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› Find signed collectible books: 'Achilles in the Quantum Universe : The Definitive History of Infinity'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Aleph and Other Stories, 1933-1969: Together with Commentaries and an Autobiographical Essay'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Aristotle Poetics/Longinus on the Sublime/Demetrius on Style'
This volume brings together the three most influential ancient Greek treatises on literature. Aristotle's Poetics contains his treatment of Greek tragedy: its history, naturne, and conventions, with details on poetic diction. Stephen Halliwell makes this seminal work newly accessible with a reliable text and a translation that is both accurate and readable. His authoritative introduction traces the work's debt to earlier theorists (especially Plato), its distinctive argument, and the reasons behind its enduring relevance.
The essay On the Sublime, usually attributed to "Longinus" (identity uncertain), was probably composed in the first century CE; its subject is the appreciation of greatness ("the sublime") in writing, with analysis of illustrative passages ranging from Homer and Sappho to Plato. In this edition, Donald Russell has revised and newly annotated the text and translation by W. Hamilton Fyfe, and supplied a new introduction.
The treatise On Style, ascribed to an (again unidentifiable) Demetrius, was perhaps composed during the secod century BCE. It is notable particularly for its theory and analysis of four distinct styles (grand, elegant, plain, and forceful). Doreen Innes' fresh rendering of the work is based on the earlier Loeb translation by W. Rhys Roberts. Her new introduction and notes represent the latest scholarship.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Art of the Infinite: The Pleasures of Mathematics'
Robert Kaplan's The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero was an international best-seller, translated into eight languages. The Times called it "elegant, discursive, and littered with quotes and allusions from Aquinas via Gershwin to Woolf" and The Philadelphia Inquirer praised it as "absolutely scintillating."
In this delightful new book, Robert Kaplan, writing together with his wife Ellen Kaplan, once again takes us on a witty, literate, and accessible tour of the world of mathematics. Where The Nothing That Is looked at math through the lens of zero, The Art of the Infinite takes infinity, in its countless guises, as a touchstone for understanding mathematical thinking. Tracing a path from Pythagoras, whose great Theorem led inexorably to a discovery that his followers tried in vain to keep secret (the existence of irrational numbers); through Descartes and Leibniz; to the brilliant, haunted Georg Cantor, who proved that infinity can come in different sizes, the Kaplans show how the attempt to grasp the ungraspable embodies the essence of mathematics. The Kaplans guide us through the "Republic of Numbers," where we meet both its upstanding citizens and more shadowy dwellers; and we travel across the plane of geometry into the unlikely realm where parallel lines meet. Along the way, deft character studies of great mathematicians (and equally colorful lesser ones) illustrate the opposed yet intertwined modes of mathematical thinking: the intutionist notion that we discover mathematical truth as it exists, and the formalist belief that math is true because we invent consistent rules for it.
"Less than All," wrote William Blake, "cannot satisfy Man." The Art of the Infinite shows us some of the ways that Man has grappled with All, and reveals mathematics as one of the most exhilarating expressions of the human imagination. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blood Alone'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Brief History of Infinity'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brief History of Time'
Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history, wrote the modern classic A Brief History of Time to help nonscientists understand the questions being asked by scientists today: Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how? Hawking attempts to reveal these questions (and where we're looking for answers) using a minimum of technical jargon. Among the topics gracefully covered are gravity, black holes, the Big Bang, the nature of time, and physicists' search for a grand unifying theory. This is deep science; these concepts are so vast (or so tiny) as to cause vertigo while reading, and one can't help but marvel at Hawking's ability to synthesize this difficult subject for people not used to thinking about things like alternate dimensions. The journey is certainly worth taking, for, as Hawking says, the reward of understanding the universe may be a glimpse of "the mind of God." --Therese Littleton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brief History of Time'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes'
Stephen Hawking has earned a reputation as the most brilliant theoretical physicist since Einstein. In this landmark volume, Professor Hawking shares his blazing intellect with nonscientists everywhere, guiding us expertly to confront the supreme questions of the nature of time and the universe. Was there a beginning of time? Will there be an end? Is the universe infinite or does it have boundaries? From Galileo and Newton to modern astrophysics, from the breathtakingly cast to the extraordinarily tiny, Professor Hawking leads us on an exhilarating journey to distant galaxies, black holes, alternate dimensions--as close as man has ever ventured to the mind of God. From the vantage point of the wheelchair from which he has spent more than twenty years trapped by Lou Gehrig's disease, Stephen Hawking has transformed our view of the universe. Cogently explained, passionately revealed, A Brief History of Time is the story of the ultimate quest for knowledge: the ongoing search for the tantalizing secrets at the heart of time and space. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes'
Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history, wrote the modern classic A Brief History of Time to help nonscientists understand the questions being asked by scientists today: Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how? Hawking attempts to reveal these questions (and where we're looking for answers) using a minimum of technical jargon. Among the topics gracefully covered are gravity, black holes, the Big Bang, the nature of time, and physicists' search for a grand unifying theory. This is deep science; these concepts are so vast (or so tiny) as to cause vertigo while reading, and one can't help but marvel at Hawking's ability to synthesize this difficult subject for people not used to thinking about things like alternate dimensions. The journey is certainly worth taking, for, as Hawking says, the reward of understanding the universe may be a glimpse of "the mind of God." --Therese Littleton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brief History of Time/International Ed'
Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists in history, wrote the modern classic A Brief History of Time to help nonscientists understand the questions being asked by scientists today: Where did the universe come from? How and why did it begin? Will it come to an end, and if so, how? Hawking attempts to reveal these questions (and where we're looking for answers) using a minimum of technical jargon. Among the topics gracefully covered are gravity, black holes, the Big Bang, the nature of time, and physicists' search for a grand unifying theory. This is deep science; these concepts are so vast (or so tiny) as to cause vertigo while reading, and one can't help but marvel at Hawking's ability to synthesize this difficult subject for people not used to thinking about things like alternate dimensions. The journey is certainly worth taking, for, as Hawking says, the reward of understanding the universe may be a glimpse of "the mind of God." --Therese Littleton [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Collected Fictions'
Although Jorge Luis Borges published his first book in 1923--doling out his own money for a limited edition of Fervor de Buenos Aires--he remained in Argentinian obscurity for almost three decades. In 1951, however, Ficciones appeared in French, followed soon after by an English translation. This collection, which included the cream of the author's short fictions, made it clear that Borges was a world-class (if highly unclassifiable) artist--a brilliant, lyrical miniaturist, who could pose the great questions of existence on the head of pin. And by 1961, when he shared the French Prix Formentor with Samuel Beckett, he seemed suddenly to tower over a half-dozen literary cultures, the very exemplar of modernism with a human face.
By the time of his death in 1986, Borges had been granted old master status by almost everybody (except, alas, the gentlemen of the Swedish Academy). Yet his work remained dispersed among a half-dozen different collections, some of them increasingly hard to find. Andrew Hurley has done readers a great service, then, by collecting all the stories in a single, meticulously translated volume. It's a pleasure to be reminded that Borges's style--poetic, dreamlike, and compounded of innumerable small surprises--was already in place by 1935, when he published A Universal History of Iniquity: "The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it." (Incidentally, the thrifty author later recycled the second of these aphorisms in his classic bit of bookish metaphysics, "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Teris.") The glories of his middle period, of course, have hardly aged a day. "The Garden of the Forking Paths" remains the best deconstruction of the detective story ever written, even in the post-Auster era, and "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" puts the so-called death of the author in pointed, hilarious perspective.
But Hurley's omnibus also brings home exactly how consistent Borges remained in his concerns. As late as 1975, in "Avelino Arredondo," he was still asking (and occasionally even answering) the same riddles about time and its human repository, memory: "For the man in prison, or the blind man, time flows downstream as though down a slight decline. As he reached the midpoint of his reclusion, Arredondo more than once achieved that virtually timeless time. In the first patio there was a wellhead, and at the bottom, a cistern where a toad lived; it never occurred to Arredondo that it was the toad's time, bordering on eternity, that he sought." Throughout, Hurley's translation is crisp and assured (although this reader will always have a soft spot for "Funes, the Memorious" rather than "Funes, His Memory.") And thanks to his efforts, Borgesians will find no better--and no more pleasurable--rebuttal of the author's description of himself as "a shy sort of man who could not bring himself to write short stories." --James Marcus [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Collected Fictions'
Although Jorge Luis Borges published his first book in 1923--doling out his own money for a limited edition of Fervor de Buenos Aires--he remained in Argentinian obscurity for almost three decades. In 1951, however, Ficciones appeared in French, followed soon after by an English translation. This collection, which included the cream of the author's short fictions, made it clear that Borges was a world-class (if highly unclassifiable) artist--a brilliant, lyrical miniaturist, who could pose the great questions of existence on the head of pin. And by 1961, when he shared the French Prix Formentor with Samuel Beckett, he seemed suddenly to tower over a half-dozen literary cultures, the very exemplar of modernism with a human face.
By the time of his death in 1986, Borges had been granted old master status by almost everybody (except, alas, the gentlemen of the Swedish Academy). Yet his work remained dispersed among a half-dozen different collections, some of them increasingly hard to find. Andrew Hurley has done readers a great service, then, by collecting all the stories in a single, meticulously translated volume. It's a pleasure to be reminded that Borges's style--poetic, dreamlike, and compounded of innumerable small surprises--was already in place by 1935, when he published A Universal History of Iniquity: "The earth we inhabit is an error, an incompetent parody. Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it." (Incidentally, the thrifty author later recycled the second of these aphorisms in his classic bit of bookish metaphysics, "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Teris.") The glories of his middle period, of course, have hardly aged a day. "The Garden of the Forking Paths" remains the best deconstruction of the detective story ever written, even in the post-Auster era, and "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" puts the so-called death of the author in pointed, hilarious perspective.
But Hurley's omnibus also brings home exactly how consistent Borges remained in his concerns. As late as 1975, in "Avelino Arredondo," he was still asking (and occasionally even answering) the same riddles about time and its human repository, memory: "For the man in prison, or the blind man, time flows downstream as though down a slight decline. As he reached the midpoint of his reclusion, Arredondo more than once achieved that virtually timeless time. In the first patio there was a wellhead, and at the bottom, a cistern where a toad lived; it never occurred to Arredondo that it was the toad's time, bordering on eternity, that he sought." Throughout, Hurley's translation is crisp and assured (although this reader will always have a soft spot for "Funes, the Memorious" rather than "Funes, His Memory.") And thanks to his efforts, Borgesians will find no better--and no more pleasurable--rebuttal of the author's description of himself as "a shy sort of man who could not bring himself to write short stories." --James Marcus [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'De Rerum Natura'
The purpose of this edition is to demonstrate the quality and interest of book VI: the intellectual curiosity of the analyst of earthquakes, volcanoes and marvellous phenomena, the rhetorical and philosophical powers of a thinker who wants to make his interpretation of Epicureanism both cogent and vivid, the deep humane compassion of the chronicler of the Plague at Athens, the sheer brilliance of the poet whose verse inspired all later writers in the tradition. This edition of the book is designed to make the poem accessible to readers who have not picked up Lucretius before and so the background has been treated as fully as possible in. Latin text with facing-page translation. 200p (Aris and Phillips 1991) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Edge of Infinity: Where the Universe Came from and How It Will End'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Aleph'
El trabajo que da titulo a Historia de la eternidad se ocupa del tiempo y de su negacion y examina dos concepciones contrapuestas de eternidad: la alejandrina, de raiz platonica, y la cristiana, nacida con la doctrina trinitaria de Ireneo y formalizada por San Agustin. Otras dos penetrantes digresiones estudian la doctrina de Nietzsche sobre el eterno retorno y las concepciones basadas en el caracter recurrente del movimiento historico. El examen de las versiones clÃÂásicas de Las 1001 noches ilustra los condicionamientos culturales e historicos de la labor de traduccion. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'El Fin De La Eternidad / the End of Eternity'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The End of Eternity'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Escher on Escher: Exploring the Infinite'
Presents a selection of Escher's art and shares his comments on his work, symmetry, infinity, and paradox. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Everything And More: A Compact History Of Infinity'
Before discussing the merits of David Foster Wallace's Everything and More: A Compact History of Infinity, it is essential to define what the book is not. This volume in the "Great Discoveries" series is not a history of the personalities and social conditions that led to the "discovery" of infinity. Nor is it a narrative fixated on the cultish fear of--and obsession with--the infinite that has seemingly driven mathematicians insane over the centuries. Rather, Everything and More is a surprisingly rigorous march through the 2000 plus years of mathematical research that began with Aristotle; continued through Galileo, Isaac Newton, G.W. Leibniz, Karl Weierstrass, and J.W.R. Dedekind; and culminated in Georg Cantor and his Set Theory. The task Wallace (author of the bestseller Infinite Jest and other fiction) has set himself is enormously challenging: without radically compromising the complexity of the philosophy, metaphysics, or mathematics that underlies the evolving concept of infinity, present the material to a lay audience in a manner that is entertaining. To propel his narrative, Wallace even develops a style that mirrors the mathematical language he probes. One difficulty in his focus on concepts and not a strict human chronology, though, is that his structure is dependent on frequent digressions (especially early on). Patience is required. Wallace demands that his reader walk through the equations, study the graphs and charts, and relearn college-level concepts to follow along on the exploration. Indeed, after one wrenching dip into Zenos paradoxes, Wallace spouts at his imagined complaining audience: "Deal." But the book should be deemed a success. If one grants him the attention he requires, Wallace has made the trip richly rewarding. --Patrick OKelley [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Fermat's Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem'
Born in 1601, Pierre de Fermat lived a quiet life as a civil servant in Toulouse, France. In his spare time, however, Fermat dabbled in mathematics, and somehow managed to become one of the great mathematical theorists of his century. Around 1637 he scribbled a marginal note in one of his books. In it, he stated that he had solved a celebrated number theory problem: "I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which, however, the margin is not large enough to contain."
If only the margin had been wider! For more than 300 years, mathematicians labored to crack the secret of Fermat's Last Theorem, without any success. Finally, in 1995, a Princeton-based mathematician named Andrew Wiles solved the riddle. Amir Aczel's account of this brainteaser and its solution is an irresistible read. And for mathematical dolts--like myself, for instance--it includes a concise, profusely illustrated history of mathematical theory from the Bronze Age to our own fin-de-siecle. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Flotsam'
› Find signed collectible books: 'The Illustrated a Brief History of Time'
In the years since its publication in 1988, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time has established itself as a landmark volume in scientific
writing. It has also become an international publishing phenomenon, translated into forty languages and selling over nine million copies.
The book was on the cutting edge of what was then known about the nature of the universe, but since then there have been extraordinary advances in the
technology of observing both the micro- and the macrocosmic world. These observations have confirmed many of Professor Hawking's theoretical predictions
in the first edition of his book, including the recent discoveries of the Cosmic Background Explorer satellite (COBE), which probed back in time to within 300,000 years of the universe's beginning and revealed the wrinkles in the fabric of space-time that he had projected.
Eager to bring to his original text the new knowledge revealed by these many observations, as well as his most recent research, for this revised and expanded edition Hawking has prepared a new introduction to the book, revised and updated the original chapters throughout, and written an entirely new chapter on the fascinating subject of wormholes and time travel.
In addition, to heighten understanding of complex concepts that readers may have found difficult to grasp despite the clarity and wit of Hawking's writing, this edition is magnificently enhanced throughout with more than 240 full-color illustrations, including satellite images, photographs made possible by spectacular new technological advances such as the Hubble telescope, and computer- generated images of three- and four-dimensional realities. Detailed captions clarify these illustrations, enabling readers to experience the vastness of intergalactic space, the nature of black holes, and the microcosmic world of
particle physics in which matter and antimatter collide.
A classic work that now brings to the reader the latest understanding of cosmology, The Illustrated A Brief History of Time is the story of the ongoing search for the tantalizing secrets at the heart of time and space. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Infinite'
This historical study of the infinite covers all its aspects from the mathematical to the mystical. Anyone who has ever pondered the limitlessness of space and time, or the endlessness of numbers, or the perfection of God will recognise the special fascination of the subject. Beginning with an entertaining account of the main paradoxes of the infinite, including those of Zeno, A.W. Moore traces the history of the topic from Aristotle to Kant, Hegel, Cantor, and Wittgenstein. Recent technical work is examined in the light of Cantor's remarkable discovery that infinity comes in degrees: some infinite sets are much bigger than others. Moore also gives a crisp sketch of Godel's celebrated proof, his clear presentation enabling the non-mathematical reader to grasp deep mathematical issues. Drawing on these technical results and on the early work of Wittgenstein, Moore outlines his own original account of the infinite. He argues that there are fundamental links between the infinite and the ineffable. In a final chapter on human finitude, these and other links are traced out, and the book concludes with a moving discussion of death and the poignancy of human finitude. [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Infinite Book: A Short Guide to the Boundless, Timeless and Endless'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Infinite in All Directions'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Infinity and Perspective'
Much postmodern rhetoric, suggests Karsten Harries, can be understood as a symptom of our civilization's discontent, born of regret that we are no longer able to experience our world as a cosmos that assigns us our place. But dissatisfaction with the modern world may also spring from a conviction that modernism has failed to confront the challenge of an inevitably open future. Such conviction has frequently led to a critique of modernity's founding heroes. Challenging that critique, Harries insists that modernity is supported by nothing other than human freedom.But more important to Harries is to show how modernist self-assertion is shadowed by nihilism and what it might mean to step out of that shadow. Looking at a small number of medieval and Renaissance texts, as well as some paintings, he uncovers the threshold that separates the modern from the premodern world. At the same time, he illuminates that other, more questionable threshold, between the modern and the postmodern.Two spirits preside over the book: Alberti, the Renaissance author on art and architecture, whose passionate interest in perspective and point of view offers a key to modernity; and Nicolaus Cusanus, the fifteenth-century cardinal, whose work shows that such interest cannot be divorced from speculations on the infinity of God. The title Infinity and Perspective connects the two to each other and to the shape of modernity.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Infinity And The Mind: The Science And Philosophy Of The Infinite'
A study of infinity in all its forms and its implications for the human mind. Within the realm of "Mindscape", part of a universe, the book shows that mathematics, science, and logic merge with the fantastic, and so much is revealed about the powers of the mind and its limitations. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Infinity War'
After Adam Warlock's return in Infinity Gauntlet, his worse half the Magus wasn't far behind! The struggle for ultimate power over the universe continues when a stockpile of evil twins overwhelm the Fantastic Four, Avengers, X-Men, New Warriors, Alpha Flight and more! Will the universe be saved, destroyed... or both? Collects Infinity War #1-6, Warlock and the Infinity Watch #7-10 and Marvel Comics Presents #108-111. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Keys to Infinity'
Clifford Pickover is by most standards a mathematics geek (Ph.D. research scientist for IBM, associate editor for two computer journals), but he is the coolest math geek you might ever meet. For this book he has compiled 30 chapters of mathematical puzzles (and one short story), all having some connection to the concept of infinity. These problems are open-ended; in the event that the reader actually solves the main puzzle, there are enough digressions, diversions, and tangents to keep even the fastest computer running for hours. Computer modelers will be happy to find that instructive BASIC and C language has been provided for most of the problems. Many puzzles have been previously posted on the Internet, and the best or weirdest replies have been included in this book.
If phrases like "Monte Carlo bootstrapping approximation" send you off the deep end, not to worry. These are not dry, dusty puzzles. In problems such as "The Loom of Creation," "Grid of the Gods," "Alien Abduction Algebra," and "The Infinity Worms of Callisto," Pickover has couched mathematical puzzles in bizarre science fiction scenarios to make them both fun and challenging. --Eric Warner [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Kingdom of Infinite Number: A Field Guide'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings'
If Jorge Luis Borges had been a computer scientist, he probably would have invented hypertext and the World Wide Web.
Instead, being a librarian and one of the world's most widely read people, he became the leading practitioner of a densely layered imaginistic writing style that has been imitated throughout this century, but has no peer (although Umberto Eco sometimes comes close, especially in Name of the Rose).
Borges's stories are redolent with an intelligence, wealth of invention, and a tight, almost mathematically formal style that challenge with mysteries and paradoxes revealed only slowly after several readings. Highly recommended to anyone who wants their imagination and intellect to be aswarm with philosophical plots, compelling conundrums, and a wealth of real and imagined literary references derived from an infinitely imaginary library. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lucretius: De Rerum Natura'
Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus) lived ca. 99ca. 55 BCE, but the details of his career are unknown. He is the author of the great didactic poem in hexameters, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). In six books compounded of solid reasoning, brilliant imagination, and noble poetry, he expounds the scientific theories of the Greek philosopher Epicurus, with the aim of dispelling fear of the gods and fear of death and so enabling man to attain peace of mind and happiness.
In Book 1 he establishes the general principles of the atomic system, refutes the views of rival physicists, and proves the infinity of the universe and of its two ultimate constituents, matter and void. In Book 2 he explains atomic movement, the variety of atomic shapes, and argues that the atoms lack colour, sensation, and other secondary qualities. In Book 3 he expounds the nature and composition of mind and spirit, proves their mortality, and argues that there is nothing to fear in death. Book 4 explains the nature of sensation and thought, and ends with an impressive account of sexual love. Book 5 describes the nature and formation of our world, astronomical phenomena, the beginnings of life on earth, and the development of civilization. In Book 6 the poet explains various atmospheric and terrestrial phenomena, including thunder, lightning, earthquakes, volcanoes, the magnet, and plagues.
The work is distinguished by the fervour and poetry of the author.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lucretius on the Nature of Things'
1926. Lucretius was a Roman poet and the author of the philosophical epic De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of the Universe), a comprehensive exposition of the Epicurean world-view. His poetry is knit into a whole and vivified through all its parts by the fearless desire for truth, the consciousness of a great purpose, and a deep reverence for nature-felt almost as a personal presence-which has caused this bitter opponent of religion to be universally recognized as one of the most truly religious of the world's poets. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Master Of Space And Time'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Mind Tools: The Five Levels of Mathematical Reality'
Now available in paperback, Mind Tools connects mathematics to the world around us. Reveals mathematics' great power as an alternative language for understanding things and explores such concepts as logic as a computing tool, digital versus analog processes and communication as information transmission. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Nature of Things'
Martin Ferguson Smith's work on Lucretius is both well known and highly regarded. However, his 1969 translation of De Rerum Natura--long out of print--is virtually unknown. Readers will share our excitement in the discovery of this accurate and fluent prose rendering. For this edition, Professor Smith provides a revised translation, new Introduction, headnotes and bibliography. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Nature of Things'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'On the Nature of Things'
Titus Lucretius Carus was probably born in the early first century B.C., and died in the year 55. Little is known of his life, although two tantalizing bits of gossip were passed on by St. Jerome: that he was poisoned by a madness-inducing aphrodisiac given him by his wife, and that his great poem On the Nature of Things was posthumously edited by Cicero. For the latter assertion, writes Anthony Esolen in his introduction to the present volume, there is little evidence, and none whatsoever for the former.
What does survive is a masterful poetic work that stands as the greatest exposition of Epicurean philosophy. Writing in the waning days of the Roman Republicas Rome's politics grew individualistic and treacherous, its high-life wanton, its piety introspective and morbidLucretius sets forth a rational and materialistic view of the world which offers a retreat into a quiet community of wisdom and friendship.
Even to modern readers, the sweep of Lucretius's observations is remarkable. A careful observer of nature, he writes with an innocent curiosity into how things are put togetherfrom the oceans, lands, and stars to a mound of poppy seeds, from the "applause" of a rooster's wings to the human mind and soul. Yet Lucretius is no romantic. Nature is what it isfascinating,purposeless, beautiful, deadly. Once we understand this, we free ourselves of superstitious fears, becoming as human and as godlike as we can be. The poem, then, is about the universe and how human beings ought to live in it. Epicurean physics and morality converge.
Until now, there has been no adequate English verse translation of Lucretius's work. Anthony Esolen fills that gap with a version that reproduceswith remarkable faithfulnessthe meaning, pace, and tone of the original Latin.
Here is a book that will introduce a new generation of readers to a thinker whose powers of observation and depth of insight remain fresh to the present day.
"Esolen has the rare gift of being both a fine poet and a lover of languages. His diction is poetic and natural; he has a fine ear for sound, and the translation benefits greatly from being read aloudas Latin poetry was meant to be. This translation is clear and forceful. It can, and will, be read."Kenneth J. Reckford, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Otherwise Than Being: Or Beyond Essence'
A sequel to Levinas's Totality and Infinity, this work is generally considered Levinas's most important contribution to the contemporary debate surrounding the closure of metaphysical discourse, much commented upon by Jacques Derrida. This work contains a fundamentally original theory of the ethical relationship and describes the face-to-face relationship, sensibility, responsibility and speech. Renowned Levinas scholar Richard A. Cohen has contributed a new foreword to this edition of Otherwise than Being, which is also the first time the work is available in an affordable paperback edition. This foreword, along with Alphonso Lingis's extensive introduction to the work, is a valuable tool for researchers and students of Levinas's philosophy. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Philosophy of Mathematics: An Anthology'
This distinctive anthology explores the central problems and exposes intriguing new directions in the philosophy of mathematics. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Satan, Cantor, and Infinity and Other Mind-Boggling Puzzles'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Selected Non-Fictions'
Jorge Luis Borges was our century's greatest miniaturist, perpetually cramming entire universes onto the head of a pin. Yet his splendid economy, along the wafer-thin proportions of such classic volumes as Ficciones and Labyrinths, has given readers the impression that Borges was miserly with his prose. In fact, he was something of a verbal spendthrift. His collected stories alone run to nearly 1,000 pages. And his nonfiction output was even more staggering: the young Borges cranked out hundreds of essays, book notes, cultural polemics, and movie reviews, and even after he lost his sight in 1955, he continued to dictate short pieces by the dozens. Eliot Weinberger has assembled just a fraction of this outpouring in Selected Non-Fictions, and the result is a 559-page Borgesian blowout, in which the Argentinean fabulist takes on being and nothingness, James Joyce and Lana Turner, and (surprisingly) racial hatred and the rise of Nazism. So much for our image of the mandarin bookworm! The very engagé author of this book seems more like a subequatorial Camus, with a dash of Siskel and Ebert on the side.
Selected Non-Fictions demonstrates just how quickly Borges began wrestling with such brainteasers as identity, time, and infinity. Indeed, the very first piece in the collection, "The Nothingness of Personality" (1922), already finds him fiddling with the self: "I, as I write this, am only a certainty that seeks out the words that are most apt to compel your attention. That proposition and a few muscular sensations, and the sight of the limpid branches that the trees place outside my window, constitute my current I." There are many such meditations here, including "A History of Eternity" (in which Borges maps out his own, disarmingly empty version of the eternal, "without a God or even a co-proprietor, and entirely devoid of archetypes"). But it's more fun--and more revelatory--to see the author venturing beyond his metaphysical stomping grounds. Borges on King Kong is a hoot, and a cornball masterpiece such as The Petrified Forest elicits this terrific nugget: "Death works in this film like hypnosis or alcohol: it brings the recesses of the soul into the light of day." His capsule biographies are a delight, his critiques of Nazi propaganda are memorably stringent, and nobody should miss him on the tango. True, the sheer variety and mind-boggling erudition of Selected Non-Fictions can be a little forbidding. But, taken as a whole, the collection surely meets the specifications that Borges laid out in a 1927 essay on literary pleasure: "If only some eternal book existed, primed for our enjoyment and whims, no less inventive in the populous morning as in the secluded night, oriented toward all hours of the world." Oh, but it does. --James Marcus [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'T. Lucreti Cari De Rerum Natura Libri Sex'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Ten Assumptions of Science: Toward a New Scientific Worldview'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Things of Each Possible Relation Hashing Against One Another'
Australian ethnohistorian Greg Dening argues that there are two views that define the Pacific: a view from the sea (the view of those who arrived from elsewhere) and the view from the land (those who were already there). things of each possible relation hashing against one another is a series of poems that opens with the view from the sea and end with the view from the land and are about the ecological hashing that happens as these two views meet in Hawai'i. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Third Policeman'
A comic trip through hell in Ireland, as told by a murderer, The Third Policeman is another inspired bit of confusing and comic lunacy from the warped imagination and lovably demented pen of Flann O'Brien, author of At Swim-Two-Birds. There's even a small chance you'll figure out what's going on if you read the publisher's note that appears on the last page. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'To the Other: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Totalite Et Fini'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority'
First published in English by Duquesne in 1969, this has become one of the classics of modern philosophy. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Traveler of the Moon 1'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'White Light'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Witch Class'
Dorothy, our cute heroine, becomes a witch to live out a romantic life that every girl wishes for: turning the world into a dark hellish cauldron, making everyone bow to her, and summoning cute zombies! Her hyperactive group of crazy characters make the heroine seem like a senile old lady in comparison. First, you have Dorothy's close friend Remi who doesn't seem to understand you're only supposed to take just one Prozac a day. Then you have Lilly, the witch whose fashion sense would make Madonna and Britney Spears blush. And finally, we can't forget about Dorothy's main love interest, a cute boy who's only problem is that he's a werewolf who wants to eat her alive! [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea'
The seemingly impossible Zen task--writing a book about nothing--has a loophole: people have been chatting, learning, and even fighting about nothing for millennia. Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea, by noted science writer Charles Seife, starts with the story of a modern battleship stopped dead in the water by a loose zero, then rewinds back to several hundred years BCE. Some empty-headed genius improved the traditional Eastern counting methods immeasurably by adding zero as a placeholder, which allowed the genesis of our still-used decimal system. It's all been uphill from there, but Seife is enthusiastic about his subject; his synthesis of math, history, and anthropology seduces the reader into a new fascination with the most troubling number.
Why did the Church reject the use of zero? How did mystics of all stripes get bent out of shape over it? Is it true that science as we know it depends on this mysterious round digit? Zero opens up these questions and lets us explore the answers and their ramifications for our oh-so-modern lives. Seife has fun with his format, too, starting with chapter 0 and finishing with an appendix titled "Make Your Own Wormhole Time Machine." (Warning: don't get your hopes up too much.) There are enough graphs and equations to scare off serious numerophobes, but the real story is in the interactions between artists, scientists, mathematicians, religious and political leaders, and the rest of us--it seems we really do have nothing in common. --Rob Lightner [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'El Aleph'
El trabajo que da titulo a Historia de la eternidad se ocupa del tiempo y de su negacion y examina dos concepciones contrapuestas de eternidad: la alejandrina, de raiz platonica, y la cristiana, nacida con la doctrina trinitaria de Ireneo y formalizada por San Agustin. Otras dos penetrantes digresiones estudian la doctrina de Nietzsche sobre el eterno retorno y las concepciones basadas en el caracter recurrente del movimiento historico. El examen de las versiones clÃÂásicas de Las 1001 noches ilustra los condicionamientos culturales e historicos de la labor de traduccion. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Brevisima Historia Del Tiempo/a Brief History of Time'
En 1988 aparecio un libro que iba a cambiar de arriba abajo nuestra concepcion del universo y que se convirtio en uno de los mayores best-sellers cientificos: "Historia del tiempo", de Stephen Hawking, el mayor genio del siglo xx despues de Einstein. Pese a su exito colosal, aquel libro presentaba algunas dificultades de comprension para el publico menos familiarizado con los principios de la fisica teorica. Ahora, diecisiete años despues, el profesor Hawking ha escrito este libro maravilloso y sencillo que pone al alcance del comun de los mortales los grandes misterios del mundo y de la vida. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'De La Naturaleza De Las Cosas'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Historia Del Tiempo'
HISTORIA DEL TIEMPO es un libro de divulgación sobre el espacio y el tiempo escrito por uno de los físicos teóricos más prestigiosos de la actualidad. En él STEPHEN W. HAWKING presenta de forma clara y concisa los conceptos fundamentales de la mecánica newtoniana, la teoría de la relatividad, la mecánica cuántica y la cosmología contemporánea, temas todos ellos que, junto a su interés intrínseco, permiten enmarcar el problema de fondo tratado en el libro: el origen del universo y la creación del espacio-tiempo, llegando a asomarse a campos más amplios y aventurados, como la metafísica e incluso la teología, al plantearse la naturaleza de Dios creador, o más bien garante del sentido del universo.(*CR*) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Historia del tiempo / A Brief History of Time: del big bang a los agujeros negros / From Big Bangs to the Black Holes'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Totalite Et Fini'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Vom Wesen Des Weltalls'
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