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Science Reference Center
Full-text articles to support research in applied sciences, biology, chemistry, earth and space science, and energy. Includes the Science Image Collection, a database of high-quality science images from National Geographic, UPI, Getty, NASA, and Nature Picture Library.
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The author writes: In this project I set out to provide an answer to two fundamental questions of political philosophy. How can human beings (living, as we do now, in a globalised world) live together, in conditions of co-operation over time, enjoying what Immanuel Kant famously called 'perpetual peace'? And how much individual freedom can we expect to enjoy, and to what degree can we expect that individual freedom to be equal, whilst engaged in the...
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The author writes: In this project I set out to provide an answer to two fundamental questions of political philosophy. How can human beings (living, as we do now, in a globalised world) live together, in conditions of co-operation over time, enjoying what Immanuel Kant famously called 'perpetual peace'? And how much individual freedom can we expect to enjoy, and to what degree can we expect that individual freedom to be equal, whilst engaged in the...
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A series of essays on the evolution of culture, dealing with topics including the city and consciousness, evolution of the afterlife, literary and mathematical archetypes, machine consciousness and the implications of 9/11, and the invasion of Iraq. The enlarged new edition contains extra essays and brings the author's comments on current affairs up to date with coverage of the election of Barak Obama as US President.
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This is a careful examination of the historical formation of Britain and of key moments in its relations with the European powers. The author looks at the governing discourses of politicians, the mass media, and the British people. The rhetoric of sovereignty among political elites and the population at large is found to conceive of Britain's engagement with Europe as a zero-sum game. A second theme is the power of geographical images – island Britain...
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The office of Prime Minister stands at the apex of the British political system. An understanding of this post is essential to all who are -- or aspire to be -- within government, or who observe it from outside. This book combines the methods of history and political science to produce theories of the development, nature and power of the premiership, and to explain the implications for present politicians and analysts. It is essential reading for...
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The history of the last two hundred years is a story of the immense and relentless growth of the State at the expense of other social institutions. We are now so familiar and accepting of the State's pre-eminence in all things, that few think to question it, and most suppose that democratic endorsement legitimizes it. The aim of this essay is to present a sustained and compelling argument against both presumptions. It contends that the gross imbalance...
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Machiavelli almost succeeded in removing morality from European politics and, indeed, since his day it has sometimes been assumed that morality and politics are separate. Ryder argues that the time has come for public policies to be seen to be based upon moral objectives. Politicians should be expected routinely to justify their policies with open moral argument. In Part I, Ryder sketches an overview of contemporary political philosophy as it relates...
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Jordan Peterson has attracted a high level of attention. Controversies may bring people into contact with Peterson's work, but ideas are arguably what keep them there. Focusing on those ideas, this book explores Peterson's answers to perennial questions.
What is common to all humans, regardless of their background? Is complete knowledge ever possible? What would constitute a meaningful life? Why have humans evolved the capacity for intelligence?...
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Echoing Mahatma Gandhi's comment on Western civilization, Graham Allen thinks the British constitution would be a very good idea-a clear constitution providing real power to the British people and their elected representatives. In The Last Prime Minister he showed the British people how they had acquired an executive presidency by stealth. It was the first-ever attempt to codify the Prime Minister's powers, many hidden in the mysteries of the royal...
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Consider the following paradox: As the leaders of both of the main British political parties subscribed to the neoconservative doctrine on Iraq, everybody else in the birthplace of parliamentary democracy was effectively disenfranchised. Yet one of the rationales supporting the deployment of UK forces in Iraq was the wish to export democracy to the Middle East. The Emperor would appear to have mislaid his clothes (see Gordon Graham's Case Against...
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We're all in favor of free speech - except when we're not! Often it's a case of 'free speech for me, but not for thee'. The regulation of speech is a matter that is typically dealt with arbitrarily without there being any obvious principled basis for the decisions that are made. Is hate speech, so-called, a form of free speech? What of blasphemy, in either its ancient or contemporary forms? Should certain forms of speech be mandatory?
As with free...
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This book argues that contemporary society in Western democracies is generally misunderstood to be a pyramidal hierarchy dominated either by government or the economy. Neither view is correct. We live in a fundamentally pluralistic society divided into numerous 'modular' social systems each performing different functions; these include politics, public administration, the armed forces, law, economics, religion, education, health and the mass media....
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Democracy is not a universal good, it is a political system, and like all political systems it is open to corruption. The word 'democracy' means 'rule by the people', not rule by a simple majority. To achieve rule by all the people, it used to be accepted that as much of civil life should be kept out of party politics as possible. A mixed constitution was one way of achieving this. By absorbing into itself the institutions of civil society, the modern...
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"Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those that have been tried before." - Winston Churchill.
So how should mankind organise itself to ensure a civilised society?
In this personal, and sometimes challenging, work the author argues that an idealised form of political government has been the goal of mankind since Plato himself. But political thinking has overwhelmingly been a theoretical exercise detached from reality. Little...
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Demarchy exploits the possibilities of modern communications to give new role to public discussion. It takes the initiative in formulating policy on each specific problem out of the hands of political parties and into the hands of those most strongly affected by that particular problem. John Burnheim explains why this needs to be done and how it can be done by voluntary initiative without constitutional change.
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The middle class provides British society with its stability and strength. According to Deane's contentious thesis, our middle class has abstained from its responsibility to uphold societal values, and the enormously damaging collapse of our society's norms and standards is largely a result of that abdication. The institutions of political and social governance provide a husk of functionality and mask these problems for those that do not wish to see,...
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Are our 'democracies' truly democratic? In the Name of the People examines the myth of modern democracy and finds it wanting. The various oligarchies of the world blame the madness of modern life on the greed and stupidity of ordinary people: this book argues that, on the contrary, elites indulge a limitless greed for power and wealth under cover of 'giving the people what they want'. As a coda to his short book, Ivo Mosley examines what true democracy...
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This polemical book examines the concept of sustainability and presents a critical exploration of its all-pervasive influence on society, arguing that sustainability, manifested in several guises, represents a pernicious and corrosive doctrine that has survived primarily because there seems to be no alternative to its canon: in effect, its bi-partisan appeal has depressed critical engagement and neutered politics. It is a malign philosophy of misanthropy,...
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