Carl Sagan’s Cosmos inspires audiences to look at the universe with new eyes and to appreciate humanity’s importance in it. Sagan’s deft use of rhetorical strategy creates an experience that pushes beyond the limits of a mere “educational” program to reveal a mythic adventure. Although Sagan contributed much to the field of science as well as to public understanding of it, Cosmos remains his signature brand. Cosmos and the Rhetoric of Popular Science builds on Thomas M. Lessl’s observations regarding Cosmos’ connection to the mythic and science fiction. It delves deeply into Sagan’s rhetorical construction of the program in order to understand what elements contributed to its mythos.
Public Religions in the Future World is the first book to map the utopian terrain of the political-religious movements of the past four decades. Examining a politically diverse set of utopian fictions, this book cuts across the usual Right/Left political divisions to show a surprising convergence: each political-religious vision imagines a revived world of care and community over and against the economization and fragmentation of neoliberalism. Understanding these religions as utopian movements in reaction to neoliberalism, Public Religions invites us to rethink the bases of religious identification and practice. Offering new insights on texts from the Left Behind series to the novels of Octavia Butler, Public Religions shows that the utopian energy of the present opens new opportunities for political organizing and genuine, lasting community building. Public Religions in the Future World presents a literary history of the political-religious present, arguing that the power of public religion lies in the utopian visions that underlie religious beliefs. It shows that contemporary literary utopianism is deeply inflected with religious ideas, with the visions, values, and ambitions of Christianity, Islam, nature mysticism, and other traditions. Further, Public Religions demonstrates that this utopianism’s religiosity is in turn politically inflected, that it resonates with and underwrites a range of competing political projects: those of imperialism, globalization, neoliberal capitalism, deep ecology, and the pro-migration movement. David Morris constructs a working theory of how religion makes large-scale interventions in political debates. The novels in his study draw on religious traditions to articulate visions, programs, or missions for achieving some version of an improved world. In doing so, they undertake the work of literary postmodernism: to represent globality, to recover the voices of the underrepresented, and to imagine a future that escapes the destructiveness of global capitalism.
Space Science and Public Engagement: 21st Century Perspectives and Opportunities critically examines the many dimensions of public engagement with space science by exploring case studies that show a spectrum of public engagement formats, ranging from the space science community's efforts to communicate developments to the public, to citizenry attempting to engage with space science issues. It addresses why public engagement is important to space science experts, what approaches they take, how public engagement varies locally, nationally and internationally, and what roles "non-experts" have played in shaping space science. Space scientists, outreach specialists in various scientific disciplines, policymakers and citizens interested in space science will find great insights in this book that will help inform their future engagement strategies. - Critically examines how expert organizations and the space science community have sought to bring space science to the public - Examines how the public has responded, and in some cases self-organized, to opportunities to contribute to space science - Outlines future engagement interests and possibilities
Fringe Rhetorics: Conspiracy Theories and the Paranormal identifies the rhetorical similarities of conspiracy theories and paranormal accounts by delving into rhetorical, psychosocial, and political science research. Identifying something as “fringe” indicates its proximal placement within accepted norms of contemporary society. Both conspiracy theories and paranormal accounts dwell on these fringes and use surprisingly similar persuasive techniques. Using elements of the Aristotelian canon as well as Steve Oswald’s strengthening and weakening strategies, this book establishes a pattern for the analysis of fringe rhetorics. It also applies this pattern through rhetorical analyses of several documentaries and provides suggestions for countering fringe arguments.
Unbelievable explodes seven of the most popular and pernicious myths about science and religion. Michael Newton Keas, a historian of science, lays out the facts to show how far the conventional wisdom departs from reality. He also shows how these myths have proliferated over the past four centuries and exert so much influence today, infiltrating science textbooks and popular culture. The seven myths, Keas shows, amount to little more than religion bashing—especially Christianity bashing. Unbelievable reveals: · Why the “Dark Ages” never happened · Why we didn’t need Christopher Columbus to prove the earth was round · Why Copernicus would be shocked to learn that he supposedly demoted humans from the center of the universe · What everyone gets wrong about Galileo’s clash with the Church, and why it matters today · Why the vastness of the universe does not deal a blow to religious belief in human significance · How the popular account of Giordano Bruno as a “martyr for science” ignores the fact that he was executed for theological reasons, not scientific ones · How a new myth is being positioned to replace religion—a futuristic myth that sounds scientific but isn’t In debunking these myths, Keas shows that the real history is much more interesting than the common narrative of religion at war with science. This accessible and entertaining book offers an invaluable resource to students, scholars, teachers, homeschoolers, and religious believers tired of being portrayed as anti-intellectual and anti-science.
The secrets of light — Your pathway to a state of presence Seeking a state of presence: The most important things in life are our health and happiness. Yet most of us are neither healthy nor happy. We have been led to believe that if we think ahead and make the right choices, we can manifest our dreams. Yet despite our best efforts, we still have more disease and discontent than ever before. Is it possible that our essential ideas about life are flawed? Can we learn how to get into the zone or a flow state? Is light the key to finding a state of presence? Living in the light: We are all aware of the impact of sunlight on a plant’s growth and development. But few of us realize that a plant actually “sees” where light is emanating from and positions itself to be in optimal alignment with it. This phenomenon, however, is not just occurring in the plant kingdom — humans are also fundamentally directed by light. The intersection of science and spirituality: In Luminous Life, Dr. Jacob Israel Liberman integrates scientific research, clinical practice, and direct experience to demonstrate how the luminous intelligence we call light effortlessly guides us toward health, contentment, and a life filled with purpose. If you have read Barbara Brennan’s Hands of Light or Light Emerging, you’re going to love Jacob Liberman’s Luminous Life.
Despite the efforts of modern scholars to explain the origins of science communication as a social, rhetorical, and aesthetic phenomenon, most researchers approach the popularization of science from the perspective of present issues, thus ignoring its historical roots in classical culture along with its continuities, disruptions, and transformations. This volume fills this research gap with a genealogically reflected introduction into the popularization of science as a recurrent cultural technique. The category »popular science« is elucidated in interdisciplinary and diachronic dialogue, discussing case studies from all historical periods. Classicists, archaeologists, medievalists, art historians, sociologists, and historians of science provide the first diachronic and multi-layered approach to the rhetoric techniques, aesthetics, and societal conditions that have shaped the dissemination and reception of scientific knowledge.
Comprehensive yet accessible, this key Handbook provides an up-to-date overview of the fast growing and increasingly important area of ‘public communication of science and technology’, from both research and practical perspectives. As well as introducing the main issues, arenas and professional perspectives involved, it presents the findings of earlier research and the conclusions previously drawn. Unlike most existing books on this topic, this unique volume couples an overview of the practical problems faced by practitioners with a thorough review of relevant literature and research. The practical Handbook format ensures it is a student-friendly resource, but its breadth of scope and impressive contributors means that it is also ideal for practitioners and professionals working in the field. Combining the contributions of different disciplines (media and journalism studies, sociology and history of science), the perspectives of different geographical and cultural contexts, and by selecting key contributions from appropriate and well-respected authors, this original text provides an interdisciplinary as well as a global approach to public communication of science and technology.
Reading Popular Physics is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the nature and implications of physics popularizations. A literary critic trained in science, Elizabeth Leane treats popular science writing as a distinct and significant genre, focusing particularly on five bestselling books: Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, Steven Weinberg's The First Three Minutes, James Gleick's Chaos, M. Mitchell Waldrop's Complexity, and Gary Zukav's The Dancing Wu Li Masters. Leane situates her examination of the texts within the heated interdisciplinary exchanges known as the 'Science Wars', focusing specifically on the disputed issue of the role of language in science. Her use of literary analysis reveals how popular science books function as sites for 'disciplinary skirmishes' as she uncovers the ways in which popularizers of science influence the public. In addition to their explicit discussion of scientific concepts, Leane argues, these authors employ subtle textual strategies that encode claims about the nature and status of scientific knowledge - claims that are all the more powerful because they are unacknowledged. Her book will change the way these texts are read, offering readers a fresh perspective on this highly visible and influential genre.
The history of science provides numerous examples of the way in which imagination, religion and mythology have sometimes helped and sometimes hindered scientific progress. While established ideas and beliefs clearly held back the discoveries of Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin, the intuitive knowledge found in mythology, art and religion has often proved useful in indicating new ways in which to explore or represent new knowledge of the world. Stories, fables and images have contributed to drawing a fuller picture of the past, understanding the present and imagining the future. The essays in this book, written by academics, writers and artists from various fields ranging from La Fontaine’s fables to nanotechnology and modern art, all point out the ways in which imagination works its way into all the fields of knowledge. At both ends of the spectrum, the hybrid nature of the chimera emerges as a pivotal symbol of both man’s predation instinct and a powerful symbol of his fear of extinction. This interdisciplinary book, weaving together visual representation, literature, mysticism, and science, will appeal to historians of science, philosophy, art and religion. It will also be of interest to scholars in cultural studies and anthropology. Drawing on recent scientific research and artistic production, the volume will additionally interest a wider audience wishing to learn more about man’s obsession and fascination with the potent symbolism of dinosaurs and dragons and all hybrid forms generated by the human imagination and recent technology.
