Author: Anthony Pagden File Type: epub NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY *KIRKUS REVIEWS* One of our most renowned and brilliant historians takes a fresh look at the revolutionary intellectual movement that laid the foundation for the modern world. Liberty and equality. Human rights. Freedom of thought and expression. Belief in reason and progress. The value of scientific inquiry. These are just some of the ideas that were conceived and developed during the Enlightenment, and which changed forever the intellectual landscape of the Western world. Spanning hundreds of years of history, Anthony Pagden traces the origins of this seminal movement, showing how Enlightenment concepts directly influenced modern culture, making possible a secular, tolerant, and, above all, cosmopolitan world. Everyone can agree on its impact. But in the end, just what was Enlightenment? A cohesive philosophical project? A discrete time period in the life of the mind when the superstitions of the past were overthrown and reason and equality came to the fore? Or an open-ended intellectual process, a way of looking at the world and the human condition, that continued long after the eighteenth century ended? To address these questions, Pagden introduces us to some of the unforgettable characters who defined the Enlightenment, including David Hume, the Scottish skeptic who advanced the idea of a universal science of man Francois-Marie Arouet, better known to the world as Voltaire, the acerbic novelist and social critic who challenged the authority of the Catholic Church and Immanuel Kant, the reclusive German philosopher for whom the triumph of a cosmopolitan world represented the final stage in mankinds evolution. Comprehensive in his analysis of this heterogeneous group of scholars and their lasting impact on the world, Pagden argues that Enlightenment ideas go beyond the empire of reason to involve the full recognition of the emotional ties that bind all human beings together. The human science developed by these eminent thinkers led to a universalizing vision of humanity, a bid to dissolve the barriers past generations had attempted to erect between the different cultures of the world. A clear and compelling explanation of the philosophical underpinnings of the modern world, The Enlightenment is a scintillating portrait of a period, a critical moment in history, and a revolution in thought that continues to this day. Praise for The Enlightenment Sweeping . . . Like being guided through a vast ballroom of rotating strangers by a confiding insider.The Washington Post Fascinating.The Telegraph (London) A political tract for our time.The Wall Street Journal** For those who recognize the names Hegel, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Voltaire, and Diderot but are unfamiliar with their thought, [Anthony] Padgen provides a fantastic introduction, explaining the driving philosophies of the period and placing their proponents in context. . . . Padgens belief that the Enlightenment made it possible for us to think . . . beyond the narrow worlds into which we are born is clearly and cogently presented.Publishers Weekly (starred review) The Enlightenment really does still matter, and with a combination of gripping storytelling about colorful characters and lucid explanation of profound ideas, Anthony Pagden shows why.Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and *The Blank Slate* From the Hardcover edition.**From BooklistPerhaps the most significant footnote in the entire history of Western thought, muses Padgen, appeared in a 1783 journal in Berlin. The footnote asked, What is enlightenment? Answering the question is this works project, which Padgen conducts through eighteenth-century intellectuals associated with the Enlightenment. Unlike the philosophers and theologians of the preceding Renaissance and Reformation, who engaged in rediscovery or restoration of the past, Enlightenment thinkers repudiated traditions thought to fetter human beings. Religion, law, government, and social customs came under criticism from writers who varied in the subjects they contemplated but generally were animated by belief in the power of reason to define human nature and design human society. Partly a process of demolition, as in attacks on the claims of Christianity, and partly a process of construction, as in the beginnings of social sciences like economics, the course of the Enlightenment unfolds in Padgens presentations of major figures Locke, Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Adam Smith, and Kant. Readers interested in the origins of modernity, progressivism, and conservatism will find much to ponder in Padgens substantive history of ideas. --Gilbert Taylor ReviewSweeping . . . Like being guided through a vast ballroom of rotating strangers by a confiding insider.*The Washington Post Fascinating.The Telegraph* (London) A political tract for our time.The Wall Street Journal** For those who recognize the names Hegel, Hume, Rousseau, Kant, Voltaire, and Diderot but are unfamiliar with their thought, [Anthony] Padgen provides a fantastic introduction, explaining the driving philosophies of the period and placing their proponents in context. . . . Padgens belief that the Enlightenment made it possible for us to think . . . beyond the narrow worlds into which we are born is clearly and cogently presented.Publishers Weekly (starred review) The Enlightenment really does still matter, and with a combination of gripping storytelling about colorful characters and lucid explanation of profound ideas, Anthony Pagden shows why.Steven Pinker, author of The Better Angels of Our Nature and The Blank Slate Reading Anthony Pagdens The Enlightenment And Why It Still Matters* is an enlightenment in itself. The larger-than-life thinkers and talkers of eighteenth-century Europe have been blamed for everything from taking the magic out of life to making Auschwitz possible, but here, in sparkling style, Pagden shows us not only how their ideas made mankind modern but also what our world might have been like without them. Everyone interested in where the West came from should read this book.Ian Morris, author of Why the West RulesFor Now Anthony Pagden defends the Enlightenment as a cosmopolitan project with classical roots and contemporary relevance. Like Kant, he argues that we live in an age of enlightenment, ongoing but incomplete, but that someday we will experience a fully enlightened age. His lucid and learned book might help to realize that hope.*David Armitage, author of Foundations of Modern International Thought Pagden demonstrates the breadth and depth of his knowledge and his impeccable research of the period we refer to as the Enlightenment. . . . A book that should be on every thinking persons shelfthe perfect primer for anyone interested in the development of Western civilization.*Kirkus Reviews*

Author: Peter Roberts File Type: pdf p Segoe UIColorful, mysterious, and often fantastically shaped, fungi have been a source of wonder and fascination since the earliest hunter-gatherers first foraged for them. Today there are few, if any, places on Earth where fungi have not found themselves a home. And these highly specialized organisms are an indispensable part of the great chain of life. They not only partner in symbiotic relationships with over ninety percent of the worlds trees and flowering plant species, they also recycle and create humus, the fertile soil from which such flora receive their nutrition. Some fungi are parasites or saprotrophs many are poisonous and, yes, hallucinogenic others possess life-enhancing properties that can be tapped for pharmaceutical products while a delicious few are prized by epicureans and gourmands worldwide.p Segoe UIIn this lavishly illustrated volume, six hundred fungi from around the globe get their full due. Each species here is reproduced at its actual size, in full color, and is accompanied by a scientific explanation of its distribution, habitat, association, abundance, growth form, spore color, and edibility. Location maps give at-a-glance indications of each species known global distribution, and specially commissioned engravings show different fruitbody forms and provide the vital statistics of height and diameter. With information on the characteristics, distinguishing features, and occasionally bizarre habits of these fungi, readers will find in this book the common and the conspicuous, the unfamiliar and the odd. There is a fungal predator, for instance, that hunts its prey with lassos, and several that set traps, including one that entices sows by releasing the pheromones of a wild boar.p Segoe UIMushrooms, morels, puffballs, toadstools, truffles, chanterellesfungi from habitats spanning the poles and the tropics, from the highest mountains to our own backyardsare all on display in this definitive work.