Paul Lawrence Farber – författare

Evolutionary theory tells us about our biological past; can it also guide us to a moral future? Paul Farber's compelling book describes a century-old philosophical hope held by many biologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and social thinkers: that universal ethical and social imperatives are built into human nature and can be discovered through knowledge of evolutionary theory. Farber describes three upsurges of enthusiasm for evolutionary ethics. The first came in the early years of mid-nineteenth century evolutionary theories; the second in the 1920s and '30s, in the years after the cultural catastrophe of World War I; and the third arrived with the recent grand claims of sociobiology to offer a sound biological basis for a theory of human culture. Unlike many who have written on evolutionary ethics, Farber considers the responses made by philosophers over the years. He maintains that their devastating criticisms have been forgotten--thus the history of evolutionary ethics is essentially one of oft-repeated philosophical mistakes.Historians, scientists, social scientists, and anyone concerned about the elusive basis of selflessness, altruism, and morality will welcome Farber's enlightening book.

This collection of original essays by his former graduate students and colleagues honors Richard S. Westfall, a highly influential scholar in the history of the physical sciences and their relations with religion. The book is divided into three parts that reflect Professor Westfall's scholarly interests and activity: the life, work, and influence of Newton; science and religion; and historiographical and social studies of science. These contributions represent a variety of approaches to the history of science, including the development of scientific ideas per se, the influence of philosophical and religious ideas on the development of science, and the study of science as a social activity. This valuable collection demonstrates the wide scope of Professor Westfall's influence on his students and on the scholarly community as a whole.

In Discovering Birds, Paul Lawrence Farber rejects the view that eighteenth-century natural history disappeared with the rise of nineteenth-century biology. In this penetrating case study of the history of ornithology, Farber demonstrates interesting continuities: as natural history evolved into individual sciences (botany, geology, and zoology) and specialties (entomology and ichthyology), the study of birds emerged as a distinct scientific discipline that remained observational and taxonomic. Ornithologists continued to see one of their primary tasks as classification, and they found no need to alter their approach. Their efforts were greatly aided at the end of the eighteenth century as colonization and exploration brought new dataa plethora of exotic and previously unknown birds. By the mid-nineteenth century, ornithology had become a scientific discipline with international experts, a large empirical base, and a rigorous methodology of watching and cataloging.

Since emerging as a discipline in the middle of the eighteenth century, natural history has been at the heart of the life sciences. It gave rise to the major organizing theory of life-evolution-and continues to be a vital science with impressive practical value. Central to advanced work in ecology, agriculture, medicine, and environmental science, natural history also attracts enormous popular interest. In Finding Order in Nature Paul Farber traces the development of the naturalist tradition since the Enlightenment and considers its relationship to other research areas in the life sciences. Written for the general reader and student alike, the volume explores the adventures of early naturalists, the ideas that lay behind classification systems, the development of museums and zoos, and the range of motives that led collectors to collect. Farber also explores the importance of sociocultural contexts, institutional settings, and government funding in the story of this durable discipline. "The quest for insight into the order of nature leads naturalists beyond classification to the creation of general theories that explain the living world.Those naturalists who focus on the order of nature inquire about the ecological relationships among organisms and also among organisms and their surrounding environments. They ask fundamental questions of evolution, about how change actually occurs over short and long periods of time. Many naturalists are drawn, consequently, to deeper philosophical and ethical issues: What is the extent of our ability to understand nature? And, understanding nature, will we be able to preserve it? Naturalists question the meaning of the order they discover and ponder our moral responsibility for it."-from the Introduction