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This monograph examines the relationship between science and democracy. The author argues that there is no clear-cut division between science and the rest of society. Rather, scientists and laypeople form a single community of inquiry, which aims at the truth. To defend his theory, the author shows that science and society are both heterogeneous and fragmented. They display variable and shifting alliances between components. He also explains how information flow between science and society is bi-directional through “transactional” processes. In other words, science and society mutually define themselves. The author also explains how science is both objective and laden with values. Covera...
The role of experts and their expertise, in our personal and social lives, has taken centre stage in the debates about our post-COVID-19 world. Scientific disinformation is rife, and expertise is badly needed to tackle highly complex social problems. This book brings together philosophers, sociologists and policy experts to discuss the nature, scope and limitations of expert advice in policy decisions. The chapters collected here address some of the most fundamental questions in the debate on the role of experts. They explore, among others, the definitions of expertise, the role of experts in modern democracies, the dilemma of choosing between equally competent and qualified experts who cannot agree, the objectivity of expert judgements, the relationship between experts and novices in polarised social settings and the conditions on the trustworthiness of experts. These explorations, by some of the best- known academics working in the field, highlight the complexities of the questions they address but also lay down a road map for addressing them. The chapters in this book were originally published in Social Epistemology: A Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Policy.
A fresh, provocative and engaging treatment of what science really amounts to in society, and of what it can do.
Addressing cultural representations of women's participation in the political violence and terrorism of the Italian anni di piombo ('years of lead', c. 1969-83), this book conceptualizes Italy's experience of political violence during those years as a form of cultural and collective trauma.
In this book, Giovanni Molteni Tagliabue asserts that the realization of the values and the implementation of the objectives as indicated in democratic constitutions (political, social rights and the people’s welfare) are hindered by structural defects of the legislative/government architecture and processes. Expertise and science have scarce say in politics and policy. The author suggests an innovative view through the ‘REDemo Project’. 1. Rationalization: the insertion of public scientists into legislative/executive mechanisms, with the creation in each democracy of a National Scientific Assembly – parallel to the extant partypolitical Chamber of Representatives – consisting of a...
The Handbook of Historical Pragmatics provides an authoritative and accessible overview of this versatile new field in pragmatics devoted to a diachronic study of language use and human interaction in context. It covers all areas of historical pragmatics from grammaticalization theory to pragmatic entities, such as discourse markers, speech acts and politeness to individual discourse domains from scientific writing to literary discourse. Each contribution, written by a leading specialist, gives a succinct, representative and up-to-date overview of research questions, theories, methods and recent developments in the field.
Rather, science is a three-way interaction among nature, the investigator, and a questioning community which, through the process of attack, defense, and dispute, determines what science is. Rhetoric, then, understood as the practice of scientific argumentation, is an essential element in the constitution of science.
This book investigates how bodily information contributes to categorization processes for at least some conceptual classes and thus to the individual mastery of meanings for at least some word classes. The bodily information considered is mainly that provided by the so-called proprioceptive and interoceptive systems introduced by Sherrington. The authors reconsider this in a new Gibsonian fashion calling it more generally “proprioception”, which indicates the complex of all the bodily signals we are aware of and the qualitative experiences these give rise to. The book shows that proprioceptive information understood in this sense is essential for explaining (among others) how we develop broad categories such as animate vs. inanimate, concepts denoting bodily experiences such as hunger or pain as well as emotions and abstract concepts such as friendship and freedom and in accounting for how we master the meanings of the corresponding words in our language.
This work includes studies by leading scholars on Ancient Jewish and Iranian studies and essays that combine both fields in the new discipline of Irano-Talmudica.