Download or read book Mind and Cosmos written by Thomas Nagel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-22 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.
Download or read book Human and Cosmic Thought written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Rudolf Steiner Press. This book was released on 2015-06-24 with total page 74 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rudolf Steiner demonstrates that there are twelve main philosophical standpoints, and that the future of philosophy rests not upon defending one and refuting the others, but in learning to experience the validity of them all.What convinces us of the truth of a certain point of view? Why do we find it difficult to comprehend viewpoints that differ from our own? What are the inner foundations of our knowledge? In these concentrated and aphoristic lectures, Steiner speaks of twelve main philosophical standpoints, and the importance of understanding each of them. An appreciation of the variety of possible world views not only sharpens and makes more flexible our own powers of thinking, but helps us to overcome a narrow-minded one-sidedness, promoting tolerance of other people and their opinions.Steiner goes on to explain how each standpoint is also coloured by a particular 'soul mood', which influences the way we actively pursue knowledge. Several philosophers and their works are characterised in this manner, throwing light on their contributions to human culture. Through such insight into the true nature of human thinking, we are led to understand the quality of cosmic thought and how, in Rudolf Steiner's words, the human being can be seen as a 'thought which is thought by the Hierarchies of the cosmos'.
Download or read book Dante and Violence written by Brenda Deen Schildgen and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2021-04-15 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study explores how Dante represents violence in the Comedy and reveals the connection between contemporary private and public violence and civic and canon law violations. Although a number of articles have addressed particular aspects of violence in discrete parts of Dante’s oeuvre, a systematic treatment of violence in the Commedia is lacking. This ambitious overview of violence in Dante’s literary works and his world examines cases of violence in the domestic, communal, and cosmic spheres while taking into account medieval legal approaches to rights and human freedom that resonate with the economy of justice developed in the Commedia. Exploring medieval concerns with violence both in the home and in just war theory, as well as the Christian theology of the Incarnation and Redemption, Brenda Deen Schildgen examines violence in connection to the natural rights theory expounded by canon lawyers beginning in the twelfth century. Partially due to the increased attention to its Greco-Roman cultural legacy, the twelfth-century Renaissance produced a number of startling intellectual developments, including the emergence of codified canon law and a renewed interest in civil law based on Justinian’s sixth-century Corpus juris civilis. Schildgen argues that, in addition to “divine justice,” Dante explores how the human system of justice, as exemplified in both canon and civil law and based on natural law and legal concepts of human freedom, was consistently violated in the society of his era. At the same time, the redemptive violence of the Crucifixion, understood by Dante as the free act of God in choosing the Incarnation and death on the cross, provides the model for self-sacrifice for the communal good. This study, primarily focused on Dante’s representation of his contemporary reality, demonstrates that the punishments and rewards in Dante’s heaven and hell, while ostensibly a staging of his vision of eternal justice, may in fact be a direct appeal to his readers to recognize the crimes that pervade their own world. Dante and Violence will have a wide readership, including students and scholars of Dante, medieval culture, violence, and peace studies.
Download or read book At the Edge of Time written by Dan Hooper and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-05 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new look at the first few seconds after the Big Bang—and how research into these moments continues to revolutionize our understanding of our universe Scientists in the past few decades have made crucial discoveries about how our cosmos evolved over the past 13.8 billion years. But there remains a critical gap in our knowledge: we still know very little about what happened in the first seconds after the Big Bang. At the Edge of Time focuses on what we have recently learned and are still striving to understand about this most essential and mysterious period of time at the beginning of cosmic history. Delving into the remarkable science of cosmology, Dan Hooper describes many of the extraordinary and perplexing questions that scientists are asking about the origin and nature of our world. Hooper examines how we are using the Large Hadron Collider and other experiments to re-create the conditions of the Big Bang and test promising theories for how and why our universe came to contain so much matter and so little antimatter. We may be poised to finally discover how dark matter was formed during our universe’s first moments, and, with new telescopes, we are also lifting the veil on the era of cosmic inflation, which led to the creation of our world as we know it. Wrestling with the mysteries surrounding the initial moments that followed the Big Bang, At the Edge of Time presents an accessible investigation of our universe and its origin.
Download or read book Cosmic Citizens and Moonshot Thinking written by Rohan Roberts and published by AuthorHouse. This book was released on 2018-08-16 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From award-winning educator, innovation expert, and Global Teacher Prize finalist, Rohan Roberts, comes a provocative look at why our current education system is not fit for purpose and why we need to overhaul it. Cosmic Citizens and Moonshot Thinking: Education in an Age of Exponential Technologies takes a fresh approach to what we need to do differently to prepare our children for a world of exponential technologies, disruptive innovations, and ubiquitous A.I. In this groundbreaking book, Roberts outlines the purpose of education in a world of increased outsourcing and automation and explains how we can future-proof our youth to survive and thrive in a world of accelerating change. Through interactions with corporate leaders, interviews with principals, meetings with parents, and surveys of students, this book considers how the best and brightest students would overhaul their education system. The book highlights the role of neuroscience in education and explores several fascinating concepts such as radical openness, abundance mindsets, the gig economy, the technological singularity, intelligent optimism, the age of imagination, humanics, transhumanism, and the importance of Enlightenment values as we advance into the 21st Century. Underpinning this book is a constant focus on the importance of bringing a sense of awe into education and fostering a sense of cosmic wonder when contemplating human purpose and human existence. Written in a style that is discursive, contemplative, and with a sense of urgency, this book will appeal to students, parents, teachers, school principals, and to anyone who recognises that the only real and long-lasting way to create a better society is to first fix our education system.
Download or read book Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Rudolf Steiner Press. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge, to guide the Spiritual in the human being to the Spiritual in the universe.' (From the first 'Leading Thought'.) This key volume contains Rudolf Steiner's so-called 'Leading thoughts' and 'Letters' written for members of the Anthroposophical Society. In brief paragraphs, they succinctly present Rudolf Steiner's science of the spirit, Anthroposophy, as a modern path of knowledge. Invaluable as clear summaries of Rudolf Steiner's fundamental lines of thought, they are intended not as doctrine, but as a stimulus and focus for study and discussion. Their intention, as Rudolf Steiner states, is to contribute to a 'unity and organic wholeness of the work of the Society without there being any question of constraint'
Download or read book Probable Impossibilities written by Alan Lightman and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author of Einstein’s Dreams tackles "big questions like the origin of the universe and the nature of consciousness ... in an entertaining and easily digestible way” (Wall Street Journal) with a collection of meditative essays on the possibilities—and impossibilities—of nothingness and infinity, and how our place in the cosmos falls somewhere in between. Can space be divided into smaller and smaller units, ad infinitum? Does space extend to larger and larger regions, on and on to infinity? Is consciousness reducible to the material brain and its neurons? What was the origin of life, and can biologists create life from scratch in the lab? Physicist and novelist Alan Lightman, whom The Washington Post has called “the poet laureate of science writers,” explores these questions and more—from the anatomy of a smile to the capriciousness of memory to the specialness of life in the universe to what came before the Big Bang. Probable Impossibilities is a deeply engaged consideration of what we know of the universe, of life and the mind, and of things vastly larger and smaller than ourselves.
Download or read book Cosmic written by Frank Cottrell Boyce and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2010-01-19 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Liam has always felt a bit like he's stuck between two worlds. This isprimarily because he's a twelve-year-old kid who looks like he's about thirty. Sometimes it's not so bad, like when his new principal mistakes him for a teacher on the first day of school or when he convinces a car dealer to let him take a Porsche out on a test drive. But mostly it's just frustrating, being a kid trapped in an adult world. And so he decides to flip things around. Liam cons his way onto the first spaceship to take civilians into space, a special flight for a group of kids and an adult chaperone, and he is going as the adult chaperone. It's not long before Liam, along with his friends, is stuck between two worlds again—only this time he's 239,000 miles from home. Frank Cottrell Boyce, author of Millions and Framed, brings us a funny and touching story of the many ways in which grown-upness is truly wasted on grown-ups.
Download or read book Starry Messenger written by Neil deGrasse Tyson and published by Henry Holt and Company. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Bringing his cosmic perspective to civilization on Earth, Neil deGrasse Tyson shines new light on the crucial fault lines of our time—war, politics, religion, truth, beauty, gender, and race—in a way that stimulates a deeper sense of unity for us all. In a time when our political and cultural views feel more polarized than ever, Tyson provides a much-needed antidote to so much of what divides us, while making a passionate case for the twin chariots of enlightenment—a cosmic perspective and the rationality of science. After thinking deeply about how science sees the world and about Earth as a planet, the human brain has the capacity to reset and recalibrates life’s priorities, shaping the actions we might take in response. No outlook on culture, society, or civilization remains untouched. With crystalline prose, Starry Messenger walks us through the scientific palette that sees and paints the world differently. From insights on resolving global conflict to reminders of how precious it is to be alive, Tyson reveals, with warmth and eloquence, an array of brilliant and beautiful truths that apply to us all, informed and enlightened by knowledge of our place in the universe.
Download or read book The Cosmic Puppets written by Philip K. Dick and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fantastical, fast-paced science fiction novel of mystery and action from award-winning novelist Philip K. Dick.
Download or read book Cosmic Pessimism written by Eugene Thacker and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 47 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “We’re doomed.” So begins the work of the philosopher whose unabashed and aphoristic indictments of the human condition have been cropping up recently in popular culture. Today we find ourselves in an increasingly inhospitable world that is, at the same time, starkly indifferent to our species-specific hopes, desires, and disappointments. In the Anthropocene, pessimism is felt everywhere but rarely given its proper place. Though pessimism may be, as Eugene Thacker says, the lowest form of philosophy, it may also contain an enigma central to understanding the horizon of the human. Written in a series of fragments, aphorisms, and prose poems, Thacker’s Cosmic Pessimism explores the varieties of pessimism and its often-conflicted relation to philosophy. “Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent?”
Download or read book The Illustrated Calendar of the Soul written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Temple Lodge Publishing. This book was released on 2020-12-18 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rudolf Steiner's beautiful meditative verses for the yearly cycle have been used by countless people over the years. Their purpose is to awaken a feeling of unity with nature, and at the same time to stimulate a discovery of self. In listening to the changing language of the year and awakening a profound sympathy for it, we can in turn discover our own individual nature. Steiner's original and unique meditations facilitate this process, leading to a healthy feeling of being at one with the natural world. This edition features Anne Stockton's 52 celebrated and evocative paintings, which are a wonderful complement to Steiner's text. Steiner's words are newly translated for this edition by John Thomson.
Download or read book The Threshold of the Spiritual World written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Cosimo, Inc.. This book was released on 2007-03-01 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 16 concise chapters, Rudolf Steiner reveals how we can look through the material veil of this world and glimpse the world of the spirit. With meditation and concentrated thought we can develop our intuition and clairvoyance and even our powers of ESP. Written "to be of use to those who are really in earnest in seeking knowledge of the spiritual world," this book continues to inspire today. Austrian scholar, philosopher and spiritual researcher RUDOLF STEINER (1861-1925) has written dozens of books, including Philosophy of Freedom, Theosophy, An Outline of Occult Science, and Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.
Download or read book Rudolf Steiner and the Founding of the New Mysteries written by Sergei O. Prokofieff and published by Temple Lodge Publishing. This book was released on 2017-06-21 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this revised and expanded edition of his classic debut, Sergei O. Prokofieff investigates the deepest mysteries of Rudolf Steiner’s life and individuality, from ‘the years of apprenticeship’ and ‘the great Sun period’ to ‘the path of the Teacher of Humanity’ and ‘the birth of the New Mysteries’. He discusses the earthly and supersensible aspects of the first Goetheanum, the implications of the Christmas Conference of 1923-24, and the Foundation Stone meditation that Steiner left as a legacy to members of the Anthroposophical Society. In his very personal Introduction, Prokofieff describes, in moving detail, the events in his life which led to his discovery of anthroposophy whilst living in Communist Russia, and how eventually he came to write this extraordinary study of Rudolf Steiner. The resulting volume – a work of secondary anthroposophical literature unprecedented in its depth and significance – was first published in Germany in 1982, meeting with equal amounts of acclaim, astonishment and controversy. It is published in this paperback edition to mark the 35th anniversary of the original publication.
Download or read book Gautama Buddha s Successor written by Robert Powell and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2013-12-01 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 2014 has a special significance that is addressed in this book by Robert Powell and Estelle Isaacson. Dr. Robert Powell is a spiritual researcher who in this short work—and in many other books—brings the results of his own research investigations. Estelle Isaacson is a contemporary seer who is gifted with a remarkable ability to perceive new streams of revelation. Both have been blessed in an extraordinary way by virtue of accessing the realm wherein Christ is presently to be found.
Powell makes the critical point that the year 2014 not only denotes the beginning of a new 600-year cultural wave in history but also that there is an ancient prophecy applying to this very same year, 2014, which can be interpreted as pointing to the onset of the twenty-first-century incarnation of the Bodhisattva who will become the future Maitreya Buddha, the successor to Gautama Buddha. Powell also makes the crucial point that the Maitreya Buddha awaited in Buddhism is the same as the Kalki Avatar expected in Hinduism.
Powell’s contribution serves as an introduction to Isaacson’s offering, comprising a series of six visions relating to the future Maitreya Buddha. The visions are highly inspirational, communicating something of the profound spirituality, peace, radiance, and, above all, goodness of this Bodhisattva who is Gautama Buddha’s successor. His title, Maitreya, means “bearer of the good,” and in Isaacson’s visions he emerges as a remarkable force for good in our time.
Also included in this book are two appendices: A Survey of Rudolf Steiner’s Indications Concerning the Maitreya Buddha and the Kalki Avatar and Valentin Tomberg’s Indications Concerning the Coming Buddha-Avatar, Maitreya-Kalki. A third appendix discusses the significance of Rudolf Steiner’s Foundation Stone of Love meditation as a heralding of Christ’s Second Coming.
Download or read book The Driving Force of Spiritual Powers in World History written by Rudolf Steiner and published by SteinerBooks. This book was released on 2023-05-05 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 7 lectures in Dornach, Switzerland, March 11-23, 1923 (CW 222) "Historical happenings on Earth can be understood in their reality only when we see them as reflections of what is being enacted in the supersensible, spiritual world between the beings of the higher hierarchies." --Rudolf Steiner (March 17, 1923) What is the qualitative difference between the utterance of true and untrue words? Is there one? How about between living and dead thoughts? What is the origin of war and strife among peoples on Earth? How can humanity find a right relationship to the beings of the spiritual world? These are among the compelling questions addressed by Rudolf Steiner in this concise yet powerful series of lectures given in March 1923, comprising this volume of "The Collected Works of Rudolf Steiner." In these lectures, Steiner portrays, among other things, the work of various hierarchical beings--both in collaboration and sometimes in opposition to one another--whose activity and strife in the spiritual world is mirrored in the migrations of and wars among peoples on Earth. The clashes between East and West, for example, are thus seen in an entirely new light, heralding a sea change in the approach to history. No longer should events on Earth be viewed as isolated within themselves, but rather as interwoven in a grand, vibrant tapestry formed from the threads that connect humanity on Earth with the activity and aims of exalted spiritual beings. Humanity has profound potential--for both good and evil. The question is whether we will be able to rise to a renewed form of cognition through which we can once again grasp living spiritual reality, or we will persist in the dead, intellectualized thinking so common today, thinking that (as Steiner points out in the final lecture of this volume), if not transformed, will lead to the gradual destruction of Earth itself. These lectures are a tour de force that should not be neglected by any serious student of history or the future of humanity and human life more broadly. Includes 10 color plates This volume is a translation from German of Die Impulsierung des weltgeschichtlichen Geschehens durch geistige Mächte, Rudolf Steiner Verlag, 1989 (GA 222). Cover Image : Naval Battle of Le Panto (1571), by Luca Cambiasi (1521-1585); at the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, Spain.
Download or read book The Cosmic View of Albert Einstein written by Albert Einstein and published by Sterling Publishing (NY). This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Draws from various sources to relate Albert Einstein's ethical and philosophical views on the cosmos, touching on such topics as God, prayer, wealth, peace, creativity, nature, imagination, and curiosity.
