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In The Nature of the Gods, the eminent Roman statesman and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BCE) analyzes the positions of the Stoic, Epicurean, and Academic schools on the existence and nature of the gods, and whether they act in the interests of humankind. Cotta, the Academic spokesman, criticizes his Epicurean and Stoic interlocutors for their failures, respectively, to account for human freedom and for the accidents and evils that...

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In his last years Mark Twain had become a respected literary figure whose opinions were widely sought by the press. He had also suffered a series of painful physical, economic, and emotional losses. The Mysterious Stranger, published posthumously in 1916 and belonging to Twain's "dark" period, belies the popular image of the affable American humorist. In this antireligious tale, Twain denies the existence of a benign Providence, a soul, an aft...

The Marquis de Sade (1740-1814) has been labeled everything from a sadomasochistic pornographer (The 120 Days of Sodom) to the fiction writer responsible for the ideas that led to the Nazi death camps.Must We Burn Sade? peels away the negative legacy that has shrouded Sade for too long. Deepak Narang Sawhney points out that "Sade's legacy has been neglected, recreated, fictionalized, and venerated by medical guilds, literary hacks, religious d...

What do we mean when we say we "know" something? What is this knowledge and how do we come by it? What exactly counts as an object of knowledge? And on what basis do we defend our claims to know against thosethe skepticswho deny that knowledge is possible or that our criteria for knowing can ever be satisfied?These questions and many others are addressed in this fascinating collection of essays by leading philosophers, who discuss the nature, ...

This volume considers in depth and carefully a cluster of issues central to contemporary philosophical and social scientific investigation while utilizing methods and conceptualizations at the very cutting edge of philosophy.

Metaphysics is the study of existence at the highest level of generality. It is traditionally characterised as the study of "being qua being" - of being in general rather than specifically of this or that sort. Accordingly, the salient task of the field is to achieve a clearer understanding of the concepts and principles of being, existence, and reality. As such, metaphysics has been an established sector of philosophy since the time of Aristo...

The Salem witch trials, a shameful episode in early New England history, provided a salient theme for several nineteenth-century American writers, including John Greenleaf Whittier and John William De Forest. Novelist and reformer John Neal (1793-1876) was an advocate of, among other causes, female suffrage and capital punishment reform. His novel, Rachel Dyer (1828) deals with the hysteria and scapegoating that surrounded the trials. Mixing d...

Before the introduction of antisepsis and inoculation, people commonly died due to unsanitary conditions in the home, or following surgery or childbirth. Between them, the great scientists Louis Pasteur (1822-1893) and Joseph Lister (1827-1912) extended widely the practice of inoculation and revolutionized medical practice. Pasteur's discovery that living organisms are the cause of fermentation formed the basis of the modern germ theory. Follo...

Televangelist Pat Robertson has built one of the most powerful religious-political movements in American history. His Christian Coalition - with its '700 Club' broadcasting fundamentalism tinged with right-wing politics to an audience of millions, its American Center for Law and Justice legal action group attempting to impose far-right Christian ideas via the courts, and the growing number of graduates from its Regents University - wields a mi...

Wilson Greatbatch, an electrical engineer in Buffalo, NY, had a brilliant idea and the technical know-how to turn his idea into a practical device, for which millions of people today are grateful. This is the story of the first pacemaker by the man who invented it.Intrigued by electronics from the time he was a boy, Greatbatch earned a degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University. It was during his time at Cornell that he first bec...

With great insight and empathy, Dr. Mary E. Mercer reflects on happiness and the difficulties we encounter at each stage of life, pointing out that all growth requires separation from previous attachments and loves. As we move from infancy to old age, the pain of each separation lifts us to a higher level of awareness of ourselves. This pattern of love and separation repeats itself throughout our lives until, if we're fortunate, our desire to ...

The Magic Numbers of Dr. Matrix draws us into the intriguing and fascinating world of numbers and number theory. "Numbers, you know, have a mysterious life of their own. It would be naive, " claims Dr. Matrix, "to suppose that there is such a thing as a randomly arranged group of symbols." Consider, for example, the decimal expansion of pi. Long considered a random series, it is actually rich with remarkable patterns. "Correctly interpreted, "...

Today, many advocates of hypnosis claim for it significant therapeutic benefits as an anesthetic, a method for controlling labor pains, an element in the treatment of dermatological conditions, and a way of gaining relief from certain types of chronic illness. But all such claims presuppose that the advocates of hypnosis are correct in assuming the existence of a "trance state" in which these phenomena can take place, and in their beliefs abou...

No other planet has so fired the human imagination as Mars. The possibility of life on the planet was an obsession in the 19th century. It is not surprising to find that it has become so once again, because of all the planets in the solar system (apart from Earth), Mars has always been regarded as the most likely to serve as the abode of life. Now that there are hints that the planet may have held "liquid water" (a prerequisite for life, in co...

Preeminent American philosopher and educator John Dewey (1859-1952) rejected Hegelian idealism for the pragmatism of William James.In this collection of informal, highly readable essays, originally published between 1897 and 1909, Dewey articulates his now classic philosophical concepts of knowledge and truth and the nature of reality. Here Dewey introduces his scientific method and uses critical intelligence to reject the traditional ways of ...

The willingness of people to believe in magical icons, mystical relics, and miraculous pictures (like the Image of Guadalupe) is almost as curious as these phenomena themselves. They cry out for investigation, yet millions of people blindly accept them as fact.Respected historical and paranormal investigator Joe Nickell confronts such strange events, powers, and objects as the Shroud of Turin, bleeding or weeping statues, burning handprints, l...

Respected historical and paranormal investigator Joe Nickell gets to the bottom of the many stories about the Shroud of Turin, bleeding or weeping statues, burning handprints, liquefying blood, ecstatic visions, miraculous cures, and people speaking in tongues.

And when the other is beside him, he shares his respite from anguish, when he is absent, he likewise shares his longing and being longed for, since he possesses that counterlove which is the image of love, though he supposes it to be friendship rather than love, and calls it by that name" (from the Phaedrus).The nature of love and friendship and their varying manifestations have stimulated philosophical interest for centuries. How should we un...

The classic novel The Ecstasy of Owen Muir is the story of what happens in 1940s America when an idealistically, fiercely honest young man, with no strong religious affiliation, marries a Roman Catholic woman. In this brilliantly comic and pungent tale, Lardner dissects the thought control of the McCarthy era, business ethics, racial intolerance, attitudes toward sex, the Manhattan nightclub set, judicial procedures, and other social phenomeno...