Priest of Nature

Priest of Nature PDF Author: Rob Iliffe
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199995354
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 553

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first major book on Isaac Newton's religious writings in nearly four decades that negotiates the complex boundaries between the scientific genius's public and private faith

Priest of Nature

Priest of Nature PDF Author: Rob Iliffe
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199995354
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 553

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first major book on Isaac Newton's religious writings in nearly four decades that negotiates the complex boundaries between the scientific genius's public and private faith

Priest of Nature

Priest of Nature PDF Author: Rob Iliffe
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 9780190931599
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 536

Get Book Here

Book Description
He was the dominant intellectual figure of his age. His published works, including the Principia Mathematica and Opticks, reached across the scientific spectrum, revealing the degree of his interdisciplinary genius. His renown opened doors throughout his career, securing him prestigious positions at Cambridge, the Royal Mint, and the Royal Society. Yet alongside his public success, Sir Isaac Newton harbored private religious convictions that set him at odds with established law and Anglican doctrine, and, if revealed, threatened not just his livelihood but his life. Religion and faith dominated much of Newton's thought and his manuscripts, in various states of completion and numbering in the thousands of pages, are filled with biblical speculation and timelines, along with passages that excoriated the early Church Fathers. They make clear that his theological positions rendered him a heretic. Newton believed that the central concept of the Trinity was a diabolical fraud and loathed the idolatry, cruelty, and persecution that had come to characterize orthodox religion. Instead, he proposed as "simple Christianity"--a faith that would center on a few core beliefs and celebrate diversity in religious thinking and practice. An utterly original but obsessively private religious thinker, Newton composed some of the most daring works of any writer of the early modern period. Little wonder that he and his inheritors suppressed them, and that for centuries they were largely inaccessible. In Priest of Nature, historian Rob Iliffe introduces readers to Newton the religious animal, deepening our understanding of the relationship between faith and science at a formative moment in history and thought. Previous scholars and biographers have generally underestimated the range and complexity of Newton's religious writings, but Iliffe shows how wide-ranging his observations and interests were, spanning the entirety of Christian history from Creation to the Apocalypse. Iliffe's book allows readers to fully engage in the theological discussion that dominated Newton's age. A vibrant biography of one of history's towering scientific figures, Priest of Nature is the definitive work on the spiritual views of the man who fundamentally changed how we look at the universe.

Newton

Newton PDF Author: Rob Iliffe
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199298033
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 161

Get Book Here

Book Description
Newton's contributions to an understanding of the heavens and the earth are considered to be unparalleled. This very short introduction explains his scientific theories, and uses Newton's unpublished writings to paint a picture of an extremely complex man whose beliefs had a huge impact on Europe's political, intellectual, and religious landscape.

The Old Priest

The Old Priest PDF Author: Anthony Wallace
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822979209
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Old Priest is a book of transformations. From the cigar-smoke-and-mirrors world of casino life, to the collection's title character morphing into a goat-man before the narrator's eyes, to a family drama upended by a miniature dinosaur in the backyard, Anthony Wallace writes about life-changing events. The characters seek to escape their earthly boundaries through artifice and fantasy, and those boundaries can be as elegant and fragile as a martini glass or as hardscrabble as an Indian reservation. In these eight vividly detailed short stories we encounter cheating husbands, neurotic housewives, out-of-control teenagers, desperate gamblers, deluded alcoholics, and a host of others who would like a chance at something more. Some face the consequences of their actions, while others simply begin to see what they've been missing all along. Through wry, ironic prose—and what feels like firsthand experience—Wallace describes a comic and often misguided search for self-knowledge in the most unlikely locations—like the Emerald City, a low-rent gambling den where a cocktail waitress dressed as an X-rated Dorothy offers gamblers more than a Scotch on the rocks; or the Bastille Hotel-Casino, where a dealer dressed as an eighteenth century footman deals five-dollar blackjack to a reminiscing Holocaust survivor. Occasionally a real demon appears, but the collection is mostly about personal demons and the possibility of exorcising them. The stories in The Old Priest have to do with time and memory, and they convincingly open out beyond ordinary daily time to reveal something else—the present moment, perhaps, but a larger, more mysterious conception of it.

Nature, Man and Woman

Nature, Man and Woman PDF Author: Alan Watts
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0679732330
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 226

Get Book Here

Book Description
From “perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West—and an author who ‘had the rare gift of ‘writing beautifully the unwritable’” (Los Angeles Times)—a guide that draws on Chinese Taoism to reexamine humanity’s place in the natural world and the relation between body and spirit. Western thought and culture have coalesced around a series of constructed ideas—that human beings stand separate from a nature that must be controlled; that the mind is somehow superior to the body; that all sexuality entails a seduction—that in some way underlie our exploitation of the earth, our distrust of emotion, and our loneliness and reluctance to love. Here, Watts fundamentally challenges these assumptions, drawing on the precepts of Taoism to present an alternative vision of man and the universe—one in which the distinctions between self and other, spirit and matter give way to a more holistic way of seeing.

Defining Nature's Limits

Defining Nature's Limits PDF Author: Neil Tarrant
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226819434
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
A look at the history of censorship, science, and magic from the Middle Ages to the post-Reformation era. Neil Tarrant challenges conventional thinking by looking at the longer history of censorship, considering a five-hundred-year continuity of goals and methods stretching from the late eleventh century to well into the sixteenth. Unlike earlier studies, Defining Nature’s Limits engages the history of both learned and popular magic. Tarrant explains how the church developed a program that sought to codify what was proper belief through confession, inquisition, and punishment and prosecuted what they considered superstition or heresy that stretched beyond the boundaries of religion. These efforts were continued by the Roman Inquisition, established in 1542. Although it was designed primarily to combat Protestantism, from the outset the new institution investigated both practitioners of “illicit” magic and inquiries into natural philosophy, delegitimizing certain practices and thus shaping the development of early modern science. Describing the dynamics of censorship that continued well into the post-Reformation era, Defining Nature's Limits is revisionist history that will interest scholars of the history science, the history of magic, and the history of the church alike.

Priest

Priest PDF Author: Sierra Simone
Publisher: Sierra Simone
ISBN: 1732172234
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 309

Get Book Here

Book Description
There are many rules a priest can't break. A priest cannot marry. A priest cannot abandon his flock. A priest cannot forsake his God. I've always been good at following rules. Until she came. Then I learned new rules. My name is Tyler Anselm Bell. I'm twenty-nine years old. Six months ago, I broke my vow of celibacy on the altar of my own church, and God help me, I would do it again. I am a priest and this is my confession.

Letter to a Priest

Letter to a Priest PDF Author: Simone Weil
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317914473
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 114

Get Book Here

Book Description
Hailed by Albert Camus as ‘the only great spirit of our times’, Simone Weil was one of great essayists and activists of the twentieth century. Her writings on the nature of religious faith and spirituality have inspired many subsequent thinkers. Wrestling with the moral dilemmas entailed by commitment to the Catholic Church, Letter to a Priest is a brilliant meditation on the perennial battle between faith and doubt and resonates today as much as when it was first written. This edition also includes one of her most inspiring and celebrated essays, ‘Human Personality’, where Weil offers a moving and unorthodox account of the preciousness of human beings. With a new foreword by Raimond Gaita.

Capitalism--its Nature and its Replacement

Capitalism--its Nature and its Replacement PDF Author: Graham Priest
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000463508
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this third decade of the 21st century, deep problems plague our world. Many people lack adequate nutrition, health care, and education, because–while there is enough wealth for everyone to meet these basic needs–most of it is tightly controlled by precious few. Global warming causes droughts, floods, rising sea levels, and soon the forced migrations of millions of people. In this book, philosopher Graham Priest explains why we find ourselves in this situation, defines the nature of the problems we face, and explains how we might solve and move beyond our current state. The first part of this book draws on Buddhist philosophy, Marx’s analysis of capitalism, and their complementary role in explaining our present crisis and the events that led us here. In the second part of the book, Priest turns to the much harder question of how one might go about creating a more rational and humane world. Here, he draws again on Buddhist and Marxist ideas as well as some key aspects of anarchist thought. His discussion of the need for bottom-up control of production, power, ideology, and an emerging awareness of our interdependence is a must-read for anyone who cares about the future of the planet and our latent capacity to care for each other. Key Features Explains the necessary elements of Marxist, Buddhist, and anarchist thought–no background knowledge of political theory or Buddhism is necessary Shows how Buddhist and Marxist notions of persons are complementary Convincingly shows capitalism’s role in creating current socio-economic problems Provides an analysis of the corrosiveness of top-down power structures and why they should be eliminated in a post-capitalist state Discusses capitalism’s role in war, environmental degradation, and race and gender-based oppression

The Adjacent

The Adjacent PDF Author: Christopher Priest
Publisher: Titan Books (US, CA)
ISBN: 1781169446
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Get Book Here

Book Description
“One of the master illusionists of our time.” —Wired “A head-spinning blast of blurred reality . . . jaw-dropping.” —NPR “Completely fascinating.” —San Francisco Book Review Set against “a kaleidoscopic backdrop of Earth’s past, present, and future”, this time-hopping science fiction novel is a moving meditation on “the resonance of history, memory, and love” (AV Club) In the near future, Tibor Tarent, a freelance photographer, is recalled from Anatolia to Britain when his wife, an aid worker, is killed—annihilated by a terrifying weapon that reduces its target to a triangular patch of scorched earth. A century earlier, Tommy Trent, a stage magician, is sent to the Western Front on a secret mission to render British reconnaissance aircraft invisible to the enemy. Present day. A theoretical physicist develops a new method of diverting matter, a discovery with devastating consequences that will resonate through time.