Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

The term 'cityscaping' is here introduced to characterise the creative process through which the image of the city is created and represented in various media - text, film and artefacts. It thus turns attention away from built urban spaces and onto mental images of cities. One focus is on the question of which literary, visual and acoustic means prompt their recipients' spatial imagination; another is to inquire into the semantics and functions that are ascribed to the image of a city as constructed in various media. The examples of ancient texts and works of art, and modern literature and films, are used to elucidate the artistic potential of images of the city and the techniques by which they are semanticised. With its interdisciplinary approach, the volume for the first time makes clear how strongly mental images of urban space, both ancient and modern, have been shaped by the techniques of their representation in media.

"An English translation of La Sorcellerie Capitaliste - a passionate but pragmatic critique in political philosophy. It diagnoses capitalism as a 'system of sorcery without sorcerers'. Capitalism paralyses us in ways that resembles sorcery and the book is concerned to look at ways we might defend ourselves against such a system"--

In this monograph, leading researchers in the world of numerical analysis, partial differential equations, and hard computational problems study the properties of solutions of the Navier-Stokes partial differential equations on (x, y, z, t) 3 x [0, T]. Initially converting the PDE to a system of integral equations, the authors then describe spaces A of analytic functions that house solutions of this equation, and show that these spaces of analytic functions are dense in the spaces S of rapidly decreasing and infinitely differentiable functions. This method benefits from the following advantages: The functions of S are nearly always conceptual rather than explicit Initial and boundary conditions of solutions of PDE are usually drawn from the applied sciences, and as such, they are nearly always piece-wise analytic, and in this case, the solutions have the same properties When methods of approximation are applied to functions of A they converge at an exponential rate, whereas methods of approximation applied to the functions of S converge only at a polynomial rate Enables sharper bounds on the solution enabling easier existence proofs, and a more accurate and more efficient method of solution, including accurate error bounds Following the proofs of denseness, the authors prove the existence of a solution of the integral equations in the space of functions A 3 x [0, T], and provide an explicit novel algorithm based on Sinc approximation and Picard-like iteration for computing the solution. Additionally, the authors include appendices that provide a custom Mathematica program for computing solutions based on the explicit algorithmic approximation procedure, and which supply explicit illustrations of these computed solutions.

When Rameau took the world of opera by storm in 1733, Voltaire set aside his first libretto, "Tanis et Zelide", and wrote "Samson" and later "Pandore" with the composer specifically in mind. All three libretti depict rebellion against established religions, culminating in spectacular scenes: Isis and Osiris destroying the temple at Memphis; Samson bringing down the temple, crushing himself and the Philistines; and Prometheus and the Titans doing battle against the Roman gods.

In Virgin Mary and the Neutrino, first published in French in 2006 and appearing here in English for the first time, Isabelle Stengers experiments with the possibility of addressing modern practices not as a block but through the way they diverge from each other. Drawing on thinkers ranging from Dewey to Deleuze, she develops what she calls an “ecology of practices” into a capacious and heterogeneous perspective that is inclusive of cultural and political forces but not reducible to them. Stengers first advocates for an approach to sciences that would emphasize the way each should be situated by the kind of relationships demanded by what it attempts to address. This approach turns away from the disabling scientific/nonscientific binary—like the opposition between the neutrino and Virgin Mary. An ecology of practices stimulates instead an appetite for thinking reality not as an arbiter but as what we can relate to through the generation of diverging concerns and obligations.

This book draws on the perspectives of leading German scholars to provide a systematic overview of early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Germany, furthering international understanding of the complexities involved in ECEC topics in Germany. The book provides a unique insight into parts of German ECEC rarely seen outside of the country. Offering in-depth insights into historical developments, theoretical approaches and empirical research, the volume discusses Germany's long tradition in ECEC against the backdrop of Froebel and other pedagogues and traditions. Chapters consider ECEC in Germany from the perspectives of theory, institutions and professionalization. The book draws on international literature and current debates to highlight the features and peculiarities of ECEC in Germany, contributing to dialogue on research into early childhood education and care. Providing a much-needed, internationally relevant insight into ECEC in Germany, this text will be essential reading for academics, researchers and post-graduate students involved in the field of early childhood education, international education, educational theory, and those researching educational policy and politics more widely.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

En 1768, Voltaire publie un recueil de 38 courts chapitres (precedes d'une introduction) sur divers aspects du monde naturel sous le titre "Les Singularites de la nature". La variete des sujets abordes temoigne de l'etendue de la curiosite de Voltaire et de son interet pour les sciences naturelles naissantes. De la geologie a la biologie, l'auteur reflechit sur les grandes questions qui agitent les esprits, il mene ses propres experiences sur des limaces et des escargots, et il contredit Buffon, de Maillet et d'autres sur la question de l'origine des fossiles et de la formation des montagnes. Dans une etude proposee en introduction au volume, Gerhardt Stenger examine la place de Voltaire dans le contexte des grands debats scientifiques de son temps. Contributors: Patricia Crepin-Obert, Jean Mayer, Gerhardt Stenger.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

In recent years a number of bestselling books have forcefully argued that belief in God can no longer be defended on rational or empirical grounds, and that the scientific worldview has rendered obsolete the traditional beliefs held by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. The authors of these books--Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Victor J. Stenger--have come to be known as the "New Atheists." Predictably, their works have been controversial and attracted a good deal of critical reaction.
In this new book, Victor J. Stenger, whose God: The Failed Hypothesis was on the New York Times bestseller list in 2007, reviews and expands upon the principles of New Atheism and answers many of its critics. He demonstrates in detail that naturalism--the view that all of reality is reducible to matter and nothing else--is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe, from the most distant galaxies to the inner workings of the brain that result in the phenomenon of mind.
Stenger disputes the claim of many critics that the question of whether God exists is beyond the ken of science. On the contrary, he argues that absence of evidence for God is, indeed, evidence of absence when the evidence should be there and is not.
Turning from scientific to historical evidence, Stenger then points out the many examples of evil perpetrated in the name of religion. He also notes that the Bible, which is still taken to be divine revelation by millions, fails as a basis for morality and is unable to account for the problem of unnecessary suffering throughout the world.
Finally, he discusses the teachings of ancient nontheist sages such as Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Confucius, whose guidelines for coping with the problems of life and death did not depend upon a supernatural metaphysics. Stenger argues that this "way of nature" is far superior to the traditional supernatural monotheisms, which history shows can lead to a host of evils.
The New Atheism is a well-argued defense of the atheist position and a strong rebuttal of its critics.

Handbook of Sinc Numerical Methods presents an ideal road map for handling general numeric problems. Reflecting the author's advances with Sinc since 1995, the text most notably provides a detailed exposition of the Sinc separation of variables method for numerically solving the full range of partial differential equations (PDEs) of interest to scientists and engineers. This new theory, which combines Sinc convolution with the boundary integral equation (IE) approach, makes for exponentially faster convergence to solutions of differential equations. The basis for the approach is the Sinc method of approximating almost every type of operation stemming from calculus via easily computed matrices of very low dimension. The downloadable resources of this handbook contain roughly 450 MATLAB (R) programs corresponding to exponentially convergent numerical algorithms for solving nearly every computational problem of science and engineering. While the book makes Sinc methods accessible to users wanting to bypass the complete theory, it also offers sufficient theoretical details for readers who do want a full working understanding of this exciting area of numerical analysis.

Alfred North Whitehead has never gone out of print, but for a time he was decidedly out of fashion in the English-speaking world. In a splendid work that serves as both introduction and erudite commentary, Isabelle Stengers one of today s leading philosophers of science goes straight to the beating heart of Whitehead s thought. The product of thirty years engagement with the mathematician-philosopher s entire canon, this volume establishes Whitehead as a daring thinker on par with Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, and Michel Foucault.

Reading the texts in broadly chronological order while highlighting major works, Stengers deftly unpacks Whitehead s often complicated language, explaining the seismic shifts in his thinking and showing how he called into question all that philosophers had considered settled after Descartes and Kant. She demonstrates that the implications of Whitehead s philosophical theories and specialized knowledge of the various sciences come yoked with his innovative, revisionist take on God. Whitehead s God exists within a specific epistemological realm created by a radically complex and often highly mathematical language.

To think with Whitehead today, Stengers writes, means to sign on in advance to an adventure that will leave none of the terms we normally use as they were.

Handbook of Sinc Numerical Methods presents an ideal road map for handling general numeric problems. Reflecting the author's advances with Sinc since 1995, the text most notably provides a detailed exposition of the Sinc separation of variables method for numerically solving the full range of partial differential equations (PDEs) of interest to scientists and engineers. This new theory, which combines Sinc convolution with the boundary integral equation (IE) approach, makes for exponentially faster convergence to solutions of differential equations. The basis for the approach is the Sinc method of approximating almost every type of operation stemming from calculus via easily computed matrices of very low dimension. The downloadable resources of this handbook contain roughly 450 MATLAB (R) programs corresponding to exponentially convergent numerical algorithms for solving nearly every computational problem of science and engineering. While the book makes Sinc methods accessible to users wanting to bypass the complete theory, it also offers sufficient theoretical details for readers who do want a full working understanding of this exciting area of numerical analysis.

Education in the Graeco-Roman world was a hallmark of the polis. Yet the complex ways in which pedagogical theory and practice intersected with their local environments has not been much explored in recent scholarship. Learning Cities in Late Antiquity suggests a new explanatory model that helps to understand better how conditions in the cities shaped learning and teaching, and how, in turn, education had an impact on its urban context. Drawing inspiration from the modern idea of 'learning cities', the chapters explore the interplay of teachers, learners, political leaders, communities and institutions in the Mediterranean polis, with a focus on the well-documented city of Gaza in the sixth century CE. They demonstrate in detail that formal and informal teaching, as well as educational thinking, not only responded to specifically local needs, but also exerted considerable influence on local society. With its interdisciplinary and comparatist approach, the volume aims to contextualise ancient education, in order to stimulate further research on ancient learning cities. It also highlights the benefits of historical research to theory and practice in modern education.

Since publication of the first edition in 1992, the field of survey sampling has grown considerably. This new edition of Survey Sampling: Theory and Methods has been updated to include the latest research and the newest methods. The authors have undertaken the daunting task of surveying the sampling literature of the past decade to provide an outstanding research reference. Starting with the unified theory, the authors explain in the clearest of terms the subsequent developments. In fact, even the most modern innovations of survey sampling, both methodological and theoretical, have found a place in this concise volume. See what's new in the Second Edition: -Descriptions of new developments -A wider range of approaches to common problems -Increased coverage of methods that combine design and model-based approaches, adjusting for sample errors Covering the current state of development of essential aspects of theory and methods of survey sampling, the authors have taken great care to avoid being dogmatic and eschew taking sides in their presentation. They have created tool for graduate and advanced level students and a reference for researchers and practitioners that goes beyond the coverage found in most textbooks.

Founded in 1919 under the Treaty of Versailles as part of the League of Nations' system, the ILO is still today the main organization responsible for the international organization of work and the improvement of working conditions in the world. Widely recognized for its efforts in building international labour standards, the ILO remains little studied by development specialists and historians. This book intends to fill this gap and traces the history of international development and its early pioneers, through an analysis of the activities of the International Labour Office, the Secretariat of the International Labour Organization, between 1930 and 1946. In this book, development is used as a key to questioning the ILO's place and function in the expanding inter-war world. The development practices and discourses that emerged in the 1930s were mainly intended to support the ILO's universalization strategy, which was made necessary by the events that shook Europe at the time. Development discourses and practices were also part of the "esprit du temps", as they were closely linked to the affirmation of the planist and rationalist ideas of the 1930s. However, development for the ILO was not reduced to a project of economic modernization, but was seen as a tool for social engineering, as evidenced by the ILO's missions of technical assistance, organized since 1930. The analysis of the expertise work makes it possible to highlight the logics that prevailed in technical assistance, which was more in line with institutional objectives, than with the dissemination of a genuine expertise. This book therefore hopes to bring new insight on the history of internationalism, and international organizations during the inter-war period and the Second World War, as well as on the role of the ILO in the history of international development thinking and practices.

Since publication of the first edition in 1992, the field of survey sampling has grown considerably. This new edition of Survey Sampling: Theory and Methods has been updated to include the latest research and the newest methods. The authors have undertaken the daunting task of surveying the sampling literature of the past decade to provide an outstanding research reference. Starting with the unified theory, the authors explain in the clearest of terms the subsequent developments. In fact, even the most modern innovations of survey sampling, both methodological and theoretical, have found a place in this concise volume. See what's new in the Second Edition: Descriptions of new developments A wider range of approaches to common problems Increased coverage of methods that combine design and model-based approaches, adjusting for sample errors Covering the current state of development of essential aspects of theory and methods of survey sampling, the authors have taken great care to avoid being dogmatic and eschew taking sides in their presentation. They have created tool for graduate and advanced level students and a reference for researchers and practitioners that goes beyond the coverage found in most textbooks.

In this monograph, leading researchers in the world of numerical analysis, partial differential equations, and hard computational problems study the properties of solutions of the Navier-Stokes partial differential equations on (x, y, z, t) 3 x [0, T]. Initially converting the PDE to a system of integral equations, the authors then describe spaces A of analytic functions that house solutions of this equation, and show that these spaces of analytic functions are dense in the spaces S of rapidly decreasing and infinitely differentiable functions. This method benefits from the following advantages: The functions of S are nearly always conceptual rather than explicit Initial and boundary conditions of solutions of PDE are usually drawn from the applied sciences, and as such, they are nearly always piece-wise analytic, and in this case, the solutions have the same properties When methods of approximation are applied to functions of A they converge at an exponential rate, whereas methods of approximation applied to the functions of S converge only at a polynomial rate Enables sharper bounds on the solution enabling easier existence proofs, and a more accurate and more efficient method of solution, including accurate error bounds Following the proofs of denseness, the authors prove the existence of a solution of the integral equations in the space of functions A 3 x [0, T], and provide an explicit novel algorithm based on Sinc approximation and Picard-like iteration for computing the solution. Additionally, the authors include appendices that provide a custom Mathematica program for computing solutions based on the explicit algorithmic approximation procedure, and which supply explicit illustrations of these computed solutions.

From Einstein's quest for a unified field theory to Stephen Hawking's belief that we "would know the mind of God" through such a theory, contemporary science-and physics in particular-has claimed that it alone possesses absolute knowledge of the universe. In a sweeping work of philosophical inquiry, originally published in French in seven volumes, Isabelle Stengers builds on her previous intellectual accomplishments to explore the role and authority of science in modern societies and to challenge its pretensions to objectivity, rationality, and truth. For Stengers, science is a constructive enterprise, a diverse, interdependent, and highly contingent system that does not simply discover preexisting truths but, through specific practices and processes, helps shape them. She addresses conceptual themes crucial for modern science, such as the formation of physical-mathematical intelligibility, from Galilean mechanics and the origin of dynamics to quantum theory, the question of biological reductionism, and the power relations at work in the social and behavioral sciences. Focusing on the polemical and creative aspects of such themes, she argues for an ecology of practices that takes into account how scientific knowledge evolves, the constraints and obligations such practices impose, and the impact they have on the sciences and beyond. This perspective, which demands that competing practices and interests be taken seriously rather than merely (and often condescendingly) tolerated, poses a profound political and ethical challenge. In place of both absolutism and tolerance, she proposes a cosmopolitics-modeled on the ideal scientific method that considers all assumptions and facts as being open to question-that reintegrates the natural and the social, the modern and the archaic, the scientific and the irrational. Cosmopolitics I includes the first three volumes of the original work. Cosmopolitics II will be published by the University of Minnesota Press in Spring 2011.

Many mathematicians, scientists, and engineers are familiar with the Fast Fourier Transform, a method based upon the Discrete Fourier Transform. Perhaps not so many mathematicians, scientists, and engineers recognize that the Discrete Fourier Transform is one of a family of symbolic formulae called Sinc methods. Sinc methods are based upon the Sinc function, a wavelet-like function replete with identities which yield approximations to all classes of computational problems. Such problems include problems over finite, semi-infinite, or infinite domains, problems with singularities, and boundary layer problems. Written by the principle authority on the subject, this book introduces Sinc methods to the world of computation. It serves as an excellent research sourcebook as well as a textbook which uses analytic functions to derive Sinc methods for the advanced numerical analysis and applied approximation theory classrooms. Problem sections and historical notes are included.

Marking the 20th anniversary of Belgium's Kunstenfestivaldesarts-a major international arts festival-this ambitious book examines a wide range of critical perspectives on two decades of performing arts. The authors look closely at performing arts pieces from around the world to see what critiques and insights they reveal about society. Among the topics that these works address are the dialogue between history and memory, the development of a sense of community, the interplay between fiction and reality, and the fine line between a spectator and a witness. In addition to featuring images of the performances, the book includes texts by the artists themselves, sketches, photos, and writings by prominent figures in the fields of philosophy and sociology. The Time We Share attempts to build a global overview of the relationship between performing arts and society and determine how different performances helped shape international thought surrounding specific issues and ideas. Distributed for Mercatorfonds

Originally published in French in seven volumes, "Cosmopolitics" investigates the role and authority of the sciences in modern societies and challenges their claims to objectivity, rationality, and truth. "Cosmopolitics II" includes the first English-language translations of the last four books: "Quantum Mechanics: The End of the Dream, In the Name of the Arrow of Time: Prigogine's Challenge, Life and Artifice: The Faces of Emergence, "and" The Curse of Tolerance.
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Arguing for an "ecology of practices" in the sciences, Isabelle Stengers explores the discordant landscape of knowledge derived from modern science, seeking intellectual consistency among contradictory, confrontational, and mutually exclusive philosophical ambitions and approaches. For Stengers, science is a constructive enterprise, a diverse, interdependent, and highly contingent system that does not simply discover preexisting truths but, through specific practices and processes, helps shape them.

Stengers concludes this philosophical inquiry with a forceful critique of tolerance; it is a fundamentally condescending attitude, she contends, that prevents those worldviews that challenge dominant explanatory systems from being taken seriously. Instead of tolerance, she proposes a "cosmopolitics" that rejects politics as a universal category and allows modern scientific practices to peacefully coexist with other forms of knowledge.

Selected Topics in Approximation and Computation addresses the relationship between modern approximation theory and computational methods. The text is a combination of expositions of basic classical methods of approximation leading to popular splines and new explicit tools of computation, including Sinc methods, elliptic function methods, and positive operator approximation methods. It also provides an excellent summary of worst case analysis in information based complexity. It relates optimal computational methods with the theory of s-numbers and n-widths. It can serve as a text for senior-graduate courses in computer science and applied mathematics, and also as a reference for professionals.