Philosophy Academic

Humans from the earliest civilizations were spellbound by the night sky - craning their necks each night, they used the stars to orient themselves in the large, strange world around them. Stargazing is a pursuit that continues to fascinate us: from Copernicus to Carl Sagan, astronomers throughout history have spent their lives trying to answer the biggest questions in the universe. Now, award-winning astronomer Emily Levesque shares the stories of modern-day stargazers.

Paper Belt on Fire is the unlikely account of how two outsiders with no experience in finance—a charter school principal and defrocked philosopher—start a venture capital fund to short the higher education bubble. Against the contempt of the education establishment, they discover, mentor, and back the leading lights in the next generation of dropout innovators and in the end make their investors millions. Can such a madcap strategy help renew American creativity? This story is the behind-the-scenes romp of one team that threw educational authorities into a panic.

Edwin Grosvenor writes of Bell's other extraordinary inventions: the first transmission of sound over light waves, metal detector, first practical phonograph, and early airplanes, including the first to fly in Canada. He also examines Bell's humanitarian efforts, including support for women's suffrage, civil rights, and speeches about what he warned would be a "greenhouse effect" of pollution causing global warming.

"Ants are the most warlike of all animals, with colony pitted against colony.... Their clashes dwarf Waterloo and Gettysburg", writes Edward O. Wilson in his most finely observed work in decades. In a myrmecological tour to such far-flung destinations as Mozambique and New Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico's Dauphin Island and even his parents' overgrown yard back in Alabama, Wilson thrillingly evokes his nine-decade-long scientific obsession with more than 15,000 ant species.

Knowledge of God in the World and the Word is a clear and succinct introduction to classical Christian apologetics that also addresses the most common objections to natural theology. Amid the crisis of authority in our modern and postmodern era, Christians need to be able to point to God's revelation in the natural world in addition to defending God's unique revelation in the Bible and in the person of Jesus Christ.

An unflinching and luminous memoir that explores a father’s philosophical transformation when he must reconsider the questions what makes us human? and whose life is worth living? Before becoming a father, Chris Gabbard was a fast-track academic finishing his doctoral dissertation at Stanford. A disciple of Enlightenment thinkers, he was a devotee of reason, believed in the reliability of science, and lived by the dictum that an unexamined life is not worth living. That is, until his son August was born.

An accessible introduction to philosophical theology, this book first explains the scope, relevance, and value of philosophical theology and then shows students how its conceptual tools help us to examine core Christian doctrines: the Trinity, the Incarnation, redemption and the atonement, and resurrection and life after death.

Michael Faraday: The Life and Legacy of the Influential 19th Century Scientist Who Pioneered Electromagnetism examines the life and work that made Faraday one of history’s most important scientists. You will learn about Michael Faraday like never before.

This small audiobook provides a biographical outline of Plotinus' life and work as described by Porphyry. Also included is an essay by Plotinus on beauty.

This book is an introduction to the field of theological ethics with a Trinitarian perspective that guides pastors, ministry leaders, and students about how to think in a gospel way about the moral formation of persons and communities, about ethical inquiry and action, and about the tone and content of engagement in the public square.

On May 10, 1998, biologist Craig Venter, director of the Institute for Genomic Research, announced that he was forming a private company that within three years would unravel the complete genetic code of human life, seven years before the projected finish of the U.S. government's Human Genome Project. Venter hoped that by decoding the genome ahead of schedule, he would speed up the pace of biomedical research and save the lives of thousands of people. He also hoped to become very famous and very rich.

By the time he was 30, Syd Kessler was a millionaire many times over, the epitome of the poor kid making good. But inside him, a hollowness was taking hold, and later, in middle age, he fell seriously ill. In the dark days of a long recovery, Kessler explored the Kabbalah and the discoveries of quantum physics, developing a system of moral principles from the truths of how the universe began and operates. His set of principles - from Big Bang to Moral Cause and Effect to Selfless Selfishness to Closure and Energy - are revolutionary.

Susan Shumsky is a successful author in the new age/spirituality field, writing books on meditation, intuition, prayer, auras, chakras, and the like. But in the 1970s, she was one of only a handful of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s personal attendants and administrators, in India, Switzerland, and elsewhere. Following the teachings of Maharishi displaced Susan’s devotion to the hippie lifestyle, as she learned about meditation and grew spiritually self-aware. Maharishi founded the spiritual movement TM (Transcendental Meditation).

Widely considered the greatest genius of all time, Albert Einstein revolutionized our understanding of the cosmos with his general theory of relativity and helped to lead us into the atomic age. Yet in the final decades of his life, he was also ignored by most working scientists, his ideas opposed by even his closest friends.

In 2013, the New York Times published an obituary for Yvonne Brill. It began: “She made a mean beef stroganoff, followed her husband from job to job, and took eight years off from work to raise three children.” It wasn’t until the second paragraph that readers discovered why the Times had devoted several hundred words to her life: Brill was a brilliant rocket scientist who invented a propulsion system to keep communications satellites in orbit, and had recently been awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation.

This is an essay on the unique teaching of J. Krishnamurti. It starts with the question "What is consciousness?" - and carefully proposes a holistic definition, after reviewing the various psychological and spiritual theories that deal with this subject. The author actually goes a step ahead and focuses on a more particular issue, a provocative question asked by K: “How to empty consciousness of its content?”

We all make mistakes. Nobody’s perfect. Not even some of the greatest geniuses in history, as Mario Livio tells us in this marvelous story of scientific error and breakthrough. Charles Darwin, William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Linus Pauling, Fred Hoyle, and Albert Einstein were all brilliant scientists. Each made groundbreaking contributions to his field - but each also stumbled badly. These five scientists expanded our knowledge of life on Earth, the evolution of the Earth itself, and the evolution of the universe, despite and because of their errors. As Mario Livio luminously explains, the scientific process advances through error.

Permanent Present Tense tells the incredible story of Henry Gustav Molaison, known only as H. M. until his death in 2008. In 1953, at the age of 27, Molaison underwent a dangerous "psychosurgical" procedure intended to alleviate his debilitating epilepsy. The surgery went horribly wrong, and when Molaison awoke he was unable to store new experiences. For the rest of his life, he would be trapped in the moment. But Molaison’s tragedy would prove a gift to humanity.

On the night of March 26, 1938, nuclear physicist Ettore Majorana boarded a ship, cash and passport in hand. He was never seen again. In A Brilliant Darkness, theoretical physicist Joo Magueijo tells the story of Majorana and his research group, the Via Panisperna Boys, who discovered atomic fission in 1934. As Majorana, the most brilliant of the group, began to realize the implications of what they had found, he became increasingly unstable.

A deeply divisive figure, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) remains an enigma to this day. Infamous for his startling assertion that "God is dead", he is often misrepresented. In this illuminating account of Nietzsche's life and work, Robert Wicks skilfully navigates the controversy that continues to surround one of today’s most famous but least understood thinkers. Exploring the impact of Nietzsche's Christian upbringing and his childhood on his beliefs, Wicks demonstrates that, far from being a nihilist, Nietzsche offers a positive and understanding of human nature.