Author: Yuval Noah Harari
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062464353
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 245
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Book Description
Official U.S. edition with full color illustrations throughout. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Yuval Noah Harari, author of the critically-acclaimed New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon Sapiens, returns with an equally original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity’s future, and our quest to upgrade humans into gods. Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature into manageable challenges. For the first time ever, more people die from eating too much than from eating too little; more people die from old age than from infectious diseases; and more people commit suicide than are killed by soldiers, terrorists and criminals put together. The average American is a thousand times more likely to die from binging at McDonalds than from being blown up by Al Qaeda. What then will replace famine, plague, and war at the top of the human agenda? As the self-made gods of planet earth, what destinies will we set ourselves, and which quests will we undertake? Homo Deus explores the projects, dreams and nightmares that will shape the twenty-first century—from overcoming death to creating artificial life. It asks the fundamental questions: Where do we go from here? And how will we protect this fragile world from our own destructive powers? This is the next stage of evolution. This is Homo Deus. With the same insight and clarity that made Sapiens an international hit and a New York Times bestseller, Harari maps out our future.
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0062316109
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 403
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Book Description
New York Times Readers’ Pick: Top 100 Books of the 21st Century New York Times Bestseller A Summer Reading Pick for President Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and Mark Zuckerberg From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What happened to the others? And what may happen to us? Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book that begins about 70,000 years ago with the appearance of modern cognition. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas. Dr. Harari also compels us to look ahead, because over the last few decades humans have begun to bend laws of natural selection that have governed life for the past four billion years. We are acquiring the ability to design not only the world around us, but also ourselves. Where is this leading us, and what do we want to become? Featuring 27 photographs, 6 maps, and 25 illustrations/diagrams, this provocative and insightful work is sure to spark debate and is essential reading for aficionados of Jared Diamond, James Gleick, Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and Sharon Moalem.
Author: J. L. Thompson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781139442084
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 474
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Book Description
It is generally accepted that the earliest human ancestors grew more like apes than like humans today. If they did so, and we are now different, when, how and why did our modern growth patterns evolve? This book focuses on species within the genus Homo to investigate the evolutionary origins of characteristic human patterns and rates of craniofacial and postcranial growth and development, and to explore unique ontogenetic patterns within each fossil species. Experts examine growth patterns found within available Plio-Pleistocene hominid samples, and analyse variation in ontogenetic patterns and rates of development in recent modern humans in order to provide a comparative context for fossil hominid studies. Presenting studies of some of the newer juvenile fossil specimens and information on Homo antecessor, this book will provide a rich data source with which anthropologists and evolutionary biologists can address the questions posed above.
Author: Wladimir Velminski
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262035693
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 129
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Book Description
How Soviet scientists and pseudoscientists pursued telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and mass hyptonism over television to control the minds of citizens. In October 1989, as the Cold War was ending and the Berlin Wall about to crumble, television viewers in the Soviet Union tuned in to the first of a series of unusual broadcasts. “Relax, let your thoughts wander free...” intoned the host, the physician and clinical psychotherapist Anatoly Mikhailovich Kashpirovsky. Moscow's Channel One was attempting mass hypnosis over television, a therapeutic session aimed at reassuring citizens panicked over the ongoing political upheaval—and aimed at taking control of their responses to it. Incredibly enough, this last-ditch effort to rally the citizenry was the culmination of decades of official telepathic research, cybernetic simulations, and coded messages undertaken to reinforce ideological conformity. In Homo Sovieticus, the art and media scholar Wladimir Velminski explores these scientific and pseudoscientific efforts at mind control. In a fascinating series of anecdotes, Velminski describes such phenomena as the conflation of mental energy and electromagnetism; the investigation of aura fields through the “Aurathron”; a laboratory that practiced mind control methods on dogs; and attempts to calibrate the thought processes of laborers. “Scientific” diagrams from the period accompany the text. In all of the experimental methods for implanting thoughts into a brain, Velminski finds political and metaphorical contaminations. These apparently technological experiments in telepathy and telekinesis were deployed for purely political purposes.
Author: Pierre Bourdieu
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804717984
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 374
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Book Description
In this highly original work, Pierre Bourdieu turns his attention to the academic world of which he is part and offers a brilliant analysis of modern intellectual culture. The academy is shown to be not just a realm of dialogue and debate, but also a sphere of power in which reputations and careers are made, defended and destroyed. Employing the distinctive methods for which he has become well known, Bourdieu examines the social background and practical activities of his fellow academics--from Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan to figures who are lesser known but not necessarily less influential. Bourdieu analyzes their social origins and current positions, how much they publish and where they publish it, their institutional connections, media appearances, political involvements and so on. This enables Bourdieu to construct a map of the intellectual field in France and to analyze the forms of capital and power, the lines of conflict and the patterns of change, which characterize the system of higher education in France today. Homo Academicus paints a vivid and dynamic picture of French intellectual life today and develops a general approach to the study of modern culture and education. It will be of great interest to students of sociology, education and politics as well as to anyone concerned with the role of intellectuals and higher education today.
Author: Vojtěch Novotný
Publisher: Karolinum Press
ISBN: 8024625199
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 182
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Book Description
This monograph has set itself the goal to examine, outline, elucidate, and supplement the existing body of knowledge concerning a theme from patristic and medieval theology recalled in 1953 by Marie-Dominique Chenu, and that is the assertion that man was created as a replacement for fallen angels (Yves Congar: créature de remplacement; Louis Bouyer: ange de remplacement). The study first shows that the idea of man having being created to take the place of fallen angels was introduced by St. Augustine and developed by other church fathers. It then identifies the typical contexts in which the subject was raised by authors of the early Middle Ages, but goes on to focus on the discussion that developed during the twelfth century (Anselm of Canterbury, the school of Laon, Rupert of Deutz, Honorius of Autun), which represents the high point of the theme under investigation, culminating in the assertion that man is an "original" being, created for its own sake, for whom God created the world – a world which together with, and through, man is destined for the heavenly Jerusalem. The question as to whether man would have been created if the angels had not sinned (cur homo) bears a clear similarity to a further controversy, the origins of which also go back to the twelfth century, and that is whether the Son of God would have become incarnate if man had not sinned (cur Deus homo). Next, the book sheds light on how the subject begins to gradually fade away through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, both within monastic tradition, which nonetheless held onto Augustine's motif, and within scholastic theology, which asserted that man was created for his own sake. The conclusion summarizes the findings and points to the surprisingly contemporary relevance of the foregoing reflections, particularly in relation to the critique that the Swiss philosopher and theologian Romano Amerio († 1997) offers concerning a statement in the pastoral constitution of the Second Vatican Council (Gaudium et spes 24), according to which man is "the only creature on earth that God willed for itself".
Author: Yuval Noah Harari
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062693603
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 504
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Book Description
Sapiens and Homo Deus: The E-book Collection has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.
Author: Leo Bersani
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674020871
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 219
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Book Description
Acclaimed for his intricate, incisive, and often controversial explorations of art, literature, and society, Leo Bersani now addresses homosexuality in America. Hardly a day goes by without the media focusing an often sympathetic beam on gay life--and, with AIDS, on gay death. Gay plays on Broadway, big book awards to authors writing on gay subjects, Hollywood movies with gay themes, gay and lesbian studies at dozens of universities, openly gay columnists and even editors at national mainstream publications, political leaders speaking in favor of gay rights: it seems that straight America has finally begun to listen to homosexual America. Still, Bersani notes, not only has homophobia grown more virulent, but many gay men and lesbians themselves are reluctant to be identified as homosexuals. In Homos, he studies the historical, political, and philosophical grounds for the current distrust, within the gay community, of self-identifying moves, for the paradoxical desire to be invisibly visible. While acknowledging the dangers of any kind of group identification (if you can be singled out, you can be disciplined), Bersani argues for a bolder presentation of what it means to be gay. In their justifiable suspicion of labels, gay men and lesbians have nearly disappeared into their own sophisticated awareness of how they have been socially constructed. By downplaying their sexuality, gays risk self-immolation--they will melt into the stifling culture they had wanted to contest. In his chapters on contemporary queer theory, on Foucault and psychoanalysis, on the politics of sadomasochism, and on the image of "the gay outlaw" in works by Gide, Proust, and Genet, Bersani raises the exciting possibility that same-sex desire by its very nature can disrupt oppressive social orders. His spectacular theory of "homo-ness" will be of interest to straights as well as gays, for it designates a mode of connecting to the world embodied in, but not reducible to, a sexual preference. The gay identity Bersani advocates is more of a force--as such, rather cool to the modest goal of social tolerance for diverse lifestyles--which can lead to a massive redefining of sociality itself, and of what we might expect from human communities. Reviews of this book: "Perhaps no one since Leo Bersani in 'Is the Rectum a Grave?' has written so convincingly against the danger of homosexual assimilation as Leo Bersani in Homos...One of the strongest elements of [this book] is Bersani's attack on things which promote a `denial of sex,' whether it be sex acts themselves or, more importantly, the context in which those sex acts are made possible...Homos is a profound piece of imaginative literature." DD--Dale Peck, Voice Literary Supplement "In Homos, Leo Bersani effectively attacks some sacred cows of gay cultural theory. Most obviously, he argues against the tenet that gay and lesbian identities are socially constructed and so ultimately (indeed, preferably) dissolvable...Refreshingly, [Bersani] also does not skate round sensitive questions such as the status of sadomasochism within gay sexual practice, and the tortuousness of the political liaison between gays and lesbians...Bersani emerges as our most persuasive advocate of homosexual identities that offer and require social resistance--he terms this 'anticommunitarianism'--but also as perhaps the only writer in the field who convincingly brings together psychological and sociological accounts of sexuality." DD--Richard Canning, New Statesman & Society "Bersani engages with questions which the gay movement cannot ignore." DD--Times Literary Supplement "In his provocative and sure-to-be-controversial book, Homos, Bersani argues for the need to preserve the 'otherness' that he maintains is the essential core of homosexual identity." DD--David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle "Homos is one of the most interesting books to appear in lesbian and gay literature--in fact its vision is so broad that it places lesbian and gay readers centre stage in what could be a revolution." DD--Our Times "Leo Bersani, one of the most interesting, original and sophisticated of...literary historians, has written primarily on Modernism, from Baudelaire to Beckett and Genet, using Freud's metapsychology as a way of penetrating into the radical implications of their thought...[His] work...[is] a surprise and a revelation, both careful and highly original...It is deeply exciting to engage with Bersani's ideas. They allow us to open up traditional psychoanalytic theory, so that it is no longer a mere therapeutic strategy, and consequently a device for social control and homogeneity, but instead a larger perspective for understanding and valuing those possibilities and differences that can constitute human experience." DD--Kenneth Lewes, Psychoanalytic Books "Homos is an extremely persuasive analysis of the `anticommunal' freedom made possible by `perverse' sexuality...Bersani's argument is at once subtle, even brilliant." DD--Peggy Phelan, Contemporary Sociology
Author: Ellen Dissanayake
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295980532
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320
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Book Description
�Dissanayake argues that art was central to human evolutionary adaptation and that the aesthetic faculty is a basic psychological component of every human being. In her view, art is intimately linked to the origins of religious practices and to ceremonies of birth, death, transition, and transcendence. Drawing on her years in Sri Lanka, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea, she gives examples of painting, song, dance, and drama as behaviors that enable participants to grasp and reinforce what is important to their cognitive world.��Publishers Weekly�Homo Aestheticus offers a wealth of original and critical thinking. It will inform and irritate specialist, student, and lay reader alike.��American AnthropologistA thoughtful, elegant, and provocative analysis of aesthetic behavior in the development of our species�one that acknowledges its roots in the work of prior thinkers while opening new vistas for those yet to come. If you�re reading just one book on art anthropology this year, make it hers.��Anthropology and Humanism
Author: Giorgio Agamben
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804732185
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 220
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Book Description
The work of Giorgio Agamben, one of Italy's most important and original philosophers, has been based on an uncommon erudition in classical traditions of philosophy and rhetoric, the grammarians of late antiquity, Christian theology, and modern philosophy. Recently, Agamben has begun to direct his thinking to the constitution of the social and to some concrete, ethico-political conclusions concerning the state of society today, and the place of the individual within it. In Homo Sacer, Agamben aims to connect the problem of pure possibility, potentiality, and power with the problem of political and social ethics in a context where the latter has lost its previous religious, metaphysical, and cultural grounding. Taking his cue from Foucault's fragmentary analysis of biopolitics, Agamben probes with great breadth, intensity, and acuteness the covert or implicit presence of an idea of biopolitics in the history of traditional political theory. He argues that from the earliest treatises of political theory, notably in Aristotle's notion of man as a political animal, and throughout the history of Western thinking about sovereignty (whether of the king or the state), a notion of sovereignty as power over "life" is implicit. The reason it remains merely implicit has to do, according to Agamben, with the way the sacred, or the idea of sacrality, becomes indissociable from the idea of sovereignty. Drawing upon Carl Schmitt's idea of the sovereign's status as the exception to the rules he safeguards, and on anthropological research that reveals the close interlinking of the sacred and the taboo, Agamben defines the sacred person as one who can be killed and yet not sacrificed—a paradox he sees as operative in the status of the modern individual living in a system that exerts control over the collective "naked life" of all individuals.
