Embodiment And The Meaning Of Life

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Meaning and Embodiment

Author : Nicholas Mowad
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438475594
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Book Synopsis Meaning and Embodiment by : Nicholas Mowad

Download or read book Meaning and Embodiment written by Nicholas Mowad and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2019-07-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meaning and Embodiment provides a detailed study of Hegel's anthropology to examine the place of corporeity or embodiment in human life, identity, and experience. In Hegel's view, to be human means in part to produce one's own spiritual embodiment in culture and habits. Whereas for animals nature only has meaning relative to biological drives, humans experience meaning in a way that transcends these limits, and which allows for aesthetic appreciation of beauty and sublimity, nihilistic feelings of meaninglessness, and the complex and different systems of symbolic speech and action characterizing language and culture. By elucidating the different forms of embodiment, Nicholas Mowad shows how for Hegel we are embodied in several different ways at once: as extended, subject to physical-chemical forces, living, and human. Many difficult problems in philosophy and everyday experience come down to using the right concept of embodiment. Mowad traces Hegel's account through the growth and development of the body, gender and racial difference, cycles of sleep and waking, and sensibility and mental illness.

Embodiment and the Meaning of Life

Author : Jeff Noonan
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0773553940
Total Pages : 278 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (735 download)

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Book Synopsis Embodiment and the Meaning of Life by : Jeff Noonan

Download or read book Embodiment and the Meaning of Life written by Jeff Noonan and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2018-03-21 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The long tradition of pessimism in philosophy and poetry notoriously laments suffering caused by vulnerabilities of the human body. The most familiar and contemporary version is antinatalism, the view that it is wrong to bring sentient life into existence because birth inevitably produces suffering. Technotopianism, which stems from a similarly negative view of embodied limitations, claims that we should escape sickness and death through radical human-enhancement technologies. In Embodiment and the Meaning of Life Jeff Noonan presents pessimism and technotopianism as two sides of the same coin, as both begin from the premise that the limitations of embodied life are inherently negative. He argues that rather than rendering life pointless, the tragic failures that mark life are fundamental to the good of human existence. The necessary limitations of embodied being are challenges for each person to live well, not only for their own sake, but for the sake of the future of the human project. Meaning is not a given, Noonan suggests, but rather the product of labour upon ourselves, others, and the world. Meaningful labour is threatened equally by unjust social systems and runaway technological development that aims to replace human action, rather than liberate it. Calling on us to draw conceptual connections between finitude, embodiment, and the meaning of life, this book shows that seeking the common good is our most viable and materially realistic source of optimism about the future.

Embodiment

Author : Tom Ziemke
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
ISBN 13 : 3110207508
Total Pages : 475 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (12 download)

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Book Synopsis Embodiment by : Tom Ziemke

Download or read book Embodiment written by Tom Ziemke and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2008-09-25 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first volume of the two-volume set Body, Language and Mind focuses on the concept of embodiment, understood in most general terms as "the bodily basis of phenomena such as meaning, mind, cognition and language". The volume offers a representative, multi- and interdisciplinary state-of-the-art collection of papers on embodiment and brings together a large variety of different perspectives, from cognitive linguistics, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, semiotics and artificial intelligence. Being envisioned as a reader of sorts in theoretical and empirical research on embodiment, the book revolves around several core issues that have been addressed previously, to a large degree independently, in various disciplines. In particular the volume illustrates the diversity of notions of embodiment that has arisen in various disciplines over the last twenty years, and addresses the question how these different interpretations relate to each other, i.e. are they different aspects of or different perspectives on the same phenomena, or do they actually contradict each other? For this purpose, several aspects of cognition and language, such as phenomenal experience, perception, action, conceptualization, communication, meaning creation, social interaction and culture, are illuminated from the perspective of different theories of embodiment. The contributions are integrated through cross-connections between individual authors’ papers and through an introductory essay that identifies the different strands of research, the central issues that they share, and the synergies that can be gained from addressing embodiment from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Embodiment and the Inner Life

Author : Murray Shanahan
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 0199226555
Total Pages : 230 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (992 download)

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Book Synopsis Embodiment and the Inner Life by : Murray Shanahan

Download or read book Embodiment and the Inner Life written by Murray Shanahan and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To understand the mind and its place in Nature is one of the great intellectual challenges of our time, a challenge that is both scientific and philosophical. How does cognition influence an animal's behaviour? What are its neural underpinnings? How is the inner life of a human being constituted? What are the neural underpinnings of the conscious condition? Embodiment and the Inner Life approaches each of these questions from a scientific standpoint. But it contends that, before we can make progress on them, we have to give up the habit of thinking metaphysically, a habit that creates a fog of philosophical confusion. From this post-reflective point of view, the book argues for an intimate relationship between cognition, sensorimotor embodiment, and the integrative character of the conscious condition. Drawing on insights from psychology, neuroscience, and dynamical systems, it proposes an empirical theory of this three-way relationship whose principles, not being tied to the contingencies of biology or physics, are applicable to the whole space of possible minds in which humans and other animals are included. Embodiment and the Inner Life is one of very few books that provides a properly joined-up theory of consciousness, and will be essential reading for all psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists with an interest in the enduring puzzle of consciousness.

Handbook of Positive Body Image and Embodiment

Author : Niva Piran
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190841885
Total Pages : 465 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (98 download)

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Book Synopsis Handbook of Positive Body Image and Embodiment by : Niva Piran

Download or read book Handbook of Positive Body Image and Embodiment written by Niva Piran and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-04-02 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For five decades, negative body image has been a major focus of study due to its association with psychological and social morbidity, including eating disorders. However, more recently the body image construct has broadened to include positive ways of living in the body, enabling greater understanding of embodied well-being, as well as protective factors and interventions to guide the prevention and treatment of eating disorders. Handbook of Positive Body Image and Embodiment is the first comprehensive, research-based resource to address the breadth of innovative theoretical concepts and related practices concerning positive ways of living in the body, including positive body image and embodiment. Presenting 37 chapters by world-renowned experts in body image and eating behaviors, this state-of-the-art collection delineates constructs of positive body image and embodiment, as well as social environments (such as families, peers, schools, media, and the Internet) and therapeutic processes that can enhance them. Constructs examined include positive embodiment, body appreciation, body functionality, body image flexibility, broad conceptualization of beauty, intuitive eating, and attuned sexuality. Also discussed are protective factors, such as environments that promote body acceptance, personal safety, diversity, and activism, and a resistant stance towards objectification, media images, and restrictive feminine ideals. The handbook also explores how therapeutic interventions (including Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Cognitive Dissonance, and many more) and public health and policy initiatives can inform scholarly, clinical, and prevention-based work in the field of eating disorders.

Symbolic Universes in Time of (Post)Crisis

Author : Sergio Salvatore
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3030194973
Total Pages : 335 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (31 download)

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Book Synopsis Symbolic Universes in Time of (Post)Crisis by : Sergio Salvatore

Download or read book Symbolic Universes in Time of (Post)Crisis written by Sergio Salvatore and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates whether, how and where the cultural milieu of European societies has changed as a result of the socio-economics crisis. To do so, it adopts a psycho-cultural approach, which views the cultural milieu as a set of meanings, placing the generalized image social actors have of themselves, the world, events and their relationships in the context of the socio-political and institutional environment, including policies. By analyzing the changes in cultural milieu and social identity, the book develops strategic and methodological guidelines for the design of post-crisis policies, providing a concept of how the cultural dynamics are associated with certain individual characteristics and specific socio-economic phenomena.

Embodiment and the Treatment of Eating Disorders: The Body as a Resource in Recovery

Author : Catherine Cook-Cottone
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN 13 : 039373417X
Total Pages : 303 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (937 download)

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Book Synopsis Embodiment and the Treatment of Eating Disorders: The Body as a Resource in Recovery by : Catherine Cook-Cottone

Download or read book Embodiment and the Treatment of Eating Disorders: The Body as a Resource in Recovery written by Catherine Cook-Cottone and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2020-09-22 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tools for the clinician to help clients turn their bodies into resources for healing from eating disorders. Embodiment refers to the lived attunement of the inner and outer experience of self. Cognitions are aligned with the sensing and feeling body. Further, in an attuned experience of self, positive embodiment is maintained by internally focused tools, such as self-care practices that support physiological health, emotional well-being, and effective cognitive functioning. For those who suffer from eating disorders, this is not the case; in fact, the opposite is true. Disordered thinking, an unattuned sense of self, and negative cognitions abound. Turning this thinking around is key to client resilience and treatment successes. Catherine Cook-Cottone provides tools for clinicians working with clients to restore their healthy selves and use their bodies as a positive resource for healing and long-term health. The book goes beyond traditional treatments to talk about mindful self-care, mindful eating, yoga, and other practices designed to support self-regulation.

The Meaning of the Body

Author : Mark Johnson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 022602699X
Total Pages : 330 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis The Meaning of the Body by : Mark Johnson

Download or read book The Meaning of the Body written by Mark Johnson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2012-06-29 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Meaning of the Body, Mark Johnson continues his pioneering work on the exciting connections between cognitive science, language, and meaning first begun in the classic Metaphors We Live By. Johnson uses recent research into infant psychology to show how the body generates meaning even before self-consciousness has fully developed. From there he turns to cognitive neuroscience to further explore the bodily origins of meaning, thought, and language and examines the many dimensions of meaning—including images, qualities, emotions, and metaphors—that are all rooted in the body’s physical encounters with the world. Drawing on the psychology of art and pragmatist philosophy, Johnson argues that all of these aspects of meaning-making are fundamentally aesthetic. He concludes that the arts are the culmination of human attempts to find meaning and that studying the aesthetic dimensions of our experience is crucial to unlocking meaning's bodily sources. Throughout, Johnson puts forth a bold new conception of the mind rooted in the understanding that philosophy will matter to nonphilosophers only if it is built on a visceral connection to the world. “Mark Johnson demonstrates that the aesthetic and emotional aspects of meaning are fundamental—central to conceptual meaning and reason, and that the arts show meaning-making in its fullest realization. If you were raised with the idea that art and emotion were external to ideas and reason, you must read this book. It grounds philosophy in our most visceral experience.”—George Lakoff, author of Moral Politics

Radical Wholeness

Author : Philip Shepherd
Publisher : North Atlantic Books
ISBN 13 : 1623171776
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (231 download)

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Book Synopsis Radical Wholeness by : Philip Shepherd

Download or read book Radical Wholeness written by Philip Shepherd and published by North Atlantic Books. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are qualities we all yearn to experience in our lives—peace, simplicity, grace, connection, clarity. Yet these qualities evade us because each of them arises from an experience of wholeness, and we live in a culture that enforces divisions within each of us. In Radical Wholeness, Philip Shepherd shows the countless ways in which we are persuaded to separate from the body and live in the head. Disconnected from the body’s intelligence, we also disconnect from the wholeness of the present. This schism within us is the primary source of stress not just in our personal lives, but for the systems of the planet. Drawing from neuroscience, anthropology, physics, the arts, myth, personal stories and his experiences helping people around the world to experience wholeness, Philip Shepherd illuminates what true wholeness means and offers practices designed to help readers soften into the intelligence of the body. Radical Wholeness is a call to action: to recover wholeness and experience a new way of being.

Embodiment and Agency

Author : Sue Campbell
Publisher : Penn State Press
ISBN 13 : 0271048085
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (71 download)

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Book Synopsis Embodiment and Agency by : Sue Campbell

Download or read book Embodiment and Agency written by Sue Campbell and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics

Author : Barbara Dancygier
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108146139
Total Pages : 1427 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (81 download)

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Book Synopsis The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics by : Barbara Dancygier

Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics written by Barbara Dancygier and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-06-01 with total page 1427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The best survey of cognitive linguistics available, this Handbook provides a thorough explanation of its rich methodology, key results, and interdisciplinary context. With in-depth coverage of the research questions, basic concepts, and various theoretical approaches, the Handbook addresses newly emerging subfields and shows their contribution to the discipline. The Handbook introduces fields of study that have become central to cognitive linguistics, such as conceptual mappings and construction grammar. It explains all the main areas of linguistic analysis traditionally expected in a full linguistics framework, and includes fields of study such as language acquisition, sociolinguistics, diachronic studies, and corpus linguistics. Setting linguistic facts within the context of many other disciplines, the Handbook will be welcomed by researchers and students in a broad range of disciplines, including linguistics, cognitive science, neuroscience, gesture studies, computational linguistics, and multimodal studies.

The Wisdom of Your Body

Author : Hillary L. PhD McBride
Publisher : Brazos Press
ISBN 13 : 149343389X
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (934 download)

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Book Synopsis The Wisdom of Your Body by : Hillary L. PhD McBride

Download or read book The Wisdom of Your Body written by Hillary L. PhD McBride and published by Brazos Press. This book was released on 2021-10-12 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of us have a complicated relationship with our body. Maybe you've been made to feel ashamed of your body or like it isn't good enough. Maybe your body is riddled with stress, pain, or the effects of trauma. Maybe you think of your body as an accessory to what you believe you really are--your mind. Maybe your experiences with racism, sexism, ableism, heterosexism, ageism, or sizeism have made you believe your body isn't the right kind of body. Whatever the reason, many of us don't feel at home in our bodies. But being disconnected from ourselves as bodies means being disconnected from truly living and from the interconnection that weaves us all together. Psychologist and award-winning researcher Hillary McBride explores the broken and unhealthy ideas we have inherited about our body. Embodiment is the way we are in the world, and our embodiment is heavily influenced by who we have been allowed to be. McBride shows that many of us feel disembodied due to colonization, racism, sexism, and patriarchy--destructive systems that rank certain bodies as less valuable, beautiful, or human than others. Embracing our embodiment can liberate us from these systems. As we come to understand the world around us and the stories we've been told, we see that our perspective of reality often limits how we see and experience ourselves, each other, and what we believe is Sacred. Instead of the body being a problem to overcome, our bodies can be the very place where we feel most alive, the seat of our spirituality and our wisdom. The Wisdom of Your Body offers a compassionate, healthy, and holistic perspective on embodied living. Weaving together illuminating research, stories from her work as a therapist, and deeply personal narratives of healing from a life-threatening eating disorder, a near-fatal car accident, and chronic pain, McBride invites us to reclaim the wisdom of the body and to experience the wholeness that has been there all along. End-of-chapter questions and practices are included.

Reading and Writing Disability Differently

Author : Tanya Titchkosky
Publisher : University of Toronto Press
ISBN 13 : 1442691557
Total Pages : 399 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (426 download)

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Book Synopsis Reading and Writing Disability Differently by : Tanya Titchkosky

Download or read book Reading and Writing Disability Differently written by Tanya Titchkosky and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2007-05-05 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mixing rigorous social theory with concrete analysis, Reading and Writing Disability Differently unpacks the marginality of disabled people by addressing how the meaning of our bodily existence is configured in everyday literate society. Tanya Titchkosky begins by illustrating how news media and policy texts reveal dominant Western ways of constituting the meaning of people, and the meaning of problems, as they relate to our understandings of the embodied self. Her goal is to configure disability as something more than a problem, and beyond simply a positive or a negative, and to treat texts on disability as potential sites to examine neo-liberal culture. Titchkosky holds that through an exploration of the potential behind limited representations of disability, we can relate to disability as a meaningful form of resistance to the restricted normative order of contemporary embodiment. Incorporating a textual analysis of ordinary depictions of disability, this innovative study promises to represent embodied differences in new ways and alter our imaginative relations to the politics of the body.

Materialist Ethics and Life-Value

Author : Jeff Noonan
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 0773588108
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (735 download)

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Book Synopsis Materialist Ethics and Life-Value by : Jeff Noonan

Download or read book Materialist Ethics and Life-Value written by Jeff Noonan and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2012-02-02 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Current patterns of global economic activity are not only unsustainable, but unethical - this claim is central to Materialist Ethics and Life-Value. Grounding the definition of ethical value in the natural and social requirements of life-support and life-development shared by all human beings, Jeff Noonan provides a new way of understanding the universal conception of "the good life." Noonan argues that the true crisis affecting the world today is not sluggish rates of economic growth but the model of measuring economic and social health in terms of money-value. In response, he develops an alternative understanding of good societies where the breadth and depth of life-activity and enjoyment are dependent on dominant institutions. The more social institutions satisfy the necessary requirements of human life, the more they empower each person to develop and enjoy the capacities that make human life valuable and meaningful. A well-reasoned synthesis of traditional philosophical concerns and contemporary critiques of global capitalism, this book is a forward-looking treatise that defends political struggle and reconsiders what is most important for a happy life.

Critical Humanism and the Politics of Difference

Author : Jeff Noonan
Publisher : McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN 13 : 077357123X
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (735 download)

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Book Synopsis Critical Humanism and the Politics of Difference by : Jeff Noonan

Download or read book Critical Humanism and the Politics of Difference written by Jeff Noonan and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2003-09-05 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noonan shows that at the core of postmodern philosophy, with its claim that culture creates humans, is a concern to dethrone the modern understanding of human beings as subjects, as builders of their world and free when those world-building activities are the outcome of free choices. He explains that because the postmodern conception of human being does not capture what is universal in all humans it is incapable of critically responding to the forcible subordination of different cultures to European "humanity." When oppressed groups explain why they struggle against oppression, they invoke just that idea of human being as subjectivity that postmodern philosophy claims is the basis of oppression. Noonan argues that the voices of cultural differences, when they struggle against the forces of hatred and exclusion, do not ground themselves just in the particular value of their culture but in the universal value of human freedom and self-determination.

Insecure at Last

Author : Eve Ensler
Publisher : Villard
ISBN 13 : 1588365700
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (883 download)

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Book Synopsis Insecure at Last by : Eve Ensler

Download or read book Insecure at Last written by Eve Ensler and published by Villard. This book was released on 2006-10-03 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Why has all this focus on security made me feel so much more insecure? Nothing is secure. And this is the good news. But only if you are not seeking security as the point of your life.”–Eve Ensler When her stage play The Vagina Monologues became a runaway hit and an international sensation, Eve Ensler emerged as a powerful voice and champion for women everywhere. Now the brilliant playwright gives us her first major work written exclusively for the printed page. Insecure at Last is a timely and urgent look at our security-obsessed world, the drastic measures taken to keep us safe, and how we can truly experience freedom by letting go of the deceptive notion of vigilant “protection.” Ensler draws on personal experiences and candid interviews with burka-clad women in Afghanistan; female prisoners in upstate New York; survivors at the Superdome after Katrina; and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan–sharing unforgettable snapshots that chronicle a post-9/11 existence in which hyped obsession for safety and security has undermined our humanity. The us-versus-them mentality, Ensler explains, has closed our minds and hardened our compassionate hearts. Provocative, illuminating, inspiring, and boldly envisioned, Insecure at Last challenges us to reconsider what it means to be free, to discover that our strength is not born out of that which protects us. Ensler offers us the opportunity to reevaluate our everyday lives, expose our vulnerability, and, in doing so, experience true freedom and fulfillment.

The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge

Author : Charles T. Wolfe
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9048136865
Total Pages : 347 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (481 download)

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Book Synopsis The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge by : Charles T. Wolfe

Download or read book The Body as Object and Instrument of Knowledge written by Charles T. Wolfe and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-04-07 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was in 1660s England, according to the received view, in the Royal Society of London, that science acquired the form of empirical enquiry we recognize as our own: an open, collaborative experimental practice, mediated by specially-designed instruments, supported by civil discourse, stressing accuracy and replicability. Guided by the philosophy of Francis Bacon, by Protestant ideas of this worldly benevolence, by gentlemanly codes of decorum and by a dominant interest in mechanics and the mechanical structure of the universe, the members of the Royal Society created a novel experimental practice that superseded former modes of empirical inquiry, from Aristotelian observations to alchemical experimentation. This volume focuses on the development of empiricism as an interest in the body – as both the object of research and the subject of experience. Re-embodying empiricism shifts the focus of interest to the ‘life sciences’; medicine, physiology, natural history. In fact, many of the active members of the Royal Society were physicians, and a significant number of those, disciples of William Harvey and through him, inheritors of the empirical anatomy practices developed in Padua during the 16th century. Indeed, the primary research interests of the early Royal Society were concentrated on the body, human and animal, and its functions much more than on mechanics. Similarly, the Académie des Sciences directly contradicted its self-imposed mandate to investigate Nature in mechanistic fashion, devoting a significant portion of its Mémoires to questions concerning life, reproduction and monsters, consulting empirical botanists, apothecaries and chemists, and keeping closer to experience than to the Cartesian standards of well-founded knowledge. These highlighted empirical studies of the body, were central in a workshop in the beginning of 2009 organized by the unit for History and Philosophy of Science in Sydney. The papers that were presented by some of the leading figures in this area are presented in this volume.