Tobias examines the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean, the ascetics of Sinai and Tibet, and the Pure Land Buddhists. He introduces the reader to the Jains of India, whose lifestyle is one of the most ecologically balanced in all of human history. In profiling various artists of 19th-century Europe and America, Tobias discovers incisive continuities among such luminaries as British poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Austrian impressionist Emilie Mediz-Pelikan, and American intimist painters Ralph Blakelock and George Inness.
Visions of Nature revives the work of late nineteenth-century landscape photographers who shaped the environmental attitudes of settlers in the colonies of the Tasman World and in California. Despite having little association with one another, these photographers developed remarkably similar visions of nature. They rode a wave of interest in wilderness imagery and made pictures that were hung in settler drawing rooms, perused in albums, projected in theaters, and re-created on vacations. In both the American West and the Tasman World, landscape photography fed into settler belonging and produced new ways of thinking about territory and history. During this key period of settler revolution, a generation of photographers came to associate “nature” with remoteness, antiquity, and emptiness, a perspective that disguised the realities of Indigenous presence and reinforced colonial fantasies of environmental abundance. This book lifts the work of these photographers out of their provincial contexts and repositions it within a new comparative frame.
Vision is the sense by which we and other animals obtain most of our information about the world around us. Darwin appreciated that at first sight it seems absurd that the human eye could have evolved by natural selection. But we now know far more about vision, the many times it has independently evolved in nature, and the astonishing variety of ways to see. The human eye, with a lens forming an image on a sensitive retina, represents just one. Scallops, shrimps, and lobsters all use mirrors in different ways. Jumping spiders scan with their front-facing eyes to check whether the object in front is an insect to eat, another spider to mate with, or a predator to avoid. Mantis shrimps can even measure the polarization of light. Animal eyes are amazing structures, often involving precision optics and impressive information processing, mainly using wet protein - not the substance an engineer would choose for such tasks. In Eyes to See, Michael Land, one of the leading world experts on vision, explores the varied ways in which sight has evolved and is used in the natural world, and describes some of the ingenious experiments researchers have used to uncover its secrets. He also discusses human vision, including his experiments on how our eye movements help us to do everyday tasks, as well as skilled ones such as sight-reading music or driving. He ends by considering the fascinating problem of how the constantly shifting images from our eyes are converted in the brain into the steady and integrated conscious view of the world we experience.
This illustrated survey covers what Nicholas Wade calls the "observational era of vision," beginning with the Greek philosophers and ending with Wheatstone's description of the stereoscope in the late 1830s.
Christopher Alexander's series of groundbreaking books--including The Timeless Way of Building and A Pattern Language--have illuminated the fundamental truths of traditional ways of building, revealing what gives life and beauty and true functionality to buildings and towns. Now, in The Nature of Order, Alexander delves into the essential properties of life itself, highlighting a common set of well-defined structures that he believes are present in all order--and in all life--from micro-organisms and mountain ranges to the creation of good houses and vibrant communities. In The Phenomenon of Life, the first volume in this masterwork, Alexander ponders the nature of order as an intellectual basis for a new architecture, proposing a well-defined scientific view of the world in which all space-matter has perceptible degrees of life. With this view as foundation, we can ask precise questions about what must be done to create life in the world--"whether in a single room...a doorknob...a neighborhood...even in a vast region." He presents the basic tenets of the concept, expanding on his theories of centers and of wholeness as a structure, and describes the fifteen properties from which he feels wholeness may be built. He also argues that living structure is at once both personal and structural, related not only to the geometry of space and how things work, but to human beings whose lives are ultimately based on feeling. Thus order, as the foundation of all things and as the foundation of all architecture, is both rooted in substance and rooted in feeling. Here then is the culmination of decades of intense thinking by one of the most innovative architects alive.
How does Christianity change the way we view the natural world? In this addition to a critically acclaimed series, renowned theologian Norman Wirzba engages philosophers, environmentalists, and cultural critics to show how the modern concept of nature has been deeply problematic. He explains that understanding the world as creation rather than as nature or the environment makes possible an imagination shaped by practices of responsibility and gratitude, which can help bring healing to our lands and communities. By learning to give thanks for creation as God's gift of life, Christians bear witness to the divine love that is reconciling all things to God. Named a "Best Theology Book of 2015," Englewood Review of Books "Best Example of Theology in Conversation with Urgent Contemporary Concerns" for 2015, Hearts & Minds Bookstore
This collection from a 1992 symposium explores how and why mathematicians, astronomers, neuroscientists, and philosophers are moving beyond classic reductionism toward a new paradigm that accounts for the whole and emphasizes events and relationships. Essays examine the irreducibility of mathematics, the incompleteness theorem, consciousness and the mind-body problem, and the social implications of artificial intelligence. For scientists, philosophers, students, and adventurous readers. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Seeing the Light is the most accessible and comprehensive study of optics and light on the market. Each chapter is a self-contained lesson, making it easy to learn about specific optical concepts. Diagrams, photos, and illustrations help bring concepts to life, and sections at the ends of chapters explore the more advanced aspects of each topic.
This landmark work explores how our attitudes toward nature are mirrored in and influenced by poetry. Showing us a resurgent vision of harmony between nature and humanity in the work of some of our most widely read poets, Imagining the Earth reveals the power of poetry to identify, interpret, and celebrate a wide range of issues related to nature and our place in it.
