Download or read book Modern Alchemy written by Mark Morrisson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-19 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alchemists are generally held to be the quirky forefathers of science, blending occultism with metaphysical pursuits. Although many were intelligent and well-intentioned thinkers, the oft-cited goals of alchemy paint these antiquated experiments as wizardry, not scientific investigation. Whether seeking to produce a miraculous panacea or struggling to transmute lead into gold, the alchemists radical goals held little relevance to consequent scientific pursuits. Thus, the temptation is to view the transition from alchemy to modern science as one that discarded fantastic ideas about philosophers stones and magic potions in exchange for modest yet steady results. It has been less noted, however, that the birth of atomic science actually coincided with an efflorescence of occultism and esoteric religion that attached deep significance to questions about the nature of matter and energy.Mark Morrisson challenges the widespread dismissal of alchemy as a largely insignificant historical footnote to science by prying into the revival of alchemy and its influence on the emerging subatomic sciences of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.Morrisson demonstrates its surprising influence on the emerging subatomic sciences of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Specifically, Morrisson examines the resurfacing of occult circles during this time period and how their interest in alchemical tropes had a substantial and traceable impact upon the science of the day. Modern Alchemy chronicles several encounters between occult conceptions of alchemy and the new science, describing how academic chemists, inspired by the alchemy revival, attempted to transmute the elements; to make gold.Examining scientists publications, correspondence, talks, and laboratory notebooks as well as the writings of occultists, alchemical tomes, and science-fiction stories, he argues that during the birth of modern nuclear physics, the trajectories of science and occultism---so often considered antithetical---briefly merged.

Download or read book Books on Demand written by and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 910 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Our Hidden Forces written by Emile Boirac and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Thirty Years of Psychical Research written by Charles Richet and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 672 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Death and Its Mystery written by Camille Flammarion and published by . This book was released on 1921 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Figures of the Pre Freudian Unconscious from Flaubert to Proust written by Michael R. Finn and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An original, wide-ranging contribution to the study of French writing in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this book examines the ways in which the unconscious was understood in literature in the years before Freud. Exploring the influence of medical and psychological discourse over the existence and/or potential nature of the unconscious, Michael R. Finn discusses the resistance of feminists opposing medical diagnoses of the female brain as the seat of the unconscious, the hypnotism craze of the 1880s and the fascination, in fiction, with dual personality and posthypnotic crimes. The heart of the study explores how the unconscious inserts itself into the writing practice of Flaubert, Maupassant and Proust. Through the presentation of scientific evidence and quarrels about the psyche, Michael R. Finn is able to show the work of such writers in a completely new light.

Download or read book Up the Walls of the World written by James Tiptree and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first novel from the award-winning author of Brightness Falls from the Air, a writer “known for gender-bending, boundary-pushing work” (Tor.com). Up the Walls of the World is the 1978 debut novel of Alice Sheldon, who had built her reputation with the acclaimed short stories she published under the name James Tiptree Jr. A singular representation of American science fiction in its prime, Tiptree’s first novel expanded on the themes she addressed in her short fiction. “From telepathy to cosmology, from densely conceived psychological narrative to the broadest of sense-of-wonder revelations, the novel is something of a tour de force” (The Science Fiction Encyclopedia). Known as the Destroyer, a self-aware leviathan roams through space gobbling up star systems. In its path is the planet Tyree, populated by telepathic wind-dwelling aliens who are facing extinction. Meanwhile on Earth, people burdened with psi powers are part of a secret military experiment run by a drug-addicted doctor struggling with his own grief. These vulnerable humans soon become the target of the Tyrenni, whose only hope of survival is to take over their bodies and minds—an unspeakable crime in any other period of the aliens’ history . . . Praise for James Tiptree Jr. “[Tiptree] can show you the human in the alien and the alien in the human and make both utterly real.” —The Washington Post “Novels that deal with the mental gymnastics of superminds, or with concepts like eternity and infinity, are doomed to fall short of the mark. But Tiptree’s misses are more exciting than the bulls‐eyes of less ambitious authors.” —The New York Times

Download or read book The Visible Word written by Johanna Drucker and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Drucker skillfully traces the development of this critical position, suggesting a methodology closer to the actual practices of the early avant-garde artists based on a rereading of their critical and theoretical writings. After reviewing theories of signification, the production of meaning, and materiality, she analyzes the work of four poets active in the typographic experimentation of the 1910s and 1920s: Ilia Zdanevich, Filippo Marinetti, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Tristan Tzara. Drucker explores the context for experimental typography in terms of printing, handwriting, and other practices concerned with the visual representation of language. Her book concludes with a brief look at the ways in which experimental techniques of the early avant-garde were transformed in both literary work and in applications to commercial design throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.

Download or read book Prospero and Caliban written by Octave Mannoni and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A classic in psychological ethnography and the history of colonialism

Download or read book Degeneration written by Max Simon Nordau and published by London, Heinemann. This book was released on 1895 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Mesmerism the Discovery of Animal Magnetism written by Franz Mesmer and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2016-01-06 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1779, Franz Anton Mesmer wrote an 88-page book, Mémoire sur la découverte du magnétisme animal, to which he appended his famous 27 Propositions. While undertaking research, G.F. Frankau obtained, on loan from a private library, an original edition of Mesmer's Mémoire sur la découverte de Magnétism Animal. Realising its medico-historical importance and tempted by a layman's vanity to undertake the translation himself, he eventually decided that the task could only be accomplished by an expert; He secured the services of Captain V. R. Myers of the Berlitz School of Languages. Myer's rendering of the eighteenth-century French is highly praiseworthy. The adjective "mesmeric", the substantive "mesmerism", and the verb to "mesmerise" have not changed their meanings since they first became current-posterity's unique tribute to a unique man.

Download or read book The Theory of the Avant garde written by Renato Poggioli and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1968 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Convinced that all aspects of modern culture have been affected by avant-garde art, Renato Poggioli explores the relationship between the avant-garde and civilization. Historical parallels and modern examples from all the arts are used to show how the avant-garde is both symptom and cause of many major extra-aesthetic trends of our time, and that the contemporary avant-garde is the sole and authentic one.

Download or read book The Greeks and the Irrational written by Eric R. Dodds and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-06-16 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this philosophy classic, which was first published in 1951, E. R. Dodds takes on the traditional view of Greek culture as a triumph of rationalism. Using the analytical tools of modern anthropology and psychology, Dodds asks, "Why should we attribute to the ancient Greeks an immunity from 'primitive' modes of thought which we do not find in any society open to our direct observation?" Praised by reviewers as "an event in modern Greek scholarship" and "a book which it would be difficult to over-praise," The Greeks and the Irrational was Volume 25 of the Sather Classical Lectures series.

Download or read book Revelations of a Spirit Medium written by Charles F. Pidgeon and published by . This book was released on 1922 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Pathos Poetry and Politics in Michel Houellebecq s Fiction written by Russell Williams and published by Brill. This book was released on 2020 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Pathos, Poetry and Politics, Russell Williams examines the literary style in the work of Michel Houellebecq. This book underlines the extent to which the author's notorious provocations are key to the texture of his novels.

Download or read book Impressionism Reflections and Perceptions written by Meyer Schapiro and published by George Braziller Publishers. This book was released on 1997 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a revision of the late Columbia University art historian's lectures given at Indiana University in 1961.

Download or read book Botticelli Past and Present written by Ana Debenedetti and published by UCL Press. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent exhibitions dedicated to Botticelli around the world show, more than ever, the significant and continued debate about the artist. Botticelli Past and Present engages with this debate. The book comprises four thematic parts, spanning four centuries of Botticelli’s artistic fame and reception from the fifteenth century. Each part comprises a number of essays and includes a short introduction which positions them within the wider scholarly literature on Botticelli. The parts are organised chronologically beginning with discussion of the artist and his working practice in his own time, moving onto the progressive rediscovery of his work from the late eighteenth to the turn of the twentieth century, through to his enduring impact on contemporary art and design. Expertly written by researchers and eminent art historians and richly illustrated throughout, the broad range of essays in this book make a valuable contribution to Botticelli studies.