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Author: David F. Noble Publisher: Knopf ISBN: 0307828530 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 341
Book Description
Arguing against the widely held belief that technology and religion are at war with each other, David F. Noble's groundbreaking book reveals the religious roots and spirit of Western technology. It links the technological enthusiasms of the present day with the ancient and enduring Christian expectation of recovering humankind's lost divinity. Covering a period of a thousand years, Noble traces the evolution of the Western idea of technological development from the ninth century, when the useful arts became connected to the concept of redemption, up to the twentieth, when humans began to exercise God-like knowledge and powers. Noble describes how technological advance accelerated at the very point when it was invested with spiritual significance. By examining the imaginings of monks, explorers, magi, scientists, Freemasons, and engineers, this historical account brings to light an other-worldly inspiration behind the apparently worldly endeavors by which we habitually define Western civilization. Thus we see that Isaac Newton devoted his lifetime to the interpretation of prophecy. Joseph Priestley was the discoverer of oxygen and a founder of Unitarianism. Freemasons were early advocates of industrialization and the fathers of the engineering profession. Wernher von Braun saw spaceflight as a millenarian new beginning for humankind. The narrative moves into our own time through the technological enterprises of the last half of the twentieth century: nuclear weapons, manned space exploration, Artificial Intelligence, and genetic engineering. Here the book suggests that the convergence of technology and religion has outlived its usefulness, that though it once contributed to human well-being, it has now become a threat to our survival. Viewed at the dawn of the new millennium, the technological means upon which we have come to rely for the preservation and enlargement of our lives betray an increasing impatience with life and a disdainful disregard for mortal needs. David F. Noble thus contends that we must collectively strive to disabuse ourselves of the inherited religion of technology and begin rigorously to re-examine our enchantment with unregulated technological advance.
Author: James True Publisher: ISBN: 9781697181289 Category : Languages : en Pages : 145
Book Description
This book outlines the technology of belief. There is a powerful science hidden in our life-force. These chapters demonstrate its effects through history from the Oracle at Delphi, Cleopatra in Egypt, Julius Caesar in Rome, the Messiah Jesus Christ, St. Peter the gatekeeper, Scientism, Zionism, The Apocalypse, Hades, and the New World Order.There is a technology to belief. Ancient ideas have been unplugged and hoarded. We toil to complete the circuit. When a circle is fulfilled, the ground glows. Our shoulders buzz like filaments when someone shares truth. We are swimming in plasma. Our lungs are gills in an ocean.Belief is the aether endowed by a flock. Our beliefs have been enslaved for centuries. This happens in religion, science, and politics. The power of belief is always mistaken for its costume. We only give credit to its props and choreography. It's a statistical fact that half of all scientific research will be proven wrong within twenty years. Still, we believe in science. It was shown recently that two-thirds of clinical studies couldn't be duplicated. Still, we give science every benefit of our doubt. We dismiss belief as childish. We coddle science like a pimp. We pretend all legitimacy is found on the surface. But below language there is sound. Below sound, there is intent. Below intent, there is the technology of a belief.Table of ContentsMoon's Field Notes * Oracle at Delphi * Needles of Cleopatra * Medusa of Gorgon * The Electric Cobra * Behold a Pale Horse Ass * Blackmail and Whitemail * Alchemy of Airships * A Smooth Criminal * Fire & Isis * The Satanic Messiah * The Trojan Horse of Zionism * The SDK of Magic * The Man from Katuah * Equality is a Bad Word * The Snake Oil Messiah * America Believes * Secretions of the Spider * Corporate Pride Month * Sins of the Father * Flat Earth Karate * Trumps Flow State * Billion Dollar Liars * Definition of Evil * CNN is the Government * The Prana Economy * Government is Mafia * The Wasp and the Caterpillar * The Second Coming * The Capital of Punishment * The Two Towers * Apocalypse NowReader Reviews"Eloquent brilliance." - "It is an amazing new form, not only art, but something more." - "You have to read it for yourself" - "The way this man writes is so engaging you can't stop reading!" - "James really hit it out of the park with this one." - "It's sooo good." - "Imagine if William Cooper, Tolkien, and Bruce Lee sat down and composed a text." - "This is the best book I have ever read in my life, every short chapter deserves a movie" - "You will get your rose-colored glasses completely ripped off your astonished face!" - "This has affected the way I see reality" - "The author infuses it with such humanity, such emotion" - "incredibly relevant and well written." - "He's like a sober, non-degenerate Hunter S. Thompson." - "My new favorite writer."
Author: David F. Noble Publisher: Knopf ISBN: 0307828530 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 341
Book Description
Arguing against the widely held belief that technology and religion are at war with each other, David F. Noble's groundbreaking book reveals the religious roots and spirit of Western technology. It links the technological enthusiasms of the present day with the ancient and enduring Christian expectation of recovering humankind's lost divinity. Covering a period of a thousand years, Noble traces the evolution of the Western idea of technological development from the ninth century, when the useful arts became connected to the concept of redemption, up to the twentieth, when humans began to exercise God-like knowledge and powers. Noble describes how technological advance accelerated at the very point when it was invested with spiritual significance. By examining the imaginings of monks, explorers, magi, scientists, Freemasons, and engineers, this historical account brings to light an other-worldly inspiration behind the apparently worldly endeavors by which we habitually define Western civilization. Thus we see that Isaac Newton devoted his lifetime to the interpretation of prophecy. Joseph Priestley was the discoverer of oxygen and a founder of Unitarianism. Freemasons were early advocates of industrialization and the fathers of the engineering profession. Wernher von Braun saw spaceflight as a millenarian new beginning for humankind. The narrative moves into our own time through the technological enterprises of the last half of the twentieth century: nuclear weapons, manned space exploration, Artificial Intelligence, and genetic engineering. Here the book suggests that the convergence of technology and religion has outlived its usefulness, that though it once contributed to human well-being, it has now become a threat to our survival. Viewed at the dawn of the new millennium, the technological means upon which we have come to rely for the preservation and enlargement of our lives betray an increasing impatience with life and a disdainful disregard for mortal needs. David F. Noble thus contends that we must collectively strive to disabuse ourselves of the inherited religion of technology and begin rigorously to re-examine our enchantment with unregulated technological advance.
Author: Myles W. Jackson Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 9780262100847 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 308
Book Description
In the nineteenth century, scientific practice underwent a dramatic transformation from personal endeavor to business enterprise. In Spectrum of Belief, Myles Jackson explores this transformation through a sociocultural history of the rise of precision optics in Germany. He uses the career of the optician Joseph von Fraunhofer (1787-1826) to probe the relationship between science and society, and between artisans and experimental natural philosophers, during this important transition. Fraunhofer came from a long line of glassmakers. Orphaned at age eleven, the young apprentice moved in with his master, the court decorative glass cutter. At age nineteen, bored with his work and angered by his master's refusal to allow him to study optical theory, Fraunhofer took a position at the Optical Institute assisting in the manufacture of achromatic lenses. Within ten years he was producing the world's finest achromatic lenses and prisms. Housed in an old Benedictine monastery, Fraunhofer's laboratory mirrored the labor of the monks. Because of his secrecy (after his death, even those who had worked most closely with him could not achieve his success), British experimental natural philosophers were unable to reproduce his work. This secrecy, while guaranteeing his institute's monopoly, thwarted Fraunhofer's attempts to gain credibility within the scientific community, which looked down on artisanal work and its clandestine practices as an affront. The response to the ensuing rise of German optical technology sheds light on crucial social, economic, and political issues of the period, such as mechanization, patent law reform, the role of skills in both physics and society, the rise of Mechanics' Institutes, and scientific patronage. After his death, Fraunhofer's example was used in the newly united Germany to argue for the merging of scientific research and technological innovation with industrial and state support.
Author: Slavoj Zizek Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 113452272X Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 177
Book Description
What is the basis of belief in an era when globalization, multiculturalism and big business are the new religion? Slavoj Zizek, renowned philosopher and irrepressible cultural critic takes on all comers in this compelling and breathless new book. From 'cyberspace reason' to the paradox that is 'Western Buddhism', On Belief gets behind the contours of the way we normally think about belief, in particular Judaism and Christianity. Holding up the so-called authenticity of religious belief to critical light, Zizek draws on psychoanalysis, film and philosophy to reveal in startling fashion that nothing could be worse for believers than their beliefs turning out to be true.
Author: David Levi Strauss Publisher: David Zwirner Books ISBN: 9781644230473 Category : Photography Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
In this exploration of contemporary photography, David Levi Strauss questions the concept that “seeing is believing” Identifying a recent shift in the dominance of photography, David Levi Strauss looks at the power of the medium in the age of Photoshop, smart phones, and the internet, asking important questions about how we look and what we trust. In the first ekphrasis title on photography, Strauss challenges the aura of believability and highlights the potential dangers around this status. He examines how images produced on cameras gradually gained an inordinate power to influence public opinion, prompt action, comfort and assuage, and direct or even create desire. How and why do we believe technical images the way we do? Offering a poignant argument in the era of “fake news,” Strauss draws attention to new changes in the technology of seeing. Some uses of "technical images" are causing the connection between images and belief (between seeing and believing) to fray and pull apart. How is this shifting our relationship to images? Will this crisis in what we can believe come to threaten our very purchase on the real? This book is an inquiry into the history and future of our belief in images.
Author: Erik Davis Publisher: North Atlantic Books ISBN: 1583949305 Category : Computers Languages : en Pages : 457
Book Description
TechGnosis is a cult classic of media studies that straddles the line between academic discourse and popular culture; it appeals to both those secular and spiritual, to fans of cyberpunk and hacker literature and culture as much as new-thought adherents and spiritual seekers How does our fascination with technology intersect with the religious imagination? In TechGnosis—a cult classic now updated and reissued with a new afterword—Erik Davis argues that while the realms of the digital and the spiritual may seem worlds apart, esoteric and religious impulses have in fact always permeated (and sometimes inspired) technological communication. Davis uncovers startling connections between such seemingly disparate topics as electricity and alchemy; online roleplaying games and religious and occult practices; virtual reality and gnostic mythology; programming languages and Kabbalah. The final chapters address the apocalyptic dreams that haunt technology, providing vital historical context as well as new ways to think about a future defined by the mutant intermingling of mind and machine, nightmare and fantasy.
Author: Francis Collins Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1847396151 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 227
Book Description
Dr Francis S. Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, is one of the world's leading scientists, working at the cutting edge of the study of DNA, the code of life. Yet he is also a man of unshakable faith in God. How does he reconcile the seemingly unreconcilable? In THE LANGUAGE OF GOD he explains his own journey from atheism to faith, and then takes the reader on a stunning tour of modern science to show that physics, chemistry and biology -- indeed, reason itself -- are not incompatible with belief. His book is essential reading for anyone who wonders about the deepest questions of all: why are we here? How did we get here? And what does life mean?
Author: John Gibbons Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA ISBN: 019967339X Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
John Gibbons presents a new account of epistemic normativity. Belief seems to come with a built-in set of standards or norms—truth and reasonableness, for example—but which one is the fundamental norm of belief? He explains both the norms of knowledge and of truth in terms of the fundamental norm, the one that tells you to be reasonable.
Author: Steven G. Vick Publisher: ASCE Publications ISBN: 0784470863 Category : Technology & Engineering Languages : en Pages : 469
Book Description
Observing at a risk analysis conference for civil engineers that participants did not share a common language of probability, Vick, a consultant and geotechnic engineer, set out to not only examine why, but to also bridge the gap. He reexamines three elements at the core of engineering the concepts
Author: Frank Krueger Publisher: Psychology Press ISBN: 1136234977 Category : Psychology Languages : en Pages : 273
Book Description
Is the everyday understanding of belief susceptible to scientific investigation? Belief is one of the most commonly used, yet unexplained terms in neuroscience. Beliefs can be seen as forms of mental representations and one of the building blocks of our conscious thoughts. This book provides an interdisciplinary overview of what we currently know about the neural basis of human belief systems, and how different belief systems are implemented in the human brain. The chapters in this volume explain how the neural correlates of beliefs mediate a range of explicit and implicit behaviours ranging from moral decision making, to the practice of religion. Drawing inferences from philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, religion, and cognitive neuroscience, the book has important implications for understanding how different belief systems are implemented in the human brain, and outlines the directions which research on the cognitive neuroscience of beliefs should take in the future. The Neural Basis of Human Belief Systems will be of great interest to researchers in the fields of psychology, philosophy, psychiatry, and cognitive neuroscience.
Author: David F. Noble
Author: James True
Author: David F. Noble
Author: Myles W. Jackson
Author: Slavoj Zizek
Author: David Levi Strauss
Author: Erik Davis
Author: Francis Collins
Author: John Gibbons
Author: Steven G. Vick
Author: Frank Krueger