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Author: Telmo Pievani Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262548356 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 177
Book Description
In praise of imperfection: how life on our planet is a catalog of imperfections, errors, alternatives, and anomalies. In the beginning, there was imperfection, which became the source of all things. Anomalies and asymmetries caused planets to take shape from the bubbling void and sent light into darkness. Life on earth is a catalog of accidents, alternatives, and errors that turned out to work quite well. In this book, Telmo Pievani shows that life on our planet has flourished and survived not because of its perfection but despite (and perhaps because of) its imperfection. He begins his story with the disruption-filled birth of the universe and proceeds through the random DNA copying errors that fuel evolution, the transformations of advantages into handicaps by natural selection, the anatomical and functional jumble that is the human brain, and our many bodily mismatches. Along the way, Pievani tells readers about the Irish elk (incidentally, neither Irish nor elk), whose enormous antlers serve to illustrate the first two laws of imperfection; the widespread dissemination of costly or useless traits; and the neuroimperfection of the human brain—“a frozen accident of evolution that was not designed from scratch,” as Pievani calls it. He sizes up the alleged perfection of the human body, asking, for example, if everything in our bodies serves a purpose, why do we have appendixes? Why bipedalism, with the inevitable back pain that results? In this fascinating account, Pievani offers the first comprehensive explanatory theory for the ubiquity of imperfection.
Author: Telmo Pievani Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262548356 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 177
Book Description
In praise of imperfection: how life on our planet is a catalog of imperfections, errors, alternatives, and anomalies. In the beginning, there was imperfection, which became the source of all things. Anomalies and asymmetries caused planets to take shape from the bubbling void and sent light into darkness. Life on earth is a catalog of accidents, alternatives, and errors that turned out to work quite well. In this book, Telmo Pievani shows that life on our planet has flourished and survived not because of its perfection but despite (and perhaps because of) its imperfection. He begins his story with the disruption-filled birth of the universe and proceeds through the random DNA copying errors that fuel evolution, the transformations of advantages into handicaps by natural selection, the anatomical and functional jumble that is the human brain, and our many bodily mismatches. Along the way, Pievani tells readers about the Irish elk (incidentally, neither Irish nor elk), whose enormous antlers serve to illustrate the first two laws of imperfection; the widespread dissemination of costly or useless traits; and the neuroimperfection of the human brain—“a frozen accident of evolution that was not designed from scratch,” as Pievani calls it. He sizes up the alleged perfection of the human body, asking, for example, if everything in our bodies serves a purpose, why do we have appendixes? Why bipedalism, with the inevitable back pain that results? In this fascinating account, Pievani offers the first comprehensive explanatory theory for the ubiquity of imperfection.
Author: Peter B. Knupfer Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press ISBN: 080786255X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 302
Book Description
The first scholar to trace the meaning and importance of the idea of political compromise from the founding of the Republic to the onset of the Civil War, Knupfer shows how recurring justifications of sectional compromise reflected common ideas about the way governments were supposed to work. Originally published in 1991. A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.
Author: David Robertson Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 0199796297 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 343
Book Description
What were the Founding Fathers really thinking when they gathered in the Pennsylvania State House to draft the United States Constitution? This book explores this question and more. Organized thematically, each chapter covers a crucial Constitutional issue: the respective roles of the executive, the judiciary, and the legislature; the balance between the federal government and the states; slavery; and war and peace.
Author: Nigel Biggar Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192606549 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
Are natural rights 'nonsense on stilts', as Jeremy Bentham memorably put it? Must the very notion of a right be individualistic, subverting the common good? Should the right against torture be absolute, even though the heavens fall? Are human rights universal or merely expressions of Western neo-imperial arrogance? Are rights ethically fundamental, proudly impervious to changing circumstances? Should judges strive to extend the reach of rights from civil Hamburg to anarchical Basra? Should judicial oligarchies, rather than legislatures, decide controversial ethical issues by inventing novel rights? Ought human rights advocates learn greater sympathy for the dilemmas facing those burdened with government? These are the questions that What's Wrong with Rights? addresses. In doing so, it draws upon resources in intellectual history, legal philosophy, moral philosophy, moral theology, human rights literature, and the judgments of courts. It ranges from debates about property in medieval Christendom, through Confucian rights-scepticism, to contemporary discussions about the remedy for global hunger and the justification of killing. And it straddles assisted dying in Canada, the military occupation of Iraq, and genocide in Rwanda. What's Wrong with Rights? concludes that much contemporary rights-talk obscures the importance of fostering civic virtue, corrodes military effectiveness, subverts the democratic legitimacy of law, proliferates publicly onerous rights, and undermines their authority and credibility. The solution to these problems lies in the abandonment of rights-fundamentalism and the recovery of a richer public discourse about ethics, one that includes talk about the duty and virtue of rights-holders.
Author: E. Grey Dimond Publisher: iUniverse ISBN: 0595147887 Category : Languages : en Pages : 226
Book Description
In these 50 years of doctoring, I wandered from the bedside frequently, founded a new medical school, helped create the largest education institution in the world for heart doctors, served a year and half apprenticeship in the political process in Washington, led U.S. State Department-sponsored teaching groups of physicians to 20 countries, was in and out of Asia 40 times-including being in the first group of physicians in China after 22 years of the Bamboo Curtain, taught clinical medicine to practicing physicians at a twice a year, ten day retreat for 30 years, produced a monthly one hour audiotape for physicians for 18 consecutive years, and wrote a once a month essay for medical students, their parents, and physicians for 25 years. None of that proves that the opinions expressed are right. Perhaps they do verify that the writer has survived exposure to very critical audiences.
Author: Jay Cost Publisher: Basic Books ISBN: 1541699548 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 375
Book Description
An intellectual biography of James Madison, arguing that he invented American politics as we know it How do you solve a problem like James Madison? The fourth president is one of the most confounding figures in early American history; his political trajectory seems almost intentionally inconsistent. He was both for and against a strong federal government. He wrote about the dangers of political parties in the Federalist Papers and then helped to found the Republican Party just a few years later. This so-called Madison problem has occupied scholars for ages. As Jay Cost shows in this incisive new biography, the underlying logic of Madison’s seemingly mixed record comes into focus only when we understand him primarily as a working politician. Whereas other founders split their time between politics and other vocations, Madison dedicated himself singularly to the work of politics and ultimately developed it into a distinctly American idiom. He was, in short, the first American politician.
Author: Uttam Garg Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 1071635417 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 469
Book Description
This fully updated volume describes methods and protocols for a number of drugs and toxins in a stepwise manner. Exploring the versatility and flexibility of mass spectrometry, the book covers the advantages of this technology, which typically include elimination of the need for special reagents such as antibodies, increased sensitivity and specificity, and multi-component analysis enabling the screening of tens to hundreds of compounds in a single assay run. Written for the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology series, chapters include introductions to their respective topics, lists of the necessary materials and reagents, step-by-step and readily reproducible laboratory protocols, as well as tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls. Authoritative and up-to-date, Clinical Applications of Mass Spectrometry in Drug Analysis: Methods and Protocols, Second Edition serves as a valuable resource for laboratory professionals who are already utilizing mass spectrometry or considering bringing this technology to their labs.
Author: Kees Gispen Publisher: Berghahn Books ISBN: 9781571812421 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
The role of National Socialism in the development of German society remains a central question of historical inquiry. This study presents original answers by examining the politics of inventing, a crucial but long ignored problem at the intersection of the history of technology, legal, political, and business history. The analysis of conflicts over the rights of inventors and the meaning of inventing from the 1920s to the 1950s reveals a deep chasm, reaching back to the late nineteenth century, between the forces of capital and big business on one hand and the exponents of intellectual capital - inventors, engineers, industrial scientists - on the other.
Author: Telmo Pievani
Author: Telmo Pievani
Author: Peter B. Knupfer
Author: David Robertson
Author: Nigel Biggar
Author: E. Grey Dimond
Author: Warner Fite
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Select Committee on Indian Affairs
Author: Jay Cost
Author: Uttam Garg
Author: Kees Gispen