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In A History of Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, Christian Delacampagne reviews the discipline's divergent and dramatic course and shows that its greatest figures, even the most unworldly among them, were deeply affected by events of their time. From Ludwig Wittgenstein, whose famous Tractatus was actually composed in the trenches during World War I, to Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger—one who found himself barred from public life with Hitler's coming to power, the other a member of the Nazi party who later refused to repudiate German war crimes. From Bertrand Russell, whose lifelong pacifism led him to turn from logic and mathematics to social and moral questions, and Jean-Paul Sartre, who made philosophy an occasion for direct and personal political engagement, to Rudolf Carnap, a committed socialist, and Karl Popper, a resolute opponent of Communism. From the Vienna Circle and the Frankfurt School to the contemporary work of philosophers as variously minded as Jacques Derrida, Jürgen Habermas, and Hilary Putnam. The thinking of these philosophers, and scores of others, cannot be understood without being placed in the context of the times in which they lived.

This easy-to-read introduction takes the reader from elementary problems through to current research. Ideal for courses and self-study.

The initial impetus for his research was the book series Ether-Physics and-Philosophy Volume 1-4 (German edition) by Prof Alfred Evert, last published in 2011. Using basic mathematics, he identifies false assumptions and is questioning nothing less than our common astrophysical world model. Today, it seems undisputed that our universe must contain some dark matter and that the vacuum is filled with infinite energies. Highly admired academics and despised lunatics speculate about parallel worlds and the possibility of multiple dimensions. Esotericism and science equally work with vague definitions and often wrong assumptions. As a non-academic amateur, Christian Främbs' doubts were growing the more he researched the fundaments of our dominant and very rarely questioned astrophysical explanation of the world. The author's brother - an experienced Navigator and Mariner - convinced Christian Främbs to write an essay covering his thoughts, analyses, questions and alternative conclusions. Rewriting the proverb that an apple doesn't just fall far from the tree describes the spirit of his work. The key element and basis of his suggestion of another alternative world model is the good old and widely forgotten physical concept of the ether. The Key Statements of this publication: - All perceptions are illusionary projections of reality. - Only two facts are undoubted: There must be SOMETHING and MOTION. - The ether-theorem is based on just these two hypotheses: a single real substance which is vibrating in itself. - Many different movement patterns represent the phenomena, from the photon, electron and atom to the stars and galaxies. - There are no fixed particles. In analogy to sound, only the structures of MOTION are wandering forward within the ether. - Gravity only exists in the immediate vicinity of a celestial body, but its cause is not based on mass. - There are also no forces attracting the mass; the Earth, for example, drifts passively in an ether-whirlpool around the Sun. - The geostationary satellites, for example, provide clear proof, as they are contrary to the usual laws constantly dancing around. - Everything is made of ONE. This ancient wisdom/spiritual concept becomes a physical/scientific reality: The homogeneous ether fills the universe without gaps, and all phenomena are only movements within this medium. - New approaches for a more understandable and plausible world model are presented.

This thesis explores the idea that the Higgs boson of the Standard Model and the cosmological inflation are just two manifestations of one and the same scalar field - the Higgs-inflation. By this unification two energy scales that are separated by many orders of magnitude are connected, thereby building a bridge between particle physics and cosmology. An essential ingredient for making this model consistent with observational data is a strong non-minimal coupling to gravity. Predictions for the value of the Higgs mass as well as for cosmological parameters are derived, and can be tested by future experiments. The results become especially exciting in the light of the recently announced discovery of the Higgs boson. The model of non-minimal Higgs inflation is also used in a quantum cosmological context to predict initial conditions for inflation. These results can in turn be tested by the detection of primordial gravitational waves. The presentation includes all introductory material about cosmology and the Standard Model that is essential for the further understanding. It also provides an introduction to the mathematical methods used to calculate the effective action by heat kernel methods.