Useful Fictions

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Useful Fictions

Author : Michael Austin
Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
ISBN 13 : 0803232977
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (32 download)

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Book Synopsis Useful Fictions by : Michael Austin

Download or read book Useful Fictions written by Michael Austin and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2011-01-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We tell ourselves stories in order to live," Joan Didion observed inThe White Album. Why is this? Michael Austin asks, inUseful Fictions. Why, in particular, are human beings, whose very survival depends on obtaining true information, so drawn to fictional narratives? After all, virtually every human culture reveres some form of storytelling. Might there be an evolutionary reason behind our species' need for stories? Drawing on evolutionary biology, anthropology, narrative theory, cognitive psychology, game theory, and evolutionary aesthetics, Austin develops the concept of a "useful fiction," a simple narrative that serves an adaptive function unrelated to its factual accuracy. In his work we see how these useful fictions play a key role in neutralizing the overwhelming anxiety that humans can experience as their minds gather and process information. Rudimentary narratives constructed for this purpose, Austin suggests, provided a cognitive scaffold that might have become the basis for our well-documented love of fictional stories. Written in clear, jargon-free prose and employing abundant literary examplesfrom the Bible toOne Thousand and One Arabian NightsandDon QuixotetoNo ExitAustin's work offers a new way of understanding the relationship between fiction and evolutionary processesand, perhaps, the very origins of literature.

Bentham's Theory of Fictions

Author : Jeremy Bentham
Publisher : Psychology Press
ISBN 13 : 9780415225557
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (255 download)

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Book Synopsis Bentham's Theory of Fictions by : Jeremy Bentham

Download or read book Bentham's Theory of Fictions written by Jeremy Bentham and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Neo-Kantian Reader

Author : Sebastian Luft
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040294790
Total Pages : 538 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (42 download)

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Book Synopsis The Neo-Kantian Reader by : Sebastian Luft

Download or read book The Neo-Kantian Reader written by Sebastian Luft and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-11-01 with total page 538 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The latter half of the nineteenth and the early part of the twentieth century witnessed a remarkable resurgence of interest in Kant’s philosophy in Continental Europe, the effects of which are still being felt today. The Neo-Kantian Reader is the first anthology to collect the most important primary sources in Neo-Kantian philosophy, with many being published here in English for the first time. It includes extracts on a rich and diverse number of subjects, including logic, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, and transcendental idealism. Sebastian Luft, together with other scholars, provides clear introductions to each of the following sections (to the authors as well as to each text), placing them in historical and philosophical context: the beginnings of Neo-Kantianism: including the work of Hermann von Helmholtz, Otto Liebman, Friedrich Lange, and Hermann Lotze the Marburg School: including Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, and Ernst Cassirer the Southwest School: including Wilhelm Windelband, Heinrich Rickert, Emil Lask, and Hans Vaihinger responses and critiques: including Moritz Schlick, Edmund Husserl; Rudolf Carnap, and the 'Davos dispute' between Martin Heidegger and Ernst Cassirer. The Neo-Kantian Reader is essential reading for all students of Kant, nineteenth and twentieth century philosophy, history and philosophy of science, and phenomenology, as well as to those studying important philosophical movements such as logical positivism and analytic philosophy and its history.

Logical Fictions

Author : Frederick Bauer
Publisher : iUniverse
ISBN 13 : 0595450520
Total Pages : 78 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (954 download)

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Book Synopsis Logical Fictions by : Frederick Bauer

Download or read book Logical Fictions written by Frederick Bauer and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2007-12 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The media bombard us with claims that are often strange, unclear, and even upsetting. Quantum physicists claim that "vacuum nothingness" is not really nothing, because it teems with energy and virtual particles. Psychological research suggests that most of our neighbors suffer from some degree of mental disorder. Social scientists assure us that science itself is simply a cultural myth. Can anyone sort out fact from fiction in today's world? The answer, thankfully, is "Yes " But first, you must make a radical shift in your approach, because serious thinking about reality involves serious thinking about fiction, not only in your everyday mind, but also in the scholarly and technical realms. For anyone who has ever wondered-and you should wonder-whether there really are such things as government, society, the economy, or even marriage, the deeply philosophical and utterly practical Logical Fictions shows you how a solid grounding in logic and language can help you avoid getting trapped by the ideological fictions prevalent in today's sophisticated world. Consider yourself warned: humorous and filled with entertaining examples, this book will stretch your brain and provoke your thoughts. Your view of the world may never be the same.

Fictions in Science

Author : Mauricio Suárez
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135854718
Total Pages : 494 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (358 download)

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Book Synopsis Fictions in Science by : Mauricio Suárez

Download or read book Fictions in Science written by Mauricio Suárez and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2008-10-26 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science is popularly understood as being an ideal of impartial algorithmic objectivity that provides us with a realistic description of the world down to the last detail. The essays collected in this book—written by some of the leading experts in the field—challenge this popular image right at its heart, taking as their starting point that science trades not only in truth, but in fiction, too. With case studies that range from physics to economics and to biology, Fictions in Science reveals that fictions are as ubiquitous in scientific narratives and practice as they are in any other human endeavor, including literature and art. Of course scientific activity, most prominently in the formal sciences, employs logically precise algorithmic thinking. However, the key to the predictive and technological success of the empirical sciences might well lie elsewhere—perhaps even in scientists’ extraordinary creative imagination instead. As these essays demonstrate, within the bounds of what is empirically possible, a scientist’s capacity for invention and creative thinking matches that of any writer or artist.

Fictions of Consent

Author : Urvashi Chakravarty
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812298268
Total Pages : 307 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (122 download)

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Book Synopsis Fictions of Consent by : Urvashi Chakravarty

Download or read book Fictions of Consent written by Urvashi Chakravarty and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2022-03-22 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Fictions of Consent Urvashi Chakravarty excavates the ideologies of slavery that took root in early modern England in the period that preceded the development of an organized trade in enslaved persons. Despite the persistent fiction that England was innocent of racialized slavery, Chakravarty argues that we must hold early modern England—and its narratives of exceptional and essential freedom—to account for the frameworks of slavery that it paradoxically but strategically engendered. Slavery was not a foreign or faraway phenomenon, she demonstrates; rather, the ideologies of slavery were seeded in the quotidian spaces of English life and in the everyday contexts of England's service society, from the family to the household, in the theater and, especially, the grammar school classroom, where the legacies of classical slavery and race were inherited and negotiated. The English conscripted the Roman freedman's figurative "stain of slavery" to register an immutable sign of bondage and to secure slavery to epidermal difference, even as early modern frameworks of "volitional service" provided the strategies for later fictions of "happy slavery" in the Atlantic world. Early modern texts presage the heritability of slavery in early America, reveal the embeddedness of slavery within the family, and illuminate the ways in which bloodlines of descent underwrite the racialized futures of enslavement. Fictions of Consent intervenes in a number of areas including early modern literary and cultural studies, premodern critical race studies, the reception of classical antiquity, and the histories of law, education, and labor to uncover the conceptual genealogies of slavery and servitude and to reveal the everyday sites where the foundations of racialized slavery were laid. Although early modern England claimed to have "too pure an Air for Slaves to breathe in," Chakravarty reveals slavery was a quintessentially English phenomenon.

The Philosopher's Toolkit

Author : Peter S. Fosl
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1119103231
Total Pages : 384 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (191 download)

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Book Synopsis The Philosopher's Toolkit by : Peter S. Fosl

Download or read book The Philosopher's Toolkit written by Peter S. Fosl and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new edition of the bestselling guide to the study of philosophy: the ideal intellectual ‘toolkit’ for sharpening analytical skills and building philosophical acuity Whether used as a guide to basic principles or a resource for key concepts and methods, The Philosopher's Toolkit equips readers with all the intellectual ‘tools’ necessary for engaging closely with philosophical argument and developing fluency in the methods and language of philosophical inquiry. Featuring accessible explanations, practical examples, and expert guidance, this text empowers readers to understand traditional philosophical thinking and to engage with new ideas. Focuses on the practical methods and concepts necessary for philosophical inquiry Presents a versatile resource for both novice and advanced students in areas of philosophy, critical theory, and rhetoric Adopts a pluralistic approach to teaching philosophy, making this a suitable resource for many courses Delivers extensive cross-referenced entries, recommended readings, and updated online resources Covers an array of topics, from basic tools of argumentation to sophisticated philosophical principles Fully revised and updated to include new topics and entries as well as expanded recommended reading lists to encourage further study

Dionysus Reborn

Author : Mihai Spariosu
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780801423277
Total Pages : 342 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (232 download)

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Book Synopsis Dionysus Reborn by : Mihai Spariosu

Download or read book Dionysus Reborn written by Mihai Spariosu and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1989 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mihai Spariosu here explores the significance of the closely linked concepts of play and aestheticism in philosophical and scientific discourse since the end of the eighteenth century. Spariosu points out that since its birth in archaic and classical Hellenic thought the concept of play has always been subject to the influences of various rational and prerational sets of values. Spariosu maintains that there have been not one but two major modern concepts of aestheticism: artistic aestheticism, related to a prerational mentality and introduced in modern thought by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche; and philosophicalscientific aestheticism, initiated by Kant and Schiller and shaped by rationalism. According to Spariosu, the first has often arisen in response to the attempts of philosophy and science to impose their standards on art, and the second has often been called on to deal with the epistemological crises that periodically shake these disciplines. Spariosu also looks closely at some of the play concepts that surface in modern science in connection with the Darwinian theory of evolution and the play of scientific discourse itself, as exemplified by the new physics and the contemporary philosophy of science. A penetrating and cogently argued book, Dionysus Reborn will be welcomed by readers interested in Continental philosophy, scientific discourse, and the aesthetics of play, including literary theorists, comparatists, philosophers, intellectual historians, and social scientists.

The Fictions of American Capitalism

Author : Jacques-Henri Coste
Publisher : Springer Nature
ISBN 13 : 3030365646
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (33 download)

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Book Synopsis The Fictions of American Capitalism by : Jacques-Henri Coste

Download or read book The Fictions of American Capitalism written by Jacques-Henri Coste and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-02-26 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Fictions of American Capitalism: Working Fictions and the Economic Novel introduces a new way of thinking about fiction in connection with capitalism, especially American capitalism. These essays demonstrate how fiction fulfills a major function of the American capitalist engine, presenting various formulations of American capitalism from the perspective of economists, social scientists, and literary critics. Focusing on three narratives—fictitious capital, working fictions, and the economic novel—the volume questions whether these three types of fiction can be linked under the sign of capitalism. This collection seeks to illustrate the American economy’s dependence on fictitiousness, America’s ideological fictions, and the nation’s creative literary fiction. In relation to what the credit and banking crisis of 2007–2008 exposed about the “unreal” base of the economy, the volume concludes with a call to recognize the economic humanities, arguing that American fiction and American literary studies can provide a useful mirror for economists.

Fictions of the Cosmos

Author : Frédérique Aït-Touati
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 0226011240
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (26 download)

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Book Synopsis Fictions of the Cosmos by : Frédérique Aït-Touati

Download or read book Fictions of the Cosmos written by Frédérique Aït-Touati and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2011-10-14 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In today’s academe, the fields of science and literature are considered unconnected, one relying on raw data and fact, the other focusing on fiction. During the period between the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, however, the two fields were not so distinct. Just as the natural philosophers of the era were discovering in and adopting from literature new strategies and techniques for their discourse, so too were poets and storytellers finding inspiration in natural philosophy, particularly in astronomy. A work that speaks to the history of science and literary studies, Fictions of the Cosmos explores the evolving relationship that ensued between fiction and astronomical authority. By examining writings of Kepler, Godwin, Hooke, Cyrano, Cavendish, Fontenelle, and others, Frédérique Aït-Touati shows that it was through the telling of stories—such as through accounts of celestial journeys—that the Copernican hypothesis, for example, found an ontological weight that its geometric models did not provide. Aït-Touati draws from both cosmological treatises and fictions of travel and knowledge, as well as personal correspondences, drawings, and instruments, to emphasize the multiple borrowings between scientific and literary discourses. This volume sheds new light on the practices of scientific invention, experimentation, and hypothesis formation by situating them according to their fictional or factual tendencies.

Two Dimensions of Meaning

Author : Andrew Goatly
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000600246
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (6 download)

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Book Synopsis Two Dimensions of Meaning by : Andrew Goatly

Download or read book Two Dimensions of Meaning written by Andrew Goatly and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-30 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book takes as its point of departure the notion that similarity and contiguity are fundamental to meaning. It shows how they manifest in oral, literate, print, and internet cultures, in language acquisition, pragmatics, dialogism, classification, the semantics of grammar, literature, and, most centrally, metaphor and metonymy. The book situates these reflections on similarity and contiguity in the interplay of language, cognition, culture, and ideology, and within broader debates around such issues as capitalism, biodiversity, and human control over nature. Positing that while similarity-focused systems can be reductive, and have therefore been contested in social science, philosophy, and poetry, and contiguity-based ones might disregard useful statistical and scientific evidence, Andrew Goatly argues for the need for humans to entertain diverse metaphors, models, and languages as ways of understanding and acting on our world. The volume also considers the cognitive connections between the similarity-contiguity duality and the noun-verb distinction. This innovative volume will appeal to scholars involved in wider debates on meaning, within the fields of cognitive semantics, pragmatics, metaphor and metonymy theory, critical discourse analysis, and the philosophy of language. Equally, the motivated and intelligent general reader, interested in language, philosophy, culture, and ecology, should find the later chapters of the book fascinating, and the earlier technical chapters accessible.

Synthetic Aesthetics

Author : Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 0262534010
Total Pages : 372 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (625 download)

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Book Synopsis Synthetic Aesthetics by : Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg

Download or read book Synthetic Aesthetics written by Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2017-01-06 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As synthetic biology transforms living matter into a medium for making, what is the role of design and its associated values? Synthetic biology manipulates the stuff of life. For synthetic biologists, living matter is programmable material. In search of carbon-neutral fuels, sustainable manufacturing techniques, and innovative drugs, these researchers aim to redesign existing organisms and even construct completely novel biological entities. Some synthetic biologists see themselves as designers, inventing new products and applications. But if biology is viewed as a malleable, engineerable, designable medium, what is the role of design and how will its values apply? In this book, synthetic biologists, artists, designers, and social scientists investigate synthetic biology and design. After chapters that introduce the science and set the terms of the discussion, the book follows six boundary-crossing collaborations between artists and designers and synthetic biologists from around the world, helping us understand what it might mean to 'design nature.' These collaborations have resulted in biological computers that calculate form; speculative packaging that builds its own contents; algae that feeds on circuit boards; and a sampling of human cheeses. They raise intriguing questions about the scientific process, the delegation of creativity, our relationship to designed matter, and, the importance of critical engagement. Should these projects be considered art, design, synthetic biology, or something else altogether? Synthetic biology is driven by its potential; some of these projects are fictions, beyond the current capabilities of the technology. Yet even as fictions, they help illuminate, question, and even shape the future of the field.

Economics of Good and Evil

Author : Tomas Sedlacek
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199830614
Total Pages : 365 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis Economics of Good and Evil by : Tomas Sedlacek

Download or read book Economics of Good and Evil written by Tomas Sedlacek and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tomas Sedlacek has shaken the study of economics as few ever have. Named one of the "Young Guns" and one of the "five hot minds in economics" by the Yale Economic Review, he serves on the National Economic Council in Prague, where his provocative writing has achieved bestseller status. How has he done it? By arguing a simple, almost heretical proposition: economics is ultimately about good and evil. In The Economics of Good and Evil, Sedlacek radically rethinks his field, challenging our assumptions about the world. Economics is touted as a science, a value-free mathematical inquiry, he writes, but it's actually a cultural phenomenon, a product of our civilization. It began within philosophy--Adam Smith himself not only wrote The Wealth of Nations, but also The Theory of Moral Sentiments--and economics, as Sedlacek shows, is woven out of history, myth, religion, and ethics. "Even the most sophisticated mathematical model," Sedlacek writes, "is, de facto, a story, a parable, our effort to (rationally) grasp the world around us." Economics not only describes the world, but establishes normative standards, identifying ideal conditions. Science, he claims, is a system of beliefs to which we are committed. To grasp the beliefs underlying economics, he breaks out of the field's confines with a tour de force exploration of economic thinking, broadly defined, over the millennia. He ranges from the epic of Gilgamesh and the Old Testament to the emergence of Christianity, from Descartes and Adam Smith to the consumerism in Fight Club. Throughout, he asks searching meta-economic questions: What is the meaning and the point of economics? Can we do ethically all that we can do technically? Does it pay to be good? Placing the wisdom of philosophers and poets over strict mathematical models of human behavior, Sedlacek's groundbreaking work promises to change the way we calculate economic value.

ESSENTIALS OF THE LAW. VOL.III COMPRISING THE ESSENTIAL PARTS OF POLLOCK ON TORTS; WILLIAMS ON REAL PROPERTY AND BEST ON EVIDENCE FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS AT LAW.

Download ESSENTIALS OF THE LAW. VOL.III COMPRISING THE ESSENTIAL PARTS OF POLLOCK ON TORTS; WILLIAMS ON REAL PROPERTY AND BEST ON EVIDENCE FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS AT LAW. PDF Online Free

Author : MARSHALL D. EWELL
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 368 pages
Book Rating : 4./5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis ESSENTIALS OF THE LAW. VOL.III COMPRISING THE ESSENTIAL PARTS OF POLLOCK ON TORTS; WILLIAMS ON REAL PROPERTY AND BEST ON EVIDENCE FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS AT LAW. by : MARSHALL D. EWELL

Download or read book ESSENTIALS OF THE LAW. VOL.III COMPRISING THE ESSENTIAL PARTS OF POLLOCK ON TORTS; WILLIAMS ON REAL PROPERTY AND BEST ON EVIDENCE FOR THE USE OF STUDENTS AT LAW. written by MARSHALL D. EWELL and published by . This book was released on 1888 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Essentials of the Law ...: Elementary law ... with notes and references for the use of students at law

Author : Marshall Davis Ewell
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 1064 pages
Book Rating : 4.A/5 ( download)

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Book Synopsis Essentials of the Law ...: Elementary law ... with notes and references for the use of students at law by : Marshall Davis Ewell

Download or read book Essentials of the Law ...: Elementary law ... with notes and references for the use of students at law written by Marshall Davis Ewell and published by . This book was released on 1915 with total page 1064 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Beyond Mastering

Author : Steve Turnidge
Publisher : Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN 13 : 1480366838
Total Pages : 210 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (83 download)

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Book Synopsis Beyond Mastering by : Steve Turnidge

Download or read book Beyond Mastering written by Steve Turnidge and published by Hal Leonard Corporation. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Music Pro Guide Books & DVDs). In his first book, Desktop Mastering , Steve Turnidge unveiled his unique approach to mastering in the box, all the while providing glimpses of his mind-set and resulting workflow. Now, in Beyond Mastering , Turnidge pulls back the veil to give a tour of the physics and philosophy driving the mastering engineer, and the internal state required for happiness and success. By definition, universal truths can be expressed in any medium. In this book, these truths are revealed through the art of mastering, building on the step-by-step methods explained in Desktop Mastering , related in well-developed metaphor and analogy. Beyond Mastering is full of guiding principles gained from Turnidge's more than 25 years at the forefront of art and technology.

A Useful Fiction

Author : Patrick Hannan
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 212 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (91 download)

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Book Synopsis A Useful Fiction by : Patrick Hannan

Download or read book A Useful Fiction written by Patrick Hannan and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political broadcaster Patrick Hannan asks the question: what principles should underlie the democratic running of Britain and its constituent parts and how should the parliamentary system change as those parts devolve?