Science Ethics

The statesman, orator, and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero remains a writer whose influence has been felt for many centuries. Tusculan Disputations is his most wide-ranging philosophical work, and was intended to introduce the Roman people to the pleasures and benefits of the study of philosophy. In a series of stimulating dialogues, Tusculan Disputations examines some of the most fundamental questions of human life: the fear of death, the endurance of pain, the alleviation of sorrow, the various disorders of the soul, and the necessity of virtue for a happy life.

Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is the first of Immanuel Kant's mature works on moral philosophy and remains one of the most influential in the field. Kant conceives his investigation as a work of foundational ethics - one that clears the ground for future research by explaining the core concepts and principles of moral theory, and showing that they are normative for rational agents.

Deepak Chopra's passionate new book, Peace Is the Way, was inspired by a saying from Mahatma Gandhi: "There is no way to peace. Peace is the way." In a world where every path to peace has proved futile, the one strategy that hasn’t been tried is the way of peace itself. "We must not bring one war to an end, or thirty," Chopra tells us, "but the idea of war itself." How can this be done?

In this small volume an attempt has been made to gather together the best and most reliable of the sets of ethical verses attributed to the Pythagoreans. Both Hall's translation from the Greek (1657), and Rowe's translation from the French of André Dacier (1707), have been used in reproducing the Golden Verses of Pythagoras, but Dacier's version has been almost exclusively followed, being clearer and more intelligible.

One of the most influential Roman perspectives on religion came from a nonreligious belief system that is finding new adherents even today: Stoicism. How did the Stoics think about religion? In How to Think About God, Philip Freeman presents vivid new translations of Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods and The Dream of Scipio. In these brief works, Cicero offers a Stoic view of belief, divinity, and human immortality, giving eloquent expression to the religious ideas of one of the most popular schools of Roman and Greek philosophy.

What if the secret to being your best, attracting people, and leading people was merely knowing what, why, and how to commit to people? All you have ever wanted was to have more meaningful relationships, attract others to your cause, and be able to make a difference in the lives of the people around you. You can have all this and more when you harness the power of the commitment.

An estimated 10 percent of Americans are implanted with medical devices - like pacemakers, artificial hips, cardiac stents, etc. The overwhelming majority of high-risk implanted devices have never undergone a single clinical trial. The FDA lets device manufacturers decide whether to report serious complications or deaths that may have been caused by their products. Here, award-winning journalist Jeanne Lenzer brings these horrifying statistics to life through the story of one working-class man who, after his "cure" nearly kills him, ends up in a battle for justice.

W. H. Auden once wrote that "art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead." In his brilliant and compulsively listenable new treatise, Alan Jacobs shows us that engaging with the strange and wonderful writings of the past might help us live less anxiously in the present - and increase what Thomas Pynchon once called our "personal density." Today we are battling too much information in a society changing at lightning speed, with algorithms aimed at shaping our every thought - plus a sense that history offers no resources, only impediments to overcome or ignore.

Graham Gooding is a leader at a tech start-up when his brilliant coworker—and work crush—Nessie Locke asks for help testing a new algorithm. Graham jumps at the chance to impress her, and to improve his floundering personal life. He soon discovers that the algo is more powerful than Nessie—or anyone—realizes. It was built to detect lies on the internet, but when Graham makes a small edit to Nessie’s online profile, hoping to see if the program will catch the lie, Nessie changes in real life. The algo can alter the real world. Now, so can Graham.

In this new audiobook, Stubborn Attachments: A Vision for a Society of Free, Prosperous, and Responsible Individuals, Cowen argues that our reason and common sense can help free us of the faulty ideas that hold us back as people and as a society. Stubborn Attachments, at its heart, makes the contemporary moral case for economic growth and delivers a great dose of inspiration and optimism about our future possibilities.

Traditional economics measures the ways in which we spend our income, but doesn't attribute worth to the crucial human interactions that give our lives meaning. Clair Brown, an economics professor at U.C. Berkeley and a practicing Buddhist, has developed a holistic model, one based on the notion that quality of life should be measured by more than national income. Brown advocates an approach to organizing the economy that embraces rather than skirts questions of values, sustainability, and equity.

Karl Popper's THE POVERTY OF HISTORICISM is one of the most important books on the social sciences to have appeared since the Second World War. It is also the work of one of the most original thinkers of the twentieth century, and a devastating criticism of the idea that there are laws of development in history and that human beings are able to discover them. Popper dedicated the book to all those who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny

When a beloved place is decimated by physical damage, many hit the donate button or call their congressperson. But award-winning author Trebbe Johnson argues that we need new methods for coping with these losses and invites listeners to reconsider what constitutes “worthwhile action”. She discusses real wounded places ranging from weapons-testing grounds at Eglin Air Force Base to Appalachian mountain tops destroyed by mining. These stories, along with tools for community engagement, show us how we can find beauty in these places and discover new sources of meaning and community.

Monty was just like any other dog. A scruffy and irascible Maltese terrier, he enjoyed barking at pugs and sniffing at trees. But after Monty has yet another dramatic confrontation with the local Rottweiler, Anthony McGowan realizes it’s high time he and Monty had a chat about what makes him a good or a bad dog.

Robert Jackall's Moral Mazes offers an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and how big organizations shape moral consciousness. Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, IMoral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation.

To flourish, humans need to develop virtues of independent thought and acknowledged social dependence. In this book, a leading moral philosopher presents a comparison of humans to other animals and explores the impact of these virtues.

El filósofo estoico Epicteto destila en este manual de vida, publicado en el año 125, las claves de una existencia plena. Su influencia llegó hasta el mismo Marco Aurelio. Esta edición traducida del griego por José Ortiz y Sanz adopta el estilo minimalista y directo propio del estoicismo.

Few ideas have been as influential in the development of moral, political, legal, and economic thought in the broad Western tradition as the idea of natural law. It is also true that the understanding of natural law and its influence on specific norms and institutions—rights, justice, private property, rule of law, limited government—is not anywhere near as widespread in the 21st century as it was just 100 years ago.

David Hume (1711-1776) was the most important philosopher ever to write in English as well as a master stylist. This volume contains his major philosophical works. A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740), published while Hume was still in his twenties, consists of three books on the understanding, the passions, and morals.

Rigged financial markets and hopeless under-regulation on Wall Street are not new problems. In this book, Susanne Trimbath gives a sobering account of naked short-selling, the failure to settle, and her efforts over decades trying to get this fixed. This is a cautionary tale. What started as a regulatory failure turned into a regulatory crisis. Shareholder democracy is in shambles. The institutions that were established to correct a problem of trade settlement failures have instead exacerbated the problem. Global financial markets may not survive what comes next.