A leading philosopher of technology calls for the democratic coordination of technical rationality with everyday experience. The technologies, markets, and administrations of today's knowledge society are in crisis. We face recurring disasters in every domain: climate change, energy shortages, economic meltdown. The system is broken, despite everything the technocrats claim to know about science, technology, and economics. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that today powerful technologies have unforeseen effects that disrupt everyday life; the new masters of technology are not restrained by the lessons of experience, and accelerate change to the point where society is in constant turmoil. In Between Reason and Experience, leading philosopher of technology Andrew Feenberg makes a case for the interdependence of reason—scientific knowledge, technical rationality—and experience. Feenberg examines different aspects of the tangled relationship between technology and society from the perspective of critical theory of technology, an approach he has pioneered over the past twenty years. Feenberg points to two examples of democratic interventions into technology: the Internet (in which user initiative has influenced design) and the environmental movement (in which science coordinates with protest and policy). He examines methodological applications of critical theory of technology to the case of the French Minitel computing network and to the relationship between national culture and technology in Japan. Finally, Feenberg considers the philosophies of technology of Heidegger, Habermas, Latour, and Marcuse. The gradual extension of democracy into the technical sphere, Feenberg argues, is one of the great political transformations of our time.

A leading philosopher of technology calls for the democratic coordination of technical rationality with everyday experience. The technologies, markets, and administrations of today's knowledge society are in crisis. We face recurring disasters in every domain: climate change, energy shortages, economic meltdown. The system is broken, despite everything the technocrats claim to know about science, technology, and economics. These problems are exacerbated by the fact that today powerful technologies have unforeseen effects that disrupt everyday life; the new masters of technology are not restrained by the lessons of experience, and accelerate change to the point where society is in constant turmoil. In Between Reason and Experience, leading philosopher of technology Andrew Feenberg makes a case for the interdependence of reason—scientific knowledge, technical rationality—and experience. Feenberg examines different aspects of the tangled relationship between technology and society from the perspective of critical theory of technology, an approach he has pioneered over the past twenty years. Feenberg points to two examples of democratic interventions into technology: the Internet (in which user initiative has influenced design) and the environmental movement (in which science coordinates with protest and policy). He examines methodological applications of critical theory of technology to the case of the French Minitel computing network and to the relationship between national culture and technology in Japan. Finally, Feenberg considers the philosophies of technology of Heidegger, Habermas, Latour, and Marcuse. The gradual extension of democracy into the technical sphere, Feenberg argues, is one of the great political transformations of our time.

This short book is a lively dialogue between a religious believer and a skeptic. It covers all the main issues including different ideas of God, the good and bad in religion, religious experience and neuroscience, pain and suffering, death and life after death, and includes interesting autobiographical revelations.

Women‘s movements in Islamic countries have had a long and arduous journey in their quest for the realization of human rights and genuine equality. The author examines whether discriminatory laws against women do in fact originate from Islam and, ultimately, if there is any interpretation of Islam compatible with gender equality. She investigates women’s rights in Iran since the 1979 Revolution from the perspectives of the main currents of Islamic thought, fundamentalists, reformists, and seculars, using a sociological explanation.

This book realistically describes the experiences of people living with schizophrenia and their families, from the detection of the first symptoms until the development of treatments and strategies to cope with this unique human condition. Schizophrenia is a form of psychosis in which subjective aspects, such as hallucinatory and delusional phenomena, tend to distort the understanding of reality. Because psychotic states fluctuate in intensity over time, those affected literally live between reason and illusion. Between Reason and Illusion: Demystifying Schizophrenia is an invitation to understand what it means to develop schizophrenia and to live with it throughout one's life. And this is an invitation to all those who are in some way affected by this condition: those who live with it, family members, friends, health professionals, and everyone who want to have a non-stigmatized view of mental disorders and people who live with them. “Faced with psychosis, the person affected by the disease and the family are lost and go looking for alternative or spiritual help, which usually delays the beginning of treatment. Jorge, Cecília and Rodrigo had the courage to face a difficult theme and the happy idea of writing a book of an educational nature about schizophrenia. The book's originality lies in the fact that it was written taking into account the experience of the person with the disease and his or her family members in the face of this something new that has occurred in their lives”. - Dr. Itiro Shirakawa, Professor Emeritus of the Paulista Medical School of the Federal University of São Paulo (UNIFESP/EPM), Brazil.

Reproduction of the original: Rationalism by J.M. Robertson