Philosopher and biologist Massimo Pigliucci uses the combination of science and philosophy to answer questions about morality, love, friendship, justice, and politics.
Lobel crosses Eastern and Western philosophical and religious traditions to discover a beauty and purpose at the heart of reality that makes life worth living. This title does not treat philosophy as an abstract, theoretical discipline but as living experience.
Howard J. Curzer presents a fresh new reading of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which brings each of the virtues alive. He argues that justice and friendship are symbiotic in Aristotle's view; reveals how virtue ethics is not only about being good, but about becoming good; and describes Aristotle's ultimate quest to determine happiness.
Explores fundamental philosophical and scientific questions about the nature of life, particularly in relation to the search for extraterrestrial life.
Why cracking the code of human conception took centuries of wild theories, misogynist blunders, and ludicrous mistakes Throughout most of human history, babies were surprises. People knew the basics: men and women had sex, and sometimes babies followed. But beyond that the origins of life were a colossal mystery. The Seeds of Life is the remarkable and rollicking story of how a series of blundering geniuses and brilliant amateurs struggled for two centuries to discover where, exactly, babies come from. Taking a page from investigative thrillers, acclaimed science writer Edward Dolnick looks to these early scientists as if they were detectives hot on the trail of a bedeviling and urgent mystery. These strange searchers included an Italian surgeon using shark teeth to prove that female reproductive organs were not 'failed' male genitalia, and a Catholic priest who designed ingenious miniature pants to prove that frogs required semen to fertilize their eggs. A witty and rousing history of science, The Seeds of Life presents our greatest scientists struggling-against their perceptions, their religious beliefs, and their deep-seated prejudices-to uncover how and where we come from.
Who is Aristotle Aristotle was a philosopher and polymath in the ancient Greek world. The natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts are only few of the fields that are covered in his publications. A wide range of topics are covered. It was he who initiated the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which laid the foundation for the creation of contemporary science. He was the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy, which was located in the Lyceum in Athens. How you will benefit (I) Insights about the following: Chapter 1: Aristotle Chapter 2: Avicenna Chapter 3: Alexander of Aphrodisias Chapter 4: Nicomachean Ethics Chapter 5: Plato Chapter 6: Averroes Chapter 7: Teleology Chapter 8: Islamic philosophy Chapter 9: Ancient Greek philosophy Chapter 10: Al-Farabi Chapter 11: Aristotelianism Chapter 12: Renaissance philosophy Chapter 13: Telos Chapter 14: Potentiality and actuality Chapter 15: Aristotelian ethics Chapter 16: Unmoved mover Chapter 17: G. E. L. Owen Chapter 18: Eudorus of Alexandria Chapter 19: Medieval philosophy Chapter 20: Philosophy of happiness Chapter 21: Aristotle's biology Who this book is for Professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, enthusiasts, hobbyists, and those who want to go beyond basic knowledge or information about Aristotle.
In Aristotle's Empiricism, Jean De Groot argues that an important part of Aristotle's natural philosophy has remained largely unexplored and shows that much of Aristotle's analysis of natural movement is influenced by the logic and concepts of mathematical mechanics that emerged from late Pythagorean thought. De Groot draws upon the pseudo-Aristotelian Physical Problems XVI to reconstruct the context of mechanics in Aristotle's time and to trace the development of kinematic thinking from Archytas to the Aristotelian Mechanics. She shows the influence of kinematic thinking on Aristotle's concept of power or potentiality, which she sees as having a physicalistic meaning originating in the problem of movement.De Groot identifies the source of early mechanical knowledge in kinesthetic awareness of mechanical advantage, showing the relation of Aristotle's empiricism to more ancient experience. The book sheds light on the classical Greek understanding of imitation and device, as it questions both the claim that Aristotle's natural philosophy codifies opinions held by convention and the view that the cogency of his scientific ideas depends on metaphysics.
Presents a new interpretation of Aristotle's Analytics (the Prior and Posterior Analytics) as a unified whole, and argues that to "loose up"or solve -- rather than to reduce or break up -- is the principle meaning which best characterizes the Analytics. Offering a new interpretation of Aristotle's Analytics (the Prior and Posterior Analytics) as a unified whole, Patrick H. Byrne argues that a non-deductive form of ancient mathematical analysis influenced Aristotle's thinking. Reading the Analytics with this perspective in mind sheds new light on Aristotle's theories of the syllogism, demonstration, and the principles of science. The book begins with a brief survey of ancient geometrical analysis and an investigation of Aristotle's uses of the Greek term, analuein. Byrne argues that "to loose up" or solve -- rather than to reduce or break up -- is the principal meaning which best characterizes Aristotle's Analytics. Extending this line of reasoning, he argues that for Aristotle scientific analysis commonly begins with knowledge of a "mere fact" (a conclusion) and seeks a rigorous demonstration which expresses knowledge of the "reasoned fact". Moreover, genuine analysis of a fact into a reasoned fact cannot be accomplished unless the premises of demonstrations are themselves reasoned facts. Hence the processes which yield the immediate principles (especially definitions) are next investigated through detailed examinations of key examples which Aristotle provides.
Anyone interested in theories of moral or human practice will find in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics one of the few basic models relevant through to today. At the centre of his analysis, both sober and cautious, are such concepts as happiness, virtue, choice, prudence, incontinence, pleasure and friendship. Aristotle’s arguments are by no means of merely historical interest, but continue to exert a key influence on present-day ethical debate.