The book provides a deep account of the use of computational thinking (CT) skills in education, with a focus on individual, social and cultural elements, and dives into issues foregrounding CT skills. Although the chapters of the book provide important educational and practical implications for the reader, methodological choices and the lack of theoretical connections of CT concepts curtail the use of CT skills in education, from a constructionist view.

When the whole is greater than the sum of the parts--indeed, so great that the sum far transcends the parts and represents something utterly new and different--we call that phenomenon emergence. When the chemicals diffusing in the primordial waters came together to form the first living cell, that was emergence. When the activities of the neurons in the brain result in mind, that too is emergence. In The Emergence of Everything, one of the leading scientists involved in the study of (...) complexity, Harold J. Morowitz, takes us on a sweeping tour of the universe, a tour with 28 stops, each one highlighting a particularly important moment of emergence. For instance, Morowitz illuminates the emergence of the stars, the birth of the elements and of the periodic table, and the appearance of solar systems and planets. We look at the emergence of living cells, animals, vertebrates, reptiles, and mammals, leading to the great apes and the appearance of humanity. He also examines tool making, the evolution of language, the invention of agriculture and technology, and the birth of cities. And as he offers these insights into the evolutionary unfolding of our universe, our solar system, and life itself, Morowitz also seeks out the nature of God in the emergent universe, the God posited by Spinoza, Bruno, and Einstein, a God Morowitz argues we can know through a study of the laws of nature. Written by one of our wisest scientists, The Emergence of Everything offers a fascinating new way to look at the universe and the natural world, and it makes an important contribution to the dialogue between science and religion. (shrink)

Harold Tarrant here explores ancient attempts to interpret Plato's writings, by philosophers who spoke a Greek close to Plato's own, and provides a fresh, ...

Revolutionizing received opinion of Taoism's origins in light of historic new discoveries, Harold D. Roth has uncovered China's oldest mystical text--the original expression of Taoist philosophy--and presents it here with a complete translation and commentary. Over the past twenty-five years, documents recovered from the tombs of China's ancient elite have sparked a revolution in scholarship about early Chinese thought, in particular the origins of Taoist philosophy and religion. In _Original Tao,_ Harold D. Roth exhumes the seminal text of (...) Taoism--_Inward Training (Nei-yeh)_--not from a tomb but from the pages of the _Kuan Tzu,_ a voluminous text on politics and economics in which this mystical tract had been "buried" for centuries. _Inward Training_ is composed of short poetic verses devoted to the practice of breath meditation, and to the insights about the nature of human beings and the form of the cosmos derived from this practice. In its poetic form and tone, the work closely resembles the _Tao-te Ching_; moreover, it clearly evokes Taoism's affinities to other mystical traditions, notably aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism. Roth argues that _Inward Training_ is the foundational text of early Taoism and traces the book to the mid-fourth century B.C. (the late Warring States period in China). These verses contain the oldest surviving expressions of a method for mystical "inner cultivation," which Roth identifies as the basis for all early Taoist texts, including the _Chuang Tzu_ and the world-renowned _Tao-te Ching._ With these historic discoveries, he reveals the possibility of a much deeper continuity between early "philosophical" Taoism and the later Taoist religion than scholars had previously suspected. _Original Tao_ contains an elegant and luminous complete translation of the original text. Roth's comprehensive analysis explains what _Inward Training_ meant to the people who wrote it, how this work came to be "entombed" within the _Kuan Tzu,_ and why the text was largely overlooked after the early Han period. (shrink)

Revolutionizing received opinion of Taoism's origins in light of historic new discoveries, Harold D. Roth has uncovered China's oldest mystical text -- the original expression of Taoist philosophy -- and presents it here with a complete translation and commentary. Over the past twenty-five years, documents recovered from the tombs of China's ancient elite have sparked a revolution in scholarship about early Chinese thought, in particular the origins of Taoist philosophy and religion. In _Original Tao,_ Harold D. Roth exhumes (...) the seminal text of Taoism -- _Inward Training _ -- not from a tomb but from the pages of the _Kuan Tzu,_ a voluminous text on politics and economics in which this mystical tract had been "buried" for centuries. _Inward Training_ is composed of short poetic verses devoted to the practice of breath meditation, and to the insights about the nature of human beings and the form of the cosmos derived from this practice. In its poetic form and tone, the work closely resembles the _Tao-te Ching_; moreover, it clearly evokes Taoism's affinities to other mystical traditions, notably aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism. Roth argues that _Inward Training_ is the foundational text of early Taoism and traces the book to the mid-fourth century B.C.. These verses contain the oldest surviving expressions of a method for mystical "inner cultivation," which Roth identifies as the basis for all early Taoist texts, including the _Chuang Tzu_ and the world-renowned _Tao-te Ching._ With these historic discoveries, he reveals the possibility of a much deeper continuity between early "philosophical" Taoism and the later Taoist religion than scholars had previously suspected. _Original Tao_ contains an elegant and luminous complete translation of the original text. Roth's comprehensive analysis explains what _Inward Training_ meant to the people who wrote it, how this work came to be "entombed" within the _Kuan Tzu,_ and why the text was largely overlooked after the early Han period. (shrink)

Analyzes the development of art during the past decade paying special attention to the works of Mondrian, Arp, Newman, and Dubuffet.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Interpretation, Constraint, and the Prospects of Scientific Realism I explore the interaction between theory-based interpretations of scientific evidence and constraints on theories provided by that evidence. Interpretation is often viewed as a source of error and a reason for scepticism about scientific results. But, I argue, while interpretation does generate epistemic risk, it also points to new sources of evidence that can constrain our theories. This is especially clear in the development of instrumentation that increases the range of our interactions (...) with nature. While the design of such instruments and the interpretation of their outputs are deeply dependent on theory-based interpretations, these outputs can still challenge those very theories. At the same time, theory-guided instrumentation provides us access to aspects of nature that we cannot study with our unaided senses. This access allows us to extend the range of evidence that we collect, and thus increases the constraints on our theories. As a result, theory-guided evidence collection has a positive impact on the prospects of scientific realism since these increasing constraints on our theories provide our only reason for thinking that we may be approaching the development of true theories. (shrink)

Laski, Harold J. The Foundations of Sovereignty and Other Essays.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Another title in the reissued Oxford Classic Texts in the Physical Sciences series, Jeffrey's Theory of Probability, first published in 1939, was the first to develop a fundamental theory of scientific inference based on the ideas of Bayesian statistics. His ideas were way ahead of their time and it is only in the past ten years that the subject of Bayes' factors has been significantly developed and extended. Until recently the two schools of statistics were distinctly different and set apart. (...) Recent work has changed all that and today's graduate students and researchers all require an understanding of Bayesian ideas. This book is their starting point. (shrink)

Coincidence comes in two varieties – permanent and temporary. Moderate monism is the position that permanent coincidence, but not temporary coincidence, entails identity. Extreme monism is the position that even temporary coincidence entails identity. Pluralists are opponents of monism tout court. The intuitively obvious, commonsensical position is moderate monism. It is therefore important to see if it can be sustained.

The paper discusses the arguments for and against animalism and concludes that a pluralist position which rejects animalism and embraces a multiplicity of thinkers is the best option.

The 2017 codetection of electromagnetic radiation and gravitational waves was the first of its kind and marked the beginning of multimessenger astronomy. But this event has been treated within recent literature as something of an end as well. The 2017 detection is often regarded as an instance of falsification for all theories of modified gravity which postulate gravitational waves propagate along separate geodesics from electromagnetic radiation, perhaps most notably Jacob Bekenstein’s Tensor-Vector-Scalar gravity. I critically examine this explicit endorsement of falsification (...) by astronomers and astrophysicists. While the current state of multimetric modified gravity theories is dim, recent developments in multimessenger observation do not offer a deductive falsification. Rather such evidence should be regarded as a corroboration of the null hypothesis, following Deborah Mayo's error-statistical account. (shrink)

This book explores the thought of Jacques Derrida as it relates to the tradition of apophatic thought--negative theology and philosophy--in both Western and Eastern traditions. Following the Introduction by Toby Foshay, two of Derrida's essays on negative theology, Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy and How to Avoid Speaking: Denials, are reprinted here. These are followed by essays from a Western perspective by Mark C. Taylor and Michel Despland, and essays from an Eastern perspective by David Loy, a (...) Buddhist, and Harold Coward, a Hindu. In the Conclusion, Jacques Derrida responds to these discussions. (shrink)

BEGINNING with G. E. M. Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy" in 1958, various critics--e.g., Frankena, Foot, MacIntyre, and Murdock--have, to one extent or another, expressed dissatisfaction with the condition of modern moral philosophy. Prior to this round of critiques, H. A. Prichard in 1912 asked the question "Is Moral Philosophy Based on a Mistake?" in an essay of that title in Mind. One finds precedent for these expressions of discontent with the ground rules of moral philosophy in both Aristotle and Kant, (...) two thinkers whose reformulations of the questions and procedures of ethics proved seminal for the discipline. Even neglecting other important developments in contemporary moral philosophy, the diversity and rigour of these critiques alone suggest that the prognosis for the discipline of ethics is quite favorable. Philosophy in at least one of its dimensions has recovered that self-reflective attentiveness that marks its most productive phases. So it is that several of these contemporary critiques raise the suspicion that what is wrong with moral philosophy is that it operates outside of a context in terms of which talk about moral laws or moral goods would be intelligible. Our contemporary situation can thus be contrasted with, for example, that of Aristotle for whom a discussion of "magnificence" was firmly rooted in an Athenian context in terms of which an argument over the merits of that particular virtue might be resolved. Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue brings this line of reflection into sharp new focus with a series of illuminating discussions concerning the role of the virtues both in the history of moral practices and in the logic of moral argument. In general, MacIntyre tries to show that "contemporary moral debate is interminable" ; that is, he tries to show why, given the nature of contemporary moral philosophy, there is "no rational way of securing moral agreement". Because I believe MacIntyre is successful in his demonstration, I shall, in this paper, take that demonstration for granted and try to construct a set of arguments designed to show how, in terms of a universally accessible paradigmatic character, we have at hand a way of avoiding the "interminable" regress of moral debate. Thus although my argument is derivative to MacIntyre's diagnosis and dependent, in part, upon his treatment of the concept of virtue, the proposal I develop here for the resolution of moral arguments is, sadly to say, somewhat at odds with his own. (shrink)