Ascent of the A-Word

Ascent of the A-Word PDF

Author: Geoffrey Nunberg

Publisher:

Published: 2012-08-14

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 1610391756

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An attention-grabbing, thought-provoking exploration of the life of the word "asshole," by a renowned linguist and author

Ascent to the Beautiful

Ascent to the Beautiful PDF

Author: William H. F. Altman

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-10-21

Total Pages: 619

ISBN-13: 1793615969

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With Ascent to the Beautiful, William H. F. Altman completes his five-volume reconstruction of the Reading Order of the Platonic dialogues. This book covers Plato’s elementary dialogues, grappling from the start with F. D. E. Schleiermacher, who created an enduring prejudice against the works Plato wrote for beginners. Recognized in antiquity as the place to begin, Alcibiades Major was banished from the canon but it was not alone: with the exception of Protagoras and Symposium, Schleiermacher rejected as inauthentic all seven of the dialogues this book places between them. In order to prove their authenticity, Altman illuminates their interconnections and shows how each prepares the student to move beyond self-interest to gallantry, and thus from the doctrinal intellectualism Aristotle found in Protagoras to the emergence of philosophy as intermediate between wisdom and ignorance in Symposium, en route to Diotima’s ascent to the transcendent Beautiful. Based on the hypothesis that it was his own eminently teachable dialogues that Plato taught—and bequeathed to posterity as his Academy’s eternal curriculum—Ascent to the Beautiful helps the reader to imagine the Academy as a school and to find in Plato the brilliant teacher who built on Homer, Thucydides, and Xenophon.

Paul's Ascent to Paradise

Paul's Ascent to Paradise PDF

Author: James D Tabor

Publisher:

Published: 2020-08-19

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13:

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Paul makes the singular claim to have been the "last but not the least" of the Apostles of Jesus. Paul never met Jesus, but he makes high claims for his experiences of mystical revelations that include his ascent to heaven and his claim to not only have "seen" Jesus in his glory, but to have regularly communicated with the one he calls the Risen Christ. Early Christianity, as it unfolds, stands or falls on the claims of this single man whose Message and Mission are distinct from that of James, Peter, and John. In this book Paul's Ascent to Paradise becomes an entrée into his whole world of Hellenistic mystical religious experience. This "history of religions" approach to Paul supersedes the dogmatic approaches of Christian theology and dogma. It is refreshing, gripping, dramatic, bold and fascinating. For Paul the "appointed time of the end had grown very short," to use his words. Everything has to be viewed through that apocalyptic lens and one is transported back to Paul's social world, the "battles of the apostles," and either his triumph or his failure--depending on the judgment of history.

The Ascent of Information

The Ascent of Information PDF

Author: Caleb Scharf

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-06-14

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0593087259

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“Full of fascinating insights drawn from an impressive range of disciplines, The Ascent of Information casts the familiar and the foreign in a dramatic new light.” —Brian Greene, author of The Elegant Universe Your information has a life of its own, and it’s using you to get what it wants. One of the most peculiar and possibly unique features of humans is the vast amount of information we carry outside our biological selves. But in our rush to build the infrastructure for the 20 quintillion bits we create every day, we’ve failed to ask exactly why we’re expending ever-increasing amounts of energy, resources, and human effort to maintain all this data. Drawing on deep ideas and frontier thinking in evolutionary biology, computer science, information theory, and astrobiology, Caleb Scharf argues that information is, in a very real sense, alive. All the data we create—all of our emails, tweets, selfies, A.I.-generated text and funny cat videos—amounts to an aggregate lifeform. It has goals and needs. It can control our behavior and influence our well-being. And it’s an organism that has evolved right alongside us. This symbiotic relationship with information offers a startling new lens for looking at the world. Data isn’t just something we produce; it’s the reason we exist. This powerful idea has the potential to upend the way we think about our technology, our role as humans, and the fundamental nature of life. The Ascent of Information offers a humbling vision of a universe built of and for information. Scharf explores how our relationship with data will affect our ongoing evolution as a species. Understanding this relationship will be crucial to preventing our data from becoming more of a burden than an asset, and to preserving the possibility of a human future.

Ascent

Ascent PDF

Author: Hayley Mills

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2012-10-29

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781479304295

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"My neck prickled with heat and, before I had time to analyze the feeling, bony fingers wrapped my arms in a vice. I screamed. I didn't think I'd ever screamed that loud before in my life. It was a long, terrified sound that nearly ripped me in half. I fought the hands that tried to restrain me and was able to turn just enough to see it was another hooded figure, their hood too low and dark to discern a face." Laila Benett was perfectly content with her life. She had a loving mother and sister, an amazing best friend and an uncomplicated life. But something changed. Now, she is being stalked by creatures in the night. Her sister has fallen ill, tearing her family apart. Her best friend is missing and she's stuck in the middle of a deadly love triangle. Laila meets Christopher, a seemingly easy-going, yet mysterious teenager. As he drags her deeper into a world she wants no part in, her life continues to be put into jeopardy and she fights to find out Christopher's dark secret while battling the confusing attraction she feels towards him. In her quest to uncover Christopher's secrets, she meets Henry, a stranger who looks familiar and knows too much about her. She continues her search and her fight to return her life to normal, but deep down she knows: things will never be the same again.

The Ascent to Truth

The Ascent to Truth PDF

Author: Thomas Merton

Publisher: HMH

Published: 2002-11-04

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 0547537077

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The author of The Seven Storey Mountain explores the mysticism of Saint John of the Cross. The only thing that can save the world from complete moral collapse is a spiritual revolution. . . . The desire for unworldliness, detachment, and union with God is the most fundamental expression of this revolutionary spirit. In Ascent to Truth, author and Trappist Monk Thomas Merton makes an impassioned case for the importance of contemplation. Drawing on a range of thinkers—from Carl Jung to Pope Pius XII—Merton defines the nature of contemplative experience and shows how the Christian mysticism of sixteenth-century Spanish Carmelite Saint John of the Cross offers essential answers to our disquieting and troubling times. “For any who have the desire to look into meditation and contemplation . . . this is the book for which they have waited.” —New York Herald Tribune Book Review “For those who may be curious about mysticism, and for those who may be called to a life of contemplation, this is an excellent book.” —Catholic World

The Ascent from Nominalism

The Ascent from Nominalism PDF

Author: Terry Penner

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 1987-02-28

Total Pages: 490

ISBN-13: 9789027724274

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divisibility in Physics VI. I had been assuming at that time that Aristotle's elimination of reference to the infinitely large in his account of the potential inf inite--like the elimination of the infinitely small from nineteenth century accounts of limits and continuity--gave us everything that was important in a theory of the infinite. Hilbert's paper showed me that this was not obviously so. Suddenly other certainties about Aristotle's (apparently) judicious toning down of (supposed) Platonic extremisms began to crumble. The upshot of work I had been doing earlier on Plato's 'Third Man Argument' began to look different from the way it had before. I was confronted with a possibility I had not till then so much as entertained. What if the more extreme posi tions of Plato on these issues were the more likely to be correct? The present work is the first instalment of the result ing reassessment of Plato's metaphysics, and especially of his theory of Forms. It has occupied much of my teaching and scholarly time over the past fifteen years and more. The central question wi th which I concern myself is, "How does Plato argue for the existence of his Forms (if he does )7" The idea of making this the central question is that if we know how he argues for the existence of Forms, we may get a better sense of what they are.

Paul and Jesus

Paul and Jesus PDF

Author: James D. Tabor

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-11-26

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1439123322

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Draws on St. Paul's letters and other early sources to reveal the apostles' sharply competing ideas about the significance of Jesus and his teachings while demonstrating how St. Paul independently shaped Christianity as it is known today.

The Ascent of Humanity

The Ascent of Humanity PDF

Author: Charles Eisenstein

Publisher: North Atlantic Books

Published: 2013-02-05

Total Pages: 577

ISBN-13: 1583946365

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The author of The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible explores the history and potential future of civilization, tracing the converging crises of our age to the illusion of the separate self Our disconnection from one another and the natural world has mislaid the foundations of science, religion, money, technology, economics, medicine, and education as we know them. It has fired our near-pathological pursuit of technological Utopias even as we push ourselves and our planet to the brink of collapse. Fortunately, an Age of Reunion is emerging out of the birth pangs of an earth in crisis. Our journey of separation hasn't been a terrible mistake but an evolutionary process and an adventure in self-discovery. Even in our darkest hour, Eisenstein sees the possibility of a more beautiful world—not through the extension of millennia-old methods of management and control but by fundamentally reimagining ourselves and our systems. We must shift away from our Babelian efforts to build ever-higher towers to heaven and instead turn out attention to creating a new kind of civilization—one designed for beauty rather than height.

Ascent

Ascent PDF

Author: Laurence Leamer

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2011-02-22

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 0062039237

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Willi Unsoeld, a legend among mountaineers--a man whom Bill Moyers calls one of the few giants he has ever met--fearlessly challenged the world's highest peaks and inspired a generation of climbers with his legacy. Ascent is the story of his life--a thrilling tale of physical and spiritual adventure that captures the hypnotic force behind this extraordinary personality. From his triumphant conquest of Everest's forbidding West Ridge to the tragic loss of his daughter on the treacherous slopes of Nanda Devi to his final, fatal attempt at Mount Rainier, we see Willi as guru and guide, lover of danger and philosopher of risk--a man whose indomitable spirit triggered such devotion that people followed him fearlessly to extraordinary heights and, sometimes, even to their deaths. A dramatic saga of bravery, daring, and the search for spiritual truth, Ascent brilliantly captures the mythic figure of Willi Unsoeld.