The renowned Nobel Prize-winning scientist's elegant and concise explanation of the fundamental ideas in biology and their uses today. Hailed by Philip Pullman as "a great communicator" who is also "as distinguished a scientist as there could be," Paul Nurse writes with delight at life's richness and a sense of the urgent role of biology in our time. With What Is Life? he delivers a brief but powerful work of popular science in the vein of Carlo Rovelli's Seven Brief Lessons (...) in Physics. Nurse takes readers on a wondrous journey through five fundamental biological ideas-the Cell, the Gene, Evolution by Natural Selection, Life as Chemistry, and Life as Information-introducing the scientists who made the most important advances and taking us into his own lab to give us a sense of the thrill of scientific discovery. In a final chapter, Nurse addresses biology's most pressing ethical issues (including gene-editing, genetic testing, and genetically modified crops), and he concludes with a stirring encomium to biology's role in tackling infectious disease. (shrink)

Life is all around us, abundant and diverse, it is extraordinary. But what does it actually mean to be alive? Nobel prize-winner Paul Nurse has spent his career revealing how living cells work. In this book, he takes up the challenge of defining life in a way that every reader can understand. It is a shared journey of discovery; step by step he illuminates five great ideas that underpin biology. He traces the roots of his own curiosity and knowledge to (...) reveal how science works, both now and in the past. Using his personal experiences, in and out of the lab, he shares with us the challenges, the lucky breaks, and the thrilling eureka moments of discovery. To survive the challenges that face the human race today - from climate change, to pandemics, loss of biodiversity and food security - it is vital that we all understand what life is. (shrink)

Employs philosophy to help illuminate the nature of nursing and provide a holistic view of both nursing and persons.

This paper outlines the background and significance of philosophy of technology as a focus of inquiry emerging within nursing scholarship and research. The thesis of the paper is that philosophy of technology and nursing is fundamental to discipline development and our role in enhancing health care. It is argued that we must further our responsibility and interest in critiquing current and future health care systems through philosophical inquiry into the experience, meaning and implications of technology. This (...) paper locates nurses as important contributors to the use and integration of health care technology and identifies nursing as a discipline that can provide specific insights into the health experience of individuals, cultures and societies. Nurses are encouraged to undertake further examination of epistemological, ontological and ethical challenges to arise from technology as a focus of philosophical inquiry. The advancement of philosophy of technology and nursing will make a profound contribution to inquiry into the experience of technology, the needs of humanity and the development of appropriate health care. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this article, I indicate how the naturalized and individualized conception of disability that prevails in philosophy informs the indifference of philosophers to the predictable COVID-19 tragedy that has unfolded in nursing homes, supported living centers, psychiatric institutions, and other institutions in which elders and younger disabled people are placed. I maintain that, insofar as feminist and other discourses represent these institutions as sites of care and love, they enact structural gaslighting. I argue, therefore, that philosophers must (...) engage in conceptual engineering with respect to how disability and these institutions are understood and represented. To substantiate my argument, I trace the sequence of catastrophic events that have occurred in nursing homes in Canada and in the Canadian province of Ontario in particular during the pandemic, tying these events to other past and current eugenic practices produced in the Canadian context. The crux of the article is that the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown into vivid relief the carceral character of nursing homes and other congregate settings in which elders and younger disabled people are confined. -/- KEYWORDS carceral, conceptual engineering, nursing home-industrial-complex, philosophy of disability, structural gaslighting. (shrink)

Philosophy has a complicated relationship with nursing practice. Selected concepts from Hans‐Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method specifically prejudice, conversation, and language are articulated. An exemplar involving nursing practice at an outpatient clinic for women seeking pre‐ and postbreast cancer care is offered to explicate these concepts. We considered the fit of Gadamer's philosophy, particularly the concept of conversation, within a public health nursing practice context in home and community settings of the client/family and offered tentative (...) conclusions. To extend the discussion of the relationship between philosophy and nursing practice, we posed questions developed to provide deeper insight into this complicated relationship. (shrink)

‘It comes together at the end’: the impact of a one‐year subject in Nursing Inquiry on philosophies of nursingThis paper reframes an interpretive study as critical inquiry as the researchers interrogate their roles and authority in the ‘reading’ of what is valued as reflective. Working from data collected in written philosophies and interviews within the context of a one‐year subject aimed at developing reflective practice and an appreciation of ways of knowing, this paper examines the change in philosophies of (...) nursing perceived by three university‐based educators and their students. The study reveals a growing appreciation of the complexity of nursing but a limited consideration of the dialectic of critical theorising and everyday engagement necessary to critical reflection and reconstruction of action. More importantly, the process of research collaboration raises questions of the soul‐searching necessary for university educators to act against the institutionalised political context that determines what is seen to be of value in student learning. (shrink)

The ontological foundation of the modern world view based on irreconcilable dichotomies has held hegemonic status since the dawn of the scientific revolution. The post‐modern critique has exposed the inadequacies of the modern perspective and challenged the potential for any narrative to adequately ground a vision for the future. This paper proposes that the philosophy of Beatrice Bruteau can support a foundation for a visionary world view consistent with nursing's respect for human dignity and societal health. The author (...) discusses the key concepts of Bruteau's perspective on societal evolution based on an integrated study of science, mathematics, religion, and philosophy. This perspective is discussed as a foundation to move beyond the dichotomous influence of the modern world view and the deconstructive critique of the post‐modern perspective. The author suggests spiritual evolution and a participatory consciousness as an ontological foundation for a cosmology congruent with nursing's social mandate. (shrink)

North American society has undergone a period of sacralization where ideas of spirituality have increasingly been infused into the public domain. This sacralization is particularly evident in the nursing discourse where it is common to find claims about the nature of persons as inherently spiritual, about what a spiritually healthy person looks like and about the environment as spiritually energetic and interconnected. Nursing theoretical thinking has also used claims about the nature of persons, health, and the environment to (...) attempt to establish a unified ontology for the discipline. However, despite this common ground, there has been little discussion about the intersections between nursing philosophic thinking and the spirituality in nursing discourse, or about the challenges of adopting a common view of these claims within a spiritually pluralist society. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the call for ontological unity within nursing philosophic thinking in the context of the sacralization of a diverse society. I will begin with a discussion of secularization and sacralization, illustrating the diversity of beliefs and experiences that characterize the current trend towards sacralization. I will then discuss the challenges of a unified ontological perspective, or closed world view, for this diversity, using examples from both a naturalistic and a unitary perspective. I will conclude by arguing for a unified approach within nursing ethics rather than nursing ontology. (shrink)

Nursing practice in correctional settings is ethically unique. Its premise is the contradiction between causing harm (the purpose of imprisonment) and acting for patients’ good (the purpose of health care). I describe three ethical regions in which correctional nurses can practise, based on different philosophies: punishment as retribution, as rationality, and as paradox. Retribution and rationality resolve the ethical contradiction by relegating offenders to intractable otherness. Restorative nursing based on paradox is an oppositional practice that preserves the contradiction, (...) making engagement possible between prisoner and nurse. Endorsement by nursing of one of the three philosophies of punishment could redefine care for the entire profession. (shrink)