The End of Meaning

The End of Meaning PDF Author: William A. Sikes
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666783366
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Towards the end of the twentieth century books proclaiming the “closing” of America’s mind, the “collapse” of her communities, and the “end” of her art, literature, education and more, began appearing with regularity. The underlying theme in all such works is the loss of those experiences that give our lives meaning. In The End of Meaning: Cultural Change in America Since 1945, readers learn to recognize these experiences, realize how prominent they were in the postwar period (c. 1945–65), understand the forces that have brought about their extraordinary decline (in our families and communities, universities and religious institutions, films and popular music, fine arts, labor and more) and realize the implications of this loss for our society and our humanity. In doing so the book provides a way of thinking about a vital subject—one which, despite its enormous importance, has never been examined in a broad and systematic way capable of generating real understanding, discussion and debate.

The End of Meaning

The End of Meaning PDF Author: William A. Sikes
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1666783366
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
Towards the end of the twentieth century books proclaiming the “closing” of America’s mind, the “collapse” of her communities, and the “end” of her art, literature, education and more, began appearing with regularity. The underlying theme in all such works is the loss of those experiences that give our lives meaning. In The End of Meaning: Cultural Change in America Since 1945, readers learn to recognize these experiences, realize how prominent they were in the postwar period (c. 1945–65), understand the forces that have brought about their extraordinary decline (in our families and communities, universities and religious institutions, films and popular music, fine arts, labor and more) and realize the implications of this loss for our society and our humanity. In doing so the book provides a way of thinking about a vital subject—one which, despite its enormous importance, has never been examined in a broad and systematic way capable of generating real understanding, discussion and debate.

The End of Meaning

The End of Meaning PDF Author: Matthew Gumpert
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443839434
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 565

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Book Description
The specter of the apocalypse has always been a semiotic fantasy: only at the end of all things will their true meaning be revealed. Our long romance with catastrophe is inseparable from the Western hermeneutical tradition: our search for an elusive truth, one that can only be uncovered through the interminable work of interpretation. Catastrophe terrifies and tantalizes to the extent it promises an end to this task. 9/11 is this book’s beginning, but not its end. Here, it seemed, was the apocalypse America had long been waiting for; until it became just another event. And, indeed, the real lesson of 9/11 may be that catastrophe is the purest form of the event. From the poetry of classical Greece to the popular culture of contemporary America, The End of Meaning seeks to demonstrate that catastrophe, precisely as the notion of the sui generis, has always been generic. This is not a book on the great catastrophes of the West; it offers no canon of catastrophe, no history of the catastrophic. The End of Meaning asks, instead, what if meaning itself is a catastrophe?

The End of Ice

The End of Ice PDF Author: Dahr Jamail
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1620976056
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Book Description
Finalist for the 2020 PEN / E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Acclaimed on its hardcover publication, a global journey that reminds us "of how magical the planet we're about to lose really is" (Bill McKibben) With a new epilogue by the author After nearly a decade overseas as a war reporter, the acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamail returned to America to renew his passion for mountaineering, only to find that the slopes he had once climbed have been irrevocably changed by climate disruption. In response, Jamail embarks on a journey to the geographical front lines of this crisis—from Alaska to Australia's Great Barrier Reef, via the Amazon rainforest—in order to discover the consequences to nature and to humans of the loss of ice. In The End of Ice, we follow Jamail as he scales Denali, the highest peak in North America, dives in the warm crystal waters of the Pacific only to find ghostly coral reefs, and explores the tundra of St. Paul Island where he meets the last subsistence seal hunters of the Bering Sea and witnesses its melting glaciers. Accompanied by climate scientists and people whose families have fished, farmed, and lived in the areas he visits for centuries, Jamail begins to accept the fact that Earth, most likely, is in a hospice situation. Ironically, this allows him to renew his passion for the planet's wild places, cherishing Earth in a way he has never been able to before. Like no other book, The End of Ice offers a firsthand chronicle—including photographs throughout of Jamail on his journey across the world—of the catastrophic reality of our situation and the incalculable necessity of relishing this vulnerable, fragile planet while we still can.

Until the End of Time

Until the End of Time PDF Author: Brian Greene
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 1524731684
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A captivating exploration of deep time and humanity's search for purpose, from the world-renowned physicist and best-selling author of The Elegant Universe. "Few humans share Greene’s mastery of both the latest cosmological science and English prose." —The New York Times Until the End of Time is Brian Greene's breathtaking new exploration of the cosmos and our quest to find meaning in the face of this vast expanse. Greene takes us on a journey from the big bang to the end of time, exploring how lasting structures formed, how life and mind emerged, and how we grapple with our existence through narrative, myth, religion, creative expression, science, the quest for truth, and a deep longing for the eternal. From particles to planets, consciousness to creativity, matter to meaning—Brian Greene allows us all to grasp and appreciate our fleeting but utterly exquisite moment in the cosmos.

The Meaning and End of Religion

The Meaning and End of Religion PDF Author: Wilfred Cantwell Smith
Publisher: Fortress Press
ISBN: 9781451420142
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Wilfred Cantwell Smith, maintained in this vastly important work that Westerners have misperceived religious life by making "religion" into one thing. He shows the inadequacy of "religion" to capture the living, endlessly variable ways and traditions in which religious faith presents itself in the world.

Frindle

Frindle PDF Author: Andrew Clements
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
ISBN: 9781665906227
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
From bestselling and award-winning author Andrew Clements, a quirky, imaginative tale about creative thought and the power of language that will have readers inventing their own words—now available in a deluxe paperback edition! Is Nick Allen a troublemaker? He really just likes to liven things up at school--and he's always had plenty of great ideas. When Nick learns some interesting information about how words are created, suddenly he’s got the inspiration for his best plan ever...the frindle. Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle? Things begin innocently enough as Nick gets his friends to use the new word. Then other people in town start saying frindle. Soon the school is in an uproar, and Nick has become a local hero. His teacher wants Nick to put an end to all this nonsense, but the funny thing is frindle doesn’t belong to Nick anymore. The new word is spreading across the country, and there’s nothing Nick can do to stop it.

The Beginning and the End

The Beginning and the End PDF Author: Clément Vidal
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319050621
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
In this fascinating journey to the edge of science, Vidal takes on big philosophical questions: Does our universe have a beginning and an end or is it cyclic? Are we alone in the universe? What is the role of intelligent life, if any, in cosmic evolution? Grounded in science and committed to philosophical rigor, this book presents an evolutionary worldview where the rise of intelligent life is not an accident, but may well be the key to unlocking the universe's deepest mysteries. Vidal shows how the fine-tuning controversy can be advanced with computer simulations. He also explores whether natural or artificial selection could hold on a cosmic scale. In perhaps his boldest hypothesis, he argues that signs of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are already present in our astrophysical data. His conclusions invite us to see the meaning of life, evolution and intelligence from a novel cosmological framework that should stir debate for years to come.

The End of the World

The End of the World PDF Author: Marcia Sa Cavalcante Schuback
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1786602636
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
The 'end of the world' opens up philosophical questions concerning the very notion of the world, which is a fundamental element of all existential, phenomenological and hermeneutical philosophy. Is the 'end of the world' for us 'somebody's' death (the end of 'being-in-the-world') or the extinction of many or of all (the end of the world itself)? Is the erosion of the 'world' a phenomenon that does not in fact affect the notion of the world as a fundamental feature of all existential-ontological inquiry? This volume examines the present state of these concerns in philosophy, film and literature. It presents a philosophical hermeneutics of the present state of the world and explores the principal questions of the philosophical accounts of the end of the world, such as finality and finitude. It also shows how literature and cinema have ventured to express the end of the world while asking if a consequent expression of the end of the world is also an end of its expression.

Education's End

Education's End PDF Author: Anthony T. Kronman
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300138164
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
This book describes the ever-escalating dangers to which Jewish refugees and recent immigrants were subjected in France and Italy as the Holocaust marched forward. Susan Zuccotti uncovers a gruelling yet complex history of suffering and resilience through historical documents and personal testimonies from members of nine central and eastern European Jewish families, displaced to France in the opening years of the Second World War. The chronicle of their lives reveals clearly that these Jewish families experienced persecution of far greater intensity than citizen Jews or longtime resident immigrants. The odyssey of the nine families took them from hostile Vichy France to the Alpine village of Saint-Martin-Vesubie and on to Italy, where German soldiers rather than hoped-for Allied troops awaited. Those who crossed over to Italy were either deported to Auschwitz or forced to scatter in desperate flight. Zuccotti brings to light the agonies of the refugees' unstable lives, the evolution of French policies toward Jews, the reasons behind the flight from the relative idyll of Saint-Martin-Vesubie, and the choices that confronted those who arrived in Italy. Powerful archival evidence frames this history, while firsthand reports underscore the human cost of the nightmarish years of persecution.

Means, Ends, and Persons

Means, Ends, and Persons PDF Author: Robert Audi
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0190251557
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 193

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Book Description
This book is a full-scale account of the morally important ideas of treating persons merely as means and treating them as ends. Audi clarifies these independently of Kant, but with implications for understanding him, and presents a theory of conduct that enhances their usefulness both in ethical theory and in practical ethics.