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The Trials of Academe: The New Era of Campus Litigation
by Amy GajdaOnce upon a time, virtually no one in the academy thought to sue over campus disputes, and, if they dared, judges bounced the case on grounds that it was no business of the courts. Tenure decisions, grading curves, course content, and committee assignments were the stuff of faculty meetings, not lawsuits. Not so today. As Amy Gajda shows in this witty yet troubling book, litigation is now common on campus, and perhaps even more commonly feared. Professors sue each other for defamation based on assertions in research articles or tenure review letters; students sue professors for breach of contract when an F prevents them from graduating; professors threaten to sue students for unfairly criticizing their teaching. Gajda’s lively account introduces the new duo driving the changes: the litigious academic who sees academic prerogative as a matter of legal entitlement and the skeptical judge who is increasingly willing to set aside decades of academic deference to pronounce campus rights and responsibilities. This turn to the courts is changing campus life, eroding traditional notions of academic autonomy and confidentiality, and encouraging courts to micromanage course content, admissions standards, exam policies, graduation requirements, and peer review. This book explores the origins and causes of the litigation trend, its implications for academic freedom, and what lawyers, judges, and academics themselves can do to limit the potential damage.
The Trials of Socrates: Six Classic Texts
by C. D. Reeve Xenophon Aristophanes PlatoLampooned in 406 B.C.E. in a blistering Aristophanic satire, Socrates was tried in 399 B.C.E. on a charge of corrupting the youth, convicted by a jury of about five hundred of his peers, and condemned to death. Glimpsed today through the extant writings of his contemporaries and near-contemporaries, he remains for us as compelling, enigmatic, and elusive a figure as Jesus or Buddha. Although present-day (like ancient Greek) opinion on the real Socrates diverges widely, six classic texts that any informed judgment of him must take into account appear together, for the first time, in this volume. Those of Plato and Xenophon appear in new, previously unpublished translations that combine accuracy, accessibility, and readability; that of Aristophanes' Clouds offers these same qualities in an unbowdlerized translation that captures brilliantly the bite of Aristophanes' wit. An Introduction to each text and judicious footnotes provide crucial background information and important cross-references.
The TrialThat Never Ends: Hannah Arendt's 'Eichmann in Jerusalelm' in Retrospect
by Richard J. Golsan Sarah MisemerThe fiftieth anniversary of the Adolf Eichmann trial may have come and gone but in many countries around the world there is a renewed focus on the trial, Eichmann himself, and the nature of his crimes. This increased attention also stimulates scrutiny of Hannah Arendt’s influential and controversial work, Eichmann in Jerusalem. The contributors gathered together by Richard J. Golsan and Sarah M. Misemer in The Trial That Never Ends assess the contested legacy of Hannah Arendt’s famous book and the issues she raised: the "banality of evil", the possibility of justice in the aftermath of monstrous crimes, the right of Israel to kidnap and judge Eichmann, and the agency and role of victims. The contributors also interrogate Arendt’s own ambivalent attitudes towards race and critically interpret the nature of the crimes Eichmann committed in light of newly discovered Nazi documents. The Trial That Never Ends responds to new scholarship by Deborah Lipstadt, Bettina Stangneth, and Shoshana Felman and offers rich new ground for historical, legal, philosophical, and psychological speculation.
The Triangle of Representation
by Christopher PrendergastMoving deftly among literary and visual arts, as well as the modern critical canon, Christopher Prendergast's book explores the meaning and value of representation as both a philosophical challenge (What does it mean to create an image that "stands for" something absent?) and a political issue (Who has the right to represent whom?).The Triangle of Representation raises a range of theoretical, historical, and aesthetic questions, and offers subtle readings of such cultural critics as Raymond Williams, Paul de Man, Edward Said, Walter Benjamin, and Hélène Cixous, in addition to penetrating investigations of visual artists like Gros, Ingres, and Matisse and significant insights into Proust and the onus of translating him. Above all, Prendergast's work is a striking display of how a firm grounding in theory is essential for the exploration of art and literature.
Tribal Epistemologies: Essays in the Philosophy of Anthropology (Routledge Revivals)
by Helmut WautischerFirst published in 1998, this collection of ten essays transforms our understanding of both the role of philosophical anthropology in modern world philosophy and the origins of tribal knowledge in their relation to contemporary assessments of cognition and consciousness. Ethnographic data from geographically distant cultures - such as the Maori of New Zealand, the Fore of New Guinea, the Sea Nomads of the Andaman, the Cowlitz of North America, the Maya, Australian Aborigines, Siberian Shamans - are carefully crafted toward an empirical basis for discussing a variety of phenomena traditional labelled in Western thought as transcendent or metaphysical. This anthology is a valuable source of information relevant for any theories of knowledge and a solid challenge for reductionist models of consciousness. The essays enhance our recognition and appreciation of fundamental similarities as well as differences in world views and cultural perspectives related to knowledge claims. This anthology illustrates unplumbed depths of human consciousness, reveals experiential understandings beyond linguistic thought, and stands aside from the view that behaviour and intelligence can be understood by deterministic principles. This volume of essays should be read with stereoscopic vision: one lens focusing on the rich ethnographic material of folk societies, the other focusing on the wider awareness of how we come to know what we know. It features specialists in philosophy, ethnology and comparative sociology, comparative religion, cross-cultural psychology, physical anthropology, environmental and marine scientists, Indian affairs, anthropology, comparative literature, shamanism and theoretical biology. These contributors explore issues including individuality in relational cultures, Maori epistemology, shamanistic knowledge and cosmology and images of conduct, character and personhood in the Native American tradition.
The Tribal Imagination: Civilization and the Savage Mind
by Robin FoxWe began as savages, and savagery has served us well—it got us where we are. But how do our tribal impulses, still in place and in play, fit in the highly complex, civilized world we inhabit today? This question, raised by thinkers from Freud to Levi-Strauss, is fully explored in this book by the acclaimed anthropologist Robin Fox. It takes up what he sees as the main—and urgent—task of evolutionary science: not so much to explain what we do, as to explain what we do at our peril. Ranging from incest and arranged marriage to poetry and myth to human rights and pop icons, Fox sets out to show how a variety of human behaviors reveal traces of their tribal roots, and how this evolutionary past limits our capacity for action. Among the questions he raises: How real is our notion of time? Is there a human “right” to vengeance? Are we democratic by nature? Are cultural studies and fascism cousins under the skin? Is evolutionary history coming to an end—or just getting more interesting? In his famously informative and entertaining fashion, drawing links from Volkswagens to Bartok to Woody Guthrie, from Swinburne to Seinfeld, Fox traces our ongoing struggle to maintain open societies in the face of profoundly tribal human needs—needs which, paradoxically, hold the key to our survival.
Trick or Truth?
by Anthony Aguirre Brendan Foster Zeeya MeraliThe prize-winning essays in thisbook address the fascinating but sometimes uncomfortable relationship betweenphysics and mathematics. Ismathematics merely another natural science? Or is it the result of humancreativity? Does physics simply wear mathematics like a costume, or is math thelifeblood of physical reality? The nineteen wide-ranging, highly imaginative and oftenentertaining essays are enhanced versions of the prize-winning entries to theFQXi essay competition "Trick or Truth", which attracted over 200 submissions. The Foundational QuestionsInstitute, FQXi, catalyzes, supports, and disseminates research on questions atthe foundations of physics and cosmology, particularly new frontiers andinnovative ideas integral to a deep understanding of reality, but unlikely tobe supported by conventional funding sources.
The Trickster and the System: Identity and agency in contemporary society
by Helena Bassil-MorozowFor centuries, the trickster has been used in various narratives, including mythological, literary and cinematic, to convey the idea of agency, rebellion and, often turbulent, progress. In The Trickster and the System: Identity and Agency in Contemporary Society, Helena Bassil-Morozow shows how the trickster can be seen as a metaphor to describe the psycho-anthropological concept of change, an impulse that challenges the existing order of things, a progressive force that is a-structural and anti-structural in its nature. The book is about being able to see things from an unusual, even ‘odd’, perspective, which does not coincide with the homogenous normality of the mass, or the social system, or a political ideology, or some other kind of authority. The Trickster and the System offers an analytical paradigm which can be used to examine relationships between tricksters and systems, change and stability, in a wide range of social, political and cultural contexts. It covers a range of systems, describes different types of tricksters and discusses possible conflicts, tensions and dialogues between the two opposing sides. One of the central ideas of the book is that social systems use shame as a tool to control and manage all kinds of tricksters – individuality, agency, creativity, spontaneity, innovation and initiative, to name but a few. The author argues that any society that neglects its tricksters (agents of change), ends up suffering from decay, stagnation – or even mass hysterical outbursts. The Trickster and the System: Identity and Agency in Contemporary Society provides a fresh perspective on the trickster figure in a variety of cultural contexts. It covers a range of psychological, cultural, social and political phenomena, from personal issues to the highest level of society’s functioning: self-esteem and shame, lifestyle and relationships, creativity and self-expression, media, advertising, economy, political ideology and, most importantly, human identity and authenticity. The book is essential reading for scholars in the areas of psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, myth, cultural and media studies, narrative analysis, cultural anthropology, as well as anyone interested in critical issues in contemporary culture. Helena Bassil-Morozow is a cultural philosopher, film scholar and academic writer whose many publications include Tim Burton: The Monster and the Crowd (Routledge, 2010) and The Trickster in Contemporary Film (Routledge, 2011). Helena is currently working on another Routledge project, Jungian Film Studies: the Essential Guide (co-authored with Luke Hockley). Her principal academic affiliation is the University of Bedfordshire, Faculty of Creative Arts, Technologies & Science.
The Tricontinental Revolution: Third World Radicalism and the Cold War (Cambridge Studies in US Foreign Relations)
by Mark Atwood Lawrence R. Joseph ParrottThe Tricontinental Revolution provides a major reassessment of the global rise and impact of Tricontinentalism, the militant strand of Third World solidarity that defined the 1960s and 1970s as decades of rebellion. Cold War interventions highlighted the limits of decolonization, prompting a generation of global South radicals to adopt expansive visions of self-determination. Long associated with Cuba, this anti-imperial worldview stretched far beyond the Caribbean to unite international revolutions around programs of socialism, armed revolt, economic sovereignty, and confrontational diplomacy. Linking independent nations with non-state movements from North Vietnam through South Africa to New York City, Tricontinentalism encouraged marginalized groups to mount radical challenges to the United States and the inequitable Euro-centric international system. Through eleven expert essays, this volume recenters global political debates on the priorities and ideologies of the Global South, providing a new framework, chronology, and tentative vocabulary for understanding the evolution of anti-imperial and decolonial politics.
Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief
by James M. McphersonJames McPherson, a bestselling historian of the Civil War, illuminates how Lincoln worked with - and often against - his senior commanders to defeat the Confederacy and create the role of commander in chief as we know it. Though Abraham Lincoln arrived at the White House with no previous military experience (apart from a couple of months spent soldiering in 1832), he quickly established himself as the greatest commander in chief in American history. James McPherson illuminates this often misunderstood and profoundly influential aspect of Lincoln's legacy. In essence, Lincoln invented the idea of commander in chief, as neither the Constitution nor existing legislation specified how the president ought to declare war or dictate strategy. In fact, by assuming the powers we associate with the role of commander in chief, Lincoln often overstepped the narrow band of rights granted the president. Good thing too, because his strategic insight and will to fight changed the course of the war and saved the Union. For most of the conflict, he constantly had to goad his reluctant generals toward battle, and he oversaw strategy and planning for major engagements with the enemy. Lincoln was a self-taught military strategist (as he was a self-taught lawyer), which makes his adroit conduct of the war seem almost miraculous. To be sure, the Union's campaigns often went awry, sometimes horribly so, but McPherson makes clear how the missteps arose from the all-too-common moments when Lincoln could neither threaten nor cajole his commanders to follow his orders. Because Lincoln's war took place within our borders, the relationship between the front lines and the home front was especially close - and volatile. Here again, Lincoln faced enormous challenges in exemplary fashion. He was a masterly molder of public opinion, for instance, defining the war aims initially as preserving the Union and only later as ending slavery - when he sensed the public was at last ready to bear such a lofty burden. As we approach the bicentennial of Lincoln's birth in 2009, this book will be that rarest gift-a genuinely novel, even timely, view of the most-written-about figure in our history. Tried by War offers a revelatory portrait of leadership during the greatest crisis our nation has ever endured. How Lincoln overcame feckless generals, fickle public opinion, and his own paralyzing fears is a story at once suspenseful and inspiring.
Trigonometric Delights
by Eli MaorTrigonometry has always been the black sheep of mathematics. It has a reputation as a dry and difficult subject, a glorified form of geometry complicated by tedious computation. In this book, Eli Maor draws on his remarkable talents as a guide to the world of numbers to dispel that view. Rejecting the usual arid descriptions of sine, cosine, and their trigonometric relatives, he brings the subject to life in a compelling blend of history, biography, and mathematics. He presents both a survey of the main elements of trigonometry and a unique account of its vital contribution to science and social development. Woven together in a tapestry of entertaining stories, scientific curiosities, and educational insights, the book more than lives up to the title Trigonometric Delights.Maor, whose previous books have demystified the concept of infinity and the unusual number "e," begins by examining the "proto-trigonometry" of the Egyptian pyramid builders. He shows how Greek astronomers developed the first true trigonometry. He traces the slow emergence of modern, analytical trigonometry, recounting its colorful origins in Renaissance Europe's quest for more accurate artillery, more precise clocks, and more pleasing musical instruments. Along the way, we see trigonometry at work in, for example, the struggle of the famous mapmaker Gerardus Mercator to represent the curved earth on a flat sheet of paper; we see how M. C. Escher used geometric progressions in his art; and we learn how the toy Spirograph uses epicycles and hypocycles.Maor also sketches the lives of some of the intriguing figures who have shaped four thousand years of trigonometric history. We meet, for instance, the Renaissance scholar Regiomontanus, who is rumored to have been poisoned for insulting a colleague, and Maria Agnesi, an eighteenth-century Italian genius who gave up mathematics to work with the poor--but not before she investigated a special curve that, due to mistranslation, bears the unfortunate name "the witch of Agnesi." The book is richly illustrated, including rare prints from the author's own collection. Trigonometric Delights will change forever our view of a once dreaded subject.
Trilogy of Resistance
by Antonio Negri Timothy S. MurphyWith Trilogy of Resistance, the political philosopher Antonio Negri extends his intervention in contemporary politics and culture into a new medium: drama. The three plays collected for the first time in this volume dramatize the central concepts of the innovative and influential thought he has articulated in his best-selling books Empire and Multitude, coauthored with Michael Hardt. In the tradition of Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Müller, Negri's political dramas are designed to provoke debate around the fundamental questions they raise about resistance, violence, and tyranny. In Swarm, the protagonist searches for an effective mode of activism; with the help of a Greek-style chorus, she tries on different roles, from the suicide bomber and party apparatchik to the multitude. The Bent Man, set in fascist Italy, focuses on a woodcutter who resists fascism by bending himself in two and using his own now-twisted body as a weapon against war. In Cithaeron, perhaps the most audacious of the three plays, Negri reworks Euripides's Bacchae to explore the circumstances that would compel a diverse and creative community to withdraw from both the despotic government that constrains it and the traditional family relationships that reinforce that despotism.First published in France in 2009 and featuring an introduction by Negri, Trilogy of Resistance provides a direct and passionate distillation of Negri's concepts and offers insights into one of the most important projects in political philosophy currently under way, as well as a timely reminder of the power of theater to effectively dramatize complex and challenging ideas.
Trimming, Miniaturization and Ideality via Convolution Technique of TRIZ
by Saurabh Kwatra Yuri SalamatovThe book is a valuable research tool-kit for innovators, amateur & professionals alike. Additionally, College & University faculties on Engineering, who organize yearly workshops internationally will find hundreds of novel themes to choose from. Some teachers might just secretly buy this book to introduce out-of-box brain-teasers in classroom to add fizz to normal (at times boring) lecturing. The book can be used as main/add-on textbook towards following courses: (1) Master's degree programs on design innovation worldwide and (2) Senior undergraduate courses in industrial, engineering & product design.
The Trinitarian Controversy
by William G. RuschThe purpose of this series is to allow an English-reading public to gain firsthand insights into these significant times for Christianity by making available in a modern, readable English the fundamental sources which chronicle how Christianity and its theology attained their normative character. This volume explores the development of the doctrine of the Trinity in the patristic church as a result of the Arian controversy:Arius -- Letter to Eusebius of Nicomedia Arius -- Letter to Alexander of Alexandria Alexander of Alexandria -- Letter to Alexander of Thessalonica The Synodal Letter of the Council of Antioch, A. D. 325 The Creed of the Synod of Nicaea (June 19, 325) The Canons of Nicaea, A. D. 325 Eusebius of Caesarea -- Letter to His Church concerning the Synod at Nicaea Arius -- Letter to the Emperor Constantine Athanasius -- Orations against the Arians, Book 1 Gregory of Nazianzus -- Third Theological Oration concerning the Son Gregory of Nyssa -- Concerning We Should Think of Saying That There Are Not Three Gods to Ablabius Augustine of Hippo -- On the Trinity, Book 9
Trinitarian Theology and Power Relations
by Meredith MinisterThis text crafts a trinitarian theology that reorients theology from presumptions about the immateriality of the Trinity toward the places where the Trinity matters--material bodies in historical contexts and the intersecting ways political and theological power structures normalize and marginalize bodies on the basis of material difference.
Trinitarian Theology in Medieval and Reformation Thought
by John T. SlotemakerThis book is an introduction to trinitarian theology as it developed from the late medieval period. John T. Slotemaker presents an overview of the central aspects of trinitarian theology by focusing on four themes: theological epistemology, the emanations in God, the divine relations, and the Trinity of persons. He does so by exploring a broad range of theological opinions on each subject and delineating the options that existed for medieval theologians from the early thirteenth century through the sixteenth. He argues that despite the diversity of opinion on a given subject, there is a normative theological center that grounds late medieval trinitarian theology. This center consists of theological developments involving the adoption of Peter Lombard’s Sentences as a theological textbook, the conciliar decisions of Lateran IV, and a shared Aristotelian philosophical background of Western trinitarian theology.
The Trinity in History: Volume Two: Missions, Relations, and Persons (Lonergan Studies #2)
by Robert M. Doran, S.J.The second volume of Robert M. Doran’s magisterial The Trinity in History continues his exploration of the Trinitarian theology of Bernard Lonergan, focusing now on the notions of relations and persons and connecting the systematic proposals with the so-called "Third Quest for the Historical Jesus." Doran not only interprets Lonergan’s major work in Trinitarian theology and Christology but also suggests at least a twofold advance: a new version of the psychological analogy for understanding Trinitarian doctrine and a new starting point for the whole of systematic theology. He links these theological concerns with René Girard’s mimetic theory, proposes a theory of history based in Lonergan’s scale of values, and creates a link between exegetical and historical scholarship and systematic theology.
The Trinity in History
by Robert M. Doran SJThe Trinity in History is the first volume in a new series by Robert M. Doran that uses the thought of Bernard Lonergan to develop a unified field structure for systematic work in theology. Building on his successful and thought-provoking Theology and the Dialectics of History and What Is Systematic Theology?, Doran works out a starting point for a contemporary theology of history and proposes a new application of the 'psychological analogy' for understanding the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.Advancing the work of Lonergan, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, The Trinity in History also enters into conversation with contemporary philosophical emphases, especially with the mimetic theory of noted anthropological philosopher René Girard. Doran suggests several refinements of Lonergan's notion of functional specialization - developing a perspective for including the data of various religious traditions in theological construction, and establishing this theory's relevance for contemporary interreligious dialogue.
The Triple Helix: The Soul of Bioethics
by Lisa BellantoniLisa Bellantoni argues that contemporary bioethics divides into two logically incommensurable positions: a cult of rights, which identifies the worth of human life with our autonomy, and a cult of life, which identifies human worth with the possession of a soul, and thereby, of human dignity.
Trips: Rock Life in the Sixties—Augmented Edition
by Ellen Sander"Simply one of the best pieces of rock reportage ever written." — Los Angeles Review of BooksAs a pioneering rock journalist for Hit Parader, Vogue, Saturday Review, and other publications, Ellen Sander had a backstage pass to the hottest music scenes of the 1960s. In this feast of juicy anecdotes and keen social commentary, she draws upon her professional and personal experiences to chronicle pop culture's highs and lows during the turbulent decade. Join her for weird and wild road trips with companions ranging from Yippies to the members of Led Zeppelin. Stops along the way include the folk music clubs of Greenwich Village, Haight-Ashbury in its riotous heyday, and the euphoric festivals at Monterey and Woodstock."It is a memoir, a sourcebook, and a love letter," Sander writes, "a recollection of a time, parenthesized by ambivalence and apathy, a search for the ultimate high, a generation with an irrepressible vision, its art, artists, its audience, and the substance of its statement." This expanded edition of Trips adds "The Plaster Casters of Chicago," Sander's seminal piece on groupie culture, the lengthy "Concerts and Conversations," as well as a new Preface and chapter postscripts.
The Triumph and Tragedy of the Intellectuals: Evil, Enlightenment, and Death
by Harry RednerThis fourth instalment of Harry Redner's tetralogy on the history of civilization argues that intellectuals have a brilliant past, a dubious present, and possibly no future. He contends that the philosophers of the seventeenth century laid the ground for the intellectuals of the eighteenth century, the Age of Enlightenment. They, in turn, promoted a fundamental transformation of human consciousness: they literally intellectualized the world. The outcome was the disenchantment of the world in all its cultural dimensions: in art, religion, ethics, politics, and philosophy.In this fascinating study, Redner demonstrates how secularization took the sting out of both the dread and promise of an afterlife and intellectuals learned to die without the hope of immortality popularized by philosophy and religion. Ultimately, they produced the ideologies that generated the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, which subsequently exterminated these intellectuals through mass murder on a scale never before experienced. The book traces the sources of this fatal entanglement and goes on to examine the contemporary condition of intellectuals in America and the world.Wherein lies the future of the intellectuals? Redner suggest that in the present state of globalization, dominated by technocrats, experts, and professionals, their fate remains uncertain.
The Triumph of Empire
by Michael KulikowskiMichael Kulikowski takes readers into the political heart of imperial Rome, beginning with the reign of Hadrian, who visited the farthest reaches of his domain and created stable frontiers, to the decades after Constantine the Great, who overhauled the government, introduced a new state religion, and founded a second Rome.
Triumph of Good Will: How Terry Sanford Beat a Champion of Segregation and Reshaped the South
by John DrescherIn the spring of 1960 two talented, capable men, each with great passion and conviction, opposed each other in a pivotal governor's race that was to shake North Carolina and change southern politics forever. Both Terry Sanford and I. Beverly Lake were Democrats in the one-party South of that era. Yet they were different in almost every other way. Lake, a middle-aged law professor, was committed to segregation. Sanford, an ambitious young politician and lawyer, believed in expanding opportunities for all citizens. In their run-off Lake wanted the contest to be a referendum on preserving segregation. Sanford's platform rested on the improvement of public schools. It was a heated struggle that would bind them together for the rest of their lives. With unparalleled access to both sides and an objective correspondent's hindsight view, John Drescher has written the biography of a campaign that set the winning strategy for many who followed, and of a winning candidate, a governor rated as one of the finest of the twentieth century. Sanford, the moderate, won, and his victory is an oddity, for in the civil rights period from 1957 to 1973 only twice in the South did racial moderates defeat strong segregationists in a governor's race. In a gamble that almost cost Sanford the election, he became the first major politician in the Bible Belt to endorse the Catholic John F. Kennedy for president. In the November vote he defeated his Republican opponent in what was then the closest North Carolina governor's race of the century. His win validated his belief in the triumph of good will among North Carolina's people. Sanford became a bold, aggressive governor of unusual energy and creativity. His school program added teachers and dramatically raised teacher pay. He helped establish a statewide system of community colleges and started an anti-poverty fund later emulated by LBJ as a model for the War on Poverty. He was the first southern governor to call for employment without regard to race or creed. Sanford became the model for other southern governors who stressed education and a moderate stand on race relations. He influenced other gubernatorial candidates across Dixie -- Jim Hunt in his own state, William Winter in Mississippi, Dick Riley in South Carolina, Bill Clinton in Arkansas. The effects of that 1960 race continue to be felt in North Carolina, in the South, and across the nation.
The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism
by Rabbi Irving (Yitz) GreenbergThe Triumph of Life is Rabbi Irving Greenberg&’s magnum opus—a narrative of the relationship between God and humanity as expressed in the Jewish journey through modernity, the Holocaust, the creation of Israel, and the birth of Judaism&’s next era. Greenberg describes Judaism&’s utopian vision of a world created by a God who loves life, who invites humans to live on the side of life, and who enables the forces of life to triumph over death. The Bible proclaims our mission of tikkun olam, repairing the world, such that every human image of God is sustained in the fullness of our dignity. To achieve this ideal, Judaism offers the method of covenant—a realistic, personal, incremental partnership between God and humanity across generations in which human beings grow ever more responsible for world repair. Greenberg calls on us to redirect humanity&’s unprecedented power in modernity to overcome poverty, oppression, inequality, sickness, and war. The work of covenant requires an ethic of power—one that advances life collaboratively and at a human pace—so that the Jewish people and all humanity can bring the world toward the triumph of life.
The Triumph of Numbers: How Counting Shaped Modern Life
by I. Bernard CohenFrom the pyramids to mortality tables, Galileo to Florence Nightingale, a vibrant history of numbers and the birth of statistics. The great historian of science I. B. Cohen explores how numbers have come to assume a leading role in science, in the operations and structure of government, in marketing, and in many other aspects of daily life. Consulting and collecting numbers has been a feature of human affairs since antiquity--taxes, head counts for military service--but not until the Scientific Revolution in the twelfth century did social numbers such as births, deaths, and marriages begin to be analyzed. Cohen shines a new light on familiar figures such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Charles Dickens; and he reveals Florence Nightingale to be a passionate statistician. Cohen has left us with an engaging and accessible history of numbers, an appreciation of the essential nature of statistics.