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The Science of Walking recounts the story of the growing interest and investment of Western scholars, physicians, and writers in the scientific study of an activity that seems utterly trivial in its everyday performance yet essential to our human nature: walking. Most people see walking as a natural and unremarkable activity of daily life, yet the mechanism has long puzzled scientists and doctors, who considered it an elusive, recalcitrant, and even mysterious act. In The Science of Walking, Andreas Mayer provides a history of investigations of the human gait that emerged at the intersection of a variety of disciplines, including physiology, neurology, orthopedic surgery, anthropology, and p...
Marquetry, also called intarsia or inlay, is the art of creating intricate pictures and designs on furniture by skillfully cutting and fitting together thin pieces of colored wood, horn, metal, shell, and other precious materials. While this highly specialized art has its roots in ancient times, it was popularized in the eighteenth century in France and today remains centered in Paris. This three-volume set-originally published in French and now available for the first time in English-is the most comprehensive examination to date of the techniques used by expert marqueters in creating their exquisite masterpieces. Masterpieces of Marquetry offers a detailed history of the medium from antiquity to the present day, illustrated with examples from the collections of museums around the world, and includes the masterpieces of some of the greatest cabinetmakers and marqueters in history. Methodically organized and lavishly illustrated, this set is an invaluable resource for art historians, antique collectors, and dealers, as well as contemporary fine furniture makers.
What is the relationship between the ideas of the Enlightenment and the culture and ideology of the French Revolution? This book takes up that classic question by concentrating on changing conceptions of language and, especially, signs during the second half of the eighteenth century. The author traces, first, the emergence of a new interest in the possibility of gestural communication within the philosophy, theater, and pedagogy of the last decades of the Old Regime. She then explores the varied uses and significance of a variety of semiotic experiments, including the development of a sign language for the deaf, within the language politics of the Revolution. A Revolution in Language shows not only that many key revolutionary thinkers were unusually preoccupied by questions of language, but also that prevailing assumptions about words and other signs profoundly shaped revolutionaries' efforts to imagine and to institute an ideal polity between 1789 and the start of the new century. This book reveals the links between Enlightenment epistemology and the development of modern French political culture.
With a focus on the economic, social, and political impetus for producing monuments to knowledge, this volume recognizes the encyclopedic compilation as the quintessential tool of enlightenment knowledge transfer.