Altri libri che potrebbero interessarti

• 

  Creative Evolution

  Henri Bergson

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Henri Bergson’s highly influential book, ‘Creative Evolution’ (‘Evolution Creatrice’, 1907) established a theory of evolution - called ‘Creative Evolution Theory’ - which gained a considerable following in the first half of the 20th Century. It also helped the author to win the Nobel Prize in 1927 for his work investigating the origins of biological information and divergence in the evolutionary process.  
   
  In this work, Bergson seeks an alternative explanation as to how new forms of life emerge compared to those prevailing at the time. This included both the ‘mechanistic’ or deterministic explanations of biological science on the one hand, and on the other the ‘finalist’ or strictly teleological explanation of those who believed in the hand of a ‘Creator’ or God, coordinating life in a divine plan. 
   
  Creative Evolution proposes a third explanation in what Bergson calls élan vital’ or ‘vital impetus’, a force that infuses all matter and drives it forward into an ever-changing and infinite variety of living forms. This appears as a vital impetus that can also be related to humanity’s own creative life force. Bergson’s book builds on his ‘Theory of Time’ as set forth in works such as ‘Matter and Memory’ and ‘Time and Free Will’.  In these works, and in the present volume, Bergson sees continuous ‘duration’ as real time, as opposed to the way in which time is divided up into measured units by the ‘organising’ mind of science. 
   
  Life, as we really experience it, is subject to constant change and our tendency to explain evolutionary change by looking only at ‘ends’ achieved rather than the processes by which they emerge, divorces us from the life force itself.  
   
  Instead, Bergson feels we need to reengage with our instincts as well as with our intelligence in order to understand the evolutionary process, as both co-exist to some extent within us, all forms of life having a common origin in that instinctual, innate knowledge of simpler life forms. Though these may be unconscious or semi-conscious, they are, in Bergson’s view, much more in touch with the ever-changing nature of real time than the analytical and rational knowledge of our species 
   
  As he writes:  “Our thought, in its purely logical form, is incapable of presenting the true nature of life, the full meaning of the evolutionary movement. Created by life, in definite circumstances, to act on definite things, how can it embrace life, of which it is only an emanation or an aspect?”  
   
  It is to attempt an answer to this question that ‘Creative Evolution’ directs its attention.

  Mostra libro

• 

  Sparta - Rise of a Warrior Nation

  Philip Matyszak

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This cultural history of Ancient Sparta chronicles the rise of its legendary military power and offers revealing insight into the people behind the myths. 
   
   
    
  The Spartans of ancient Greece are typically portrayed as macho heroes: noble, laconic, totally fearless, and impervious to pain. And indeed, they often lived up to this image. But life was not as simple as this image suggests. In truth, ancient Sparta was a city of contrasts. 
   
   
    
  We might admire their physical toughness, but Spartans also systematically abused their children. They gave rights to female citizens that were unmatched in Europe until the modern era, meanwhile subjecting their conquered subject peoples to a murderous reign of terror. Though idealized by the Athenian contemporaries of Socrates, Sparta was almost devoid of intellectual achievement. 
   
   
    
  In this revealing history of Spartan society, Philip Matyszak chronicles the rise of the city from a Peloponnesian village to the military superpower of Greece. Above all, Matyszak investigates the role of the Spartan hoplite, the archetypal Greek warrior who was feared throughout Greece in his own day and has since become a legend. The reader is shown the man behind the myth; who he was, who he thought he was, and the environment which produced him.

  Mostra libro

• 

  Stolen Child - Kidnapped at 12...

  Marie-Claire Vidja, Olivier Goujon

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  "My name is Marie-Claire. I have had nightmares every night from the time I was 11, when I was kidnapped.”
  From the clutches of a French family who tortured her into the grips of an Algerian family who kidnapped and confined her, Marie-Claire went through hell before making a spectacular escape and reaching France.
  There are lives whose reality is hard to imagine. Marie-Claire's life is one of those. An unwanted child, born in France, beaten, involved in drug trafficking, she was abandoned, temporarily placed in the care of Social Services, before being returned to her parents—and then she was kidnapped by her stepfather and then by her father’s family that included a radicalized Islamic "tutor." She went through hell for ten years before escaping and starting on a path to recovery in which suffering and hardships kept getting worse, but which eventually led her to the hallowed halls of a French university, from where she continues to fight for the hundreds of children kidnapped by a parent—children who, every year, are victims of their parents' crimes and of institutional abandonment. 
  She also uses her personal experience to look at mixed marriages, parental authority, parental responsibility. She points out with intelligence and accuracy the blind spots in the law, the cowardice of institutions, and the indifference of public opinion in the face of crimes whose victims are, first and foremost, thousands of children.
  The life of Marie-Claire is not a novel.

  Mostra libro

• 

  The Book of Gaia - Untold...

  Charles Dawson

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The best complement to The Urantia Book has arrived to resolve many doubts about the origin of our universe...  
  GAIA is the planet on which we are doomed to suffer for sins of other higher beings. The whole human race may be a sin, a terrible mistake; nevertheless the Universal Source has a destiny in store for us.  
  We are prisoners in a material world and we need to transcend and elevate our consciousness to escape from it. Our planetary history may be a mistake, something that should’ve never happened; only our decisions can save us, because beings as wonderful as our master Jesus intervened to help us escape from the matrix of control. 
   The contents of this book will be your infallible weapon to escape from this planetary prison.

  Mostra libro

• 

  The Fine Art of Literary...

  Lee Gutkind

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  In the 1970s, Lee Gutkind, a leather-clad hippie motorcyclist and former public relations writer, fought his way into the academy. His goal: to make creative nonfiction an accepted academic discipline, one as vital as poetry, drama, and fiction. In this book Gutkind tells the true story of how creative nonfiction became a leading genre for both readers and writers. 
   
   
    
  Creative nonfiction offered liberation to writers, allowing them to push their work in freewheeling directions. The genre also opened doors to outsiders—doctors, lawyers, construction workers—who felt they had stories to tell about their lives and experiences. 
   
   
    
  Gutkind documents the evolution of the genre, discussing the lives and work of such practitioners as Joan Didion, Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Rachel Carson, Upton Sinclair, Janet Malcolm, and Vivian Gornick. Gutkind also highlights the ethics of writing creative nonfiction, including how writers handle the distinctions between fact and fiction. 
   
   
    
  Gutkind's book narrates the story not just of a genre but of the person who brought it to the forefront of the literary and journalistic world.

  Mostra libro

• 

  Surveillance - A Very Short...

  David Lyon

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Surveillance permeates every aspect of our lives today. Every click on the keyboard, every call, text or email, every purchase, every contact with a doctor or the police or a government department, each time you walk under a video camera or pass through a security check, and in many other ways, you are recorded, identified, traced, and tracked. Who processes this free-flowing data, how, and with what consequences, is a critical question affecting everyone. 
   
   
   
  Surveillance is not inherently good or bad but neither is it neutral. It urgently needs to be understood better because people's lives and life-chances depend on it. Today surveillance is central to doing business, meeting friends, organizing governance, maintaining security, and being entertained. Surveillance requires not just exploration and understanding but ethical guidance and political debate. How you get credit or welfare benefits or get on a no-fly list or are ranked as a consumer depends on surveillance. This Very Short Introduction investigates how surveillance makes people visible, how it grew to its present size and prevalence, how it came to rely on technologies of data-handling, and how it developed its own cultural features. Throughout, David Lyon also considers the ethics of surveillance, and explores its potential in prompting political struggles.

  Mostra libro