SUMMARY: This book is If you’ve ever wondered about human behavior, wonder no more. In The Laws of Human Nature, Greene takes a look at 18 laws that reveal who we are and why we do the things we do. Humans are complex beings, but Greene uses these laws to strip human nature down to its bare bones. Every law that he presents is supported by a real-life historical account, with an insightful twist to drive the point home. As you read the book, don’t be surprised if you get the feeling that everyone you know, including yourself, is described in the book! DISCLAIMER: This is an UNOFFICIAL summary and not the original book. It is designed to record all the key points of the original book.

An important and timely recipe for hope for humans and all forms of life Palila v Hawaii. New ZealandÕs Te Urewera Act. Sierra Club v Disney. These legal phrases hardly sound like the makings of a revolution, but beyond the headlines portending environmental catastrophes, a movement of immense import has been building Ñ in courtrooms, legislatures, and communities across the globe. Cultures and laws are transforming to provide a powerful new approach to protecting the planet and the species with whom we share it. Lawyers from California to New York are fighting to gain legal rights for chimpanzees and killer whales, and lawmakers are ending the era of keeping these intelligent animals in captivity. In Hawaii and India, judges have recognized that endangered species Ñ from birds to lions Ñ have the legal right to exist. Around the world, more and more laws are being passed recognizing that ecosystems Ñ rivers, forests, mountains, and more Ñ have legally enforceable rights. And if nature has rights, then humans have responsibilities. In The Rights of Nature, noted environmental lawyer David Boyd tells this remarkable story, which is, at its heart, one of humans as a species finally growing up. Read this book and your world view will be altered forever.

In this groundbreaking book, Adrian Bejan takes the recurring patterns in nature—trees, tributaries, air passages, neural networks, and lightning bolts—and reveals how a single principle of physics, the constructal law, accounts for the evolution of these and many other designs in our world. Everything—from biological life to inanimate systems—generates shape and structure and evolves in a sequence of ever-improving designs in order to facilitate flow. River basins, cardiovascular systems, and bolts of lightning are very efficient flow systems to move a current—of water, blood, or electricity. Likewise, the more complex architecture of animals evolve to cover greater distance per unit of useful energy, or increase their flow across the land. Such designs also appear in human organizations, like the hierarchical “flowcharts” or reporting structures in corporations and political bodies. All are governed by the same principle, known as the constructal law, and configure and reconfigure themselves over time to flow more efficiently. Written in an easy style that achieves clarity without sacrificing complexity, Design in Nature is a paradigm-shifting book that will fundamentally transform our understanding of the world around us.

Presents a systematic, contemporary defence of the natural law outlook in ethics, politics and jurisprudence.

Winner, IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award in Politics/Current Events: A systems theorist and a legal scholar present a new paradigm for protecting our planet. This is the first book to trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science from antiquity to modern times, showing how the two disciplines have always influenced each other—until recently. In the past few decades, science has shifted from seeing the natural world as a kind of cosmic machine best understood by analyzing each cog and sprocket to a systems perspective that views the world as a vast network of fluid communities and studies their dynamic interactions. The concept of ecology exemplifies this approach. But law is stuck in the old mechanistic paradigm: The world is simply a collection of discrete parts, and ownership of these parts is an individual right, protected by the state. Fritjof Capra, physicist, systems theorist, and bestselling author of The Tao of Physics, and distinguished legal scholar Ugo Mattei show that this obsolete worldview has led to overconsumption, pollution, and a general disregard on the part of the powerful for the common good. Capra and Mattei outline the basic concepts and structures of a legal order consistent with the ecological principles that sustain life on Earth that better addresses many of the economic and social crises we face today. This is a visionary reconceptualization of the very foundations of the Western legal system, a kind of Copernican revolution in the law, with profound implications for the future of our planet. “Thoughtful . . . The authors propose a philosophy and jurisprudence that is deeply radical—upending centuries of Western tradition and culture—but possibly crucial to solving looming environmental problems.” —Publishers Weekly

This book exposes the dysfunction of environmental law and offers a transformative approach based on the public trust doctrine. An ancient and enduring principle, the public trust doctrine empowers citizens to protect their inalienable property rights to crucial resources. This book shows how a trust principle can apply from the local to global level to protect the planet.

First published in 1985, D. M. Armstrong's original work on what laws of nature are has continued to be influential in the areas of metaphysics and philosophy of science. Presenting a definitive attack on the sceptical Humean view, that laws are no more than a regularity of coincidence between stances of properties, Armstrong establishes his own theory and defends it concisely and systematically against objections. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Marc Lange, illuminating its continuing importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this influential work is available for a new generation of readers.

Originally published in German in 1936, The Natural Law is the first work to clarify the differences between traditional natural law as represented in the writings of Cicero, Aquinas, and Hooker and the revolutionary doctrines of natural rights espoused by Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. Beginning with the legacies of Greek and Roman life and thought, Rommen traces the natural law tradition to its displacement by legal positivism and concludes with what the author calls "the reappearance" of natural law thought in more recent times. In seven chapters each Rommen explores "The History of the Idea of Natural Law" and "The Philosophy and Content of the Natural Law." In his introduction, Russell Hittinger places Rommen's work in the context of contemporary debate on the relevance of natural law to philosophical inquiry and constitutional interpretation. Heinrich Rommen (1897–1967) taught in Germany and England before concluding his distinguished scholarly career at Georgetown University. Russell Hittinger is William K. Warren Professor of Catholic Studies and Research Professor of Law at the University of Tulsa.

This impressive volume is the first attempt to look at the intertwined histories of natural law and the laws of nature in early modern Europe. These notions became central to jurisprudence and natural philosophy in the seventeenth century; the debates that informed developments in those fields drew heavily on theology and moral philosophy, and vice versa. Historians of science, law, philosophy, and theology from Europe and North America here come together to address these central themes and to consider the question; was the emergence of natural law both in European jurisprudence and natural philosophy merely a coincidence, or did these disciplinary traditions develop within a common conceptual matrix, in which theological, philosophical, and political arguments converged to make the analogy between legal and natural orders compelling. This book will stimulate new debate in the areas of intellectual history and the history of philosophy, as well as the natural and human sciences in general.