The Many Faces of Maimonides
【作者】Dov Schwartz
【出版社】Academic Studies Press (30 Mar. 2019)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】B382 /S399 /E
【简 介】This volume offers a new reading of Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed. In particular, it explores how Maimonides' commitment to integrity led him to a critique of the Kalam, to a complex concept of immortality, and to insight into the human yearning for metaphysical knowledge. Maimonides' search for objective truth is also analyzed in its connection with the scientific writings of his time, which neither the Kalam nor the Jewish philosophical tradition that preceded him had endorsed. Through a careful analysis of these issues, this book seeks to contribute to the understanding of the modes of thought adopted in The Guide of the Perplexed, including the "philosophical theologian" model of Maimonides' own design, and to the knowledge of its sources.
Unlocking the Poetry of W. B. Yeats: Heart Mysteries
【作者】Daniel Tompsett
【出版社】Routledge; 1 edition (19 Jun. 2018)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】I562.072 /T662 /E
【简 介】Unlocking the Poetry of W.B. Yeats undertakes a thorough re-reading of Yeats' oeuvre as an extended meditation on the image and theme of the heart as it is evident within the poetry. It places the heart at the centre of a complex web of Yeatsian preoccupations and associations―from the biographical, to the poetic and philosophical, to the mythological and mystical. In particular, the book seeks to unlock Yeats’ mystifying aesthetic vision via his understanding of the ancient Egyptian "Weighing of the Heart" ceremony. The work provides a chronological narrative arc that looks to use the theme of the heart as it recurs in the poetry in order to circumvent and overcome more established frameworks. Its purpose is to offer refreshing ways of conceptualizing and building alternatives to more deeply entrenched, but not entirely satisfactory arguments that have been offered since Yeats' death in 1939, while demonstrating the centrality of the occult to Yeats' art.
Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations
【编 者】Amy Chua
【出版社】Bloomsbury Publishing (22 Feb. 2018)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心阅览室
【索书号】D771.262 /C559 /E(HF)
【简介】Never has our society felt more divided.
In Political Tribes, Amy Chua diagnoses the cause of our current political discord: tribalism. In many parts of the world, the group identities that matter most - the ones that people will kill and die for - are ethnic, religious, sectarian or clan-based. Time and time again our blindness to tribalism has undermined our foreign policy.
At home, we have recently witnessed the rise of identity politics, a movement that encourages us to define ourselves against, and thereby exclude, others. The shock results of the US election and the Brexit referendum show that tribalism is a social truth that we ignore at our peril. When people are defined by their differences to each other, extremism becomes the common ground, and the grand ideals of democracy have a hard time competing with a more primal need to belong.
If we are to transcend our political tribes, we must rediscover a broader, more nuanced unity that acknowledges the reality of our group differences. Insightful, challenging and provocative, Amy Chua's groundbreaking book could not be more timely.
Unlocking the Poetry of W. B. Yeats: Heart Mysteries
Creating Language: Integrating Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing
【编者】Morten H. Christiansen, Nick Chater
【出版社】MIT Press; Reprint edition (6 July 2018)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】H0-05 /C555 /E
【简介】 A work that reveals the profound links between the evolution, acquisition, and processing of language, and proposes a new integrative framework for the language sciences. Language is a hallmark of the human species; the flexibility and unbounded expressivity of our linguistic abilities is unique in the biological world. In this book, Morten Christiansen and Nick Chater argue that to understand this astonishing phenomenon, we must consider how language is created: moment by moment, in the generation and understanding of individual utterances; year by year, as new language learners acquire language skills; and generation by generation, as languages change, split, and fuse through the processes of cultural evolution. Christiansen and Chater propose a revolutionary new framework for understanding the evolution, acquisition, and processing of language, offering an integrated theory of how language creation is intertwined across these multiple timescales. Christiansen and Chater argue that mainstream generative approaches to language do not provide compelling accounts of language evolution, acquisition, and processing. Their own account draws on important developments from across the language sciences, including statistical natural language processing, learnability theory, computational modeling, and psycholinguistic experiments with children and adults. Christiansen and Chater also consider some of the major implications of their theoretical approach for our understanding of how language works, offering alternative accounts of specific aspects of language, including the structure of the vocabulary, the importance of experience in language processing, and the nature of recursive linguistic structure.
The Making of Consumer Culture in Modern Britain
【作者】Peter Gurney
【出版社】Bloomsbury Academic USA; 1st edition edition (7 April 2017)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】F156.19 /G981 /E
【简介】 It is commonly accepted that the consumer is now centre stage in modern Britain, rather than the worker or producer. Consumer choice is widely regarded as the major source of self-definition and identity rather than productive activity. Politicians vie with each other to fashion their appeal to 'citizen-consumers'. When and how did these profound changes occur? Which historical alternatives were pushed to the margins in the process? In what ways did the everyday consumer practices and forms of consumer organising adopted by both middle and working-class men and women shape the outcomes? This study of the making of consumer culture in Britain since 1800 explores these questions, introduces students to major debates and cuts a distinctive path through this vibrant field. It suggests that the consumer culture that emerged during this period was shaped as much by political relationships as it was by economic and social factors.
The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution
【作 者】David Wootton
【出版社】Penguin; 01 edition (29 Sept. 2016)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】N09 /W918 /E
【简介】We live in a world made by science. How and when did this happen? This book tells the story of the extraordinary intellectual and cultural revolution that gave birth to modern science, and mounts a major challenge to the prevailing orthodoxy of its history.
Before 1492 it was assumed that all significant knowledge was already available; there was no concept of progress; people looked for understanding to the past not the future. This book argues that the discovery of America demonstrated that new knowledge was possible: indeed it introduced the very concept of 'discovery', and opened the way to the invention of science.
The first crucial discovery was Tycho Brahe's nova of 1572: proof that there could be change in the heavens. The telescope (1610) rendered the old astronomy obsolete. Torricelli's experiment with the vacuum (1643) led directly to the triumph of the experimental method in the Royal Society of Boyle and Newton. By 1750 Newtonianism was being celebrated throughout Europe.
The new science did not consist simply of new discoveries, or new methods. It relied on a new understanding of what knowledge might be, and with this came a new language: discovery, progress, facts, experiments, hypotheses, theories, laws of nature - almost all these terms existed before 1492, but their meanings were radically transformed so they became tools with which to think scientifically. We all now speak this language of science, which was invented during the Scientific Revolution.
The new culture had its martyrs (Bruno, Galileo), its heroes (Kepler, Boyle), its propagandists (Voltaire, Diderot), and its patient labourers (Gilbert, Hooke). It led to a new rationalism, killing off alchemy, astrology, and belief in witchcraft. It led to the invention of the steam engine and to the first Industrial Revolution. David Wootton's landmark book changes our understanding of how this great transformation came about, and of what science is.
The Economics of Philanthropy: Donations and Fundraising
【编者】Kimberley Scharf, Mirco Tonin
【出版社】MIT Press (11 Sept. 2018)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】C913.7 /E19e /E
【简介】Experts bring economic tools to bear on philanthropic activities, addressing topics that range from the determinants of giving to the effectiveness of fundraising techniques. Economists are increasingly aware of the need to better understand philanthropic activities. In this book, economists address a variety of topics related to the economics of philanthropy, ranging from the determinants of giving to the effectiveness of fundraising techniques. The contributions focus on individual motives for giving and volunteering, and in particular how they affect donation outcomes, fundraising decisions, and public policies toward giving. Previous research has viewed motives for giving as embedded in formal models of economic behavior with rational agents who maximize their own utility while constrained by a budget. These models, however, have been shown to have poor predictive power, neglecting direct and indirect motives for giving. The contributors consider, among other subjects, the free-riding problem in these models; altruistic, direct, and indirect motives for giving, addressed both theoretically and with lab experiments; the linear public good game; the role of social information; the effectiveness of matching gifts and premiums; motives for unpaid volunteering; subscription models as a way to regulate revenue streams; and increasing reliance on public funds.
Empires of Knowledge: Scientific Networks in the Early Modern World
【作 者】Paula Findlen
【出版社】Routledge; 1 edition (20 Sept. 2018)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】G321.9 /E55 /E
【简 介】 Empires of Knowledge charts the emergence of different kinds of scientific networks – local and long-distance, informal and institutional, religious and secular – as one of the important phenomena of the early modern world. It seeks to answer questions about what role these networks played in making knowledge, how information traveled, how it was transformed by travel, and who the brokers of this world were.
Bringing together an international group of historians of science and medicine, this book looks at the changing relationship between knowledge and community in the early modern period through case studies connecting Europe, Asia, the Ottoman Empire, and the Americas. It explores a landscape of understanding (and misunderstanding) nature through examinations of well-known intelligencers such as overseas missions, trading companies, and empires while incorporating more recent scholarship on the many less prominent go-betweens, such as translators and local experts, which made these networks of knowledge vibrant and truly global institutions.
Empires of Knowledge is the perfect introduction to the global history of early modern science and medicine.
Witnessing Romania's Century of Turmoil: Memoirs of a Political Prisoner
【作者】Nicolae Margineanu
【出版社】University of Rochester Press (20 Dec. 2017)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】K542.4 /M328 /E
【简介】Nicolae Margineanu's journey started in 1905 in the village of Obreja in Transylvania and ended in 1980 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He began his life under Austro-Hungarian rule, was witness to the 1918 Union, lived under three kings (Ferdinand, Carol II, and Mihai), and survived all of Romania's dictatorships, from absolute monarchy to the Legionnaires' rebellion, the Antonescian dictatorship, and finally the years under Communist rule. Margineanu studied psychology at the University of Cluj and attended postgraduate courses in Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg, Paris, and London. He was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship that enabled him to do research for two years in the United States, at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, the University of Chicago, and Duke. He returned to Romania and became chair of the psychology department at the University of Cluj.
In 1948, Margineanu was arrested on a charge of "high treason," based on his alleged membership in a resistance movement against Communist rule. He was sentenced to twenty-five years' imprisonment, of which he served sixteen, passing through the jails at Malmaison, Jilava, Pitesti, Aiud, and Gherla. This book, his autobiography, is a shocking testimony to the fate of the intellectual elite of Romania during the Communist dictatorship. It is a unique and invaluable addition to the literature in English on the experience of political prisoners, not only in Communist Romania but in authoritarian states in general.
Nicolae Margineanu (1905-1980) was a Romanian psychologist and writer who was a political prisoner during the period of Communist rule. Dennis Deletant is the Visiting Ratiu Professor of Romanian Studies at Georgetown University. Calin Cotoiu is a translator based in Bucharest, Romania.
The Great Stink of Paris and the Nineteenth-Century Struggle against Filth and Germs
【作者】David S. Barnes
【出版社】Johns Hopkins University Press; Reprint edition (27 Mar. 2018)
【馆藏地】医科馆外文图书区
【索书号】R-095 /B261 /E
【简介】Late in the summer of 1880, a wave of odors enveloped large portions of Paris. As the stench lingered, outraged residents feared that the foul air would breed an epidemic. Fifteen years later―when the City of Light was in the grips of another Great Stink―the public conversation about health and disease had changed dramatically. Parisians held their noses and protested, but this time few feared that the odors would spread disease.
Historian David S. Barnes examines the birth of a new microbe-centered science of public health during the 1880s and 1890s, when the germ theory of disease burst into public consciousness. Tracing a series of developments in French science, medicine, politics, and culture, Barnes reveals how the science and practice of public health changed during the heyday of the Bacteriological Revolution.
Despite its many innovations, however, the new science of germs did not entirely sweep away the older "sanitarian" view of public health. The longstanding conviction that disease could be traced to filthy people, places, and substances remained strong, even as it was translated into the language of bacteriology. Ultimately, the attitudes of physicians and the French public were shaped by political struggles between republicans and the clergy, by aggressive efforts to educate and "civilize" the peasantry, and by long-term shifts in the public's ability to tolerate the odor of bodily substances.