From bookshelves overflowing with self-help books to scholarly treatises on neurobiology to late-night infomercials that promise to make you happier, healthier, and smarter with the acquisition of just a few simple practices, the discourse of habit is a staple of contemporary culture high and low. Discussion of habit, however, tends to neglect the most fundamental questions: What is habit? Habits, we say, are hard to break. But what does it mean to break a habit? Where and how do habits take root in us? Do only humans acquire habits? What accounts for the strength or weakness of a habit? Are habits something possessed or something that possesses? We spend a lot of time thinking about our habits, but rarely do we think deeply about the nature of habit itself. Aristotle and the ancient Greeks recognized the importance of habit for the constitution of character, while readers of David Hume or American pragmatists like C.S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey know that habit is a central component in the conceptual framework of many key figures in the history of philosophy. Less familiar are the disparate discussions of habit found in the Roman Stoics, Thomas Aquinas, Michel de Montaigne, Rene Descartes, Gilles Deleuze, French phenomenology, and contemporary Anglo-American philosophies of embodiment, race, and gender, among many others. The essays gathered in this book demonstrate that the philosophy of habit is not confined to the work of just a handful of thinkers, but traverses the entire history of Western philosophy and continues to thrive in contemporary theory. A History of Habit: From Aristotle to Bourdieu is the first of its kind to document the richness and diversity of this history. It demonstrates the breadth, flexibility, and explanatory power of the concept of habit as well as its enduring significance. It makes the case for habit's perennial attraction for philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists.

From bookshelves overflowing with self-help books to scholarly treatises on neurobiology to late-night infomercials that promise to make you happier, healthier, and smarter with the acquisition of just a few simple practices, the discourse of habit is a staple of contemporary culture high and low. Discussion of habit, however, tends to neglect the most fundamental questions: What is habit? Habits, we say, are hard to break. But what does it mean to break a habit? Where and how do habits take root in us? Do only humans acquire habits? What accounts for the strength or weakness of a habit? Are habits something possessed or something that possesses? We spend a lot of time thinking about our habits, but rarely do we think deeply about the nature of habit itself. Aristotle and the ancient Greeks recognized the importance of habit for the constitution of character, while readers of David Hume or American pragmatists like C.S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey know that habit is a central component in the conceptual framework of many key figures in the history of philosophy. Less familiar are the disparate discussions of habit found in the Roman Stoics, Thomas Aquinas, Michel de Montaigne, Rene Descartes, Gilles Deleuze, French phenomenology, and contemporary Anglo-American philosophies of embodiment, race, and gender, among many others. The essays gathered in this book demonstrate that the philosophy of habit is not confined to the work of just a handful of thinkers, but traverses the entire history of Western philosophy and continues to thrive in contemporary theory. A History of Habit: From Aristotle to Bourdieu is the first of its kind to document the richness and diversity of this history. It demonstrates the breadth, flexibility, and explanatory power of the concept of habit as well as its enduring significance. It makes the case for habit's perennial attraction for philosophers, psychologists, and sociologists.

Jeffrey Bell offers a novel approach to thinking about a number of longstanding problems in metaphysics, issues that have persisted throughout the history of philosophy. By developing a metaphysics of problems, he shows how the history of both the analytic and continental traditions of philosophy can be seen to be an ongoing response to the problem of regresses. By highlighting this shared history, Bell brings these two traditions back together to address problems that have been essential to their projects all along and central to much of the history of philosophy.

Jeffrey Bell argues that a motivating problematic for existentialist writers is the attempt to think through the implications of the problematic nature of life. He applies a Deleuzian theory of problems to an analysis of some key concepts in contemporary social and political theory. Building on the metaphysics of problems set out in his book, An Inquiry into Analytic-Continental Metaphysics, he provides a new way of integrating the concerns of existentialist writers into contemporary political and social debates

This book offers the first extended comparison of the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and David Hume. Jeffrey Bell argues that Deleuze's early work on Hume was instrumental to Deleuze's formulation of the problems and concepts that would remain a focus of his entire corpus. Reading Deleuze's work in light of Hume's influence, along with a comparison of Deleuze's work with William James, Henri Bergson, and others, sets the stage for a vigorous defence of his philosophy against a number of recent criticisms, and it extends the field of Deleuze studies by showing how Deleuze's thought can clarify and contribute to the work being done in political theory, cultural studies, and history, particularly the history of the Scottish Enlightenment. By engaging Deleuze's thought with the work of Hume, this book clarifies and supports the work of Deleuze and exemplifies the continuing relevance of Hume's thought to a number of contemporary debates.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

PREFACE. THE reader who is sufficiently acquainted with the progress in vertebrate physiology during the last phase of physiological methods, and who knows how scattered and incomplete are the investigations which have been made by the same kind of physical and chemical inquiries on invertebrate animals, will not expect to find in the present volume any complete statement of the physiology of animals, in the sense in which that term is now used. Such observations as have been made without especial reference to the vital processes of man are, for the most part, very valuable and suggestive but the time to write a text- book of Comparative Physiology, aswe now understand it, has not yet arrived. All that I have attempted to do in this little book has been to illustrate the details of structure by a notice of such experimental inquiries as I have con- vinced myself, or have adequate reason to believe, are, in their broad outlines, correctly stated. I have much more attempted to make use of what were long since called the experiments that Nature makes for us, by referring to, sometimes perhaps insisting on, the dif- ferent methods by which similar results are attained by different animals. That which I have most constantly kept before myself, and which I hope the student will faithfully bear in mind, is, that there has been an evolution of organs as well as of animals, and that he who desires to understand the most complicated organs must first know the structure of such as are more simply constituted. In pursuit of this object, I have written about organs rather than about groups of animals but I have added an index in which the various parts of an animal are collected under the head ofits name so that the student who desires to use this manual as a zoological text-book will have no difficulty in selecting the portions of the chapters which bear on a particular form or set of forms. I have departed a little from the ordinary method of writing a handbook, in somewhat plentifully inter- spersing the names of my authorities for various statements. I have done this, not only because it recommends itself to my sense of justice, but becau.se zoological science is just now advancing so rapidly that many observations and suggestions have to be incorporated, even in a text-book, before they become the general property of zoological workers. My indebtedness to the personal teaching and the published writings of Professor Ray Lankester must be by no means thought to be limited to the statements with which his name will be found to be connected indeed, I owe him more than I can well express. I have been careful to acknowledge the source whence the illustrations are taken, and I have to return my thanks to the Publication Committee of the Zoological Society to Professor Flower, who only added one more to a number of acts of personal kindness when he generously put at my disposal all the wood-blocks which were in his own possession and to those other friends who have allowed me to copy figures from their works. As this manual is written on lines that are rarely followed, I shall be greatly obliged for any suggestions as to its improvement, or for corrections of any errors which may have found their way into it. Kings College, May, 1885. F. JEFFKEY BELL. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY 1 II. AMCEBA 18 III.- THE GENERAL STRUCTURE OF ANIMALS ... 23 IV...

PREFACE. THE reader who is sufficiently acquainted with the progress in vertebrate physiology during the last phase of physiological methods, and who knows how scattered and incomplete are the investigations which have been made by the same kind of physical and chemical inquiries on invertebrate animals, will not expect to find in the present volume any complete statement of the physiology of animals, in the sense in which that term is now used. Such observations as have been made without especial reference to the vital processes of man are, for the most part, very valuable and suggestive but the time to write a text- book of Comparative Physiology, aswe now understand it, has not yet arrived. All that I have attempted to do in this little book has been to illustrate the details of structure by a notice of such experimental inquiries as I have con- vinced myself, or have adequate reason to believe, are, in their broad outlines, correctly stated. I have much more attempted to make use of what were long since called the experiments that Nature makes for us, by referring to, sometimes perhaps insisting on, the dif- ferent methods by which similar results are attained by different animals. That which I have most constantly kept before myself, and which I hope the student will faithfully bear in mind, is, that there has been an evolution of organs as well as of animals, and that he who desires to understand the most complicated organs must first know the structure of such as are more simply constituted. In pursuit of this object, I have written about organs rather than about groups of animals but I have added an index in which the various parts of an animal are collected under the head ofits name so that the student who desires to use this manual as a zoological text-book will have no difficulty in selecting the portions of the chapters which bear on a particular form or set of forms. I have departed a little from the ordinary method of writing a handbook, in somewhat plentifully inter- spersing the names of my authorities for various statements. I have done this, not only because it recommends itself to my sense of justice, but becau.se zoological science is just now advancing so rapidly that many observations and suggestions have to be incorporated, even in a text-book, before they become the general property of zoological workers. My indebtedness to the personal teaching and the published writings of Professor Ray Lankester must be by no means thought to be limited to the statements with which his name will be found to be connected indeed, I owe him more than I can well express. I have been careful to acknowledge the source whence the illustrations are taken, and I have to return my thanks to the Publication Committee of the Zoological Society to Professor Flower, who only added one more to a number of acts of personal kindness when he generously put at my disposal all the wood-blocks which were in his own possession and to those other friends who have allowed me to copy figures from their works. As this manual is written on lines that are rarely followed, I shall be greatly obliged for any suggestions as to its improvement, or for corrections of any errors which may have found their way into it. Kings College, May, 1885. F. JEFFKEY BELL. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. INTRODUCTORY 1 II. AMCEBA 18 III.- THE GENERAL STRUCTURE OF ANIMALS ... 23 IV...

Two boys, Adam and Matthew, live in an ancient border Tower on the east coast of Scotland, of which their father is the custodian. The present and the past overlap linking the loss of a jewel belonging to Mary Queen of Scots during her flight from Loch Leven with the arrival of two suspicious men. The boys foil the plot of the two men but in the process discover the real secret of Stromm - the Tower itself. A series of hair-raising and cliff-hanging adventures bring the story to a close, during which the boys learn quite a lot about themselves and their relationship. STROMM TOWER was inspired by a family holiday in Scotland and a visit to Culross where there is a fine watching tower and a panelled gallery. Mary Stuart did in fact loose a jewel during her flight from Loch Leven.