Five hundred years ago an Italian whose name, translated into English, meant Christopher Dove, came to America and began a process not of discovery, but incursion -- "a ruthless, angry search for wealth" that continues to the present day. This provocative and superbly written book gives a true assessment of Columbus's legacy while taking the first steps toward its redemption. Even as he draws a direct line between the atrocities of Spanish conquistadors and the ongoing pillage of our lands and waters, Barry Lopez challenges us to adopt an ethic that will make further depredations impossible. The Rediscovery of North America is a ringingly persuasive call for us, at long last, to make this country our home.
A compelling case for connecting with the wild, for our psychological and physical well-being and to flourish as a species We often enjoy the benefits of connecting with nearby, domesticated nature--a city park, a backyard garden. But this book makes the provocative case for the necessity of connecting with wild nature--untamed, unmanaged, not encompassed, self-organizing, and unencumbered and unmediated by technological artifice. We can love the wild. We can fear it. We are strengthened and nurtured by it. As a species, we came of age in a natural world far wilder than today's, and much of the need for wildness still exists within us, body and mind. The Rediscovery of the Wild considers ways to engage with the wild, protect it, and recover it--for our psychological and physical well-being and to flourish as a species. The contributors offer a range of perspectives on the wild, discussing such topics as the evolutionary underpinnings of our need for the wild; the wild within, including the primal passions of sexuality and aggression; birding as a portal to wildness; children's fascination with wild animals; wildness and psychological healing; the shifting baseline of what we consider wild; and the true work of conservation.
The Rediscovery of Teaching presents the innovative claim that teaching does not necessarily have to be perceived as an act of control but can be understood and configured as a way of activating possibilities for students to exist as subjects. By framing teaching as an act of dissensus, that is, as an interruption of egological ways of being, this book positions teaching at the progressive end of the educational spectrum, where it can be reconnected with the emancipatory ambitions of education. In conversation with the works of Emmanuel Levinas, Paulo Freire, Jacques Rancière, and other theorists, Gert Biesta shows how students’ existence as subjects hinges on the creation of existential possibilities, through which students can assert their "grown-up" place in the world. Written for researchers and students in the areas of philosophy of education, educational theory, curriculum theory, teaching, and teacher education, The Rediscovery of Teaching demonstrates the important role of teachers and teaching in the project of education as emancipation towards grown-up ways of being in the world.
By reconstructing it and tracing its vicissitudes, David Conway rehabilitates a time-honoured conception of philosophy, originating in Plato and Aristotle, which makes theoretical wisdom its aim. Wisdom is equated with possessing a demonstrably correct understanding of why the world exists and has the broad character it does. Adherents of this conception maintained the world to be the demonstrable creation of a divine intelligence in whose contemplation supreme human happiness resides. Their claims are defended against various latter-day scepticisms.
A “lively and accessible” history of the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh, and its sensational rediscovery in the nineteenth century (The Boston Sunday Globe). Composed in Middle Babylonia around 1200 BCE, The Epic of Gilgamesh foreshadowed later stories that would become as fundamental as any in human history: the Bible, Homer, The Thousand and One Nights. But in 600 BCE, the clay tablets that bore the story were lost—buried beneath ashes and ruins when the library of the wild king Ashurbanipal was sacked in a raid. The Buried Book begins with the rediscovery of the forgotten epic and its deciphering in 1872 by George Smith, a brilliant self-taught linguist who created a sensation—and controversy—when he discovered Gilgamesh among the thousands of tablets in the British Museum’s collection. From there the story goes backward in time, all the way to Gilgamesh himself. Damrosch reveals the story as a literary bridge between East and West: a document lost in Babylonia, discovered by an Iraqi, decoded by an Englishman, and appropriated in novels by both Philip Roth and Saddam Hussein. This is an illuminating, fast-paced tale of history as it was written, stolen, lost, and—after 2,000 years, countless battles, fevered digs, conspiracies, and revelations—finally found. “Damrosch creates vivid portraits of archaeologists, Assyriologists, and ancient kings, lending his history an almost novelistic sense of character. [He] has done a superb job of bringing what was buried to life.” —The New York Times Book Review “As astounding as the content of the Epic of Gilgamesh in which the questing hero travels to the underworld and back . . . superb and engrossing.” —Booklist (starred review) “Damrosch’s fascinating literary sleuthing will appeal to scholars and lay readers alike.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
In this major new work, John Searle launches a formidable attack on current orthodoxies in the philosophy of mind. More than anything else, he argues, it is the neglect of consciousness that results in so much barrenness and sterility in psychology, the philosophy of mind, and cognitive science: there can be no study of mind that leaves out consciousness. What is going on in the brain is neurophysiological processes and consciousness and nothing more—no rule following, no mental information processing or mental models, no language of thought, and no universal grammar. Mental events are themselves features of the brain, "like liquidity is a feature of water." Beginning with a spirited discussion of what's wrong with the philosophy of mind, Searle characterizes and refutes the philosophical tradition of materialism. But he does not embrace dualism. All these "isms" are mistaken, he insists. Once you start counting types of substance you are on the wrong track, whether you stop at one or two. In four chapters that constitute the heart of his argument, Searle elaborates a theory of consciousness and its relation to our overall scientific world view and to unconscious mental phenomena. He concludes with a criticism of cognitive science and a proposal for an approach to studying the mind that emphasizes the centrality of consciousness to any account of mental functioning. In his characteristically direct style, punctuated with persuasive examples, Searle identifies the very terminology of the field as the main source of truth. He observes that it is a mistake to suppose that the ontology of the mental is objective and to suppose that the methodology of a science of the mind must concern itself only with objectively observable behavior; that it is also a mistake to suppose that we know of the existence of mental phenomena in others only by observing their behavior; that behavior or causal relations to behavior are not essential to the existence of mental phenomena; and that it is inconsistent with what we know about the universe and our place in it to suppose that everything is knowable by us.
Leonie Hastur has a high degree of laran, the telepathic power of the Comyn caste, and wants to be Keeper of Arilinn Tower, which will give her as much power as her twin brother Lorill, Heir to Hastur. But she has a premonition that something strange and disturbing will come from the sky and change their world forever. She is correct. Ysaye Barnett loves life on shipboard and would happily stay right there, with her beloved computers, forever. Her best friend Elizabeth Mackintosh, a musician and anthropologist, and her fiance, linguist David Lorne, want to marry and have children, which means they need a planet they can settle on and make their lives' work. They are very excited about the new planet, especially when they realize that it's a lost Terran colony. As five young lives and their very different cultures meet, all of them will be changed by the encounter.
