by Alexander Hars (2003)
Today "s publishing infrastructure is rapidly changing. As electronic journals, digital libraries, collaboratories, logic servers, and other knowledge infrastructures emerge on the internet, the key aspects of this transformation need to be identified. Here, the author details the implications that this transformation is having on the creation, dissemination and organization of academic knowledge. The author shows that many established publishing principles need to be given up in order to facilitate this transformation. The text provides valuable insights for knowledge managers, designers of internet-based knowledge infrastructures, and professionals in the publishing industry. Researchers will find the scenarios and implications for research processes stimulating and thought-provoking.
Michel Foucault
When one defines 'order' as a sorting of priorities, it becomes beautifully clear what Foucault is doing here. He weaves an intensely complex history of thought. He dips into literature, art, economics and even biology.
Marcello Pera
In this greatly anticipated revision and translation of Scienza e Retorica, Marcello Pera argues that rhetoric is central to the making of scientific knowledge. Pera begins with an attack on what he calls the "Cartesian syndrome," the fixation on method shared by supporters of both the "standard" and "new" philosophies of science. He argues that in linking scientific rationality to methodological rules, both sides get it wrong. Scientific knowledge is neither the mirror of nature provided by a universal method, nor a cultural construct imposed by subjective interests. Pera proposes to overcome the tension between normative and descriptive philosophies of science by focusing on rhetoric in the construction and acceptance of theories. Examining the uses of argumentation in Galileo's Dialogue, Darwin's Origin, and the big bang-steady state controversy in cosmology, Pera shows that scientific research is not just an interchange between nature and the observer. 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. . As a powerful alternative to dominant philosophies of science and a bold reconsideration of rhetoric and dialectic more broadly, this book addresses contemporary questions in philosophy, rhetoric, history of science, literary criticism, and cognitive science.
Carolyn Johnsen
"The American Public. Government, and the news media continually grapple with myriad policy issues related to science and technology. Those issues include global warming, energy, stem-cell research, health care childhood autism, food safety, and genetics, to name but a few, When the public is informed on such topics, chances improve for reasoned policy decisions. Journalists have typically bridged the gap between scientists and the public, but the times now call for more engagement from the experts. The authors and engineers should shake off their ivory-tower reticence and take science to the people." "Taking Science to the People calls on scientists and engineers to polish their writing and Speaking skills in order to communicate more clearly about their work to the public, policy makers, and reporters who cover science. The authors represent a range of experience and authority, including distinguished scientists who write well about science, federal official who communicate to Congress about science and science journalists who weigh in with their own expertise, In this long-overdue volume, scientists, engineers, and journalists will find both a convincing rationale for communicating well about science and many practical methods for doing so."--BOOK JACKET.
Sylvia Boorstein
Explores the relationship between Jewish and Buddhist traditions and discusses the reasons why some Jews are drawn to Buddhism and become practicing Buddhists.