Apocalypse When?: Calculating How Long the Human Race Will SurviveThis book will be a key trailblazer in a new and upcoming field. The author’s predictive approach relies on simple and intuitive probability formulations that will appeal to readers with a modest knowledge of astronomy, mathematics, and statistics. Wells’ carefully erected theory stands on a sure footing and thus should serve as the basis of many rational predictions of survival in the face of natural disasters such as hits by asteroids or comets in the coming years.
Management Lives: Power and Identity in Work Organizations
Based on courses taught by the authors over many years, this innovative text is a lively and accessible analysis of people at work and the problems they have to confront. The student is introduced to a range of key themes in management such as: power and identity; consumption and bureaucracy; rational choice and meaning all through the medium of characters and situations in contemporary literature.
The core of the book centres around the idea of cognitive dissonance, where the brain has to reconcile two contrasting viewpoints. For example the self belief that "I am rational and intelligent" with the action "I am slowly killing myself by smoking". The dissonance could be resolved by concluding that actually I am neither rational nor especially intelligent, but of course no one wants to conclude that! So instead I look for levers to reduce the gap in the other direction. Smoking helps me to relax, and stress is a big killer, smoking helps me to keep my weight down and obesity is a big health problem. And so on......
This book is a fascinating insight into human nature and will help you understand both other people and more importantly yourself a lot better.
In Rationality and Logic, Robert Hanna argues that logic is intrinsically psychological and that human psychology is intrinsically logical. He claims that logic is cognitively constructed by rational animals (including humans) and that rational animals are essentially logical animals. In order to do so, he defends the broadly Kantian thesis that all (and only) rational animals possess an innate cognitive 'logic faculty.' Hanna's claims challenge the conventional philosophical wisdom that sees logic as a fully formal or 'topic-neutral' science irreconcilably separate from the species- or individual-specific focus of empirical psychology.
