Showing titles in Epistemology

Best-selling historian and philosopher Will Durant devoted his entire life to studying the most significant eras, individuals, and achievements of human history. Here is a summation of Durant's work, as he presents the best of world history. Filled with Durant's renowned wit, knowledge, and unique ability to explain events in simple and exciting terms, it is a concise liberal arts education.

What if topology were not about objects, but about transformations? Not about space, but about the conditions under which identity persists? This book invites listeners into a radical rethinking of mathematics—not as a solemn march of proofs, but as a living practice of imaginative stability, structural openness, and conceptual play. Moving through classical theory, unresolved conjectures, and emerging landscapes of abstraction, this work reframes topology as a mode of thought that thrives on deformation, ambiguity, and partial knowledge.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The instant classic about why some ideas thrive, why others die, and how to make your ideas stick. “Anyone interested in influencing others—to buy, to vote, to learn, to diet, to give to charity or to start a revolution—can learn from this book.”—The...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "A dazzling journey across the sciences and humanities in search of deep laws to unite them." —The Wall Street Journal One of our greatest scientists—and the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for On Human Nature and The Ants—gives us a work of visionary importance that...

Over a storied career, Daniel C. Dennett has engaged questions about science and the workings of the mind. His answers have combined rigorous argument with strong empirical grounding. And a lot of fun. Intuition Pumps and Other Tools for Thinking offers seventy-seven of Dennett’s most successful “imagination-extenders and focus-holders” meant to guide you through some of life’s most treacherous subject matter: evolution, meaning, mind, and free will.

One of our greatest philosophers and scientists of the mind asks, where does the self come from -- and how our selves can exist in the minds of others. Can thought arise out of matter? Can self, soul, consciousness, "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? I Am...

This reissue of Thomas Sowell’s classic study of decision making, which includes a preface by the author, updates his seminal work in the context of The Vision of the Anointed. Sowell, one of America’s most celebrated public intellectuals, describes in concrete detail how knowledge is shared and disseminated throughout modern society. He warns that society suffers from an ever-widening gap between firsthand knowledge and decision making—a gap that threatens not only our economic and political efficiency but our very freedom.

A seminal work of scientific and philosophical exploration. Ever since the Greeks coined the language we commonly use for scientific description, mythology and science have developed separately. But what if we could prove that all myths have one common origin in a celestial cosmology? What if the gods, the places they lived, and what they did are but ciphers for celestial activity, a language for the perpetuation of complex astronomical data?

Aristotle's Metaphysics was the first major study of the subject of metaphysics - in other words, an inquiry into 'first philosophy', or 'wisdom'. It differs from Physics which is concerned with the natural world: things which are subject to the laws of nature, things that move and change, are measurable. In Metaphysics, the study falls on 'being qua being' - being insofar as it is being; the causes and principles of being, the causes and principles of substances.

There is an epidemic of bad thinking in the world today. When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People provides an engaging tour through the basic principles of logic, argument, evidence, and probability that can make all of us more reasonable and responsible citizens.

For fans of Eckhart Tolle—a guide to mastering self-awareness through direct experience rather than old presumptions or harmful thought patterns Through decades of martial arts and meditation practice, Peter Ralston discovered a curious and paradoxical fact: that true awareness arises from a...

What if the greatest obstacle to knowledge lies not in the world but in ourselves? Four centuries ago, Francis Bacon revolutionized human thought by identifying the “idols of the mind”—systematic biases that distort our understanding. Today, modern science has confirmed his insights with mathematical precision: the structure of our assumptions determines what we can know, often more fundamentally than the evidence we gather or the intelligence we apply.

In this guide to science and society, a cosmologist argues that physics must embrace the excluded, listen to the unheard, and be unafraid of being wrong. Years ago, cosmologist Stephon Alexander received life-changing advice: to discover real physics, he needed to stop memorizing and start...

Conjectures and Refutations is one of Karl Popper’s most wide-ranging and popular works, notable not only for its acute insights into the way scientific knowledge grows, but also for applying those insights to politics and to history. It provides one of the clearest and most accessible statements of the fundamental idea that guided his work: not only our knowledge but our aims and our standards grow through an unending process of trial and error.

New insights from the science of science Facts change all the time. Smoking has gone from doctor recommended to deadly. We used to think the Earth was the center of the universe and that Pluto was a planet. For decades, we were convinced that the brontosaurus was a real dinosaur. In short, what we know about the world is constantly changing. But it turns out there’s an order to the state of knowledge, an explanation for how we know what we know.

Whether pondering black holes or predicting discoveries at CERN, physicists believe the best theories are beautiful, natural, and elegant, and this standard separates popular theories from disposable ones. This is why, Sabine Hossenfelder argues, we have not seen a major breakthrough in the foundations of physics for more than four decades. The belief in beauty has become so dogmatic that it now conflicts with scientific objectivity: Observation has been unable to confirm mindboggling theories, like supersymmetry or grand unification, invented by physicists based on aesthetic criteria.

'Terrific and passionate writing about a philosopher whose heroism is unquestionable . . . and as lively and learned an introduction to classical Athens as you could want' - Daily Telegraph In The Hemlock Cup, award-winning historian Bettany Hughes brings to vivid life one of the most...

Our beliefs constitute a large part of our knowledge of the world. We have beliefs about objects, about culture, about the past, and about the future. We have beliefs about other people, and we believe that they have beliefs as well. We use beliefs to predict, to explain, to create, to console, to entertain. Some of our beliefs we call theories, and we are extraordinarily creative at constructing them. Theories of quantum mechanics, evolution, and relativity are examples.

Reason, we are told, is what makes us human, the source of our knowledge and wisdom. If reason is so useful, why didn't it also evolve in other animals? If reason is that reliable, why do we produce so much thoroughly reasoned nonsense? In their groundbreaking account of the evolution and workings of reason, Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber set out to solve this double enigma.

By calling everything into doubt, Descartes laid the foundations of modern philosophy. With the celebrated words "I think therefore I am," his compelling argument swept aside ancient and medieval traditions. He deduced that human beings consist of minds and bodies; that these are totally distinct "substances"; that God exists and that He ensures we can trust the evidence of our senses.