The Mechanics Of Wonder

Download or read book The Mechanics of Wonder written by Gary Westfahl and published by Liverpool University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a sustained argument about the idea of science fiction by a renowned critic. Overturning many received opinions, it is both controversial and stimulating Much of the controversy arises from Westfahl's resurrection of Hugo Gernsback - for decades a largely derided figure - as the true creator of science fiction. Following an initial demolition of earlier critics, Westfahl argues for Gernsback's importance. His argument is fully documented, showing a much greater familiarity with early American science fiction, particularly magazine fiction, than previous academic critics or historians. After his initial chapters on Gernsback, he examines the way in which the Gernsback tradition was adopted and modified by later magazine editors and early critics. This involves a re-evaluation of the importance of John W. Campbell to the history of science fiction as well as a very interesting critique of Robert Heinlein's Beyond the Horizon, one the seminal texts of American science fiction. In conclusion, Westfahl uses the theories of Gernsback and Campbell to develop a descriptive definition of science fiction and he explores the ramifications of that definition. The Mechanics of Wonder will arouse debate and force the questioning of presuppositions. No other book so closely examines the origins and development of the idea of science fiction, and it will stand among a small number of crucial texts with which every science fiction scholar or prospective science fiction scholar will have to read.

Download or read book Always Being Reformed written by David Hadley Jensen and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2016-03-31 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the most persistent slogans of Reformed theology is that it is "reformed and always being reformed." But what does this slogan mean? This volume gathers thirteen essays written by a younger generation of Reformed theologians who teach and write on five different continents, who together offer this work in Christian systematic theology. Unlike many other works of Reformed theology, however, this book is framed by pressing contextual issues and questions (instead of traditional loci). Each chapter engages classical doctrine, but does so through the lens of contemporary, lived experience in particular contexts. The result is not a theology where doctrines are "applied" to contexts, but an approach where doctrine and context mutually shape one another. The contributors take seriously the notion that theology is "always being reformed" and is always partial, ever on the way--hence it requires conversation partners beyond the Reformed family of faith. The result is a study in Reformed theology that is thoroughly ecumenical.

Download or read book Last Thoughts written by Henri Poincaré and published by MultiMedia Publishing. This book was released on 1900 with total page 99 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Henri Poincaré is a mathematician, physicist, philosopher and engineer, born April 29, 1854 in Nancy and died July 17, 1912 in Paris. He has carried out works of major importance in optics and in infinitesimal calculus. His advances on the problem of the three bodies make him a founder of the qualitative study of systems of differential equations and chaos theory; he is also a major precursor of the theory of special relativity and the theory of dynamical systems. Henri Poincaré is considered one of the last great universal scholars, mastering all branches of mathematics of his time and some branches of physics. This book gathers here various articles and lectures that Henri Poincaré himself intended to form the fourth volume of his works of philosophy of science. All the previous ones had already appeared in this collection. It would be useless to recall their prodigious success. The most illustrious of modern mathematicians has been an eminent philosopher, one of those whose books profoundly influence human thought. It is probable that if Henri Poincaré himself had published this volume, he would have modified certain details, removed some repetitions. But it seemed to us that the respect due to the memory of this great death forbade any editing of his text.

Download or read book Signs and Wonders written by Delia Falconer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2021-09-29 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2022 Nib Literary Awards. Chosen as a 2021 ‘Book of the Year’ in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Book Review. The celebrated, Walkley Award-winning author on how global warming is changing not only our climate but our culture. Beautifully observed, brilliantly argued and deeply felt, these essays show that our emotions, our art, our relationships with the generations around us – all the delicate networks that make us who we are – have already been transformed. In Signs and Wonders, Falconer explores how it feels to live as a reader, a writer, a lover of nature and a mother of small children in an era of profound ecological change. Building on Falconer’s two acclaimed essays, ‘Signs and Wonders’ and the Walkley Award-winning ‘The Opposite of Glamour’, Signs and Wonders is a pioneering examination of how we are changing our culture, language and imaginations along with our climate. Is a mammoth emerging from the permafrost beautiful or terrifying? How is our imagination affected when something that used to be ordinary – like a car windscreen smeared with insects – becomes unimaginable? What can the disappearance of the paragraph from much contemporary writing tell us about what’s happening in the modern mind? Scientists write about a 'great acceleration' in human impact on the natural world. Signs and Wonders shows that we are also in a period of profound cultural acceleration, which is just as dynamic, strange, extreme and, sometimes, beautiful. Ranging from an ‘unnatural’ history of coal to the effect of a large fur seal turning up in the park below her apartment, this book is a searching and poetic examination of the ways we are thinking about how, and why, to live now. ‘Only the finest of writers can hope to convey the mercurial nature of the times we are living though: the sense of slippage; of terror and beauty. Falconer is such a writer. Signs and Wonders is an essential collection.’ Sophie Cunningham, author of City of Trees ‘Delia Falconer is one of the best writers working today, and in Signs and Wonders she demonstrates everything that makes her writing so necessary. Brave, beautiful, and breathtaking in its elegance and intelligence, it is, quite simply, a marvel.’ James Bradley ‘Scintillating. Delia Falconer is at the peak of her powers as a critic, and as an observer of the natural world. Signs and Wonders looks outward from Sydney, and from literature, to trace the contours of our environmental moment.’ Rebecca Giggs, author of Fathoms ‘Exquisite … From reflections on feeding birds, analyses of literary trends, to Falconer’s Covid and fire diaries, the essays are complex, ambitious, rewarding … Delia Falconer’s mesmerising Signs and Wonders helps us to process the disorienting complexity of living in this time of great beauty and loss.’ Jonica Newby, Australian Book Review

Download or read book The Mechanical Hypothesis in Ancient Greek Natural Philosophy written by Sylvia Berryman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-06 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It has long been thought that the ancient Greeks did not take mechanics seriously as part of the workings of nature, and that therefore their natural philosophy was both primitive and marginal. In this book Sylvia Berryman challenges that assumption, arguing that the idea that the world works 'like a machine' can be found in ancient Greek thought, predating the early modern philosophy with which it is most closely associated. Her discussion ranges over topics including balancing and equilibrium, lifting water, sphere-making and models of the heavens, and ancient Greek pneumatic theory, with detailed analysis of thinkers such as Aristotle, Archimedes, and Hero of Alexandria. Her book shows scholars of ancient Greek philosophy why it is necessary to pay attention to mechanics, and shows historians of science why the differences between ancient and modern reactions to mechanics are not as great as was generally thought.

Download or read book Reason Diminished written by Peter G. Platt and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 1997-01-01 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reason Diminished examines ?the power that wonder wields over reason in [Shakespeare?s] late plays, both philosophically and dramaturgically.? Peter Platt posits that, in these famous plays, wonder and the marvelous are assigned preeminent positions over reason and order. In fact, Platt argues that the marvelous played a crucial role in Renaissance culture as a whole. ø The book opens by surveying theories of wonder from Aristotle?s Poetics and Metaphysics through the writings of Renaissance theorists. A crucial chapter examines the many ways that the Renaissance attempted to bring the marvelous to bear on the world around it. The next two chapters look at the tension between realism and the marvelous in Elizabethan fiction and the theatrical tradition of the masque. ø Part of the book examines the role of wonder and the marvelous in Shakespeare?s ?romances?: Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter?s Tale, and The Tempest. ?Shakespeare?s romances,? writes Platt, ?represent various experiments with the marvelous.? Platt argues that ?late Shakespeare . . . invites the spectators to engage in?and in some cases to shape?the marvels on the stage before them.? ø A persuasive and resourceful study of some of Shakespeare?s most celebrated works, Reason Diminished will add significantly to the ongoing reassessment of Shakespeare?s plays and the world in which they took shape.

Download or read book Hugo Gernsback and the Century of Science Fiction written by Gary Westfahl and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2007-08-01 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of science fiction editor and author Hugo Gernsback's career, this critical study explores the many ways in which his work influenced the genre. It summarizes the science fiction theories of Gernsback and his successors, considers his efforts to define science fiction both verbally and visually, and for the first time offers detailed studies of his rarest periodicals, including Technocracy Review, Superworld Comics, and Science-Fiction Plus. An analysis of his ground-breaking novel, Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660, and its influences on a variety of science fiction novels, films and television programs is also offered.