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Over a period of forty years, Rousseau combined his devotion to writing with his enthusiasm for chess, and these two passions necessarily intertwined. Rousseau was able to transfer his power of concentration and the strict dialectics of his literary writings to his chess strategy. If Rousseau’s analytical skills influenced his attitude toward the game, then the game of chess inspired his logic and affected his discourse. Interpreted as a form of rationality, as a conceptual paradigm, the rules and strategies of chess accurately describe Rousseau’s ideas for social management, political power, and organization. Reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau through the Prism of Chess shows that Rousseau’s political theory, though allegedly inspired by Nature, found a perfect model in a game created by mankind; chess thus became a reference for his philosophical discourse and practice as well as a method to systematize Nature and organize society.
Essay by Wendy Weitman.
Bernhard Varenius’ books influenced the history of science in such a way that Isaac Newton, Alexander von Humboldt and Tsar Peter the Great all referred to him. Varenius wrote the first comprehensive description of Japan (Descriptio regni Japoniae, 1649) from a European perspective, exclusively based on a diversity of sources. But the impact of his Geographia generalis (1650) explains his ranking among the founding fathers of geography as a science. He called ‘general’ geography a branch of (applied) mathematics which does not deal with regional specifics. The contributions in this book focus on his multi-faceted work, the influence of his books and the tragically short life of this young polymath from Germany who benefited from the intellectually stimulating milieu of Leiden and Amsterdam. Contributors include: Horst Walter Blanke, Reinhard Düchting, Klaus Lehmann, Robert Mayhew, Sandra Rebok, Folker Reichert, Frank Richter, Margret Schuchard, Denis J.B. Shaw, Ulrich Staffhorst, Johann Anselm Steiger, Rienk H. Vermij, and Ernst-Christian Volkmann.
The results of randomized trials evaluating the use of early or adjuvant systemic treatment for patients with resectable breast cancer provide an eloquent rebuttal to those who would argue that we have made no progress in the treatment of cancer. Many of the tumors that we have been most successful in curing with chemotherapy and other newer forms of treatment are relatively uncommon. In contrast, breast cancer continues to be the single most common malignancy among women in the western world, is increasingly a cause of death throughout Asia and Third-World countries, and remains one of the most substantial causes of cancer mortality world wide. The use of mammography as a means of early det...
Exploring the relationship between museums and biographies, this collection of essays examines examples from the early 19th century to the present day.
This is an essay by Benjamin Constant. In this essay, Constant contrasted two views on freedom: one held by "the Ancients," particularly those in Classical Greece, and the other by members of modern societies. He investigates the dangers of attempting to impose ancient liberty in a modern context, as well as the risks associated with each type of liberty. The danger of ancient liberty was that men, preoccupied with securing their share of social power, might place too little value on individual rights and pleasures. The danger of modern liberty is that we will give up our right to participate in political power too easily, absorbed in the enjoyment of our independence and the pursuit of our particular interests." Constant believes that the two types of liberty must eventually be combined.