In Search of Ultimate Reality

In Search of Ultimate Reality

Author: H. Chris Ransford

Publisher: Ibidem Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 9783838213293

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Using contemporary physics, narrated at a popular science level, Ransford shows why full nothingness--a nothingness within which even the disembodied laws of mathematics would not exist--cannot possibly exist, and what most likely underpins and enables reality.s reality.


Body and Reality

Body and Reality

Author: Jasper van Buuren

Publisher: Transcript Verlag, Roswitha Gost, Sigrid Nokel u. Dr. Karin Werner

Published: 2018-02

Total Pages: 309

ISBN-13: 9783837641639

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Biographical note: Jasper van Buuren, born in 1974, is an independent philosopher based in Berlin with publications in the fields of phenomenology, philosophical anthropology, and the philosophy of the good life. He obtained his master's degree in philosophy in Amsterdam and Leuven. After several visiting studentships in the United States he received his PhD in Potsdam.


Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality

Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality

Author: Huw Price

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 415

ISBN-13: 0199278199

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The difference between cause and effect seems obvious and crucial in ordinary life, yet missing modern physics. Almost a century ago, Bertrand Russell called the law of causality 'a relic of a bygone age'. Scholars revisit Russell's conclusion, discussing one of the most significant and puzzling issues in contemporary thought.


Reality of Dreams

Reality of Dreams

Author: Japhy Wilson

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2021-09-28

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 0300262930

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An exploration of radical megaprojects in the Ecuadorian Amazon, considering the fate of utopian fantasies under conditions of global capitalism From 2007 to 2017, the “Citizens’ Revolution” launched an ambitious series of post-neoliberal megaprojects in the remote Amazonian region of Ecuador, including an interoceanic transport corridor, a world-leading biotechnology university, and a planned network of two hundred “Millennium Cities.” The aim was to liberate the nation from its ecologically catastrophic dependence on Amazonian oil reserves, while transforming its jungle region from a wild neoliberal frontier into a brave new world of “twenty-first-century socialism.” This book documents the heroic scale of this endeavor, the surreal extent of its failure, and the paradoxical process through which it ended up reinforcing the economic model that it had been designed to overcome. It explores the phantasmatic and absurd dimensions of the transformation of social reality under conditions of global capitalism, deconstructing the utopian fantasies of the state, and drawing attention to the eruption of insurgent utopias staged by those with nothing left to lose.


Journalism in the Age of Virtual Reality

Journalism in the Age of Virtual Reality

Author: John V. Pavlik

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2019-09-17

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0231545517

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With the advent of the internet and handheld or wearable media systems that plunge the user into 360o video, augmented—or virtual reality—technology is changing how stories are told and created. In this book, John V. Pavlik argues that a new form of mediated communication has emerged: experiential news. Experiential media delivers not just news stories but also news experiences, in which the consumer engages news as a participant or virtual eyewitness in immersive, multisensory, and interactive narratives. Pavlik describes and analyzes new tools and approaches that allow journalists to tell stories that go beyond text and image. He delves into developing forms such as virtual reality, haptic technologies, interactive documentaries, and drone media, presenting the principles of how to design and frame a story using these techniques. Pavlik warns that although experiential news can heighten user engagement and increase understanding, it may also fuel the transformation of fake news into artificial realities, and he discusses the standards of ethics and accuracy needed to build public trust in journalism in the age of virtual reality. Journalism in the Age of Virtual Reality offers important lessons for practitioners seeking to produce quality experiential news and those interested in the ethical considerations that experiential media raise for journalism and the public.


Plastic Reality

Plastic Reality

Author: Julie A. Turnock

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-02-03

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 0231535279

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Julie A. Turnock tracks the use and evolution of special effects in 1970s filmmaking, a development as revolutionary to film as the form's transition to sound in the 1920s. Beginning with the classical studio era's early approaches to special effects, she follows the industry's slow build toward the significant advances of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which set the stage for the groundbreaking achievements of 1977. Turnock analyzes the far-reaching impact of the convincing, absorbing, and seemingly unlimited fantasy environments of that year's iconic films, dedicating a major section of her book to the unparalleled innovations of Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. She then traces these films' technological, cultural, and aesthetic influence into the 1980s in the deployment of optical special effects as well as the "not-too-realistic" and hyper-realistic techniques of traditional stop motion and Showscan. She concludes with a critique of special effects practices in the 2000s and their implications for the future of filmmaking and the production and experience of other visual media.


The Republic

The Republic

Author: By Plato

Publisher: BookRix

Published: 2019-06-15

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 3736801467

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The Republic is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 380 BCE, concerning the definition of justice, the order and character of the just city-state and the just man. The dramatic date of the dialogue has been much debated and though it must take place some time during the Peloponnesian War, "there would be jarring anachronisms if any of the candidate specific dates between 432 and 404 were assigned". It is Plato's best-known work and has proven to be one of the most intellectually and historically influential works of philosophy and political theory. In it, Socrates along with various Athenians and foreigners discuss the meaning of justice and examine whether or not the just man is happier than the unjust man by considering a series of different cities coming into existence "in speech", culminating in a city (Kallipolis) ruled by philosopher-kings; and by examining the nature of existing regimes. The participants also discuss the theory of forms, the immortality of the soul, and the roles of the philosopher and of poetry in society.


The Republic of Imagination

The Republic of Imagination

Author: Azar Nafisi

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2014-10-21

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0698170334

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A New York Times bestseller The author of the beloved #1 New York Times bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran returns with the next chapter of her life in books—a passionate and deeply moving hymn to America Ten years ago, Azar Nafisi electrified readers with her multimillion-copy bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, which told the story of how, against the backdrop of morality squads and executions, she taught The Great Gatsby and other classics of English and American literature to her eager students in Iran. In this electrifying follow-up, she argues that fiction is just as threatened—and just as invaluable—in America today. Blending memoir and polemic with close readings of her favorite novels, she describes the unexpected journey that led her to become an American citizen after first dreaming of America as a young girl in Tehran and coming to know the country through its fiction. She urges us to rediscover the America of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and challenges us to be truer to the words and spirit of the Founding Fathers, who understood that their democratic experiment would never thrive or survive unless they could foster a democratic imagination. Nafisi invites committed readers everywhere to join her as citizens of what she calls the Republic of Imagination, a country with no borders and few restrictions, where the only passport to entry is a free mind and a willingness to dream.