The undeniable utility and advance of technology is encouraging a conviction that science is following a path of "natural development"; in other words that science stands above human concerns and exerts ultimate authority over all aspects of life and all other fields of inquiry. Fast-moving developments in fields such as genetics, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology and artificial intelligence are leading many to question long-held beliefs that we have entertained about the human condition. A consequence of this naturalism is the marginalization of art and an indifference to history and politics, which are seen as distractions from the main business of science. There is an urgent need to properly demarcate the domain of science and re-establish the centrality of moral and aesthetic understandings. Belief that the mind can be reduced to the brain is dispelled by the notion that reality is gained through the exercise of our imaginations. Wallace Stevens rightly appeals to "reality as a thing seen by the mind, not to that which is, but that which is apprehended."
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From the Author:
In "When Science is Silent", I explore the limitations of scientific investigations into the human condition and propose an alternative to methodological naturalism. Many people fear that our confident rationality is masking our alienation from the material universe that science has uncovered and they are crying out for a new type of philosophical synthesis, integrating the world of science and the world of the arts and humanities. In this polemical work, quoting poetry at every opportunity, I attack functional and statistical explanations of social life. I eshew detailed academic analysis and approach the subject as a worried observer of the general intellectual climate in which we find ourselves.
About the Author:
Born in the UK, Andrew Langridge currently lives in Norway with his family, and has been a geophysical scientist in the oil industry for 20 years. He has a long-standing interest in philosophical issues, especially with regard to the status of scientific knowledge.
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