There Plant Eyes

There Plant Eyes PDF Author: M. Leona Godin
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 1524748722
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
From Homer to Helen Keller, from Dune to Stevie Wonder, from the invention of braille to the science of echolocation, M. Leona Godin explores the fascinating history of blindness, interweaving it with her own story of gradually losing her sight. “[A] thought-provoking mixture of criticism, memoir, and advocacy." —The New Yorker There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocularcentric culture, challenging deeply ingrained ideas about what it means to be “blind.” For millennia, blindness has been used to signify such things as thoughtlessness (“blind faith”), irrationality (“blind rage”), and unconsciousness (“blind evolution”). But at the same time, blind people have been othered as the recipients of special powers as compensation for lost sight (from the poetic gifts of John Milton to the heightened senses of the comic book hero Daredevil). Godin—who began losing her vision at age ten—illuminates the often-surprising history of both the condition of blindness and the myths and ideas that have grown up around it over the course of generations. She combines an analysis of blindness in art and culture (from King Lear to Star Wars) with a study of the science of blindness and key developments in accessibility (the white cane, embossed printing, digital technology) to paint a vivid personal and cultural history. A genre-defying work, There Plant Eyes reveals just how essential blindness and vision are to humanity’s understanding of itself and the world.

There Plant Eyes

There Plant Eyes PDF Author: M. Leona Godin
Publisher: Pantheon
ISBN: 1524748722
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 353

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Book Description
From Homer to Helen Keller, from Dune to Stevie Wonder, from the invention of braille to the science of echolocation, M. Leona Godin explores the fascinating history of blindness, interweaving it with her own story of gradually losing her sight. “[A] thought-provoking mixture of criticism, memoir, and advocacy." —The New Yorker There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocularcentric culture, challenging deeply ingrained ideas about what it means to be “blind.” For millennia, blindness has been used to signify such things as thoughtlessness (“blind faith”), irrationality (“blind rage”), and unconsciousness (“blind evolution”). But at the same time, blind people have been othered as the recipients of special powers as compensation for lost sight (from the poetic gifts of John Milton to the heightened senses of the comic book hero Daredevil). Godin—who began losing her vision at age ten—illuminates the often-surprising history of both the condition of blindness and the myths and ideas that have grown up around it over the course of generations. She combines an analysis of blindness in art and culture (from King Lear to Star Wars) with a study of the science of blindness and key developments in accessibility (the white cane, embossed printing, digital technology) to paint a vivid personal and cultural history. A genre-defying work, There Plant Eyes reveals just how essential blindness and vision are to humanity’s understanding of itself and the world.

Blind Oracles

Blind Oracles PDF Author: Bruce Kuklick
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691133875
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
In this trenchant analysis, historian Bruce Kuklick examines the role of intellectuals in foreign policymaking. He recounts the history of the development of ideas about strategy and foreign policy during a critical period in American history: the era of the nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. The book looks at how the country's foremost thinkers advanced their ideas during this time of United States expansionism, a period that culminated in the Vietnam War and détente with the Soviets. Beginning with George Kennan after World War II, and concluding with Henry Kissinger and the Vietnam War, Kuklick examines the role of both institutional policymakers such as those at The Rand Corporation and Harvard's Kennedy School, and individual thinkers including Paul Nitze, McGeorge Bundy, and Walt Rostow. Kuklick contends that the figures having the most influence on American strategy--Kissinger, for example--clearly understood the way politics and the exercise of power affects policymaking. Other brilliant thinkers, on the other hand, often played a minor role, providing, at best, a rationale for policies adopted for political reasons. At a time when the role of the neoconservatives' influence over American foreign policy is a subject of intense debate, this book offers important insight into the function of intellectuals in foreign policymaking.

Against the Modern World

Against the Modern World PDF Author: Mark J. Sedgwick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195396014
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

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Book Description
Against the Modern World is the first history of Traditionalism, an important yet surprisingly little-known twentieth-century anti-modern movement. Comprising a number of often secret but sometimes very influential religious groups in the West and in the Islamic world, it affected mainstream and radical politics in Europe and the development of the field of religious studies in the United States, touching the lives of many individuals. French writer Rene Guenon rejected modernity as a dark age and sought to reconstruct the Perennial Philosophy - the central truths behind all the major world religions. Guenon stressed the urgent need for the West's remaining spiritual and intellectual elite to find personal and collective salvation in the surviving vestiges of ancient religious traditions. A number of disenchanted intellectuals responded to his call. In Europe, America, and the Islamic world, Traditionalists founded institutes, Sufi brotherhoods, Masonic lodges, and secret societies. Some attempted unsuccessfully to guide Fascism and Nazism along Traditionalist lines; others later participated in political terror in Italy. Traditionalist ideas were the ideological cement for the alliance of anti-democratic forces in post-Soviet Russia, and in the Islamic world entered the debate about the relationship between Islam and modernity. Although its appeal in the West was ultimately limited, Traditionalism has wielded enormous influence in religious studies, through the work of such Traditionalists as Ananda Coomaraswamy, Huston Smith, Mircea Eliade, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Willful Blindness

Willful Blindness PDF Author: Margaret Heffernan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0802777953
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
“With deft prose and page after page of keen insights, Heffernan shows why we close our eyes to facts that threaten our families, our livelihood, and our self-image--and, even better, she points the way out of the darkness.” --Daniel H. Pink In the tradition of Malcolm Gladwell and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Margaret Heffernan's Willful Blindness is a tour de force on human behavior that will open your eyes. Why, after every major accident and blunder, do we look back and say, How could we have been so blind? Why do some people see what others don't? And how can we change? Drawing on studies by psychologists and neuroscientists, and from interviews with business leaders, whistleblowers, and white collar criminals, distinguished businesswoman and writer Margaret Heffernan examines the phenomenon of willful blindness, exploring the reasons that individuals and groups are blind to impending personal tragedies, corporate collapses, engineering failures-even crimes against humanity. We turn a blind eye in order to feel safe, to avoid conflict, to reduce anxiety, and to protect prestige. But greater understanding leads to solutions, and Heffernan shows how-by challenging our biases, encouraging debate, discouraging conformity, and not backing away from difficult or complicated problems-we can be more mindful of what's going on around us and be proactive instead of reactive.

Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World

Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World PDF Author: James Hoke Sweet
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807834491
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Between 1730 and 1750, Domingos Alvares traversed the colonial Atlantic world like few Africans of his time--from Africa to South America to Europe. By tracing the steps of this powerful African healer and vodun priest, James Sweet finds dramatic means fo

An Intellectual History of Psychology

An Intellectual History of Psychology PDF Author: Daniel N. Robinson
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
ISBN: 0299148432
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
An Intellectual History of Psychology, already a classic in its field, is now available in a concise new third edition. It presents psychological ideas as part of a greater web of thinking throughout history about the essentials of human nature, interwoven with ideas from philosophy, science, religion, art, literature, and politics. Daniel N. Robinson demonstrates that from the dawn of rigorous and self-critical inquiry in ancient Greece, reflections about human nature have been inextricably linked to the cultures from which they arose, and each definable historical age has added its own character and tone to this long tradition. An Intellectual History of Psychology not only explores the most significant ideas about human nature from ancient to modern times, but also examines the broader social and scientific contexts in which these concepts were articulated and defended. Robinson treats each epoch, whether ancient Greece or Renaissance Florence or Enlightenment France, in its own terms, revealing the problems that dominated the age and engaged the energies of leading thinkers. Robinson also explores the abiding tension between humanistic and scientific perspectives, assessing the most convincing positions on each side of the debate. Invaluable as a text for students and as a stimulating and insightful overview for scholars and practicing psychologists, this volume can be read either as a history of psychology in both its philosophical and aspiring scientific periods or as a concise history of Western philosophy’s concepts of human nature.

People of Vision

People of Vision PDF Author: James J. Megivern
Publisher: AuthorHouse
ISBN: 9781410729552
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


Blindness and Enlightenment: An Essay

Blindness and Enlightenment: An Essay PDF Author: Kate E. Tunstall
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1441119329
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
Blindness and Enlightenment presents a reading and a new translation of Diderot's Letter on the Blind. Diderot was the editor of the Encyclopédie, that Trojan horse of Enlightenment ideas, as well as a novelist, playwright, art critic and philosopher. His Letter on the Blind of 1749 is essential reading for anyone interested in Enlightenment philosophy or eighteenth-century literature because it contradicts a central assumption of Western literature and philosophy, and of the Enlightenment in particular, namely that moral and philosophical insight is dependent on seeing. Kate Tunstall's essay guides the reader through the Letter, its anecdotes, ideas and its conversational mode of presenting them, and it situates the Letter in relation both to the Encyclopedie and to a rich tradition of writing about and, most importantly, talking and listening to the blind.

Perspectives on Early Modern and Modern Intellectual History

Perspectives on Early Modern and Modern Intellectual History PDF Author: Joseph Marino
Publisher: University Rochester Press
ISBN: 9781580460620
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
Perspectives on Early and Modern Intellectual History brings together several disciplines and historical periods, and three generations of scholars to celebrate the pedagogical and scholarly career of Nancy Struever, who taught in the Humanities Center and Department of History at The John Hopkins University. Twenty-three essays reflect the breadth of disciplinary competence and the standards of scholarly rigor that Stuever instilled in her students and demonstrates in her scholarship. The book is organized around three divisional areas of inquiry: Renaissance Humanism, Histories of Art, and Rhetorics, Philosophies, and Histories. The first part includes studies on Shakespeare and Ariosto; essays on Machiavelli, Caterina da Siena, and Lorenzo Valla; and Manetti on the library of Nicholas V. The section on histories of art contains contributions on L.B. Alberti, on early modern spectacle and the performance of images, and on rhetoric and art. The third section continues with discussions of rhetoric, history, and literature from a more theoretical viewpoint. The book concludes with a bibliography of Stuever's works. Authors include: Marvin Becker, Marjorie O'Rourke Boyle, Salvatore Camporeale, F. Edward Cranz, Elizabeth Cropper, Marc Fumaroli, Thomas M. Greene, Michael Ann Holly, J. G. A. Pocock, Charles Trinkaus, and Hayden White. Joseph Marino is an independent scholar and is with Current Analysis in Virginia. Melinda Schlitt is Associate Professor in the Department of Fine Arts, Dickinson College.

The prose writers of America with a survey of the intellectual history, condition, and prospects of the country

The prose writers of America with a survey of the intellectual history, condition, and prospects of the country PDF Author: Rufus Wilmot Griswold
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : American literature
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description