Michelangelo’s Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence

Michelangelo’s Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence PDF Author: Raymond Tallis
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030016890X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
A renowned British public intellectual illustrates how our unique ability to point the index finger has shaped our amazing evolutionary pathway as humansIn this startlingly original and persuasive book, Raymond Tallis shows that it is easy to underestimate the influence of small things in determining what manner of creatures humans are. He argues that the independent movement of the human index finger is one such easily overlooked factor. Indeed, not for nothing is the index finger called the “forefinger.” It is the finger we most naturally deploy when we want to pry objects out of small spaces, but it plays a far more significant role in an action unique to us among primates: pointing.Tallis argues that it is through pointing that the index finger made a significant contribution to the development of humans and to the creation of a human world separate from the rest of the natural world. Observing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the hugely familiar and awkward encounter between Michelangelo’s God and Man through their index fingers, Tallis identifies the artist’s intuitive awareness of the central role of the index finger in making us unique. Just as the reaching index fingers of God and Man are here made central to the creation of our kind, so Tallis believes that the seemingly simple act of pointing, which is used in a wide variety of ways, is central to our extraordinary evolution.

Michelangelo’s Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence

Michelangelo’s Finger: An Exploration of Everyday Transcendence PDF Author: Raymond Tallis
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030016890X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
A renowned British public intellectual illustrates how our unique ability to point the index finger has shaped our amazing evolutionary pathway as humansIn this startlingly original and persuasive book, Raymond Tallis shows that it is easy to underestimate the influence of small things in determining what manner of creatures humans are. He argues that the independent movement of the human index finger is one such easily overlooked factor. Indeed, not for nothing is the index finger called the “forefinger.” It is the finger we most naturally deploy when we want to pry objects out of small spaces, but it plays a far more significant role in an action unique to us among primates: pointing.Tallis argues that it is through pointing that the index finger made a significant contribution to the development of humans and to the creation of a human world separate from the rest of the natural world. Observing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the hugely familiar and awkward encounter between Michelangelo’s God and Man through their index fingers, Tallis identifies the artist’s intuitive awareness of the central role of the index finger in making us unique. Just as the reaching index fingers of God and Man are here made central to the creation of our kind, so Tallis believes that the seemingly simple act of pointing, which is used in a wide variety of ways, is central to our extraordinary evolution.

Michelangelo's Finger

Michelangelo's Finger PDF Author: Raymond Tallis
Publisher: Atlantic Books
ISBN: 9781848871199
Category : Communication and culture
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
"The ability of the human index finger to point is truly unique in the animal world. In Michaelangelo's Finger Raymond Tallis shows just how central this seemingly insignificant difference has been in determining the amazing evolutionary pathway of the human being. In this startlingly original and persuasive book, Raymond Tallis shows that it is easy to underestimate the influence of small things in determining what manner of creatures humans are. He reveals that over time the repeated and multiple effects of the seemingly insignificant can make an enormous difference and argues that the independent movement of the human index finger is one such easily overlooked factor. Indeed, not for nothing is the index finger called 'the forefinger'. It is the one we most naturally deploy when we want to winkle things out of small spaces, but it plays a far more significant role in an action unique to us among primates: pointing. In Michelangelo's Finger, Raymond Tallis argues that it is through pointing that the index finger made a significant contribution to hominid development and to the creation of a human world separate to the rest of the natural world. Observing the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the hugely familiar and awkward encounter between Michelangelo's God and Man through their index fingers, Tallis identifies an intuitive indication of the central role of the index finger in making us unique. Just as the reaching index fingers of God and Man are here made central to the creation of our kind, so Tallis believes that the simple act of pointing is central to our extraordinary evolution."--Publisher's description.

God's Presence

God's Presence PDF Author: Frances Young
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107038375
Category : Bibles
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
Explores how teachings of the church fathers can be applied today, despite the differences in our intellectual and ecclesial environments.

How Music Helps in Music Therapy and Everyday Life

How Music Helps in Music Therapy and Everyday Life PDF Author: Gary Ansdell
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317120817
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Why is music so important to most of us? How does music help us both in our everyday lives, and in the more specialist context of music therapy? This book suggests a new way of approaching these topical questions, drawing from Ansdell's long experience as a music therapist, and from the latest thinking on music in everyday life. Vibrant and moving examples from music therapy situations are twinned with the stories of 'ordinary' people who describe how music helps them within their everyday lives. Together this complementary material leads Ansdell to present a new interdisciplinary framework showing how musical experiences can help all of us build and negotiate identities, make intimate non-verbal relationships, belong together in community, and find moments of transcendence and meaning. How Music Helps is not just a book about music therapy. It has the more ambitious aim to promote (from a music therapist's perspective) a better understanding of 'music and change' in our personal and social life. Ansdell's theoretical synthesis links the tradition of Nordoff-Robbins music therapy and its recent developments in Community Music Therapy to contemporary music sociology and music studies. This book will be relevant to practitioners, academics, and researchers looking for a broad-based theoretical perspective to guide further study and policy in music, well-being, and health.

Unimaginable

Unimaginable PDF Author: Graham Ward
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1786734087
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
What we imagine can crush us or create us, destroy us or heal us; it can pitch us into battles with demons or set us among the songs of angels. It has roots beneath consciousness and is expressed in moods, rhythms, tones and textures of experience that are as much mental as physiological. In his new book, a sequel to the earlier Unbelievable, one of Britain's most exciting writers on religion here presents a nuanced and many-dimensional portrait of the mystery and creativity of the human imagination. Traversing landscapes that are both physical and emotional, palpable and intangible, the author enlists the company of fellow-travellers William Wordsworth, William Turner, Samuel Palmer and Ralph Vaughan Williams – alongside many other creative artists – to try to get to the bottom of the true meanings of originality and memory. Drawing the while on his own rich and varied encounters with belief, he asks why it is that the imagination is so fundamental to who and what we are. Using metaphor and story to unpeel the hidden motivations and architecture of the mind, and show what might lie beneath, Graham Ward grapples here with profound questions of ultimacy and transcendence. He reveals that, in understanding what it really means to be human, what cannot be imagined invariably means as much as what can.

Full of Character

Full of Character PDF Author: Frances Ward
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN: 1784506605
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 266

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Book Description
Engaging with current philosophers and thinkers, this book looks at what are the roots to our human condition. It looks the wisdom that traditional Christianity can bring to a Western culture preoccupied with post-truth, individualism and utilitarian methods of thinking. The desire for a fulfilling life is a common motivation to people, regardless of religious faith or non-faith. To be full of character - joyful, thoughtful, resourceful and truthful - we need habits of the heart. This book will explore the ways in which we can imagine our humanity differently, and find happiness as a direct result of becoming full of character.

Laurence Sterne and the Eighteenth-Century Book

Laurence Sterne and the Eighteenth-Century Book PDF Author: Helen Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108842763
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Offers new readings of Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy by considering its design features alongside broader developments in eighteenth-century book production.

Understanding Infants Psychoanalytically

Understanding Infants Psychoanalytically PDF Author: Elizabeth Urban
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000546284
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 170

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Book Description
Focussing on infants and the relationship between child and parent, this book presents a discourse on eminent Jungian child analyst Michael Fordham's model of development that extended Jung's theory to infancy and childhood. In this book, Elizabeth Urban, a Jungian psychotherapist in weekly conversations with Fordham, proposes five key areas, such as identifying periods of primary self-funcionin and the active participation of the infant in development, that contribute to the Fordham model of infant development. Drawing extensively on her observations and experiences working in a London child and adolescent unit, and a mother and baby unit, as well as using real-life observations to support the proposed contributions, the author provides a deeper understanding of infant development in the context of the relationship with the parents. This book is a unique contribution to the study of child development and is of great interest to paediatricians, psychotherapists, and other mental health professionals who work with children and their parents.

Consciousness and Transcendence

Consciousness and Transcendence PDF Author: Loomis Mayer
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
ISBN: 1803412259
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 109

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Book Description
A central but rarely explored mystery of human existence and subjective consciousness was recognized by Blaise Pascal several centuries ago: Why am I me and not you or anyone else? Science can explain why there is (objectively) a person here, but not why that person is (subjectively) me. This relates to the more widely debated mind/body problem, more currently known as the "Hard Problem of Consciousness." Moving on to human culture, including religion and the arts, this book asks whether these are the direct result of Darwinian evolution or, rather, of the nature of human consciousness. Do the mysteries of our consciousness, of our existence, have a role to play?

Prolegomena to a Carnal Hermeneutics

Prolegomena to a Carnal Hermeneutics PDF Author: Hwa Yol Jung
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739185810
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Prolegomena to a Carnal Hermeneutics introduces the importance of body politics from both Eastern and Western perspectives. Hwa Yol Jung begins with Giambattista Vico’s anti-Cartesianism as the birth of the discipline. He then explores the homecoming of Greek mousike (performing arts), which included oral poetry, dance, drama, and music; Mikhail Bakhtin’s dialogical body politics; the making of body politics in Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Levinas, and Luce Irigaray; Marshall McLuhan’s transversal and embodied philosophy of communication; and transversal geophilosophy. This tour de force will be an engaging read for anyone interested in the above thinkers, as well as for students and scholars of comparative philosophy, communication theory, environmental philosophy, political philosophy, or continental philosophy