Throughout history, humans have dreamed of knowing the reason for the existence of the universe. In The Mind of God, physicist Paul Davies explores whether modern science can provide the key that will unlock this last secret. In his quest for an ultimate explanation, Davies reexamines the great questions that have preoccupied humankind for millennia, and in the process explores, among other topics, the origin and evolution of the cosmos, the nature of life and consciousness, and the claim that our universe is a kind of gigantic computer. Charting the ways in which the theories of such scientists as Newton, Einstein, and more recently Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman have altered our conception of the physical universe. Davies puts these scientists' discoveries into context with the writings of philosophers such as Plato. Descartes, Hume, and Kant. His startling conclusion is that the universe is "no minor byproduct of mindless, purposeless forces. We are truly meant to be here." By the means of science, we can truly see into the mind of God.

Elgar Advanced Introductions are stimulating and thoughtful introductions to major fields in the social sciences and law, expertly written by the world's leading scholars. Designed to be accessible yet rigorous, they offer concise and lucid surveys of the substantive and policy issues associated with discrete subject areas. This cutting edge book introduces the origins and consequences of digital platforms, examining how artificial intelligence-enabled digital platforms collect and process data from and about users by providing social media and e-commerce services. Robin Mansell and W. Edward Steinmueller compare and contrast neoclassical, institutional and critical political economy approaches. They show how uneven power relationships between platform operators and their users are analysed in different economic traditions. Key features include: analysis of economic and public values provides a foundation for platform regulation examines the impacts of platforms on the media industry challenges claims of the inevitability of platform dominance discusses key challenges, including: artificial intelligence, data sharing and competition in the digital economy. This concise book will be indispensable for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students of media and communication studies, innovation studies and economics, particularly those focusing on platform economics.

The Extinction of Experience explores the way a broad range of technologies, from the microwave to the sophisticated computer simulator, now influence our everyday choices-what we eat, how we educate our children, how we get to and from work, and how we spend our leisure time. It is about one of the defining challenges of our age: how to live in the real world, with all of its messy physical realities, unmediated? Daily intimacy with the physical world recedes, little by little, at the same time that the worlds we access through the screen grow exponentially. More and more, we know our world through information about it rather than experience with it. And it is changing who we are. The Extinction of Experience is a book about this transformation.

Since time immemorial, men have assumed superior innate qualities which have justified them in exerting power over the other sex right up to the twentieth century. The last few years have seen the emergence of a new literary genre: to show that despite this, women have managed to become outstanding writers, artists, scientists, explorers, rulers and politicians. Of such books, none discusses a fundamental question: is the supposed male superiority biological, or has it arisen for some other reason over the course of time? This is the issue that Androcentrism: The Ascendancy of Man addresses.The stronger physique of males may have given Palaeolithic man a feeling of superiority, but the two sexes probably lived in fairly gender-neutral, or even matriarchal, groups right up to the end of the Neolithic Age. Charles Pasternak argues that it was the emergence of hierarchies, like chiefdom, that largely sparked androcentrism. It became established as villages grew into towns, with the ownership of property as an important ingredient, during the Bronze Age. While the Mediaeval Period was a time of slight respite for women, the Age of Enlightenment in Europe did not bolster this trend; it reversed it. Not until the latter half of the nineteenth century was androcentrism beginning to be seriously questioned, but significant change happened only after World War I. Today androcentrism has virtually disappeared from most parts of the world. It was just a cultural blip, albeit one that lasted over 5,000 years.