Articles liés à Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another

Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another - Couverture souple

Ball, Philip

 
9780374530419: Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another
Couverture souple
ISBN 10 : 0374530416 ISBN 13 : 9780374530419
Editeur : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006

Synopsis

Are there "natural laws" that govern the ways in which humans behave and organize themselves, just as there are physical laws that govern the motions of atoms and planets? Unlikely as it may seem, such laws now seem to be emerging from attempts to bring the tools and concepts of physics into the social sciences. These new discoveries are part of an old tradition. In the seventeenth century the philosopher Thomas Hobbes, dismayed by the impending civil war in England, decided that he would work out what kind of government was needed for a stable society. His solution sparked a new way of thinking about human behavior in looking for the "scientific" rules of society.

Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Auguste Comte, and John Stuart Mill pursued this idea from different political perspectives. But these philosophers lacked the tools that modern physics can now bring to bear on the matter. Philip Ball shows how, by using these tools, we can understand many aspects of mass human behavior. Once we recognize that we do not make most of our decisions in isolation but are affected by what others decide, we can start to discern a surprising and perhaps even disturbing predictability in our laws, institutions, and customs.

Lively and compelling, Critical Mass is the first book to bring these new ideas together and to show how they fit within the broader historical context of a rational search for better ways to live.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l'auteur

Philip Ball is the author of many books, including Life's Matrix (FSG, 2000), Bright Earth (FSG, 2002), Critical Mass (FSG, 2004), which won the Aventis Science Book Prize in 2005, and The Devil's Doctor (2006).

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Date d'édition
2006
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
0374530416
ISBN 13 
9780374530419
Reliure
Broché
Nombre de pages
528
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

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