Planethood

Harry J. Bury has a dream, a vision of how the world can be immensely better in the future than it is today. In An Invitation to Think and Feel Differently in the New Millennium, Bury presents his hope for the world and provides a path to achieve this goal. An Invitation to Think and Feel Differently in the New Millennium describes a practical way of looking at life positively that brings meaning and fulfillment to oneself and others. This guide tells stories that touch the deepest layers of our humannessawakening our imagination and transforming our understanding in a manner that makes us happy. Bury generates these stories for the new millennium in order to overcome cynicism with reasonable hopefulness while suggesting practical measures we can take to make life better for ourselves and for everyone in the world. He invites citizens to participate in creating an emerging and global worldview that enables humans to meet the challenges and opportunities of the new millennium. An Invitation to Think and Feel Differently in the New Millennium encourages us to change our mind to change the world.

Epistemic cognition, the philosophical core of metacognition, concerns people’s knowledge about the justification and truth of beliefs. Multiple literatures in psychology and education address aspects of epistemic cognition. In the absence of a coherent conceptual framework, however, these literatures mostly fail to communicate with each other and often connect only loosely to genuine epistemology. This complicates any effort to achieve a systematic theoretical understanding of epistemic cognition and its development. Deanna Kuhn writes in her foreword, "Moshman is not the first to take on this challenge, but he fulfills it elegantly and, I think, the most comprehensively and astutely." After reviewing the basics of philosophical epistemology and cognitive psychology, Epistemic Cognition and Development provides a compelling account of developmental change across childhood and beyond in knowledge about knowledge, especially with regard to fundamental conceptions of objectivity, subjectivity, rationality, justification, and truth. This is followed by detailed consideration of domain-specific epistemologies of science, logic, morality, social convention, history, and identity, including associated forms of reasoning. The final section provides theoretical conclusions, educational and social applications, and suggestions for further research.

We are nearing a turning point in our quest for life in the universe—we now have the capacity to detect Earth-like planets around other stars. But will we find any? In The Crowded Universe, renowned astronomer Alan Boss argues that based on what we already know about planetary systems, in the coming years we will find abundant Earths, including many that are indisputably alive. Life is not only possible elsewhere in the universe, Boss argues—it is common. Boss describes how our ideas about planetary formation have changed radically in the past decade and brings readers up to date on discoveries of bizarre inhabitants of various solar systems, including our own. America must stay in this new space race, Boss contends, or risk being left out of one of the most profoundly important discoveries of all time: the first confirmed finding of extraterrestrial life.

At the conclusion of World War II, war crimes tribunals were carried out at Nuremberg, Germany. Justice was meted out for major war criminals, and Benjamin Ferencz was chief prosecutor for what the Associated Press said was the largest murder trial in history. This biography of the last living Nuremberg prosecutor traces his life from early childhood growing up as an immigrant in Hell's Kitchen in New York City, to Harvard Law School, to the U.S. Army and Patton's Judge Advocate War Crimes Investigation Section, to the Nuremberg Tribunals and beyond. His life has been spent working toward the goal of world peace through law, not war, including the successful formation of the International Criminal Court, in which Ferencz played a key role.

How social scientists' disagreements about their key words and distinctions have been misconceived, and what to do about it Social scientists do research on a variety of topics—gender, capitalism, populism, and race and ethnicity, among others. They make descriptive and explanatory claims about empathy, intelligence, neoliberalism, and power. They advise policymakers on diversity, digitalization, work, and religion. And yet, as Gabriel Abend points out in this provocative book, they can’t agree on what these things are and how to identify them. How to tell if something is a religion or a cult or a sect? What is empathy? What makes this society a capitalist one? Disputes of this sort arise again and again in the social sciences. Abend argues that these disagreements have been doubly misconceived. First, they conflate two questions: how a social science community should use its most important words, and what distinctions it should accept and work with. Second, there’s no fact of the matter about either. Instead, they’re practical reason questions for a community, which aim at epistemically and morally good outcomes. Abend calls on social science communities to work together on their words, distinctions, and classifications. They must make collective decisions about the uses of words, the acceptability of distinctions, and the criteria for assessing both. These decisions aren’t up to individual scholars; the community gets the last word. According to Abend, the common good, justice, and equality should play a significant role in the logic of scientific research. Gabriel Abend is professor of sociology at University of Lucerne and the author of The Moral Background: An Inquiry into the History of Business Ethics (Princeton).

Talking Lightly was originally published in print form in 1994. Talking Lightly features interviews with twelve prominent personalities of new thought - figures who have helped define the New Age Movement. Author William Koopman, former editor and publisher of The Light provides a description of each person's history and accomplishments and describes how the interviews came about. These fascinating and intimate discussions explore many different concepts: from firewalking to music, from self-awareness to the tapping of inner strength. Talking Lightly will challenge readers to rediscover and reassess their perception of the world around them.

Over the past two decades, the word 'metacognition' has become a regularly used part of our language and vocabulary in both psychology and education. Many research articles have been written about it, the conceptualisation of this construct has expanded, and conferences abound with investigations and empirical research into various facets of this domain. This book provides some of the most recent research by scholars from various parts of the world. It includes differing perspectives -- some empirical, some theory driven, and some application papers. The book focuses on metacognition and it's relevance to gifted and highly able students. Many of the papers focus directly and specifically on this; others are more tangential in nature.