An enduring ethical dispute accompanies prenatal screening and testing (PST) technologies. This ethical debate focuses on notions of reproductive choice. On one side of the dispute are those who have supported PST as a way to empower women’s reproductive choice, while on the other side are those who argue that PST, particularly when made a routine part of prenatal care, limits deliberate choice. Empirical research does not resolve this ethical debate with evidence both of women for whom PST enhances their (...) choices but also persistent evidence of recurrent problems between PST and women’s autonomous decision-making. While there have been attempts to remove challenges to reproductive choice, it has been argued that these challenges cannot be removed entirely. In this paper I provide a historical review of PST technologies’ development and in doing so provide a detailed insight into the root causes of this tension between the opposing sides of this debate. This historical account provides evidence that those who championed the early use of these technologies did so in order to achieve a number of wholly different goals other than women’s choice and empowerment. These different aims focus on scientific discovery and eugenic goals and, I argue, areirreconcilablewith women’s choice and empowerment. It thus may not be surprising that the resulting practice of PST continues to resist compatibility with women’s choice and empowerment. Ultimately, by understanding the historical foundations of PST we can more effectively assess how toreconcilewomen’s reproductive autonomy with routine prenatal screening. (shrink)

Egg freezing can allow women to preserve their eggs to avoid age-related infertility. The UK's recent extension of elective egg freezing storage has been welcomed as a way of enhancing the reproductive choices of young women who wish to delay having children. In this paper, I explore the issue of enhancing women’s reproductive choices, questioning whether there is a more significant aspect overlooked in egg freezing. While increasing storage limits expands reproductive choices for some women, focus on this extension alone, (...) I argue, misses a fundamental issue with egg preservation that often remains ignored; the importance of effective information on egg freezing and the effect this has on women’s reproductive choices. Ultimately, I highlight the crucial role of balanced information in enhancing women’s choices regarding egg freezing and argue that focusing on extending and increasing provision may obscure this real opportunity to empower women and their authentic reproductive choices. (shrink)

Presents Newton's unifying idea of gravitation and explains how he converted physics from a science of explanation into a general mathematical system.

We may have different ways of defining the nature of philosophy. One view would take philosophy to be a system of knowledge just like science; only it is a more comprehensive system that includes all science, or rather, it is a synthetic system of knowledge. Another view would take philosophy to be just a reflective and critical attitude. It purports to reflect on methods, postulates, axioms, and fundamental concepts that science relies on to build its knowledge in order to clarify (...) other scientific concepts and principles and to understand the limit of each science and of scientific knowledge itself so that they will not be wrongly applied to areas where they do not apply. Still another view would take philosophy to be that which helps us to understand the universe and human life, to have wisdom to penetrate into history, culture, and concrete affairs, and to give us direction for our actions. Of these three, the first view takes philosophy to be an activity for pursuing knowledge, the second view takes philosophy to be an activity for understanding our knowledge, and the third view takes philosophy to be an activity that starts with knowledge in order to achieve wisdom, which is above and beyond knowledge. All these views have their justifications. I would like to elaborate on them in the following. (shrink)

Издание содержит: Есть ли ошибка в формуле мира?; Бегство от смысла; Секрет формулы мира - закон притяжения?

kn. 1. Vechnye voprosy v svete nauki, filosofii religii.

If there is an inherent connection between love and generosity, between love and creativeness, as this book argues there is, then how can love itself be selfish, destructive and tyrannical? Concerned with questions about love in its different forms, this book seeks and discusses the views of writers--Plato, Proust, Sartre, Freud, D. H. Lawrence, Erich Fromm, C. S. Lewis, Kierkegaard, Simone Weil and Kahlil Gibran--who have suggested distinctive solutions to the problems which love poses in the face of its obstacles. (...) The enquiry which the book undertakes emcompasses both the conceptual and existential experience of love. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to analyze the consequences of R. Rorty’s pragmatic cum linguistic turn for the understanding of natural and human sciences. The author analyzes first this turn and tries to show that it represents an intersubjectivist type of antirealism. Then he deals with Rorty’s approach to hermeneutics and his understanding of its place in natural and human sciences. Finally, he discusses the consequences of Rorty’s intersubjectivist antirealism for human sciences and tries to show that, on one (...) hand, it represents the philosophical basis of the so-called idea-lism of interpretative human science and on the other hand, it enables us to see the latter’s foundations from a new, fresh perspective. (shrink)

Книга рассчитана на обществоведов, историков, гуманитариев широкого профиля, студентов, аспирантов, практических работников в сферах социологии, политологии и этнологии.

t. 1.Novoe mirovozzrenie i novai͡a teorii͡a nauki -- t. 2. [without special title].