From Beast-machine to Man-machine
Author: Leonora Cohen Rosenfield
Publisher:
Published: 1968
Total Pages: 424
ISBN-13:
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God, Human, Animal, Machine
Author: Meghan O'Gieblyn
Publisher: Anchor
Published: 2022-07-12
Total Pages: 305
ISBN-13: 0525562710
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA strikingly original exploration of what it might mean to be authentically human in the age of artificial intelligence, from the author of the critically-acclaimed Interior States. • "At times personal, at times philosophical, with a bracing mixture of openness and skepticism, it speaks thoughtfully and articulately to the most crucial issues awaiting our future." —Phillip Lopate “[A] truly fantastic book.”—Ezra Klein For most of human history the world was a magical and enchanted place ruled by forces beyond our understanding. The rise of science and Descartes's division of mind from world made materialism our ruling paradigm, in the process asking whether our own consciousness—i.e., souls—might be illusions. Now the inexorable rise of technology, with artificial intelligences that surpass our comprehension and control, and the spread of digital metaphors for self-understanding, the core questions of existence—identity, knowledge, the very nature and purpose of life itself—urgently require rethinking. Meghan O'Gieblyn tackles this challenge with philosophical rigor, intellectual reach, essayistic verve, refreshing originality, and an ironic sense of contradiction. She draws deeply and sometimes humorously from her own personal experience as a formerly religious believer still haunted by questions of faith, and she serves as the best possible guide to navigating the territory we are all entering.
Nature's Enigma
Author: Virginia Parker Dawson
Publisher: American Philosophical Society
Published: 1987
Total Pages: 288
ISBN-13: 9780871691743
DOWNLOAD EBOOKTwo striking discoveries made 1740 a turning point in the history of 18th-century biology. Charles Bonnet established that aphids could reproduce without male fertilization. Shortly afterwards Abraham Trembley proved that a tiny aquatic animal, the fresh water polyp, or hydra, could regenerate from cuttings like some plants. The discovery of the polyp was important because of the disturbing metaphysical issues that it raised. In their letters written during the decade of the 1740s to Reaumur, the great French Academician, both Trembley & Bonnet referred to the polyp as an enigma. Not only did it seem to present a new mode of animal reproduction, previously unsuspected, but it called into question the prevailing mechanistic view of animal biology & brought into focus the problem of animal soul. Drawing on some of the most illuminating letters from the private archives of the Trembley family, this study focuses on the discovery of the polyp, using the correspondence of Bonnet & Trembley to understand their common Genevan background & their possible differences in approach from that of Reaumur.
Machine Man
Author: Max Barry
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2011-08-09
Total Pages: 289
ISBN-13: 0307743225
DOWNLOAD EBOOKScientist Charles Neumann loses a leg in an industrial accident. It's not a tragedy. It's an opportunity. Charlie always thought his body could be better. He begins to explore a few ideas. To build parts. Better parts. Prosthetist Lola Shanks loves a good artificial limb. In Charlie, she sees a man on his way to becoming artificial everything. But others see a madman. Or a product. Or a weapon. A story for the age of pervasive technology, Machine Man is a gruesomely funny unraveling of one man's quest for ultimate self-improvement.
Readings on Human Nature
Author: Peter Loptson
Publisher: Broadview Press
Published: 1998-02-04
Total Pages: 588
ISBN-13: 9781551111568
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis anthology brings together 45 selections by a wide range of philosophers and other thinkers, and provides a representative sampling of the approaches to the study of human nature that have been taken within the western tradition. The selections range in time from the ancient Greeks to the 1990s, and in political orientation from the conservative individualism of Ayn Rand to the liberalism of John Rawls. Classic writings from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries are here (Descartes, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, and so on), but so are a wide range of twentieth-century writings, including a number of feminist voices, the biological theory of Edward O. Wilson, and the cultural materialist theory of Marvin Harris. A substantial selection of Christian views of human nature is a central part of the anthology. The anthology is as notable for its depth as it is for its breadth; an important editorial principle has been to include a variety of substantial selections, thus allowing the reader to engage more readily with some of the complexities of each approach.
La Mettrie: Machine Man and Other Writings
Author: Julien Offray de La Mettrie
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1996-04-18
Total Pages: 216
ISBN-13: 9780521478496
DOWNLOAD EBOOKJulien Offray de La Mettrie (1709-51), author of Machine Man (1747), was the most uncompromising of the materialists of the eighteenth century, and the provocative title of his work ensured it a succès de scandale in his own time. It was however a serious, if polemical, attempt to provide an explanation of the workings of the human body and mind in purely material terms and to show that thought was the product of the workings of the brain alone. This fully annotated edition presents an English translation of the text together with the most important of La Mettrie's other philosophical works translated into English, and Ann Thomson's introduction examines his aims and the scandalous moral consequences which he drew from his materialism.
On Animals
Author: David L. Clough
Publisher: A&C Black
Published: 2012-02-02
Total Pages: 194
ISBN-13: 0567171213
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume is a project in systematic theology: a rigorous engagement with the Christian tradition in relation to animals under the doctrinal headings of creation, reconciliation and redemption and in dialogue with the Bible and theological voices central to the tradition. The book shows that such engagement with the tradition with the question of the animal in mind produces surprising answers that challenge modern anthropocentric assumptions. For the most part, therefore, the novelty of the project lies in the questions raised, rather than the proposal of innovative answers to it. The transformation in our thinking about animals for which the book argues results in the main from looking squarely for the first time at the sum of what we are already committed to believing about other animals and their place in God's creation.
Experimenting with Humans and Animals
Author: Anita Guerrini
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2003-07-02
Total Pages: 198
ISBN-13: 9780801871979
DOWNLOAD EBOOKEthical questions about the use of animals and humans in research remain among the most vexing within both the scientific community and society at large. These often rancorous arguments have gone on, however, with little awareness of their historical antecedents. Experimentation on animals and particularly humans is often assumed to be a uniquely modern phenomenon, but the ideas and attitudes that encourage the biological and medical sciences to experiment on living creatures date from the earliest expression of Western thought. Here, Anita Guerrini looks at the history of these practices from vivisection in ancient Alexandria to present-day battles over animal rights and medical research employing human subjects. Guerrini discusses key historical episodes, including the discovery of blood circulation, the development of smallpox and polio vaccines, and recent AIDS research. She also explores the rise of the antivivisection movement in Victorian England, the modern animal rights movement, and current debates over gene therapy.--From publisher description.
The Making of Copernicus
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2014-10-16
Total Pages: 347
ISBN-13: 9004281126
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe contributions to Making of Copernicus examine exemplarily how some of the Copernicus myths came about and if they could hold their ground or have vanished again. Are there links between a factual or postulated transformation of world images and the application of certain scientific metaphors, especially the metaphor of a revolution? Were there interactions and amalgamations of the literary and scientific enthronement, or outlawry of Copernicus and if so, how did they take place? On the other hand, are there repercussions of the scientific-historical reconstructions and hagiographies on the literary image of Copernicus as sketched by novelists even in the 20th century? The history of the reception of Copernicus shall not be dominantly dealt with from the point of view of a factual affirmation and rejection of the astronomer and his doctrine but rather as accomplishments of transformation respectively. Thus, the essays in this volume investigate transformations: methodological, institutional, textual, and visual transformations of the Copernican doctrine and the topical, rhetorical and literary transformations of the historical person of Copernicus respectively.
Errans
Author: Christoph F. E. Holzhey
Publisher: ICI Berlin Press
Published: 2022-09-20
Total Pages: 270
ISBN-13: 3965580361
DOWNLOAD EBOOKToday’s critical discourses and theorizing vanguards agree on the importance of getting lost, of failure, of erring — as do life coaches and business gurus. The taste for a departure from progress and other teleologies, the fascination with disorder, unfocused modes of attention, or improvisational performances cut across wide swaths of scholarly and activist discourses, practices in the arts, but also in business, warfare, and politics. Yet often the laudible failures are only those that are redeemed by subsequent successes. What could it mean to think errancy beyond such restrictions? And what would a radical critique of productivity, success, and fixed determination look like that doesn’t collapse into the infamous ‘I would prefer not to’? This volume looks for an answer in the complicated word field branching and stretching from the Latin errāre. Its contributions explore the implications of embracing error, randomness, failure, non-teleological temporalities across different disciplines, discourses, and practices, with critical attention to the ambivalences such an impossible embrace generates.
