Books published by MIT Press Ltd

"Sensing Machines shows how sensors and artificial intelligence transform our lives, from driving and playing games, to the ways we eat, sleep and dream"--

"This book on "unofficial" art from the early GDR forces us to rethink assumptions underpinning Western art's postwar histories and better understand the relationship between art practice and political influence"--

"An explanation of where children's scientific intuitions come from and how they can be nurtured. Intended not just for scholars but science teachers and enthusiasts as well"--

An innovative account that brings together cognitive science and literary history to examine patterns of "mindreading" in a range of literary works. In The Secret Life of Literature, Lisa Zunshine brings together cognitive science and literary history to trace patterns of "mindreading" in works ranging from The Epic of Gilgamesh to Invisible Man. Zunshine shows that novels, plays, and narrative poems continue to find new ways to make their readers engage in imaginative construction of mental states: their own, the characters,' the narrator's, and the author's. Crucially, these mental states-thoughts, feelings, and intentions-are "embedded" within each other. For instance, Ellison's Invisible Man is aware of how his white Party comrades pretend not to understand what he means, when they want to reassert their position of power. Race, class, and gender inform literary embedments, and so do unspoken cultural rules about the ethics of mindreading. Social situations involving complex embedments, Zunshine points out, occur in literature much more often than they do in everyday life. They are the cornerstone of literary imagination, and yet they are largely invisible to readers and critics. Zunshine examines specific patterns of mindreading, showing readers how to recognize them; explores the evolutionary and neurocognitive foundations of embedment; considers community-specific mindreading values; and looks at the migration of mindreading across genres and national literary traditions, paying particular attention to the use of deception, eavesdropping, and shame as plot devices. Finally, she investigates mindreading in children's literature.

"What's a tort? It's a wrong that a court is prepared to recognize, usually in the form of ordering the transfer of money ("damages") from the wrongdoer to the wronged. The court is usually alerted to wrong by the filing of a lawsuit: anyone can walk through the courthouse doors and, subject to the limits explored in civil procedure, call someone else (or, if a company, some-thing) to account. We'll discuss the sources that courts turn to in order to answer such questions. Rarely, in tort cases, are those sources the ones laypeople expect: statutes passed by legislatures. Without statutes to guide them, what are courts left with?"--

How the global financial services sector has been transformed by artificial intelligence, data science, and blockchain.  Artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, and other new technologies have upended the global financial services sector, creating opportunities for entrepreneurs and corporate innovators. Venture capitalists have helped to fund this disruption, pouring nearly $500 billion into fintech over the last five years. This book offers global perspectives on technology-fueled transformations in financial services, with contributions from a wide-ranging group of academics, industry professionals, former government officials, and current government advisors. They examine not only the struggles of rich countries to bring the old analog world into the new digital one but also the opportunities for developing countries to “leapfrog” directly into digital. The book offers accessible explanations of blockchain and distributed ledger technology and explores big data analytics. It considers, among other things, open banking, platform-based strategies for banks, and digital financial services. Case studies imagine possible future fintech-government interaction, emphasizing that legal and regulatory frameworks can help to create trust in financial processes. The contributors offer novel takes and unexpected insights that will be of interest to fintech experts and nonexperts alike. ContributorsAjay Bhalla, Michelle Chivunga, John D’Agostino, Mark Flood, Amias Moore Gerety, Oliver R. Goodenough, Thomas Hardjono, Sharmila Kassam, Boris Khentov, Alexander Lipton, Lev Menand, Pinar Ozcan, Alex Pentland, Matthew Reed, David L. Shrier, Markos Zachariadis

The new edition of a comprehensive and rigorous but concise introduction to symbolic logic.Logic Primer offers a comprehensive and rigorous introduction to symbolic logic, providing concise definitions of key concepts, illustrative examples, and exercises. After presenting the definitions of validity and soundness, the book goes on to introduce a formal language, proof theory, and formal semantics for sentential logic (chapters 1-3) and for first-order predicate logic (chapters 4-6) with identity (chapter 7). For this third edition, the material has been reorganized from four chapters into seven, increasing the modularity of the text and enabling teachers to choose alternative paths through the book. New exercises have been added, and all exercises are now arranged to support students moving from easier to harder problems. Its spare and elegant treatment makes Logic Primer unique among textbooks. It presents the material with minimal chattiness, allowing students to proceed more directly from topic to topic and leaving instructors free to cover the subject matter in the way that best suits their students. The book includes more than thirty exercise sets, with answers to many of them provided in an appendix. The book's website allows students to enter and check proofs, truth tables, and other exercises interactively.

A comprehensive study of the growth, potential, and limits of transnational eco-certification in China and the implications for other emerging economies.China has long prioritized economic growth over environmental protection. But in recent years, the country has become a global leader in the fight to save the planet by promoting clean energy, cutting air and water pollution, and developing a system of green finance. In Certifying China, Yixian Sun explores the potential and limits of transnational eco-certification in moving the world’s most populous country toward sustainable consumption and production. He identifies the forces that drive companies from three sectors—seafood, palm oil, and tea—to embrace eco-certification. The success of eco-certification, he says, will depend on the extent to which it wins the support of domestic actors in fast-growing emerging economies. The assumption of eco-certification is that demand along the supply chain can drive businesses to adopt good practices for social, environmental, and economic sustainability by specifying rules for production, third-party verification, and product labeling. Through case studies drawn from extensive fieldwork and mixed methods, Sun traces the processes by which certification programs originating from the Global North were introduced in China and gradually gained traction. He finds that the rise of eco-certification in the Chinese market is mainly driven by state actors, including government-sponsored industry associations, who seek benefits of transnational governance for their own development goals. The book challenges the conventional wisdom that the Chinese state has little interest in supporting transnational governance, offering novel insights into the interaction between state and non-state actors in earth system governance in emerging economies.

"From the phone phreaks of the 1970s to Anonymous, how how hackers deploy persuasion, helpfulness, manipulation, and deception to gain access to sensitive information"--

"An advanced level textbook on the science of action and movement from one of the most respected researchers in the field"--

A primer on nuclear weapons, from the science of fission and fusion to the pursuit of mutually assured destruction, the SALT treaties, and the Bomb in pop culture.Although the world's attention has shifted to drone-controlled bombing and cyberwarfare, the threat of nuclear war still exists. There are now 14,000 nuclear weapons in the hands of the nine declared nuclear powers. Even though the world survived the Cold War, we need to understand what it means to live with nuclear weapons. In this volume in the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, Mark Wolverton offers a primer on nuclear weapons, from the science of fission and fusion to the pursuit of mutually assured destruction, the SALT and START agreements, and the Bomb in pop culture. Wolverton explains the basic scientific facts, offers historical perspective, and provides a nuanced view of the the unique political, social, and moral dilemmas posed by nuclear weapons. He describes the birth of the Bomb in 1945 and its use against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; explains how a nuclear bomb works; recounts episodes when the world came close to waging nuclear war, including the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962; discusses nuclear policy and nuclear treaties; and traces the influence of such films as On the Beach, Dr. Strangelove, and The Day After.

"Explores the making of regulatory objects as a political and economic operation as relates to the European Union and especially the impacts following Brexit"--

"An in-depth analysis of Amazon as a ubiquitous brand that has decisively shaped retail, both online and off, and normalized monpoly"--

An approach to understanding religion that draws on both humanities and natural science but rejects approaches that employ simple monisms and radical dualisms. In Beyond Heaven and Earth, Gabriel Levy argues that collective religious narratives and beliefs are part of nature; they are the basis for the formation of the narratives and beliefs of individuals. Religion grows out of the universe, but to make sense of it we have to recognize the paradox that the universe is both mental and material (or neither). We need both humanities and natural science approaches to study religion and religious meaning, Levy contends, but we must also recognize the limits of these approaches. First, we must make the dominant metaphysics that undergird the various disciplines of science and humanities more explicit, and second, we must reject those versions of metaphysics that maintain simple monisms and radical dualisms. Bringing Donald Davidson’s philosophy—a form of pragmatism known as anomalous monism—to bear on religion, Levy offers a blueprint for one way that the humanities and natural sciences can have a mutually respectful dialogue. Levy argues that in order to understand religions we have to take their semantic content seriously. We need to rethink such basic concepts as narrative fiction, information, agency, creativity, technology, and intimacy. In the course of his argument, Levy considers the relation between two closely related semantics, fiction and religion, and outlines a new approach to information. He then applies his theory to discrete cases: ancient texts, modern media, and intimacy.

"Garcia lays out tactics for researchers to fully engage in education policy by directly engaging with politicians -- at levels from local to national -- both before and after they are elected"--

"A brief introduction to the physics of supernovae--explosions of dying stars that yield heavy chemical elements and spark the birth of new stars--and to past, present, and future research directions"--

"A short philosophy of language book on quotation that maps out the history of the topic and offers a new approach to it"--

A new approach to teaching university-level chemistry that links core concepts of chemistry and physical science to current global challenges.Introductory chemistry and physics are taught at the university level as isolated subjects, divorced from any compelling context. Moreover, the "formalism first" teaching approach presents students with disembodied knowledge, abstract and learned by rote. By contrast, this textbook presents a new approach to teaching university-level chemistry that links core concepts of chemistry and physical science to current global challenges. It establishes the importance of the principles of chemistry and physics to issues including energy production and distribution, climate, and national security; introduces such core concepts as energy and energy transformations, thermodynamics, chemical equlibria, and quantum mechanics; and places these core concepts in a global context. Each chapter opens with a "Framework" section that establishes the topic's connection to emerging challenges. Next, a "Core" section addresses quantitative concepts. Finally, "Case Studies" link to global issues. These case studies are designed to build quantitative reasoning skills, supply the technology background, or illustrate the global need for dramatically increased primary energy generation. The text's development of both context and scientific principles is rigorous, equipping students for advanced classes as well as future involvement in scientific and societal arenas. University Chemistry was written for a course created and taught by the author at Harvard.

"New genomic studies on ancient remains are unveiling different forms of inequality that were prevalent in the past and have shaped the genomes of humankind"--