A Certain Ambiguity

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A Certain Ambiguity

Author : Gaurav Suri
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400834775
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis A Certain Ambiguity by : Gaurav Suri

Download or read book A Certain Ambiguity written by Gaurav Suri and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While taking a class on infinity at Stanford in the late 1980s, Ravi Kapoor discovers that he is confronting the same mathematical and philosophical dilemmas that his mathematician grandfather had faced many decades earlier--and that had landed him in jail. Charged under an obscure blasphemy law in a small New Jersey town in 1919, Vijay Sahni is challenged by a skeptical judge to defend his belief that the certainty of mathematics can be extended to all human knowledge--including religion. Together, the two men discover the power--and the fallibility--of what has long been considered the pinnacle of human certainty, Euclidean geometry. As grandfather and grandson struggle with the question of whether there can ever be absolute certainty in mathematics or life, they are forced to reconsider their fundamental beliefs and choices. Their stories hinge on their explorations of parallel developments in the study of geometry and infinity--and the mathematics throughout is as rigorous and fascinating as the narrative and characters are compelling and complex. Moving and enlightening, A Certain Ambiguity is a story about what it means to face the extent--and the limits--of human knowledge.

The Ambiguity of Play

Author : Brian Sutton-Smith
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674044185
Total Pages : 289 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (74 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ambiguity of Play by : Brian Sutton-Smith

Download or read book The Ambiguity of Play written by Brian Sutton-Smith and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sutton-Smith focuses on play theories rooted in seven distinct "rhetorics"--The ancient discourses of fate, power, communal identity, and frivolity and the modern discourses of progress, the imaginary, and the self. In a sweeping analysis that moves from the question of play in child development to the implications of play for the Western work ethic, he explores the values, historical sources, and interests that have dictated the terms and forms of play put forth in each discourse's "objective" theory

How Mathematicians Think

Author : William Byers
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691145997
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis How Mathematicians Think by : William Byers

Download or read book How Mathematicians Think written by William Byers and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-02 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To many outsiders, mathematicians appear to think like computers, grimly grinding away with a strict formal logic and moving methodically--even algorithmically--from one black-and-white deduction to another. Yet mathematicians often describe their most important breakthroughs as creative, intuitive responses to ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox. A unique examination of this less-familiar aspect of mathematics, How Mathematicians Think reveals that mathematics is a profoundly creative activity and not just a body of formalized rules and results. Nonlogical qualities, William Byers shows, play an essential role in mathematics. Ambiguities, contradictions, and paradoxes can arise when ideas developed in different contexts come into contact. Uncertainties and conflicts do not impede but rather spur the development of mathematics. Creativity often means bringing apparently incompatible perspectives together as complementary aspects of a new, more subtle theory. The secret of mathematics is not to be found only in its logical structure. The creative dimensions of mathematical work have great implications for our notions of mathematical and scientific truth, and How Mathematicians Think provides a novel approach to many fundamental questions. Is mathematics objectively true? Is it discovered or invented? And is there such a thing as a "final" scientific theory? Ultimately, How Mathematicians Think shows that the nature of mathematical thinking can teach us a great deal about the human condition itself.

Alexander

Author : Guy Maclean Rogers
Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks
ISBN 13 : 0812972716
Total Pages : 466 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (129 download)

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Book Synopsis Alexander by : Guy Maclean Rogers

Download or read book Alexander written by Guy Maclean Rogers and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2005-10-11 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For nearly two and a half millennia, Alexander the Great has loomed over history as a legend–and an enigma. Wounded repeatedly but always triumphant in battle, he conquered most of the known world, only to die mysteriously at the age of thirty-two. In his day he was revered as a god; in our day he has been reviled as a mass murderer, a tyrant as brutal as Stalin or Hitler. Who was the man behind the mask of power? Why did Alexander embark on an unprecedented program of global domination? What accounted for his astonishing success on the battlefield? In this luminous new biography, the esteemed classical scholar and historian Guy MacLean Rogers sifts through thousands of years of history and myth to uncover the truth about this complex, ambiguous genius. Ascending to the throne of Macedonia after the assassination of his father, King Philip II, Alexander discovered while barely out of his teens that he had an extraordinary talent and a boundless appetite for military conquest. A virtuoso of violence, he was gifted with an uncanny ability to visualize how a battle would unfold, coupled with devastating decisiveness in the field. Granicus, Issos, Gaugamela, Hydaspes–as the victories mounted, Alexander’s passion for conquest expanded from cities to countries to continents. When Persia, the greatest empire of his day, fell before him, he marched at once on India, intending to add it to his holdings. As Rogers shows, Alexander’s military prowess only heightened his exuberant sexuality. Though his taste for multiple partners, both male and female, was tolerated, Alexander’s relatively enlightened treatment of women was nothing short of revolutionary. He outlawed rape, he placed intelligent women in positions of authority, and he chose his wives from among the peoples he conquered. Indeed, as Rogers argues, Alexander’s fascination with Persian culture, customs, and sexual practices may have led to his downfall, perhaps even to his death. Alexander emerges as a charismatic and surprisingly modern figure–neither a messiah nor a genocidal butcher but one of the most imaginative and daring military tacticians of all time. Balanced and authoritative, this brilliant portrait brings Alexander to life as a man, without diminishing the power of the legend.

Navigating Ambiguity

Author : Andrea Small
Publisher : Ten Speed Press
ISBN 13 : 1984857967
Total Pages : 145 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (848 download)

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Book Synopsis Navigating Ambiguity by : Andrea Small

Download or read book Navigating Ambiguity written by Andrea Small and published by Ten Speed Press. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking guide to help you lean in to the discomfort of the unknown to turn creative opportunities into intentional design, from Stanford University's world-renowned d.school. “Navigating Ambiguity reminds us not to run from uncertainty but rather see it as a defining moment of opportunity.”—Yves Béhar, Founder and CEO, fuseproject A design process presents a series of steps, but in real life, it rarely plays out this neatly. Navigating Ambiguity underscores how the creative process isn’t formulaic. This book shows you how to surrender control by being adaptable, curious, and unbiased as well as resourceful, tenacious, and courageous. Designers and educators Andrea Small and Kelly Schmutte use humor and clear steps to help you embrace uncertainty as you approach a creative project. First, they explain how the brain works and why it defaults to certainty. Then they show you how to let go of the need for control and instead employ a flexible strategy that relies on the balance between acting and adapting, and the give-and-take between opposing approaches to make your way to your goal. Beautiful cut-paper artwork illustrations offer ways to rethink creative work without hitting the usual roadblocks. The result is a more open and satisfying journey from assignment or idea to finished product.

The Ethics of Ambiguity

Author : Simone de Beauvoir
Publisher : Open Road Media
ISBN 13 : 1504054210
Total Pages : 98 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis The Ethics of Ambiguity by : Simone de Beauvoir

Download or read book The Ethics of Ambiguity written by Simone de Beauvoir and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the groundbreaking author of The Second Sex comes a radical argument for ethical responsibility and freedom. In this classic introduction to existentialist thought, French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir’s The Ethics of Ambiguity simultaneously pays homage to and grapples with her French contemporaries, philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, by arguing that the freedoms in existentialism carry with them certain ethical responsibilities. De Beauvoir outlines a series of “ways of being” (the adventurer, the passionate person, the lover, the artist, and the intellectual), each of which overcomes the former’s deficiencies, and therefore can live up to the responsibilities of freedom. Ultimately, de Beauvoir argues that in order to achieve true freedom, one must battle against the choices and activities of those who suppress it. The Ethics of Ambiguity is the book that launched Simone de Beauvoir’s feminist and existential philosophy. It remains a concise yet thorough examination of existence and what it means to be human.

A History of Ambiguity

Author : Anthony Ossa-Richardson
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691228442
Total Pages : 488 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis A History of Ambiguity by : Anthony Ossa-Richardson

Download or read book A History of Ambiguity written by Anthony Ossa-Richardson and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since it was first published in 1930, William Empson’s Seven Types of Ambiguity has been perceived as a milestone in literary criticism—far from being an impediment to communication, ambiguity now seemed an index of poetic richness and expressive power. Little, however, has been written on the broader trajectory of Western thought about ambiguity before Empson; as a result, the nature of his innovation has been poorly understood. A History of Ambiguity remedies this omission. Starting with classical grammar and rhetoric, and moving on to moral theology, law, biblical exegesis, German philosophy, and literary criticism, Anthony Ossa-Richardson explores the many ways in which readers and theorists posited, denied, conceptualised, and argued over the existence of multiple meanings in texts between antiquity and the twentieth century. This process took on a variety of interconnected forms, from the Renaissance delight in the ‘elegance’ of ambiguities in Horace, through the extraordinary Catholic claim that Scripture could contain multiple literal—and not just allegorical—senses, to the theory of dramatic irony developed in the nineteenth century, a theory intertwined with discoveries of the double meanings in Greek tragedy. Such narratives are not merely of antiquarian interest: rather, they provide an insight into the foundations of modern criticism, revealing deep resonances between acts of interpretation in disparate eras and contexts. A History of Ambiguity lays bare the long tradition of efforts to liberate language, and even a poet’s intention, from the strictures of a single meaning.

Seven Types of Ambiguity

Author : William Empson
Publisher : New Directions Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780811200370
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (3 download)

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Book Synopsis Seven Types of Ambiguity by : William Empson

Download or read book Seven Types of Ambiguity written by William Empson and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 1966 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines seven types of ambiguity, providing examples of it in the writings of Shakespeare, Wordsworth, and T.S. Eliot.

Ambiguity Machines

Author : Vandana Singh
Publisher : Small Beer Press
ISBN 13 : 1618731424
Total Pages : 305 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (187 download)

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Book Synopsis Ambiguity Machines by : Vandana Singh

Download or read book Ambiguity Machines written by Vandana Singh and published by Small Beer Press. This book was released on 2018-02-13 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philip K. Dick Award finalist Praise for Vandana Singh: “A most promising and original young writer.”—Ursula K. Le Guin “Lovely! What a pleasure this book is . . . full of warmth, compassion, affection, high comedy and low.”—Molly Gloss, author of The Hearts of Horses “Vandana Singh’s radiant protagonist is a planet unto herself.”—Village Voice “Sweeping starscapes and daring cosmology that make Singh a worthy heir to Cordwainer Smith and Arthur C. Clarke.”—Chris Moriarty, Fantasy & Science Fiction “I’m looking forward to the collection . . . everything I’ve read has impressed me—the past and future visions in ‘Delhi’, the intensity of ‘Thirst’, the feeling of escape at the end of ‘The Tetrahedron’...” —Niall Harrison, Vector (British Science Fiction Association) “...the first writer of Indian origin to make a serious mark in the SF world ... she writes with such a beguiling touch of the strange.” —Nilanjana Roy, Business Standard In her first North American collection, Vandana Singh’s deep humanism interplays with her scientific background in stories that explore and celebrate this world and others and characters who are trying to make sense of the people they meet, what they see, and the challenges they face. An eleventh century poet wakes to find he is as an artificially intelligent companion on a starship. A woman of no account has the ability to look into the past. In "Requiem," a major new novella, a woman goes to Alaska to try and make sense of her aunt’s disappearance. Singh's stories have been performed on BBC radio, been finalists for the British SF Association award, selected for the Tiptree award honor list, and oft reprinted in Best of the Year anthologies. Her dives deep into the vast strangeness of the universe without and within and with her unblinking clear vision she explores the ways we move through space and time: together, yet always apart.

Ambiguity and the Absolute

Author : Frank Chouraqui
Publisher : Fordham Univ Press
ISBN 13 : 0823254127
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (232 download)

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Book Synopsis Ambiguity and the Absolute by : Frank Chouraqui

Download or read book Ambiguity and the Absolute written by Frank Chouraqui and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2013-12-02 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Friedrich Nietzsche and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Chouraqui argues, are linked by how they conceive the question of truth. Although both thinkers criticize the traditional concept of truth as objectivity, they both find that rejecting it does not solve the problem. What is it in our natural existence that gave rise to the notion of truth? The answer to that question is threefold. First, Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty both propose a genealogy of “truth” in which to exist means to make implicit truth claims. Second, both seek to recover the preobjective ground from which truth as an erroneous concept arose. Finally, this attempt at recovery leads both thinkers to ontological considerations regarding how we must conceive of a being whose structure allows for the existence of the belief in truth. In conclusion, Chouraqui suggests that both thinkers’ investigations of the question of truth lead them to conceive of being as the process of self-falsification by which indeterminate being presents itself as determinate.

Through a Glass Darkly

Author : Donald L. Berry
Publisher : University Press of America
ISBN 13 : 9780761835479
Total Pages : 106 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (354 download)

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Book Synopsis Through a Glass Darkly by : Donald L. Berry

Download or read book Through a Glass Darkly written by Donald L. Berry and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2006 with total page 106 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origin, basic texts, central affirmations, and life-policy proposals of the Christian tradition are more ambiguous than either Christianity's critics or advocates often acknowledge. Through a Glass Darkly considers how one might grant authority to the biblical texts without regarding them as inerrant or infallibly true.

Mathematics Through the Eyes of Faith

Author : Russell Howell
Publisher : Harper Collins
ISBN 13 : 0062094912
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (62 download)

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Book Synopsis Mathematics Through the Eyes of Faith by : Russell Howell

Download or read book Mathematics Through the Eyes of Faith written by Russell Howell and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book description to come.

A Certain Ambiguity

Author : Gaurav Suri
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780691127095
Total Pages : 296 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (27 download)

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Book Synopsis A Certain Ambiguity by : Gaurav Suri

Download or read book A Certain Ambiguity written by Gaurav Suri and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-22 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While taking a class on infinity at Stanford in the late 1980s, Ravi Kapoor discovers that he is confronting the same mathematical and philosophical dilemmas that his mathematician grandfather had faced many decades earlier--and that had landed him in jail. Charged under an obscure blasphemy law in a small New Jersey town in 1919, Vijay Sahni is challenged by a skeptical judge to defend his belief that the certainty of mathematics can be extended to all human knowledge--including religion. Together, the two men discover the power--and the fallibility--of what has long been considered the pinnacle of human certainty, Euclidean geometry. As grandfather and grandson struggle with the question of whether there can ever be absolute certainty in mathematics or life, they are forced to reconsider their fundamental beliefs and choices. Their stories hinge on their explorations of parallel developments in the study of geometry and infinity--and the mathematics throughout is as rigorous and fascinating as the narrative and characters are compelling and complex. Moving and enlightening, A Certain Ambiguity is a story about what it means to face the extent--and the limits--of human knowledge.

A Culture of Ambiguity

Author : Thomas Bauer
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231553323
Total Pages : 244 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis A Culture of Ambiguity by : Thomas Bauer

Download or read book A Culture of Ambiguity written by Thomas Bauer and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the Western imagination, Islamic cultures are dominated by dogmatic religious norms that permit no nuance. Those fighting such stereotypes have countered with a portrait of Islam’s medieval “Golden Age,” marked by rationality, tolerance, and even proto-secularism. How can we understand Islamic history, culture, and thought beyond this dichotomy? In this magisterial cultural and intellectual history, Thomas Bauer reconsiders classical and modern Islam by tracing differing attitudes toward ambiguity. Over a span of many centuries, he explores the tension between one strand that aspires to annihilate all uncertainties and establish absolute, uncontestable truths and another, competing tendency that looks for ways to live with ambiguity and accept complexity. Bauer ranges across cultural and linguistic ambiguities, considering premodern Islamic textual and cultural forms from law to Quranic exegesis to literary genres alongside attitudes toward religious minorities and foreigners. He emphasizes the relative absence of conflict between religious and secular discourses in classical Islamic culture, which stands in striking contrast to both present-day fundamentalism and much of European history. Bauer shows how Islam’s encounter with the modern West and its demand for certainty helped bring about both Islamicist and secular liberal ideologies that in their own ways rejected ambiguity—and therefore also their own cultural traditions. Awarded the prestigious Leibniz Prize, A Culture of Ambiguity not only reframes a vast range of Islamic history but also offers an interdisciplinary model for investigating the tolerance of ambiguity across cultures and eras.

Sometimes I Lie

Author : Alice Feeney
Publisher : Flatiron Books
ISBN 13 : 1250144833
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis Sometimes I Lie by : Alice Feeney

Download or read book Sometimes I Lie written by Alice Feeney and published by Flatiron Books. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie. Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?

Questioning Secularism

Author : Hussein Ali Agrama
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226010686
Total Pages : 297 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis Questioning Secularism by : Hussein Ali Agrama

Download or read book Questioning Secularism written by Hussein Ali Agrama and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-11-02 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What, exactly, is secularism? What has the West's long familiarity with it inevitably obscured? In this work, Hussein Ali Agrama tackles these questions. Focusing on the fatwa councils and family law courts of Egypt just prior to the revolution, he delves deeply into the meaning of secularism itself and the ambiguities that lie at its heart.

Potential Images

Author : Dario Gamboni
Publisher : Reaktion Books
ISBN 13 : 9781861891495
Total Pages : 312 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (914 download)

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Book Synopsis Potential Images by : Dario Gamboni

Download or read book Potential Images written by Dario Gamboni and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Potential Images Dario Gamboni explores ambiguity in modern art, considering images that rely to a great degree on a projected or imaginative response from viewers to achieve their effect. Ambiguity became increasingly important in late 19th- and early 20th-century aesthetics, as is evidenced in works by such artists as Redon, Cezanne, Gauguin, Ensor and the Nabis. Similarly, the Cubists subverted traditional representational conventions, requiring their viewers to decipher images to extract their full meanings. The same device was taken up in the various experiments leading to abstraction. For example, it was Kandinsky's intention that his work could be interpreted in both figurative and non-figurative ways, and Duchamp's Readymades suggested the radical conclusion that 'it is the beholder who makes the picture'. These invitations to viewers to participate in the process of artistic communication had social and political implications, as they accorded artist and beholder symmetrical, almost interchangeable, roles.