Hidden Bibliographic Details
| ISBN: | 9780773574694
0773574697
9780773534131
077353413X
9780773536197
0773536191
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| Notes: | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Restrictions unspecified
Electronic reproduction. [Place of publication not identified] : HathiTrust Digital Library, 2010.
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212
digitized 2010 HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve
Print version record.
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| Summary: | "Current dogma holds that all cultures and moral values are conditional, nothing human is innate, and Einstein proved that the whole universe is relative. Challenging this position, William Gairdner argues that relativism is not only logically and morally self-defeating but that progress in scientific and intellectual disciplines has actually strengthened the case for absolutes, universals, and constants of nature and human nature." "Gairdner refutes the popular belief in cultural relativism by showing that there are hundreds of well-established cross-cultural human universals. He then discusses the many universals found in physics - as well as Einstein's personal regret at how his work was misinterpreted in the public's eagerness to promote relativism. Gairdner also gives a lively account of the many universals of human biology, including the controversial topic of universal gender differences or "brain sex." He looks at universal concepts of both natural and international law, and ends by discussing language theory. Gairdner shows how philosophers from Nietzsche to Derrida have misused linguistic concepts to justify their relativism, even though a sustained and successful effort by serious scientists and philosophers of language has revealed myriad universals of human language, ranging from language acquisition, to word-order, to Universal Grammar."--Jacket.
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| Other form: | Print version: Gairdner, William D. (William Douglas), 1940- Book of absolutes. Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, ©2008
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