How the Biosphere Works

How the Biosphere Works PDF Author: Fred Spier
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000573141
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
How the Biosphere Works: Fresh Views Discovered While Growing Peppers offers a simple and novel theoretical approach to understanding the history of the biosphere, including humanity’s place within it. It also helps to clarify what the possibilities and limitations are for future action. This is a subject of wide interest because today we are facing a great many environmental issues, many of which may appear unconnected. Yet all these issues are part of our biosphere. For making plans for the future and addressing our long-term survival and well-being, an integrated knowledge of our biosphere and its history is therefore indispensable. Key Features Documents what the biosphere is, and what our position as humans within it is today. Describes how the biosphere has become the way it is. Summarizes the novel simple theoretical model proposed in the book, and thus, how the biosphere functions. Predicts what the possibilities and limitations are for future human action Emphasizes how simple but careful observations can lead to far-reaching theoretical implications.

How the Biosphere Works

How the Biosphere Works PDF Author: Fred Spier
Publisher: CRC Press
ISBN: 1000573141
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Get Book Here

Book Description
How the Biosphere Works: Fresh Views Discovered While Growing Peppers offers a simple and novel theoretical approach to understanding the history of the biosphere, including humanity’s place within it. It also helps to clarify what the possibilities and limitations are for future action. This is a subject of wide interest because today we are facing a great many environmental issues, many of which may appear unconnected. Yet all these issues are part of our biosphere. For making plans for the future and addressing our long-term survival and well-being, an integrated knowledge of our biosphere and its history is therefore indispensable. Key Features Documents what the biosphere is, and what our position as humans within it is today. Describes how the biosphere has become the way it is. Summarizes the novel simple theoretical model proposed in the book, and thus, how the biosphere functions. Predicts what the possibilities and limitations are for future human action Emphasizes how simple but careful observations can lead to far-reaching theoretical implications.

How the Incas Built Their Heartland

How the Incas Built Their Heartland PDF Author: R. Alan Covey
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 9780472114788
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
"In How the Incas Built Their Heartland R. Alan Covey supplements an archaeological approach with the tools of a historian, forming an interdisciplinary study of how the Incas became sufficiently powerful to embark on an unprecedented campaign of territorial expansion and how such developments related to earlier patterns of Andean statecraft."--BOOK JACKET.

Heaven, Hell, and Everything in Between

Heaven, Hell, and Everything in Between PDF Author: Ananda Cohen Suarez
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477300457
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Examining the vivid, often apocalyptic church murals of Peru from the early colonial period through the nineteenth century, Heaven, Hell, and Everything in Between explores the sociopolitical situation represented by the artists who generated these murals for rural parishes. Arguing that the murals were embedded in complex networks of trade, commerce, and the exchange of ideas between the Andes and Europe, Ananda Cohen-Aponte also considers the ways in which artists and viewers worked through difficult questions of envisioning sacredness. This study brings to light the fact that, unlike the murals of New Spain, the murals of the Andes possess few direct visual connections to a pre-Columbian painting tradition; the Incas’ preference for abstracted motifs created a problem for visually translating Catholic doctrine to indigenous congregations, as the Spaniards were unable to read Inca visual culture. Nevertheless, as Cohen Suarez demonstrates, colonial murals of the Andes can be seen as a reformulation of a long-standing artistic practice of adorning architectural spaces with images that command power and contemplation. Drawing on extensive secondary and archival sources, including account books from the churches, as well as on colonial Spanish texts, Cohen Suarez urges us to see the murals not merely as decoration or as tools of missionaries but as visual archives of the complex negotiations among empire, communities, and individuals.

Big History and the Future of Humanity

Big History and the Future of Humanity PDF Author: Fred Spier
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118881729
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 371

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Book Description
big history and the future of humanity “This remains the best single attempt to theorize big history as a discipline that can link core concepts and paradigms across all historical disciplines, from cosmology to geology, from biology to human history. With additional and updated material, the Second Edition also offers a fine introduction to the history of big history and a superb introductory survey to the big history story. Essential reading for anyone interested in a rapidly evolving new field of scholarship that links the sciences and the humanities into a modern, science-based origin story.” David Christian, Macquarie University “Notable for its theoretic approach, this new Second Edition is both an indispensable contribution to the emerging big history narrative and a powerful university textbook. Spier defines words carefully and recognizes the limits of current knowledge, aspects of his own clear thinking.” Cynthia Brown, Emerita, Dominican University of California Reflecting the latest theories in the sciences and humanities, this new edition of Big History and the Future of Humanity presents an accessible and original overview of the entire sweep of history from the origins of the universe and life on Earth up to the present day. Placing the relatively brief period of human history within a much broader framework – one that considers everything from vast galaxy clusters to the tiniest sub-atomic particles – big history is an innovative theoretical approach that opens up entirely new multidisciplinary research agendas. Noted historian Fred Spier reveals how a thorough examination of patterns of complexity can offer richer insights into what the future may have in store for humanity. The second edition includes new learning features, such as highlighted scientific concepts, an illustrative timeline and comprehensive glossary. By exploring the cumulative history from the Big Bang to the modern day, Big History and the Future of Humanity, Second Edition, sheds important historical light on where we have been – and offers a tantalizing glimpse of what lies ahead.

Social Sciences

Social Sciences PDF Author: Katherine D. McCann
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 9780292752436
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 958

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Book Description
Beginning with volume 41 (1979), the University of Texas Press became the publisher of the Handbook of Latin American Studies, the most comprehensive annual bibliography in the field. Compiled by the Hispanic Division of the Library of Congress and annotated by a corps of more than 130 specialists in various disciplines, the Handbook alternates from year to year between social sciences and humanities. The Handbook annotates works on Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and the Guianas, Spanish South America, and Brazil, as well as materials covering Latin America as a whole. Most of the subsections are preceded by introductory essays that serve as biannual evaluations of the literature and research under way in specialized areas. The Handbook of Latin American Studies is the oldest continuing reference work in the field. Katherine D. McCann is acting editor for this volume. The subject categories for Volume 57 are as follows: Electronic Resources for the Social Sciences Anthropology Economics Geography Government and Politics International Relations Sociology

The Structure of Big History from the Big Bang Until Today

The Structure of Big History from the Big Bang Until Today PDF Author: Fred Spier
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
ISBN: 9789053562208
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
The social and natural sciences have more in common than most people would perhaps suspect. This thought-provoking study, the first of its kind ever attempted, presents a single straightforward structure which unites the latest scientific views on the history of the Universe, the Solar System, Earth, life and humankind. It contributes to a better understanding of some long-standing academic controversies, such as the root causes for the origins of humankind, the rise of agriculture and the emergence of early states.

Religious Regimes in Peru

Religious Regimes in Peru PDF Author: Fred Spier
Publisher: Leiden University Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
This study deals with religion and politics from the first introduction of agriculture, ca 8000 B.C.E., providing a wealth of new sociological insights as well as many novel historical facts. This long-term investigation is among the first of its kind, if not the first, that has been produced for any world region.

Killing the Snake of Poverty. Local perceptions of poverty and wellbeing and peoples capabilities to improve their lives in the Southern Andes of Peru

Killing the Snake of Poverty. Local perceptions of poverty and wellbeing and peoples capabilities to improve their lives in the Southern Andes of Peru PDF Author: Azusa Miyashita
Publisher: Rozenberg Publishers
ISBN: 9036101484
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description


Inca Apocalypse

Inca Apocalypse PDF Author: R. Alan Covey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190299134
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 593

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Book Description
A major new history of the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, set in a larger global context than previous accounts Previous accounts of the fall of the Inca empire have played up the importance of the events of one violent day in November 1532 at the highland Andean town of Cajamarca. To some, the "Cajamarca miracle"-in which Francisco Pizarro and a small contingent of Spaniards captured an Inca who led an army numbering in the tens of thousands-demonstrated the intervention of divine providence. To others, the outcome was simply the result of European technological and immunological superiority. Inca Apocalypse develops a new perspective on the Spanish invasion and transformation of the Inca realm. Alan Covey's sweeping narrative traces the origins of the Inca and Spanish empires, identifying how Andean and Iberian beliefs about the world's end shaped the collision of the two civilizations. Rather than a decisive victory on the field at Cajamarca, the Spanish conquest was an uncertain, disruptive process that reshaped the worldviews of those on each side of the conflict.. The survivors built colonial Peru, a new society that never forgot the Inca imperial legacy or the enduring supernatural power of the Andean landscape. Covey retells a familiar story of conquest at a larger historical and geographical scale than ever before. This rich new history, based on the latest archaeological and historical evidence, illuminates mysteries that still surround the last days of the largest empire in the pre-Columbian Americas.

The Andean World

The Andean World PDF Author: Linda J. Seligmann
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317220773
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 1412

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Book Description
This comprehensive reference offers an authoritative overview of Andean lifeways. It provides valuable historical context, and demonstrates the relevance of learning about the Andes in light of contemporary events and debates. The volume covers the ecology and pre-Columbian history of the region, and addresses key themes such as cosmology, aesthetics, gender and household relations, modes of economic production, exchange, and consumption, postcolonial legacies, identities, political organization and movements, and transnational interconnections. With over 40 essays by expert contributors that highlight the breadth and depth of Andean worlds, this is an essential resource for students and scholars alike.