An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence

An Inquiry Into Modes of Existence PDF Author: Bruno Latour
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674728556
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 519

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Book Description
In a new approach to philosophical anthropology, Bruno Latour offers answers to questions raised in We Have Never Been Modern: If not modern, what have we been, and what values should we inherit? An Inquiry into Modes of Existence offers a new basis for diplomatic encounters with other societies at a time of ecological crisis.

Transfixed by Prehistory

Transfixed by Prehistory PDF Author: Maria Stavrinaki
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 194213066X
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
An examination of how modern art was impacted by the concept of prehistory and the prehistoric Prehistory is an invention of the late nineteenth century. In that moment of technological progress and acceleration of production and circulation, three major Western narratives about time took shape. One after another, these new fields of inquiry delved into the obscure immensity of the past: first, to surmise the age of the Earth; second, to find the point of emergence of human beings; and third, to ponder the age of art. Maria Stavrinaki considers the inseparability of these accounts of temporality from the disruptive forces of modernity. She asks what a history of modernity and its art would look like if considered through these three interwoven inventions of the longue durée. Transfixed by Prehistory attempts to articulate such a history, which turns out to be more complex than an inevitable march of progress leading up to the Anthropocene. Rather, it is a history of stupor, defamiliarization, regressive acceleration, and incessant invention, since the “new” was also found in the deep sediments of the Earth. Composed of as much speed as slowness, as much change as deep time, as much confidence as skepticism and doubt, modernity is a complex phenomenon that needs to be rethought. Stavrinaki focuses on this intrinsic tension through major artistic practices (Cézanne, Matisse, De Chirico, Ernst, Picasso, Dubuffet, Smithson, Morris, and contemporary artists such as Pierre Huyghe and Thomas Hirschhorn), philosophical discourses (Bataille, Blumenberg, and Jünger), and the human sciences. This groundbreaking book will attract readers interested in the intersections of art history, anthropology, psychoanalysis, mythology, geology, and archaeology.

Curiosity

Curiosity PDF Author: Barbara M. Benedict
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226042640
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
In this striking social history, Barbara M. Benedict draws on the texts of the early modern period to discover the era's attitudes toward curiosity, a trait we learn was often depicted as an unsavory form of transgression or cultural ambition.

The Spirit of Inquiry

The Spirit of Inquiry PDF Author: Susannah Gibson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192569880
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Cambridge is now world-famous as a centre of science, but it wasn't always so. Before the nineteenth century, the sciences were of little importance in the University of Cambridge. But that began to change in 1819 when two young Cambridge fellows took a geological fieldtrip to the Isle of Wight. Adam Sedgwick and John Stevens Henslow spent their days there exploring, unearthing dazzling fossils, dreaming up elaborate theories about the formation of the earth, and bemoaning the lack of serious science in their ancient university. As they threw themselves into the exciting new science of geology - conjuring millions of years of history from the evidence they found in the island's rocks - they also began to dream of a new scientific society for Cambridge. This society would bring together like-minded young men who wished to learn of the latest science from overseas, and would encourage original research in Cambridge. It would be, they wrote, a society "to keep alive the spirit of inquiry". Their vision was realised when they founded the Cambridge Philosophical Society later that same year. Its founders could not have imagined the impact the Cambridge Philosophical Society would have: it was responsible for the first publication of Charles Darwin's scientific writings, and hosted some of the most heated debates about evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century; it saw the first announcement of x-ray diffraction by a young Lawrence Bragg - a technique that would revolutionise the physical, chemical and life sciences; it published the first paper by C.T.R. Wilson on his cloud chamber - a device that opened up a previously-unimaginable world of sub-atomic particles. 200 years on from the Society's foundation, this book reflects on the achievements of Sedgwick, Henslow, their peers, and their successors. Susannah Gibson explains how Cambridge moved from what Sedgwick saw as a "death-like stagnation" (really little more than a provincial training school for Church of England clergy) to being a world-leader in the sciences. And she shows how science, once a peripheral activity undertaken for interest by a small number of wealthy gentlemen, has transformed into an enormously well-funded activity that can affect every aspect of our lives.

Places of Inquiry

Places of Inquiry PDF Author: Burton R. Clark
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520915100
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
A distinguished work by one of America's leading scholars of higher education, Places of Inquiry explores one of the major issues in university education today: the relationship among research, teaching, and study. Based on cross-national research on the university systems of Germany, Britain, France, the United States, and Japan—which was first reported in the edited volume The Research Foundations of Graduate Education (California, 1993)—this book offers in-depth comparative analysis and draws provocative conclusions about the future of the research-teaching-study nexus. With characteristic clarity and vision, Burton R. Clark identifies the main features and limitations of each national system: governmental and industrial dominance in Japan, for example, and England's collegiate form of university. He examines the forces drawing research, teaching, and study apart and those binding them together. Highlighting the fruitful integration of teaching and research in the American graduate school, Clark decries the widely held view that these are antithetical activities. Rather, he demonstrates that research provides a rich basis for instruction and learning. Universities, he maintains, are places of inquiry, and the future lies with institutions firmly grounded in this belief.

Metaphysical Inquiry Into Method, Objects, and Result of Ancient and Modern Philosophy

Metaphysical Inquiry Into Method, Objects, and Result of Ancient and Modern Philosophy PDF Author: Isaac Preston Cory
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 522

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Book Description


Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life

Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life PDF Author: Albert Borgmann
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226066290
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Table of Contents Acknowledgments Part One - The Problem of Technology 1. Technology and Theory 2. Theories of Technology 3. The Choice of a Theory 4. Scientific Theory 5. Scientific Explanation 6. The Scope of Scientific Explanation 7. Science and Technology Part Two - The Character of Technology 8. The Promise of Technology 9. The Device Paradigm 10. The Foreground of Technology 11. Devices, Means, and Machines 12. Paradigmatic Explanation 13. Technology and the Social Order 14. Technology and Democracy 15. The Rule of Technology 16. Political Engagement and Social Justice 17. Work and Labor 18. Leisure, Excellence, and Happiness 19. The Stability of Technology Part Three - The Reform of Technology 20. The Possibilities of Reform 21. Deictic Discourse 22. The Challenge of Nature 23. Focal Things and Practices 24. Wealth and the Good Life 25. Political Affirmation 26. The Recovery of the Promise of Technology Notes Index.

Metaphysical inquiry into the method, objects and result of ancient and modern philosophy. [Followed by] Mythological inquiry into the recondite theology of the heathens [and] Chronological inquiry into the ancient history of Egypt

Metaphysical inquiry into the method, objects and result of ancient and modern philosophy. [Followed by] Mythological inquiry into the recondite theology of the heathens [and] Chronological inquiry into the ancient history of Egypt PDF Author: Isaac Preston Cory
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description


Modern Dreams

Modern Dreams PDF Author: Beng-Lan Goh
Publisher: SEAP Publications
ISBN: 9780877277309
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
A fascinating ethnographic study of the cultural politics of urban redevelopment in Kampung Serani, one Penang community, in the 1990s. Through interviews, newspaper reports, and other records, Goh considers changing notions of culture, ethnic identity, and urban space.

Sovereignty, Inc.

Sovereignty, Inc. PDF Author: William Mazzarella
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022666841X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
What does the name Trump stand for? If branding now rules over the production of value, as the coauthors of Sovereignty, Inc. argue, then Trump assumes the status of a master brand whose primary activity is the compulsive work of self-branding—such is the new sovereignty business in which, whether one belongs to his base or not, we are all “incorporated.” Drawing on anthropology, political theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and theater, William Mazzarella, Eric L. Santner, and Aaron Schuster show how politics in the age of Trump functions by mobilizing a contradictory and convoluted enjoyment, an explosive mixture of drives and fantasies that eludes existing portraits of our era. The current political moment turns out to be not so much exceptional as exceptionally revealing of the constitutive tension between enjoyment and economy that has always been a key component of the social order. Santner analyzes the collective dream-work that sustains a new sort of authoritarian charisma or mana, a mana-facturing process that keeps us riveted to an excessively carnal incorporation of sovereignty. Mazzarella examines the contemporary merger of consumer brand and political brand and the cross-contamination of politics and economics, warning against all too easy laments about the corruption of politics by marketing. Schuster, focusing on the extreme theatricality and self-satirical comedy of the present, shows how authority reasserts itself at the very moment of distrust and disillusionment in the system, profiting off its supposed decline. A dazzling diagnostic of our present, Sovereignty, Inc., forces us to come to terms with our complicity in Trump’s political presence and will immediately take its place in discussions of contemporary politics.