Mindboggling: Preliminaries to a science of the mind by Roy Harris. Do you have a mind? Answers to this question have divided Western thinkers for centuries, and still do. Mindboggling sets out to identify a nucleus of basic issues about the mind, and present the main arguments for and against in each case. Targeted to a lay readership, each chapter discusses a different theory, myth or idea about the mind. Anticipate wails from theorists whose theories have been given short shrift. Mindboggling is available on Amazon, from Bookshops or direct from Publishers.
Science on Television by Bienvenido León.
The book is a clear and systematic guide to the narrative and rhetorical techniques used by science documentary filmmakers. The book is priced at £18.50, but for direct orders we are offering a 20% discount.
Motivating Science is a collection of articles from the first five years of The Pantaneto Forum. We are offering a 20% discount for direct orders.
Editorial
There is a lot more to gender issues in science than simply the recipe: “add women and stir”. In “Gender, Democracy, and philosophy of science”, Sandra Harding traces how the underlying conceptual frameworks of science have been undermined as a result of the “stir”. Her article covers the last three decades of the women’s movement, with particular emphasis on gender issues of women from racial and ethnic minorities. These latter together with a “Third World” perspective have come to the forefront in the last ten years.
One of the problems of research funding is balance, not just between different types of science projects, but also between science and the Humanities. In “Out of Proportion: Toward a Balance Among Science, Technology, Humanities, and the Arts”, Robert Johnson looks at this balance in the context of the present climate of cutbacks and, in particular, the current American administration’s efforts to support science. Nobody, (at least among scientists), will argue against supporting science, but Johnson makes the case for a widening imbalance between science and the humanities, which has developed over the decades since the 1940’s. This, according to Johnson, has been to the detriment of science, in particular, squeezing out ethics.
On a more positive note, Enikö Patkós has written a useful guide to grants available from the European Union for science communication projects. In these times when research budgets are under stress, sources of funding are of increasing importance. Particularly for a subject like “science communication”, finding one’s way around the labyrinthine pathways of EU funding opportunities can be daunting, and therefore Enikö Patkós’s short guide is extremely welcome.
The proceedings of the Science Matters conference, which we reported in Issue 28, October 2007, have just been published and are available from the publishers – World Scientific.
Nigel Sanitt Editor
ISSN 1741-1572
Contents
Articles
Gender, Democracy, and philosophy of science, Sandra Harding
A Short Guide to EU Grants for Science Communication, Enikö Patkós
Conference Report
The Second Biennial Conference ‘Science Matters’ (Scimat), Estoril, Portugal, October 5-7, 2009.