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Ritual and Its Consequences
This pioneering, interdisciplinary work shows how rituals allow us to live in a perennially imperfect world. Drawing on a variety of cultural settings, the authors utilize psychoanalytic and anthropological perspectives to describe how ritual--like play--creates "as if" worlds, rooted in the imaginative capacity of the human mind to create a subjunctive universe. The ability to cross between imagined worlds is central to the human capacity for empathy. Ritual, they claim, defines the boundaries of these imagined worlds, including those of empathy and other realms of human creativity, such as music, architecture and literature. The authors juxtapose this ritual orientation to a "sincere" search for unity and wholeness. The sincere world sees fragmentation and incoherence as signs of inauthenticity that must be overcome. Our modern world has accepted the sincere viewpoint at the expense of ritual, dismissing ritual as mere convention. In response, the authors show how the conventions of ritual allow us to live together in a broken world. Ritual is work, endless work. But it is among the most important things that we humans do.
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Fields Medallists' Lectures
Although not as publicly well-known as the Nobel Prizes, the Fields Medal shares the same intellectual standing and is the equivalent award in the field of mathematics. This volume presents a selected list of 22 Fields Medallists and their contributions to give a highly interesting and varied bird's eye view of mathematics over the past 60 years. The contributions relate directly to the work for which the Medals were awarded or to the medallists' more current interests. In most cases, they are preceded by the introductory speech given by another leading mathematician during the prize ceremony, a photograph and up-to-date biographical notice.
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Fields Medallists' Lectures, 2nd Edition
Although the Fields Medal does not have the same public recognition as the Nobel Prizes, they share a similar intellectual standing. It is restricted to one field — that of mathematics — and an age limit of 40 has become an accepted tradition. Mathematics has in the main been interpreted as pure mathematics, and this is not so unreasonable since major contributions in some applied areas can be (and have been) recognized with Nobel Prizes.A list of Fields Medallists and their contributions provides a bird's-eye view of mathematics over the past 60 years. It highlights the areas in which, at various times, greatest progress has been made. This volume does not pretend to be comprehensive, nor is it a historical document. On the other hand, it presents contributions from Fields Medallists and so provides a highly interesting and varied picture.The second edition of Fields Medallists' Lectures features additional contributions from the following Medallists: Kunihiko Kodaira (1954), Richard E Borcherds (1998), William T Gowers (1998), Maxim Kontsevich (1998), Curtis T McMullen (1998) and Vladimir Voevodsky (2002).
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Sport and Social Exclusion
Structured around key excluded groups, such as the elderly, ethnic minorities, the disabled and rural communities, this book offers an assessment of sports policy in contemporary Britain.
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The Earth's Ionosphere
Although interesting in its own right, due to the ever-increasing use of satellites for communication and navigation, weather in the ionosphere is of great concern. Every such system uses trans-ionospheric propagation of radio waves, waves which must traverse the commonly turbulent ionosphere. Understanding this turbulence and predicting it are one of the major goals of the National Space Weather program. Acquiring such a prediction capability will rest on understanding the very topics of this book, the plasma physics and electrodynamics of the system. - Fully updated to reflect advances in the field in the 20 years since the first edition published - Explores the buffeting of the ionosphere from above by the sun and from below by the lower atmosphere - Unique text appropriate both as a reference and for coursework
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Collections, Codes, and Torah
Scholars of biblical law are already widely agreed that ancient Israel did not draft law-texts for legislative purposes. This study critiques and challenges the current consensus, and presents an alternative hypothesis.
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ספר עלי שיח
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Law in Religious Communities in the Roman Period
The role and function of law in religious communities in the Roman period—especially in Judaism—has been a key issue among scholars in recent years. This thought-provoking work is the first full-scale attempt to write a historical assessment of the scholarly debate concerning this question, focussing on two closely related religious communities, Judaism and Christianity. By juxtaposing the two religions, a clearer understanding of the developments with respect to torah and nomos in Judaism and early Christianity emerges. This insightful work, placing emphasis on the major figures and both the scholarly lines of development and the appropriate lines for future research, will set the debate in a clearer and more and succinct manner. It will serve as a critical point of reference for further discussion.
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