Practical Matter

Margaret Jacob and Larry Stewart examine the profound transformation that began in 1687. From the year when Newton published his Principia to the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1851, science gradually became central to Western thought and economic development. The book aims at a general audience and examines how, despite powerful opposition on the Continent, a Newtonian understanding gained acceptance and practical application. By the mid-eighteenth century the new science had achieved ascendancy, and the race was on to apply Newtonian mechanics to industry and manufacturing. They end the story with the temple to scientific and technological progress that was the Crystal Palace exhibition. Choosing their examples carefully, Jacob and Stewart show that there was nothing preordained or inevitable about the centrality awarded to science. "It is easy to forget that science might have been stillborn, or remained the esoteric knowledge of court elites. Instead, for better and for worse, science became a centerpiece of Western culture."

The Practical, Moral, and Personal Sense of Nursing is the first explicitly philosophical articulation in English of the essence of nursing from a phenomenological perspective. The authors interpret nursing as competencies and excellences that are exercised in an “in-between” situation characteristic of nursing practice (the practical sense) which fosters the well-being of patients (the moral sense) within the nurse-patient relationship (the personal sense). This directly challenges the current tendency to reconstruct nursing by using theories drawn from the behavioral and natural sciences, and shows why nursing must be reformed from within. Bishop and Scudder stress the use of phenomenology to articulate an actual practice, showing the unique capacity of phenomenology to illuminate actual situations and to generate fresh understandings of old problems.

Although the virtues are implicit in Catholic Social Teaching, they are too often overlooked. In this pioneering study, Andrew M. Yuengert draws on the neo-Aristotelian virtues tradition to bring the virtue of practical wisdom into an explicit and wide-ranging engagement with the Church's social doctrine. Practical wisdom and the virtues clarify the meaning of Christian personalism, highlight the irreplaceable role of the laity in social reform, and bring attention to the important task of lay formation in virtue. This form of wisdom also offers new insights into the Church's dialogue with economics and the social sciences, and reframes practical political disagreements between popes, bishops, and the laity in a way that challenges both laypersons and episcopal leadership. Yuengert's study respects the Church's social tradition, while showing how it might develop to be more practical. By proposing active engagement with practical wisdom, he demonstrates how Catholic Social Teaching can more effectively inform and inspire practical social reform.

Ad hoc and interdisciplinary, the field of interaction design claims no unified theory. Yet guidelines are needed. In essays by 26 major thinkers and designers, this book presents the rich mosaic of ideas which nourish the lively art of interaction design. The editors introduction is a critical survey of interaction design with a debt and contribut

The best-selling Pharmacy Practice and the Law, Eighth Edition reviews federal law and policy as it applies to and affects the pharmacist's practice.