Download or read book The Grand Contraption written by David Park and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Grand Contraption tells the story of humanity's attempts through 4,000 years of written history to make sense of the world in its cosmic totality, to understand its physical nature, and to know its real and imagined inhabitants. No other book has provided as coherent, compelling, and learned a narrative on this subject of subjects. David Park takes us on an incredible journey that illuminates the multitude of elaborate "contraptions" by which humans in the Western world have imagined the earth they inhabit--and what lies beyond. Intertwining history, religion, philosophy, literature, and the physical sciences, this eminently readable book is, ultimately, about the "grand contraption" we've constructed through the ages in an effort to understand and identify with the universe. According to Park, people long ago conceived of our world as a great rock slab inhabited by gods, devils, and people and crowned by stars. Thinkers imagined ether to fill the empty space, and in the comforting certainty of celestial movement they discerned numbers, and in numbers, order. Separate sections of the book tell the fascinating stories of measuring and mapping the Earth and Heavens, and later, the scientific exploration of the universe. The journey reveals many common threads stretching from ancient Mesopotamians and Greeks to peoples of today. For example, humans have tended to imagine Earth and Sky as living creatures. Not true, say science-savvy moderns. But truth isn't always the point. The point, says Park, is that Earth is indeed the fragile bubble we surmise, and we must treat it with the reverence it deserves.
Download or read book Narrative Inquiry written by D. Jean Clandinin and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2004-08-13 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The literature on narrative inquiry has been, until now, widely scattered and theoretically incomplete. Clandinin and Connelly have created a major tour de force. This book is lucid, fluid, beautifully argued, and rich in examples. Students will find a wealth of arguments to support their research, and teaching faculty will find everything they need to teach narrative inquiry theory and methods."--Yvonna S. Lincoln, professor, Department of Educational Administration, Texas A&M University Understanding experience as lived and told stories--also known as narrative inquiry--has gained popularity and credence in qualitative research. Unlike more traditional methods, narrative inquiry successfully captures personal and human dimensions that cannot be quantified into dry facts and numerical data. In this definitive guide, Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly draw from more than twenty years of field experience to show how narrative inquiry can be used in educational and social science research. Tracing the origins of narrative inquiry in the social sciences, they offer new and practical ideas for conducting fieldwork, composing field notes, and conveying research results. Throughout the book, stories and examples reveal a wide range of narrative methods. Engaging and easy to read, Narrative Inquiry is a practical resource from experts who have long pioneered the use of narrative in qualitative research.
Download or read book The Readers Advisory Guide to Nonfiction written by Neal Wyatt and published by American Library Association. This book was released on 2007-05-14 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Navigating what at she calls the " extravagantly rich world of nonfiction," renowned readers' advisor (RA) Wyatt builds readers' advisory bridges from fiction to compelling and increasingly popular nonfiction to encompass the library's entire collection. She focuses on eight popular categories: history, true crime, true adventure, science, memoir, food/cooking, travel, and sports. Within each, she explains the scope, popularity, style, major authors and works, and the subject's position in readers' advisory interviews. Wyatt addresses who is reading nonfiction and why, while providing RAs with the tools and language to incorporate nonfiction into discussions that point readers to what to read next. In easy-to-follow steps, Wyatt Explains the hows and whys of offering fiction and nonfiction suggestions together Illustrates ways to get up to speed fast in nonfiction Shows how to lead readers to a variety of books using her "read-around" and "reading map" strategies Provides tools to build nonfiction subject guides for the collection This hands-on guide includes nonfiction bibliography, key authors, benchmark books with annotations, and core collections. It is destined to become the nonfiction 'bible' for readers' advisory and collection development, helping librarians, library workers, and patrons select great reading from the entire library collection!
Download or read book Narratives of Technology written by J. M. van der Laan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-06-11 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book documents and investigates the stories we have told and continue to tell about technology-now the dominant feature of our civilization-in fiction, non-fiction, film, and advertising. It answers important questions about the meanings people ascribe to technology, the hopes and fears we express in the different narratives, the effect of those narratives upon us, and the new forms of myth those narratives represent. Narratives of Technology offers an approach grounded in the humanities, adding another perspective to that of social scientists and technologists.
Download or read book Always Near written by Robert J. Morgan and published by Thomas Nelson. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this fast-paced culture, it's easy to feel lonely and overwhelmed by life. In Always Near, Robert J. Morgan reminds us that God is closer than you can imagine. We need to train our souls to awaken to the simple pleasure of being present with our Savior so we can be relieved from what all-to-often overwhelms us. Morgan shares 10 ways you can cultivate the blessings of God's presence, including: Discovering special places Focusing on things unseen Abiding in Scripture Highlighting special times Trusting God in difficulty Serving God in ways large and small This beautiful book contains a presentation page and is perfect to give as a gift for a friend. It will remind you that no matter how you feel, God is in the room. You can relax in His presence and let the stress drain from you. It is time to nurture a sense of the abiding nearness of Him, who is closer than a brother, so that you'll know more of His joy, strength, and comfort. Experience a relationship with the God who made you, who loves you, and desires for you to enjoy His presence. Seek the Lord and soon discover He was, is, and will be Always Near.
Download or read book Lost Knowledge written by Benjamin B. Olshin and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-02-19 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Lost Knowledge: The Concept of Vanished Technologies and Other Human Histories investigates early texts that speak of sophisticated technologies millennia ago that became obscured over time or were destroyed with the civilizations that had created them.
Download or read book The Met and the Masses in Postwar America written by Mitchell Frank and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-11-17 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the collaborations, during the mid-20th century, between the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Book-of-the-Month Club. Between 1948 and 1962 the two institutions collaborated on three book projects-The Metropolitan Museum of Art Miniatures (1948-1957), The Metropolitan Seminars in Art (1958-60), and a print reproduction of Rembrandt's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer (1962)-bringing art from the Met's collections right into the homes of subscribers. The Met and the Masses places these commercial enterprises in a variety of contemporary and historical contexts, including the relation of cultural education to democracy in America, the history of the Met as an educational institution, the rise of art education in postwar America, and the concurrent transformation of the home into a space that mediated familial privacy and the public sphere. Using never before published archival material, the book demonstrates how the Met sought to bring art to the masses in postwar America, whilst upholding its reputation as an institution of high culture. It is essential reading for scholars, researchers and curators interested in the history of modern art, museum and curatorial studies, arts and cultural management, heritage studies, as well as the history of art publications.
Download or read book Revelation written by Stephen Trujillo and published by Magic Kingdom Dispatch. This book was released on 2018-11-15 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revelation on cosmogony, quantum physics, Hinduism, Buddhism, Tantra, the Apocrypha, Kabbalah, the Western Mystery Tradition, dreams within dreams and multiverses without end. By the author of A Tale of the Grenada Raiders, Metamorphosis and the forthcoming Tales of the Rangers. www.magickingdomdispatch.com Magic Kingdom Dispatch Stephen Trujillo is a writer in Bangkok.
Download or read book Mathematics Common Sense written by Philip J. Davis and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2006-11-30 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the Preface: This book is addressed to all who are curious about the nature of mathematics and its role in society. It is neither a text book nor a specialists' book. It consists of a number of loosely linked essays that may be read independently and for which I have tried to provide a leitmotif by throwing light on the relationship between mathematics and common sense. In these essays I hope to foster a critical attitude towards both the existence of common sense in mathematics and the ambiguous role that it can play.
Download or read book Trajectory of the 21st Century written by Lawrence J. Terlizzese and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-01-10 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Trajectory of the Twenty-first Century explores what many prophets of the twentieth century, such as Oswald Spengler, Paul Tillich, Aldous Huxley, Jacques Ellul, and others, have predicted would transpire in the current century. Their vision included an out-of-control technological system and a return to religious sentiment that will ultimately undermine the system to which it is reacting. This book aims to accurately present their positions and draw certain logical conclusions from them that pertain to the course of history in our time. The book's theme argues that modernity is a secularized version of millennial Christianity, which reaches its fullest development in the twenty-first century and will regress into what Russian philosopher Nicholas Berdyaev called the new Middle Ages or a new religious period. This will mean the twilight of modern technological society, as its values of rationalism give way to a postrationalist society. Ironically, decline will come through further technological advance. Omnicide threatens through religious world war driven by transcendent values and modern weaponry. Jihadist thinking and posthumanist technology both establish the omnicidal mentatlity. New technologies such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence created under millennial inspiration to reach for immortality could potentially bring an end to the human species either through a slow, steady obsolescence or through environmental catastrophe. The titanic forces of technological progress and regress are on a direct collision course in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book The Wonder of the Universe written by Karl W. Giberson and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2012-04-07 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like detectives sleuthing out the greatest mystery of all, scientists over the centuries have uncovered clues about the structure and origins of the universe. The work of Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and a host of other tenacious researchers and thinkers reveals a cosmos of almost unimaginable wonder and beauty. If we then honestly follow the evidence of science wherever it leads, where do we end up? Karl Giberson takes us on a fascinating guided tour of planets and protons, galaxies and gamma rays. We discover that if gravity were slightly stronger, neutrons a tiny bit lighter, the size of our sun somewhat larger or a dozen other factors altered by fractions, there would be no life. The author shows that for many observers, even those who do not embrace religious faith, all of this looks suspiciously like the expression of a grand plan--a cosmic architecture capable of both supporting life such as ours, and inspiring observers like us to seek out hints of a creator. Join this cosmic expedition and discover the wonder of it all.
Download or read book The Way Things Aren t Deconstructing Reality to Facilitate Communication written by John Backman and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are our own views really ‘the way things are’? This provocative book debunks that notion, exploring communication as a flashpoint between different ‘realities’ in case examples from Iraq, Poland, and other areas
Download or read book All Those Vanished Engines written by Paul Park and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-07 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follows the Park family in three different areas of the nation after the Queen of the North agreed to a two-nation settlement in the Civil War, in this new alternate-history novel from the author of A Princess of Roumania.
Download or read book Incerto written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House Trade. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 1873 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The landmark five-book series--all together in one boxed set The Incerto is an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision making when we don't understand the world, expressed in the form of a personal essay with autobiographical sections, stories, parables, and philosophical, historical, and scientific discussions, in non-overlapping volumes that can be accessed in any order. The main thread is that while there is inordinate uncertainty about what is going on, there is great certainty as to what one should do about it. This boxed set includes: FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS THE BLACK SWAN THE BED OF PROCRUSTES ANTIFRAGILE SKIN IN THE GAME
Download or read book Believing written by Michael McGuire and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2013-09-10 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new book about brain chemistry, neural systems, and the formation of beliefs from the scientist who brought to light serotonin's many crucial roles in human behavior. Beliefs: What are they? How have evolution and culture led to a brain that is seemingly committed to near endless belief creation? And once established, why are most beliefs so difficult to change? Believing offers answers to these questions from the perspective of a leading neuroscientist and expert in brain-behavior research. Combining personal anecdotes and the latest research, Dr. McGuire takes the novel approach of focusing on the central and critical role of brain systems and the ways in which they interact with the environment to create and maintain beliefs. This approach yields some surprising and counterintuitive conclusions: • The brain is designed for belief creation and acceptance. • It is biased in favor of its own beliefs and is highly insensitive to disconfirming evidence. • It prefers beliefs that are pleasurable and rewarding to those that are unfavorable. • Beliefs are "afterthoughts" of unperceived brain activities; they don't cause behavior. • Our consciousness has minimal influence on the neural systems that create beliefs. Based on these observations, McGuire concludes that for the foreseeable future people will continue to hold a multitude of beliefs, many of them intransigent.
Download or read book Spaceship Earth in the Environmental Age 1960 1990 written by Sabine Höhler and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-10-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The idea of the earth as a vessel in space came of age in an era shaped by space travel and the Cold War. Höhler’s study brings together technology, science and ecology to explore the way this latter-day ark was invoked by politicians, environmentalists, cultural historians, writers of science fiction and many others across three decades.
Download or read book The Wealth of Shadows written by Graham Moore and published by Random House. This book was released on 2024-05-21 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A thriller of a different kind—with an unlikely band of economists and bureaucrats working in the shadows to save the world.”—Charles Frazier, New York Times bestselling author of Cold Mountain An ordinary man joins a secret mission to bring down the Nazi war machine by crashing their economy in this thrilling novel based on a true story, from the Academy Award–winning screenwriter of The Imitation Game and bestselling author of The Last Days of Night. 1939. Ansel Luxford has everything a person could want—a comfortable career, a brilliant spouse, a beautiful new baby. But he is obsessed by a belief that Europe is on the precipice of a war that will grow to consume the world. The United States is officially proclaiming neutrality in any foreign conflict, but when Ansel is offered an opportunity to move to Washington, D.C., to join a clandestine project within the Treasury Department that is working to undermine Nazi Germany, he uproots his family overnight and takes on the challenge of a lifetime. How can they defeat the enemy without firing a bullet? To thwart the Nazis, Ansel and his team invent a powerful new theater of battle: economic warfare. Money is a dangerous weapon, and Ansel’s efforts will plunge him into a world full of peril and deceit. He will crisscross the globe to broker backroom deals, undertake daring heists, and spar with titans of industry like J.P. Morgan and the century’s greatest economic mind, Britain’s John Maynard Keynes. When Ansel’s wife takes a job with the FBI to hunt for spies within the government, the need for subterfuge extends to the home front. And Ansel discovers that he might be closer to those spies than he could ever imagine. The Wealth of Shadows is a mind-expanding historical novel about the mysterious powers of money, the lies worth telling to defeat evil, and a hidden war that shaped the modern world.
