Delusions and Discoveries

Delusions and Discoveries
Author: Benita Parry
Publisher: Verso
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1998
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781859841280

No cultural phenomenon of the 1970s and 1980s in Britain was more curious than the Raj revival, with its slew of films and fictions, its rage for memorabilia of imperial rule in India, and its strange nostalgia for a time and a world long since past. Today, with the arrival of so-called postcolonial studies, that revival lives on in a strange afterlife of critical study. Writing some years before Raj nostalgia became all the rage, and out of the rather different political and intellectual climate of 1960s national liberation struggles, Benita Parry produced what remains one of the landmark studies of British attitudes towards India. Available for the first time in Paper, Delusions and Discoveries authoritatively surveys the mix of racist and jingoistic prejudices that dominated the writings of Anglo-Indians from Flora Annie Steele and Maud Diver to Kipling and beyond. The book also includes treatments of more liberal thinkers like Edmund Candler, Edward James Thompson and E. M. Forster, as well as a new preface by the author situating her work in relation to recent studies of the culture of colony and empire.

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference

Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference
Author: Cordelia Fine
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2011-08-08
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0393340244

Sex discrimination is supposedly a distant memory. Yet popular books, magazines and even scientific articles defend inequalities by citing immutable biological differences between the male and female brain. Why are there so few women in science and engineering, so few men in the laundry room? Well, they say, it's our brains.

The Devil's Delusion

The Devil's Delusion
Author: David Berlinski
Publisher: Basic Books
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2009-08-26
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0786751479

From a bestselling author, an “incendiary and uproarious” assault on the pretensions of scientific atheists (National Review) Militant atheism is on the rise. Prominent thinkers including Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens have published best-selling books denigrating religious belief. And these authors are merely the leading edge of a larger movement that includes much of the scientific community. In response, mathematician David Berlinski, himself a secular Jew, delivers a biting defense of religious thought. The Devil's Delusion is a brilliant, incisive, and funny book that explores the limits of science and the pretensions of those who insist it is the ultimate touchstone for understanding our world.

A History of Delusions

A History of Delusions
Author: Victoria Shepherd
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2022-06-02
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0861540921

‘Fascinating and compassionate’ Horatio Clare The King of France – thinking he was made of glass – was terrified he might shatter…and he wasn’t alone. After the Emperor met his end at Waterloo, an epidemic of Napoleons piled into France’s asylums. Throughout the nineteenth century, dozens of middle-aged women tried to convince their physicians that they were, in fact, dead. For centuries we’ve dismissed delusions as something for doctors to sort out behind locked doors. But delusions are more than just bizarre quirks – they hold the key to collective anxieties and traumas. In this groundbreaking history, Victoria Shepherd uncovers stories of delusions from medieval times to the present day and implores us to identify reason in apparent madness.

Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain

Useful Delusions: The Power and Paradox of the Self-Deceiving Brain
Author: Shankar Vedantam
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2021-03-02
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0393652211

A Behavioral Scientist Notable Book of 2021 A Next Big Idea Club Best Nonfiction of 2021 From the New York Times best-selling author and host of Hidden Brain comes a thought-provoking look at the role of self-deception in human flourishing. Self-deception does terrible harm to us, to our communities, and to the planet. But if it is so bad for us, why is it ubiquitous? In Useful Delusions, Shankar Vedantam and Bill Mesler argue that, paradoxically, self-deception can also play a vital role in our success and well-being. The lies we tell ourselves sustain our daily interactions with friends, lovers, and coworkers. They can explain why some people live longer than others, why some couples remain in love and others don’t, why some nations hold together while others splinter. Filled with powerful personal stories and drawing on new insights in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy, Useful Delusions offers a fascinating tour of what it really means to be human.

Night of Delusions

Night of Delusions
Author: Keith Laumer
Publisher: Gateway
Total Pages: 77
Release: 2016-03-24
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1473215838

It starts out as a weird but seemingly understandable assignment, bodyguarding a mad politician whose keepers have decided to let him "escape" as a sort of reality therapy. But to understand the Senator, Florin must enter the Machine, an reality will never be the same. From now on he's a Knight of Delusions.

Discoveries in Pharmacology - Volume 1 - Nervous System and Hormones

Discoveries in Pharmacology - Volume 1 - Nervous System and Hormones
Author: Clive Page
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2022-09-09
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0323855202

Discoveries in Pharmacology: Volume 1: Nervous system and hormones (2nd Ed.) presents selected articles from the historic Discoveries in Pharmacology series enhanced with commentary from contemporary scholars about the reception and importance of the chapter along with an updated bibliography on the subject with contributions from a Nobel Prize winner and other pioneers in Pharmacology. The Discoveries in Pharmacology series brought acknowledged experts in their fields together to provide first-hand accounts of important pharmacological discoveries discussing the scientific background and stories behind these pivotal moments. They allow a true understanding of the means by which pharmacological discoveries are made. This volume brings forth discussions on key discoveries in psycho- and neuro-pharmacology, haemodynamics, and hormones including chapters on antipsychotic agents by Nobel winner Anders Carlsson, Willy Haefely on benzodiazepine, and butyrophenone-type neuroleptics by P. A. J. Janssen and J. P. Tollenaere. Academic and industry researchers in pharmacology and medicine, as well as advanced students in the area will find this series a useful teaching tool and launch to new discoveries. Chapters can also be used to supplement course material in pharmacology and medical courses. It will also be of interest to those who are interested in the history of medicine. - Contains primary-source documents currently unavailable - Presents the science behind major pharmacological breakthroughs by those who discovered them - Includes commentary that contextualizes the importance of discoveries and related readings

Resonances of the Raj

Resonances of the Raj
Author: Nalini Ghuman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2014
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0199314896

During the century of British rule of the Indian subcontinent known as the British Raj, the rulers felt the significant influence of their exotic subjects. Resonances of the Raj examines the ramifications of the intertwined and overlapping histories of Britain and India on English music in the last fifty years of the colonial encounter, and traces the effects of the Raj on the English musical imagination. Conventional narratives depict a one-way influence of Britain on India, with the 'discovery' of Indian classical music occurring only in the post-colonial era. Drawing on new archival sources and approaches in cultural studies, author Nalini Ghuman shows that on the contrary, England was both deeply aware of and heavily influenced by India musically during the Indian-British colonial encounter. Case studies of representative figures, including composers Edward Elgar and Gustav Holst, and Maud MacCarthy, an ethnomusicologist and performer of the era, integrate music directly into the cultural history of the British Raj. Ghuman thus reveals unexpected minglings of peoples, musics and ideas that raise questions about 'Englishness', the nature of Empire, and the fixedness of identity. Richly illustrated with analytical music examples and archival photographs and documents, many of which appear here in print for the first time, Resonances of the Raj brings fresh hearings to both familiar and little-known musics of the time, and reveals a rich and complex history of cross-cultural musical imaginings which leads to a reappraisal of the accepted historiographies of both British musical culture and of Indo-Western fusion.

Science for Sale

Science for Sale
Author: Daniel S. Greenberg
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 334
Release: 2008-09-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0226306267

In recent years the news media have been awash in stories about increasingly close ties between college campuses and multimillion-dollar corporations. Our nation’s universities, the story goes, reap enormous windfalls patenting products of scientific research that have been primarily funded by taxpayers. Meanwhile, hoping for new streams of revenue from their innovations, the same universities are allowing their research—and their very principles—to become compromised by quests for profit. But is that really the case? Is money really hopelessly corrupting science? With Science for Sale, acclaimed journalist Daniel S. Greenberg reveals that campus capitalism is more complicated—and less profitable—than media reports would suggest. While universities seek out corporate funding, news stories rarely note that those industry dollars are dwarfed by government support and other funds. Also, while many universities have set up technology transfer offices to pursue profits through patents, many of those offices have been financial busts. Meanwhile, science is showing signs of providing its own solutions, as highly publicized misdeeds in pursuit of profits have provoked promising countermeasures within the field. But just because the threat is overhyped, Greenberg argues, doesn’t mean that there’s no danger. From research that has shifted overseas so corporations can avoid regulations to conflicts of interest in scientific publishing, the temptations of money will always be a threat, and they can only be countered through the vigilance of scientists, the press, and the public. Based on extensive, candid interviews with scientists and administrators, Science for Sale will be indispensable to anyone who cares about the future of scientific research.

Empire, Nationalism and the Postcolonial World

Empire, Nationalism and the Postcolonial World
Author: Michael Collins
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 1136580654

By presenting a new interpretation of Rabindranath Tagore’s English language writings, this book places the work of India’s greatest Nobel Prize winner and cultural icon in the context of imperial history and thereby bridges the gap between Tagore studies and imperial/postcolonial historiography. Using detailed archival research, the book charts the origins of Tagore’s ideas in Indian religious traditions and discusses the impact of early Indian nationalism on Tagore’s thinking. It offers a new interpretation of Tagore’s complex debates with Gandhi about the colonial encounter, Tagore’s provocative analysis of the impact of British imperialism in India and his questioning of nationalism as a pathway to authentic postcolonial freedom. The book also demonstrates how the man and his ideas were received and interpreted in Britain during his lifetime and how they have been sometimes misrepresented by nationalist historians and postcolonial theorists after Tagore’s death. An alternative interpretation based on an intellectual history approach, this book places Tagore’s sense of agency, his ideas and intentions within a broader historical framework. Offering an exciting critique of postcolonial theory from a historical perspective, it is a timely contribution in the wake of the 150th anniversary of Tagore's birth in 2011.