Essays in Radical Empiricism


William James - 1912
    Originally published in journals between 1884 and 1906, these 12 essays were selected by William James to illustrate the doctrine he called "radical empiricism" — a concept that made him the center of a new philosophic approach.Proclaiming experience to be the ultimate reality, James explores the applications of experience to the problem of relations, the role of feeling in experience, and the nature of truth. He argues in favor of a pluralistic universe, denying that experience can be defined in terms of an absolute force determining the relationships between things and events. Relationships, regardless of whether they hold things together or apart, are as real as the things themselves — their functions are real, and there are no hidden factors responsible for life's harmonies and dissonances.Seminal essays in this collection include "Does Consciousness Exist?: "The Essence of Humanism," and "Absolutism and Empiricism." In addition, this edition features a new translation of "On the Notion of Consciousness" — the first English rendering of the essay, which was written in French. Indispensable to an understanding of the great philosopher's other works, this systematic and compact treatment functions equally well in and out of the classroom.

The Aims of Education


Alfred North Whitehead - 1929
    Presents the texts of a series of lectures delivered between 1912 & 1928 on the purposes & practice of education.PrefaceThe aims of educationThe rhythm of educationThe rhythmic claims of freedom & disciplineTechnical education & its relation to science & literature The place of classics in educationThe mathematical curriculumUniversities & their functionThe organisation of thoughtThe anatomy of some scientific ideasSpace, time & relativity

Scepticism and Animal Faith


George Santayana - 1923
    The central concept of his philosophy is found in a careful discrimination between the awareness of objects independent of our perception and the awareness of essences attributed to objects by our mind, or between what Santayana calls the realm of existents and the realm of subsistents. Since we can never be certain that these attributes actually inhere in a substratum of existents, skepticism is established as a form of belief, but animal faith is shown to be a necessary quality of the human mind. Without this faith there could be no rational approach to the necessary problem of understanding and surviving in this world.Santayana derives this practical philosophy from a wide and fascinating variety of sources. He considers critically the positions of such philosophers as Descartes, Euclid, Hume, Kant, Parmenides, Plato, Pythagoras, Schopenhauer, and the Buddhist school as well as the assumptions made by the ordinary man in everyday situations. Such matters as the nature of belief, the rejection of classical idealism, the nature of intuition and memory, symbols and myth, mathematical reality, literary psychology, the discovery of essence, sublimation of animal faith, the implied being of truth, and many others are given detailed analyses in individual chapters.

Art and Scholasticism With Other Essays


Jacques Maritain - 1974
    Maritain provides a strong dissenting perspective on the lazy, self-flattering artistic assumptions of the past two centuries.This work contains the essays entitled: Schoolmen and the Theory of Art; Speculative Order and the Practical Order; Making and Action; Art an Intellectual Virtue; Art and Beauty; Rules of Art; Purity of Art; Christian Art; Art and Morality; Frontiers of Poetry; An Essay on Art; Some Reflections Upon Religious Art; also found within is a list of principal notes.

Science and Method


Henri Poincaré - 1908
    Drawing on examples from many fields, it explains how scientists analyze and choose their working facts, and it explores the nature of experimentation, theory, and the mind. 1914 edition.

The Two Sources of Morality and Religion


Henri Bergson - 1932
    And while "humanity groaning, half crushed under the weight of the progress it has made," he reminds us that the future depends on it. Cover illustration: © Flammarion Virginia Berthemet

Experience and Nature


John Dewey - 1925
    Dewey believes that the method of empirical naturalism presented in this volume provides the way, and the only way by which one can freely accept the standpoint and conclusions of modern science. Contents: experience and philosophic method; existence as precarious and as stable; nature, ends and histories; nature, means and knowledge; nature, communication and as meaning; nature, mind, and the subject; nature, life and body-mind; existence, ideas and consciousness; experience, nature and art; existence value and criticism.

New Essays on Human Understanding


Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz - 1704
    Challenging Locke's views in Essays on Human Understanding chapter by chapter, Leibniz's references to his contemporaries and his discussion of the ideas and institutions of the age make this work a fascinating and valuable document in the history of ideas.

Civilization on Trial


Arnold Joseph Toynbee - 1948
    

Elements of Chemistry


Antoine Lavoisier - 1789
    First explicit statement of law of conservation of matter in chemical change; first modern list of chemical elements; more. Facsimile reprint of original (1790) Kerr translation. Introduction by Professor Douglas McKie.Introduction1 Of the formation & decomposition of aeriform fluids, of the combustion of simple bodies & the formation of acids 2 Of the combination of acids with salifiable bases & of the formation of neutral salts3 Description of the instruments & operations of chemistryAppendix

Three Treatises


Martin Luther - 1943
    In the three years that followed, Luther clarified and defended his position in numerous writings. Chief among these are the three treatises written in 1520. In these writings Luther tried to frame his ideas in terms that would be comprehensible not only to the clergy but to people from a wide range of backgrounds. [i]To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation[/i] is an attack on the corruption of the church and the abuses of its authority, bringing to light many of the underlying reasons for the Reformation. The second treatise, [i]The Babylonian Captivity of the Church[/i], contains Luther's sharp criticism of the sacramental system of the Catholic church. [i[The Freedom of a Christian[/i] gives a concise presentation of Luther's position on the doctrine of justification by faith. The translations of these treatises are all taken from the American edition of Luther's Works. This new edition of [i]Three Treatises[/i] will continue to be a popular resource for individual study, church school classes, and college and seminary courses.

Rules for the Direction of the Mind


René Descartes - 1619
    Rene Descartes discusses the basic rules he has devised to guide human thought toward better knowledge.

Being and Nothingness


Jean-Paul Sartre - 1943
    The central work by one of the century's most influential thinkers, it altered the course of western philosophy. Its revolutionary approach challenged all previous assumptions about the individual's relationship with the world. Known as 'the Bible of existentialism', its impact on culture & literature was immediate & was felt worldwide, from the absurdist drama of Samuel Beckett to the soul-searching cries of the Beat poets.Being & Nothingness is one of those rare books whose influence has affected the mindset of subsequent generations. Seventy years after its 1st publication, its message remains as potent as ever--challenging readers to confront the fundamental dilemmas of human freedom, choice, responsibility & action.

The Origin And Development Of The Quantum Theory


Max Planck - 2009
    In The Origin and Development of the Quantum Theory, we address the behaviour of atoms and subatomic particles and peer into the scaffolding and instruction manuals of the Gods. Nobel Prize winning physicist Max Planck, despite a reputedly steady and conservative disposition, revolutionised his field and his work on black body radiation and his particular conclusions on Quanta remain on the cutting edge of theoretical physics. Atoms and subatomic particles emit thermal radiation but the extent to which this is from the violet portion of the spectrum varies, in this lecture, the reader can find out why.After a life in which he had already been fighting to see an upswing in the fortunes of his beleaguered nation, he gave this lecture to an assembly of his most distinguished colleagues in 1920 in Stockholm. In these pages you can find his inspiring words about the glory of a lofty goal being undimmed by initial failures. In a moment of fantastic success, this speech illustrates the truth of his theory, rising from the ashes of the First World War with a discovery which changed the way physicists think. The lecture theatre was full of the finest minds of the age, waiting with baited breath on the edge of their seats to hear a genius hold forth on what made the Universe run.As the great man himself said 'Whatever the answer to this question, there can be no doubt that science will some day master the dilemma'.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Epitome of Copernican Astronomy and Harmonies of the World


Johannes Kepler - 1621
    This volume contains two of his most important works: The Epitome of Copernican Astronomy (books 4 and 5 of which are translated here) is a textbook of Copernican science, remarkable for the prominence given to physical astronomy and for the extension to the Jovian system of the laws recently discovered to regulate the motions of the Planets. Harmonies of the World (book 5 of which is translated here) expounds an elaborate system of celestial harmonies depending on the varying velocities of the planets.