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This book analyzes the power variations between political executives in semi-presidential regimes. It contrasts institutional, partisan, and extra-institutional explanations and identifies patterns of change for the power distribution between presidents and prime ministers. It provides an empirical analysis of selected case studies and demonstrates the necessity to understand power variations in a configurative perspective, exposing the limits of institutional design explanations. This study ultimately aims to contribute to both the literature on semi-presidentialism and to the literature on democratic regimes by providing a systematic assessment of these different configurations, in both mature and emerging democracies. To explore this phenomenon, this research tests the key factors of power variation proposed in the semi-presidential literature on the power relationship between presidents and prime ministers mainly in France’s Fifth Republic and post-1993 Ukraine, but also to a lesser extent in Finland, post-1993 Russia, and post-1990 Poland.
An introduction to the new area of ignorance studies that examines how science produces ignorance—both actively and passively, intentionally and unintentionally. We may think of science as our foremost producer of knowledge, but for the past decade, science has also been studied as an important source of ignorance. The historian of science Robert Proctor has coined the term agnotology to refer to the study of ignorance, and much of the ignorance studied in this new area is produced by science. Whether an active or passive construct, intended or unintended, this ignorance is, in Proctor's words, “made, maintained, and manipulated” by science. This volume examines forms of scientific ign...
Philosophers, sociologists, and historians of science offer a multidisciplinary view of the complex interrelationships of values in science and society, in both contemporary and historic contexts. They analyze the impact of commercialization and politicization on epistemic aspirations, and conversely, the ethical dilemmas raised by “practically relevant” science in today's society.
The town of Floyd had it's first settlers in the mid 1700's. There were still native Indians and wildlife we no longer see who lived in and near the area. There was no established monetary system as yet, so most trade was done in the form of bartering. The people had to glean their living out by farming, hunting, trading or any combination of these. What remarkable people they must have been to not only survive but to flourish under the rustic untamed conditions into which they had moved to. Some moved on to other towns and even to other states, but many of them stayed. They were the ancestors of many people who now live in or near Floyd. Some of the remaining descendants were kind enough to relate the histories of their families, and some of the descendants were too busy with work and life, or didn't have any information about ancestors. Records and legal documents are available, but not always accurate. These records, documents and family histories are all compiled to create the making of "Our Roots in Floyd"
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Leading scholars in the fields of philosophy and the sciences of the mind have contributed to this newest volume in the prestigious Pittsburgh-Konstanz series. Among the problem areas discussed are folk psychology, meanings as conceptual structures, functional and qualitative properties of colors, the role of conscious mental states, representation and mental content, the impact of connectionism on the philosophy of the mind, and supervenience, emergence, and realization. Most of the essays are followed by commentaries that reflect ongoing debates in the philosophy of the mind and often develop a counterpoint to the claims of the essayists.
Earlier in this century, many philosophers of science (for example, Rudolf Carnap) drew a fairly sharp distinction between theory and observation, between theoretical terms like 'mass' and 'electron', and observation terms like 'measures three meters in length' and 'is _2° Celsius'. By simply looking at our instruments we can ascertain what numbers our measurements yield. Creatures like mass are different: we determine mass by calculation; we never directly observe a mass. Nor an electron: this term is introduced in order to explain what we observe. This (once standard) distinction between theory and observation was eventually found to be wanting. First, if the distinction holds, it is diff...
To most laypersons and scientists, science and progress appear to go hand in hand, yet philosophers and historians of science have long questioned the inevitability of this pairing. As we take leave of a century acclaimed for scientific advances and progress, Science at Century's End, the eighth volume of the Pittsburgh-Konstanz Series in the Philosophy and History of Science, takes the reader to the heart of this important matter. Subtitled Philosophical Questions on the Progress and Limits of Science, this timely volume contains twenty penetrating essays by prominent philosophers and historians who explore and debate the limits of scientific inquiry and their presumed consequences for science in the 21st century.
The fundamental question whether, or in which sense, science informs us about the real world has pervaded the history of thought since antiquity. Is what science tells us about the world determined unambiguously by facts or does the content of any scientific theory in some way depend on the human condition? "Sokal`s hoax" added a new dimension to this controversial debate, which very quickly came to been known as "Science Wars". "Knowledge and the World" examines and reviews the broad range of philosophical positions on this issue, stretching from realism to relativism, to expound the epistemic merits of science, and to address the central question: in which sense can science justifiably claim to provide a truthful portrait of reality? This book addresses everyone interested in the philosophy and history of science, and in particular in the interplay between the social and natural sciences.