Science and politics have collaborated throughout human history, and science is repeatedly invoked today in political debates, from pandemic management to climate change. But the relationship between the two is muddled and muddied. Leading policy analyst Geoff Mulgan here calls attention to the growing frictions caused by the expanding authority of science, which sometimes helps politics but often challenges it. He dissects the complex history of states’ use of science for conquest, glory and economic growth and shows the challenges of governing risk – from nuclear weapons to genetic modification, artificial intelligence to synthetic biology. He shows why the governance of science has become one of the biggest challenges of the twenty-first century, ever more prominent in daily politics and policy. Whereas science is ordered around what we know and what is, politics engages what we feel and what matters. How can we reconcile the two, so that crucial decisions are both well informed and legitimate? The book proposes new ways to organize democracy and government, both within nations and at a global scale, to better shape science and technology so that we can reap more of the benefits and fewer of the harms. Also available as an audiobook.

Francis Bacon - a leading figure in the history of science - never made a major discovery, provided a lasting explanation of any physical phenomena or revealed any hidden laws of nature. How then can he rank as he does alongside Newton? Bacon was the first major thinker to describe how science should be done, and to explain why. Scientific knowledge should not be gathered for its own sake but for practical benefit to mankind. And Bacon promoted experimentation, coming to outline and define the rigorous procedures of the 'scientific method' that today from the very bedrock of modern scientific progress. John Henry gives a dramatic account of the background to Bacon's innovations and the sometimes unconventional sources for his ideas. Why was he was so concerned to revolutionize the attitude to scientific knowledge - and why do his ideas for reform still resonate today?

"Have you ever wondered if there is a scientific explanation for phenomena such as miraculous instant healings? Want to learn a simple, rational, step-by-step technique to fill your life with health, wealth, and love? Are you frustrated with all the self-help books and seminars that don't deliver results for you? Did you know that thousands of people around the world are now using the consciousness technology of Theta Healing and experiencing miraculous instant healings and profound life transformations? Where Science Meets Spirit: The Formula for Miracles bridges the gap between the worlds of science and spirituality by presenting the scientific principles used by healers, mystics, self-help gurus, and miracle workers to manipulate and bend the fabric of reality itself."--Page 4 of cover.

• Shares the results of the author’s rigorous, repeatable, and predictable experiments with subtle energy • Shows how the mind interacts with matter by means of subtle energy--the key to the placebo effect, the healing power of affirmations and prayers, and energy medicine • Demonstrates how to harness subtle energy and explains the author’s technology to generate subtle energy formulations with practical applications Instruments of modern physics can measure the energies of the electromagnetic spectrum, but these energies only account for roughly 4 percent of the total identifiable mass-energy of the universe. What makes up the remaining 96%? In this scientifically based yet accessible analysis, Yury Kronn, Ph.D., explores the nature of the remaining 96% of the universe’s mass-energies. Contemporary science calls this massenergy “dark matter,” and the ancients called it life force, prana, or chi. Kronn shows how this subtle energy belongs to the subatomic world and how it follows laws that are fundamentally different from those known to contemporary science. Sharing the results of his rigorous, repeatable, and predictable experiments with subtle energy, the author looks at the possible mechanisms of subtle energy’s interaction with physical matter and with the human body. He shows how the mind interacts with matter by means of subtle energy—giving us the key to understanding the placebo effect and extrasensory perception as well as the healing power of affirmations and energy medicine. Kronn demonstrates how it’s possible to harness subtle energy and explains his development of Vital Force Technology, which integrates ancient knowledge of the life force with modern technology to generate specific subtle energy formulations for practical applications. He presents his experimental results creating subtle energy formulas to positively influence the germination of seeds and the growth of plants. He also demonstrates the possibility of using subtle energy for creating clean and energetic-pollution-free environments for vitality and better healing. Outlining the many benefits of subtle energy technology to individuals, societies, and the planet as a whole, Kronn reveals how the transformative power of subtle energy arises from the vast potential of human consciousness.

Scientists today working on controversial issues from climate change to drought to COVID-19 are finding themselves more often in the middle of deeply traumatizing or polarized conflicts they feel unprepared to referee. It is no longer enough for scientists to communicate a scientific topic clearly. They must now be experts not only in their fields of study, but also in navigating the thoughts, feelings, and opinions of members of the public they engage with, and with each other. And the conversations are growing more fraught. In Getting to the Heart of Science Communication, Faith Kearns has penned a succinct guide for navigating the human relationships critical to the success of practice-based science. This meticulously researched volume takes science communication to the next level, helping scientists to see the value of listening as well as talking, understanding power dynamics in relationships, and addressing the roles of trauma, loss, grief, and healing.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of The Martian, a lone astronaut must save the earth from disaster in this “propulsive” (Entertainment Weekly), cinematic thriller full of suspense, humor, and fascinating science—in development as a major motion picture starring Ryan Gosling. HUGO AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF THE YEAR’S BEST BOOKS: Bill Gates, GatesNotes, New York Public Library, Parade, Newsweek, Polygon, Shelf Awareness, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal • “An epic story of redemption, discovery and cool speculative sci-fi.”—USA Today “If you loved The Martian, you’ll go crazy for Weir’s latest.”—The Washington Post Ryland Grace is the sole survivor on a desperate, last-chance mission—and if he fails, humanity and the earth itself will perish. Except that right now, he doesn’t know that. He can’t even remember his own name, let alone the nature of his assignment or how to complete it. All he knows is that he’s been asleep for a very, very long time. And he’s just been awakened to find himself millions of miles from home, with nothing but two corpses for company. His crewmates dead, his memories fuzzily returning, Ryland realizes that an impossible task now confronts him. Hurtling through space on this tiny ship, it’s up to him to puzzle out an impossible scientific mystery—and conquer an extinction-level threat to our species. And with the clock ticking down and the nearest human being light-years away, he’s got to do it all alone. Or does he? An irresistible interstellar adventure as only Andy Weir could deliver, Project Hail Mary is a tale of discovery, speculation, and survival to rival The Martian—while taking us to places it never dreamed of going.

Elias Canetti’s 1935 novel “Auto-da-Fé” (original German title, “Die Blendung”) has traditionally been difficult to interpret and the author’s intentions in writing it have remained unclear. “Science Meets Literature” argues that “Auto-da-Fé” is a novel about human nature that illustrates the workings of the human mind and some universal aspects of human behavior and human social relationships. Canetti’s insights anticipated later scientific discoveries made by cognitive, social and evolutionary psychology including the existence of “irrational” biases in human cognition (e.g., in perception, beliefs and decision-making); the strengths and limitations of human “theory-of-mind” skills (i.e., our ability to think about other people’s minds and “read” them); the establishment, maintenance and reversal of dominance in social relationships between two individuals; and the role of dehumanization in harmful behavior. Canetti intended to warn against the conviction held by some intellectuals that human nature can be denied, controlled, ignored or dismissed. His approach in “Auto-da-Fé” was an original attempt at the integration of knowledge formation in sciences and humanities. He pointed the way for future successful attempts at the integration of evolution, cognitive science and literature, as well as for the broader integration of sciences and humanities.

In recent years the concept of power has soared to the top of the anthropological agenda, while the concept of culture has been found inadequate in understanding the contemporary world. The purposes of this study are to explain why power has become a central interest in the discipline, to evaluate the explanatory potential of power, to demonstrate how to analyze power in the ethnographic context, and to consider whether the culture concept can be salvaged. In chapter one the process by which the profile of power became elevated as a result of globalization is analyzed; included here is the critique of culture. In chapter two, a broad overview of the conception of power from early political anthropology to key works in philosophy, political science, and political sociology is attempted. Some anthropologists have recently tried to rescue the culture concept; this is the focus of chapter three. Although the argument in this study is that power is fundamentally important, it would be a mistake to think that power is any less ambiguous than culture or any other concept; thus, in chapter four it is shown that for each of 20 major assumptions about power, there is a plausible counter-assumption. Chapter five ties the study together by exploring the debates about power in the context of ethnography. The study ends with a postscript on the terrorist attacks on America of September 11, 2001—a poignant reminder that culture and power sometimes intersect to produce human tragedy on a grand scale.

Discover new theoretical connections between stochastic phenomena and the structure of natural language with this powerful volume! Information Theory Meets Power Laws: Stochastic Processes and Language Models presents readers with a novel subtype of a probabilistic approach to language, which is based on statistical laws of texts and their analysis by means of information theory. The distinguished author insightfully and rigorously examines the linguistic and mathematical subject matter while eschewing needlessly abstract and superfluous constructions. The book begins with a less formal treatment of its subjects in the first chapter, introducing its concepts to readers without mathematical training and allowing those unfamiliar with linguistics to learn the book’s motivations. Despite its inherent complexity, Information Theory Meets Power Laws: Stochastic Processes and Language Models is a surprisingly approachable treatment of idealized mathematical models of human language. The author succeeds in developing some of the theory underlying fundamental stochastic and semantic phenomena, like strong nonergodicity, in a way that has not previously been seriously attempted. In doing so, he covers topics including: Zipf’s and Herdan’s laws for natural language Power laws for information, repetitions, and correlations Markov, finite-state,and Santa Fe processes Bayesian and frequentist interpretations of probability Ergodic decomposition, Kolmogorov complexity, and universal coding Theorems about facts and words Information measures for fields Rényi entropies, recurrence times, and subword complexity Asymptotically mean stationary processes Written primarily for mathematics graduate students and professionals interested in information theory or discrete stochastic processes, Information Theory Meets Power Laws: Stochastic Processes and Language Models also belongs on the bookshelves of doctoral students and researchers in artificial intelligence, computational and quantitative linguistics as well as physics of complex systems.