In his final book, the late Arthur Hatto analyses the Khanty epic tradition in Siberia on the basis of eighteen texts of Khanty oral heroic epic poems recorded and edited by a succession of Hungarian and Russian scholars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The book examines the world view of an indigenous culture as reconstructed from its own words, demonstrates a flexible outline for organising an analytical dossier of the genre of oral heroic epic poetry in a specific culture, and presents an abundance of new information to compare with better-known heroic epics. Consisting of main sections on The Cosmos, Time, The Seasons, Geography, Spirits, Personae, Warfare, Armour and Weapons, and Men's Handiwork, the book also includes a section of background information on the Khanty people. Marianne Bakró-Nagy contributes specialist knowledge of the Khanty language to the linguistic interpretation of the texts, and there is an afterword by Daniel Prior.
The Little Book of Big History is an endeavor to encapsulate the entire story of the cosmos, from the Big Bang to the current day, into an engaging and comprehensive narrative. Combining methods from
Welcome to the Universe is a personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson,
Explore the star-studded cosmos with this fully updated, user-friendly skywatcher's guide, filled with charts, graphics, photographs, and expert tips for viewing -- and understanding -- the wonders of
Told through the lens of a guy in love with the cosmos (and maybe two girls), The Universal Laws of Marco explores the complicated histories that bring us together and tear us apart.In the summer befo
The novel understanding of the physical world that characterized the Scientific Revolution depended on a fundamental shift in the way its protagonists understood and described space. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, spatial phenomena were described in relation to a presupposed central point; by its end, space had become a centerless void in which phenomena could only be described by reference to arbitrary orientations. David Marshall Miller examines both the historical and philosophical aspects of this far-reaching development, including the rejection of the idea of heavenly spheres, the advent of rectilinear inertia, and the theoretical contributions of Copernicus, Gilbert, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. His rich study shows clearly how the centered Aristotelian cosmos became the oriented Newtonian universe, and will be of great interest to students and scholars of the history and philosophy of science.
In the first full-length study in any modern language dedicated to the Meteorologica, Malcolm Wilson presents a groundbreaking interpretation of Aristotle's natural philosophy. Divided into two parts, the book first addresses general philosophical and scientific issues by placing the treatise in a diachronic frame comprising Aristotle's predecessors and in a synchronic frame comprising his other physical works. It argues that Aristotle thought of meteorological phenomena as intermediary or 'dualizing' between the cosmos as a whole and the manifold world of terrestrial animals. Engaging with the best current literature on Aristotle's theories of science and metaphysics, Wilson focuses on issues of aetiology, teleology and the structure and unity of science. The second half of the book illustrates Aristotle's principal concerns in a section-by-section treatment of the meteorological phenomena and provides solutions to many of the problems that have been raised since the time of the ancie
Jonathan Bennett's analysis of the second half of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, in which Kant concerns himself with topics such as substance, the nature of the self, the cosmos, freedom and the existence of God, continues to be an engaging and accessible exploration of Kant's major work. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and including a specially commissioned preface written by Karl Ameriks, illuminating its enduring importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this influential work has been revived for a new generation of readers.
This is the first thorough English commentary on the geographical books of Pliny the Elder, written in the AD 70s. Pliny's account is the longest in Latin, and represents the geographical knowledge of that era, when the Roman Empire was the dominant force in the Mediterranean world. The work serves both cultural and ideological functions: much of it is topographical, but it also demonstrates the political need to express a geographical basis for the importance of the Roman state. In five books, Pliny covers the entire world as it was known in his era and includes some of the first information on the extremities of the inhabited region, including Scandinavia and the Baltic, eastern Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. The commentary provides a detailed analysis of all the points Pliny raises: his sources, toponyms, and understanding of the place of the earth in the cosmos.
Written by a group of leading scholars, this unique collection of essays investigates the views of both pagan and Christian philosophers on causation and the creation of the cosmos. Structured in two parts, the volume first looks at divine agency and how late antique thinkers, including the Stoics, Plotinus, Porphyry, Simplicius, Philoponus and Gregory of Nyssa, tackled questions such as: is the cosmos eternal? Did it come from nothing or from something pre-existing? How was it caused to come into existence? Is it material or immaterial? The second part looks at questions concerning human agency and responsibility, including the problem of evil and the nature of will, considering thinkers such as Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus and Augustine. Highlighting some of the most important and interesting aspects of these philosophical debates, the volume will be of great interest to upper-level students and scholars of philosophy, classics, theology and ancient history.
Everyone has a worldview. A worldview is the lens through which we interpret the cosmos and our lives in it. A worldview answers the big questions of life: What is our nature? What is our world? What
Do you feel the soul of another calling to you? Do you know in your heart that your destiny and his wore meant to merge In the cosmos? We can help you find him. When Romiette Cappelle and her best
The ordinary atoms that make up the known universe--from our bodies and the air we breathe to the planets and stars--constitute only 5 percent of all matter and energy in the cosmos. The rest is known
Whatever the target of our effort to know--whether we probe the origin of the cosmos, the fabric of man-made symbols and culture, or simply the layout of our immediate environment--all knowledge is g
In a desperate attempt for survival, a peaceful civilization on a faraway planet besieged by a dark lord sends its most precious gift across the cosmos into the lunchbox of sixth-grader Tommy Pepper o
This 2003 book develops the basic underlying physics required for a fuller, richer understanding of the science of astrophysics and the important astronomical phenomena it describes. The cosmos manifests phenomena in which physics can appear in its most extreme, and therefore more insightful, forms. A proper understanding of phenomena like black holes, quasars and extrasolar planets requires that we understand the physics that underlies all of astrophysics. Consequently, developing astrophysical concepts from fundamental physics has the potential to achieve two goals: to derive a better understanding of astrophysical phenomena from first principles and to illuminate the physics from which the astrophysics is developed. To that end, astrophysical topics are grouped according to the relevant areas of physics. The book is ideal as a text for graduate and advanced undergraduate students as well as a reference for established researchers.
Professor of Music at Colgate University and a widely respected musicologist, Godwin traces the history of the idea, held since ancient times, that the whole cosmos, with its circling planets and sta
This festschrift volume is dedicated to William Liller, a noted observational astronomer who is now retired from a Harvard University named professorship. Nineteen of Liller's colleagues and former students (as well as Liller himself) give insightful reviews of the current state of a broad range of frontier astrophysical areas from the solar system to the limits of the observable universe. The reviews are of special interest to professional astronomers and students of astronomy, and are also accessible to the interested nonspecialist reader. The articles are well suited for providing graduate students in astronomy with an introduction to these topics. The authors describe their personal involvement in important research advances and convey a sense of the excitement of scientific discovery. The reader is given an overview of the advanced techniques used by today's observational astronomers for probing the mysteries of the cosmos, and of the theoretical interpretation of the observationa
As a biblical motif, 'new creation' resonates throughout the pages of the Jewish and Christian scriptures, and occupies a central place in the apostle Paul's vision of the Christian life. Yet the biblical and extra-biblical occurrences of this theme vary widely in meaning, referring to either a new cosmos, a new community, or a new individual. Beginning with the Old Testament and working through the important texts of Second Temple Judaism, Moyer V. Hubbard focuses on how the motif functions in the argument, strategy, and literary structure of these documents, highlighting its role as the solution to the perceived plight. He then explores in detail which senses of the term Paul intends in Galatians 6.15 and 2 Corinthians 5.17, concluding that 'new creation' in Paul's letters describes the Spirit-wrought newness of the person in Christ, and is fundamentally anthropological in orientation.
The growth of science and a correspondingly scientific way of looking at evidence have for the last three centuries slowly been gaining ground over religious explanations of the cosmos and mankind's place in it. However, not only is secularism now under renewed attack from religious fundamentalism, but it has also been widely claimed that the scientific evidence itself points strongly to a universe deliberately fine-tuned for life to evolve in it. In addition, certain aspects of human life, like consciousness and the ability to recognise the existence of universal moral standards, seem completely resistant to evolutionary explanation. In this book Colin Howson analyses in detail the evidence which is claimed to support belief in God's existence and argues that the claim is not well-founded. Moreover, there is very compelling evidence that an all-powerful, all-knowing God not only does not exist but cannot exist, a conclusion both surprising and provocative.
