Der hollandische Kolonialbeamte und Professor der Sinologie in Berlin (1854-1921) hat bahnbrechend auf dem Gebiet der chinesischen Volkskunde und Religionsgeschichte gearbeitet. Zu seinen Hauptwerken gehoren u.a. Le Code du Mahayana en Chine und The Religious System of China. Daneben hat de Groot fur Emile Guimet, Grunder des Musee Guimet, die Figuren eines volksreligiosen Pantheon zusammengetragen, das heute, neben einer spateren Sammlung von Otto Franke in Berlin, einzigartiges Studienmaterial bietet. Der Jerusalemer Religionswissenschaftler Zwi Werblowsky wurdigt in diesem Band erstmals de Groots Leben und Werk, wobei er sich wesentlich auf unveroffentlichte Quellen, so de Groots Tagebuch, stutzt.
"I'm an explorer, OK? I like to find out!" -- One of the towering figures of twentieth-century science, Richard Feynman possessed a curiosity that was the stuff of legend. Even before he won the Nobel Prize in 1965, his unorthodox and spellbinding lectures on physics secured his reputation amongst students and seekers around the world. It was his outsized love for life, however, that earned him the status of an American cultural icon-here was an extraordinary intellect devoted to the proposition that the thrill of discovery was matched only by the joy of communicating it to others. In this career-spanning collection of letters, many published here for the first time, we are able to see this side of Feynman like never before. Beginning with a short note home in his first days as a graduate student, and ending with a letter to a stranger seeking his advice decades later, Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track covers a dazzling array of topics and themes, scientific developments and personal histories. With missives to and from scientific luminaries, as well as letters to and from fans, family, students, crackpots, as well as everyday people eager for Feynman's wisdom and counsel, the result is a wonderful de facto guide to life, and eloquent testimony to the human quest for knowledge at all levels. Feynman once mused that "people are entertained' enormously by being allowed to understand a little bit of something they never understood before." As edited and annotated by his daughter, Michelle, these letters not only allow us to better grasp the how and why of Feynman's enduring appeal, but also to see the virtues of an inquiring eye in spectacular fashion. Whether discussing the Manhattan Project or developments in quantum physics, the Challenger investigation or grade-school textbooks, the love of his wife or the best way to approach a problem, his dedication to clarity, grace, humor, and optimism is everywhere evident..
This unique work examines the role played by sexuality in the historical encounter between China and the West. Distinguished historian D.E. Mungello focuses especially on Western homosexuals who saw China as a place of escape from the homophobia of Europe and North America. His groundbreaking study traces the lives of two dozen men, many previously unknown to have same-sex desire, who fled to China and in the process influenced perceptions of Chinese culture to this day. This escapism engendered casual sexual encounters, serious friendships, and substantive intellectual rela.
With our American Philosophy and Religion series, Applewood reissues many primary sources published throughout American history. Through these books, scholars, interpreters, students, and non-academics alike can see the thoughts and beliefs of Americans who came before us.
The most promising result of solar research since Kirchhoff in 1859 interpreted the dark lines of the sun’s spectrum has recently been announced from America. Interesting in itself, the discovery just made is doubly interesting in what it seems to promise in the future. Just as Kirchhoff’s great discovery, that a certain double dark line in the solar spectrum is due to the vapour of sodium in the sun’s atmosphere, was but the first of a long series of results which the spectroscopic analysis of the sun was to reveal, so the discovery just announced that a certain important gas—the oxygen present in our air and the chief chemical constituent of water—shows its presence in the sun by bright lines instead of dark, will in all probability turn out to be but the firstfruits of a new method of examining the solar spectrum. As its author, Dr. Henry Draper, of New York, remarks, further investigation in the direction he has pursued will lead to the discovery of other elements in the sun, but it was not “proper to conceal, for the sake of personal advantage, the principle on which such researches are to be conducted.” It may well happen, though I anticipate otherwise, that by thus at once describing his method of observation, Dr. Draper may enable others to add to the list of known solar elements some which yet remain to be detected; but if Dr. Draper should thus have added but one element to that list, he will ever be regarded as the physicist to whose acumen the method was due by which all were detected, and to whom, therefore, the chief credit of their discovery must certainly be attributed. I propose briefly to consider the circumstances which preceded the great discovery which it is now my pleasing duty to describe, in order that the reader may the more readily follow the remarks by which I shall endeavour to indicate some of the results which seem to follow from the discovery, as well as the line along which, in my opinion, the new method may most hopefully be followed.
