The Nature of Nature - Examining the Role of Naturalism in Science

Bruce Gordon, William Dembski

Publisher: Intercollegiate Studies Institute

Summary

The intellectual and cultural battles now raging over theism and atheism, conservatism and secular progressivism, dualism and monism, realism and antirealism, and transcendent reality versus material reality extend even into the scientific disciplines. This stunning new volume captures this titanic clash of worldviews among those who have thought most deeply about the nature of science and of the universe itself.Unmatched in its breadth and scope, The Nature of Nature brings together some of the most influential scientists, scholars, and public intellectuals—including three Nobel laureates—across a wide spectrum of disciplines and schools of thought. Here they grapple with a perennial question that has been made all the more pressing by recent advances in the natural sciences: Is the fundamental explanatory principle of the universe, life, and self-conscious awareness to be found in inanimate matter or immaterial mind? The answers found in this book have profound implications for what it means to do science, what it means to be human, and what the future holds for all of us.

Available since: 04/29/2014.

Print length: 900 pages.

Other books that might interest you

The World According to Joan Didion

Evelyn McDonnell

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2023 by The Millions
""A wonderfully fitting tribute to Joan Didion: one that avoids simple platitudes, approaching the great writer with a fierce, probing intelligence, flawless language, and the impulse, which drove Didion's finest work, to understand the dreams of another."" — Hua Hsu, Pulitzer-winning author of Stay True
An intimate exploration of the life, craft, and legacy of one of the most revered and influential writers, an artist who continues to inspire fans and creatives to cultivate practices of deep attention, rigorous interrogation and beautiful style.
Joan Didion was a writer’s writer; not only a groundbreaking journalist, essayist, novelist and screenwriter, but a keen observer who honed her sights on life’s telling details. Her insights continue to influence creatives and admirers, encouraging them to become close observers of the world, unsentimental critics, and meticulous stylists.
An antidote to a global view that narrows our vision to the smallest screens, The World According To Joan Didion is a meditation on the people, places, and objects that propelled Didion’s prose and an invitation to journalists, storytellers, and life adventurers to “throw themselves into the convulsions of the world,” as she once said.
Evelyn McDonnell, the acclaimed journalist, essayist, critic, feminist, native Californian, and university professor who regularly teaches Didion’s work, is attuned to interpret Didion’s vision for readers today. Inspired by Didion’s own words—from her works both published and unpublished—and informed by the people who knew Didion and those whose lives she shaped, The World According to Joan Didion is an illustrated journey through her life, tracing the path she carved from Sacramento, Portuguese Bend, Los Angeles, and Malibu to Manhattan, Miami, and Hawaii. McDonnell reveals the world as it was seen through Didion’s eyes and explores her work in chapters keyed to the singular physical motifs of her writing: Snake. Typewriter. Hotel. Notebook. Girl. Etc.
One of the first books to be published after the revered writer’s death in 2021, The World According to Joan Didion is a literary companion for those embarking on new journeys and a guide to innovative ways of being. It will radically transform the way you explore the world, and will help you answer the question as you sit in a café, or on a plane or train, pondering the future: What would Joan Didion have seen?

Show book

Mary & Me - A Lasting Link...

Mary Potter Kenyon, Mary...

“A powerful testament to the beauty of friendship as told through decades of letter writing . . . disarmingly personal.” —Heather Gudenkauf, New York Times–bestselling author of This is How I Lied 
 
Mary & Me: A Lasting Link Through Ink explores a thirty-year friendship between two women: one who had never learned to cultivate female friendships, and the other who had managed to gather and maintain a large group of friends throughout her adult life. The fact that thousands of handwritten letters between them tethered these two together is just part of the intriguing story. 
 
Coauthors Mary Potter Kenyon—author of Refined by Fire, Coupon Crazy, and Chemo-Therapist—and Mary Jedlicka Humston share an unforgettable friendship that will inspire you to pick up your pen and begin writing “Dear . . .” 
 
“Offers rich wisdom about the art of friendship and the beauty of commitment.” —Shelly Beach, Christy Award-winning author of Ambushed by Grace

Show book

Imperfect God An - George...

Henry Wiencek

Washington was born and raised among blacks and mixed-race people; he and his wife had blood ties to the slave community. Yet as a young man he bought and sold slaves without scruple, even raffled off children to collect debts (an incident ignored by earlier biographers). Then, on the Revolutionary battlefields where he commanded both black and white troops, Washington's attitudes began to change. He and the other framers enshrined slavery in the Constitution, but, Henry Wiencek shows, even before he became president Washington had begun to see the system's evil, and he understood that the problem of this "peculiar institution" would be central to the American experience.Wiencek's revelatory narrative, based on a meticulous examination of private papers, court records, and the voluminous Washington archives, documents for the first time the moral transformation culminating in Washington's determination to emancipate his slaves. He acted too late to keep the new republic from perpetuating slavery, but his repentance was genuine. And it was perhaps related to the possibility, as the oral history of Mount Vernon's slave descendants has long asserted, that a slave named West Ford was the son of George and a woman named Venus.In this superb, nuanced portrait we see George Washington in full—both as a man of his time and a man ahead of his time.A Macmillan Audio production.

Show book

Pascal's Wager - The Man Who...

James A. Connor

In a major biography of Blaise Pascal, James Connor explores both the intellectual giant whose theory of probability paved the way for modernity and the devout religious mystic who dared apply probability to faith.

Show book

PUTIN: The History of the Reign...

U.S. Navy, United States...

Is Vladimir Putin nuts? Has he drunk too much Russian vodka? Does he truly hate America? Do the people he presides over truly hate America? This book analyzes modern anti-Americanism in Russia during the era of Vladimir Putin. The main objective is to evaluate Vladimir Putin's anti-Americanism and the domestic political implications of Putinist anti-Americanism within Russia.
Contents:
Putin's Evolving Anti-Americanism
Putin's Hybrid-authoritarian Machine
Implications of Russians' Anti-Americanism
Putin's Early History
Early Life and College
Into the Shadows: Putin in the KGB and the Case for a Long Term Cognitive Predisposition
Yeltsin Era
Putin in the Aftermath of Collapse
Russia and the West in the 1990s: U.S. As an Inadvertent Contributor to PutinistAnti-americanism
NATO
Balkans
Economic Collapse and the Absence of U.S. Aid
Putin: A Sudden Thrust Into the Limelight
Putin's Short-lived Premiership and Acting Presidency
Crisis in Chechnya
Presidential Election of 2000
Putin's First Presidency
Integrate Into or With the West… or Neither?
The Attacks of 9/11 and the Aftermath
Brotherly Love: Putin and Bush
Iraq and a Sudden Turn Against America?
Putin's Second Presidency
Shift From the West
America Inadvertently Plays Into Putin's Hand
The Future of U.S. Unilateralism
Western Turn by Former Constituent States
Critical Reciprocity? Attack on Those Who Criticize Him
President to Puppet Master and Back Again: Putin's Recent Premiership and Return to the Presidency Georgia
The Obama-Medvedev Reset: Short Lived or DOA?
The 2012 Election and Putin's Third Term
Russian Anti-Americanism: The Man, the Machine, and the Nation
The Russian Connection: Anti-Americanism and the Putin-state-polity Link
Anti-Americanism's Role in the Future of Russian–American Relations
Most Recent Events
How Can America Cope?

Show book

This Chicago program connects...

PBS NewsHour

Free Write Jail Arts and Literacy aims to help troubled youths in Chicago’s Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center address their personal issues by writing poetry about their circumstances and upbringing. Jeffrey Brown talks with poet Reginald Dwayne Betts, who turned around his life with writing and education after eight and a half years in prison.

Show book