The last few decades have seen an explosion in the production of critical theories, with deconstructioniss, poststructuralists, postmoderniss, second-wave feminists, new historicists, cultural materialists, postcolonialists, black critics and queer theorists, among a host of others, all vying for our attention. The world around us can look very ...
Aiming to demystify the facts of Freud, this text tells the story of Freud's life and ideas from his upbringing in 19th-century Vienna, his early medical career and his encounter with cocaine to the gradual evolution of his theories of the unconscious, dreams and sexuality.
Here is the new expanded edition of the international bestseller Introducing Postmodernism. Has the 21st century resolved the question of 'postmodernism' or are we more than ever ensnared in its perplexities? Postmodernism seemed to promise an end to the grim Cold War era of nuclear confrontation and oppressive ideologies. Fukuyama's notoriously ...
The ideas of psychoanalysis have permeated Western culture. It is the dominant paradigm through which we understand our emotional lives, and Freud still finds himself an iconic figure. Yet despite the constant stream of anti-Freud literature, little is known about contemporary psychoanalysis. "Introducing Psychoanalysis" redresses the balance. It ...
Our knowledge comes primarily from experience. But is experience really what it seems? Is it reliable? Empiricist philosophers accept a 'commonsense' view of the phenomena we observe and yet conclude that all we can ever know are 'ideas'. Physical reality may not exist at all! The experimental breakthroughs of Kepler, Galileo and Newton - a ...
A wonderful educational tool for those unfamiliar with Kafka, this volume includes a brief but inclusive biography as well as the plots of many of his works, all illustrated by Crumb, making this newly designed edition a must-have for admirers of both Kafka and Crumb. Young Adult.
Can machines really think? Is the mind just a complicated computer program? "Introducing Artificial Intelligence" focuses on the major issues behind one of the hardest scientific problems ever undertaken. Artificial Intelligence is not just a fictional concept. Half a century of research into the construction of intelligent machinery has resulted ...
Philosphy, art, literature, music and politics were tranformed in the turbulent period between the French Revolution of 1789 and the Communist Manifesto of 1848. This overview of Romanticism focuses on the leading figures in Europe and America.
Pope Pius XII condemned Existentialism for its 'terrifying nihilism'. Anguish, despair, absurdity, nothingness...these still have a power to scandalise. Do we find in them the quintessence of Existentialism? Or has Existentialism's truth been eclipsed by its popular appeal? Richard Appignanesi begins with Camus and suicide: 'Must life have a ...
Freud revolutionized the way we think of ourselves. His psychoanalytic terms such as Id, Ego, libido, neurosis and Oedipus Complex have become a familiar part of our everyday vocabulary. But do we know what they really mean? This book demystifies the facts of Freud's discovery of psychoanalysis. Irreverent but never trivial, it tells the story of ...
Carl Gustav Jung was the most enigmatic and controversial disciple of Sigmund Freud. He introduced to psychoanalysis crucial questions about religion and the soul which Freud neglected. However, our perception of Jung today as a quasi-religious sage with a growing "New Age" following overlooks the fact that he was primarily a scientist and a ...
Hindusm is said to be the world's oldest religion. Yet the word 'Hindu' is of foreign 18th-century origin. Hindusm is defined as a polytheistic religion, but Mahatma Gandhi famously declared that one can be a Hindu without believing in any god. Hindusm appears to accommodate endless contradictions. It is a religion at least as much of myth as of ...
'Machiavellian' is a popular byword for treachery and opportunism. Machiavelli's classic book on statecraft, "The Prince", published over 400 years ago, remains controversial to this day because of its electrifying frankness as a practical guide to power. Is it a how-to manual for dictators, a cynical philosophy of 'the end justifies the means', ...
90% or more of the matter in the universe is unseen. Nobody knows what it is. The universe expands, but nobody knows how long the expansion has been going on. Will it expand forever, or collapse in a Big Crunch, perhaps a Big Bang in reverse? From Aristotle to Newton, Einstein and quantum mechanics, this book recounts the revolutions in physics ...
Environmental issues affect the daily lives of everyone on Earth, from the air we breathe and the food we eat to the technology we use. They are quite simply central to our survival and the preservation of a world worth living in. This revised and updated edition offers a wide range of information to help us understand the subject, from the Flood ...
In 1859, Charles Darwin shocked the world with a radical theory - evolution by natural selection. One hundred and fifty years later, his theory still challenges some of our most precious beliefs. Introducing Evolution provides a step-by-step guide to 'Darwin's dangerous idea' and takes a fresh look at the often misunderstood concepts of natural ...
Freud is universally recognised as a pivotal figure in modern culture. Yet the man and his work continually attract scandal, outrage and scientific suspicion. Was he a psychological genius or a peddler of humbug? Despite his atheism, did he invent a new religious cult? Is he to blame for disguising the prevalence of sexual abuse? Is there an ...
This is a reissue of a key "Introducing" title. The rainbow, the moon, a spinning top, a comet, the ebb and flood of the oceans...a falling apple. There is only one universe and it fell to Isaac Newton to discover its secrets. Newton was arguably the greatest scientific genius of all time, and yet he remains a mysterious figure. Brilliantly ...
William Shakespeare's absolute pre-eminence in contemporary Western culture and society is simply unparalleled. His plays pack theatres and provide Hollywood blockbusters with scripts; his works are considered fundamental to the teaching of English literature. He has given us many of our words, and defined much of how we think. How did this happen ...
Lenin is the key to understanding the Russian Revolution. His dream as the creation of the world's first Socialist state. It was a short-lived dream that became a nightmare when Stalin rose to absolute power in 1929. Lenin was the avant-garde revolutionary who adapted Marxist theory to the practical realities of a vast, complex and backward Russia ...
For Thomas Sebeok, semiotics not only addresses human verbal communication but embraces the study of all sign activity - which is indeed, Sebeok argues, the very definition of life in the universe. What does Sebeok's vision say, though, about ethics or the arts?
This book examines a profound and mysterious puzzle: how does the biological tissue that makes up the brain give rise to the activities that our culture refers to as 'the mind'? How does the three pounds of electric sponge stowed in the top of your head allow you to experience enchantment in front of the evening landscape, and then make you ...
In 1979 Jean-Francois Lyotard claimed to have laid the 'grand narrative' to rest. Yet the ecological disasters of recent years Myerson argues, herald a return of the big story, and in a new way are a legitmation, after all, of science. Once again, the minutiae of the everyday are simultaneously part of the bigger picture...
What on earth is postmodernism? This is a guide to the maddeningly enigmatic concept which is supposed to define the human cultural condition at the end of the 20th century. Postmodernism claims that "modernity" has collapsed, that the historical process which began with the enlightenment, industrialism, Darwin, Marx, Freud and so on has exhausted ...
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