Environmental disasters. Terrorist wars. Energy scarcity. Economic failure. Is this the world's inevitable fate, a downward spiral that ultimately spells the collapse of societies? Perhaps, says acclaimed author Thomas Homer-Dixon - or perhaps these crises can actually lead to renewal for ourselves and planet earth. The Upside of Down takes the reader on a mind-stretching tour of societies' management, or mismanagement, of disasters over time. From the demise of ancient Rome to contemporary climate change, this spellbinding book analyzes what happens when multiple crises compound to cause what the author calls "synchronous failure." But, crisis doesn't have to mean total global calamity. Through catagenesis, or creative, bold reform in the wake of breakdown, it is possible to reinvent our future. Drawing on the worlds of archeology, poetry, politics, science, and economics, The Upside of Down is certain to provoke controversy and stir imaginations across the globe. The author's wide-ranging expertise makes his insights and proposals particularly acute, as people of all nations try to grapple with how we can survive tomorrow's inevitable shocks to our global system. There is no guarantee of success, but there are ways to begin thinking about a better world, and The Upside of Down is the ideal place to start thinking.

Rationality and Decision Making: From Normative Rules to Heuristics offers a broad overview of both classic and very recent discussions concerning rationality and strategies of individual and group decision making. They are considered from a methodological, ethical, sociological, historical, cultural as well as an evolutionary perspective. Decision making, both rational and irrational, is treated in its complexity as an algorithmic, heuristic and intuitive process. The volume analyzes the theoretical and practical aspects of decision making in individual intentional endeavors and group or institutionalized undertakings. The analyses are mostly theoretical but they also appeal to empirical studies, proposed by philosophers and cognitive scientists who have studied logical, cognitive, biological, social and evolutionary aspects of human rationality. Contributors include María José Frápolli, Marek Hetmański, Jan F. Jacko, Artur Koterski, Agnieszka Lekka-Kowalik, Sofia Miguens, Ángeles J. Perona, Manueal de Pinedo, João Alberto Pinto, Krzysztof Polit, Marcin Rządeczka, Rui Sampaio da Silva, Joanna Sokołowska, Barbara Trybulec, Marcin Trybulec, Neftalí Villanueva, Monika Walczak, Jan Winkowski, Anna Wójtowicz, Jesús Zamora-Bonilla, and António Zilhão.

You and your friend each have flights to catch at 8 p.m. and your destination cities are different. You decide to share a cab, but get caught in a rare traffic jam lasting several hours. You end up at the airport around midnight, and surely enough, both of you miss your flights. All quantifiable consequences of missing the flights-cost of tickets cancellation, paying for a new ticket, taking a cab back to the city, overnight stay, taking a cab back to the airport next morning, etc.-are expectedly identical for both. Now suppose the airline assistant tells you, 'Sorry, your flight left as scheduled at 8 p.m. sharp.' But your friend is told, 'Oh, how very unfortunate. Your flight was almost four hours late and only just departed!' Who feels the greater disappointment? You or your friend? Neoclassical economics tells us that because both individuals are assumed rational, their regret levels ought to be identical since their economic consequences are identical. Behavioural economists, however, combine psychology with economics, and focus on how real people, with their cognitive biases, actually behave. The friend who just missed the flight does indeed experience greater disappointment than the one who missed the flight by a margin of four hours. Does that make one or the other irrational? Irrationally Rational takes you through the journey of such rationality-irrationality arguments, showing why economics shorn of psychology may be incomplete. It is the first book of its kind, collating the works of ten Nobel Laureates largely responsible for the rise of behavioural economics, that makes understanding behavioural economics more fun and accessible.

"Handbook on Evolution and Society" brings together original chapters by prominent scholars who have been instrumental in the revival of evolutionary theorizing and research in the social sciences over the last twenty-five years. Previously unpublished essays provide up-to-date, critical surveys of recent research and key debates. The contributors discuss early challenges posed by sociobiology, the rise of evolutionary psychology, the more conflicted response of evolutionary sociology to sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology. Chapters address the application and limitations of Darwinian ideas in the social sciences. Prominent authors come from a variety of disciplines in ecology, biology, primatology, psychology, sociology, and the humanities. The most comprehensive resource available, this vital collection demonstrates to scholars and students the new ways in which evolutionary approaches, ultimately derived from biology, are influencing the diverse social sciences and humanities.

The concept of practical reason is central to contemporary thought on ethics and the philosophy of law - acting well means acting for good reasons. Explaining this requires several stages. How do reasons relate to actions at all, as incentives and in explanations? What are values, how do they relate to human nature, and how do they enter practical reasoning? How do the concepts of 'right and wrong' fit in, and in what way do they involve questions of mutual trust among human beings? How does our moral freedom - our freedom to form our own moral commitments - relate to our responsibilities to each other? How is this final question transposed into law and legal commitments? This book explores these questions, vital to understanding the nature of law and morality. It presents a clear account of practical reason, valuable to students of moral philosophy and jurisprudence at undergraduate or postgraduate levels. For more advanced scholars it also offers a reinterpretation of Kant's views on moral autonomy and Smith's on self-command, marrying Smith's 'moral sentiments' to Kant's 'categorical imperative' in a novel way. The book concludes and underpins the author's Law, State and Practical Reason series. Taken together the books offer an overarching theory of the nature of law and legal reason, the role of the State, and the nature of moral reason and judgement.