Download or read book Signs of Paradox written by Eric Lawrence Gans and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting from the minimal principle of generative anthropology--that human culture originates as "the deferral of violence through representation"--the author proposes a new understanding of the fundamental concepts of metaphysics and an explanation of the historical problematic that underlies the postmodern "end of culture." Part I begins with the paradoxical emergence of the "vertical" sign from the "horizontal" world of appetite. Two persons reaching for the same object are a minimal model of this emergence; their "pragmatic paradox" can be resolved only by substituting the representation of the object for its appropriation. The nature of paradox and the related notion of irony, as well as the fundamental concepts of being, thinking, and signification, are rethought on the basis of this triangular model, leading to an anthropological interpretation of the origin of philosophy and semiotics in Plato's Ideas. Part I concludes with an exploration of the psychoanalytic categories of the unconscious and the erotic. Part II develops the idea that material exchange originates in the sparagmos or violent rendering of the sacrificial victim from which each participant obtains a roughly equal portion. The dependence of the process on the central victimary figure culminates in the Holocaust, the extermination of the Jews, whose crucial role in Western culture is their rejection of the central image in favor of peripheral exchange. As a result, postmodern dialogue becomes dominated by the rhetoric of victimage, and the culture of centrality gives way to an aesthetic of the marginal.
Download or read book Paradoxical Thinking written by Jerry L. Fletcher and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 1997-06 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking advantage of contradictory elements in oneself and one's situation can lead to better performance all around. In this guide, the authors present a five-step process for using paradoxes to find solutions to a wide range of problems. Includes case studies showing how real people have used paradoxical thinking to solve real problems.
Download or read book The Paradox of Self consciousness written by José Luis Bermúdez and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Jos� Luis Berm�dez addesses two fundamental problems in the philosophy and psychology of self-consciousness: (1) Can we provide a noncircular account of fully fledged self-conscious thought and language in terms of more fundamental capacities? (2) Can we explain how fully fledged self-conscious thought and language can arise in the normal course of human development? Berm�dez argues that a paradox (the paradox of self-consciousness) arises from the apparent strict interdependence between self-conscious thought and linguistic self-reference. The paradox renders circular all theories that define self-consciousness in terms of linguistic mastery of the first-person pronoun. It seems to follow from the paradox of self-consciousness that no such account or explanation can be given. Drawing on recent work in empirical psychology and philosophy, the author argues that any explanation of fully fledged self-consciousness that answers these two questions requires attention to primitive forms of self-consciousness that are prelinguistic and preconceptual. Such primitive forms of self-consciousness are to be found in somatic proprioception, the structure of exteroceptive perception, and prelinguistic forms of social interaction. The author uses these primitive forms of self-consciousness to dissolve the paradox of self-consciousness and to show how the two questions can be given an affirmative answer.
Download or read book Paradox written by A. J. Paquette and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 2013 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fans of James Dashner's Maze Runner series are sure to love this post-apocalyptic adventure about a girl who must survive an alien planet in order to save the Earth.
Download or read book The Paradox of Choice written by Barry Schwartz and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Whether we're buying a pair of jeans, ordering a cup of coffee, selecting a long-distance carrier, applying to college, choosing a doctor, or setting up a 401(k), everyday decisions—both big and small—have become increasingly complex due to the overwhelming abundance of choice with which we are presented. As Americans, we assume that more choice means better options and greater satisfaction. But beware of excessive choice: choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis, anxiety, and perpetual stress. And, in a culture that tells us that there is no excuse for falling short of perfection when your options are limitless, too much choice can lead to clinical depression. In The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains at what point choice—the hallmark of individual freedom and self-determination that we so cherish—becomes detrimental to our psychological and emotional well-being. In accessible, engaging, and anecdotal prose, Schwartz shows how the dramatic explosion in choice—from the mundane to the profound challenges of balancing career, family, and individual needs—has paradoxically become a problem instead of a solution. Schwartz also shows how our obsession with choice encourages us to seek that which makes us feel worse. By synthesizing current research in the social sciences, Schwartz makes the counter intuitive case that eliminating choices can greatly reduce the stress, anxiety, and busyness of our lives. He offers eleven practical steps on how to limit choices to a manageable number, have the discipline to focus on those that are important and ignore the rest, and ultimately derive greater satisfaction from the choices you have to make.
Download or read book Paradox written by Catherine Coulter and published by Pocket Books. This book was released on 2019-07-30 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 New York Times bestselling author Catherine Coulter delves into the mind of an escaped mental patient obsessed with revenge in this “eerie, unsettling, and breathlessly terrifying” (The Real Book Spy) twenty-third installment in her FBI series. When an escaped mental patient fails to kidnap five-year-old Sean Savich, agents Sherlock and Savich know they’re in his crosshairs and must find him before he continues with his kill list. Chief Ty Christie of Willicott, Maryland, witnesses a murder at dawn from the deck of her lake cottage. When dragging the lake, the divers find not only find the murder victim but also dozens of bones. Working together with Chief Christie, Savich and Sherlock soon discover a frightening connection between the bones and the escaped psychopath. Paradox is a chilling mix of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, old secrets that refuse to stay buried, and ruthless greed that keep Savich and Sherlock and Chief Christie working at high speed to uncover the truth before their own bones end up at the bottom of the lake.
Download or read book Paradox in Oz written by Edward Einhorn and published by . This book was released on 2014-05-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Time travel in the land of Oz! New paperback edition with a dozen new illustrations and a new Afterword by the author!
Download or read book Paradox of Conscious Healing written by R. Kelley Otani and published by Dog Ear Publishing. This book was released on 2016-12-23 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emotional pain is interconnected with disease and pain. Ten years in the making, Paradox of Conscious Healing explores the power of both the mind and spirituality, along with mind-body healing. By providing step-by-step tools to improve happiness and health, the book will appeal to a wide range of audiences and is intended to not only help individuals with illnesses but to educate medical healthcare providers to assist their patients’ healing. Walking away from his medical practice, Dr. Otani searched to find cures for the incurable. Conventional medicine turns primarily to greater drugs and technology—but at the cost of exponentially greater expense. Dr. Otani’s journey led to the study of consciousness, psychology, and the spiritual healing practices of different religions, including those of the Native American. How was it that avatars of great spiritual traditions were able to perform miraculous healing? Paradox of Conscious Healing has been clinically tested by actual patients to verify its efficacy. Taking the book’s concepts into real life, Dr. Otani instituted a holistic program for his patients based on the concepts in this book. The program was transformative—not only for those patients but for Dr. Otani, as well. The principles presented in this book not only helped patients with their pain but in all aspects of their illness. The lessons in this book also improved the committed participant’s relationships and wealth. It is Dr. Otani’s hope that this book will do the same for you, the reader.
Download or read book The Proximity Paradox written by Kiirsten May and published by ECW Press. This book was released on 2020-03-24 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You’re too close to your business, and it’s killing your creativity Traditional business structures love stability and predictability. Yet many organizations believe the two essential ingredients for long-term success are creativity and innovation. Kiirsten May and Alex Varricchio, founders of the marketing agency UpHouse, call the relationship between these two opposing expectations the Proximity Paradox™ — the belief that those who are closest to a subject are best-qualified to innovate for it, when, in reality, intense proximity limits creativity. Instead, people need to create distance from challenges in order to see the best way forward. May and Varricchio believe that until we can separate innovation and execution within ourselves, we will only innovate to the level at which we can execute the idea. To be effective, we need to create distance between our innovation brain and our execution brain. Unpacking ten common Proximity Paradoxes that affect a company’s people, processes, and industry, the authors share some practical ideas to create the distance necessary for your next great idea. An especially valuable book for creatives, and non-creatives in creative industries, but equally applicable to all businesses that depend on innovation, The Proximity Paradox encourages us to ask hard questions about how we work, how our businesses are structured, and why we routinely find our creativity at odds with what’s asked of us as executors and stewards of the bottom line.
Download or read book The Male Paradox written by John Munder Ross and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A noted pshychologist explores the paradoxes of masculinity. This book examines men's hopes and fears, dreams and reality, love lives and work lives, as Ross unfolds a new theory of masculinity based on 20 years of clinical experience and research. Provocative reading for men--and for the women in their lives.
Download or read book The Dark Forest written by Cixin Liu and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2015-08-11 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The inspiration for the Netflix series 3 Body Problem! Over 1 million copies of the Three-Body Problem series sold in North America PRAISE FOR THE THREE-BODY PROBLEM SERIES: “A mind-bending epic.”—The New York Times • “War of the Worlds for the 21st century.”—The Wall Street Journal • “Fascinating.”—TIME • “Extraordinary.”—The New Yorker • “Wildly imaginative.”—Barack Obama • “Provocative.”—Slate • “A breakthrough book.”—George R. R. Martin • “Impossible to put down.”—GQ • “Absolutely mind-unfolding.”—NPR • “You should be reading Liu Cixin.”—The Washington Post The Dark Forest is the second novel in the groundbreaking, Hugo Award-winning series from China's most beloved science fiction author, Cixin Liu. In The Dark Forest, Earth is reeling from the revelation of a coming alien invasion-in just four centuries' time. The aliens' human collaborators may have been defeated, but the presence of the sophons, the subatomic particles that allow Trisolaris instant access to all human information, means that Earth's defense plans are totally exposed to the enemy. Only the human mind remains a secret. This is the motivation for the Wallfacer Project, a daring plan that grants four men enormous resources to design secret strategies, hidden through deceit and misdirection from Earth and Trisolaris alike. Three of the Wallfacers are influential statesmen and scientists, but the fourth is a total unknown. Luo Ji, an unambitious Chinese astronomer and sociologist, is baffled by his new status. All he knows is that he's the one Wallfacer that Trisolaris wants dead. The Three-Body Problem Series The Three-Body Problem The Dark Forest Death's End Other Books by Cixin Liu Ball Lightning Supernova Era To Hold Up the Sky The Wandering Earth A View from the Stars At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book The Contact Paradox written by Keith Cooper and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-10-31 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What will happen if (perhaps when) humanity makes contact with another civilisation on a different planet? In 1974 a message was beamed towards the stars by the giant Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, a brief blast of radio waves designed to alert extraterrestrial civilisations to our existence. Of course, we don't know if such civilisations really exist. For the past six decades a small cadre of researchers have been on a quest to find out, as part of SETI, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. So far, SETI has found no evidence of extraterrestrial life, but with more than a hundred billion stars in our Galaxy alone to search, the odds of quick success are stacked against us. The silence from the stars is prompting some researchers to transmit more messages into space, in an effort to provoke a response from any civilisations out there that might otherwise be staying quiet. However, the act of transmitting raises troubling questions about the process of contact. In The Contact Paradox, author Keith Cooper looks at how far SETI has come since its modest beginnings, and where it is going, by speaking to the leading names in the field and beyond. SETI forces us to confront our nature in a way that we seldom have before – where did we come from, where are we going, and who are we in the cosmic context of things? This book considers the assumptions that we make in our search for extraterrestrial life, and explores how those assumptions can teach us about ourselves.
Download or read book Good and Real written by Gary L. Drescher and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining a series of provocative paradoxes about consciousness, choice, ethics, and other topics, Good and Real tries to reconcile a purely mechanical view of the universe with key aspects of our subjective impressions of our own existence. In Good and Real, Gary Drescher examines a series of provocative paradoxes about consciousness, choice, ethics, quantum mechanics, and other topics, in an effort to reconcile a purely mechanical view of the universe with key aspects of our subjective impressions of our own existence. Many scientists suspect that the universe can ultimately be described by a simple (perhaps even deterministic) formalism; all that is real unfolds mechanically according to that formalism. But how, then, is it possible for us to be conscious, or to make genuine choices? And how can there be an ethical dimension to such choices? Drescher sketches computational models of consciousness, choice, and subjunctive reasoning--what would happen if this or that were to occur? --to show how such phenomena are compatible with a mechanical, even deterministic universe. Analyses of Newcomb's Problem (a paradox about choice) and the Prisoner's Dilemma (a paradox about self-interest vs. altruism, arguably reducible to Newcomb's Problem) help bring the problems and proposed solutions into focus. Regarding quantum mechanics, Drescher builds on Everett's relative-state formulation--but presenting a simplified formalism, accessible to laypersons--to argue that, contrary to some popular impressions, quantum mechanics is compatible with an objective, deterministic physical reality, and that there is no special connection between quantum phenomena and consciousness. In each of several disparate but intertwined topics ranging from physics to ethics, Drescher argues that a missing technical linchpin can make the quest for objectivity seem impossible, until the elusive technical fix is at hand.
Download or read book The Passion Paradox written by Brad Stulberg and published by Rodale Books. This book was released on 2019-03-19 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The coauthors of the bestselling Peak Performance dive into the fascinating science behind passion, showing how it can lead to a rich and meaningful life while also illuminating the ways in which it is a double-edged sword. Here’s how to cultivate a passion that will take you to great heights—while minimizing the risk of an equally great fall. Common advice is to find and follow your passion. A life of passion is a good life, or so we are told. But it's not that simple. Rarely is passion something that you just stumble upon, and the same drive that fuels breakthroughs—whether they're athletic, scientific, entrepreneurial, or artistic—can be every bit as destructive as it is productive. Yes, passion can be a wonderful gift, but only if you know how to channel it. If you're not careful, passion can become an awful curse, leading to endless seeking, suffering, and burnout. Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness once again team up, this time to demystify passion, showing readers how they can find and cultivate their passion, sustainably harness its power, and avoid its dangers. They ultimately argue that passion and balance--that other virtue touted by our culture--are incompatible, and that to find your passion, you must lose balance. And that's not always a bad thing. They show readers how to develop the right kind of passion, the kind that lets you achieve great things without ruining your life. Swift, compact, and powerful, this thought-provoking book combines captivating stories of extraordinarily passionate individuals with the latest science on the biological and psychological factors that give rise to—and every bit as important, sustain—passion.
Download or read book Fortune s Pawn written by Rachel Bach and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fans of Firefly and Elizabeth Moon will lap up this action-packed military science fiction series. Welcome to the start of a thrilling new space adventure, starring female mercenary Deviana Morris . . . Deviana Morris isn't your average mercenary. She has plans. Big ones. And a ton of ambition. One of those is going to get her killed one day - but not just yet. Not when she just got a job on a tiny trade ship with a nasty reputation for surprises. The Glorious Fool isn't misnamed: it likes to get into trouble. And with a reputation for bad luck that makes one year as security detail on this ship equal to five years everywhere else - Devi knows she's found the perfect way to get the jump on the next part of her Plan. But the Fool doesn't give up its secrets without a fight, and one year might be more than even Devi can handle. Review for FORTUNE'S PAWN: 'This book kicked ass . . . I just loved it!' - FELICIA DAY 'Devi is hands-down one of the best sci-fi heroines I've read in years' - RT BOOK REVIEWS 'Rollicking space opera starring a tough, sexy, armor-clad space chick . . . [Bach] does a nice job of painting a scenario that, if familiar - think the space marines of the Alien franchise or the motley crew of Firefly - allows her plenty of room for action. And action aplenty is what she delivers . . . Lots of fun' - KIRKUS REVIEWS
Download or read book The Grand Paradox written by Ken Wytsma and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If we were made for relationship with God, why do we often feel lost and distant from Him? The life of Christian faith is and always has been a beautifully awkward reality. Following Jesus is done—can only be done—in the messiness of this world into which we were all born. Yet many Christians expect the walk of faith to be easier, neater, and relatively devoid of hassles. So perhaps it’s time for a frank conversation about the true nature of Christian faith. Maybe there are many desperately in need of a clear dialogue about how—despite living in a turbulent, chaotic world—our greatest joy is found in our pursuit of God. In The Grand Paradox, Ken Wytsma seeks to help readers understand that although God can be mysterious, He is in no way absent. God’s ways are contradictory and counter to the way the world tells us to pursue happiness. Doubt is okay, it will accompany in the life of faith. What looks like struggle can actually be the most important and meaningful season of our lives. This book is an exploration of the art of living by faith. It is a book for all those wrestling with the paradoxes that confront those who seek to walk with Christ. It’s an honest look at how faith works, here and now, in our culture, our time—and how to put down real roots and flourish in the midst of our messy lives.
Download or read book Plagues and the Paradox of Progress written by Thomas J. Bollyky and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the news about the global decline of infectious diseases is not all good. Plagues and parasites have played a central role in world affairs, shaping the evolution of the modern state, the growth of cities, and the disparate fortunes of national economies. This book tells that story, but it is not about the resurgence of pestilence. It is the story of its decline. For the first time in recorded history, virus, bacteria, and other infectious diseases are not the leading cause of death or disability in any region of the world. People are living longer, and fewer mothers are giving birth to many children in the hopes that some might survive. And yet, the news is not all good. Recent reductions in infectious disease have not been accompanied by the same improvements in income, job opportunities, and governance that occurred with these changes in wealthier countries decades ago. There have also been unintended consequences. In this book, Thomas Bollyky explores the paradox in our fight against infectious disease: the world is getting healthier in ways that should make us worry. Bollyky interweaves a grand historical narrative about the rise and fall of plagues in human societies with contemporary case studies of the consequences. Bollyky visits Dhaka—one of the most densely populated places on the planet—to show how low-cost health tools helped enable the phenomenon of poor world megacities. He visits China and Kenya to illustrate how dramatic declines in plagues have affected national economies. Bollyky traces the role of infectious disease in the migrations from Ireland before the potato famine and to Europe from Africa and elsewhere today. Historic health achievements are remaking a world that is both worrisome and full of opportunities. Whether the peril or promise of that progress prevails, Bollyky explains, depends on what we do next. A Council on Foreign Relations Book
