"This book is a hymn to the hand. In Prehension, Colin McGinn links questions from science to philosophical concerns to consider something that we take for granted: the importance of the hand in everything we do. Drawing on evolutionary biology, anatomy, archaeology, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, among other disciplines, McGinn examines the role of the hand in shaping human evolution…
"In this book, Colin McGinn presents a concise, clear, and compelling argument that the origins of knowledge are innate that nativism, not empiricism, is correct in its theory of how concepts are acquired. McGinn considers the particular case of sensible qualities ideas of color, shape, taste, and so on. He argues that these, which he once regarded as the strongest case for the empiricist posit…
"The Department of Defense and the military continually grapple with complex scientific, engineering, and technological problems. Defense systems analysis offers a way to reach a clearer understanding of how to approach and think about complex problems. It guides analysts in defining the question, capturing previous work in the area, assessing the principal issues, and understanding how they ar…
An argument that draws on empirical findings in psychology to offer a blueprint for cultivating a widespread commitment to public reason.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
The story of the evolution of the urban freeway, the competing visions that informed it, and the emerging alternatives for more sustainable urban transportation.Urban freeways often cut through the heart of a city, destroying neighborhoods, displacing residents, and reconfiguring street maps. These massive infrastructure projects, costing billions of dollars in transportation funds, have been s…
Philosophical reflections on the environment began with early philosophers' invocation of a cosmology that mixed natural and supernatural phenomena. Today, the central philosophical problem posed by the environment involves not what it can teach us about ourselves and our place in the cosmic order but rather how we can understand its workings in order to make better decisions about our own cond…
Schools do not define education, and they are not the only institutions in which learning takes place. After-school programs, music lessons, Scouts, summer camps, on-the-job training, and home activities all offer out-of-school educational experiences. In "Learning at Not-School," Julian Sefton-Green explores studies and scholarly research on out-of-school learning, investigating just what it i…
"How will low-income communities be affected by the waves of social, economic, political, and cultural change that surround the new information technologies? How can we influence the outcome? This action-oriented book identifies the key issues, explores the evidence, and suggests some answers. Avoiding both utopianism and despair, the book presents the voices of technology enthusiasts and skept…
Papers presented at the Conference on Household Portfolios, held in Florence, Italy, Dec. 17-18, 1999.Theoretical and empirical analysis of the structure of household portfolios.Until recently, researchers in economics and finance paid relatively little attention to household portfolios. Reasons included the tendency of most households to hold simple portfolios, the inability of the dominant as…