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Author: Donald E. Johnson Publisher: Big Mac Publishers ISBN: 0982355440 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 133
Book Description
This is the sequel to the well received "Probability's Nature And Nature's Probability which was written in depth for Scientist and Professionals. This new book has the same wonderful foundation, but has been revised and put into layman's terms so anyone can understand it. The author once believed anyone not accepting the "proven" evolutionary scenario that was ingrained during his science education was of the same mentality as someone believing in a flat earth. With continued scientific investigation, paying closer attention to actual data (rather than speculative conclusions), he began to doubt the natural explanations that had been so ingrained in a number of key areas including the origin and fine-tuning of mass and energy, the origin of life with its complex information content, and the increase in complexity in living organisms. It was science, and not religion, that caused his disbelief in the explanatory powers of undirected nature. The fantastic leaps of faith required to accept the undirected natural causes in these areas demand a scientific response to the scientific-sounding concepts that in fact have no known scientific basis. Scientific integrity needs to be restored so that ideas that have no methods to test or falsify are not considered part of science. Too often "possible" is used by scientists without considering that "possible" has a scientific definition within the nature of probability. For example, one should not be able to get away with stating "it is possible that life arose from non-life by ..." or "it's possible that a different form of life exists elsewhere in the universe" without first demonstrating that it is indeed possible (non-zero probability) using known science. One could, of course, state "it may be speculated that ...," but such a statement wouldn't have the believability that its author intends to convey by the pseudo-scientific pronouncement. This book reviews the many prevalent scenarios that are widely accepted, but need closer examination of their scientific validity. It will also examine the scientific validity of Intelligent Design (ID) as a model that can be empirically detected and examined. For example, the book uses known science (including Shannon and Functional information principles) to prove that it is impossible (zero probability) for life's complex information system to have an undirected natural source. The usefulness of the ID model for furthering scientific inquiry is also analyzed. One chapter is devoted to exposing fallacies, presuppositions, and beliefs that attempt to prevent acceptance of ID as "science."
Author: Donald E. Johnson Publisher: Big Mac Publishers ISBN: 0982355440 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 133
Book Description
This is the sequel to the well received "Probability's Nature And Nature's Probability which was written in depth for Scientist and Professionals. This new book has the same wonderful foundation, but has been revised and put into layman's terms so anyone can understand it. The author once believed anyone not accepting the "proven" evolutionary scenario that was ingrained during his science education was of the same mentality as someone believing in a flat earth. With continued scientific investigation, paying closer attention to actual data (rather than speculative conclusions), he began to doubt the natural explanations that had been so ingrained in a number of key areas including the origin and fine-tuning of mass and energy, the origin of life with its complex information content, and the increase in complexity in living organisms. It was science, and not religion, that caused his disbelief in the explanatory powers of undirected nature. The fantastic leaps of faith required to accept the undirected natural causes in these areas demand a scientific response to the scientific-sounding concepts that in fact have no known scientific basis. Scientific integrity needs to be restored so that ideas that have no methods to test or falsify are not considered part of science. Too often "possible" is used by scientists without considering that "possible" has a scientific definition within the nature of probability. For example, one should not be able to get away with stating "it is possible that life arose from non-life by ..." or "it's possible that a different form of life exists elsewhere in the universe" without first demonstrating that it is indeed possible (non-zero probability) using known science. One could, of course, state "it may be speculated that ...," but such a statement wouldn't have the believability that its author intends to convey by the pseudo-scientific pronouncement. This book reviews the many prevalent scenarios that are widely accepted, but need closer examination of their scientific validity. It will also examine the scientific validity of Intelligent Design (ID) as a model that can be empirically detected and examined. For example, the book uses known science (including Shannon and Functional information principles) to prove that it is impossible (zero probability) for life's complex information system to have an undirected natural source. The usefulness of the ID model for furthering scientific inquiry is also analyzed. One chapter is devoted to exposing fallacies, presuppositions, and beliefs that attempt to prevent acceptance of ID as "science."
Author: John Earman Publisher: Bradford Books ISBN: 9780262050463 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
There is currently no viable alternative to the Bayesian analysis of scientific inference, yet the available versions of Bayesianism fail to do justice to several aspects of the testing and confirmation of scientific hypotheses. Bayes or Bust? provides the first balanced treatment of the complex set of issues involved in this nagging conundrum in the philosophy of science. Both Bayesians and anti-Bayesians will find a wealth of new insights on topics ranging from Bayes's original paper to contemporary formal learning theory. In a paper published posthumously in 1763, the Reverend Thomas Bayes made a seminal contribution to the understanding of "analogical or inductive reasoning." Building on his insights, modem Bayesians have developed an account of scientific inference that has attracted numerous champions as well as numerous detractors. Earman argues that Bayesianism provides the best hope for a comprehensive and unified account of scientific inference, yet the presently available versions of Bayesianisin fail to do justice to several aspects of the testing and confirming of scientific theories and hypotheses. By focusing on the need for a resolution to this impasse, Earman sharpens the issues on which a resolution turns. John Earman is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh.
Author: John McPhee Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN: 0374708495 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
While John McPhee was working on his previous book, Rising from the Plains, he happened to walk by the engineering building at the University of Wyoming, where words etched in limestone said: "Strive on--the control of Nature is won, not given." In the morning sunlight, that central phrase--"the control of nature"--seemed to sparkle with unintended ambiguity. Bilateral, symmetrical, it could with equal speed travel in opposite directions. For some years, he had been planning a book about places in the world where people have been engaged in all-out battles with nature, about (in the words of the book itself) "any struggle against natural forces--heroic or venal, rash or well advised--when human beings conscript themselves to fight against the earth, to take what is not given, to rout the destroying enemy, to surround the base of Mt. Olympus demanding and expecting the surrender of the gods." His interest had first been sparked when he went into the Atchafalaya--the largest river swamp in North America--and had learned that virtually all of its waters were metered and rationed by a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' project called Old River Control. In the natural cycles of the Mississippi's deltaic plain, the time had come for the Mississippi to change course, to shift its mouth more than a hundred miles and go down the Atchafalaya, one of its distributary branches. The United States could not afford that--for New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and all the industries that lie between would be cut off from river commerce with the rest of the nation. At a place called Old River, the Corps therefore had built a great fortress--part dam, part valve--to restrain the flow of the Atchafalaya and compel the Mississippi to stay where it is. In Iceland, in 1973, an island split open without warning and huge volumes of lava began moving in the direction of a harbor scarcely half a mile away. It was not only Iceland's premier fishing port (accounting for a large percentage of Iceland's export economy) but it was also the only harbor along the nation's southern coast. As the lava threatened to fill the harbor and wipe it out, a physicist named Thorbjorn Sigurgeirsson suggested a way to fight against the flowing red rock--initiating an all-out endeavor unique in human history. On the big island of Hawaii, one of the world's two must eruptive hot spots, people are not unmindful of the Icelandic example. McPhee went to Hawaii to talk with them and to walk beside the edges of a molten lake and incandescent rivers. Some of the more expensive real estate in Los Angeles is up against mountains that are rising and disintegrating as rapidly as any in the world. After a complex coincidence of natural events, boulders will flow out of these mountains like fish eggs, mixed with mud, sand, and smaller rocks in a cascading mass known as debris flow. Plucking up trees and cars, bursting through doors and windows, filling up houses to their eaves, debris flows threaten the lives of people living in and near Los Angeles' famous canyons. At extraordinary expense the city has built a hundred and fifty stadium-like basins in a daring effort to catch the debris. Taking us deep into these contested territories, McPhee details the strategies and tactics through which people attempt to control nature. Most striking in his vivid depiction of the main contestants: nature in complex and awesome guises, and those who would attempt to wrest control from her--stubborn, often ingenious, and always arresting characters.
Author: John Dupré Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199248060 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 212
Book Description
Dupré warns that our understanding of human nature is being distorted by two faulty and harmful forms of pseudo-scientific thinking. He claims it is important to resist scientism - an exaggerated conception of what science can be expected to do.
Author: Doctor Lorenzo Fioramonti Publisher: Zed Books Ltd. ISBN: 1780322704 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 281
Book Description
Numbers dominate global politics and, as a result, our everyday lives. Credit ratings steer financial markets and can make or break the future of entire nations. GDP drives our economies. Stock market indices flood our media and national debates. Statistical calculations define how we deal with climate change, poverty and sustainability. But what is behind these numbers? In How Numbers Rule the World, Lorenzo Fioramonti reveals the hidden agendas underpinning the use of statistics and those who control them. Most worryingly, he shows how numbers have been used as a means to reinforce the grip of markets on our social and political life, curtailing public participation and rational debate. An innovative and timely exposé of the politics, power and contestation of numbers.
Author: U.S. Global Change Research Program Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 0521144078 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 193
Book Description
Summarizes the science of climate change and impacts on the United States, for the public and policymakers.
Author: Joseph Alcamo Publisher: ISBN: Category : Biodiversity Languages : en Pages : 272
Book Description
Ecosystems and Human Well-Being is the first product of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year international work program designed to meet the needs of decisionmakers for scientific information on the links between ecosystem change and human well-being. The book offers an overview of the project, describing the conceptual framework that is being used, defining its scope, and providing a baseline of understanding that all participants need to move forward. The Millennium Assessment focuses on how humans have altered ecosystems, and how changes in ecosystem services have affected human well-being, how ecosystem changes may affect people in future decades, and what types of responses can be adopted at local, national, or global scales to improve ecosystem management and thereby contribute to human well-being and poverty alleviation. The program was launched by United National Secretary-General Kofi Annan in June 2001, and the primary assessment reports will be released by Island Press in 2005. Leading scientists from more than 100 nations are conducting the assessment, which can aid countries, regions, or companies by: providing a clear, scientific picture of the current sta
Author: Robin Hanson Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198754620 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 522
Book Description
Robots may one day rule the world, but what is a robot-ruled Earth like? Many think that the first truly smart robots will be brain emulations or "ems." Robin Hanson draws on decades of expertise in economics, physics, and computer science to paint a detailed picture of this next great era in human (and machine) evolution - the age of em.
Author: James Aronson Publisher: Island Press ISBN: 1597267791 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 400
Book Description
How can environmental degradation be stopped? How can it be reversed? And how can the damage already done be repaired? The authors of this volume argue that a two-pronged approach is needed: reducing demand for ecosystem goods and services and better management of them, coupled with an increase in supply through environmental restoration. Restoring Natural Capital brings together economists and ecologists, theoreticians, practitioners, policy makers, and scientists from the developed and developing worlds to consider the costs and benefits of repairing ecosystem goods and services in natural and socioecological systems. It examines the business and practice of restoring natural capital, and seeks to establish common ground between economists and ecologists with respect to the restoration of degraded ecosystems and landscapes and the still broader task of restoring natural capital. The book focuses on developing strategies that can achieve the best outcomes in the shortest amount of time as it: • considers conceptual and theoretical issues from both an economic and ecological perspective • examines specific strategies to foster the restoration of natural capital and offers a synthesis and a vision of the way forward Nineteen case studies from around the world illustrate challenges and achievements in setting targets, refining approaches to finding and implementing restoration projects, and using restoration of natural capital as an economic opportunity. Throughout, contributors make the case that the restoration of natural capital requires close collaboration among scientists from across disciplines as well as local people, and when successfully executed represents a practical, realistic, and essential tool for achieving lasting sustainable development.
Author: Sahotra Sarkar Publisher: Psychology Press ISBN: 0415939275 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 1012
Book Description
The first in-depth reference to the field that combines scientific knowledge with philosophical inquiry, this encyclopedia brings together a team of leading scholars to provide nearly 150 entries on the essential concepts in the philosophy of science. The areas covered include biology, chemistry, epistemology and metaphysics, physics, psychology and mind, the social sciences, and key figures in the combined studies of science and philosophy. (Midwest).
Author: Donald E. Johnson
Author: Donald E. Johnson
Author: John Earman
Author: John McPhee
Author: John Dupré
Author: Doctor Lorenzo Fioramonti
Author: U.S. Global Change Research Program
Author: Joseph Alcamo
Author: Robin Hanson
Author: James Aronson
Author: Sahotra Sarkar