The central problem of social theory is 'structure and agency'. How do the objective features of society influence human agents? Determinism is not the answer, nor is conditioning as currently conceptualised. It accentuates the way structure and culture shape the social context in which individuals operate, but it neglects our personal capacity to define what we care about most...(展开全部)

One of the most basic and important distinctions we draw is between those entities with the capacity of agency and those without. As humans we enjoy agency in its full-blooded form and therefore a proper understanding of the nature of agency is of great importance to appreciate who we are and what we should expect and demand of our existence. The Routledge Handbook of Philosoph...(展开全部)

This first novel in Alexander McCall Smith’s widely acclaimed The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series tells the story of the delightfully cunning and enormously engaging Precious Ramotswe, who is drawn to her profession to “help people with problems in their lives.” Immediately upon setting up shop in a small storefront in Gaborone, she is hired to track down a missing husban...(展开全部)

The idea of a reason for acting is ubiquitous in philosophy, social science, and the law. When someone does something intentionally, we often want to know why they did it: what their reason for acting was, or, perhaps equivalently, their goal, intention, purpose, or motive for acting. In addition to asking what an agent’s reason for acting was, we ask whether their reason was a...(展开全部)

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...(展开全部)

When the State Meets the Street probes the complex moral lives of street-level bureaucrats: the frontline social and welfare workers, police officers, and educators who represent government’s human face to ordinary citizens. Too often dismissed as soulless operators, these workers wield a significant margin of discretion and make decisions that profoundly affect people’s lives....(展开全部)

In this ambitious work, Philip Pettit offers a single, unified, and overarching theory of freedom. A puzzling topic, freedom extends from the individual and the metaphysical (i.e. free will) to the social and the political, yet a theory connecting these two realms has yet to be devised. In an elegant, accessible manner, Pettit presents a survey of available theories of freedom,...(展开全部)

Based on exclusive interviews with senior Pentagon officials and previously unseen declassified documents, this is the definitive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency--the Pentagon agency that has quietly shaped war and technology for nearly sixty years. Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, the agency’s original mission was to create “the un...(展开全部)

Based on exclusive interviews with senior Pentagon officials and previously unseen declassified documents, this is the definitive history of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency--the Pentagon agency that has quietly shaped war and technology for nearly sixty years. Founded in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik, the agency’s original mission was to create “the un...(展开全部)