The Plausibility Of Life

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The Plausibility of Life

Author : Marc W. Kirschner,John C. Gerhart
Publisher : Yale University Press
Page : 330 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2005-10-19
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780300128673

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The Plausibility of Life by Marc W. Kirschner,John C. Gerhart Pdf

Two biologists tackle the unresolved question in the field of evolution: how have living organisms on Earth developed with such variety and complexity? In the 150 years since Darwin, the field of evolutionary biology has left a glaring gap in understanding how animals developed their astounding variety and complexity. The standard answer has been that small genetic mutations accumulate over time to produce wondrous innovations such as eyes and wings. Drawing on cutting-edge research across the spectrum of modern biology, Marc Kirschner and John Gerhart demonstrate how this stock answer is woefully inadequate. Rather they offer an original solution to the longstanding puzzle of how small random genetic change can be converted into complex, useful innovations. In a new theory they call “facilitated variation,” Kirschner and Gerhart elevate the individual organism from a passive target of natural selection to a central player in the 3-billion-year history of evolution. In clear, accessible language, the authors invite every reader to contemplate daring new ideas about evolution. By closing the major gap in Darwin’s theory Kirschner and Gerhart also provide a timely scientific rebuttal to modern critics of evolution who champion “intelligent design.” “Makes for informative and enjoyable reading, and the issues the authors raise are worthy of attention.”—American Scientist “Thought-provoking and lucidly written…The Plausibility of Life will help readers understand not just the plausibility of evolution, but its remarkable, inventive powers.”—Sean Carroll, author of Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo

Same-Sex Attraction and the Church

Author : Ed Shaw
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
Page : 177 pages
File Size : 53,5 Mb
Release : 2015-11-09
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780830899791

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Same-Sex Attraction and the Church by Ed Shaw Pdf

The Gospel Coalition Top Books of 2015 in Christian Living Tim Challies' Top Books of 2015 ProdigalThought.net's Top Reads of 2015 Leadership Journal's Best Ministry Books of the Year When Christians have same-sex attraction, how should the church respond? Pastor Ed Shaw experiences same-sex attraction, and yet he is committed to Scripture and the church's traditional position of fidelity in heterosexual marriage and celibacy in singleness. In this honest book, he shares his pain in dealing with these issues, but at the same time shows us that obedience to Jesus is ultimately the only way to experience life to the full. He shows that the Bible's teaching seems unreasonable not because of its difficulties, but because of missteps that the church has often taken in its understanding of the Christian life. We have been shaped by the world around us and urgently need to re-examine the values that drive our discipleship. Only by doing this in the light of the Bible can we make sense of its call on the lives of those who are attracted to their own sex.

The Plausibility of Future Scenarios

Author : Ricarda Schmidt-Scheele
Publisher : transcript Verlag
Page : 265 pages
File Size : 43,8 Mb
Release : 2020-07-31
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783839453193

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The Plausibility of Future Scenarios by Ricarda Schmidt-Scheele Pdf

What does plausibility mean in relation to scenario planning and how do users of scenarios assess it? Despite the concept's ubiquity, its epistemological and empirical foundations remain unexplored in previous research. Ricarda Schmidt-Scheele offers an interdisciplinary perspective: she presents approaches from philosophy of sciences, cognitive psychology, narrative theory and linguistics, and tests key hypotheses in an experimental study. A conceptual map lays out indicators for scenario plausibility and explains how assessments vary across scenario methods. This helps researchers and practitioners to better understand the implications of their methodological choices in scenario development.

The Persuasive Christian Parent

Author : Mike D'Virgilio
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 276 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2020-09-13
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9798685909893

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The Persuasive Christian Parent by Mike D'Virgilio Pdf

Readers of The Persuasive Christian Parent will learn: - Why parents are the most important influence in their children's lives- That truth should be a consistent topic of conversation with our children- That parents can have confidence in Christian truth and teach that to their kids- Why plausibility is important to a confident faith- How Christianity explains reality far more powerfully than anything else- How a hostile, secular culture can strengthen their children's faithBecause of this hostile, secular culture, many Christian parents fear for their children's faith. The Persuasive Christian Parent offers a powerful panacea to this crisis of confidence with nine foundational concepts parents can teach their children, building in them an enduring, lifelong faith. God has provided Christians everything they need to successfully defend their faith to themselves, and their children. As you engage the arguments in The Persuasive Christian Parent, you will be able to provide answers to the tough questions that daily confront children and parents alike.

My Book of Life By Angel

Author : Martine Leavitt
Publisher : Groundwood Books Ltd
Page : 258 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2012-08-22
Category : Young Adult Fiction
ISBN : 9781554983179

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My Book of Life By Angel by Martine Leavitt Pdf

Winner of the CLA Young Adult Book Award, selected for the CCBC Choices List, selected for the Bankstreet College of Education's Best Children’s Books of the Year 2013, and honoured with the Horn Book Fanfare It starts when Call sees sixteen-year-old Angel stealing shoes at the mall. He just buys her Chinese food at first, but before long Call is supplying her with "candy" and saying he loves her. Angel ends up living with him and walking the Kiddy Stroll in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside -- a neighbourhood with a reputation for being the poorest postal code in the country, with one of the highest rates of HIV infection in the world. When Angel's best friend Serena goes missing, Angel starts to pay attention to the stories of other girls who have disappeared, and a mysterious Mr. P. who drives a van with tinted windows. But Call tells her she's crazy to worry, and the police turn a blind eye. And Angel remains trapped in her street life. Then Call brings home another girl. Her name is Melli, and she is just eleven years old, and suddenly Angel realizes what she must do. Save Melli at any cost, and perhaps save herself at the same time. This is a long-awaited new novel from Governor General's Award nominee and National Book Award finalist Martine Leavitt, who has created an unforgettable protagonist in the feisty and fragile Angel. Through her eyes, and in a haunting, startling verse narrative, we see Angel's life on the street and root for her as she tries to find a way out of violence and despair. Meticulously researched, this is a beautifully written, harrowing but ultimately redemptive story told with grace, wit, compassion and deep respect for the missing women -- the "Eastside angels" to whom the book is dedicated.

Handbook of Imagination and Mental Simulation

Author : Keith D. Markman,William M. P. Klein,Julie A. Suhr
Publisher : Psychology Press
Page : 811 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2012-09-10
Category : Psychology
ISBN : 9781136678097

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Handbook of Imagination and Mental Simulation by Keith D. Markman,William M. P. Klein,Julie A. Suhr Pdf

Over the past thirty years, and particularly within the last ten years, researchers in the areas of social psychology, cognitive psychology, clinical psychology, and neuroscience have been examining fascinating questions regarding the nature of imagination and mental simulation – the imagination and generation of alternative realities. Some of these researchers have focused on the specific processes that occur in the brain when an individual is mentally simulating an action or forming a mental image, whereas others have focused on the consequences of mental simulation processes for affect, cognition, motivation, and behavior. This Handbook provides a novel and stimulating integration of work on imagination and mental simulation from a variety of perspectives. It is the first broad-based volume to integrate specific sub-areas such as mental imagery, imagination, thought flow, narrative transportation, fantasizing, and counterfactual thinking, which have, until now, been treated by researchers as disparate and orthogonal lines of inquiry. As such, the volume enlightens psychologists to the notion that a wide-range of mental simulation phenomena may actually share a commonality of underlying processes.

Mating

Author : Norman Rush
Publisher : Vintage
Page : 498 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 1992-09-01
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780679737094

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Mating by Norman Rush Pdf

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • Is love between equals possible? This modern classic is a delightful intellectual love story that explores the deepest canyons of romantic love even as it asks large questions about society, geopolitics, and the mystery of what men and women really want. “Luminous…Few books evoke the state of love at its apogee.” —The New York Times Book Review “The best rendering of erotic politics…since D.H. Lawrence…The voice of Rush’s narrator is immediate, instructive and endearing.” —The New York Review of Books The narrator of this splendidly expansive novel of high intellect and grand passion is an American anthropologist at loose ends in the South African republic of Botswana. She has a noble and exacting mind, a compelling waist, and a busted thesis project. She also has a yen for Nelson Denoon, a charismatic intellectual who is rumored to have founded a secretive and unorthodox utopian society in a remote corner of the Kalahari—one in which he is virtually the only man. What ensues is an exhilarating quest and an exuberant comedy of manners: “A dryly comic love story about grown-up people who take the life of the mind seriously.” —Newsweek

Good Enough

Author : Daniel S. Milo
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2019
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780674504622

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Good Enough by Daniel S. Milo Pdf

Philosopher Daniel Milo offers a vigorous critique of the quasi-monopoly that Darwin's natural selection has on our idea of the natural world. In popular thought, Darwinism has even acquired the trappings of an ethical system, focused on optimization, competition, and innovation. Yet in nature, imperfect creatures often have the evolutionary edge.

The Evidence for Evolution

Author : Alan R. Rogers
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 128 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2011-06-01
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9780226723853

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The Evidence for Evolution by Alan R. Rogers Pdf

According to polling data, most Americans doubt that evolution is a real phenomenon. And it’s no wonder that so many are skeptical: many of today’s biology courses and textbooks dwell on the mechanisms of evolution—natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow—but say little about the evidence that evolution happens at all. How do we know that species change? Has there really been enough time for evolution to operate? With The Evidence for Evolution, Alan R. Rogers provides an elegant, straightforward text that details the evidence for evolution. Rogers covers different levels of evolution, from within-species changes, which are much less challenging to see and believe, to much larger ones, say, from fish to amphibian, or from land mammal to whale. For each case, he supplies numerous lines of evidence to illustrate the changes, including fossils, DNA, and radioactive isotopes. His comprehensive treatment stresses recent advances in knowledge but also recounts the give and take between skeptical scientists who first asked “how can we be sure” and then marshaled scientific evidence to attain certainty. The Evidence for Evolution is a valuable addition to the literature on evolution and will be essential to introductory courses in the life sciences.

Mind and Cosmos

Author : Thomas Nagel
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 141 pages
File Size : 46,7 Mb
Release : 2012-11-22
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199919758

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Mind and Cosmos by Thomas Nagel Pdf

The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.

Purposeful Sexuality

Author : Ed Shaw
Publisher : Inter-Varsity Press
Page : 53 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2021-01-21
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9781789743111

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Purposeful Sexuality by Ed Shaw Pdf

If God means for us to save sex for marriage, why doesn't he just zap us with sexuality on our wedding night? Why do most of us experience sexual feelings throughout our adult lives, not just in the safe confines of marriage? Is limiting marriage to the union of a man and a woman anything but outdated prejudice? What is our sexuality actually for? Today's culture overwhelmingly tells us that sex is essential for human flourishing. Far too often the church perpetuates the same message - as long as you are married. But far from being liberating, this idolising of sex leaves us even more sexually broken than before. With refreshing honesty and clarity, Ed Shaw calls on the church to rediscover its confidence in the Bible's teaching about our ability to experience or express sexual feelings. He points us to how God's word reveals that sexuality's ultimate purpose is to help us better know God and the full power of his passionate love. He shows us how this is surprisingly good news for all our joys and struggles with sexuality.

Pleasure and the Good Life

Author : Fred Feldman
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2004-03-25
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199265169

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Pleasure and the Good Life by Fred Feldman Pdf

Since ancient times, hedonism has been one of the most attractive and controversial theories. In this text, the author presents a careful, modern formulation of hedonism, defending the theory against some of the most important objections.

Evolution in Four Dimensions, revised edition

Author : Eva Jablonka,Marion J. Lamb
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 577 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2014-03-21
Category : Science
ISBN : 9780262525848

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Evolution in Four Dimensions, revised edition by Eva Jablonka,Marion J. Lamb Pdf

A pioneering proposal for a pluralistic extension of evolutionary theory, now updated to reflect the most recent research. This new edition of the widely read Evolution in Four Dimensions has been revised to reflect the spate of new discoveries in biology since the book was first published in 2005, offering corrections, an updated bibliography, and a substantial new chapter. Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb's pioneering argument proposes that there is more to heredity than genes. They describe four “dimensions” in heredity—four inheritance systems that play a role in evolution: genetic, epigenetic (or non-DNA cellular transmission of traits), behavioral, and symbolic (transmission through language and other forms of symbolic communication). These systems, they argue, can all provide variations on which natural selection can act. Jablonka and Lamb present a richer, more complex view of evolution than that offered by the gene-based Modern Synthesis, arguing that induced and acquired changes also play a role. Their lucid and accessible text is accompanied by artist-physician Anna Zeligowski's lively drawings, which humorously and effectively illustrate the authors' points. Each chapter ends with a dialogue in which the authors refine their arguments against the vigorous skepticism of the fictional “I.M.” (for Ipcha Mistabra—Aramaic for “the opposite conjecture”). The extensive new chapter, presented engagingly as a dialogue with I.M., updates the information on each of the four dimensions—with special attention to the epigenetic, where there has been an explosion of new research. Praise for the first edition “With courage and verve, and in a style accessible to general readers, Jablonka and Lamb lay out some of the exciting new pathways of Darwinian evolution that have been uncovered by contemporary research.” —Evelyn Fox Keller, MIT, author of Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines “In their beautifully written and impressively argued new book, Jablonka and Lamb show that the evidence from more than fifty years of molecular, behavioral and linguistic studies forces us to reevaluate our inherited understanding of evolution.” —Oren Harman, The New Republic “It is not only an enjoyable read, replete with ideas and facts of interest but it does the most valuable thing a book can do—it makes you think and reexamine your premises and long-held conclusions.” —Adam Wilkins, BioEssays

His Whole Life

Author : Elizabeth Hay
Publisher : McClelland & Stewart
Page : 304 pages
File Size : 51,9 Mb
Release : 2015-08-11
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 9780771038617

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His Whole Life by Elizabeth Hay Pdf

Finalist for the 2016 Ottawa Book Award for Fiction From the #1 nationally bestselling, Giller Prize-winning author of Late Nights on Air and Alone in the Classroom, comes an irresistible new novel that has everything we would hope for from this celebrated author -- and more. Starting with something as simple as a boy who wants a dog, His Whole Life takes us into a richly intimate world where everything that matters to him is at risk: family, nature, home. At the outset ten-year-old Jim and his Canadian mother and American father are on a journey from New York City to a lake in eastern Ontario during the last hot days of August. What unfolds is a completely enveloping story that spans a few pivotal years of his youth. Moving from city to country, summer to winter, wellbeing to illness, the novel charts the deepening bond between mother and son even as the family comes apart. Set in the mid-1990s, when Quebec is on the verge of leaving Canada, this captivating novel is an unconventional coming of age story as only Elizabeth Hay could tell it. It draws readers in with its warmth, wisdom, its vivid sense of place, its searching honesty, and nuanced portrait of the lives of one family and those closest to it. Hay explores the mystery of how members of a family can hurt each other so deeply, and remember those hurts in such detail, yet find openings that shock them with love and forgiveness. This is vintage Elizabeth Hay at the height of her powers.

Divine Action and Natural Selection

Author : Joseph Seckbach
Publisher : World Scientific
Page : 1122 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2009
Category : Science
ISBN : 9789812834355

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Divine Action and Natural Selection by Joseph Seckbach Pdf

The debate between divine action, or faith, and natural selection, or science, is garnering tremendous interest. This book ventures well beyond the usual, contrasting American Protestant and atheistic points of view, and also includes the perspectives of Jews, Muslims, and Roman Catholics. It contains arguments from the various proponents of intelligent design, creationism, and Darwinism, and also covers the sensitive issue of how to incorporate evolution into the secondary school biology curriculum. Comprising contributions from prominent, award-winning authors, the book also contains dialogs following each chapter to provide extra stimulus to the readers and a full picture of this OC hotOCO topic, which delves into the fundamentals of science and religion."