From a biological point of view

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Robert H. Carlson

"Technology is a Process and a body of knowledge as much as a collection of artifacts. Biology is no different - and we are just beginning to comprehend the challenges inherent in the next stage of biology as a human technology. It is this critical moment, with its wide-ranging implications, that Robert Carlson considers in Biology Is Technology. He offers a uniquely informed perspective on the endeavors that contribute to current progress in this area - the science of biological systems and the technology used to manipulate them." "In a number of case studies, Carlson demonstrates that the development of new mathematical, computational, and laboratory tools will facilitate the engineering of biological artifacts - up to and including organisms and ecosystems. Exploring how this will happen, with reference to past technological advances, he explains how objects are constructed virtually, tested using sophisticated mathematical models, and finally constructed in the real world." "Such rapid increases in the power, availability, and application of biotechnology raise obvious questions about who gets to use it, and to what end. Carlson's thoughtful analysis offers rare insight into our choices about how to develop biological technologies and how these choices will determine the pace and effectiveness of innovation as a public good."--Jacket.

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James Giles

Phenomenalism is a philosophical theory of perception involving the idea that statements about material objects can be explained in terms of statements about actual and possible sense experiences. In this study James Giles explores the development of phenomenalism through the works of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and others. He shows how problems occur for phenomenalists precisely at the point where they abandon their empiricism. Holding to empiricism, Giles then presents his own version of phenomenalism as a metaphysical thesis in which the material objects are constructed out of sense experience. He then argues that the major critiques of phenomenalism, including Wittgenstein’s private language argument and Sellars’ famous attack on the ‘myth of the given’, all fail to dislodge the basic phenomenalist insights.

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Gregory Chaitin

Explains how evolution works on a mathematical level, arguing that mathematical theory is an essential part of evolution while highlighting mathematical principles in the biological world.

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Michael Ruse

Since its original publication, Taking Darwin Seriously has established itself as one of the most important works of evolutionary naturalism since Charles Darwin's Origin of Species over a century ago. Applying evolutionary biology to philosophical problems of epistemology and ethics, it definitively establishes a naturalistic approach to our understanding of life's major problems. Updated with a new preface and a final chapter that addresses the most recent developments in and popular attacks on contemporary evolution, this is an essential work for those interested in the implications of modern Darwinism - especially human sociobiology - for questions in the theory of knowledge and of moral behaviour and thought. Written in a style accessible to both the professional and the general reader, Taking Darwin Seriously is intended as a direct challenge to all who would push creationism as a credible alternative to scientific evolution in public schools, universities, and as a general theory for public consumption.