The First Sense: A Philosophical Study of Human Touch
Author: Matthew Fulkerson It is through touch that we are able to interact directly with the world; it is our primary conduit of both pleasure and pain. Touch may be our most immediate and powerful sense -- "the first sense" because of the central role it plays in experience. In this book, Matthew Fulkerson proposes that human touch, despite its functional diversity, is a single, unified sensory modality. Fulkerson offers a philosophical account of touch, reflecting the interests, methods, and approach that define contemporary philosophy; but his argument is informed throughout by the insights and constraints of empirical work on touch. Human touch is a multidimensional object of investigation, Fulkerson writes, best served by using a variety of methods and approaches. To defend his view of the unity of touch, Fulkerson describes and argues for a novel, unifying role for exploratory action in touch. He goes on to fill in the details of this unified, exploratory form of perception, offering philosophical accounts of tool use and distal touch, the representational structure of tangible properties, the spatial content of touch, and the role of pleasure in tactual experience. Fulkerson's argument for the unique role played by exploratory action departs notably from traditional vision-centric philosophical approaches to perception, challenging the received view that action plays the same role in all sensory modalities. The robust philosophical account of touch he offers in <I>The First Sense</I> has significant implications for our general understanding of perception and perceptual experience.
Author: Isabel Stenzel Byrnes and Anabel Stenzel
For most people, a diagnosis of cystic fibrosis means the certainty of a life ended too soon. But for Isabel Stenzel Byrnes and Anabel Stenzel, twin girls with the disease, what began as a familys stubborn determination grew into a miracle.The tragedy of CF has been touchingly recounted in such books as Frank Defords Alex: The Life of a Child, but The Power of Two is the first book to portray the symbiotic relationship of twins who share this life-threatening disease through adulthood.Isabel and Anabel tell of their lifelong struggle to pursue normal lives with cystic fibrosis while grappling with the realization that they will die young. Their story reflects the physical and emotional challenges of a particularly aggressive form of CF and is an honest and gripping portrayal of the daily struggle associated with long-term hospitalization, the impact of chronic illness on marriage and family, and the importance of a support network to continuing survival.Born in 1972, seventeen years before scientists discovered the genetic mutation that causes CF, the Stenzel twins endured the daily regimen of chest percussion, frequent doctor visits, and lengthy hospitalizations. But in the face of innumerable setbacks, their deep-seated dependence on each other allowed them to survive long enough to reap the benefits of the miraculous lung transplants that marked a turning point in their lives: We have an old lifeone of growing up with chronic illnessand anew lifeone of opportunities and gifts we have never imagined before. In this memoir, they pay tribute to the people who shaped their experience. These two remarkable sisters have much to teach about the power of perseveranceand about the ultimate power of hope.
Author: Karl A. Roider Jr.
Focusing on the policy of the Hapsburg Monarchy toward the Ottoman Empire during the whole of the eighteenth century, Karl A. Roider maintains that it was in the early part of that century when Austria first faced the twin problems of Ottoman decline and Russian expansion into southeastern Europe.Originally published in 1982.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Travis Mossotti
Travis Mossotti writes with humor, gravity, and humility about subjects grounded in a world of grit, where the quiet mortality of working folk is weighed. To Mossotti, the love of a bricklayer for his wife is as complex and simple as life itself: ask him to put into words what that sinking is, / that shudder in his chest, as he notices / the wrinkles gathering at the corners of her mouth. But not a whiff of sentiment enters these poems, for Mossotti has little patience for ideas of the noble or for sympathetic portraits of hard-used saints. His vision is clear, as clear as the memory of how scarecrows in the rearview, each of them, stuffed / into a body they didn't choose, resembled / your own plight. His poetry embraces unsanctimonious life with all its wonder, its levity, and clumsiness. About the Dead is an accomplished collection by a writer in control of a wide range of experience.
This volume written by eighteen monks nuns and lay scholars from seven countries and four continents aims to recognize the contribution that Michael Casey has made to Cistercian and Benedictine life over the past forty years Acclaimed as one of todays the most significant writers in the Benedictine and Cistercian tradition Casey has published over one hundred articles and reviews in various journals written more than eighteen books and edited many more books and journals He is a worldrenowned retreat master lecturer and formator
Author: Christopher Martin
How did Shakespeare and his contemporaries, whose works mark the last quarter century of Elizabeth Is reign as one of the richest moments in all of English literature, regard and represent old age? Was late life seen primarily as a time of withdrawal and preparation for death, as scholars and historians have traditionally maintained? In this book, Christopher Martin examines how, contrary to received impressions, writers and thinkers of the eraworking in the shadow of the kinetic, long-lived queen herselfcontested such prejudicial and dismissive social attitudes. In late Tudor England, Martin argues, competing definitions of and regard for old age established a deeply conflicted frontier between external, socially constituted beliefs and a developing sense of an individuals constitution or physical makeup, a usage that entered the language in the mid-1500s. This space was further complicated by internal divisions within the opposing camps. On one side, reverence for the elders authority, rooted in religious and social convention, was persistently challenged by the discontents of an ambitious younger underclass. Simultaneously, the aging subject grounded an enduring social presence and dignity on a bodily integrity that time inevitably threatened. In a historical setting that saw both the extended reign of an aging monarch and a resulting climate of acute generational strife, this network of competition and accommodation uniquely shaped late Elizabethan literary imagination. Through fresh readings of signature works, genres, and figures, Martin redirects critical attention to this neglected aspect of early modern studies.
Author: Tyler V. Johnson
In Devotion to the Adopted Country, Tyler V. Johnson looks at the efforts of Americas Democratic Party and Catholic leadership to use the service of immigrant volunteers in the U.S.Mexican War as a weapon against nativism and anti-Catholicism. Each chapter focuses on one of the five major events or issues that arose during the war, finishing with how the Catholic and immigrant community remembered the war during the nativist resurgence of the 1850s and in the outbreak of the Civil War. Johnsons book uncovers a new social aspect to military history by connecting the war to the larger social, political, and religious threads of antebellum history. Having grown used to the repeated attacks of nativists upon the fidelity and competency of the German and Irish immigrants flooding into the United States, Democratic and Catholic newspapers vigorously defended the adopted citizens they valued as constituents and congregants. These efforts frequently consisted of arguments extolling the American virtues of the recent arrivals, pointing to their hard work, love of liberty, and willingness to sacrifice for their adopted country. However, immigrants sometimes undermined this portrayal by prioritizing their ethnic and/or religious identities over their identities as new U.S. citizens. Even opportunities seemingly tailor-made for the defenders of Catholicism and the nations adopted citizens could go awry. When the supposedly well-disciplined Irish volunteers from Savannah brawled with soldiers from another Georgia company on a Rio Grande steamboat, the fight threatened to confirm the worst stereotypes of the nations new Irish citizens. In addition, although the Jesuits John McElroy and Anthony Rey gained admirers in the army and in the rest of the country for their untiring care for wounded and sick soldiers in northern Mexico, anti-Catholic activists denounced them for taking advantage of vulnerable young men to win converts for the Church. Using the letters and personal papers of soldiers, the diaries and correspondence of Fathers McElroy and Rey, Catholic and Democratic newspapers, and military records, Johnson illuminates the lives and actions of Catholic and immigrant volunteers and the debates over their participation in the war. Shedding light on this understudied and misunderstood facet of the war with Mexico, Devotion to the Adopted Country adds to the scholarship on immigration and religion in antebellum America, illustrating the contentious and controversial process by which immigrants and their supporters tried to carve out a place in U.S. society.
Author: C. Gilbert Storms
In 1854, funded by a syndicate of San Francisco businessmen, Charles D. Poston and a party of twenty-five men launched an expedition from San Francisco to Sinaloa and Sonora, Mexico, before trekking north into Arizona and returning to California. Reconnaissance in Sonora brings to light Postons handwritten report to the syndicate about the journey, published here for the first time. Poston led his party through Sonora and the territory of the 1854 Gadsden Purchase, which today encompasses southern Arizona and a portion of southern New Mexico. The syndicates charge to the young adventurer was to acquire land in Mexico in anticipation of the Gadsden Purchase and the building of the transcontinental railroad. Reconnaissance in Sonora details Postons expedition, including the founding of the town of Colorado City at the site of present-day Yuma, Arizona. C. Gilbert Storms explores the American ideas of territorial expansion and Manifest Destiny, the national debate over a route for a transcontinental railroad, the legends of rich gold and silver mines in northern Mexico, and the French and American filibusters that plagued northern Mexico in the early 1850s.
Author: Martin Carnoy
Through a comparative analysis of educational theory and practice, this analytic overview illuminates the larger economic and political changes occurring in five peripheral countries--China, Cuba, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Nicaragua--commonly viewed as in transition to socialism. Current political patterns and leadership in these countries have emerged in the context of predominantly agricultural, industrially underdeveloped economies. Each state has played a major role in social transformation, relying on the educational system to train, educate, and socialize its future citizens. Discussing the similarities and differences among these states, the authors show the primacy of politics and the interaction of material and ideological goals in the process of social transition, and how shifting policies reflect and are reflected in educational change. This collection first examines critical analyses of education in capitalist societies, both industrialized and peripheral, and explores the utility of those perspectives in the political and educational conditions of the countries under study. Together these essays offer the first systematic explanation of how and why education in socialist countries undergoing rapid change differs from education in developing capitalist countries. Contributions to the study were made by Mary Ann Burris, Anton Johnston, and Carlos Alberto Torres.Originally published in 1990.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
Author: Alexander Welsh
Although it is customary to credit Freud's self-analysis, it may be more accurate, Alexander Welsh argues, to say that psychoanalysis began when The Interpretation of Dreams was published in the last weeks of the nineteenth century. Only by going public with his theory--that dreams manifest hidden wishes--did Freud establish a position to defend and embark upon a career. That position and career have been among the most influential in this century. In August 1899, Freud wrote to Wilhelm Fliess of the dream book in terms reminiscent of Dante's Inferno. Beginning from a dark wood, this modern journey features a concealed pass though which I lead the reader--my specimen dream with its peculiarities, details, indiscretions, bad jokes--and then suddenly the high ground and the view and the question, Which way do you wish to go now? Physician that he is, Freud appoints himself guide rather than hero, yet the way you wish to go is very much his prescribed way. In Welsh's book, readers are invited on Freud's journey, to pause at each concealed pass in his seminal work and ask where the guide is taking them and why. Along the way, Welsh shows how Freud's arbitrary turnings are themselves wishful, intended to persuade by pleasing the reader and author alike; that his interest in secrets and his self-proclaimed modest ambition are products of their time; and that the book may best be read as a romance or serial comedy. Some of the humor throughout, Welsh notes, can only be understood as a particular kind of fine performance. Welsh offers the first critical overview of the argument in Freud's masterpiece and of the author who presents himself as guide.