This volume presents the proceedings from the AMS-IMS-SIAM Summer Research Conference on Homotopy Methods in Algebraic Topology held at the University of Colorado.The conference coincided with the sixtieth birthday of J. Peter May. An article is included reflecting his wide-ranging and influential contributions to the subject area. Other articles in the book discuss the Adams $E 2$ term for elliptic cohomology, mapping class groups and function spaces, rational SO(3) equivariant cohomology theories, toral groups and classifying spaces of $p$-compact groups, dual calculus for functors to spectra, flatness for the $E {\infty}$ tensor product, and further related areas. The book offers a true comprehensive source on modern aspects of homotopy theoretic methods exported to algebraic settings.
In this transnational account of black protest, Nicholas Grant examines how African Americans engaged with, supported, and were inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement. Bringing black activism into conversation with the foreign policy of both the U.S. and South African governments, this study questions the dominant perception that U.S.-centered anticommunism decimated black international activism. Instead, by tracing the considerable amount of time, money, and effort the state invested into responding to black international criticism, Grant outlines the extent to which the U.S. and South African governments were forced to reshape and occasionally reconsider their racial policies in the Cold War world. This study shows how African Americans and black South Africans navigated transnationally organized state repression in ways that challenged white supremacy on both sides of the Atlantic. The political and cultural ties that they forged during the 1940s and 1950s are testament to the insistence of black activists in both countries that the struggle against apartheid and Jim Crow were intimately interconnected.
Supply Chain Management and Corporate Governance: Artificial Intelligence, Game Theory and Robust Optimisation is the first innovative, comprehensive analysis and analytical robust optimisation modelling of the relationships between corporate governance principles and supply chain management for risk management and decision-making under uncertainty in supply chain operations. To avoid corporate failures and crises caused by agency problems and other external factors, effective corporate governance mechanisms are essential for efficient supply chain management. This book develops a new collaborative robust supply chain management and corporate governance (RSCMCG) model and framework that combines good corporate governance practices for risk management strategies and decision-making under uncertainty. This model is developed as a principal–agent game theory model, and it is digitalised and computed by Excel algorithms and spreadsheets as an artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithm. The implementation of the RSCMCG model provides optimal supply chain solutions, corporate governance principles and risk management strategies for supporting the company to achieve long-term benefits in firm value and maximising shareholders’ interests and corporate performance while maintaining robustness in an uncertain environment. This book shows the latest state of knowledge on the topic and will be of interest to researchers, academics, practitioners, policymakers and advanced students in the areas of corporate governance, supply chain management, finance, strategy and risk management.
The definitive mission of metaphilosophy is to facilitate an understanding of how philosophy works—the aim of the enterprise, the instrumental and procedural resources for its work, and the prospect of its success. Nicholas Rescher unites two facets of metaphilosophy to show that historical perspective and forward-thinking normative, or systematic, metaphilosophy cannot be independent of one another. The descriptive, or historical, metaphilosophy provides an account of what has been thought regarding the conduct of philosophical inquiry, and the prescriptive, or normative, metaphilosophy which deliberates about what is to be thought regarding the conduct of philosophizing. Rescher argues that metaphilosophy forms a part of philosophy itself. This is a unique feature of the discipline since the philosophy of biology is not a part of biology and the philosophy of mathematics is not a part of mathematics. Ultimately, the salient features of philosophizing in general—including the inherently controversial and discordant nature of philosophical doctrines—are also bound to afflict metaphilosophy. Thus, only by a careful analysis of the central issues can a plausible view of the enterprise be developed. Metaphilosophy: Philosophy in Philosophical Perspective challenges the static, compartmentalized view of metaphilosophy, providing insight for scholars and students of all areas of philosophy.
This text advocates a radical shift of concern in philosophical, historical, and sociological studies of the sciences, from answers and doctrines to questions and problems, and explores the consequences of such a shift.
This volume offers an examination of Brecht's largely forgotten theatrical fragments of a life of David, written just after the Great War but prior to Brecht winning the Kleist Prize in 1922 and the acclaim that would launch his extraordinary career. David J. Shepherd and Nicholas E. Johnson take as their starting point Brecht's own diaries from the time, which offer a vivid picture of the young Brecht shuttling between Munich and the family home in Augsburg, surrounded by friends, torn between women, desperate for success, and all the while with 'David on the brain'. The analysis of Brecht's David, along with his notebooks and diaries, reveals significant connections between the reception of the Biblical David and one of Germany's most tumultuous cultural periods. Drawing on theatrical experiments conducted with an ensemble from Trinity College Dublin, this volume includes the first ever translation of the David fragments in English, an extensive discussion of the theatrical afterlife of David in the early twentieth century as well as new interdisciplinary insights into the early Brecht: a writer entranced by the biblical David and utterly committed to translating the biblical tradition into his own evolving theatrical idiom.
During his four years as the tenth Chancellor of Berkeley (2013-17), Nicholas B. Dirks was confronted by crises arguably more challenging than those faced by any other college administrator in the contemporary period. This thoughtfully candid book, emerging from deep reflection on his turbulent time in office, offers not just a gripping insider's account of the febrile politics of his time as Berkeley's leader, but also decades of nuanced reflection on the university's true meaning (at its best, to be an aspirational 'city of intellect'). Dirks wrestles with some of the most urgent questions with which educational leaders are presently having to engage: including topics such as free speech and campus safe spaces, the humanities' contested future, and the real cost and value of liberal arts learning. His visionary intervention - part autobiography, part practical manifesto - is a passionate cri de cœur for structural changes in higher education that are both significant and profound.
This book is about education, learning, rational inquiry, philosophy, science studies, problem solving, academic inquiry, global problems, wisdom and, above all, the urgent need for an academic revolution. Despite this range and diversity of topics, there is a common underlying theme. Education ought to be devoted, much more than it is, to the exploration real-life, open problems; it ought not to be restricted to learning up solutions to already solved problems - especially if nothing is said about the problems that provoked the solutions in the first place. A central task of philosophy ought to be to keep alive awareness of our unsolved fundamental problems - especially our most fundamental problem of all, encompassing all others: How can our human world - and the world of sentient life more generally - imbued with the experiential, consciousness, free will, meaning and value, exist and best flourish embedded as it is in the physical universe? This is both our fundamental intellectual problem and our fundamental problem of living. The essays in this volume seek to provoke a concerted effort to transform our institutions of learning so that they become rationally and effectively devoted to helping us learn how to create a wiser world. Our most serious problems of living are so grim, so imbued with suffering, wasted lives and unnecessary death, that the idea of approaching them in a playful spirit seems sacrilegious. We need to keep alive tackling of intellectual problems so that playful capacities can be exercised - if for no other reason (and other reasons there are, of course, aplenty). There are two really worthy impulses behind all rational inquiry: delight and compassion.
In Adam’s Dust and Adam’s Glory, Nicholas A. Meyer challenges the scholarly reconstruction of a traditional theological framework of creation, fall, and restoration in order to comprehend the pessimistic anthropologies of the Hodayot and the letters of Paul. Meyer argues that too little notice has been paid to the fact that this literature problematizes ordinary humanity by way of original humanity—its sexuality, its earthly physicality, its spiritual-moral frailty—and that these texts look not for the restoration of human nature as determined in creation, but rather for its transformation. Setting aside the traditional threefold framework, the author offers an innovative and comprehensive reading of the use of traditions of anthropogony, including the glory of Adam and the image of God, in this literature.
Cinema and science fiction were made for each other. Science fiction has been at the cutting edge of film technology and the genre has produced some of the most ambitious, imaginative and visually spectacular films ever made. Yet science fiction cinema is about more than just state-of-the-art special effects. It has also provided a vehicle for film-makers and writers to comment on their own societies and cultures. In this new study of the genre, James Chapman and Nicholas Cull examine a series of landmark science fiction films from the 1930s to the present. They include genre classics, including 'Things to Come', 'Forbidden Planet', 'Planet of the Apes' and '2001: A Space Odyssey', alongside modern blockbusters 'Star Wars' and 'Avatar'. They consider both screen originals and adaptations of the work of major science fiction authors such as H.G. Wells and Arthur C. Clarke. They range widely across the genre from pulp adventure and space opera to political allegory and speculative documentary- there is even a science fiction musical. Chapman and Cull explore the contexts and document the production histories of each film to show how they made their way to the screen- and why they turned out the way they did. Informed throughout by extensive original research in US and British archives, Projecting Tomorrow will be essential reading for all students and fans of science fiction cinema.
In this study of Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes, Perkins argues that despite the view of Hoccleve's politics and poetics as conventional, servile and naive, it is in fact deeply engaged in the political and literary currents of the early 15th century.
From the taunting videos of Osama Bin Laden to the partisan euphoria of the embedded journalist, from the visual rhetoric of the anti-globalisation movement to the empire of spin to the scalding polemics of American campaign advertising, propaganda is back. This book provides a full and detailed analysis of the phenomenon of propaganda, its meaning, content and urgent significance. It is one of the most original works ever published on the subject. While it applies a conceptual approach to the study of propaganda, the theoretics are grounded in practice. Insightful case studies on Symbolic Government, negative campaign advertising, single issue group polemic and corporate propaganda, culminate in a vivid narrative of the role of propaganda in driving the remorseless new conflict which began on September 11 2001. Contents Part One: Defining what and reasoning why 1. A question of meaning 2. Explaining propaganda Part Two: A conceptual arrangement 3. An essential trinity: rhetoric, symbolism and myth 4. Elements of propaganda: foundations; why we need enemies; enmity in action Part Three: case studies in propaganda 5. Privatising propaganda: the rise of the single issue 6. Evangelism and corporate propaganda 7. Propaganda and the symbolic state: a British experience 8. 9-11 and war 9. Weapons of mass deception: propaganda, the media and the Iraq war Afterword - The impact of propaganda Index Nicholas O’Shaughnessy is Professor of Marketing and Communication at the University of Keele
Richard Evans wrote In Defence of History at a time when the historian's profession was coming under heavy attack as a result of the ‘cultural turn’ taken by the discipline during the late 1980s and the 1990s. Historians were being forced to face up to postmodern thinking, which argued that, because all texts were the product of biased writers who had incomplete information, none could be privileged above others. In this reading, there could be no objective history, merely the study of the texts themselves. While In Defence of History addresses all aspects of historical method, its key focus is on an extensive evaluation of this postmodern thinking. Evans judges the acceptability of the reasoning advanced by the postmodernists – and finds it badly wanting. He is strongly critical both of the relevance and of the adequacy of their arguments, seeking to show that, ultimately, they are guilty of failing to accept the logic of their own position. All texts are equally valid, or invalid, they suggest – while insisting that the products of their own school are in fact more ‘true’ than those of their opponents. Evans concludes by pointing out that this same argument could be advanced to suggest that the works of Holocaust deniers are just as valid as are those of historians who accept that the Nazis set out to commit genocide. So why, he demands, is no postmodernist willing to say as much? A devastating example of the usefulness of relentless evaluation.
Combining the insight of Franklin Foer’s How Soccer Explains the World and the intrigue of Ben Affleck’s Argo, Ping Pong Diplomacy traces the story of how an aristocratic British spy used the game of table tennis to propel a Communist strategy that changed the shape of the world. THE SPRING OF 1971 heralded the greatest geopolitical realignment in a generation. After twenty-two years of antagonism, China and the United States suddenly moved toward a détente—achieved not by politicians but by Ping-Pong players. The Western press delighted in the absurdity of the moment and branded it “Ping-Pong Diplomacy.” But for the Chinese, Ping-Pong was always political, a strategic cog in Mao Zedong’s foreign policy. Nicholas Griffin proves that the organized game, from its first breath, was tied to Communism thanks to its founder, Ivor Montagu, son of a wealthy English baron and spy for the Soviet Union. Ping-Pong Diplomacy traces a crucial intersection of sports and society. Griffin tells the strange and tragic story of how the game was manipulated at the highest levels; how the Chinese government helped cover up the death of 36 million peasants by holding the World Table Tennis Championships during the Great Famine; how championship players were driven to their deaths during the Cultural Revolution; and, finally, how the survivors were reconvened in 1971 and ordered to reach out to their American counterparts. Through a cast of eccentric characters, from spies to hippies and Ping-Pong-obsessed generals to atom-bomb survivors, Griffin explores how a neglected sport was used to help realign the balance of worldwide power.
This lively work of cultural history tells the stories of five young art patrons who, in the last 1920s and 1930s, were instrumental in bringing modern painting, sculpture, and dance to America. A combination of wealth, Harvard education privilege, and family connections enabled Lincoln Kirstein, Edward M. M. Warburg, Agnes Mongan, James Thrall Soby, and A. Everett (Chick) Austin, Jr., to introduce the work of Picasso, Balanchine, Calder, and other important artists to the United States.
Our world is enormously sophisticated and nature's complexity is literally inexhaustible. As a result, projects to describe and explain natural science can never be completed. This volume explores the nature of complexity and considers its bearing on our world and how we manage our affairs within it. Rescher's overall lesson is that the management of our affairs within a socially, technologically, and cognitively complex environment is plagued with vast management problems and risks of mishap. In primitive societies, failure to understand how things work can endanger a family or, at worst, a clan or tribe. In the modern world, man-made catastrophes on the model of Chernobyl can endanger millions, possibly even risking the totality of human life on our planet. Rescher explains "technological escalation" as a sort of arms race against nature in which scientific progress requires more powerful technology for observation and experimentation, and, conversely, scientific progress requires the continual enhancement of technology. The increasing complexity of science and technology (and, in consequence, of social systems) along with problems growing faster than solutions confront us with major management and decision problems. This study is the first of its kind. There have been many specialized studies of complexity in physics and computation theory, but no overall analysis of the phenomenon. Although Rescher offers a sobering outlook, he also believes that complexity entails mixed blessings: our imperfect knowledge provides a rationale for putting forth our best efforts. Rescher urges us to gear the conduct of life's practical affairs to the demands of a complex world. This highly readable and accessible volume will be of interest to those interested in philosophy, the philosophy of science, science policy studies, and future studies.
This is the third and final volume of A System of Pragmatic Idealism, a series that will synthesize the life's work of the philosopher Nicholas Rescher. Rescher's numerous books and articles, which address almost every major philosophical topic, reflect a unified approach: the combination of pragmatism and idealism characteristic of his thinking throughout his career. The three related but independently readable books of the series present Rescher's system as a whole. In combining leading ideas of European continental idealism and American pragmatism in a new way, Rescher has created an integrated philosophical position in which the central concepts of these two traditions become a coherent totality. The initial volume in the series was dedicated to epistemology, the philosophy of science, and the philosophy of nature, while the second dealt with issues of value theory, ethics, and practical philosophy. In Volume III Rescher examines the nature of philosophical inquiry itself, seeking to affirm the classical conception of philosophy as a significant problem-solving enterprise that draws on the whole range of human experience to attempt to resolve the "big questions." Originally published in 1994. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Religiously motivated violence caused by the fusion of state and religion occurred in medieval Tibet and Bhutan and later in imperial Japan, but interfaith conflict also followed colonial incursions in India, Sri Lanka, and Burma. Before that time, there was a general premodern harmony among the resident religions of the latter countries, and only in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries did religiously motivated violence break out. While conflict caused by Hindu fundamentalists has been serious and widespread, a combination of medieval Tibetan Buddhists and modern Sri Lankan, Japanese, and Burmese Buddhists has caused the most violence among the Asian religions. However, the Chinese Taiping Christians have the world record for the number of religious killings by one single sect. A theoretical investigation reveals that specific aspects of the Abrahamic religions—an insistence on the purity of revelation, a deity who intervenes in history, but one who still is primarily transcendent—may be primary causes of religious conflict. Only one factor—a mystical monism not favored in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—was the basis of a distinctively Japanese Buddhist call for individuals to identify totally with the emperor and to wage war on behalf of a divine ruler. The Origins of Religious Violence: An Asian Perspective uses a methodological heuristic of premodern, modern, and constructive postmodern forms of thought to analyze causes and offer solutions to religious violence.
Perhaps the most peculiar feature of a financial bubble – one that Charles Kindleberger's classic work Manias, Panics and Crashes draws particular attention to – is the inability of those trapped inside it to grasp the seriousness of their predicament. They know in principle that bubbles exist, and they know that the financial crashes that result from them are capable of destroying individuals' wealth and entire economies. Yet whenever and wherever a bubble begins to form, we're told that this time things are different, that there are sound reasons to continue to invest and to presume that prices will continue to rise steadily forever. Kindleberger's achievement is to use the critical thinking skill of evaluation to examine this strange mindset and the arguments advanced in support of it. He harshly judges the acceptability of the reasons used to create such arguments, and highlights the issues of relevance and adequacy that give us every reason to doubt them. Kindleberger also uses his powers of reasoning to effect an unusual achievement – writing a work soundly rooted in economics that nonetheless engages and convinces a non-specialist audience of the correctness of his arguments.
This new, fully revised second edition of Fundamentals of Molecular Virology is designed for university students learning about virology at the undergraduate or graduate level. Chapters cover most of the major virus families, emphasizing the unique features of each virus family. These chapters are designed to tell stories about the viruses covered, and include information on discovery, diseases and pathogenesis, virus structure, steps in viral replication, and interaction with cellular signaling pathways. This approach portrays the “personality” of each virus, helping students to learn the material and to build up their knowledge of virology, starting with smaller and simpler viruses and proceeding to more complex viruses.
This third edition of a classic urban sociology text examines critical but often-neglected aspects of urban life from a social-psychological theoretical perspective. Symbolic interaction is among the most central theoretical paradigms in sociology and the theory that most thoroughly attends to how individuals give meaning to their world—in this case, how city dwellers interpret and respond to their daily experiences as urbanites. This thoroughly updated edition of Being Urban: A Sociology of City Life remains true to this particular theoretical angle of vision—the symbolic interactionist approach—focusing on specific topics that are relatively neglected in other urban sociology texts, and that lend themselves to the kind of social-psychological analyses that define the distinctive conceptual core of the authors' efforts. After the first two chapters supply readers with theoretical foundations of urban sociology, the next four chapters describe the various ways that individuals experience and make sense of key aspects of urban life. The final section—also composed of four chapters—addresses strategically chosen urban institutions and related processes of social change. Specific subject areas covered include sports, everyday public life, tolerance for diversity, women in cities, urban politics, and the arts. Readers will learn about how order is maintained in public urban places, understand why cities naturally breed a tolerance for diversity that may not be so easily achieved in less urban settings, and appreciate the delicate political and economic tensions between cities and their surrounding suburbs.
Guided by the founding ideas of American pragmatism, Epistemology provides a clear example of the basic concepts involved in knowledge acquisition and explains the principles at work in the development of rational inquiry. It examines how these principles analyze the course of scientific progress and how the development of scientific inquiry inevitably encounters certain natural disasters. At the center of the book's deliberations there lies not only the potential for scientific progress but also the limit of science as well. This comprehensive introduction to the theory of knowledge addresses a myriad of topics, including the critique of skepticism, the nature of rationality, the possibility of science for extraterrestrial intelligences, and the prospect of insoluble issues in science.
Pragmatism is rooted in the linking of practice and theory. It describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent practice. Pragmatism was intended, by Charles S. Peirce, its founder, as a doctrine for the rational substantiation of knowledge claims. For Peirce, what mattered was successful prediction and control. Practice was to serve as the arbiter of theory. Objective efficacy, not personal satisfaction, is what matters for fixing opinion in a community of rational inquirers. According to Nicholas Rescher, later pragmatists saw the matter differently. They envisioned subjective satisfactions, rather than objectively determinable functional effectiveness, as being the aim of the enterprise. Rescher notes that William James, in particular, had an agenda different from that of Peirce. The two pragmatisms are complete opposites, Rescher argues, in terms of claims and intentions. James’s soft pragmatism abandons the classical idea of inquiry as the paramount of truth; it believes that truth is an illusion, an unrealizable figment of the imagination. By contrast, Peirce’s hard pragmatism believes that the classic idea of truth remains valid. Rescher seeks to examine and explore pragmatism dialectically, with a conviction that brings pragmatism to life for specialist and generalist alike.
Perfected science is but an idealization that provides a useful contrast to highlight the limited character of what we do and can attain. This lies at the core of various debates in the philosophy of science and Rescher's discussion focuses on the question: how far could science go in principle—what are the theoretical limits on science? He concentrates on what science can discover, not what it should discover. He explores in detail the existence of limits or limitations on scientific inquiry, especially those that, in principle, preclude the full realization of the aims of science, as opposed to those that relate to economic obstacles to scientific progress. Rescher also places his argument within the politics of the day, where "strident calls of ideological extremes surround us," ranging from the exaggeration that "science can do anything"—to the antiscientism that views science as a costly diversion we would be well advised to abandon. Rescher offers a middle path between these two extremes and provides an appreciation of the actual powers and limitations of science, not only to philosophers of science but also to a larger, less specialized audience.
This book brings together thirteen of Nicholas Onuf’s previously published yet rarely cited essays. They address topics that Onuf has puzzled over for decades, including the problem of materiality in social construction, epochal change in the modern world, and the power of language.
A radically new view of the nature and purpose of consciousness How is consciousness possible? What biological purpose does it serve? And why do we value it so highly? In Soul Dust, the psychologist Nicholas Humphrey, a leading figure in consciousness research, proposes a startling new theory. Consciousness, he argues, is nothing less than a magical-mystery show that we stage for ourselves inside our own heads. This self-made show lights up the world for us and makes us feel special and transcendent. Thus consciousness paves the way for spirituality, and allows us, as human beings, to reap the rewards, and anxieties, of living in what Humphrey calls the "soul niche." Tightly argued, intellectually gripping, and a joy to read, Soul Dust provides answers to the deepest questions. It shows how the problem of consciousness merges with questions that obsess us all—how life should be lived and the fear of death. Resting firmly on neuroscience and evolutionary theory, and drawing a wealth of insights from philosophy and literature, Soul Dust is an uncompromising yet life-affirming work—one that never loses sight of the majesty and wonder of consciousness.
Why have scholars located the emergence of the novel in eighteenth-century England? What historical forces and stylistic developments helped to turn a disreputable type of writing into an eminent literary form? This Reader's Guide explores the key critical debates and theories about the rising novel, from eighteenth-century assessments through to present day concerns. Nicholas Seager: - Surveys major criticism on authors such as Aphra Behn, Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding and Jane Austen - Covers a range of critical approaches and topics including feminism, historicism, postcolonialism and print culture - Demonstrates how critical work is interrelated, allowing readers to discern trends in the critical conversation. Approachable and stimulating, this is an invaluable introduction for anyone studying the origins of the novel and the surrounding body of scholarship.
This book continues Rescher’s longstanding practice of publishing groups of philosophical essays that originated in occasional lecture and conference presentations. Notwithstanding their topical diversity they exhibit a uniformity of method in a common attempt to view historically significant philosophical issues in the light of modern perspectives opened up thorough conceptual clarification.
In theory and practice, the notion of fairness is far from simple. The principle is often elusive and subject to confusion, even in institutions of law, usage, and custom. In Fairness, Nicholas Rescher aims to liberate this concept from misunderstandings by showing how its definitive characteristics prevent it from being absorbed by such related conceptions as paternalistic benevolence, radical egalitarianism, and social harmonization. Rescher demonstrates that equality before the state is an instrument of justice, not of social utility or public welfare, and argues that the notion of fairness stops well short of a literal egalitarianism. Rescher disposes of the confusions arising from economists' penchant to focus on individual preferences, from decision theorists' concern for averting envy, and from political theorists' sympathy for egalitarianism. In their place he shows how the idea of distributive equity forms the core of the concept of fairness in matters of distributive justice. The coordination of shares with valid claims is the crux of the concept of fairness. In Rescher's view, this means that the pursuit of fairness requires objective rather than subjective evaluation of the goods being shared. This is something quite different from subjective equity based on the personal evaluation of goods by those laying claim to them. Insofar as subjective equity is a concern, the appropriate procedure for its realization is a process of maximum value distribution. Further, Rescher demonstrates that in matters of distributive justice, the distinction between new ownership and preexisting ownership is pivotal and calls for proceeding on very different principles depending on the case. How one should proceed depends on context, and what is adjudged fair is pragmatic, in that there are different requirements for effectiveness in achieving the aims and purposes of the sort of distribution that is intended. Rescher concludes that fairness is a fundamentally ethical concept. Its distinctive modus operandi contrasts sharply with the aims of paternalism, preference-maximizing, or economic advantage. Fairness will be of interest to philosophers, economists, and political scientists.
Finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction: “Nicholas Carr has written a Silent Spring for the literary mind.”—Michael Agger, Slate “Is Google making us stupid?” When Nicholas Carr posed that question, in a celebrated Atlantic Monthly cover story, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the Net’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply? Now, Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the Internet’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. As he describes how human thought has been shaped through the centuries by “tools of the mind”—from the alphabet to maps, to the printing press, the clock, and the computer—Carr interweaves a fascinating account of recent discoveries in neuroscience by such pioneers as Michael Merzenich and Eric Kandel. Our brains, the historical and scientific evidence reveals, change in response to our experiences. The technologies we use to find, store, and share information can literally reroute our neural pathways. Building on the insights of thinkers from Plato to McLuhan, Carr makes a convincing case that every information technology carries an intellectual ethic—a set of assumptions about the nature of knowledge and intelligence. He explains how the printed book served to focus our attention, promoting deep and creative thought. In stark contrast, the Internet encourages the rapid, distracted sampling of small bits of information from many sources. Its ethic is that of the industrialist, an ethic of speed and efficiency, of optimized production and consumption—and now the Net is remaking us in its own image. We are becoming ever more adept at scanning and skimming, but what we are losing is our capacity for concentration, contemplation, and reflection. Part intellectual history, part popular science, and part cultural criticism, The Shallows sparkles with memorable vignettes—Friedrich Nietzsche wrestling with a typewriter, Sigmund Freud dissecting the brains of sea creatures, Nathaniel Hawthorne contemplating the thunderous approach of a steam locomotive—even as it plumbs profound questions about the state of our modern psyche. This is a book that will forever alter the way we think about media and our minds.
The Letter to the Hebrews lies at the heart of a tradition that views repetition as a uniformly negative phenomenon. Nicholas Moore argues that repetition in fact has a variety of functions in the letter, including an essential role in the believer's appropriation of the eternally valid work of Christ. (Publisher).
In addition to their obvious roles in American politics, race and gender also work in hidden ways to profoundly influence the way we think—and vote—about a vast array of issues that don’t seem related to either category. As Nicholas Winter reveals in Dangerous Frames, politicians and leaders often frame these seemingly unrelated issues in ways that prime audiences to respond not to the policy at hand but instead to the way its presentation resonates with their deeply held beliefs about race and gender. Winter shows, for example, how official rhetoric about welfare and Social Security has tapped into white Americans’ racial biases to shape their opinions on both issues for the past two decades. Similarly, the way politicians presented health care reform in the 1990s divided Americans along the lines of their attitudes toward gender. Combining cognitive and political psychology with innovative empirical research, Dangerous Frames ultimatelyilluminates the emotional underpinnings of American politics.
The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy ???The style is fresh and engaging, and it gives a broad and accurate picture of the western philosophical tradition. It is a pleasure to browse in, even if one is not looking for an answer to a particular question.??? David Pears ???Its entries manage to avoid the obscurities of an exaggerated brevity without stretching themselves out, as if seeking to embody whole miniature essays. In short it presents itself as a model of clarity and clarification.??? Alan Montefiore
The Ideal of Rationality presents an evaluation of all the main varieties of rationalism, in clear and jargon-free language. Different notions of rationality - such as means-end, conception, hedonism, and the evil-avoidance view - are examined and rejected, in favor of the theory that to act rationally is to 'act for the best', a theory Nathanson characterizes as "critical pluralism". Among present-day thinkers whose ideas are scrutinized are Richard Brandt, Bernard Gert, Gilbert Harman, John Kekes, Robert Nozick, Karl Popper, and John Rawls.
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