Acts of Literature brings together for the first time a number of these works—on French, German, and English literary texts and figures—including Rousseau, Mallarme, Joyce, Shakespeare, and Kafka. Also included is a substantial new interview with Derrida on questions of literature, deconstruction, politics, feminism, and history. For those unfamiliar with Derrida's writing, editor Derek Attridge provides an introductory essay on deconstruction and the question of literature, as well as suggestions for further reading.Acts of Literature will serve as an excellent introduction to Derrida's remarkable contribution to literary studies, and will help refocus attention on the importance of literature, an on such topics as singularity, responsibility, and affirmation, in his work as a philosopher and critic of institutions.

    She was described by T. S. Eliot as 'a woman of genius, of a kind of genius akin to that of the saints', and by Albert Camus as 'the only great spirit of our time'. Originally published posthumously in two volumes, these newly reissued notebooks, are among the very few unedited personal writings of Weil's that still survive today. Containing her thoughts on art, love, science, God and the meaning of life, they give context and meaning to Weil's famous works, revealing an unique philosophy in development and offering a rare private glimpse of her singular personality.

    Einstein's Heroes takes you on a journey of discovery about just such a miraculous language--the language of mathematics--one of humanity's mostamazing accomplishments. Blending science, history, and biography, this remarkable book reveals the mysteries of mathematics, focusing on the life and work of three of Albert Einstein's heroes: Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, and especially James Clerk Maxwell, whose work directly inspired the theory of relativity. RobynArianrhod bridges the gap between science and literature, portraying mathematics as a language and arguing that a physical theory is a work of imagination involving the elegant and clever use of this language. The heart of the book illuminates how Maxwell, using the language of mathematics in a newand radical way, resolved the seemingly insoluble controversy between Faraday's idea of lines of force and Newton's theory of action-at-a-distance. In so doing, Maxwell not only produced the first complete mathematical description of electromagnetism, but actually predicted the existence of theradio wave, teasing it out of the mathematical language itself. Here then is a fascinating look at mathematics: its colorful characters, its historical intrigues, and above all its role as the uncannily accurate language of nature.

    Readers will find an enlightening history of the vacuum: how the efforts to make a better vacuum led to the discovery of the electron; the ideas of Newton, Mach, and Einstein on the nature of space and time; the mysterious aether and how Einstein did away with it; and the latest ideas that the vacuum is filled with the Higgs field. The story ranges from the absolute zero of temperature and the seething vacuum of virtual particles and anti-particles that fills space, to the extreme heat and energy of the early universe. About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

    Prepared with the assistance of an academic board of leading scholars, this invaluable reference includes- Hundreds of entries, alphabetically arranged, with key words and concepts highlighted and cross-referenced--more than two thousand in all- A special emphasis on multicultural influences and contemporary thought - A comprehensive index giving easy access to all essential terms and namesA World of Ideas is an indispensable resource for the curious reader.

    Josh McDowell's timeless examination of the true nature of Christ and his impact on our lives is one of the best-selling Christian books ever. Written by a former skeptic of Christianity, it is a hard-hitting book for those who doubt Jesus' deity and his purpose.

    Their visionary answers flow from the frontiers of psychology, philosophy, economics, physics, sociology, and more. Surprising and enlightening, these insights will revolutionize the way you think about yourself and the world.Contributors include:Daniel Kahneman on the “focusing illusion”Jonah Lehrer on controlling attentionRichard Dawkins on experimentationAubrey De Grey on conquering our fear of the unknownMartin Seligman on the ingredients of well-beingNicholas Carr on managing “cognitive load”Steven Pinker on win-win negotiatingDaniel Goleman on understanding our connection to the natural worldMatt Ridley on tapping collective intelligenceLisa Randall on effective theorizingBrian Eno on “ecological vision”J. Craig Venter on the multiple possible origins of life  Helen Fisher on temperamentSam Harris on the flow of thoughtLawrence Krauss on living with uncertainty

    Language is informal, examples are vivid and lively, and the perspectivie is fresh. Based on lectures delivered to engineering students, this work will also be valued by scientists, engineers, technicians, businessmen, anyone facing energy challenges of the future.

    Burge details a comprehensive picture of an increasingly significant group--Americans who say they have no religious affiliation.The growth of the nones in American society has been dramatic. In 1972, just 5 percent of Americans claimed "no religion" on the General Social Survey. In 2018, that number rose to 23.7 percent, making the nones as numerous as both evangelical Protestants and Roman Catholics. Every indication is that the nones will be the largest religious group in the United States in the next decade.Burge illustrates his precise but accessible descriptions with charts and graphs drawn from over a dozen carefully curated datasets, some tracking changes in American religion over a long period of time, others large enough to allow a statistical deep dive on subgroups such as atheists and agnostics. Burge also draws on data that tracks how individuals move in and out of religion over time, helping readers understand what type of people become nones and what factors lead an individual to return to religion.The Nones gives readers a nuanced, accurate, and meaningful picture of the growing number of Americans who say they have no religious affiliation. Burge explains how this rise happened, who the nones are, and what they mean for the future of American religion.

    We know that accidents happen, but we believe we are on earth for a reason. Until now, most scientists have argued that science and faith occupy distinct arenas. Francis Collins, a former atheist as a science student who converted to faith as he became a doctor, is about to change that. Collins's faith in God has been confirmed and enhanced by the revolutionary discoveries in biology that he has helped to oversee. He has absorbed the arguments for atheism of many scientists and pundits, and he can refute them. Darwinian evolution occurs, yet, as he explains, it cannot fully explain human nature - evolution can and must be directed by God. He offers an inspiring tour of the human genome to show the miraculous nature of God's instruction book.

    In those twelve months, Einstein shattered many cherished scientific beliefs with five extraordinary papers that would establish him as the world's leading physicist. This book brings those papers together in an accessible format. The best-known papers are the two that founded special relativity: On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies and Does the Inertia of a Body Depend on Its Energy Content? In the former, Einstein showed that absolute time had to be replaced by a new absolute: the speed of light. In the second, he asserted the equivalence of mass and energy, which would lead to the famous formula E = mc2.The book also includes On a Heuristic Point of View Concerning the Production and Transformation of Light, in which Einstein challenged the wave theory of light, suggesting that light could also be regarded as a collection of particles. This helped to open the door to a whole new world--that of quantum physics. For ideas in this paper, he won the Nobel Prize in 1921.The fourth paper also led to a Nobel Prize, although for another scientist, Jean Perrin. On the Movement of Small Particles Suspended in Stationary Liquids Required by the Molecular-Kinetic Theory of Heat concerns the Brownian motion of such particles. With profound insight, Einstein blended ideas from kinetic theory and classical hydrodynamics to derive an equation for the mean free path of such particles as a function of the time, which Perrin confirmed experimentally. The fifth paper, A New Determination of Molecular Dimensions, was Einstein's doctoral dissertation, and remains among his most cited articles. It shows how to calculate Avogadro's number and the size of molecules.These papers, presented in a modern English translation, are essential reading for any physicist, mathematician, or astrophysicist. Far more than just a collection of scientific articles, this book presents work that is among the high points of human achievement and marks a watershed in the history of science. Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the miraculous year, this new paperback edition includes an introduction by John Stachel, which focuses on the personal aspects of Einstein's youth that facilitated and led up to the miraculous year.

    A Fellow at Oxford and a leading chemist, he has won admiration for his precise, lucid, and yet rigorous explanations of science. Now he turns his forensic mind to the greatest--and most controversial--questions of human existence: birth, death, the origin of reality, and its end.In On Being, Atkins makes a provocative contribution to the great debate between religion and science. Atkins makes his position clear from the very first sentence: The scientific method can shed light on every and any concept, even those that have troubled humans since the earliest stirrings of consciousness, he writes. He takes a materialist approach to the great questions of being that have inspired myth and religion, seeking to dispel their mystery without diminishing their grandeur. In placing scientific knowledge in such cosmic perspective, he takes us on an often dizzying tour of existence. For example, he argues that the substrate of existence is nothing at all. The total electrical charge of the universe, among other things, must be nothing--zero--he writes, or else the universe would have blasted itself apart. Charge was not created at the creation: electrical Nothing separated into equal and opposite charges. He explores breathtaking questions--asking the purpose of the universe--with wit and learning, touching on Sanskrit scriptures and John Updike along the way.

    It is often rational to act against our own best interests, he argues, and most of us have moralviews that are self-defeating. We often act wrongly, although we know there will be no one with serious grounds for complaint, and when we consider future generations it is very hard to avoid conclusions that most of us will find very disturbing.

    Yet unlike Einstein, with whom he formed a warm and abiding friendship, Gödel has long escaped all but the most casual scrutiny of his life.Stephen Budiansky’s Journey to the Edge of Reason is the first biography to fully draw upon Gödel’s voluminous letters and writings—including a never-before-transcribed shorthand diary of his most intimate thoughts—to explore Gödel’s profound intellectual friendships, his moving relationship with his mother, his troubled yet devoted marriage, and the debilitating bouts of paranoia that ultimately took his life. It also offers an intimate portrait of the scientific and intellectual circles in prewar Vienna, a haunting account of Gödel’s and Jewish intellectuals’ flight from Austria and Germany at the start of the Second World War, and a vivid re-creation of the early days of Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, where Gödel and Einstein both worked.Eloquent and insightful, Journey to the Edge of Reason is a fully realized portrait of the odd, brilliant, and tormented man who has been called the greatest logician since Aristotle, and illuminates the far-reaching implications of Gödel’s revolutionary ideas for philosophy, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and man’s place in the cosmos.

    In the wake of discoveries through the telescope and Copernican theory, the notion of an ordered cosmos of "fixed stars" gave way to that of a universe infinite in both time and space—with significant and far-reaching consequences for human thought. Alexandre Koyré interprets this revolution in terms of the change that occurred in our conception of the universe and our place in it and shows the primacy of this change in the development of the modern world.