Redefining Reality - The Intellectual Implications of Modern Science

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Although the cultural optimists and pessimists disagreed on the underlying motor of social change, they agreed that society was advancing. But Tönnies’s view merely has us moving back and forth between community and society, with no engine driving forward. The question then arises: Does society advance? Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth.” Kropotkin, . Tönnies, . Weber, Methodology of Social Sciences. Is the desire to get ahead a virtue or a vice? If we are raising children in a society with a capitalist economy in which looking out for number one is advantageous, should we instill an ethos of self-promotion and selfinterest in them? Abraham Lincoln also correct that a house divided against itself cannot stand? If both are correct, are we doomed? Are any thoughts of the world coming together for the good of all humankind illusory? 166
The concept of race has long been a part of human culture. We have used it to justify war, to deny people rights, and as a source of pride. But biological attempts to specify it have failed. It is certainly true that there are observable differences among people from different regions, but none of the attempts to categorize people using these and their genetic sources has worked. Genetic diversity within racial groups turns out to be greater than it is across racial divides. Attempts to locate race in psychological features have not been successful either. Is race real even if it is not biological? Some of the dividing lines we create between communities are real, representing actual differences between people, and some of them are arbitrary, not something that is actually a part of the real world of course, are racial lines. But is race a part of reality or simply a social construct? For thinkers before the 20 th century, there was no doubt that race was real. Immanuel Kant, in his 1775 essay “Of the Different Human Races,” divided us into four categories based on skin color: “the noble blonde” of northern Europe, “the copper red” of the Americas and south Asia, “the black” of Africa, and “the yellowolive” of East Asia and the Middle East. According to Kant, aspects of mind and moral character could be ranked in this division. In the two centuries following Kant, we see this notion of geography tied to visible biological features, invisible biological features, and elements of character all bound up together in one package called race that was used to justify beliefs about human worth. 167
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Topic Philosophy & Intellectual His
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Steven Gimbel, Ph.D. Professor of P
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Table of Contents LECTURE 11 Dark M
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Table of Contents SUPPLEMENTAL MATE
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: I and technological a
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This question allows us to turn fro
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The study of reality is what philos
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Semmelweis noticed that the inciden
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ut sometimes, even after checking t
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. The Matrix. We don’t believe
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Wisdom comes from rejecting the imp
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Thus, Aristotle’s prime mover, th
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Aristotle had said that an object
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For centuries, mathematics was cons
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th century, the Russian mathematici
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had turned their attention to logic
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Abbott, . Bell, Men of Mathematics.
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Scientists thought that the physica
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H. A. Lorentz had found, when you a
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Thinkers as far back as Gottfried L
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E grounds. First, the prin
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If you woke up tomorrow in a small
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speed up going in and slow down com
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Is it true that a difference that m
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Einstein thought, there would be lo
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Scientists largely hated this idea,
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If Gamow and Alpher’s work was ri
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Although physicists at the end of t
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In the 19 th century, there was the
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In 1873, James Clerk Maxwell publis
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The idea of a large central mass at
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We know, however, that for a given
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whether light is a particle or a wa
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is a particle, then the slits would
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One of the early results of quantum
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eams, we also knew that there were
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The hadrons are made up of quarks,
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As the meaning of the physics began
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The demon is a being with a super-i
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ignoring certain elements, we can c
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One of the simplest fractal pattern
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Earlier, we talked about Thomas Kuh
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so greatly separated that no proces
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een able to form in that environmen
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Nicolson, . Panek, . Our theories
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Similarly, James Clerk Maxwell, in
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But as we move away from the pole,
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Great press has been given to a pot
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Some people take the idea of a theo
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see from CAT scans that when someon
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Because we are just atoms, we, too,
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Would the randomness of quantum mec
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Aristotle thought that this world i
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If you select strange enough traits
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Although this aspect of the theory
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Darwin posited that children look l
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The key to understanding how we pas
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This picture of illness is quite di
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How much of who we are is determine
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inferred that the function of that
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a byproduct of mental illness, Freu
Page 123 and 124: With the genetic approach, we are w
Page 125 and 126: After Freud, psychology developed i
Page 127 and 128: experiences that are not our own, t
Page 129 and 130: Behaviorism was an attempt to make
Page 131 and 132: Psychology, which had begun as a se
Page 133 and 134: I th century, psychology had the lu
Page 135 and 136: part, in the group. To understand t
Page 137 and 138: acting in ways that showed a lack o
Page 139 and 140: has learned from the so-called barb
Page 141 and 142: led him to begin one of the most fa
Page 143 and 144: ules. We are now adult in our ethic
Page 145 and 146: In a contract-based relationship, y
Page 147 and 148: The study of psychology changed for
Page 149 and 150: Instead, we are a part of the world
Page 151 and 152: But it turns out that exposure to c
Page 153 and 154: Glickstein, . Lynch, . mean we
Page 155 and 156: But evolutionary psychologists Leda
Page 157 and 158: suited to solving these problems an
Page 159 and 160: As such, when we look at the innate
Page 161 and 162: In looking at reality, we can exami
Page 163 and 164: We see this also in the writings of
Page 165 and 166: one universal is crime. Crime is no
Page 167 and 168: To avoid such situations of anomie
Page 169 and 170: Historians create narratives that e
Page 171 and 172: Society is composed of individuals
Page 173: © Digital Vision/Thinkstock.
Page 177 and 178: there are different combinations am
Page 179 and 180: Perhaps race is what Durkheim calle
Page 181 and 182: Gould, . Hernnstein and Murray, . K
Page 183 and 184: Slavery, for example, was a necessa
Page 185 and 186: Parsons’s picture is not the Marx
Page 187 and 188: In defeat, the smaller neighbors wo
Page 189 and 190: Economics became a science with the
Page 191 and 192: self-interest. Second, the large-sc
Page 193 and 194: Under the classical model, this sho
Page 195 and 196: How do we account for these effects
Page 197 and 198: If the star is large enough, when i
Page 199 and 200: © amenic181/iStock/Thinkstock.
Page 201 and 202: What environment on Earth could pro
Page 203 and 204: The possibility of life on other pl
Page 205 and 206: Our newfound alien interlocutors te
Page 207 and 208: Perhaps the best evidence for extra
Page 209 and 210: Mayor and Frei, . Morrison, Billing
Page 211 and 212: It has long been argued, however, t
Page 213 and 214: But the idea of using the body’s
Page 215 and 216: Although that seems worrisome, it i
Page 217 and 218: I equally much for how w
Page 219 and 220: The use of one’s DNA in creating
Page 221 and 222: With cytoplasmic transfer, the nucl
Page 223 and 224: Macintosh, . Given that multiple
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we could begin with the desired por
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The second step is trickier. Here,
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Aside from medical uses, we can alt
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We can now use medical technology t
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The problem here is that sometimes
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of disease and disorder. In America
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performance-enhancing drugs? We see
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Advances have led to hand-shaped ap
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Warwick then went a step further. H
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Scientists at MIT have taken DNA fr
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Computers can do many things, but c
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possible right answers. The machine
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player having a king and a pawn and
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If intelligence or sentience is an
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enable us to become a global villag
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engineers used their technological
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Another intriguing development on t
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In these lectures, we’ve seen tha
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leave messages or comments, and whe
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This ability of mothers doesn’t m
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But Einstein showed us that the rea
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Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo. Linked: Th
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———. The Descent of Man: and
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Gilligan, Carol. . Cambridg
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Kramer, Peter. . New York: Viking
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eings that we are willing to act in
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Rothman, Sheila M. Medical Enhance
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———. . London: Century, 2002.
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