Seminal nineteenth-century thinkers predicted that religion would gradually fade in importance with the emergence of industrial society. The belief that religion was dying became the conventional wisdom in the social sciences during most of the twentieth century. The traditional secularization thesis needs updating, however, religion has not disappeared and is unlikely to do so. Nevertheless, the concept of secularization captures an important part of what is going on. This book develops a theory of existential security. It demonstrates that the publics of virtually all advanced industrial societies have been moving toward more secular orientations during the past half century, but also that the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before. This second edition expands the theory and provides new and updated evidence from a broad perspective and in a wide range of countries. This confirms that religiosity persists most strongly among vulnerable populations, especially in poorer nations and in failed states. Conversely, a systematic erosion of religious practices, values, and beliefs has occurred among the more prosperous strata in rich nations.

The Concise Oxford American Dictionary is the perfect companion for anyone looking to enhance their vocabulary and improve their writing skills. Featuring more than 180,000 entries, this dictionary provides accurate definitions, clear pronunciations, and practical usage notes to ensure that every word is used correctly. With hundreds of word histories and helpful illustrations, readers can gain a deeper understanding of their favorite words and the fascinating stories behind them. The Ready Reference section is also an invaluable tool for students, professionals, and anyone looking to quickly find information on a wide range of topics.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics is the most authoritative and up-to-date dictionary of linguistics available. Written by Peter Matthews, Professor of Linguistics at Cambridge University, the book provides concise and informative entries across the whole field of linguistics. With entries ranging from epiglottal and morpheme to Austronesian and Navajo, this dictionary is an ideal reference for students and anyone with an interest in language and its study. • Over 3,000 entries from phonetics to formal semantics• Grammatical terms in English and grammatical categories in other languages• World-wide coverage of language families and major languages• The theory of language and language history• Important figures and ideas in linguistics • Directory of symbols included for quick and easy reference

If you've ever wondered how scientific breakthroughs topple established theories, "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" is your guide through this terrain. Thomas Kuhn's provocation of the status quo not only illuminates the evolution of scientific ideas but invites you to question the very nature of truth and progress in science. It's a compelling read that might just shift your own paradigms.

Spotlight Science 8: Framework Edition could be a great read for middle schoolers who are interested in science and are looking for a comprehensive guide that is easy to follow. The book features full-color illustrations that are always close to the relevant text. The sentence structure is simple, accessible and friendly, with clear personalized questions to engage the readers. The book's "Things to do" section also provides useful questions for homework, extra work for faster students, or for work during staff absence.

Written by well-respected authors, the Cambridge Checkpoint Science suite provides a comprehensive, structured resource which covers the full Cambridge Secondary 1 framework and seamlessly progresses into the next stage. This engaging course supports teaching of the Science framework both theoretically and practically, with full coverage of the Scientific Enquiry framework integrated throughout the series. This Coursebook for Stage 8 gives a thorough introduction to the concepts, and offers a wealth of ideas for hands-on activities to make the subject matter come to life.

Written by well-respected authors, the Cambridge Checkpoint Science suite provides a comprehensive, structured resource which covers the full Cambridge Secondary 1 framework and seamlessly progresses into the next stage. This engaging course supports teaching of the Science framework both theoretically and practically, with full coverage of the Scientific Enquiry framework integrated throughout the series. This Workbook for Stage 7 contains exercises that develop students' ability to apply their knowledge, as well as Scientific Enquiry skills relating to planning experiments and recording results.

Written by well-respected authors, the Cambridge Checkpoint Science suite provides a comprehensive, structured resource which covers the full Cambridge Secondary 1 framework and seamlessly progresses into the next stage. This engaging course supports teaching of the Science framework both theoretically and practically, with full coverage of the Scientific Enquiry framework integrated throughout the series. This Coursebook for Stage 7 gives a thorough introduction to the concepts, and offers a wealth of ideas for hands-on activities to make the subject matter come to life.

The Cambridge IGCSE Biology Revision Guide supports students through their course, containing specifically designed features to help students apply their knowledge as they prepare for assessment. This Revision Guide offers support for students as they prepare for their Cambridge IGCSE Biology (0610) exams. Containing up to date material that matches the syllabus for examination from 2016 and packed full of guidance such as Worked Examples, Tips and Progress Check questions throughout to help students to hone their revision and exam technique and avoid common mistakes. These features have been specifically designed to help students apply their knowledge in exams. Written in a clear and straightforward tone, this Revision Guide is perfect for international learners.

A tour of supermarket innovations reveals how food gets to a store, where fruit and vegetables grow in the winter, what holds gelatin together, and why eggs are different colors

Find out about frogs and toads, snakes and lizards. Get close up to a rattlesnake's rattle, see how a tadpole becomes a frog, and how a deadly pit viper senses the heat given off by its prey.

The end of our high-growth world was underway well before COVID-19 arrived. In this powerful and timely argument, Danny Dorling demonstrates the benefits of a larger, ongoing societal slowdown Drawing from an incredibly rich trove of global data, this groundbreaking book reveals that human progress has been slowing down since the early 1970s. Danny Dorling uses compelling visualizations to illustrate how fertility rates, growth in GDP per person, and even the frequency of new social movements have all steadily declined over the last few generations.   Perhaps most surprising of all is the fact that even as new technologies frequently reshape our everyday lives and are widely believed to be propelling our civilization into new and uncharted waters, the rate of technological progress is also rapidly dropping. Rather than lament this turn of events, Dorling embraces it as a moment of promise and a move toward stability, and he notes that many of the older great strides in progress that have defined recent history also brought with them widespread warfare, divided societies, and massive inequality.

Recommendation: If you've ever been intrigued by the enigmatic nature of human madness, Andrew Scull's "Madness: A Very Short Introduction" is a must-read. With its insightful exploration of the social, cultural, medical, and artistic responses to mental disturbance throughout history, this book offers a provocative and entertaining examination of a subject that simultaneously frightens and fascinates us all. Delving into the complexities of madness, Scull challenges our common sense assumptions and invites us to question our interpretations of mental illness. Whether you're interested in the historical perspective or the contemporary accounts, this captivating and thought-provoking book will leave you with a deeper understanding of the human experience.

This manual offers practical advice on the fundamentals of research to college and university students in all fields of study. The Craft of Research teaches much more than the mechanics of fact it explains how to approach a research project as an analytical process. The authors chart every stage of research, from finding a topic and generating research questions about it to marshalling evidence, constructing arguments, and writing everything up in a final report that is a model of authority. Their advice is designed for use by both beginners and seasoned practitioners, and for projects from class papers to dissertations.This book is organized into four parts. Part One is a spirited introduction to the distinctive nature, values, and protocols of research. Part Two demystifies the art of discovering a topic. It outlines a wide range of sources, among them personal interests and passions. Parts Three and Four cover the essentials of argument—how to make a claim and support it—and ways to outline, draft, revise, rewrite, and polish the final report. Part Three is a short course in the logic, structure, uses, and common pitfalls of argumentation. The writing chapters in Part Four show how to present verbal and visual information effectively and how to shape sentences and paragraphs that communicate with power and precision."A well-constructed, articulate reminder of how important fundamental questions of style and approach, such as clarity and precision, are to all research."— Times Literary Supplement

Technology and increasing levels of education have exposed people to more information than ever before. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism.Tom Nichols' The Death of Expertise shows how this rejection of experts has occurred: the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine, among other reasons. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. When ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy or, in the worst case, a combination of both. An update to the 2017breakout hit, the paperback edition of The Death of Expertise provides a new foreword to cover the alarming exacerbation of these trends in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election. Judging from events on the ground since it first published, The Death of Expertise issues a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age that is even more important today.

If you’re intrigued by educational systems and cultural nuances, "Preschool in Three Cultures Revisited" can be an enriching pick. You'll see how globalization and societal changes over twenty years have influenced preschool education in China, Japan, and the USA. This book doesn't just give you data; it immerses you in the classroom experience across continents, through vivid descriptions and video stills. It's a deep dive into the evolving pedagogies shaping our youngest minds.

If you're interested in biology, Biological Science 1 is an excellent read. It covers a wide range of topics including human health and disease, microbiology, genetics and biotechnology. The author provides comprehensive coverage of the latest syllabuses and includes questions and practical work, making it perfect for students. The appendices cover biological chemistry, biological techniques and statistics, adding value to the reader.

A new, evolutionary explanation of markets and investor behaviorHalf of all Americans have money in the stock market, yet economists can't agree on whether investors and markets are rational and efficient, as modern financial theory assumes, or irrational and inefficient, as behavioral economists believe--and as financial bubbles, crashes, and crises suggest. This is one of the biggest debates in economics and the value or futility of investment management and financial regulation hang on the outcome. In this groundbreaking book, Andrew Lo cuts through this debate with a new framework, the Adaptive Markets Hypothesis, in which rationality and irrationality coexist.Drawing on psychology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and other fields, Adaptive Markets shows that the theory of market efficiency isn't wrong but merely incomplete. When markets are unstable, investors react instinctively, creating inefficiencies for others to exploit. Lo's new paradigm explains how financial evolution shapes behavior and markets at the speed of thought--a fact revealed by swings between stability and crisis, profit and loss, and innovation and regulation.A fascinating intellectual journey filled with compelling stories, Adaptive Markets starts with the origins of market efficiency and its failures, turns to the foundations of investor behavior, and concludes with practical implications--including how hedge funds have become the Galapagos Islands of finance, what really happened in the 2008 meltdown, and how we might avoid future crises.An ambitious new answer to fundamental questions in economics, Adaptive Markets is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how markets really work.

"A Natural History of California" is an informative and engaging read for anyone interested in the flora and fauna of California. Allan Schoenherr's detailed descriptions of the state's various regions, along with their distinct climate, soil, and history, make for a compelling narrative. The inclusion of the impact of human activity on the environment also provides readers with a deeper understanding of California's ecology. This book would be particularly appealing to nature enthusiasts and those passionate about conservation efforts.

Economics has much to do with incentives--not least, incentives to work hard, to produce quality products, to study, to invest, and to save. Although Adam Smith amply confirmed this more than two hundred years ago in his analysis of sharecropping contracts, only in recent decades has a theory begun to emerge to place the topic at the heart of economic thinking. In this book, Jean-Jacques Laffont and David Martimort present the most thorough yet accessible introduction to incentives theory to date. Central to this theory is a simple question as pivotal to modern-day management as it is to economics What makes people act in a particular way in an economic or business situation? In seeking an answer, the authors provide the methodological tools to design institutions that can ensure good incentives for economic agents.This book focuses on the principal-agent model, the "simple" situation where a principal, or company, delegates a task to a single agent through a contract--the essence of management and contract theory. How does the owner or manager of a firm align the objectives of its various members to maximize profits? Following a brief historical overview showing how the problem of incentives has come to the fore in the past two centuries, the authors devote the bulk of their work to exploring principal-agent models and various extensions thereof in light of three types of information adverse selection, moral hazard, and non-verifiability. Offering an unprecedented look at a subject vital to industrial organization, labor economics, and behavioral economics, this book is set to become the definitive resource for students, researchers, and others who might find themselves pondering what contracts, and the incentives they embody, are really all about.

This is a study of a crucial and controversial topic in metaphysics and the philosophy of science: the status of the laws of nature. D. M. Armstrong works out clearly and in comprehensive detail a largely original view that laws are relations between properties or universals. The theory is continuous with the views on universals and more generally with the scientific realism that Professor Armstrong has advanced in earlier publications. He begins here by mounting an attack on the orthodox and sceptical view deriving from Hume that laws assert no more than a regularity of coincidence between instances of properties. In doing so he presents what may become the definitive statement of the case against this position. Professor Armstrong then goes on to establish his own theory in a systematic manner defending it against the most likely objections, and extending both it and the related theory of universals to cover functional and statistical laws. This treatment of the subject is refreshingly concise and vivid: it will both stimulate vigorous professional debate and make an excellent student text.

Modesty, humor, compassion, and wisdom are the traits most evident in these personal papers, most of them never before published, from the Einstein archives. The illustrious physicist wrote as thoughtfully to an Ohio fifth-grader, distressed by her discovery that scientists classify humans as animals, as to a Colorado banker, who asked whether he believed in a personal God. Witty rhymes, and exchange about fine music with Queen Elizabeth of Belgium, and expressions of his devotion to Zionism are but some of the highlights found in this rare, warm enriching book.

If the waddle and charm of penguins have ever caught your eye, "Penguins of the World" is a delightful journey through their lives. Pauline Reilly vividly brings together the tale of 17 penguin species in a way that's accessible for all – from curious kids to passionate ornithologists. Illustrated and rich in detail yet digestible, this book promises to deepen your appreciation for these tuxedoed seabirds.

This book considers how and why forms and meanings of different languages at different times may resemble one another. Its editors and authors aim to explain and identify the relationship between areal diffusion and the genetic development of languages, and to discover the means of distinguishing what may cause one language to share the characteristics of another.

Boasting almost one hundred articles and book excerpts, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a breathtaking celebration of the finest writing by scientists--the best such collection in print--packed with scintillating essays on everything from "The Discovery of Lucy" to "The Terror and Vastness of the Universe."Edited by best-selling author and renowned scientist Richard Dawkins, this sterling collection brings together exhilarating pieces by a who's who of scientists and science writers, including Stephen Pinker, Stephen Jay Gould, Martin Gardner, Albert Einstein, Julian Huxley, and many dozens more. Readers will find excerpts from bestsellers such as Douglas R. Hofstadter's Godel, Escher, Bach , Francis Crick's Life Itself , Loren Eiseley's The Immense Journey , Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea , and Rachel Carson's The Sea Around Us . There are classic essays ranging from J.B.S. Haldane's "On Being the Right Size" and Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons" to Alan Turing's "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" and Albert Einstein's famed New York Times article on "Relativity." And readers will also discover lesser-known but engaging pieces such as Lewis Thomas's "Seven Wonders of Science," J. Robert Oppenheimer on "War and Physicists," and Freeman Dyson's memoir of studyingunder Hans Bethe.A must-read volume for all science buffs, The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing is a rich and vibrant anthology that captures the poetry and excitement of scientific thought and discovery.

What causes poverty? Are economic crises inevitable under capitalism? Is government intervention in an economy a helpful approach or a disastrous idea? The answers to such basic economic questions matter to everyone, yet the unfamiliar jargon and math of economics can seem daunting. This clear, accessible, and even humorous book is ideal for young readers new to economics and for all readers who seek a better understanding of the full sweep of economic history and ideas. Economic historian Niall Kishtainy organizes short, chronological chapters that center on big ideas and events. He recounts the contributions of key thinkers including Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and others, while examining topics ranging from the invention of money and the rise of agrarianism to the Great Depression, entrepreneurship, environmental destruction, inequality, and behavioral economics. The result is a uniquely enjoyable volume that succeeds in illuminating the economic ideas and forces that shape our world.

If you've found philosophy intimidating or dense before, "A Little History of Philosophy" might change your mind. Nigel Warburton presents complex ideas with approachable clarity, making you feel like a participant in the great philosophical dialogues throughout history. This book delivers both depth and brevity, an invitation to ponder life's big questions alongside history’s greatest thinkers. It could spark a lifelong passion for philosophy in just a few pages.

220 pages. Book is in Very good condition throughout. This Provides A Straightforward And Comprehensive Survey Of The Basic Issues And Topics Involved In The Study Of Language.