The title of this 1998 book was inspired by a passage in Charles Sherrington's Man on his Nature. When that famous physiologist died in 1952, the prospects for a scientific explanation of consciousness seemed remote. Enchanted Looms shows how the situation has changed dramatically, and provides what is probably the most wide-ranging account of the phenomenon ever written. Rodney Cotterill bridges the gap between the bottom-up approach to understanding consciousness, anchored in the brain's biochemistry, anatomy and physiology, and the top-down strategy, which concerns itself with behaviour and the nervous system's interaction with the environment. The author argues that an explanation of consciousness is now at hand, and extends the discussion to include intelligence and creativity. This beautifully written and illustrated book will be valued for its easy access to one of science's last great challenges. It will change forever our view of consciousness, and our concept of the human being.

Joseph de Maistre's Considerations on France is the best known French equivalent of Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. This new edition of Richard Lebrun's 1974 translation is introduced by Isaiah Berlin, with a bibliography and chronology by the translator. Published in 1797, the work of the self-exiled Maistre presents a providential interpretation of the French Revolution and argues for a new alliance of throne and altar under a restored Bourbon monarchy. Although the Directory and then Napoleon delayed Maistre's influence within France until the Restoration, he is now acknowledged as the most eloquent spokesperson for continental conservatism. Considerations on France was a shrewd piece of propaganda, but, as Isaiah Berlin contends, by arguing his case in broad historical, philosophical and religious terms, Maistre raises issues of enduring importance.

The Cambridge History of Philosophy 1870-1945 comprises over sixty specially commissioned essays by experts on the philosophy of this period and is designed to be accessible to non-specialists who have little previous familiarity with philosophy. As with the other volumes in the series, much of the emphasis of the essays is thematic, concentrating on developments during the period across a range of philosophical topics, from logic and metaphysics to political philosophy and philosophy of religion. Several chapters also discuss the changing relationship of philosophy to the natural and social sciences during this period. The result is an authoritative survey of this rich and varied period of philosophical activity, which will be of critical importance not only to teachers and students of philosophy but also to scholars in neighbouring disciplines such as the history of science, the history of ideas, theology and the social sciences.

This is a 1988 philosophical introduction to Aristotle, and Professor Lear starts where Aristotle himself starts. The first sentence of the Metaphysics states that all human beings by their nature desire to know. But what is it for us to be animated by this desire in this world? What is it for a creature to have a nature; what is our human nature; what must the world be like to be intelligible; and what must we be like to understand it systematically? Through a consideration of these questions Professor Lear introduces us to the essence of Aristotle's philosophy and guides us through the central Aristotelian texts - selected from the Physics, Metaphysics, Ethics, Politics and from the biological and logical works. The book is written in a direct, lucid style which engages the reader with the themes in an active, participatory manner.

Writing and the Ancient State explores the early development of writing and its relationship to the growth of political structures. The first part of the book focuses on the contribution of writing to the state's legitimating project. The second part deals with the state's use of writing in administration, analyzing both textual and archaeological evidence to reconstruct how the state used bookkeeping to allocate land, police its people, and extract taxes from them. The third part focuses on education, the state's system for replenishing its staff of scribe-officials. The first half of each part surveys evidence from Mesopotamia, Egypt, the Maya lowlands, Central Mexico, and the Andes;
http://www.cambridge.org/asia/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=9781107028128
against this background the second half examines the evidence from China. The chief aim of this book is to shed new light on early China (from the second millennium BC through the end of the Han period, ca. 220 AD) while bringing to bear the lens of cross-cultural analysis on each of the civilizations under discussion. The compiling of lists – lists of names, or of names and numbers – is a recurring theme throughout all three parts. A concluding chapter argues that there is nothing accidental about the pervasiveness of this theme: in both origin and function, early writing is almost synonymous with the listing of names.
Side-by-side comparisons and a global perspective make this a far-reaching study
Vividly illustrated with over 100 images and a color insert
Imaginative scenarios for the invention of writing bring the story to life for both the specialist and the student

The power of music to influence mood, create scenes, routines and occasions is widely recognised and this is reflected in a strand of social theory from Plato to Adorno that portrays music as an influence on character, social structure and action. There have, however, been few attempts to specify this power empirically and to provide theoretically grounded accounts of music's structuring properties in everyday experience. Music in Everyday Life uses a series of ethnographic studies - an aerobics class, karaoke evenings, music therapy sessions and the use of background music in the retail sector - as well as in-depth interviews to show how music is a constitutive feature of human agency. Drawing together concepts from psychology, sociology and socio-linguistics it develops a theory of music's active role in the construction of personal and social life and highlights the aesthetic dimension of social order and organisation in late modern societies.

From the conversion of the emperor Constantine in the early fourth century, vast sums of money were spent on the building and sumptuous decoration of churches. The resulting works of art contain many of the greatest monuments of late antique and early medieval society. But how did such expenditure fit with Christ's message of poverty and simplicity? In attempting to answer that question, this 1998 study employs theories on the use of metaphor to show how physical beauty could stand for spiritual excellence. As well as explaining the evolving attitudes to sanctity, decorum and display in Roman and medieval society, detailed analysis is made of case studies of Latin biblical exegesis and gold-ground mosaics so as to counterpoint the contemporary use of gold as a Christian image in art and text.

Why do living things and physical phenomena take the form they do? D'Arcy Thompson's classic On Growth and Form looks at the way things grow and the shapes they take. Analysing biological processes in their mathematical and physical aspects, this historic work, first published in 1917, has also become renowned for the sheer poetry of its descriptions. A great scientist sensitive to the fascinations and beauty of the natural world tells of jumping fleas and slipper limpets; of buds and seeds; of bees' cells and rain drops; of the potter's thumb and the spider's web; of a film of soap and a bubble of oil; of a splash of a pebble in a pond. D'Arcy Thompson's writing, hailed as 'good literature as well as good science; a discourse on science as though it were a humanity', is now made available for a wider readership, with a foreword by one of today's great populisers of science, explaining the importance of the work for a new generation of readers.

This book, first published in 2008, is a fascinating account of frontier Stalinism told through the previously unexplored history of a campaign to attract female settlers to the socialist frontiers of the Soviet Far East in the late 1930s. Elena Shulman reveals the instrumental part these migrants played in the extension of Soviet state power and cultural dominion in the region. Their remarkable stories, recovered from archival letters, party documents, memoirs, press coverage and films, shed new light on Soviet women's roles in state formation, the role of frontier Stalinism in structuring gender ideals and the nature of Soviet society and Stalinism in the 1930s. Through these narratives Elena Shulman offers a nuanced picture of the world of the frontier as well as the complexities of women's lives under Stalin and the limits of Moscow's rule over the periphery and even the Gulag.

First published in 1968, An Introduction to Harmonic Analysis has firmly established itself as a classic text and a favorite for students and experts alike. Professor Katznelson starts the book with an exposition of classical Fourier series. The aim is to demonstrate the central ideas of harmonic analysis in a concrete setting, and to provide a stock of examples to foster a clear understanding of the theory. Once these ideas are established, the author goes on to show that the scope of harmonic analysis extends far beyond the setting of the circle group, and he opens the door to other contexts by considering Fourier transforms on the real line as well as a brief look at Fourier analysis on locally compact abelian groups. This new edition has been revised by the author, to include several new sections and a new appendix.

In the latter-half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, Japan underwent two major shifts in political control. In the 1910s, the power of the oligarchy was eclipsed by that of a larger group of professional politicians; in the 1930s, the focus of power shifted again, this time to a set of independent military leaders. In this book, Ramseyer and Rosenbluth examine a key question of modern Japanese politics: why the Meiji oligarchs were unable to design institutions capable of protecting their power. The authors question why the oligarchs chose the political institutions they did, and what the consequences of those choices were for Japan's political competition, economic development, and diplomatic relations. Indeed, they argue, it was the oligarchs' very inability to agree among themselves on how to rule that prompted them to cut the military loose from civilian control - a decision that was to have disastrous consequences not only for Japan but for the rest of the world.

As a conquest dynasty, Qing China's new Manchu leaders desperately needed to legitimize their rule. To win the approval of China's native elites, they developed an ambitious plan to return Confucianism to civil society. Filial piety, the core Confucian value, would once again be upheld by the state, and laborious and time-consuming mourning rituals, the touchstones of a well-ordered Confucian society, would be observed by officials throughout the empire. In this way, the emperor would be following the ancient dictate that he 'govern all-under-heaven with filial piety'. Norman Kutcher's study of mourning looks beneath the rhetoric to demonstrate how the state - unwilling to make the sacrifices that a genuine commitment to proper mourning demanded - quietly but forcefully undermined, not reinvigorated, the Confucian mourning system. With acute sensitivity to language and its changing meanings, Kutcher sheds light on a wide variety of issues that are of interest to historians of late Imperial China.

This major work of academic reference provides the first comprehensive survey of political thought in Europe, North America and Asia in the century following the French Revolution. Written by a distinguished team of international scholars, this Cambridge History is the latest in a sequence of volumes firmly established as the principal reference source for the history of political thought. In a series of scholarly but accessible essays, every major theme in nineteenth-century political thought is covered, including political economy, religion, democratic radicalism, nationalism, socialism and feminism. The volume also includes studies of major figures, including Hegel, Mill, Bentham and Marx, and biographical notes on every significant thinker in the period. Of interest to students and scholars of politics and history at all levels, this volume explores seismic changes in the languages and expectations of politics accompanying political revolution, industrialisation and imperial expansion and less-noted continuities in political and social thinking.

This volume brings together the major statements by the leading contemporary scholars of cultural analysis on the relationship between culture and society. Part one surveys the range of current analytical debate over culture, focusing on the relationship of culture to social structure and power. Approaches to the study of culture covered include functionalism, semiotics, and Weberian, Durkheimian, and Marxian analysis. While individual contributions differ in defining the nature of culture and its relation to society, they are in agreement in assessing the relative autonomy of culture and the centrality of symbolic analysis. Part two turns to substantive debates, including those over the role of religion, secular ideology, and mass culture and brings to light disputes about the meaning of modernity. The book testifies to the remarkable development in the last two decades of a cultural paradigm for social and political analysis.