Winner of the 2000 Scientific and Medical Network Book Prize In this book, David Ray Griffin argues that the perceived conflict between science and religion is based upon a double mistake-the assumption that religion requires supernaturalism and that scientific naturalism requires atheism and materialism.

Naturalism is a philosophical doctrine that maintains that everything arises from natural properties and causes, and supernatural or spiritual explanations are either excluded or discounted. This viewpoint has been pivotal in shaping modern scientific thought and philosophical inquiry. As a worldview, naturalism posits that the universe is a closed system where every event can be explained by natural causes and laws, without resorting to supernatural or metaphysical explanations. The resurgence and adaptation of naturalism in the 21st century reflect its continued relevance in various fields, including science, philosophy, and ethics.

This book shows how absolute naturalism, deciphering nature without reference to God, emerged from the inheritance, dynamics and debates of orthodox culture.

Richard J. Bernstein argues that despite the apparent chaotic debates about naturalism, there has recently been a series of powerful arguments that support a version of naturalism that is in the spirit of John Dewey’s pragmatic naturalism. After presenting a sketch of Dewey’s pragmatic naturalism, he critically examines the works of a variety of thinkers—Robert Brandom, John McDowell, Richard Rorty, Wilfrid Sellars, Peter Godfrey-Smith, Philip Kitcher, Bjorn Ramberg, David Macarthur, Steven Levine, Mark Johnson, Robert Sinclair, Huw Price, and Joseph Rouse—to show how they have contributed analytic finesse to the articulation of Dewey’s vision of pragmatic naturalism. As Bernstein shows, Dewey’s philosophical legacy is very much alive today in some of the best recent philosophic discussions.

First published in 1951, Arnold Hauser's commanding work presents an account of the development and meaning of art, from its origins in the Stone Age through to the "Film Age." This new edition of a classic work explores historical and social movements and the effects these have had on the production of art--the centrality of class and class struggle, the cultural roles of ideologies and the determining influence of modes of economic development. There are 144 illustrations within the four volumes and each volume has a new general introduction by Jonathan Harris which traces the history of Hauser's project, discusses the relevance of the work for art history today, provides a synopsis of Hauser's narrative, and offers a critical guide that highlights major themes, trends and arguments.

Metaethics occupies a central place in analytical philosophy, and the last forty years has seen an upsurge of interest in questions about the nature and practice of morality. This collection presents original and ground-breaking research on metaethical issues from some of the very best of a new generation of philosophers working in this field.

The “Natural Problem of Consciousness” is the problem of understanding why there are presently conscious beings at all. Given a non-reductive naturalist framework taking consciousness as an ontologically subjective biological phenomenon, how can we rationally explain the fact that the actual world has turned out to be one where there are presently living beings that can feel, rather than having developed as a zombie-world in which there would be no conscious experiences of any kind? This book introduces the Natural Problem by relating it to central problems in the philosophy of mind (metaphysical mind-body problem, Hard Problem of consciousness) and emphasizing the distinctive interest of its diachronic dimension. Ranging from philosophy to biology and neuroscience, it offers a thorough analysis aimed at better understanding what could explain why phenomenal consciousness has been preserved throughout evolution by natural selection. This is an original, engaging, and thought provoking philosophical study of a neglected but fundamental question regarding the nature and origin of consciousness.

The second edition of Jack Crumley’s An Introduction to Epistemology strikes a balance between the many issues that engage contemporary epistemologists and the contributions of the major historical figures. He shows not only how philosophers such as Descartes, Hume, Locke, Berkeley, and Kant foreground the contemporary debates, but also why they deserve consideration on their own terms. A substantial revision of the first edition, the second edition is even more accessible to students. The new edition includes recent work on contextualism, evidentialism, externalism and internalism, and perceptual realism; as well, the chapter on coherence theory is substantially revised, reflecting recent developments in that area. New to this second edition is a chapter on feminist epistemology, which includes discussions of major positions and themes, such as feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint epistemology, postmodern epistemology, and feminist critiques of objectivity. It presents the important contributions of philosophers such as Sandra Harding, Helen Longino, Genevieve Lloyd, and others. Each chapter ends with a list of study questions and readings for further study.

A naturalist on Montana’s academic frontier, passionate conservationist Morton J. Elrod was instrumental in establishing the Department of Biology at the University of Montana, as well as Glacier National Park and the National Bison Range. In Montana’s Pioneer Naturalist, the first in-depth assessment of Elrod’s career, George M. Dennison reveals how one man helped to shape the scholarly study of nature and its institutionalization in the West at the turn of the century. Elrod moved to Missoula in 1897, just four years after the state university’s founding, and participated in virtually every aspect of university life for almost forty years. To reveal the depths of this pioneer scientist’s influence on the growth of his university, his state, and the academic fields he worked in, author George M. Dennison delves into state and university archives, including Elrod’s personal papers. Although Elrod was an active participant in bison conservation and the growth of the National Park Naturalist Service, much of his work focused on Flathead Lake, where he surveyed local life forms and initiated the university’s biological station—one of the first of its kind in the United States. Yet at heart Elrod was an educator who desired to foster in his students a “love of nature,” which, he said, “should give health to any one, and supply knowledge of greatest value, either to the individual or to society, or to both.” In this biography of a prominent scientist now almost forgotten, Dennison—longtime president of the University of Montana—demonstrates how Elrod’s scholarship and philosophy regarding science and nature made him one of Montana’s most distinguished naturalists, conservationists, and educators.