Bøger af Michael Pitman

Social science researchers in the global South, and in South Africa particularly, utilise research methods in innovative ways in order to respond to contexts characterised by diversity, racial and political tensions, socioeconomic disparities and gender inequalities. These methods often remain undocumented - a gap that this book starts to address. Written by experts from various methodological fields, Transforming Research Methods in the Social Sciences is a comprehensive collation of original essays and cutting-edge research that demonstrates the variety of novel techniques and research methods available to researchers responding to these context-bound issues. It is particularly relevant for study and research in the fields of applied psychology, sociology, ethnography, biography and anthropology. In addition to their unique combination of conceptual and application issues, the chapters also include discussions on ethical considerations relevant to the method in similar global South contexts. Transforming Research Methods in the Social Sciences has much to offer to researchers, professionals and others involved in social science research both locally and internationally.

';Potted Grammar'? ';Natural Dialectic?' This book is a companion to ';Science and the Soul' whose subtitle reads ';facts and philosophy translated into Natural Dialectic'. It extracts, for clarity, the framework of that book; it thereby simplifies a model of creation that is ancient and, in scientific terms, bang up-to-date. After an explanation of the way that Natural Dialectic works, the narrative turns to explain how an orderly act of creation is expressed and physical, psychological and biological phenomena can be systematically related. It proceeds to abbreviate the explanation of these scientific subjects given in Science and the Soul. Is this explanation rigorous and accurate enough? The last Chapter is entitled Truth, Appearance and Reality. The book, one of a series grouped as Cosmic Connections (website www.cosmicconnections.co.uk), is very thought-provoking. It is a riveting explanation of the way things are bolted together! And it makes a fine philosophical machine! Could its routine accurately reflect the origin and operation of our home, the cosmos? Just allow that information is an immaterial entity. Allow that consciousness is not a physical phenomenon and journey, intellectual seat-belt fastened, far and fast from there

This volume is the umbilical offshoot of its mother book, Science and the Soul. Both are truly original works. We begin by linking with the latter. Then, using facts from palaeoanthropology, biology (classical and molecular), information theory, design theory and philosophy, A Mutant Ape? assesses the two main interpretations of your human origin.The simple difference between these interpretations is identified. So also are the differences between man and ape. Thence the book follows the course of palaeoanthropological history until the second world war and deals with each main character in the order of its scientific discovery. After the war things become, with more workers in the field, more complex. Finds worldwide are covered and various theories seeking to locate human emergence are described and criticised. These include an account of the recent impact of genetics before, at last, we both turn to Australia and return to Europe for the summing up.Read thoroughly and by the end what will you think? The books Adam and Evolution and A Potted Grammar of Natural Dialectic may further help to clarify the issue.

What pleasure just to bask in ancient tree-light, Puck-likepropped against a trunk beneath the boughs that sway this forest family.....What can be said about a poem better than reading it? This collection of about fifty lights is drawn from material written between 1962 and 1988 but mostly during the period 1965-75 (the authors twenties). It celebrates natures beauty, romance, music, sex, mystic love and even the sad demise of steam engines!As regards philosophical element an analyst might discern a thread running between A Cluster of Lights and the authors works like Adam and Evolution and, latterly, Science and the Soul. If true, such thread constitutes an embryonic, unwitting precursor because Cluster is clearly not scientific. Instead, its rationale embodies a literary compression whose spring of words may equally powerfully propel the reader into flights of understanding, universal principle and quickening imagination.

This work is updated version of the original ground-breaking Adam and Evolution. It not only heavily criticises neo-Darwinian orthodoxy in all its various fields but also provides a logical, alternative perspective to the question of lifes origin. Its premise is that matter (and therefore any biological vehicle) is a form of non-conscious energy but code is an expression of thought. Matter itself, having no reason, cannot produce codified information. Does a biological body, perhaps even the body of the universe itself, involve an immaterial part - codified instruction that makes it larger than the sum of its physical parts? Or is chance king? Although the universe appears to work by rules and to have been established in a very particular way, a materialist believes that this appearance of order is in fact unplanned. Its invisible framework of regulation must have occurred by chance and, since inception, individual objects and events occur by chance as well. Thus neo-Darwinism is a gospel accepted in the faith that, given enough time, chance could generate the miracle of life. Is this a rational belief? Let us take a look at these two radical differences of opinion, ones that affect us personally and deeply. This works is a harbinger of the philosophical framework called Natural Dialectic and links with books Science and the Soul, A Mutant Ape? The Origin of Mans Descent and A Potted Grammar of Natural Dialectic.