The Skeptical Visionary

Download or read book The Skeptical Visionary written by Seymour Bernard Sarason and published by Temple University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seymour Sarason, in the words of Carl Glickman, is "one of America's seminal thinkers about public education." For over four decades his has been a voice of much-needed skepticism about our plans for school reform, teacher training, and educational psychology. Now, for the first time, Sarason's essential writings on these and other issues are collected together, offering student and researcher alike with the range, depth, and originality of Sarason's contributions to American thinking on schooling. As we go from debate to debate on issues such as school choice, charter schools, inclusive education, national standards, and other problems that seem to drag on without solution, Sarason's critical stance on the folly of many of our attempts to fix schools has always had at the center a concern for the main players in our educational institutions: the students, the teachers and the parents. Any plans that cannot account for their well-being are doomed to failure. And in the face of such failure, the clarity of Sarason's vision for real educational success is a much-needed antidote to much of the rhetoric that currently passes for substantial debate. A wide-ranging and comprehensive selection of Sarason's most significant writings,The Skeptical Visionaryshould find a prized space on any student's or teacher's bookshelf. Author note:Robert Friedis Associate Professor in the School of Education at Northeastern University, and is the author ofThe Passionate Teacher: A Practical GuideandThe Passionate Learner: How Teachers and Parents Can Help Children Reclaim the Joy of Discovery.Seymour Sarasonis Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychology at Yale University. He is the author of over forty books and is considered to be one of the most significant researchers in education and educational psychology in the country.

Download or read book Joseph Conrad and the Fictions of Skepticism written by Mark Wollaeger and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1990-11-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "You want more scepticism at the very foundation of your work. Scepticism, the tonic of minds, the tonic of life, the agent of truth - the way of art and salvation." Joseph Conrad wrote these words to John Galsworthy in 1901, and this study argues that Conrad's skepticism forms the basis of his most important works, participating in a tradition of philosophical skepticism that extends from Descartes to the present. Conrad's epistemological and moral skepticism - expressed, forestalled, mitigated, and suppressed - provides the terms for the author's rethinking of the peculiar relation between philosophy and literary form in Conrad's writing and, more broadly, for reconsidering what it means to call any novel 'philosophical'. Among the issues freshly argued are Conrad's thematics of coercion, isolation, and betrayal; the complicated relations among author, narrator, and character; and the logic of Conradian romance, comedy, and tragedy. The author also offers a new way of conceptualizing the shape of Conrad's career, especially the 'decline' evidenced in the later fiction. The uniqueness of Conrad's multifarious literary and cultural inheritance makes it difficult to locate him securely in the dominant tradition of the British novel. A philosophical approach to Conrad, however, reveals links to other novelists - notably Hardy, Forster, and Woolf - all of whom share in the increasing philosophical burden of the modern novel by enacting the very philosophical issues that are discussed within their pages. Conrad's interest as a skeptic is heightened by the degree to which he resists the insights proffered by his own skepticism. The first chapter introduces the idea of the Conradian 'shelter', and the next two use Schopenhauer to show how the language of metaphysical speculation in Tales of Unrest and 'Heart of Darkness' spills over into a religious impulse that resists the disintegrating effect of Conrad's skepticism. The author then turns to Hume to model the authorial skepticism that in Lord Jim contests the continuing visionary strain of the earlier fiction and Descartes to analyze the ways in which Romantic vision is more stringently chastened by irony in Nostromo and The Secret Agent. The concluding chapter touches on several late novels before examining how competing models of political agency in Conrad's last great fiction of skepticism, Under Western Eyes, situate it somewhere between ideology critique and a mystified account of the exigencies of individual consciousness.

Download or read book Visionary written by Graham Hancock and published by Red Wheel/Weiser. This book was released on 2022-04-04 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The latest archaeology and history redefining book from bestselling author Graham Hancock (Fingerprints of the Gods), who is featured in Ancient Apocalypse, a hit Netflix original docuseries. "With the original unabridged text of Supernatural, I offer the reader an investigation that explores the human experience with psychedelics from the Stone Age to the Space Age and the role of these extraordinary plant medicines as tools to investigate the nature of reality itself."—Graham Hancock Discover the pathway to the gods. Less than 50,000 years ago mankind had no art, no religion, no sophisticated symbolism, no innovative thinking. Then, in a dramatic and electrifying change, described by scientists as "the greatest riddle in human history," all the skills and qualities that we value most highly in ourselves appeared already fully formed, as though bestowed on us by hidden powers. In Visionary, Graham Hancock sets out to investigate this mysterious "before-and-after moment" and to discover the truth about the influences that gave birth to modern human mind. His quest takes him on a journey of adventure and detection from the stunningly beautiful painted caves of prehistoric France, Spain, and Italy to remote rock shelters in the mountains of South Africa, where he finds a treasure trove of extraordinary Stone Age art. Hancock uncovers clues that lead him to travel to the depths of the Amazon rainforest to drink the powerful plant hallucinogen ayahuasca with Indian shamans, whose paintings contain images of "supernatural beings" identical to the animal-human hybrids depicted in prehistoric caves and rock shelters. Hallucinogens such as mescaline also produce visionary encounters with exactly the same beings. Scientists at the cutting edge of consciousness research have begun to consider the possibility that such hallucinations may be real perceptions of other "dimensions." Could the "supernaturals" first depicted in the painted caves and rock shelters be the ancient teachers of mankind? Could it be that human evolution is not just the "blind," "meaningless" process that Darwin identified, but something more purposive and intelligent, something that we have barely even begun to understand? Previously published as Supernatural, this definitive edition includes a new Introduction by Graham Hancock as well as restored chapters that were omitted from the original paperback release.

Download or read book The Skeptical Sublime written by James Noggle and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title examines the role of scepticism in initiating the idea of the sublime in early modern British literature. James Noggle draws on philosophy, intellectual history, and critical theory to illuminate the aesthetic ideology of Pope, Swift, Dryden, and Rochester among other import ant writers of the period. "The Skeptical Sublime" compares the view of sublimity presented by these authors with that of the dominant, liberal tradition of 18th-century criticism to offer a new understanding of how these writers helped construct proto-aesthetic categories that stabilized British culture after years of civil war and revolution, while at the same time their scepticism allowed them to express ambivalence about the emerging social order

Download or read book Harper's New Monthly Magazine written by and published by . This book was released on 1872 with total page 972 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Harper's New Monthly Magazine written by Henry Mills Alden and published by . This book was released on 1872 with total page 972 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Harper's informs a diverse body of readers of cultural, business, political, literary and scientific affairs.

Download or read book Skepticism in Early Modern English Literature written by Anita Gilman Sherman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-29 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early modern skepticism contributed to literary invention, aesthetic pleasure, and the uneven process of secularization in England.