Philosophy Academic

Auf ausgedehnten Reisen erkundete Alexander von Humboldt nicht nur die Natur. Ebenso gehörte der rege Kontakt mit internationalen Geistesgrößen zum Wirken des universal Interessierten, der von Zeitgenossen ein "neuer Aristoteles" genannt wurde. Andreas Daums kompakte Einführung in Leben und Werk Alexander von Humboldts bietet einen Überblick über die vielfältigen Netzwerke des Forschers, dessen Jahrhundertleben so zum Spiegel mehrerer Epochen und ihrer dramatischen Umwälzungen.

It's Not Free Speech considers the ideal of academic freedom in the wake of the activism inspired by outrageous police brutality, white supremacy, and the #MeToo movement. Arguing that academic freedom must be distinguished from freedom of speech, Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth take aim at explicit defenses of colonialism and theories of white supremacy that have no intellectual legitimacy. They argue that the democracy-destroying potential of social media makes it very difficult to uphold the traditional liberal view that the best remedy for hate speech is more speech.

Survival of the fittest or survival of the nicest? Since the dawn of time man has contemplated the mystery of altruism, but it was Darwin who posed the question most starkly. From the selfless ant to the stinging bee to the man laying down his life for a stranger, evolution has yielded a goodness that in theory should never be. Set against the sweeping tale of 150 years of scientific attempts to explain kindness, The Price of Altruism tells for the first time the moving story of the eccentric American genius George Price (1922-1975), as he strives to answer evolution's greatest riddle.

A dazzlingly original account of the life and thought of Adam Smith, the greatest economist of all time. In Adam Smith, political philosopher Jesse Norman dispels the myths and caricatures, and provides a far more complex portrait of the man. Offering a highly engaging account of Smith's life and times, Norman explores his work as a whole and traces his influence over two centuries to the present day. Finally, he shows how a proper understanding of Smith can help us address the problems of modern capitalism.

The explorers featured in this volume include: Michele Dougherty, the mathematician who persuaded the Cassini mission to Saturn to make a diversion; Richard Fortey on his love of trilobites; Monica Grady, Meteorite Lady; neurosurgeon Henry Marsh on slicing through our thoughts; the Director of the British Antarctic Survey, Jane Francis; Jocelyn Bell Burnell describing how she missed out on a Nobel Prize; Brian Cox on quantum mechanics; and Nobel Prize winner John Sulston on why he thought it would be a good idea to sequence the human genome.

Sometimes our understanding of our universe is given a huge boost by one insightful thinker. Such a boost came in the first half of the 20th century, when an obscure Belgian priest put his mind to deciphering the nature of the cosmos. The Day Without Yesterday covers the modern history of an evolving universe, and how Georges Lemaître convinced a generation of thinkers to embrace the notion of cosmic expansion and the theory that this expansion could be traced backward to the cosmic origins, a starting point for space and time that Lemaître called "the day without yesterday".

Mesmerized, at times unnerved, by his 97-year-old father's nearly superhuman vitality and optimism, David Shields undertakes an investigation of the human physical condition. The result is this exhilarating book - both a personal meditation on mortality and an exploration of flesh-and-blood existence from crib to oblivion. It's an exploration that paradoxically prompts a renewed and profound appreciation of life.

Everyone agrees that education is the key to creating a more just and equal world, and that our schools are broken and failing. Proposed reforms variously target incompetent teachers, corrupt union practices, or outdated curricula, but no one acknowledges a scientifically-proven fact that we all understand intuitively: academic potential varies between individuals, and cannot be dramatically improved.

Passionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher-writers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are one of the world's legendary couples. Their committed but notoriously open union generated no end of controversy in their day. Biographer Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Tête-à-Tête magnificently details the passion, daring, humor, and contradictions of a remarkably unorthodox relationship.

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889 and died in Cambridge, England in 1951. He was one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century.

Socrate est un philosophe de la Grèce antique (-470 à -399), considéré comme l'un des inventeurs de la philosophie morale et politique. Il n'a cependant laissé aucune œuvre écrite ; sa philosophie s'est transmise par l'intermédiaire de témoignages indirects (en particulier par les écrits de ses disciples Platon et Xénophon).

David Hume (1711-1776) is perhaps best known for his ideas about cause and effect and his criticisms of religion, but he is rarely thought of as a philosopher with practical wisdom to offer. Yet Hume's philosophy is grounded in an honest assessment of nature - human nature in particular. The Great Guide is an engaging and eye-opening account of how Hume's thought should serve as the basis for a complete approach to life. Julian Baggini masterfully interweaves biography with intellectual history and philosophy to give us a complete vision of Hume's guide to life.

La historia de cómo cuatro genios revolucionaron la filosofía y cambiaron nuestra forma de entender el mundo.

John C. Kendrew (1917-1997) was a pioneer in structural biology and a catalyst for the emergence of molecular biology in the second half of the 20th century. He was the first person to determine the three-dimensional structure of a protein at atomic resolution and, for this, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1962. Kendrew ultimately became an international organizer, administrator, and advocate for science, and his expansive legacy lives on today.

Ernest Rutherford, who grew up in colonial New Zealand and came to Cambridge on a scholarship, made numerous revolutionary discoveries, among them the orbital structure of the atom and the concept of the “half-life” of radioactive materials, which led to a massive re-evaluation of the age of the Earth―previously judged just 100 million years old. Above all, perhaps, Rutherford and the young men working under him were the first to split the atom, unlocking tremendous forces―forces, as Rutherford himself predicted, that would bring us the atomic bomb.

On July 4, 2012, the announcement came that one of the longest-running mysteries in physics had been solved: the Higgs boson, the missing piece in understanding why particles have mass, had finally been discovered. On the rostrum, surrounded by jostling physicists and media, was the particle’s retiring namesake—the only person in history to have an existing single particle named for them. Why Peter Higgs? Drawing on years of conversations with Higgs and others, Close illuminates how an unprolific man became one of the world’s most famous scientists.

Robert Greene hat eine ungewöhnliche, provozierende Enzyklopädie verfaßt und alle Spielregeln der Macht zusammengestellt, die immer und überall gelten.

In his first memoir, Richard Dawkins shares a rare view into his early life, his intellectual awakening at Oxford, and his path to writing The Selfish Gene. This is an intimate memoir of the childhood and intellectual development of the evolutionary biologist and world-famous atheist and how he came to write what is widely held to be one of the most important books of the 20th century.

Through family interviews, diaries, letters, and workbooks that had been sealed for over 60 years, Barbara Goldsmith reveals the Marie Curie behind the myth - an all-too-human woman struggling to balance a spectacular scientific career, a demanding family, the prejudice of society, and her own passionate nature. Obsessive Genius is a dazzling portrait of Curie, her amazing scientific success, and the price she paid for fame.

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.