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On Purpose (Hardcover)
Loot Price: R987
Discovery Miles 9 870
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On Purpose (Hardcover)
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A brief, accessible history of the idea of purpose in Western
thought, from ancient Greece to the present Can we live without the
idea of purpose? Should we even try to? Kant thought we were stuck
with purpose, and even Darwin's theory of natural selection, which
profoundly shook the idea, was unable to kill it. Indeed,
teleological explanation--what Aristotle called understanding in
terms of "final causes"--seems to be making a comeback today, as
both religious proponents of intelligent design and some prominent
secular philosophers argue that any explanation of life without the
idea of purpose is missing something essential. In On Purpose,
Michael Ruse explores the history of the idea of purpose in
philosophical, religious, scientific, and historical thought, from
ancient Greece to the present. Accessibly written and filled with
literary and other examples, the book examines "purpose" thinking
in the natural and human world. It shows how three ideas about
purpose have been at the heart of Western thought for more than two
thousand years. In the Platonic view, purpose results from the
planning of a human or divine being; in the Aristotelian, purpose
stems from a tendency or principle of order in the natural world;
and in the Kantian, purpose is essentially heuristic, or something
to be discovered, an idea given substance by Darwin's theory of
evolution through natural selection. On Purpose traces the profound
and fascinating implications of these ways of thinking about
purpose. Along the way, it takes up tough questions about the
purpose of life and whether it's possible to have meaning without
purpose, revealing that purpose is still a vital and pressing
issue.
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