Very Short Introductions: Brilliant, Sharp, Inspiring Emotions are complex mental states that resist reduction. They are visceral reactions but also beliefs about the world. They are spontaneous outbursts but also culturally learned performances. They are intimate and private and yet gain their substance and significance only from interpersonal and social frameworks. And just as our emotions in any given moment display this complex structure, so their history is plural rather than singular. The history of emotions is where the history of ideas meets the history of the body, and where the history of subjectivity meets social and cultural history. In this Very Short Introduction, Thomas Dixon traces the historical ancestries of feelings ranging from sorrow, melancholy, rage, and terror to cheerfulness, enthusiasm, sympathy, and love. The picture that emerges is a complex one, showing how the states we group together today as "the emotions" are the product of long and varied historical changes in language, culture, beliefs, and ways of life. The grief-stricken rage of Achilles in the Iliad, the happiness inscribed in America's Declaration of Independence, the love of humanity that fired crusades and revolutions through the ages, and the righteous rage of modern protest movements all look different when seen through this lens. With examples from ancient, medieval, and modern cultures, including forgotten feelings and the creation of modern emotional regimes, this Very Short Introduction sheds new light on our emotions in the present, by looking at what historians can tell us about their past. Dixon explains the key ideas of historians of emotions as they have developed in conversation with psychology and psychiatry, with attention paid especially to ideas about basic emotions, psychological construction, and affect theory. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Do you have to be a genius to get a first at university? In How to Get a First Thomas Dixon argues that you do not, and sets out to demystify first-class degrees in the arts, humanities and social sciences, clearly articulating the difference between the excellent and the merely competent in undergraduate work. This concise, no-nonsense guidebook will give prospective and current students advice on teaching and learning styles that prevail in university, managing your time and managing your lecturers. In an accessible, and entertaining style, the author looks at subjects such as: making the transition from school to university; developing transferable skills; making use of lectures and seminars; using libraries and the internet; note-taking, essays, seminars and presentations; common mistakes to avoid; writing with clarity and style; revision and examinations. Illustrated with many examples from a range of academic disciplines, How to Get a First is an all-purpose guide to success in academic life.

In this informative guide, Thomas Dixon argues that you do not have to be a genius to get a first at university. He sets out to de-mystify first-class degrees in the arts, humanities and social sciences, clearly articulating the difference between the excellent and the merely competent in undergraduate work. This concise, no-nonsense guidebook will give prospective and current students advice on teaching and learning styles that prevail in university and on how to manage their two most important resources - their time and their lecturers. In an accessible and entertaining style, the author looks at subjects such as: making the transition from school to university developing transferable skills making use of lectures and seminars using libraries and the Internet note-taking, essays, seminars and presentations common mistakes to avoid writing with clarity and style revision and examinations. Illustrated with many examples from a range of academic disciplines, How to Get a First is an all-purpose guide to success in academic life. Visit the companion website www.getafirst.com

Thomas Dixon was a lawyer, North Carolina state legislator, Baptist minister, lecturer, and novelist. This novel, an abridgement by Cary Wintz was originally published in 1905. It reflects turn-of-the-century attitudes most southerners had about Republican rule during Reconstruction.

Thomas Dixon was a lawyer, North Carolina state legislator, Baptist minister, lecturer, and novelist. This novel, an abridgement by Cary Wintz was originally published in 1905. It reflects turn-of-the-century attitudes most southerners had about Republican rule during Reconstruction.

The idea of an inevitable conflict between science and religion was decisively challenged by John Hedley Brooke in his classic Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, 1991). Almost two decades on, Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives revisits this argument and asks how historians can now impose order on the complex and contingent histories of religious engagements with science. Bringing together leading scholars, this volume explores the history and changing meanings of the categories 'science' and 'religion'; the role of publishing and education in forging and spreading ideas; the connection between knowledge, power and intellectual imperialism; and the reasons for the confrontation between evolution and creationism among American Christians and in the Islamic world. A major contribution to the historiography of science and religion, this book makes the most recent scholarship on this much misunderstood debate widely accessible.

Until two centuries ago "the emotions" did not exist. Thomas Dixon reveals in this study how emotions came into being as a distinct psychological category. They replaced such concepts as appetites, passions, sentiments and affections, which had preoccupied thinkers as diverse as Augustine, Aquinas, Hume, and Darwin. The book is a significant original contribution to the debate which has preoccupied western thinkers across many disciplines in recent decades.

The idea of an inevitable conflict between science and religion was decisively challenged by John Hedley Brooke in his classic Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, 1991). Almost two decades on, Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives revisits this argument and asks how historians can now impose order on the complex and contingent histories of religious engagements with science. Bringing together leading scholars, this new volume explores the history and changing meanings of the categories 'science' and 'religion'; the role of publishing and education in forging and spreading ideas; the connection between knowledge, power and intellectual imperialism; and the reasons for the confrontation between evolution and creationism among American Christians and in the Islamic world. A major contribution to the historiography of science and religion, this book makes the most recent scholarship on this much misunderstood debate widely accessible.

Today there is a thriving 'emotions industry' to which philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists are contributing. Yet until two centuries ago 'the emotions' did not exist. In this path-breaking study Thomas Dixon shows how, during the nineteenth century, the emotions came into being as a distinct psychological category, replacing existing categories such as appetites, passions, sentiments and affections. By examining medieval and eighteenth-century theological psychologies and placing Charles Darwin and William James within a broader and more complex nineteenth-century setting, Thomas Dixon argues that this domination by one single descriptive category is not healthy. Overinclusivity of 'the emotions' hampers attempts to argue with any subtlety about the enormous range of mental states and stances of which humans are capable. This book is an important contribution to the debate about emotion and rationality which has preoccupied western thinkers throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has implications for contemporary debates.

According to the reigning competition-driven model of evolution, selfish behaviors that maximize an organism's reproductive potential offer a fitness advantage over self-sacrificing behaviors-rendering unselfish behavior for the sake of others a mystery that requires extra explanation. Evolution, Games, and God addresses this conundrum by exploring how cooperation, working alongside mutation and natural selection, plays a critical role in populations from microbes to human societies. Inheriting a tendency to cooperate, argue the contributors to this book, may be as beneficial as the self-preserving instincts usually thought to be decisive in evolutionary dynamics. Assembling experts in mathematical biology, history of science, psychology, philosophy, and theology, Martin Nowak and Sarah Coakley take an interdisciplinary approach to the terms "cooperation" and "altruism." Using game theory, the authors elucidate mechanisms by which cooperation-a form of working together in which one individual benefits at the cost of another-arises through natural selection. They then examine altruism-cooperation which includes the sometimes conscious choice to act sacrificially for the collective good-as a key concept in scientific attempts to explain the origins of morality. Discoveries in cooperation go beyond the spread of genes in a population to include the spread of cultural transformations such as languages, ethics, and religious systems of meaning. The authors resist the presumption that theology and evolutionary theory are inevitably at odds. Rather, in rationally presenting a number of theological interpretations of the phenomena of cooperation and altruism, they find evolutionary explanation and theology to be strongly compatible.