Kirjahaku

Cybernetics is often thought of as a grim military or industrial science of control. But as Andrew Pickering reveals in this surprising book, a much more lively and experimental strain of cybernetics can be traced from the 1940s to the present. "The Cybernetic Brain" explores a largely forgotten group of British thinkers, including Grey Walter, Ross Ashby, Gregory Bateson, R.D. Laing, Stafford Beer, and Gordon Pask, and their singular work in a dazzling array of fields. Psychiatry, engineering, management, politics, music, architecture, education, tantric yoga, the Beats, and the sixties counterculture all come into play as Pickering follows the history of cybernetics' impact on the world, from contemporary robotics and complexity theory to the Chilean economy under Salvador Allende. What underpins this fascinating history, Pickering argues, is a shared but unconventional vision of the world as ultimately unknowable, a place where genuine novelty is always emerging. And thus, Pickering suggests, the history of cybernetics provides us with an imaginative model of open-ended experimentation in stark opposition to the modern urge to achieve domination over nature and each other.

Cybernetics is often thought of as a grim military or industrial science of control. But as Andrew Pickering reveals in this surprising book, a much more lively and experimental strain of cybernetics can be traced from the 1940s to the present. "The Cybernetic Brain" explores a largely forgotten group of British thinkers, including Grey Walter, Ross Ashby, Gregory Bateson, R.D. Laing, Stafford Beer, and Gordon Pask, and their singular work in a dazzling array of fields. Psychiatry, engineering, management, politics, music, architecture, education, tantric yoga, the Beats, and the sixties counterculture all come into play as Pickering follows the history of cybernetics' impact on the world, from contemporary robotics and complexity theory to the Chilean economy under Salvador Allende. What underpins this fascinating history, Pickering argues, is a shared but unconventional vision of the world as ultimately unknowable, a place where genuine novelty is always emerging. And thus, Pickering suggests, the history of cybernetics provides us with an imaginative model of open-ended experimentation in stark opposition to the modern urge to achieve domination over nature and each other.

Recounts the history of the post-war conceptual development of elementary-particle physics. Inviting a reappraisal of the status of scientific knowledge, the text suggests that scientists are not mere passive observers and reporters of nature. Rather they are social beings as well as active constructors of natural phenomena who engage in both experimental and theoretical practice.

This text offers an understanding of the nature of scientific, mathematical and engineering practice, and the production of scientific knowledge. The author presents an approach to the unpredictable nature of change in science, taking into account the number of factors - social, technological, conceptual and natural - that interact to affect the creation of scientific knowledge. In his view, machines, instruments, facts, theories, conceptual and mathematical structures, disciplined practices and human beings are in constantly shifting relationships with one another - "mangled" together in ways that are shaped by the contingencies of culture, time and place. Situating material as well as human agency in their larger cultural context, Pickering uses case studies to show how this picture of the open, changeable nature of science advances a greater understanding of scientific work both past and present. He examines the building of the bubble chamber in particle physics, the search for the quark, the construction of the quarternion system in mathematics and the introduction of computer-controlled machine tools in industry. He uses these examples to address the most basic elements of scientific practice - the development of experimental apparatus, the production of facts, the development of theory and the interrelation of machines and social organization.

This text offers an understanding of the nature of scientific, mathematical and engineering practice, and the production of scientific knowledge. The author presents an approach to the unpredictable nature of change in science, taking into account the number of factors - social, technological, conceptual and natural - that interact to affect the creation of scientific knowledge. In his view, machines, instruments, facts, theories, conceptual and mathematical structures, disciplined practices and human beings are in constantly shifting relationships with one another - "mangled" together in ways that are shaped by the contingencies of culture, time and place. Situating material as well as human agency in their larger cultural context, Pickering uses case studies to show how this picture of the open, changeable nature of science advances a greater understanding of scientific work both past and present. He examines the building of the bubble chamber in particle physics, the search for the quark, the construction of the quarternion system in mathematics and the introduction of computer-controlled machine tools in industry. He uses these examples to address the most basic elements of scientific practice - the development of experimental apparatus, the production of facts, the development of theory and the interrelation of machines and social organization.

The Wars of the Roses and the struggle for the throne between the Houses of York and Lancaster dominate the turbulent history of the latter half of the fifteenth century. Andrew Pickering addresses the issues critical to the study of this period, and analyses the historical debates surounding the characters and events. The text also includes a document study section which offers readers the opportunity to examine a diverse set of written and visual sources. The result is a stimulating foundation text for all Advanced Subsidiary (AS) students, as well as for undergraduates needing an introduction to the period. Lancastrians to Tudors is part of the Cambridge Perspectives in History series. It meets the requirements of the new OCR AS level specifications and is endorsed by OCR.

In the Anthropocene our actions are coming home to roost. Global warming, species extinctions, and environmental disasters are the dark side of our mastery of nature. In Acting with the World, Andrew Pickering identifies a different pattern of being and doing that can evade this dark side, a pattern that he calls acting-with the world. In contrast to our usual practice of acting on the world, acting-with foregrounds nonhuman or more-than-human agency and aims to attune our practices to the propensities of nature. Pickering explores examples of acting-with from around the globe, including flood control on the Mississippi River, ecosystem restoration on the Colorado River, the Room for the River project and rewilding in the Netherlands, natural farming in Japan, Aboriginal fire techniques in Australia, and Amazonian shamanism. Pickering argues that acting-with intimately and gracefully plugs us into nature, undercuts the Anthropocene from below, and offers a constructive approach to addressing otherwise intractable wicked problems.

In the Anthropocene our actions are coming home to roost. Global warming, species extinctions, and environmental disasters are the dark side of our mastery of nature. In Acting with the World, Andrew Pickering identifies a different pattern of being and doing that can evade this dark side, a pattern that he calls acting-with the world. In contrast to our usual practice of acting on the world, acting-with foregrounds nonhuman or more-than-human agency and aims to attune our practices to the propensities of nature. Pickering explores examples of acting-with from around the globe, including flood control on the Mississippi River, ecosystem restoration on the Colorado River, the Room for the River project and rewilding in the Netherlands, natural farming in Japan, Aboriginal fire techniques in Australia, and Amazonian shamanism. Pickering argues that acting-with intimately and gracefully plugs us into nature, undercuts the Anthropocene from below, and offers a constructive approach to addressing otherwise intractable wicked problems.

The ancient forest of Selwood straddles the borders of Somerset and Wiltshire and terminates in the south where these counties meet Dorset. This book explores the connections between important theological texts written in the region, notably Richard Bernard's Guide to the Grand-Jury Men (1627) and Joseph Glanvill's Saducismus Triumphatus (1681), influential local families, and the extraordinary witchcraft accounts in the area. In particular it focuses on a little known case in the village of Beckington in 1689 and shows how this was not a late, isolated episode but an integral part of the wider Selwood Forest witchcraft story. By presenting a micro-history of a specific area, which was rife in witchcraft practices in the seventeenth century, the author makes a valuable contribution to early modern social history.

This book, fully colour illustrated, tells the fascinating story of Bruton, a small town in Somerset, England, and its environs from the earliest times to the present day. An important ecclesiastical centre since the seventh century, notable individuals in Bruton's history include Sir John Fitzjames, standard bearer serving three monarchs and a co-founder of Bruton's free grammar school, Stephan Batman, an eminent Tudor author and cleric, Sir Hugh Sexey, the town's great benefactor, and Gabriel Felling and Ernst Blensdorf, two of its most admired artist-craftsmen. R. D. Blackmore, author of Lorna Doone was schooled in Bruton and, for most of 1959, it was home to the great American novelist, John Steinbeck. The lives of ordinary folk raising families, working on the land and in the town's mills, are revealed in a host of parochial records and in the fabric of the buildings in which they lived and worked, prayed and played.

The ancient forest of Selwood straddles the borders of Somerset and Wiltshire and terminates in the south where these counties meet Dorset. This book explores the connections between important theological texts written in the region, notably Richard Bernard's Guide to the Grand-Jury Men (1627) and Joseph Glanvill's Saducismus Triumphatus (1681), influential local families, and the extraordinary witchcraft accounts in the area. In particular it focuses on a little known case in the village of Beckington in 1689 and shows how this was not a late, isolated episode but an integral part of the wider Selwood Forest witchcraft story. By presenting a micro-history of a specific area, which was rife in witchcraft practices in the seventeenth century, the author makes a valuable contribution to early modern social history. First published in hardback in 2021, now reprinted with minor changes in paperback.