Among those you'll investigate are the accounts of the creation of the world in Hesiod's Theogony and Ovid's Metamorphoses; the gods Zeus, Apollo, Demeter, Persephone, Hermes, Dionysos, and Aphrodite; the Greek heroes, Theseus and Heracles (Hercules in the Roman version); and the most famous of all classical myths, the Trojan War.Professor Vandiver anchors her presentation in some basics. What is a myth? Which societies use myths? What are some of the problems inherent in studying classical mythology? She also discusses the most influential 19th- and 20th-century thinking about myth's nature and function, including the psychological theories of Freud and Jung and the metaphysical approach of Joseph Campbell. You'll also consider the relationship between mythology and culture (such as the implications of the myth of Demeter, Persephone, and Hades for the Greek view of life, death, and marriage), the origins of classical mythology (including the similarities between the Theogony and Mesopotamian creation myths), and the dangers of probing for distant origins (for example, there's little evidence that a prehistoric "mother goddess" lies at the heart of mythology).Taking you from the surprising "truths" about the Minotaur to Ovid's impact on the works of William Shakespeare, these lectures make classical mythology fresh, absorbing, and often surprising.Disclaimer: Please note that this recording may include references to supplemental texts or print references that are not essential to the program and not supplied with your purchase.©2000 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2000 The Great Courses

    Professor Weil introduces you to masterpieces such as Tolstoy's War and Peace, Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, Gogol's Dead Souls, Chekhov's The Seagull, Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago, and many other great novels, stories, plays, and poems. In all, you plunge into more than 40 works by a dozen writers, from Aleksandr Pushkin in the 19th century to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in the 20th century. You also investigate the origin of Russian literature itself, which traces its lineage back to powerful epic poetry and beautiful renderings of the Bible into Slavic during the Middle Ages. All of these works are treated in translation, but Professor Weil does something very unusual in the literature-in-translation arena. For almost every passage that he quotes in English, he reads an extract in the original Russian, with a fluent accent and an actor's sense of drama.

    Fewer records were kept, leaving an often-empty legacy to historians attempting to understand the age.But modern archaeology has begun to unearth an increasing number of clues to this once-lost era. And as historians have joined them to sift through those clues—including evidence of a vast arc of Viking trade reaching from Scandinavia to Asia—new light has begun to fall across those once "dark" ages and their fascinating personalities and events.

    

    Learn how our most abundant poet and dramatist has been moving, delighting, and enlightening readers and audiences for 400 years, with no end in sight.Lecture Titles:1. Shakespeare Then and Now2. The Nature of Shakespeare's Plays3. Twelfth Night—Shakespearean Comedy4. Twelfth Night—Malvolio in Love5. The Taming of the Shrew—Getting Married in the 1590s6. The Taming of the Shrew—Farce and Romance7. The Merchant of Venice—Courting the Heiress8. The Merchant of Venice—Shylock9. Measure for Measure—Sex in Society10. Measure for Measure—Justice and Comedy11. Richard III—Shakespearean History12. Richard III—The Villain's Career13. Richard II—The Theory of Kingship14. Richard II—The Fall of the King15. Henry IV—All the King's Men16. Henry IV—The Life of Falstaff17. Henry V—The Death of Falstaff18. Henry V—The King Victorious19. Romeo and Juliet—Shakespearean Tragedy20. Romeo and Juliet—Public Violence and Private Bliss;21. Troilus and Cressida—Ancient Epic in a New Mode22. Troilus and Cressida—Heroic Aspirations23. Julius Caesar—The Matter of Rome24. Julius Caesar—Heroes of History25. Hamlet—The Abundance of the Play26. Hamlet—The Causes of Tragedy27. Hamlet—The Protestant Hero28. Othello—The Design of the Tragedy29. Othello—“O Villainy!”30. Othello—“The Noble Moor”31. King Lear—“This Is the Worst”32. King Lear—Wisdom Through Suffering33. King Lear—“Then We Go On”34. Macbeth—“Fair Is Foul”35. Macbeth—Musing on Murder36. Macbeth—“Enter Two Murderers”

    (B) Scientific knowledge is always provisional and tells us nothing that is universal, necessary, or certain about the world. Welcome to the science wars—a long-running battle over the status of scientific knowledge that began in ancient Greece, raged furiously among scientists, social scientists, and humanists during the 1990s, and has re-emerged in today's conflict between science and religion over issues such as evolution.Professor Steven L. Goldman, whose Teaching Company course on Science in the 20th Century was praised by customers as "a scholarly achievement of the highest order" and "excellent in every way," leads you on a quest for the nature of scientific reasoning in this intellectually pathbreaking lecture series, Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It.Those who have taken Professor Goldman's previous course, which is an intensive survey of the revolution in scientific knowledge from 1900 to 2000, may have wondered: if what counts as scientific knowledge can transform so dramatically within only 100 years, what exactly is scientific knowledge? Science Wars addresses this surprisingly difficult question.Five Centuries of the Science WarsIn 24 half-hour lectures, Science Wars explores the history of competing conceptions of scientific knowledge and their implications for science and society from the onset of the Scientific Revolution in the 1600s to the present. It may seem that the accelerating pace of discoveries, inventions, and unexpected insights into nature during this period guarantees the secure foundations of scientific inquiry, but that is far from true. Consider these cases:The scientific method: In the 1600s the English philosopher Francis Bacon defined the scientific method in its classic form: the use of inductive reasoning to draw conclusions from an exhaustive body of facts. But "no scientist has ever been a strict Baconian," says Professor Goldman. "If you followed that, you would get nowhere."A "heated" debate: Around 1800 the dispute over the nature of heat was resolved in favor of the theory that heat is motion and not a substance given off during burning. But then the French mathematical physicist Joseph Fourier wrote a set of equations that accurately described how heat behaves regardless of what it "really" is, which, Fourier contended, was not a scientific question at all.Paradigm shifts: The publication in 1962 of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions precipitated a radical change in attitudes toward scientific knowledge, prompted by Kuhn's insight that science is not an entirely rational enterprise, and that its well-established theories (or paradigms) are overturned in a revolutionary, nonlogical process.Postmodern putdown: The postmodern attack on science as a privileged mode of inquiry made some headway in the late 20th century. But the credibility of the movement wilted in 1996, when a postmodern journal unwittingly published a spoof by physicist Alan Sokal, purporting to prove that physical theory was socially constructed. Sokal then exposed his piece as a parody.In the penultimate lecture of the course, Professor Goldman considers intelligent design—the argument that evolution can't account for the immense complexity of life and that a master designer must be at work. He approaches this topical debate by asking: What are the minimum criteria that define a hypothesis as scientific, and does intelligent design qualify? Having already covered five centuries of the science wars in the previous lectures, you will analyze this controversy with a set of tools that allows you to see the issues in a sharp, new light.What Is Reality?"Fasten your seatbelts," says Professor Goldman at the outset of Lecture 21—an advisory that applies equally to the whole course, which covers an astonishing array of ideas and thinkers. Throughout, Professor Goldman never loses his narrative thread, which begins 2,400 years ago with Plato's allegorical battle between "the gods" and "the earth giants"—between those for whom knowledge is universal, necessary, and certain; and those for whom it cannot be so and is based wholly on experience.The problem of what constitutes scientific knowledge can be illustrated with one of the most famous and widely accepted scientific theories of all time, Nicolaus Copernicus's heliostatic (stationary sun) theory of the solar system, which has undergone continual change since it was first proposed in 1543: Copernicus called for the planets to move in uniform circular motion around the sun, slightly displaced from the center. Using observations by Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler revised the Copernican model, discarding the ancient dogma of circular motion, which did not fit the data. Instead, he guessed that the planets in fact move in elliptical orbits. In his influential work endorsing the Copernican theory, Galileo ignored Kepler's corrections and opted for circular motion. Notoriously, the Catholic Church condemned Galileo for heresy. But the church was actually correct that he had no basis for claiming the heliocentric theory was true, rather than simply an interpretation of experience. Galileo's picture of space was superseded by Newton's and later by Einstein's, which also will doubtless be revised. Even something as basic as the elliptical motion of the planets is a vast oversimplification. There are no closed curves in space, since the solar system is moving around the center of the galaxy; the galaxy is moving within the local cluster; and the local cluster is also moving. Although we still call the conventional picture of the solar system Copernican astronomy, there is effectively no resemblance between astronomy today and Copernicus's 1543 theory of the heavens. The same is also true of other theories, such as the atomic theory of matter. All scientific theories are in a state of ceaseless revision, which raises the question of what reality "really" is. As the contemporary philosopher of science Mary Hesse has pointed out, the lesson of the history of science seems to be that the theories we currently hold to be true are as likely to be overturned as the theories they replaced!Sharpen Your Understanding of What Science IsThe uncertainty about the status of scientific knowledge and about the objectivity of the scientific enterprise led to a broad assault on science in the late 20th century by sociologists, philosophers, and historians, many connected with the postmodern movement. The lectures covering this attack and the ensuing counterattack by scientists are some of the most thrilling in the course and involve a number of figures whom Professor Goldman knows personally.Of one of the firebrands in this conflict, the late Viennese philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend, Professor Goldman says, "I myself took a seminar with Feyerabend when he was teaching at Berkeley in the early 1960s. … Feyerabend was not really off the wall, although he was often depicted that way. … He too recognized, as everyone must, that after all, science does work and science is knowledge of a sort. It's just not the absolute knowledge that scientists and philosophers have historically claimed that it is."By the time you reach the end of this course, you will understand exactly what science is, and you will be enlightened about a fascinating problem that perhaps you didn't even know existed. "There have been a raft of popular books about what scientists know," says Professor Goldman, "but to the best of my knowledge, there is not a single one of these popular books that focuses centrally on the question of how scientists know what they know."This course serves as that book.Course Lecture Titles1. Knowledge and Truth Are Age-Old Problems 2. Competing Visions of the Scientific Method 3. Galileo, the Catholic Church, and Truth 4. Isaac Newtons Theory of the Universe 5. Science vs. Philosophy in the 17th Century 6. Locke, Hume, and the Path to Skepticism 7. Kant Restores Certainty 8. Science, Society, and the Age of Reason 9. Science Comes of Age in the 19th Century 10. Theories Need Not Explain 11. Knowledge as a Product of the Active Mind 12. Trading Reality for Experience 13. Scientific Truth in the Early 20th Century 14. Two New Theories of Scientific Knowledge 15. Einstein and Bohr Redefine Reality 16. Truth, Ideology, and Thought Collectives 17. Kuhn's Revolutionary Image of Science 18. Challenging Mainstream Science from Within 19. Objectivity Under Attack 20. Scientific Knowledge as Social Construct 21. New Definitions of Objectivity 22. Science Wars of the Late 20th Century 23. Intelligent Design and the Scope of Science 24. Truth, History, and Citizenship12 Audio CDs(24 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)

    The Great Ideas of Classical Physics 2. Describing MotionA Break from Aristotle 3. Describing Ever More Complex Motion 4. Astronomy as a Bridge to Modern Physics 5. Isaac NewtonThe Dawn of Classical Physics 6. Newton QuantifiedForce and Acceleration 7. Newton and the Connections to Astronomy 8. Universal Gravitation 9. Newton's Third Law 10. Conservation of Momentum 11. Beyond NewtonWork and Energy 12. Power and the Newtonian Synthesis 13. Further DevelopmentsStatic Electricity 14. Electricity, Magnetism, and Force Fields 15. Electrical Currents and Voltage 16. The Origin of Electric and Magnetic Fields 17. Unification IMaxwell's Equations 18. Unification IIElectromagnetism and Light 19. Vibrations and Waves 20. Sound Waves and Light Waves 21. The Atomic Hypothesis 22. Energy in SystemsHeat and Thermodynamics 23. Heat and the Second Law of Thermodynamics 24. The Grand Picture of Classical Physics

    Modern science demonstrates that this mental hardwiring, traceable to the survival needs of our earliest ancestors, is at the root of many of the psychological and behavioral problems that we face today.For thousands of years, people have used mindfulness practices—techniques to develop awareness of present experience with acceptance—to deal effectively with a wide range of life challenges. And, a large and fascinating body of scientific research now validates the remarkable benefits of mindfulness practice for psychological as well as physical health.But how exactly does mindfulness work, in scientific terms? How can understanding the science and practice of mindfulness improve everyday life? And how can the human brain, whose very functioning gives rise to so many of the problems we struggle with, actually provide a solution?Now, in the 24 fascinating lectures of The Science of Mindfulness, Professor Ronald D. Siegel, a clinical psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School, reveals the science behind mindfulness in compelling detail and demonstrates its application to an extraordinary range of human problems—psychological, social, and medical. You’ll closely examine the neurobiology involved, leaving you with a clear knowledge of the science underlying ancient practices that are now profoundly influencing the contemporary world. And you’ll learn many practical ways you can use mindfulness techniques in your own life.

    Learning the skills and techniques of artful reading can improve your life in many ways, whether you're a fiction reader, an aspiring writer, a book club member, or a student.And the best part: These skills are not difficult or unwieldy; rather, they are well within your reach. This entertaining, 24-lecture course gives you a veritable toolbox of knowledge and methods to approach even the most daunting reading experience with increased confidence.You'll learn the definitions and characteristics of terms such as authorship, master plot, and genre. While some of these nuts-and-bolts concepts may be familiar to you, Professor Spurgin examines them from multiple angles, revealing hidden meanings that can escape even experienced readers.Practical tips and techniques will maximize your effectiveness as an artful reader. You'll see why holding an initial reading session will acquaint you with the author's writing style and the characters, making the book easy to return to even if you take a few days off.You'll also discover the benefits of "pre-reading" - exploring a book's organization and structure - and how to constantly ask questions to become more deeply involved with the characters and their stories.Throughout the course, a host of literary "case studies" will refine and elaborate on the concepts of artful reading. Literary examples show how you can finally approach works that, in the past, might have seemed intimidating - making your future reading experiences both more engaging and more enlightening.

    And in this bold 24-lecture series, you can do just that.

    

    But what was it like to actually live in those extraordinary times? Now you can find out.These 36 lectures provide a different perspective on the society and culture of the Middle Ages - one that entrenches you in the daily human experience of living during this underappreciated era. Drawing on history, literature, the arts, technology, and science, these lectures will deepen the way you understand not only the Middle Ages but everything that came afterward: From the Renaissance, to the Enlightenment, to your own world.Filled with amazing insights, this series brings you closer than ever before to life as it was lived and felt. You'll meet the likes of William Caxton, England's first printer who not only printed and distributed a variety of works but also often had to translate them himself; learn about Hugh of Payns and the role of his Knights Templar - organized for the protection of pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem - in the creation of the first modern bank; see how communities dealt with marriage in a time when the church had not yet drawn this institution into its orbit; and much more.Rich with information and period detail (including revealing examples of medieval literature from the English, French, Norse, Icelandic, and Italian worlds), these lectures will dramatically increase your understanding of how lives in the Middle Ages were really lived.

    Introduction 2. The Sources 3. Pre-Roman Italy and the Etruscans 4. The Foundation of Rome 5. The Kings of Rome 6. Regal Society 7. The Beginnings of the Republic 8. The Struggle of the Orders 9. Roman Expansion in Italy 10. The Roman Confederation in Italy 11. The International Scene on the Eve of Roman Expansion 12. Carthage and the First Punic War 13. The Second Punic (or Hannibalic) War 14. Rome in the Eastern Mediterranean 15. Explaining the Rise of the Roman Empire 16. "The Captured Conqueror"-Rome and Hellenism 17. Governing the Roman Republic, Part I-Senate and Magistrates 18. Governing the Roman Republic, Part II-Popular Assemblies and Provincial Administration 19. The Pressures of Empire 20. The Gracchi Brothers 21. Marius and Sulla 22. "The Royal Rule of Sulla" 23. Sulla's Reforms Undone 24. Pompey and Crassus 25. The First Triumvirate 26. Pompey and Caesar 27. "The Domination of Caesar" 28. Social and Cultural Life in the Late Republic 29. Antony and Octavian 30. The Second Triumvirate 31. Octavian Emerges Supreme 32. The New Order of Augustus 33. The Imperial Succession 34. The Julio-Claudian Dynasty 35. The Emperor in the Roman World 36. The Third-Century Crisis 37. The Shape of Roman Society 38. Roman Slavery 39. The Family 40. Women in Roman Society 41. An Empire of Cities 42. Public Entertainment, Part I-The Roman Baths and Chariot Racing 43. Public Entertainment, Part II-Gladiatorial Games 44. Roman Paganism 45. The Rise of Christianity 46. The Restoration of Order 47. Constantine and the Late Empire 48. Thoughts on the "Fall" of the Roman Empire

    With 1066, Professor Paxton's exciting and historically rich six-lecture course, you can experience for yourself the drama of this dynamic year. Taking you from the shores of Scandinavia and France to the battlefields of the English countryside, 1066 will plunge you into a world of fierce Viking warriors, powerful noble families, politically charged marriages, tense succession crises, epic military invasions, and much more.This is #8422 in The Great Courses series of lectures.