The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People
- ISBN-10
- 0805096930
- ISBN-13
- 9780805096934
- Category
- Science
- Pages
- 560
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2015-01-20
- Publisher
- Henry Holt and Company
- Author
- Michael Shermer
Description
Bestselling author Michael Shermer's exploration of science and morality that demonstrates how the scientific way of thinking has made people, and society as a whole, more moral From Galileo and Newton to Thomas Hobbes and Martin Luther King, Jr., thinkers throughout history have consciously employed scientific techniques to better understand the non-physical world. The Age of Reason and the Enlightenment led theorists to apply scientific reasoning to the non-scientific disciplines of politics, economics, and moral philosophy. Instead of relying on the woodcuts of dissected bodies in old medical texts, physicians opened bodies themselves to see what was there; instead of divining truth through the authority of an ancient holy book or philosophical treatise, people began to explore the book of nature for themselves through travel and exploration; instead of the supernatural belief in the divine right of kings, people employed a natural belief in the right of democracy. In The Moral Arc, Shermer will explain how abstract reasoning, rationality, empiricism, skepticism--scientific ways of thinking--have profoundly changed the way we perceive morality and, indeed, move us ever closer to a more just world.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2016-01-26
- 560 pages
- Paperback
- St. Martin's Griffin
-
- 2015-01-20
- 541 pages
- Paperback
- Macmillan
Similar books
-
The Arc of the Moral Universe and Other Essays
By Joshua CohenAs Adam Smith put it, “A person who can acquire no property, can have no other interest but to eat as much, and to labor as little as possible. Whatever work he does beyond what is sufficient to purchase his own maintenance, ...
-
Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age
By Kevin Boyle60–62; Jacquelyn Dowd Hall et al, Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987), pp. 66–67; John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, ...
-
The Long Arc of Legality: Hobbes, Kelsen, Hart
By David DyzenhausExplores how the central question of philosophy of law is the legal subject's: how can that be law for me?
-
Giving the Devil his Due: Reflections of a Scientific Humanist
By Michael Shermerthe absurd, students from UC Berkeley attempted to no-platform the comedian and social commentator Bill Maher for his alleged “Islamophobia,” code for anyone who criticizes Islam for any reason. Maher delivered his commencement oration ...
-
The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress
By Peter Singerby encouraging the foster parents to think of at least one needy child as their personal responsibility. By thus tapping sources of altruism not reached by appeals to help people en masse, foster-parenting adds to the total amount of ...
-
Scythe
By Neal ShustermanA Time Best YA Book of All Time (2021) Two teens must learn the “art of killing” in this Printz Honor–winning book, the first in a chilling new series from Neal Shusterman, author of the New York Times bestselling Unwind dystology.
-
The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
By Sam HarrisKoenigs, M., Young, L., Adolphs, R., Tranel, D., Cushman, F., 276 References.
-
Skeptic: Viewing the World with a Rational Eye
By Michael ShermerAnother option involves a multiple universes model of cosmology in which you travel back in time to a different but closely parallel universe to our own, as portrayed in Michael Crichton's novel Timeline, where the characters journey to ...
-
Against Silence: Poems
By Frank BidartAn urgent new collection from the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and “one of the undisputed master poets of our time” (Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR) Words, voices reek of the worlds from which they emerge: ...
-
The Trials of Eroy Brown: The Murder Case That Shook the Texas Prison System
By Michael BerryhillOshinsky, David M. “Worse Than Slavery”: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice. New York: Free Press, 1996. Palmer, John W. Constitutional ... Potts, James L., and Alvin J. Bronstein. Prisoners' Self-Help Litigation Manual.