"In a post-truth, fake news world, we are particularly susceptible to the claims of pseudoscience. When emotions and opinions are more widely disseminated than scientific findings, and self-proclaimed experts get their expertise from Google, how can the average person distinguish real science from fake? This book examines pseudoscience from a variety of perspectives, through case studies, analy…
OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
The vast differences between the brain's neural circuitry and a computer's silicon circuitry might suggest that they have nothing in common. In fact, as Dana Ballard argues in this book, computational tools are essential for understanding brain function. Ballard shows that the hierarchical organisation of the brain has many parallels with the hierarchical organisation of computing; as in silico…
A new framework for understanding computing: a coherent set of principles spanning technologies, domains, algorithms, architectures, and designs."Computing is usually viewed as a technology field that advances at the breakneck speed of Moore's Law. If we turn away even for a moment, we might miss a game-changing technological breakthrough or an earthshaking theoretical development. This book ta…
"I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. . . . Plastics." This line from the film The Graduate has come to symbolize the hubris, promise, and disappointment embodied in one of the world's most ubiquitous materials. At present, plastics are cheap, widely used, and durable. But that durability means that plastics persist in the environment for decades. Images of swaths of the ocean or …
"In Curious Minds: The Power of Connection, the authors explore what curiosity is and what it can do. Traipsing across the fields of philosophy and neuroscience, literature and network science, they discover that current definitions of curiosity are remarkably limited. Rather than think of curiosity as a drive to acquire new bits of information, they argue that curiosity is a practice of connec…
A new theory about the origins of consciousness that finds learning to be the driving force in the evolutionary transition to basic consciousness. What marked the evolutionary transition from organisms that lacked consciousness to those with consciousness—to minimal subjective experiencing, or, as Aristotle described it, “the sensitive soul”? In this book, Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablo…
How developments in science and technology may enable the emergence of purely digital minds -- intelligent machines equal to or greater in power than the human brain.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
This title presents a philosophical refashioning of the language of thought approach to the nature of the mind, and the related computational theory of mind.OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.
"The Microelectronics Revolution is a comprehensive guide to the silicon chip revolution and its impact on society. The distinguished contributors to this volume explain in turn the origins and nature of microelectronics, the characteristics of the burgeoning microchip industry and the increasing use of microprocessors in everyday products.The book details the impact of this new technology on s…