influence our society, these principles needs to be valued. Moral, Ethical, and Social Dilemmas in the Age of Technology: Theories and Practice highlights the innovations and developments in the ethical features of technology in society. This comprehensive collection brings together research in the areas of computer, engineering, and biotechnical ethics. These theoretical studies and innovative methodologies are essential for researchers, practitioners and philosophers.

The articles selected for this volume explore emergent issues in the contemporary relationship between Islam and science and present studies of eight major voices in the discourse. Also included is a section on the operationalization of Islamic science in the modern world and a section on studies in traditional Islamic cosmology.

This book examines the emergent and expanding role of technologies that hold both promise and possible peril for transforming the ageing process in this century. It discusses the points and counterpoints of technological advances that would influence a reconstruction of what it means to age when embedded in a post-human vision for a post-biological future. The book presents a provocative interdisciplinary meta-analysis that contrasts paradigms with inflection points, making the case that society has entered a new inflection point, provisionally labeled as Post Ageing. It goes on to discuss the moderate and radical versions of this inflection point and the philosophical issues that need to be addressed with the advent of post ageing activities: postponing and possibly ending ageing, primarily through technological advances. This book will be a valuable resource for professionals who wish to review the continuum of varied constructs and intersects of technologies ranging from those purporting to enhance the activities of daily living in older adults, to those that would enable the older worker to stay competitive in the labor market, to those that propose to extend longevity and ultimately, claim to transcend ageing itself-moving toward a transhumanistic domain and more specifically, a post-ageing inflection point.

This book is open access under a CC-BY license. The importance of the pharmaceutical industry in Sub-Saharan Africa, its claim to policy priority, is rooted in the vast unmet health needs of the sub-continent. Making Medicines in Africa is a collective endeavour, by a group of contributors with a strong African and more broadly Southern presence, to find ways to link technological development, investment and industrial growth in pharmaceuticals to improve access to essential good quality medicines, as part of moving towards universal access to competent health care in Africa. The authors aim to shift the emphasis in international debate and initiatives towards sustained Africa-based and African-led initiatives to tackle this huge challenge. Without the technological, industrial, intellectual, organisational and research-related capabilities associated with competent pharmaceutical production, and without policies that pull the industrial sectors towards serving local health needs, the African sub-continent cannot generate the resources to tackle its populations' needs and demands. Research for this book has been selected as one of the 20 best examples of the impact of UK research on development. See http://www.ukcds.org.uk/the-global-impact-of-uk-research for further details.

New biotechnologies have propelled the question of what it means to be human or posthuman to the forefront of societal and scientific consideration. This volume provides an accessible, critical overview of the main approaches in the debate on posthumanism, and argues that they do not adequately address the question of what it means to be human in an age of biotechnology. Not because they belong to rival political camps, but because they are grounded in a humanist ontology that presupposes a radical separation between human subjects and technological objects.

The volume offers a comprehensive mapping of posthumanist discourse divided into four broad approaches two humanist-based approaches: dystopic and liberal posthumanism, and two non-humanist approaches: radical and methodological posthumanism. The author compares and contrasts these models via an exploration of key issues, from human enhancement, to eugenics, to new configurations of biopower, questioning what role technology plays in defining the boundaries of the human, the subject and nature for each.

Building on the contributions and limitations of radical and methodological posthumanism, the author develops a novel perspective, mediated posthumanism, that brings together insights in the philosophy of technology, the sociology of biomedicine, and Michel Foucault s work on ethical subject constitution. In this framework, technology is neither a neutral tool nor a force that alienates humanity from itself, but something that is always already part of the experience of being human, and subjectivity is viewed as an emergent property that is constantly being shaped and transformed by its engagements with biotechnologies. Mediated posthumanism becomes a tool for identifying novel ethical modes of human experience that are richer and more multifaceted than current posthumanist perspectives allow for.

The book will be essential reading for students and scholars working on ethics and technology, philosophy of technology, poststructuralism, technology and the body, and medical ethics."

For much of recorded history, China was a leading science and technology power. But just as the West rose, China turned in on itself, and missed the Industrial Revolution. The result was the 'Hundred Years of Humiliation', and a long struggle for a modern, yet distinctly Chinese, civilisational identity. Today, technological innovation has returned to the core of national pride and ambition. Since the 1980s, reforms have transformed China into the world's second largest economy and a major global power. Cyber space and other advanced technologies have become a battleground for international dominance; but today's world relies on global supply chains and interstate collaboration-at least, for now. Growing tension between the USA and China could result in the two superpowers decoupling their technology-with significant consequences for humanity's future. The Great Decoupling shows that this technology contest, and how it plays out, will shape the geopolitics of the twenty-first century.

This book introduces four waves of upsurge in digital activism and cyberconflict. The rise of digital activism started in 1994, was transformed by the events of 9/11, culminated in 2011 with the Arab Spring uprisings, and entered a transformative phase of control and mainstreaming since 2013 with the Snowden affair.

Focussing on China's stem cell research, this book investigates how, over the last decade, Chinese scientists, ethicists and policy-makers have developed a cosmopolitan sensibility in comprehending and responding to ethical and regulatory concerns.

This book explores issues raised by past and present practices of animal enhancement in terms of their means and their goals, clarifies conceptual issues and identifies lessons that can be learned about enhancement practices, as they concern both animals and humans.

This book is the summation of many decades of work by Peter L. Berger, an internationally renowned sociologist of religion. Secularization theory-which saw modernity as leading to a decline of religion-has been empirically falsified. It should be replaced by a nuanced theory of pluralism. In this new book, Berger outlines the possible foundations for such a theory, addressing a wide range of issues spanning individual faith, interreligious societies, and the political order. He proposes a conversation around a new paradigm for religion and pluralism in an age of multiple modernities. The book also includes responses from three eminent scholars of religion:Nancy Ammerman, Detlef Pollack, and Fenggang Yang.

Technology and Household Consumption is a comprehensive text that provides insights into technology's impact on consumer behavior and the household environment. Consumption and consumer behavior has become a very important subject of study that is now covered in many disciplines including family economics, culture studies, and feminist/women studies.

In the first section, this book provides a historical perspective on how consumer behaviors have changed because of technology and how technology itself has changed. Data on ownership and expenditures is detailed in describing the penetration of technology in the household and changes over time. In the examination of demographics and social changes, an emphasis is placed on women and children. As it is important to understand the entry paths and factors that influence them, the book also introduces a research framework to understanding the adoption and utilization of household technologies. In the second section, the book examines specific household technologies and consumption experiences including shopping choices and behaviors, entertainment outlets and availability, communications technologies, and working at home. The book concludes with a section on the relationships between marketers and consumers.

Contemporary developments in the biosciences associated with new biological possibilities have generated considerable interest among the social sciences, primarily because they challenge our understanding of the relationship between the body, nature, and identity. Regenerative medicine is such a field, and has attracted major commercial, clinical, political and popular interest. It has, however, been subject to very limited social science analysis. This book explores the hype and promise associated with the field, the uneven and often failed commercial exploitation we have seen, and the political, legal and bioethical challenges that developments in the regenerative medicine field produce. It does this at a global level, including analysis of what we are seeing in the US, Europe, China and Australia. The book establishes the meaning, boundaries and likely future development we will see, and asks whether regenerative medicine heralds a new paradigm for medicine itself.

Have you ever wondered... How Did God Do It? How did God perform the many miracles and supernatural events described in the Holy Bible - without violating the laws of physics and chemistry that He Himself put into place? And without conflicting with the basic tenets of Judaism and Christianity? This book proposes a theory that marries faith and rationality in a symphony of science and scripture.

From creationism to The God Delusion, the public dialogue of science and religion either uses the early chapters of Genesis in a naive and simplistic way or rejects their relevance to contemporary questions. This is reinforced by the myth that Darwin caused a rejection of a literalistic reading of Genesis 1 and from that point most Christian theology lost any confidence in these texts. The truth is far more complex. Jewish and Christian interpretation of the early chapters of Genesis had a long a fruitful history from the earliest times. In the 19th century, many more important issues were at stake than biblical literalism, and there were many different interpretations of how the discoveries of Darwin helped or hindered the reading of the biblical text. Today, theologians are returning to the importance of Genesis as a partner in dialogue with science, gender, and environmental care. As the distinguished authors of the papers in this volume show, far from Darwin burying these ancient texts, he has liberated them to speak in new and different ways. The volume is divided into three parts. In the first, the authors explore how the scriptures themselves were interpreted before the time of Darwin. The fact that non-literal interpretations were standard in early Jewish and Christian thought is often ignored. In fact, these insightful early interpretations have much to teach us today. Part II presents essays on the real history of the Darwin controversies. Exploding the myths about this period, it is fascinating to see how Darwin was welcomed by many religious thinkers. In Part II, the authors apply the insights of Genesis post Darwin to contemporary issues today, such as: what it means to be human, questions of gender, and of evil and environmental care. The final chapter deals with the rise of creationism in its current social context.

In this important and original book, eminent scholar Barbara Herrnstein Smith describes, assesses, and reflects upon a set of contemporary intellectual projects involving science, religion, and human cognition. One, which Smith calls "the New Naturalism," is the effort to explain religion on the basis of cognitive science. Another, which she calls "the New Natural Theology," is the attempt to reconcile natural-scientific accounts of the world with traditional religious belief. These two projects, she suggests, are in many ways mirror images--or "natural reflections"--of each other. Examining these and related efforts from the perspective of a constructivist-pragmatist epistemology, Smith argues that crucial aspects of belief--religious and other--that remain elusive or invisible under dominant rationalist and computational models are illuminated by views of human cognition that stress its dynamic, embodied, and interactive features. She also demonstrates how constructivist understandings of the formation and stabilization of knowledge--scientific and other--alert us to similarities in the springs of science and religion that are elsewhere seen largely in terms of difference and contrast. In "Natural Reflections, "Smith develops a sophisticated approach to issues often framed only polemically. Recognizing science and religion as complex, distinct domains of human practice, she also insists on their significant historical connections and cognitive continuities and offers important new modes of engagement with each of them.

This book analyzes scientific problems within the history of physics, engineering, chemistry, astronomy and medicine, correlated with technological applications in the social context. When and how is tension between disciplines explicitly practised? What is the conceptual bridge between science researches and the organization of technological researches in the development of industrial applications? The authors explain various ways in which the sciences allowed advanced modelling on the one hand, and the development of new technological ideas on the other hand. An emphasis on the role played by mechanisms, production methods and instruments bestows a benefit on historical and scientific discourse: theories, institutions, universities, schools for engineers, social implications as well. Scholars from different traditions discuss the emergency style of thinking in methodology and, in theoretical perspective, aim to gather and re-evaluate the current thinking on this subject. It brings together contributions from leading experts in the field, and gives much-needed insight into the subject from a historical point of view. The volume composition makes for absorbing reading for historians, philosophers and scientists.

This book examines the management of technical change in manufacturing and services through an explicit political-economic framework. It examines the management of automation in Britain and America since 1950, and it applies the same useful framework to explore the impact of Japanization on both Britain and the US in the 1980s and 1990s.

"Technology and Security" takes forward the existing state of academic understanding where security and technology intersect. It assesses the challenges posed by emerging scientific and technological developments for security while understanding how perceptions of security threats are themselves formed in relation to conceptions of science and technology.

This book explores the emergence of a new scientific field, synthetic biology, and the many bold promises its proponents have made to change the future of science, industry, humanity and the global environment. It explores how people, including academics, students, industrialists and governance actors, tried to change their practices to bring engineering and biology together, and to realise such promises from within their everyday lives. It focuses on an ethnographic case study of an academic project that aimed to demonstrate the field's promise for solving water industry problems, from leaky pipes to climate change. In doing so, the book weaves together stories of barriers, bacteria and bodies, examining how they were entangled as people tried to make connections between academia and industry. It also reflects on the authors' attempts to work collaboratively with natural scientists and engineers, reflecting on current debates about the role of sociology in such interdisciplinary projects. The book contributes to contemporary studies of science and technology by highlighting issues such as ontology, practices, failure and time.

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.