Knowledge of facts is essential for the management of life. Most studies of the subject examine how we go about trying to obtain it; they describe the processes and proceedings of rational inquiry. The present work steps back from this to inquire into the limits and limitations of such processes and to identify the assets and the limitabilities of what they are able to supply for us. It examines how knowledge of facts is secured and consolidated as such, and what the resulting information can and cannot provide. It argues that the unavoidable incompleteness of our factual information also endows it with an element of incorrectness. By looking also at the negative side of human inquiry the book’s perspective clarifies the nature of our grip on the facts that constitute our view of the reality of things.
In Amazing Life, Boyce Rensberger takes readers to the frontlines of cell research with some of the brightest investigators in molecular, cellular, and developmental biology. The hottest topics in biomedical research are covered.
Structural colorations originate from self-organized microstructures, which interact with light in a complex way to produce brilliant colors seen everywhere in nature. Research in this field is extremely new and has been rapidly growing in the last 10 years, because the elaborate structures created in nature can now be fabricated through various types of nanotechnologies. Indeed, a fundamental book covering this field from biological, physical, and engineering viewpoints has long been expected.Coloring in nature comes mostly from inherent colors of materials, though it sometimes has a purely physical origin such as diffraction or interference of light. The latter, called structural color or iridescence, has long been a problem of scientific interest. Recently, structural colors have attracted great interest because various photonic architectures, now developing in modern technologies, have been spontaneously created in the self-organization process and have been extensively used as one of the important visual functions. In this book, the fundamental optical properties underlying structural colors are explained, and these mysteries of nature are surveyed from the viewpoint of biological diversity and according to their sophisticated structures. The book proposes a general principle of structural colors based on the structural hierarchy and presents up-to-date applications.
Hegel frequently claimed that the heart of his entire system was a book widely regarded as among the most difficult in the history of philosophy, The Science of Logic. This is the book that presents his metaphysics, an enterprise that he insists can only be properly understood as a “logic,” or a “science of pure thinking.” Since he also wrote that the proper object of any such logic is pure thinking itself, it has always been unclear in just what sense such a science could be a “metaphysics.” Robert B. Pippin offers here a bold, original interpretation of Hegel’s claim that only now, after Kant’s critical breakthrough in philosophy, can we understand how logic can be a metaphysics. Pippin addresses Hegel’s deep, constant reliance on Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics, the difference between Hegel’s project and modern rationalist metaphysics, and the links between the “logic as metaphysics” claim and modern developments in the philosophy of logic. Pippin goes on to explore many other facets of Hegel’s thought, including the significance for a philosophical logic of the self-conscious character of thought, the dynamism of reason in Kant and Hegel, life as a logical category, and what Hegel might mean by the unity of the idea of the true and the idea of the good in the “Absolute Idea.” The culmination of Pippin’s work on Hegel and German idealism, this is a book that no Hegel scholar or historian of philosophy will want to miss.
"The collection of essays ... discusses the environmental and ecocritical themes found in works of science-fiction and fantasy literature. It focuses on an analysis of important literary works in these genres to yield an understanding of how they address the environmental issues we are facing today."--Book jacket.
No modern astronomer made a more profound contribution to our understanding of the cosmos than did Edwin Hubble, who first conclusively demonstrated that the universe is expanding. Basing his theory on the observation of the change in distanct galaxies, called red shift, Hubble showed that this is a Doppler effect, or alteration in the wavelength of light, resulting from the rapid motion of celestial objects away from Earth. In 1935, Hubble described his principal observations and conclusions in the Silliman lectures at Yale University. These lectures were published the following year as "The Realm of the Nebulae," which quickly became a classic work.
Summarizes Grof's experiences and observations from more than forty years of research into non-ordinary states of consciousness. This accessible and comprehensive overview of the work of Stanislav Grof, one of the founders of transpersonal psychology, was specifically written to acquaint newcomers with his work. Serving as a summation of his career and previous works, this entirely new book is the source to introduce Grof's enormous contributions to the fields of psychiatry and psychology, especially his central concept of holotropic experience, where holotropic signifies "moving toward wholeness." Grof maintains that the current basic assumptions and concepts of psychology and psychiatry require a radical revision based on the intensive and systematic research of holotropic experience. He suggests that a radical inner transformation of humanity and a rise to a higher level of consciousness might be humankind's only real hope for the future. "It's rare to find a textbook that is both extremely informative and enjoyable to read. Psychology of the Future has to be one of the first ones I've ever come across ... Each chapter brought an entirely new concept, theory, or method that was just as engaging as the previous one." — Dr. Tami Brady, TCM Reviews "This book is by a pioneering genius in consciousness research. It presents the full spectrum of Grof's ideas, from his earliest mappings of using LSD psychotherapy, to his clinical work with people facing death, to his more recent work with holotropic breathing, to his latest thoughts about the cosmological implications of consciousness research and the prospects for dealing with an emerging planetary crisis. Grof has always been one of the most original thinkers in the transpersonal field, and his creativity has kept pace with the maturity of his overall vision." -- Michael Washburn, author of Transpersonal Psychology in Psychoanalytic Perspective "Grof offers an outstanding contribution to the ever-growing debate about the nature of human consciousness and about the place of humankind in the cosmos. If more psychiatrists could be persuaded that human consciousness transcends the limitations of the physical brain, and instead is but an aspect of what may best be described as 'cosmic consciousness,' we could not only expect treatment modalities to change, but we could also anticipate the possibility of culture-wide rethinking of the basic presuppositions of modern cosmology, the cosmology that grounds Western institutions, ideologies, and beliefs about the nature of personhood." -- Michael E. Zimmerman, author of Contesting Earth's Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity Stanislav Grof, MD, is a psychiatrist with more than fifty years of experience in research of non-ordinary states of consciousness. He has been Principal Investigator in a psychedelic research program at the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague, Czechoslovakia; Chief of Psychiatric Research at the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center; Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University; and Scholar-in-Residence at the Esalen Institute. He is currently Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, conducts professional training programs in holotropic breathwork, and gives lectures and seminars worldwide. He is one of the founders and chief theoreticians of transpersonal psychology and the founding president of the International Transpersonal Association (ITA). In 2007, he was granted the prestigious Vision 97 award from the Vaclav and Dagmar Havel Foundation in Prague. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration; Ancient Wisdom and Modern Science; Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy; The Cosmic Game: Explorations of the Frontiers of Human Consciousness; and Human Survival and Consciousness Evolution; all published by SUNY Press.
Originally published in 1913, this book was intended for the younger reader and provides an introduction to the ways in which weeds grow and spread, also showing how 'the function of different parts of plants, and indeed all the lessons of elementary botany, can be studied to full advantage among our common weeds'.
