Download or read book A Tear at the Edge of Creation written by Marcelo Gleiser and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For millennia, shamans and philosophers, believers and nonbelievers, artists and scientists have tried to make sense of our existence by suggesting that everything is connected, that a mysterious Oneness binds us to everything else. People go to temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues to pray to their divine incarnation of Oneness. Following a surprisingly similar notion, scientists have long asserted that under Nature’s apparent complexity there is a simpler underlying reality. In its modern incarnation, this Theory of Everything would unite the physical laws governing very large bodies (Einstein’s theory of relativity) and those governing tiny ones (quantum mechanics) into a single framework. But despite the brave efforts of many powerful minds, the Theory of Everything remains elusive. It turns out that the universe is not elegant. It is gloriously messy. Overturning more than twenty-five centuries of scientific thought, award-winning physicist Marcelo Gleiser argues that this quest for a Theory of Everything is fundamentally misguided, and he explains the volcanic implications this ideological shift has for humankind. All the evidence points to a scenario in which everything emerges from fundamental imperfections, primordial asymmetries in matter and time, cataclysmic accidents in Earth’s early life, and duplication errors in the genetic code. Imbalance spurs creation. Without asymmetries and imperfections, the universe would be filled with nothing but smooth radiation. A Tear at the Edge of Creation calls for nothing less than a new "humancentrism" to reflect our position in the universal order. All life, but intelligent life in particular, is a rare and precious accident. Our presence here has no meaning outside of itself, but it does have meaning. The unplanned complexity of humankind is all the more beautiful for its improbability. It’s time for science to let go of the old aesthetic that labels perfection beautiful and holds that "beauty is truth." It’s time to look at the evidence without centuries of monotheistic baggage. In this lucid, down-to-earth narrative, Gleiser walks us through the basic and cutting-edge science that fueled his own transformation from unifier to doubter—a fascinating scientific quest that led him to a new understanding of what it is to be human.
Download or read book Three Creation Stories written by Michael Gold and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is reality? Is reality both mind and matter, body and soul, as taught by Western religions such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? This is dualism, the approach of philosophers from Plato to Descartes. Or is reality only matter, as taught by many modern scientists and philosophers? This is materialism, the approach of philosophers from Hobbes to Marx. Or is reality only mind, as taught by Eastern religions and Western mystics. This is the approach of philosophers from Berkeley to Whitehead. The beginning of Genesis allows for multiple translations and interpretations. We will read the creation story in Genesis from the point of view of each of these three approaches—dualism, materialism, and idealism. In doing so, we will tell three very different creation stories. These stories will take us on a fascinating journey through science, philosophy, and religion. Join us on this journey as we explore issues such as does God perform miracles, why is there evil in the universe, was Darwin correct, can robots have souls, and if light is a wave, what is waving?
Download or read book Healing the Split written by Marc Elihu Hofstadter and published by Dog Ear Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Healing the Split consists of the collected essays of poet, literary critic and philosopher Marc Elihu Hofstadter. The essays stretch from Hofstadter's early scholarly articles about poets William Carlos Williams and Yves Bonnefoy through articles published in the Redwood Coast Review about poetry, art, music, science, politics and France to recent articles concerning the "split" between the sciences and the humanities, reason and feeling/intuition/faith. The book embodies Hofstadter's consistent belief in the idea that all human activities are composed of an "objective" element and a "subjective" element. Human knowledge, whether scientific, mathematical, philosophical or artistic, contains a degree of objective certainty mixed with a component of subjective feeling. The differences between science and the humanities are differences of degree of objectivity, not of essence, and the knowledge the humanities display is a genuine form of knowledge, less certain than science but rich in tangible, felt experience. Even early in his career as a literary critic, Hofstadter was interested in how such otherwise diverse poets as Williams and Bonnefoy sacralize the coming together of mind and world in all forms of human experience. As Williams put it, "No ideas but in things "-by which he meant, not, Let there not be any ideas but, Let all ideas be inextricably entwined with the physical world Hofstadter argues that, in all our activities, there is a mixture of the thinking, reasoning mind and the parts of us that feel, perceive, touch-our bodies, our hearts. Science and philosophy are the great achievements of the mind, while art and religion are the most powerful consummations of sensing and feeling-yet science and philosophy are partly emotive, and art and theology partly rational. The difference, again, is in degree. Healing the Split is an attempt to bring reason and feeling/intuition/faith together, to show how they are intimately related. The Buddhist faith is key to this effort, because Buddhism doesn't analyze out reason and non-rational knowledge as separate faculties but tries to unite them in a direct, embodied kind of experience that "heals the split" between them and makes the individual human being whole. In Buddhism, everything we know is known through consciousness, and distinctions between subject and object, mind and world, logic and faith become artificial, since consciousness is essentially unitary. And Buddhism sees all phenomena, known through consciousness, as being related in a universal "web" everything is connected ultimately to everything else, and the world is essentially One. Healing the Split is finally a work of mysticism in the line of Parmenides, who believed that everything is one, or the Kabbalists, who worshipped the All in the form of "Ha Shem" the unnamable "Name." Marc Elihu Hofstadter was born in New York City in 1945. He received his B.A. in French literature from Swarthmore College in 1967 and his Ph.D. in Literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1975. He has taught American literature at Santa Cruz, the Universite d'Orleans (on a Fulbright Lectureship) and Tel Aviv University. In 1980 he obtained his Master of Library Science degree from the University of California at Berkeley, and from 1982 to 2005 served as the Librarian of the City of San Francisco's transit agency. He has published five volumes of poetry: House of Peace, Visions, Shark's Tooth, Luck and Rising at 5 AM, all of which are available on amazon.com, and his poems, translations and essays have appeared in over sixty magazines. He lives in the retirement community of Rossmoor in Walnut Creek, California with his partner, the artist David Zurlin.
Download or read book Astray written by Eluned Summers-Bremner and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2023-07-17 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A meandering celebration of the indirect and unforeseen path, revealing that to err is not just human—it is everything. This book explores how, far from being an act limited to deviation from known pathways or desirable plans of action, wandering is an abundant source of meaning—a force as intimately involved in the history of our universe as it will be in the future of our planet. In ancient Australian Aboriginal cosmology, in works about the origins of democracy and surviving disasters in ancient Greece, in Eurasian steppe nomadic culture, in the lifeways of the Roma, in the movements of today’s refugees, and in our attempts to preserve spaces of untracked online freedom, wandering is how creativity and skills of adaptation are preserved in the interests of ongoing life. Astray is an enthralling look at belonging and at notions of alienation and hope.
Download or read book Worlds without End written by Mary-Jane Rubenstein and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A religion professor elucidates the theory of the multiverse, its history, and its reception in science, philosophy, religion, and literature. Multiverse cosmologies imagine our universe as just one of a vast number of others. Beginning with ancient Atomist and Stoic philosophies, Mary-Jane Rubenstein links contemporary models of the multiverse to their forerunners and explores the reasons for their recent appearance. One concerns the so-called fine-tuning of the universe: nature's constants are so delicately calibrated that it seems they have been set just right to allow life to emerge. For some thinkers, these "fine-tunings" are evidence of the existence of God; for others, however, and for most physicists, "God" is an insufficient scientific explanation. Hence the multiverse’s allure: if all possible worlds exist somewhere, then like monkeys hammering out Shakespeare, one universe is bound to be suitable for life. Of course, this hypothesis replaces God with an equally baffling article of faith: the existence of universes beyond, before, or after our own, eternally generated yet forever inaccessible to observation or experiment. In their very efforts to sidestep metaphysics, theoretical physicists propose multiverse scenarios that collide with it and even produce counter-theological narratives. Far from invalidating multiverse hypotheses, Rubenstein argues, this interdisciplinary collision actually secures their scientific viability. We may therefore be witnessing a radical reconfiguration of physics, philosophy, and religion in the modern turn to the multiverse. “Rubenstein’s witty, thought-provoking history of philosophy and physics leaves one in awe of just how close Thomas Aquinas and American physicist Steven Weinberg are in spirit as they seek ultimate answers.”—Publishers Weekly “A fun, mind-stretching read, clear and enlightening.”—San Francisco Book Review
Download or read book This Life This World New Essays on Marilynne Robinson s Housekeeping Gilead and Home written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2015-09-29 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book devoted entirely to Robinson familiarizes readers with the major currents in her thought from a diversity of perspectives—Romanticism, ecocriticism, medicine and literature, religion and literature, theology, American Studies, critical race theory, and feminist and gender studies—that reflects the amplitude and fecundity of Robinson’s art and thought.
Download or read book About Time written by Adam Frank and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-11 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Big Bang is dead and astrophysicist Adam Frank explains how our experience of time will change as a result"--
Download or read book Time To Tell written by Ronald Green and published by John Hunt Publishing. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time seems to flash by when we are enjoying ourselves, and slows to a crawl when we are bored. Why? Does time exist, or is it an illusion? Does it flow? Is it linear? How real are our memories? When is now? These are just some of the questions that Time To Tell asks in its foray into what time is for us, what it does to us and for us, and how we live and react to it in our daily lives. Digging down to the roots of our lived experience in the world, Time To Tell takes us through a journey replete with twists and turns and “aha!” moments. Challenging the obvious, the book asks us to look anew at our perspective of what we naturally take for granted. Rattling the comfort of instant satisfaction, of reality shows, celebrity worship and the self-glorification of the I-generation, Ronald Green, with panache and authority, takes us on a journey that allows us a new way of looking at ourselves in the world, and to act upon what we discover.
Download or read book Medicine Meets Virtual Reality 13 written by James D. Westwood and published by IOS Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magical describes conditions that are outside our understanding of cause and effect. Even in modern societies, magic-based explanations are powerful because, given the complexity of the universe, there are so many opportunities to use them. The history of medicine is defined by progress in understanding the human body - from magical explanations to measurable results. To continue medical progress, physicians and scientists must openly question traditional models. For thirteen years, MMVR has been an incubator for technologies that create new medical understanding via the simulation, visualization, and extension of reality. Researchers create imaginary patients because they offer a more reliable and controllable experience to the novice surgeon. With imaging tools, reality is purposefully distorted to reveal to the clinician what the eye alone cannot see. Robotics and intelligence networks allow the healer's sight, hearing, touch, and judgment to be extended across distance, as if by magic. The moments when scientific truth is suddenly revealed after lengthy observation, experimentation, and measurement is the real magic. These moments are not miraculous, however. book.
Download or read book Without a Tear written by Mark H. Bernstein and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2010-10-01 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Without a Tear Mark H. Bernstein begins with one of our most common and cherished moral beliefs: that it is wrong to intentionally and gratuitously inflict harm on the innocent. Over the course of the book, he shows how this apparently innocuous commitment requires that we drastically revise many of our most common practices involving nonhuman animals. Most people who write about our ethical obligations concerning animals base their arguments on emotional appeals or contentious philosophical assumptions; Bernstein, however, argues from reasons but carries little theoretical baggage. He considers the issues in a religious context, where he finds that Judaism in particular has the resources to ground moral obligations to animals. Without a Tear also makes novel use of feminist ethics to add to the case for drawing animals more closely into our ethical world. Bernstein details the realities of factory farms, animal-based research, and hunting fields, and contrasting these chilling facts with our moral imperatives clearly shows the need for fundamental changes to some of our most basic animal institutions. The tightly argued, provocative claims in Without a Tear will be an eye-opening experience for animal lovers, scholars, and people of good faith everywhere.
Download or read book Fracture of Brittle Disordered Materials Concrete Rock and Ceramics written by G. Baker and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 1994-12-08 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book derives from the invited IUTAM Symposium in September 1993. The contributions discuss recent advances in fracture mechanics studies of concrete, rock, ceramics and other brittle disordered materials at micro and structural levels. It draws together research and new applications in continuum, damage and fracture mechanics approaches.
Download or read book Image Processing of Edge and Surface Defects written by Roman Louban and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-09-16 with total page 174 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human ability to recognize objects on various backgrounds is amazing. Many times, industrial image processing tried to imitate this ability by its own techniques. This book discusses the recognition of defects on free-form edges and - homogeneous surfaces. My many years of experience has shown that such a task can be solved e?ciently only under particular conditions. Inevitably, the following questions must be answered: How did the defect come about? How and why is a person able to recognize a speci?c defect? In short, one needs an analysis of the process of defect creation as well as an analysis of its detection. As soon as the principle of these processes is understood, the processes can be described mathematically on the basis of an appropriate physical model and can then be captured in an algorithm for defect detection. This approach can be described as “image processing from a physicist’s perspective”. I have successfully used this approach in the development of several industrial image processingsystemsandimprovedupontheminthecourseoftime.Iwouldlike to present the achieved results in a hands-on book on the basis of edge-based algorithms for defect detection on edges and surfaces. I would like to thank all who have supported me in writing this book.
Download or read book Subduction Zone Geodynamics written by Serge Lallemand and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-02-11 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Subduction is a major process that plays a first-order role in the dynamics of the Earth. The sinking of cold lithosphere into the mantle is thought by many authors to be the most important source of energy for plates driving forces. It also deeply modifies the thermal and chemical structure of the mantle, producing arc volcanism and is responsible for the release of most of the seismic energy on Earth. There has been considerable achievements done during the past decades regarding the complex interactions between the various processes acting in subduction zones. This volume contains a collection of contributions that were presented in June 2007 in Montpellier (France) during a conference that gave a state of the art panorama and discussed the perspectives about "Subduction Zone Geodynamics". The papers included in this special volume offer a unique multidisciplinary picture of the recent research on subduction zones geodynamics. They are organized into five main topics: Subduction zone geodynamics, Seismic tomography and anisotropy, Great subduction zone earthquakes, Seismogenic zone characterization, Continental and ridge subduction processes. Each of the 13 papers collected in the present volume is primarily concerned with one of these topics. However, it is important to highlight that papers always treat more than one topic so that all are related lighting on different aspects of the complex and fascinating subduction zones geodynamics.
Download or read book Phacoemulsification Cataract Surgery written by Rajen Gupta and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-02 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides ophthalmic surgeons with a concise, clinical guide to performing the fundamentals steps in phacoemulsification cataract surgery. Clear diagrams, images, and videos are used throughout and the information can be adapted to a particular consultant’s own technique once the surgical principles are understood. The chapters serve as a modular framework that allows for safe, effective learning of skills and use as a clinical training resource. Phacoemulsification Cataract Surgery serves as a helpful teaching aid for consultants, especially newly appointed, who have little experience in teaching. Basic fundamental rules are provided as a guide for training others to improve surgical techniques in clinical practice. Recently qualified and experienced consultants will find this book to be an indispensable resource for learning and teaching in the area of phacoemulsification cataract surgery.
Download or read book Retinal Detachment written by Daniel A. Brinton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-29 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Retinal Detachment: Principles and Practice provides a historical review of current information on the diagnosis and treatment of retinal detachment. It is intended as both an introduction for graduate students in ophthalmology and a concise review or reference for practicing ophthalmologists. The volume defines the types of retinal detachments, their classifications and causes, and covers preoperative examination, preoperative management, prophylactic procedures, surgery, complications of surgery, and results of reattachment surgery. It also includes a historical introduction, suggested readings at the end of each chapter, and the classic article 'The Technique of Binocular Indirect Ophthalmoscopy,' by Morten L. Rosenthal.
Download or read book Discipleship on the Edge written by Darrell W. Johnson and published by Regent College Publishing. This book was released on 2004 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revelation is probably the most read, but least understood book of the Bible. History is replete with examples of how not to interpret it, and books featuring end-of-world prophecy claims based on Revelation consistently top the bestseller lists. But how can the message of such an enigmatic book be applied to our lives today? In Discipleship on the Edge, Darrell W. Johnson drives home the challenging and practical message of Revelation in thirty carefully crafted sermons. Paying careful attention to the original context of Revelation and the circumstances surrounding its composition, Johnson shows that the book is not a "crystal ball" but rather a "discipleship manual." Thoroughly researched and yet accessible, this collection of sermons is a helpful resource for pastors and small group leaders who are looking for models to help them preach and teach the message of Revelation in a time when there is much confusion about the end times. Darrell W. Johnson serves as Scholar-in-Residence at The Way Church and Canadian Church Leaders Network in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. A popular conference and retreat speaker, he has also served as the preaching pastor for a number of congregations in North America and the Philippines, as well as serving as Adjunct Professor of Preaching for the Doctor of Ministry program at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, and a Teaching Fellow at Regent College. His other books include Experiencing the Trinity and Fifty-Seven Words That Change The World.
Download or read book Clinical Practice in Small Incision Cataract Surgery written by Luther L. Fry and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2004-10-14 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cataract is currently the main cause of avoidable blindness in the developing world and accounts for about 75% of cases worldwide. Small incision manual techniques for cataract surgery, as described in this book, should be in the armamentarium of every cataract surgeon, whether it be in the United States or less affluent countries. Phacoemulsificat
