Einstein vs. Bergson : an enduring quarrel on time
【作 者】Alessandra Campo and Simone Gozzano
【出版社】de Gruyter (Nov. 22 2021)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】B016.9 /E35 /E
【简 介】This book brings together papers from a conference that took place in the city of L’Aquila, 4-6 April 2019, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the earthquake that struck on 6 April 2009. Philosophers and scientists from diverse fields of research debated the problem that, on 6 April 1922, divided Einstein and Bergson: the nature of time.
For Einstein, scientific time is the only time that matters and the only time we can rely on. Bergson, however, believes that scientific time is derived by abstraction, even in the sense of extraction, from a more fundamental time. The plurality of times envisaged by the theory of Relativity does not, for him, contradict the philosophical intuition of the existence of a single time. But how do things stand today? What can we say about the relationship between the quantitative and qualitative dimensions of time in the light of contemporary science? What do quantum mechanics, biology and neuroscience teach us about the nature of time?
The essays collected here take up the question that pitted Einstein against Bergson, science against philosophy, in an attempt to reverse the outcome of their monologue in two voices, with a multilogue in several voices.
Learning gender after the Cold War : contentious feminisms
【作 者】Ioana Cîrstocea
【出版社】Palgrave Macmillan; 1st ed. 2022 edition (21 Sept. 2022)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】C913.68 /C578L /E
【简 介】This book explores the role and place of feminist politics in the transformation of the former socialist world and points out the geopolitical mechanisms involved in the deployment of technocratic norms, expert discourses, activist repertoires and academic knowledge on women’s rights and gender equality in the 1990s-2000s.
Based on an interdisciplinary approach and scrutinizing transnational flows of people, resources and ideas, the analysis brings together themes and spaces that have been disconnected in previous scholarship. It sheds light on the integration of feminist resources into contemporary governance through complex entanglements of international aid to democratization, “activism beyond borders” and systemic transformation of higher education.
Internet philanthropy in China
【作 者】Yidan Chen
【出版社】Palgrave Macmillan (August 27, 2021)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】D632.1 /C518 /E
【简 介】This book is the work of Charles Chen Yidan, “the Father of China’s Internet Philanthropy”. It is based on the long-term research and practices of Tencent Research Institute and the Tencent Foundation. It reviews the recent history of internet-based charity during the past 20 years. It provides a first-time comprehensive review and study of internet-based charity from different dimensions, including the nature of internet-based charity, typical innovations and practices at home and abroad, as well as future prospects for integrating new technology and charity. It offers important insights into the transformation of many charitable organizations, the regulatory approach of governments towards these organizations, and the development of future society. This book contains not only a large set of the latest data from foreign countries but also exclusive interviews of many industry experts, including the directors of online charity platforms and chairmen of typical charitable organizations. It provides valuable references and is highly recommended for enterprises, organizations, and authorities that want to understand and promote the advancement of philanthropy in China.
Tocqueville's dilemmas, and ours : sovereignty, nationalism, globalization
【作 者】Ewa Atanassow
【出版社】Princeton University Press (October 18, 2022)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】D771.22 /A862 /E
【简 介】How can today’s liberal democracies withstand the illiberal wave sweeping the globe? What can revive our waning faith in constitutional democracy? Tocqueville’s Dilemmas, and Ours argues that Alexis de Tocqueville, one of democracy’s greatest champions and most incisive critics, can guide us forward.
Drawing on Tocqueville’s major works and lesser-known policy writings, Ewa Atanassow shines a bright light on the foundations of liberal democracy. She argues that its prospects depend on how we tackle three dilemmas that were as urgent in Tocqueville’s day as they are in ours: how to institutionalize popular sovereignty, how to define nationhood, and how to grasp the possibility and limits of global governance. These are pivotal but often neglected dimensions of Tocqueville’s work, and this fresh look at his writings provides a powerful framework for addressing the tensions between liberalism and democracy in the twenty-first century.
Recovering a richer liberalism capable of weathering today’s political storms, Tocqueville’s Dilemmas, and Ours explains how we can reclaim nationalism as a liberal force and reimagine sovereignty in a global age—and do so with one of democracy’s most discerning thinkers as our guide.
50 economics classics : your shortcut to the most important ideas on capitalism, finance, and the global economy
【作 者】Tom Butler-Bowdon
【出版社】Nicholas Brealey (May 30, 2017)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】F0 /B987 /E
【简 介】Economics drives the modern world and shapes our lives, but few of us feel we have time to engage with the breadth of ideas in the subject. 50 Economics Classics is the smart person's guide to two centuries of discussion of finance, capitalism and the global economy. From Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations to Thomas Piketty's bestseller Capital in the Twenty-First Century, here are the great reads, seminal ideas and famous texts clarified and illuminated for all.
What is academic freedom? : a century of debate, 1915-present
【作 者】Daniel Gordon
【出版社】Routledge; 1st edition (July 26, 2022)
【馆藏地】理科馆理科书库
【索书号】G649.712 /G662 /E
【简 介】This book explores the history of the debate, from 1915 to the present, about the meaning of academic freedom, particularly as concerns political activism on the college campus. The book introduces readers to the origins of the modern research university in the United States, the professionalization of the role of the university teacher, and the rise of alternative conceptions of academic freedom challenging the professional model and radicalizing the image of the university. Leading thinkers on the subject of academic freedom—Arthur Lovejoy, Angela Davis, Alexander Meiklejohn, Edward W. Said, among others—spring to life. What is the relationship between freedom of speech and academic freedom? Should communists be allowed to teach? What constitutes unacceptable political "indoctrination" in the classroom? What are the implications for academic freedom of creating Black Studies and Women's Studies departments? Do academic boycotts, such as those directed against Israel, violate the spirit of academic freedom? The book provides the context for these debates. Instead of opining as a judge, the author discloses the legal, philosophical, political, and semantic disagreements in each controversy. The book will appeal to readers across the social sciences and humanities with interests in scholarly freedom and academic life.
Dostoevsky as a translator of Balzac
【作 者】Julia Titus
【出版社】Princeton University Press (March 1, 2022)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】I512.064 /T623 /E
【简 介】The focus of this study in comparative criticism is close analysis of Dostoevsky’s first literary publication—his 1844 translation of the first edition of Balzac’s Eugе́nie Grandet (1834)—and the stylistic choices that he made as a young writer while working on Balzac’s novel. Through the prism of close reading, the author analyzes Dostoevsky’s literary debut in the context of his future mature aesthetic style and poetics. Comparing the original and the translation side by side, this book focuses on the omissions, additions and substitutions that Dostoevsky brought into the text. It demonstrates how young Dostoevsky’s free translation of Eugénie Grandet predicts the creation of his own literary characters, themes, and other aspects of his literary output that are now recognized as Dostoevsky’s signature style. It investigates the changes that Dostoevsky made while working on Balzac’s text and analyzes the complex transplantation of Balzac’s imagery, motifs, and character portraiture from Eugénie Grandet into Dostoevsky’s own writing later on.
She came from Mariupol
【作 者】Natascha Wodin
【出版社】Michigan State University Press (April 1, 2022)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】K835.168.5 /W839 /E
【简 介】WINNER OF THE 2017 LEIPZIG BOOK FAIR PRIZE—When Natascha Wodin’s mother died, Natascha was only ten years old—too young to find out what her mother had experienced during World War II. All the little girl knew was that they were detritus, human debris left over from the war. Years later, Natascha set out on a quest to find out what happened to her mother during that time. Why had they lived in a camp for “displaced persons”? Where did her mother come from? What had she experienced? The one thing she knew is that her parents had to leave Mariupol in Ukraine for Germany as part of the Nazi forced labor program in 1943. Armed with this limited knowledge, Natascha resolved to piece together the puzzle of her family’s past. The result is a highly praised, beautiful piece of prose that has drawn comparisons to W. G. Sebald in its approach. Like Sebald, Natascha’s aim is to reclaim the stories of those who can no longer speak for themselves. The author is not only in search of her own family’s history, but she is also aware that she is charting unmarked territory: accounts of the plight of forced laborers and displaced persons are still a rarity within literature about World War II and its atrocities. Natascha’s personal homage to her mother’s life story is an important lyrical memorial for the thousands of Eastern Europeans who were forced to leave their homes and work in Germany during the war, and a moving reflection of the plight of displaced peoples throughout the ages. This is a darkly radiant account of one person’s fate, developing momentous emotive power—its subject serves as a proxy for the fate of millions.
Humanity in a black mirror : essays on posthuman fantasies in a technological near future
【作 者】Jacob Blevins and Zahi Zalloua
【出版社】 McFarland (January 12, 2023)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心（东）
【索书号】J905.561 /H918 /E
【简 介】The presentation of technology as a response to human want or need is a defining aspect of Black Mirror, a series that centers the transhumanist conviction that ontological deficiency is a solvable problem. The articles in this collection continue Black Mirror's examination of the transhuman need for plentitude, addressing the convergence of fantasy, the posthuman, and the dramatization of fear. The contributors contend that Black Mirror reveals both the cracks of the posthuman self and the formation of anxiety within fantasy's empty, yet necessary, economy of desire.
The strength of the series lies in its ability to disrupt the visibility of technology, no longer portraying it as a naturalized, unseen background, affecting our very being at the ontological level without many of us realizing it. This volume of essays argues that this negative lesson is Black Mirror's most successful approach. It examines how Black Mirror demonstrates the Janus-like structure of fantasy, as well as how it teaches, unteaches, and reteaches us about desire in a technological world.
The biggest number in the world : a journey to the edge of mathematics
【作 者】David Darling & Agnijo Banerjee
【出版社】Oneworld Publications (June 14, 2022)
【馆藏地】理科馆外教中心阅览室
【索书号】O1 /D221 /E
【简 介】We all know that numbers go on forever, that you could spend your life counting and never reach the end of the line, so there can’t be such a thing as a ‘biggest number’. Or can there?
To find out, David Darling and Agnijo Banerjee embark on an epic quest, revealing the answers to questions like: are there more grains of sand on Earth or stars in the universe? Is there enough paper on Earth to write out the digits of a googolplex? And what is a googolplex?
Then things get serious.
Enter the strange realm between the finite and the infinite, and float through a universe where the rules we cling to no longer apply. Encounter the highest number computable and infinite kinds of infinity. At every turn, a cast of wild and wonderful characters threatens the status quo with their ideas, and each time the numbers get larger.