Download or read book Strange Tools written by Alva Noë and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-09-22 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A philosopher makes the case for thinking of works of art as tools for investigating ourselves In his new book, Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, the philosopher and cognitive scientist Alva Noë raises a number of profound questions: What is art? Why do we value art as we do? What does art reveal about our nature? Drawing on philosophy, art history, and cognitive science, and making provocative use of examples from all three of these fields, Noë offers new answers to such questions. He also shows why recent efforts to frame questions about art in terms of neuroscience and evolutionary biology alone have been and will continue to be unsuccessful.
Download or read book Beauty and Other Forms of Value written by Samuel Alexander and published by . This book was released on 1933 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Human Nature and the Limits of Science written by John Dupré and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dupré warns that our understanding of human nature is being distorted by two faulty and harmful forms of pseudo-scientific thinking. He claims it is important to resist scientism - an exaggerated conception of what science can be expected to do.
Download or read book Beauty and Human Nature written by Albert R. Chandler and published by . This book was released on 1977-09-01 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Beauty and the Brain written by Rachel E. Walker and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2022-11-23 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examining the history of phrenology and physiognomy, Beauty and the Brain proposes a bold new way of understanding the connection between science, politics, and popular culture in early America. Between the 1770s and the 1860s, people all across the globe relied on physiognomy and phrenology to evaluate human worth. These once-popular but now discredited disciplines were based on a deceptively simple premise: that facial features or skull shape could reveal a person’s intelligence, character, and personality. In the United States, these were culturally ubiquitous sciences that both elite thinkers and ordinary people used to understand human nature. While the modern world dismisses phrenology and physiognomy as silly and debunked disciplines, Beauty and the Brain shows why they must be taken seriously: they were the intellectual tools that a diverse group of Americans used to debate questions of race, gender, and social justice. While prominent intellectuals and political thinkers invoked these sciences to justify hierarchy, marginalized people and progressive activists deployed them for their own political aims, creatively interpreting human minds and bodies as they fought for racial justice and gender equality. Ultimately, though, physiognomy and phrenology were as dangerous as they were popular. In addition to validating the idea that external beauty was a sign of internal worth, these disciplines often appealed to the very people who were damaged by their prejudicial doctrines. In taking physiognomy and phrenology seriously, Beauty and the Brain recovers a vibrant—if largely forgotten—cultural and intellectual universe, showing how popular sciences shaped some of the greatest political debates of the American past.
Download or read book Beauty A Very Short Introduction written by Roger Scruton and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2011-03-24 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a book that is itself beautifully written, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton explores this timeless concept, asking what makes an object--either in art, in nature, or the human form--beautiful.--From publisher description.
Download or read book The Beauty of Being Human written by Nirander Safaya Ph. D. and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2020-10-31 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection of 200 poems, written after retirement from a brilliant scientific career, author Nirander Safaya takes us on a panoramic journey of self-discovery. Collectively, these poems focus on: what it means to be Human. Attachment to life, desire to love and be loved, thirst for knowing, and consciousness are the hall marks of human nature. Dr. Safaya’s poetry portrays the beauty and the challenges of these human gifts and aspirations. The Beauty of Being Human shows how our lives can become truly beautiful and fulfilled by a conscious understanding of the gifts we Sapiens possess. The book is thematically divided into 3 parts: Part I has 70 poems on Life & Living, Part II has 68 poems on Love & Passion, and Part III has 62 poems on Light & Consciousness. By presenting the poems in a sequential order, the poet is taking the serious reader through a gradual unfolding of his aesthetic and philosophical vision of the pragmatic, romantic, and spiritual aspirations of human heart and soul. It also provides a casual poetry lover the freedom to read these poems randomly and enjoy their message and beauty. “Dazzling” and uplifting, the poetry of Nirander Safaya provides “surprising imagery...to uncommon and timeless effect”. The joys and sorrows of life and the saving grace of light and consciousness are the topics and the “sensory delight” of this book.
Download or read book Beauty and Human Nature written by Albert Richard Chandler and published by . This book was released on 1934 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Human Nature written by Geoff Blackwell and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Human Nature, 12 of today's most influential nature and conservation photographers address the biggest environmental concerns of our time. • Joel Sartore • Paul Nicklen • Ami Vitale • Brent Stirton • Frans Lanting • Brian Skerry • Tim Laman • Cristina Mittermeier • J Henry Fair • Richard John Seymour • George Steinmetz • Steve Winter Alongside their reflections, they present curated selections from their photographic careers. Stories and extraordinary images from around the world come together in a powerful call to awareness and action. • The United Nations has declared that nature is in more trouble now than at any other time in human history. • Extinction looms over one million species of plants and animals. • Human Nature wrestles with challenging questions: What do we have? What do we stand to lose? This book offers inspiration to environmentalists, activists, photography fans, and anyone concerned about the future of our world. • This illuminating book tackles our modern environmental future through the lens of preeminent photographers • Great gift for photographers, nature enthusiasts, those who enjoy backpacking and camping, and anyone who cares about Earth's climate and future • Add it to the shelf with books like National Geographic The Photo Ark Vanishing: The World's Most Vulnerable Animals by Joel Sartore, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert, and Dire Predictions: The Visual Guide to the Findings of the IPCC by Michael E. Mann and Lee R. Kump.
Download or read book Confessions of a Middle Aged Hippie written by Beverley Golden and published by . This book was released on 2013-08 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Groovy Peek into "Confessions of a Middle-Aged Hippie" Should the wild escapades of your twenties and beyond silently recede into decades past? Or would you have the guts to bare it all, with the enthusiasm of a peace-loving, truth-seeking middle-aged hippie? Beverley Golden presents a love-offering of profound lessons from heart-wrenching, humorous encounters in standing up to Gods of conventional medicine while staring death in the eye, raising a child TV star, and pursuing a career in the entertainment industry at all costs always choosing a life colored by love, laughter and hope as the only possible outcome. Blazing trails though the 60s and 70s, right up to today, this candid, conversational memoir affirms the power of intuition and teaches us to never underestimate the role of questioning everything on the path of a true hippie seeker. Be forewarned this book may not be for you: If you ve never faced insurmountable health challenges determined to find another way If you never dated (or married) someone despite obvious omens courtesy of your family, God and/or Mother Nature If you ve never wanted to be on Oprah or dreamed of writing a book in eight days If you once had the chance to divulge your dreams to a rock star about your past-life connection, but failed to take it If you aren t intrigued by horoscopes, Hair or Daryl Hall and John Oates If you think everything you did in Vegas should definitely stay in Vegas Beverley s unconventional memoir will inspire you to live life on your own terms. This book proves it: you are not alone in the universe and we re all hippies at heart.
Download or read book Human Nature written by David Berlinski and published by . This book was released on 2019-11-04 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom holds that the murder rate has plummeted since the Middle Ages; humankind is growing more peaceful and enlightened; man is shortly to be much improved--better genes, better neural circuits, better biochemistry; and we are approaching a technological singularity that well may usher in utopia. Human Nature eviscerates these and other doctrines of a contemporary nihilism masquerading as science. In this wide-ranging work polymath David Berlinski draws upon history, mathematics, logic, and literature to retrain our gaze on an old truth many are eager to forget: there is and will be about the human condition beauty, nobility, and moments of sublime insight, yes, but also ignorance and depravity. Men are not about to become like gods.
Download or read book Natural Beauty written by Ronald Moore and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2007-08-28 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Natural Beauty was selected for the Choice Outstanding Academic Title list for 2008! Natural Beauty presents a bold new philosophical account of the principles involved in making aesthetic judgments about natural objects. It surveys historical and modern accounts of natural beauty and weaves elements derived from those accounts into a “syncretic theory” that centers on key features of aesthetic experience—specifically, features that sustain and reward attention. In this way, Moore’s theory sets itself apart from both the purely cognitive and the purely emotive approaches that have dominated natural aesthetics until now. Natural Beauty shows why aesthetic appreciation of works of art and aesthetic appreciation of nature can be mutually reinforcing; that is, how they are cooperative rather than rival enterprises. Moore also makes a compelling case for how and why the experience of natural beauty can contribute to the larger project of living a good life.
Download or read book Evolutionary Aesthetics written by Eckart Voland and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2003-06-12 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evolutionary aesthetics is the attempt to understand the aesthetic judgement of human beings and their spontaneous distinction between "beauty" and "ugliness" as a biologically adapted ability to make important decisions in life. The hypothesis is - both in the area of "natural beauty" and in sexuality, with regard to landscape preferences, but also in the area of "artificial beauty" (i.e. in art and design) - that beauty opens up fitness opportunities, while ugliness holds fitness risks. In this book, this adaptive view of aesthetics is developed theoretically, presented on the basis of numerous examples, and its consequences for evolutionary anthropology are illuminated.
Download or read book The Future of Human Nature written by Jürgen Habermas and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-10-15 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent developments in biotechnology and genetic research are raising complex ethical questions concerning the legitimate scope and limits of genetic intervention. As we begin to contemplate the possibility of intervening in the human genome to prevent diseases, we cannot help but feel that the human species might soon be able to take its biological evolution in its own hands. ‘Playing God’ is the metaphor commonly used for this self-transformation of the species, which, it seems, might soon be within our grasp. In this important new book, Jürgen Habermas – the most influential philosopher and social thinker in Germany today – takes up the question of genetic engineering and its ethical implications and subjects it to careful philosophical scrutiny. His analysis is guided by the view that genetic manipulation is bound up with the identity and self-understanding of the species. We cannot rule out the possibility that knowledge of one’s own hereditary factors may prove to be restrictive for the choice of an individual’s way of life and may undermine the symmetrical relations between free and equal human beings. In the concluding chapter – which was delivered as a lecture on receiving the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade for 2001 – Habermas broadens the discussion to examine the tension between science and religion in the modern world, a tension which exploded, with such tragic violence, on September 11th.
Download or read book The Good Book of Human Nature written by Carel van Schaik and published by . This book was released on 2016-05-24 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In The Good Book of Human Nature, evolutionary anthropologist Carel van Schaik and historian Kai Michel advance a new view of Homo sapiens' cultural evolution. The Bible, they argue, was written to make sense of the single greatest change in history: the transition from egalitarian hunter-gatherer to agricultural societies. Religion arose as a strategy to cope with the unprecedented levels of epidemic disease, violence, inequality, and injustice that confronted us when we abandoned the bush--and which still confront us today, "--Amazon.com.
Download or read book Humanature written by Peter Goin and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The slow growth of redwood forests . . . the annual migration of Canada geese . . . winter's first snowfall . . . things such as these persuade us that nature carries on its cycles regardless of human activities--and always will. Yet, a closer look reveals that all around us nature is becoming an illusion created by human ingenuity. As we control our rivers and shores, manage the forests, and develop habitats for endangered species, it becomes increasingly hard to think of nature as something out there that exists independently of us. Humanature asks us to intelligently consider the far-reaching ways in which we are reshaping nature on a planet-wide scale. In his eloquent essay, Peter Goin writes about land usage, pesticides and pollution, genetic engineering, resource consumption, and other indicators to show the dramatic range of human impact in the natural world. His photographs, the vital core of the book, provide convincing confirmation of the extent to which people and nature have become a continuum--humanature. Having influenced, altered, and designed nature, it behooves us to try to understand the cultural construction of wildness and of the role of nature as a cultural paradigm. Humanature will be an important and challenging contribution to this process of learning about our relationship to the environment in which we live.
Download or read book On Human Nature written by Thomas Aquinas and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indeholder Thomas Aquinas kommentarer til Aristoteles: De anima og hans egen Summa theologica
