Author: Frances Westley Publisher: Island Press ISBN: 1610910699 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 328
Book Description
In his 1998 book Consilience, E.O. Wilson set forth the idea that integrating knowledge and insights from across the spectrum of human study -- the humanities, social science, and natural sciences -- is the key to solving complex environmental and social problems. Experiments in Consilience tells the unique story of a pathbreaking effort to apply this theoretical construct in a real-world setting.The book describes the work of the Biodiversity Research Network, a team of experts from the United States and Canada brought together to build interdisciplinary connections and stimulate an exchange of expertise. Team members sought to understand the ecology and population dynamics of key species in particular ecosystems, to understand the impact of human populations on those species and ecosystems, and to develop tools and processes for involving a greater variety of stakeholders in conservation efforts.In order to keep the experiment grounded, the network focused on a single type of conservation planning workshop run by a single organization -- the Population and Habitat Viability Assessment Workshop (PHVA) of the IUCN-sponsored Conservation Breeding Specialist Group (CBSG). The book combines sections on the theoretical underpinnings of relevant concepts in population biology, simulation modeling, and social science with detailed descriptions of six PHVA workshops conducted on different species across four continents. A concluding chapter examines the lessons learned, which have application to both theory and practice, including reflections on interdisciplinarity, integrated risk assessment, and future directions for research and action. Through the combination of theory and application, combined with frank discussions of what the research network learned -- including both successes and failures -- the book offers fresh ideas on how to improve on-the-ground conservation decisionmaking. Experiments in Consilience offers a one-of-a-kind overview and introduction to the challenges of cross-disciplinary analysis as well as cross-functional, cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral action. It centers on the problem of conserving endangered species while telling the story of a new form of organizing for effective risk assessment, recommendation, and action.
Author: E. O. Wilson Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0804154066 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 384
Book Description
"A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." --The Wall Street Journal One of our greatest living scientists--and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and The Ants--gives us a work of visionary importance that may be the crowning achievement of his career. In Consilience (a word that originally meant "jumping together"), Edward O. Wilson renews the Enlightenment's search for a unified theory of knowledge in disciplines that range from physics to biology, the social sciences and the humanities. Using the natural sciences as his model, Wilson forges dramatic links between fields. He explores the chemistry of the mind and the genetic bases of culture. He postulates the biological principles underlying works of art from cave-drawings to Lolita. Presenting the latest findings in prose of wonderful clarity and oratorical eloquence, and synthesizing it into a dazzling whole, Consilience is science in the path-clearing traditions of Newton, Einstein, and Richard Feynman.
Author: Edward Slingerland Publisher: OUP USA ISBN: 0199794391 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 467
Book Description
Calls for a "consilient" or "vertically integrated" approach to the study of human mind and culture have, for the most part, been received by scholars in the humanities with either indifference or hostility. One reason for this is that consilience has often been framed as bringing the study of humanistic issues into line with the study of non-human phenomena, rather than as something to which humanists and scientists contribute equally. The other major reason that consilience has yet to catch on in the humanities is a dearth of compelling examples of the benefits of adopting a consilient approach. Creating Consilience is the product of a workshop that brought together internationally-renowned scholars from a variety of fields to address both of these issues. It includes representative pieces from workshop speakers and participants that examine how adopting such a consilient stance -- informed by cognitive science and grounded in evolutionary theory -- would concretely impact specific topics in the humanities, examining each topic in a manner that not only cuts across the humanities-natural science divide, but also across individual humanistic disciplines. By taking seriously the fact that science-humanities integration is a two-way exchange, this volume takes a new approach to bridging the cultures of science and the humanities. The editors and contributors formulate how to develop a new shared framework of consilience beyond mere interdisciplinarity, in a way that both sides can accept.
Author: Astrid Schwarz Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317317920 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 266
Book Description
Traditionally experimentation has been understood as an activity performed within the laboratory, but in the twenty-first century this view is being challenged. Schwarz uses ecological and environmental case studies to show how scientific experiments can transcend the laboratory.
Author: Edoardo Ongaro Publisher: Springer ISBN: 1137552697 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 1302
Book Description
This Handbook offers a systematic review of state-of-the-art knowledge on public administration in Europe. Covering the theoretical, epistemological and practical aspects of the field, it focuses on how public administration operates and is studied in European countries. In sixty-three chapters, written by leading scholars, this Handbook considers the uniqueness of the European situation through an interdisciplinary and comparative lens, focusing on the administrative diversity which results from the multiplicity of countries, languages, schools of thought and streams of investigation across Europe. It addresses issues such as multi-level administration and governance, intensive cross country cooperation in administrative reform policy, and public accountability under different systems. It also considers the issue of welfare service delivery, at a time of major economic and societal challenges, as well as understudied emerging issues like Islamic Public Administration and the dynamics of public sector negotiations. With contributions from key experts in Public Administration and Public Management, this cutting edge Handbook offers a significant contribution to the field of comparative public administration, policy and management.
Author: T.S. Stoinski Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 0387707212 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 369
Book Description
This volume identifies the primary problems faced in conserving wild populations of gorillas throughout Africa, pinpointing new approaches to solving these problems and outlining the increased role that zoos can play in gorilla conservation. It includes the in-depth expertise of field scientists in a variety of disciplines to discuss current conservation threats, novel approaches to conservation, and potential solutions.
Author: Adrian Currie Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262552035 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 383
Book Description
An argument that we should be optimistic about the capacity of “methodologically omnivorous” geologists, paleontologists, and archaeologists to uncover truths about the deep past. The “historical sciences”—geology, paleontology, and archaeology—have made extraordinary progress in advancing our understanding of the deep past. How has this been possible, given that the evidence they have to work with offers mere traces of the past? In Rock, Bone, and Ruin, Adrian Currie explains that these scientists are “methodological omnivores,” with a variety of strategies and techniques at their disposal, and that this gives us every reason to be optimistic about their capacity to uncover truths about prehistory. Creative and opportunistic paleontologists, for example, discovered and described a new species of prehistoric duck-billed platypus from a single fossilized tooth. Examining the complex reasoning processes of historical science, Currie also considers philosophical and scientific reflection on the relationship between past and present, the nature of evidence, contingency, and scientific progress. Currie draws on varied examples from across the historical sciences, from Mayan ritual sacrifice to giant Mesozoic fleas to Mars's mysterious watery past, to develop an account of the nature of, and resources available to, historical science. He presents two major case studies: the emerging explanation of sauropod size, and the “snowball earth” hypothesis that accounts for signs of glaciation in Neoproterozoic tropics. He develops the Ripple Model of Evidence to analyze “unlucky circumstances” in scientific investigation; examines and refutes arguments for pessimism about the capacity of the historical sciences, defending the role of analogy and arguing that simulations have an experiment-like function. Currie argues for a creative, open-ended approach, “empirically grounded” speculation.
Author: Edward O. Wilson Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company ISBN: 0871407000 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson imparts the wisdom of his storied career to the next generation. Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career—both his successes and his failures—and his motivations for becoming a biologist. At a time in human history when our survival is more than ever linked to our understanding of science, Wilson insists that success in the sciences does not depend on mathematical skill, but rather a passion for finding a problem and solving it. From the collapse of stars to the exploration of rain forests and the oceans’ depths, Wilson instills a love of the innate creativity of science and a respect for the human being’s modest place in the planet’s ecosystem in his readers.
Author: John A Matthews Publisher: SAGE ISBN: 1446264882 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 1496
Book Description
Accessibly written by a team of international authors, the Encyclopedia of Environmental Change provides a gateway to the complex facts, concepts, techniques, methodology and philosophy of environmental change. This three-volume set illustrates and examines topics within this dynamic and rapidly changing interdisciplinary field. The encyclopedia includes all of the following aspects of environmental change: Diverse evidence of environmental change, including climate change and changes on land and in the oceans Underlying natural and anthropogenic causes and mechanisms Wide-ranging local, regional and global impacts from the polar regions to the tropics Responses of geo-ecosystems and human-environmental systems in the face of past, present and future environmental change Approaches, methodologies and techniques used for reconstructing, dating, monitoring, modelling, projecting and predicting change Social, economic and political dimensions of environmental issues, environmental conservation and management and environmental policy Over 4,000 entries explore the following key themes and more: Conservation Demographic change Environmental management Environmental policy Environmental security Food security Glaciation Green Revolution Human impact on environment Industrialization Landuse change Military impacts on environment Mining and mining impacts Nuclear energy Pollution Renewable resources Solar energy Sustainability Tourism Trade Water resources Water security Wildlife conservation The comprehensive coverage of terminology includes layers of entries ranging from one-line definitions to short essays, making this an invaluable companion for any student of physical geography, environmental geography or environmental sciences.
Author: Alister E. McGrath Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192542508 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
Our understanding of human rationality has changed significantly since the beginning of the century, with growing emphasis being placed on multiple rationalities, each adapted to the specific tasks of communities of practice. We may think of the world as an ontological unity-but we use a plurality of methods to investigate and represent this world. This development has called into question both the appeal to a universal rationality, characteristic of the Enlightenment, and also the simple 'modern-postmodern' binary. The Territories of Human Reason is the first major study to explore the emergence of multiple situated rationalities. It focuses on the relation of the natural sciences and Christian theology, but its approach can easily be extended to other disciplines. It provides a robust intellectual framework for discussion of transdisciplinarity, which has become a major theme in many parts of the academic world. Alister E. McGrath offers a major reappraisal of what it means to be 'rational' which will have significant impact on older discussions of this theme. He sets out to explore the consequences of the seemingly inexorable move away from the notion of a single universal rationality towards a plurality of cultural and domain-specific methodologies and rationalities. What does this mean for the natural sciences? For the philosophy of science? For Christian theology? And for the interdisciplinary field of science and religion? How can a single individual hold together scientific and religious ideas, when these arise from quite different rational approaches? This groundbreaking volume sets out to engage these questions and will provoke intense discussion and debate.
Author: Frances Westley
Author: E. O. Wilson
Author: Edward Slingerland
Author: Astrid Schwarz
Author: Edoardo Ongaro
Author: T.S. Stoinski
Author: Adrian Currie
Author: Edward O. Wilson
Author: John A Matthews
Author: Alister E. McGrath