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The Limits of the Human

Author: Felicity Nussbaum

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2003-05-15

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 9780521016421

Felicity Nussbaum examines literary and cultural representations of human difference in England and its empire during the long eighteenth century. With a special focus on women s writing, Nussbaum analyzes canonical and lesser-known novels and plays from the Restoration to abolition. She considers a range of anomalies (defects, disease, and disability) as they intermingle with ideas of femininity, masculinity, and race to define normalcy as national identity. Incorporating writings by Behn, Burney, and the Bluestockings, as well as Southerne, Shaftesbury, Johnson, Sterne, and Equiano, Nussbaum treats a range of disabilities - being mute, blind, lame - and physical oddities such as eunuchism and giantism as they are inflected by emerging notions of a racial femininity and masculinity. She shows that these corporeal features, perceived as aberrant and extraordinary, combine in the popular imagination to reveal a repertory of differences located between the extremes of splendid and horrid novelty.

Human Nature and the Limits of Science

Author: John Dupré

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 0199248060

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Dupré warns that our understanding of human nature is being distorted by two faulty and harmful forms of pseudo-scientific thinking. He claims it is important to resist scientism - an exaggerated conception of what science can be expected to do.

Exploring the Limits of the Human through Science Fiction

Author: Gerald Alva Miller Jr.

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2012-12-04

Total Pages: 385

ISBN-13: 1137330791

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Through its engagement with different kinds of texts, Exploring the Limits of the Human through Science Fiction represents a new way of approaching both science fiction and critical theory, and its uses both to question what it means to be human in digital era.

Space, Time and the Limits of Human Understanding

Author: Shyam Wuppuluri

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-12-01

Total Pages: 530

ISBN-13: 3319444182

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In this compendium of essays, some of the world’s leading thinkers discuss their conceptions of space and time, as viewed through the lens of their own discipline. With an epilogue on the limits of human understanding, this volume hosts contributions from six or more diverse fields. It presumes only rudimentary background knowledge on the part of the reader. Time and again, through the prism of intellect, humans have tried to diffract reality into various distinct, yet seamless, atomic, yet holistic, independent, yet interrelated disciplines and have attempted to study it contextually. Philosophers debate the paradoxes, or engage in meditations, dialogues and reflections on the content and nature of space and time. Physicists, too, have been trying to mold space and time to fit their notions concerning micro- and macro-worlds. Mathematicians focus on the abstract aspects of space, time and measurement. While cognitive scientists ponder over the perceptual and experiential facets of our consciousness of space and time, computer scientists theoretically and practically try to optimize the space-time complexities in storing and retrieving data/information. The list is never-ending. Linguists, logicians, artists, evolutionary biologists, geographers etc., all are trying to weave a web of understanding around the same duo. However, our endeavour into a world of such endless imagination is restrained by intellectual dilemmas such as: Can humans comprehend everything? Are there any limits? Can finite thought fathom infinity? We have sought far and wide among the best minds to furnish articles that provide an overview of the above topics. We hope that, through this journey, a symphony of patterns and tapestry of intuitions will emerge, providing the reader with insights into the questions: What is Space? What is Time? Chapter [15] of this book is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

At The Human Edge: The Limits Of Human Physiology And Performance

Author: Marcus Ranney

Publisher: World Scientific

Published: 2020-11-19

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 9811210136

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The book is a non fiction-based piece of popular science which unravels the amazing adaptive physiological responses that our bodies undergo as we push it to the limits in extreme sports and natural environments. Each chapter captures the history, geography and physical challenges which our bodies face when we as a species have tried to conquer the great outdoors. From Mt Everest to the South Pole, from a journey to Mars to the bottom of the Mariana trench, the book makes the subject accessible to readers, with a basic knowledge of science, and also tries to bring in the author's own personal experiences and those of many legends from this sphere.For the reader (someone interested in science, particularly the life sciences or those who enjoy the outdoors and partake in extreme sports and outdoor activities), this is aimed to make physiology accessible and relatable, not as a piece of academic text.The reader will come away with a stronger understanding of human physiology (particularly at the extreme), how the body first deteriorates, then adapts and finally excels when faced with running a marathon, summiting Everest or going to Mars. Its cross functional nature, being a piece of non-fiction / popular science with personal anecdotes and history mixed in, will make for an interesting and memorable reading.

Twenty-First-Century Fiction

Author: Peter Boxall

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-06-24

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1107244498

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The widespread use of electronic communication at the dawn of the twenty-first century has created a global context for our interactions, transforming the ways we relate to the world and to one another. This critical introduction reads the fiction of the past decade as a response to our contemporary predicament – one that draws on new cultural and technological developments to challenge established notions of democracy, humanity, and national and global sovereignty. Peter Boxall traces formal and thematic similarities in the novels of contemporary writers including Don DeLillo, Margaret Atwood, J. M. Coetzee, Marilynne Robinson, Cormac McCarthy, W. G. Sebald and Philip Roth, as well as David Mitchell, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dave Eggers, Ali Smith, Amy Waldman and Roberto Bolaño. In doing so, Boxall maps new territory for scholars, students and interested readers of today's literature by exploring how these authors narrate shared cultural life in the new century.

Plato on the Limits of Human Life

Author: Sara Brill

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2013-06-03

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0253008913

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“A book that is an ambitious, well-researched and provocative scholarly reflection on soul in the Platonic corpus.” —Polis By focusing on the immortal character of the soul in key Platonic dialogues, Sara Brill shows how Plato thought of the soul as remarkably flexible, complex, and indicative of the inner workings of political life and institutions. As she explores the character of the soul, Brill reveals the corrective function that law and myth serve. If the soul is limitless, she claims, then the city must serve a regulatory or prosthetic function and prop up good political institutions against the threat of the soul’s excess. Brill’s sensitivity to dramatic elements and discursive strategies in Plato’s dialogues illuminates the intimate connection between city and soul. “Sara Brill takes on at least two significant issues in Platonic scholarship: the nature of the soul, and especially the language of immortality in its description, and the relationship between politics and psychology. She treats each one of these topics in a fresh and nuanced way. Her writing is beautiful and fluid.” —Marina McCoy, Boston College

The Nature and Limits of Human Understanding

Author: Anthony Sanford

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2003-05-01

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 9780567089472

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This book is an exploration of human understanding, from the perspectives of psychology, philosophy, biology and theology. The six contributors are among the most internationally eminent in their fields. Though scholarly, the writing is non-technical. No background in psychology, philosophy or theology is presumed. No other interdisciplinary work has undertaken to explore the nature of human understanding. This book is unique, and highly significant for anyone interested in or concerned about the human condition.

The Limits and Lies of Human Genetic Research

Author: Jonathan Michael Kaplan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-12-02

Total Pages: 237

ISBN-13: 1317721705

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In The Limits and Lies of Human Genetic Research, Jonathan Kaplan weighs in on the controversial subject of the roles genes play in determining aspects of physical and behavioral human variation. Limits and Lies makes the case that neither the information we have on genes, nor on the environment, is sufficient to explain the complex variations among humans.

Extremes

Author: Kevin Fong

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2013-03-14

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 1444737767

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In anaesthetist Dr Kevin Fong's television programmes he has often demonstrated the impact of extremes on the human body by using his own body as a 'guinea pig'. So Dr Fong is well placed to share his experience of the sheer audacity of medical practice at extreme physiological limits, where human life is balanced on a knife edge. Through gripping accounts of extraordinary events and pioneering medicine, Dr Fong explores how our body responds when tested by the extremes of heat and cold, vacuum and altitude, age and disease. He shows how science, technology and medicine have taken what was once lethal in the world and made it survivable. This is not only a book about medicine, but also about exploration in its broadest sense - and about how, by probing the very limits of our biology, we may ultimately return with a better appreciation of how our bodies work, of what life is, and what it means to be human.