76 results for "Science"

The open society and its enemies

Popper, Karl R.
One of the most important books of the twentieth century, Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies is an uncompromising defense of liberal democracy and a powerful attack on the intellectual origins of totalitarianism. Popper was born in 1902 to a Viennese family of Jewish origin. He taught in Austria until 1937, when he emigrated to New Zealand in anticipation of the Nazi annexation of Austria the following year, and he settled in England in 1949. Before the annexation, Popper had written mainly about the philosophy of science, but from 1938 until the end of the Second World War he focused his energies on political philosophy, seeking to diagnose the intellectual origins of German and Soviet totalitarianism. The Open Society and Its Enemies was the result. An immediate sensation when it was first published in two volumes in 1945, Popper's monumental achievement has attained legendary status on both the Left and Right and is credited with inspiring anticommunist dissidents during the Cold War. Arguing that the spirit of free, critical inquiry that governs scientific investigation should also apply to politics, Popper traces the roots of an opposite, authoritarian tendency to a tradition represented by Plato, Marx, and Hegel. In a substantial new introduction written for this edition, acclaimed political philosopher Alan Ryan puts Popper's landmark work in biographical, intellectual, and historical context. Also included is a personal essay by eminent art historian E. H. Gombrich, in which he recounts the story of the book's eventual publication despite numerous rejections and wartime deprivations.
Princeton University Press 2013-04-21 755 pages

Totem and Taboo

Sigmund Freud
"Totem and Taboo" is a collection of four essays by Sigmund Freud that were published together in German in 1913. Freud sought to apply his theories of psychoanalysis to the study of anthropology and early human history. The four essays cover a wide range of topics. In "The Horror of Incest", Freud examines the varied and common rules in primitive cultures that limit contact between members of the same family. In "Taboo and Emotional Ambivalence," Freud posits that primitive cultures and their attitudes about magical objects are similar to the behavior of people with neurotic psychological conditions in the modern world. In "Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thought," Freud draws comparisons between the primitive belief in magic and magical animals to obsessive and compulsive disorders. Finally, in "The Return of Totemism in Childhood," Freud, influenced by one of Charles Darwin's theories about the male-dominated arrangement of early human societies, looks for parallels with his own Oedipus complex theory in the structure of primitive cultures. A classic and influential work of early psychoanalysis, "Totem and Taboo" is an important read for students of both psychology and social anthropology.
Lulu.com 2022-10-24 172 pages

For the new intellectual: the philosophy of Ayn Rand

Rand, Ayn
This book is intended for those who wish to assume the responsibility of becoming the new intellectuals. It contains the main philosophical passages from my novels and presents the outline of a new philosophical system.The full system is implicit in these excerpts (particularly in Galt’s speech), but its fundamentals are indicated only in the widest terms and require a detailed, systematic presentation in a philosophical treatise. I am working on such a treatise at present; it will deal predominantly with the issue which is barely touched upon in Galt’s speech: epistemology, and will present a new theory of the nature, source and validation of concepts. This work will require several years; until then, I offer the present book as a lead or a summary for those who wish to acquire an integrated view of existence. They may regard it as a basic outline; it will give them the guidance they need, but only if they think through and understand the exact meaning and the full implications of these excerpts.-- from Preface
Signet 1996 224 pages

Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question Anti-Antisemitism & the Politics of the French Intellectual

Jonathan Judaken
Jean-Paul Sartre and the Jewish Question examines the image of "the Jew" in Sartre's work to rethink not only his oeuvre but also the role of the intellectual in France and the politics and ethics of existentialism. It explores more broadly how French identity is defined through the abstraction and allegorization of "the Jew" and examines the role anti-antisemitic intellectuals play in this process. Jonathan Judaken reconsiders the origins of the intellectual in France in the context of the Dreyfus affair and Sartre's interventions in the parallel Franco-French conflicts in the 1930s and during the Vichy regime. He considers what it was possible to say on behalf of Jews and Judaism during the German occupation, Sartre's contribution after the war to the Vichy syndrome, his positions on the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the ways Sartre's reflections on the Jewish Question served as a template for his shift toward Marxism, his resistance to colonialism, and for the defining of debates about Jews and Judaism in postwar France by both Jewish and non-Jewish intellectuals. Judaken analyzes the texts that Sartre devoted to these issues and argues that "the Jew" constituted a foil Sartre consistently referenced in reflecting on politics in general and on the role of the intellectual in particular.
University of Nebraska Press 2009-04-17 408 pages

Specters of Marx - The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International

Jacques Derrida
Published shortly after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet regime, Specters of Marx is one of Derrida's most interesting and prophetic books. Whilst many in the West heralded the triumph of liberal democracy and "the end of history", Derrida takes several steps back to argue that whilst Communism may have disappeared in much of the world, the questions posed by Marx continue to haunt us. In his customary provocative style, he asks some uncomfortable questions: after the fall of Communism, can we preserve Marx's legacy of radicalism? How do we continue his philosophy of responsibility? Uncannily anticipating many of the challenges facing us today, Derrida argues that the capitalist system is plagued by a multitude of ills, including aggression, trade wars, debt, the exploitation of migrant labour and ethnic conflict. This Routledge Classics edition is a translation of the revised French edition and includes a debate between Derrida and Étienne Balibar on Marx and Marxism, published here in English for the first time. It also includes new corrections and additions to the text and footnotes made by Derrida after the book's initial publication in French. Translated by Peggy Kamuf and with a new Foreword by Peter Salmon, this Routledge Classics edition retains the original Editors' Introduction by Bernd Magnus and Stephen Cullenberg.
Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Incorporated 2026-02-16 320 pages

The Great Mother An Analysis of the Archetype

Erich Neumann
A landmark account of the Great Mother as a primordial image of the human psyche In this book, renowned analytical psychologist Erich Neumann draws on ritual, mythology, art, and records of dreams and fantasies to examine how the archetype of the Great Mother has been outwardly expressed in many cultures and periods since prehistory. He shows how the feminine has been represented as goddess, monster, gate, pillar, tree, moon, sun, vessel, and every animal from snakes to birds. Neumann discerns a universal experience of the maternal as both nurturing and fearsome, an experience rooted in the dialectical relation of growing consciousness, symbolized by the child, to the unconscious and the unknown, symbolized by the Great Mother. With a foreword by Martin Liebscher, The Great Mother is a profound and enduring work by one of the most brilliant thinkers of the twentieth century.
Princeton University Press 2026-01-20 624 pages

The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche

Carl Gustav Jung,Wolfgang Ernst Pauli
Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) and Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (1900 - 1958) were two of the greatest thinkers of modern times. Jung is the founder of Analytical Psychology and is one of the best known researchers in the field of Dream Interpretation and Symbolization. Pauli was one of the pioneers of Quantum Physics. In 1945, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics after being nominated by Albert Einstein for his "decisive contribution through his discovery of a new law of Nature, the exclusion principle" involving spin theory underpinning the structure of matter and the whole of chemistry. Together they collaborated on this book that was First published in 1952 in German as Naturerklarung und Psyche. C. G. Jung: Synchronizitat als ein Prinzip akausaler Zusammenhange. W. Pauli: Der Einfluss archetypischer Vorstellungen auf die Bildung naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien bei Kepler. However, our reviewer, himself an eminent professor of mathematics, concludes, "After thoroughly studying their writings for many months now, I have come to see clearly that they are both utterly mad.""
Ishi Press International 2012-02 280 pages

The human test: how predictability, creativity, and the quantum mind will redefine life in the age of AI

Folman, Ron
"As data harvesting continues its exponential growth and computing power increases beyond what we can even imagine, AI and Big Data will be able to predict what we want for breakfast, what shoes we will buy, which political party we will vote for, and who we will fancy in a bar. Indeed, these deep-learning machines will know us better than we know ourselves. The day awaits when academia and big business will be able to quantify just how predictable each of us are. If indeed we are predictable like machines, to what extent are we alive, and under what definition? In The Human Test, quantum physicist Ron Folman unites findings from cognitive science, quantum physics, philosophy, and technology to offer a prescient look into this startling new era of human existence. If we are indeed found to be predictable, it will change everything we thought we knew about human nature. The Human Test strives for a new paradigm, and this new paradigm is found in human predictability. Existing monitors of general brain activity measure only very rudimentary aspects of the human experience, or what may be called human life; could the advent of a disruptive new technology bring about a much more insightful measure of who we are? While The Human Test describes a new and profound near-future impact of AI, it is rooted in a topic of paramount importance to humans: the enigma of consciousness and how it defines human life-or, what differentiates humans from all other life forms. Ultimately, The Human Test addresses some of the most fundamental questions about our species, starting with the most crucial: do we have free will, or are we merely machines? Fortunately, there is an antidote to predictability: creativity, that wondrous state of being original and inherently not predictable. Ultimately, Folman argues that if we can understand predictability, we can learn how to distance ourselves from it, and transcend to a purer idea of what human life should look like"-- Provided by publisher.
Prometheus 2025-03-25 267 pages

The Heart of Man

Erich Fromm
This book is a counterpart to the classic The Art of Loving. Whereas the main topic there was man's capacity to love, the main topic here is his capacity to destroy, his narcissism, and his incestuous fixations. Whereas the topic of non-love fills most of these pages, the problem of love is taken up in a new and broader sense, namely, the love of life. The love of life, independence, and the overcoming of narcissism form "a syndrome of growth" against "a syndrome of decay" formed by love of death and malignant narcissism.
American Mental Health Foundation Incorporated 2022-06-17 154 pages

The Structure and Measurement of Intelligence

Hans Eysenck
What is meant by the term "intelligence" and, once de- fined, how do we go about achieving a valid measurement of this faculty? This classic textbook, originally published in 1979, and now reissued with a new preface by Sybil Eysenck, incorporates a broad range of findings and reanalyzes much of the existing literature in this area. In The Structure and Measurement of Intelligence, Hans Eysenck draws on methods for determining the effect of genetics and environment on the development of intelligence and examines the validity of the term as defined in relation to internal as well as external criteria. He tests a number of hypotheses on intelligence against empirical research findings and considers various criticisms in detail. The significance of intelligence and its measurement in society are explored in depth. Eysenck greatly expands upon such questions as: Does IQ measure intelligence? How valid is the nature versus nurture argument? and, How might socioeconomic status influence one's intelligence? Designed primarily for students and scholars in psychology and education, this text will make thought-provoking reading for all concerned with the development and measurement of intelligence in the individual.
[distributor] Taylor & Francis, c/o Bookpoint 2017-10-27 226 pages

Atom and archetype: the Pauli/Jung letters, 1932-1958

Pauli, Wolfgang,Jung, C. G.,Meier, C. A.
In 1932, world-renowned physicist Wolfgang Pauli had already done the work that would win him the 1945 Nobel Prize. He was also suffering after a series of troubling personal events. He was drinking heavily, quarrelling frequently, and experiencing powerful, disturbing dreams. Pauli turned to C. G. Jung for help, forging an extraordinary intellectual conjunction not just between a physicist and a psychologist but between physics and psychology. As their acquaintance developed, Jung and Pauli discussed the nature of dreams and their relation to reality, finding surprising common ground between depth psychology and quantum physics and profoundly influencing each other's work. This portrait of an incredible friendship will fascinate readers interested in psychology, science, creativity, and genius.
Princeton University Press 2014-07-21 320 pages

Maimonides: life and thought

Halbertal, Moshe
Maimonides was the greatest Jewish philosopher and legal scholar of the medieval period, a towering figure who has had a profound and lasting influence on Jewish law, philosophy, and religious consciousness. This book provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to his life and work, revealing how his philosophical sensibility and outlook informed his interpretation of Jewish tradition. Moshe Halbertal vividly describes Maimonides's childhood in Muslim Spain, his family's flight to North Africa to escape persecution, and their eventual resettling in Egypt. He draws on Maimonides's letters and the testimonies of his contemporaries, both Muslims and Jews, to offer new insights into his personality and the circumstances that shaped his thinking. Halbertal then turns to Maimonides's legal and philosophical work, analyzing his three great books - Commentary on the Mishnah, the Mishneh Torah, and the Guide of the Perplexed. He discusses Maimonides's battle against all attempts to personify God, his conviction that God's presence in the world is mediated through the natural order rather than through miracles, and his locating of philosophy and science at the summit of the religious life of Torah. Halbertal examines Maimonides's philosophical positions on fundamental questions such as the nature and limits of religious language, creation and nature, prophecy, providence, the problem of evil, and the meaning of the commandments. A stunning achievement, Maimonides offers an unparalleled look at the life and thought of this important Jewish philosopher, scholar, and theologian.
Princeton University Press 2015-06-02 385 pages

Ideas General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology

Edmund Husserl
2017 Reprint of 1931 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. Widely regarded as the principal founder of phenomenology, one of the most important movements in twentieth century philosophy, Edmund Husserl's Ideas is one of his most important works and a classic of twentieth century thought. Husserl's early thought conceived of phenomenology - the general study of what appears to conscious experience - in a relatively narrow way, mainly in relation to problems in logic and the theory of knowledge. The publication of Ideas in 1913 witnessed a significant and controversial widening of Husserl's thought, changing the course of phenomenology decisively. Husserl argued that phenomenology was the study of the very nature of what it is to think, "the science of the essence of consciousness" itself. Husserl's arguments ignited a heated debate regarding the nature of consciousness and experience that has endured throughout the twentieth and continues in the present day. No understanding of twentieth century philosophy is complete without some understanding of Husserl, and his work influenced some of the great philosophers of the twentieth century, such as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Martino Fine Books 2017-08-23 462 pages

Living dharma: teachings and meditation instructions from twelve Theravada masters

Kornfield, Jack
A collection of teachings on the practice of meditation by twelve contemporary Buddhist masters from Southeast Asia—curated by the author of A Path with Heart Living Dharma explores the teachings of the Theravada Buddhist tradition through the wisdom of twelve highly respected masters from Southeast Asia whose teachings have shaped the course of Buddhist practice in the West. Jack Kornfield, a renowned teacher and psychologist, provides an overview of Buddhist philosophy and the meditation practices found in Burma (Myanmar), Thailand, and Laos. The detailed instructions from these teachers emphasize mindfulness, compassion, and the pursuit of inner freedom. Readers will gain invaluable insight into the sophisticated nature of Buddhist psychology, learning techniques to cultivate laser-like concentration and deep understanding of the mind and heart. This book dispels the notion of a singular path to enlightenment, showcasing a rich tapestry of practices that foster patience, wisdom, and clarity. With a focus on both the challenges and transformative potential of meditation, Living Dharma serves as a guide for those seeking to integrate Eastern practices into their daily lives. For those yearning to deepen their meditation practice or explore the depths of Theravada Buddhism, it offers an opportunity to engage with teachings that are both profound and practical. Kornfield bridges the gap between East and West, presenting these teachings in an accessible manner that resonates with contemporary readers. Jack Kornfield’s first three chapters give an overview of Buddhist philosophy and, specifically, the meditation practices of Burma, Thailand, and Laos. The teachings in this volume are from Achaan Chaa, Mahasi Sayadaw, Sunlun Sayadaw, Achaan Buddhadasa, Achaan Naeb, Achaan Maha Boowa, Tuangpulu Sayadaw, Mohnyin Sayadaw, Mogok Sayadaw, U Ba Khin, Achaan Dhammadaro, and Achaan Jumnien.
Shambhala 2010-10-12 320 pages

Ritual Psycho-analytic Studies

Theodor Reik
"In a work Freud characterized as "brilliant," the author, an acknowledged pioneer in the study of the psychology of religion, analyzes a variety of rituals - couvade, puberty rites, the prayers and religious customs of modern Jews - in order to reconstruct the nature of the original impulses from which ritual is derived. He applies psychoanalytic methods of investigation to some of the most highly valued products of civilization - a task Freud called a "scientific duty." Connecting the superstitious beliefs of prehistoric times with contemporary practices, Dr. Reik illuminates the significance of modern and ancient religion. The author's lively style, combined with his scholarly documentation, makes this a book that will appeal alike to psychiatrists, psychologists, and students of comparative religion" -- Back cover.
International Universities Press 1976 367 pages

Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy On Being an American Citizen

Susan Griffin
What does is it mean to be a citizen of the United States? Susan Griffin’s provocative investigation of that question takes us from the Declaration of Independence to the Iraq War, with many stops in between. Her conclusion: democracy is nothing less than a revolution of consciousness, and the revolution has just begun.
Shambhala Publications, Incorporated 2009-11-10 291 pages