The Science Of Social Vision The Science Of Social Vision

The human visual system is particularly attuned to and remarkably efficient at processing social cues. This text examines the functional and neuroanatomical mechanisms which underpin social vision.

This volume synthesizes social, cognitive, ecological, evolutionary, & neuroscience research, showing that the way in which people perceive the world changes with their cognitions, emotions, goals, motivations, culture, & other factors traditionally considered exclusive to social, personality, & cognitive psychology.

In recent years, the use of video has soared spurring debate about the body-camera-environment connection and other concepts a social scientist considering this research tool will face. In this volume we zoom in on ethics, methodology, and analysis, while also zooming out on a wider praxis. The time is here to collectively identify our experiences, methods, and knowledge of video as a research methodology. This compilation of work unpacks the use of video as a research tool. Often through the interdisciplinary lens of environmental psychology as well as anthropology, sociology, and the broader field of psychology, fascinating angles of the use of participant and naturalistic observations are captured along with that of participatory action research. Strategies such as recording video messages, the creation of student informed videos, and facilitating videos taken by or edited by research participants are coupled with methods for obtaining Institutional Review Board approvals, analysis, development of theory or action, and presentation. This volume presents thought provoking, cutting-edge research that is both accessible to students and useful for social scientists who are yearning for a more accurate way to collect, analyze, and present data in our hyper-technical, visual, and competitive world.

He has been described in many ways, including a prophet, a scholar, and the most influential Rabbi in modern history. Regardless, the influence of Jewish Mystical Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, popularly known as the "Lubavitcher Rebbe," cannot be underestimated. Among his many accomplishments, he was an advisor to every U.S. president from Richard Nixon to George H.W. Bush and received a Congressional Gold Medal posthumously. In one of the first works of its kind, authors Philip Wexler, Michael Wexler, and Eli Rubin explore the neglected social vision of a leader whose movement and followers span more than 50 countries and 250 colleges and universities worldwide. The book provides a window into the previously undisclosed wisdom of the Rebbe. Modern Prophet is a tour de force that provides striking and revolutionary insights into a breathtaking array of topics championed by the Rebbe. Treating each with an equal amount of passion, Rabbi Schneerson focused on such wide-ranging concerns as public education, social justice, prison reform, technology, feminism, green energy, and, of course, the hope and possibility of a new and "mystical" society.

Is human behavior determined in accordance with causal laws available to scientists? Is science capable of making sense of human actions and social life? This book is a penetrating inquiry into the question of what social science is all about. In it, Michael A. Simon challenges the prevailing view with his thesis that the social sciences are sciences in name only, and are based upon the freedom and uniqueness of the human subjects of scientific explanation. Combining sound scholarship with clear, readable prose, Simon explains why freedom must be a primitive conception and indicates the conditions for human uniqueness. He offers a proposal for what the social sciences might become if researchers recognize that they are not scientists in the ordinary sense of the word.

Offers a vital, unique and agenda-setting perspective for the field of social epistemology – the philosophical basis for prescribing the social means and ends for pursuing knowledge.

Visual Perception: Theory and Practice focuses on the theory and practice of visual perception, with emphasis on technologies used in vision research and in visual information processing. Central areas of vision research including spatial vision, motion perception, and color are discussed. Light and optics, convolutions and Fourier methods, and network theory and systems are also examined. Comprised of nine chapters, this book begins with an overview of language and processes underlying specific areas of vision such as measures of neural activity, feature specificity, and individual cells and psychophysics. The reader is then systematically introduced to the more essential properties of light and optics relevant to visual perception; the use of convolutions, Fourier series, and Fourier transform to model processes in visual perception; and network theory and systems. Subsequent chapters deal with the geometry of visual perception; spatial vision; the perception of motion; and some specific issues in visual perception, including color perception, binocular vision, and steriopsis. This monograph is intended for students, practitioners, and investigators in physiology.

This fascinating study examines the rise of American molecular biology to disciplinary dominance, focusing on the period between 1930 and the elucidation of DNA structure in the mid 1950s. Research undertaken during this period, with its focus on genetic structure and function, endowed scientists with then unprecedented power over life. By viewing the new biology as both a scientific and cultural enterprise, Lily E. Kay shows that the growth of molecular biology was a result of systematic efforts by key scientists and their sponsors to direct the development of biological research toward a shared vision of science and society. She analyzes the motivations and mechanisms empowering this vision by focusing on two key institutions: Caltech and its sponsor, the Rockefeller Foundation. Her study explores a number of vital, sometimes controversial topics, among them the role of private power centers in shaping scientific agenda, and the political dimensions of "pure" research. It also advances a sobering argument: the cognitive and social groundwork for genetic engineering and human genome projects was laid by the American architects of molecular biology during these early decades of the project. This book will be of interest to molecular biologists, historians, sociologists, and the general reader alike.