According to the received tradition, the language used to to refer to natural kinds in scientific discourse remains stable even as theories about these kinds are refined. In this illuminating book, Joseph LaPorte argues that scientists do not discover that sentences about natural kinds, like 'Whales are mammals, not fish', are true rather than false. Instead, scientists find that these sentences were vague in the language of earlier speakers and they refine the meanings of the relevant natural-kind terms to make the sentences true. Hence, scientists change the meaning of these terms, This conclusions prompts LaPorte to examine the consequences of this change in meaning for the issue of incommensurability and for the progress of science. This book will appeal to students and professional in the philosophy of science, the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of language.

Hittite is the earliest attested Indo-European language and was the language of a state which flourished in Asia Minor in the second millennium BC. This exciting and accessible new introductory course, which can be used in both trimester and semester systems, offers in ten lessons a comprehensive introduction to the grammar of the Hittite language with ample exercises both in transliteration and in cuneiform. It includes a separate section of paradigms, a grammatical index, as well as a list of every cuneiform sign used in the book. A full glossary can be found at the back. The book has been designed so that the cuneiform is not essential and can be left out of any course if so desired. The introduction provides the necessary cultural and historical background, with suggestions for further reading, and explains the principles of the cuneiform writing system.

Nearly one million people take their own lives each year world-wide - however, contrary to popular belief, suicide can be prevented. While suicide is commonly thought to be an understandable reaction to severe stress, it is actually an abnormal reaction to regular situations. Something more than unbearable stress is needed to explain suicide, and neuroscience shows what this is, how it is caused and how it can be treated. Professor Kees van Heeringen describes findings from neuroscientific research on suicide, using various approaches from population genetics to brain imaging. Compelling evidence is reviewed that shows how and why genetic characteristics or early traumatic experiences may lead to a specific predisposition that makes people vulnerable to triggering life events. Neuroscientific studies are yielding results that provide insight into how the risk of suicide may develop; ultimately demonstrating how suicide can be prevented.

The field of mathematical psychology began in the 1950s and includes both psychological theorizing, in which mathematics plays a key role, and applied mathematics, motivated by substantive problems in psychology. Central to its success was the publication of the first 'Handbook of Mathematical Psychology' in the 1960s. The psychological sciences have since expanded to include new areas of research, and significant advances have been made in both traditional psychological domains and in the applications of the computational sciences to psychology. Upholding the rigor of the first title in this field to be published, the New Handbook of Mathematical Psychology reflects the current state of the field by exploring the mathematical and computational foundations of new developments over the last half-century. This first volume focuses on select mathematical ideas, theories, and modeling approaches to form a foundational treatment of mathematical psychology.

This book provides a complete introduction to the neuroscience of sleep and dreams in plain language. In it, Patrick McNamara outlines new discoveries in the science of sleep and dreams, places them within an evolutionary context, and brings them together with existing scientific findings and implications for sleep medicine. Unlike other introductory texts, the important evolutionary background and social nature of sleep and dreams is emphasized. Major advances in sleep medicine, sleep and memory, dream content analyzes, brain correlates of sleep stages and lifespan development of sleep are covered in depth. While the text is geared towards students, the general reader and scientists studying other disciplines will find it accessible and informative.
Tells a story that connects all of the disparate facts surrounding sleep and dreams
Evolutionary theories are brought in to explain the functional significance of sleep data and findings
Links new discoveries about sleep and dreams to established scientific findings with implications for sleep medicine
Reviews & endorsements
'This is an accessible and much-needed resource for students, teachers, and the general public. Sleep and dream sciences are rapidly expanding, but are underrepresented in psychology and neuroscience textbooks. This book fills the gap perfectly! Patrick McNamara's fascinating incorporation of social and evolutionary neuroscience is certain to engage readers from many backgrounds.' Edward F. Pace-Schott, Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts
'Patrick McNamara gives all the answers that science has found so far; covering the psychology, neuroscience, evolution, and social aspects of sleep and dreams in a balanced and integrated manner that is a joy to read. Anyone who wants to know what science really knows about sleep and dreams should read this book.' Antti Revonsuo, University of Skövde, Sweden, and University of Turku, Finland
'The text is an introduction, as indicated by the title, but it could serve easily as a university textbook, containing clear learning objectives, review questions, and further reading sections. It is an absorbing read, an informative reference, and will appeal to students and researchers at every level of training.' Tore Nielsen, Director, Dream and Nightmare Laboratory, Université de Montréal
'This book offers an authoritative and clearly written overview of neuroscience's answers to questions about sleep and dreams. Patrick McNamara explains research findings suitable for the beginner, but also with enough depth for the experienced. I recommend it enthusiastically to all who want a solid scientific perspective on sleep and dreams.' Deirdre Barrett, author of The Committee of Sleep

Developed specifically for students in the behavioral and brain sciences, this is the only textbook that provides an accessible and practical overview of the range of human neuroimaging techniques. Methods covered include functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, electroencephalography, magnetoencephalography, multimodal imaging, and various brain stimulation methods. Experimental design, image processing, and statistical inference are also addressed, with chapters for both basic and more advanced data analyses. Key concepts are illustrated through research studies on the relationship between brain and behavior, and practice questions are included throughout to test knowledge and aid self-study. Offering just the right amount of detail for understanding how major imaging techniques can be applied to answer neuroscientific questions, and the practical skills needed for future research, this is an essential text for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science programs taking introductory courses on human neuroimaging.

This interdisciplinary study explores collective memory as it is presented by official producers (such as textbooks and media) and reflected by consumers (group members). Focusing on a case study of Russians and Russian immigrants to the USA and their memories of seminal events in the twentieth-century Russian collective past, Isurin shows how autobiographical memory contributes to the formation of collective memory, and also examines how the memory of the shared past is reconstructed by those who stayed with the group and those who left. By bringing together historical, anthropological, and psychological approaches, Collective Remembering provides a new theoretical framework for memory studies that incorporates both content analysis of texts and empirical data from human participants, thus demonstrating that methodologies from the humanities and the social sciences can complement each other to create a better understanding of how memory works in the world and in the mind.

This book provides students and researchers of bilingualism with the most recent methodological and theoretical advances on how bilinguals resolve ambiguous information across languages. With reports on the latest findings from the behavioral and neuropsychological fields, the authors survey the latest research into bilingual language-system modelling and bilingual lexical ambiguity processing. Each chapter looks at bilingual ambiguity resolution both at the word and sentence levels, explaining how bilinguals ultimately comprehend ambiguous information arising from languages they already know. This volume not only explores enduring theoretical questions in bilingual research, such as bilingual representation and language processing, but also evaluates the extent to which the existing bilingual models can satisfactorily account for the most recent research findings.

This book has sufficient material for two semester-length courses in intermediate engineering dynamics. For the first course, a Newton-Euler approach is used, followed by a Lagrangrian approach in the second. Using some ideas from differential geometry, the equivalence of these two approaches is illuminated throughout the text. In addition, this book contains comprehensive treatments of the kinematics and dynamics of particles and rigid bodies. The subject matter is illuminated by numerous, highly structured examples and exercises featuring a wide range of applications and numerical simulations.

Based on narrative, iconographical, and liturgical sources, this is the first systematic study to trace the story of the ritual of royal self-coronations from Ancient Persia to the present. Exposing as myth the idea that Napoleon's act of self-coronation in 1804 was the first extraordinary event to break the secular tradition of kings being crowned by bishops, Jaume Aurell vividly demonstrates that self-coronations were not as transgressive or unconventional as has been imagined. Drawing on numerous examples of royal self-coronations, with a particular focus on European Kings of the Middle Ages, including Frederic II of Germany (1229), Alphonse XI of Castile (1328), Peter IV of Aragon (1332) and Charles III of Navarra (1390), Aurell draws on history, anthropology, ritual studies, liturgy and art history to explore royal self-coronations as privileged sites at which the frontiers and limits between the temporal and spiritual, politics and religion, tradition and innovation are encountered.

This book offers a general introduction to the dazzling world of the troubadours. Its sixteen chapters, newly commissioned from leading scholars in Britain, the US, France, Italy and Spain, trace the development of troubadour song (including music), engage with the main trends in troubadour scholarship, and examine the reception of troubadour poetry in manuscripts and in Northern French romance. A series of Appendices offer an invaluable guide to more than fifty troubadours, to technical vocabulary, to research tools and to surviving manuscripts.

Sasanian Persia, which succeeded the Parthians, was one of the great powers of late antiquity and the most significant power in the Near East, together with the Roman Empire. This book undertakes a thorough investigation of the diverse range of written, numismatic, and archaeological sources in order to reassess Sasanian political ideology and its sources and influences in the ideologies of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, Babylonian scholarship and prophecy, and Hellenistic Greek thought. It sheds fresh light on the political complexities of early Arsacid and Sasanian history, especially the situation in Babylon and Elymais, and on the Roman propaganda which penetrated, shaped, and determined Roman attitudes towards Sasanian Persia.

Death and immortality played a central role in Greek and Roman thought, from Homer and early Greek philosophy to Marcus Aurelius. In this book A. G. Long explains the significance of death and immortality in ancient ethics, particularly Plato's dialogues, Stoicism and Epicureanism; he also shows how philosophical cosmology and theology caused immortality to be re-imagined. Ancient arguments and theories are related both to the original literary and theological contexts and to contemporary debates on the philosophy of death. The book will be of major interest to scholars and students working on Greek and Roman philosophy, and to those wishing to explore ancient precursors of contemporary debates about death and its outcomes.

Persian served as one of the primary languages of historical writing over the period of the early modern Islamic empires of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals. Historians writing under these empires read and cited each other's work, some moving from one empire to another, writing under different rival dynasties at various points in time. Emphasising the importance of looking beyond the confines of political boundaries in studying this phenomenon, Sholeh A. Quinn employs a variety of historiographical approaches to draw attention to the importance of placing these histories not only within their historical context, but also historiographical context. This comparative study of Persian historiography from the 16th-17th centuries presents in-depth case analyses alongside a wide array of primary sources written under the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals to illustrate that Persian historiography during this era was part of an extensive universe of literary-historical writing.