Philosophy

Hardcover. NY, Penguin Press, 1st, 2023, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 511 pages. Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about consciousness--the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one, Sapolsky takes out all the major arguments for free will, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos theory and quantum physics. But as Sapolsky acknowledges, it's sometimes impossible to uncouple from our zeal to judge people, including ourselves. Determined applies this new understanding to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. Most of all, Sapolsky argues that while accepting the reality about free will is monumentally difficult, it will make for a much more humane world. Clean copy.

Hardcover. London, William Blackwood and Sons, 1st, 1903, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 2 Volumes. Blue cloth covers. Volume 1 - 358 pages. Previous owners bookplate on inside front cover. Area of foxing at top left corner of half title page. Light moisture wrinkle to front/back covers at upper right/left corners - this does not effect text block. Title in gilt on spine. Clean, tight copy. Volume 2 - 330 pages plus 32 pages of ads. Previous owners bookplate on front endpaper. Blue stain along gutter of half title, and title page. Title in gilt on spine. Clean, tight copy.

Softcover. NY, Continuum, reprint, 1989, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 258 pages. Dialectic of Enlightenment is undoubtedly the most influential publication of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory. Written during the Second World War and circulated privately, it appeared in a printed edition in Amsterdam in 1947. "What we had set out to do," the authors write in the Preface, "was nothing less than to explain why humanity, instead of entering a truly human state, is sinking into a new kind of barbarism." Yet the work goes far beyond a mere critique of contemporary events. Historically remote developments, indeed, the birth of Western history and of subjectivity itself out of the struggle against natural forces, as represented in myths, are connected in a wide arch to the most threatening experiences of the present. The book consists in five chapters, at first glance unconnected, together with a number of shorter notes. The various analyses concern such phenomena as the detachment of science from practical life, formalized morality, the manipulative nature of entertainment culture, and a paranoid behavioral structure, expressed in aggressive anti-Semitism, that marks the limits of enlightenment. The authors perceive a common element in these phenomena, the tendency toward self-destruction of the guiding criteria inherent in enlightenment thought from the beginning. Using historical analyses to elucidate the present, they show, against the background of a prehistory of subjectivity, why the National Socialist terror was not an aberration of modern history but was rooted deeply in the fundamental characteristics of Western civilization. Spine faded, Clean copy.

Hardcover. NY, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1st US, 1925, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth, gilt lettering on spine, 193 pages. Name and pencil notations to front endpapers

Hardcover. New York, Oxford University Press, 3rd Ed., 1931, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Five volumes complete, 594, 576, 543. 645 and 593 pages. Olive cloth binding with gilt lettering on spine, top edge gilt.Couple hinges tender. Bright, clean set. DUE TO WEIGHT, DOESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.

Hardcover. NY, Abaris Books, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, dark gray cloth with gilt stamping, 359 pages. French & English on facing pages. Janus Series 13.

Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1st, 1988, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 366 pages. Previous owner's signature on front end paper. Markings in pencil to a handful pages. Else a clean, tight copy. Twelve original essays advance the understanding of theistic metaphysics and it's capacity to illuminate a variety of fundamental issues.

Hardcover. NY, Macmillan, reprint, 1929, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt letterng on spine and front cover, 242 pages. Does Civilization Need Religion? sets out from the fact that religion's inability to make its ethical and social resources available for the solution of the moral problems of modern civilization is one, and the neglected one, of the two chief causes responsible for its debilitated condition. It is convinced that if Christian idealists are to make religion socially effective they will be forced to detach themselves from the dominant secular desires of the nations as well as from the greed of economic groups. It aims to show that though neither the orthodox nor the modern wing of the Christian Church seems capable of initiating a genuine revival which will evolve a morality capable of challenging and maintaining itself against the dominant desires of modern civilization's needs, there are resources in the Christian religion which make it the inevitable basis of any spiritual regeneration of Western civilization. Does Civilization Need Religion? maintains that the task of redeeming Western society rests in a peculiar sense upon Christianity, which has reduced the eternal conflict between self-assertion and self-denial to the paradox of self-assertion through self-denial and made the Cross the symbol of life's highest achievement. It is persuaded that the idea of a potent but yet suffering divine ideal which is defeated by the world but gains its victory in the defeat must continue to remain basic in any morally creative worldview. Names on front fly leaf otherwise a clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Aperture, 1st, 1998, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. 96 pages, color photographs, Like new in publisher's shrinkwrap. Doors of the Kingdom is a unique collection of photographs depicting the ancient and disappearing craft of doormaking in Arabia. The Islamic concept of hurma, or sanctity of a place of dwelling or worship, is recurrent throughout Arabic poetry and literature. The door (bab), preserver of sanctity, becomes symbolic of the boundary between public and private space, and between the profane and the sacred. In 1995, Haajar Gouverneur traveled throughout the Arabian Peninsula photographing each region's distinctive doorways and the remaining artisans who make them. The doors of Arabia, painstakingly hand-carved from the wood of the Al-Athel trees, last in their exquisite variety for hundreds of years. This ancient craft, passed down from generation to generation in the central and northern regions of Saudi Arabia, is now nearly extinct. Modern materials, technology, and changing priorities threaten the continuity of the sacred and artisanal tradition of doormaking.

Hardcover. Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1st Edition, 1961, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 154 pages. Hardcover. Navy blue cloth cover boards, title on spine in white and small gilt design on front cover board. Previous owner's name on front flyleaf. Light pencil marks (erasable) throughout. Binding tight. Spine straight. This small book, the last work of a world-renowned scholar, has established itself as a classic. It provides a superb overview of the vast historical process by which Christianity was Hellenized and Hellenic civilization became Christianized.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1st, 1969, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 556 pages. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Oxford UK, Oxford University Press, 1st, 2016, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 382 pages. This study addresses the need for a more current understanding of Cartesian philosophy by considering the different constructions of Descartes's thought that emerged in the Calvinist United Provinces (Netherlands) and Catholic France, the two main centers for early modern Cartesianism, during the period dating from the last decades of his life to the century or so following his death in 1650. It turns out that we must speak not of a single early modern Cartesianism rigidly defined in terms of Descartes's own authorial intentions, but rather of a loose collection of early modern Cartesianisms that involve a range of different positions on various sets of issues. Though more or less rooted in Descartes's somewhat open-ended views, these Cartesianisms evolved in different ways over time in response to different intellectual and social pressures. Chapters of this study are devoted to: the early modern Catholic and Calvinist condemnations of Descartes and the incompatible Cartesian responses to these; conflicting attitudes among early modern Cartesians toward ancient thought and modernity; competing early modern attempts to combine Descartes's views with those of Augustine; the different occasionalist accounts of causation within early modern Cartesianism; and the impact of various forms of early modern Cartesianism on both Dutch medicine and French physics. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Durham UK, Acumen, 1st, 2009, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in blue cloth, with red title block, gilt lettering, 348 pages. The early modern period in philosophy - encompassing the 16th to the 18th centuries - reflects a time of social and intellectual turmoil. The Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Counter-Reformation, and the birth of the Enlightenment all contributed to the re-evaluation of reason and faith. The revolution in science and in natural philosophy swept away two millennia of Aristotelian certainty in a human-centered universe. Covering some of the most important figures in the history of Western thought - notably Descartes, Locke, Hume and Kant - "Early Modern Philosophy of Religion" charts the philosophical understanding of religion at a time of intellectual and spiritual revolution. "Early Modern Philosophy of Religion" will be of interest to historians and philosophers of religion, while also serving as an indispensable reference for teachers, students and others who would like to learn more about this formative period in the history of ideas. Lacks dust jacket. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Salem MA, Cushing and Carlton, 1st US, 1795, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 144 pages, 2 parts bound in one volume, bound in leather. Front cover hinge partially cracked, loose. Light pencil writing on last blank page, otherwise clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Stanford CA, Stanford University Press, 1st, 1964, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 194 pages. Based upon the 1961 Arensberg Lectures, given at Stanford University, this collection of essays offers a genuinely unified interpretation of Italian Renaissance thought by describing and evaluating the philosophies of eight pivotal figures: 1). Francesco Petrarch. 2). Lorenzo Valla. 3). Marsilio Ficino. 4). Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. 5). Pietro Pomponazzi. 6). Bernardino Telesio. 7). Francesco Patrizi. 8). Giordano Bruno. With appendix: The medieval antecedents of Renaisssance Humanism, notes, bibliographical survey and index. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 2nd pr., 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 332 pages, b&w illustrations. Einstein and the Quantum reveals for the first time the full significance of Albert Einstein's contributions to quantum theory. Einstein famously rejected quantum mechanics, observing that God does not play dice. But, in fact, he thought more about the nature of atoms, molecules, and the emission and absorption of light-the core of what we now know as quantum theory-than he did about relativity.A compelling blend of physics, biography, and the history of science, Einstein and the Quantum shares the untold story of how Einstein-not Max Planck or Niels Bohr-was the driving force behind early quantum theory. It paints a vivid portrait of the iconic physicist as he grappled with the apparently contradictory nature of the atomic world, in which its invisible constituents defy the categories of classical physics, behaving simultaneously as both particle and wave. And it demonstrates how Einstein's later work on the emission and absorption of light, and on atomic gases, led directly to Erwin Schrodinger's breakthrough to the modern form of quantum mechanics. The book sheds light on why Einstein ultimately renounced his own brilliant work on quantum theory, due to his deep belief in science as something objective and eternal. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Netherlands, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 223 pages. In Elements, Principles and Particles, Antonio Clericuzio explores the relationships between chemistry and corpuscular philosophy in the age of the Scientific Revolution. Science historians have regarded chemistry and corpuscular philosophy as two distinct traditions. Clericuzio's view is that since the beginning of the 17th century atomism and chemistry were strictly connected. This is attested by Daniel Sennert and by many hitherto little-known French and English natural philosophers. They often combined a corpuscular theory of matter with Paracelsian chemical (and medical) doctrines. Boyle plays a central part in the present book: Clericuzio redefines Boyle's chemical views, by showing that Boyle did not subordinate chemistry to the principles of mechanical philosophy. When Boyle explained chemical phenomena, he had recourse to corpuscles endowed with chemical, not mechanical, properties. The combination of chemistry and corpuscular philosophy was adopted by a number of chemists active in the last decades of the 17th century, both in England and on the Continent. Using a large number of primary sources, the author challenges the standard view of the corpuscular theory of matter as identical with the mechanical philosophy. He points out that different versions of the corpuscular philosophy flourished in the 17th century. Most of them were not based on the mechanical theory, i.e. on the view that matter is inert and has only mechanical properties. Throughout the 17th century, active principles, as well as chemical properties, are attributed to corpuscles. Given its broad coverage, the book is a significant contribution to both history of science and history of philosophy.

Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 403 pages plus a 27 page addenda. A facsimile printing of the 1671 edition. Some 100 illustrations to text showing physical or geometrical calculations. Henry More (1614-1687), was an influential Jesuit, Neoplatonist, and philosopher. This work on metaphysics profoundly influenced the development of Newton's thought, "It seems undeniable that Newton read and was influenced by More's views on space and time, as presented in the Enchiridion metaphysicum. Like More, Newton also believed that for something to exist it must exist in space, and he identified the immensity of infinite space with the extension of God the similarities between their views of space and time, and their relationship to God, guarantees More's place in the history of science." Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean and bright.

Hardcover. London, England, Cambridge at the University Press, Revised 2nd edition, 1925, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 207 pages. Hardcover. Navy blue cloth cover boards, gilt title on spine. Ex-library book with labels/stamps/and appropriate markings. Light pencil markings throughout. Some light tanning to edges and pages. Traditions of Science, The Foundations of Dynamical Physics, Scientific Relativity, The Natural Elements...

Hardcover. Bristol UK, Thoemmes Press, reprint, 1997, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth with gilt lettering on spine, 319 pages. A facsimile reprint of the 1656 edition. One of 9 volumes in More's collected works. Name, light pencil marking to front fly leaf otherwise a clean, bright copy.

Paris, Honore Champion, 1st thus, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, pale blue boards stamped in black and blue, 1086 pages. Translated to French by Pierre Coste, edited by Georges Moyal. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. London, Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 2nd, 1874, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 164 pages, plus 24 pages of new works from publishers. Green cloth covers, gilt titles to spine, blind stamped titles and border to front cover. Light edgewear and rubbing to covers, spine cracked at inside of front hinge, previous owner's inscription to front endpaper, Edinburgh Medical Society stamp to title page, short pencil notations to rear endpaper; otherwise a very neat, tight copy.