Immortal Passage: Philosophical Speculations on Posthuman Evolution is Asher Seidel's speculative account of posthuman evolution. Seidel begins with the transitional period in which humans begin to live for significantly extended periods, then moves to the closer future in which, having transitioned, the now posthumans enjoy enhanced cognitive and creative powers. Finally, Seidel enters the distant future, where our descendants might possess abilities beyond the limits of what is ...

**A biologist-turned-philosopher shows how scientific discoveries can help resolve some of philosophy's longest-debated issues.“This book will make you reflect on both the meaning of science...and of your own life.” — New Scientist**How should we live? According to philosopher and biologist Massimo Pigliucci, the greatest guidance to this essential question lies in combining the wisdom of 24 centuries of philosophy with the latest research from 21st century science...

No one doubts that science underlies every tangible aspect of our lives, but few people apply its systematic style of thinking to improve their communication styles. To get the most out of science, its important to understand science as a style of thinking rather than just a forbidding collection of facts and mathematics. Individuals who learn how scientists collect evidence, evaluate facts, and draw conclusions can improve their own thought processes and overcome shortcomings. Written by ...

Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers “yes!”Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly originalarguments—drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy—that f...

The books in this bite-sized new series contain no complicated techniques or tricky materials, making them ideal for the busy, the time-pressured or the merely curious. Philosophy is a short, simple and to-the-point guide to philosophy. In just 96 pages, the reader will discover the ideas of all the key figures, from Socrates to Wittgenstein. Ideal for the busy, the time-pressured or the merely curious, Philosophy is a quick, no-effort way to break into this fascinating topic.UNDER...

New Materialisms brings into focus and explains the significance of the innovative materialist critiques that are emerging across the social sciences and humanities. By gathering essays that exemplify the new thinking about matter and processes of materialization, this important collection shows how scholars are reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges. In the...

Once upon a time the practice of storytelling was about collecting interesting stories about the past, and converting them into soundbite pitches. Now it is more about foretelling the ways the future is approaching the present, prompting a re-storying of the past. Storytelling has progressed and is about a diversity of voices, not just one teller of one past; it is how a group or organization of people negotiates the telling of history and the telling of what future is arriving in the pres...

In this thought-provoking work, Tony D. Sampson presents a contagion theory fit for the age of networks. Unlike memes and microbial contagions, Virality does not restrict itself to biological analogies and medical metaphors. It instead points toward a theory of contagious assemblages, events, and affects. For Sampson, contagion is not necessarily a positive or negative force of encounter; it is how society comes together and relates.Sampson argues that a biological knowled...

The library has been created by actual necessities in modern civilization. It is now a necessary unit in the social fabric. Culture must transcend the individual for it is essentially a social cumulation of experience whereby the men of each generation possess potentially at least, all that their predecessors have ever learned. Books are one social mechanism for preserving the racial memory and the library one social apparatus for transferring this to the consciousness of living individual...

In 1687 Isaac Newton ushered in a new scientific era in which laws of nature could be used to predict the movements of matter with almost perfect precision. Newton's physics also posed a profound challenge to our self-understanding, however, for the very same laws that keep airplanes in the air and rivers flowing downhill tell us that it is in principle possible to predict what each of us will do every second of our entire lives, given the early conditions of the universe. Can it really be...

The fundamental principles of the scientific method are essential for enhancing perspective, increasing productivity, and stimulating innovation. These principles include deductive and inductive logic, probability, parsimony and hypothesis testing, as well as science's presuppositions, limitations, ethics and bold claims of rationality and truth. The examples and case studies drawn upon in this book span the physical, biological and social sciences; include applications in agriculture, eng...

Do we have free will?Not many questions can excite people more than this one, and for good reasons. Our ideas about our own freedom influence some of the most important aspects of our lives, from our political decisions and legal practices to our personal motivations, choices, and actions.The goal of this short book is to address the problem of free will. This goal is not pursued by reciting the history of the problem. Instead, it is pursued by approaching t...