Fifty Thinkers Who Shaped the Modern World

Author: Stephen Trombley
Publisher: Atlantic Books
ISBN: 1782390383
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 433

Book Description
The development of modern thought is traced through a sequence of accessible profiles of the most influential thinkers in every domain of intellectual endeavor since 1789 No major representative of post-Enlightenment thought escapes Trombley's attention in this history: the German idealists Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel; the utilitarians Bentham and Mill; the transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau; Kierkegaard and the existentialists; founders of new fields of inquiry such as Weber, Durkheim, and C.S. Peirce; the analytic philosophers Russell, Moore, Whitehead, and Wittgenstein; political leaders from Mohandas K. Gandhi to Adolf Hitler; and—last but not least—the four shapers-in-chief of our modern world: the philosopher, historian, and political theorist Karl Marx; the naturalist Charles Darwin, proposer of the theory of evolution; Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis; and the theoretical physicist Albert Einstein, begetter of the special and general theories of relativity and founder of post-Newtonian physics. This book offers a crisp analysis of their key ideas, and in some cases a reevaluation of their importance as we proceed into the 21st century.

How Russia Shaped the Modern World

Author: Steven G. Marks
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691118450
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
This sweeping history tells the story of how Russian figures, ideas, and movements changed our world in dramatic but often unattributed ways. It points out that Russia gave the world new ways of writing novels, and launched trends in ballet, theatre and art that revolutionized cultural life.

War in the Modern World

Author: Theodore Ropp
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801864452
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 430

Book Description
From the Renaissance to the Cold War, the definitive survey of the social, political, military, and technological aspects of modern warfare returns to print in a new paperback edition. Topics include land and sea warfare from the Renaissance to the neoclassical age; the Anglo-American military tradition; the French Revolution and Napoleon; the Industrial Revolution and war; and the First and Second World Wars and their aftermath.

Fifty Major Political Thinkers

Author: Ian Adams
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134586361
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
Fifty Major Political Thinkers introduces the lives and ideas of some of the most influential figures in Western political thought, from ancient Greece to the present day. The entries provide a fascinating introduction to the major figures and schools of thought that have shaped contemporary politics, including: Aristotle Simone de Beauvoir Michel Foucault Mohandas Gandhi Jurgen Habermas Machiavelli Karl Marx Thomas Paine Jean-Jacques Rousseau Mary Wollstonecraft. Fully cross-referenced and including a glossary of theoretical terms, this wide-ranging and accessible book is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the evolution and history of contemporary political thought.

Fifty Key Thinkers on Globalization

Author: William Coleman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136163948
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
Fifty Key Thinkers on Globalization is an outstanding guide to often-encountered thinkers whose ideas have shaped, defined and influenced this new and rapidly growing field. The authors clearly and lucidly survey the life, work and impact of fifty of the most important theorists of globalization including: Manuel Castells Joseph Stiglitz David Held Jan Aart Scholte Each thinker’s contribution to the field is evaluated and assessed, and each entry includes a helpful guide to further reading. Fully cross-referenced throughout, this remarkable reference guide is essential reading for students of politics and international relations, economics, sociology, history, anthropology and literary studies.

How the Scots Invented the Modern World

Author: Arthur Herman
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307420957
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Book Description
An exciting account of the origins of the modern world Who formed the first literate society? Who invented our modern ideas of democracy and free market capitalism? The Scots. As historian and author Arthur Herman reveals, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Scotland made crucial contributions to science, philosophy, literature, education, medicine, commerce, and politics—contributions that have formed and nurtured the modern West ever since. Herman has charted a fascinating journey across the centuries of Scottish history. Here is the untold story of how John Knox and the Church of Scotland laid the foundation for our modern idea of democracy; how the Scottish Enlightenment helped to inspire both the American Revolution and the U.S. Constitution; and how thousands of Scottish immigrants left their homes to create the American frontier, the Australian outback, and the British Empire in India and Hong Kong. How the Scots Invented the Modern World reveals how Scottish genius for creating the basic ideas and institutions of modern life stamped the lives of a series of remarkable historical figures, from James Watt and Adam Smith to Andrew Carnegie and Arthur Conan Doyle, and how Scottish heroes continue to inspire our contemporary culture, from William “Braveheart” Wallace to James Bond. And no one who takes this incredible historical trek will ever view the Scots—or the modern West—in the same way again.

The Philosophical Breakfast Club

Author: Laura J. Snyder
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0767930495
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 458

Book Description
“[A] fascinating book...about the way four geniuses at Cambridge University revolutionized modern science.“ —Newsweek The Philosophical Breakfast Club recounts the life and work of four men who met as students at Cambridge University: Charles Babbage, John Herschel, William Whewell, and Richard Jones. Recognizing that they shared a love of science (as well as good food and drink) they began to meet on Sunday mornings to talk about the state of science in Britain and the world at large. Inspired by the great 17th century scientific reformer and political figure Francis Bacon—another former student of Cambridge—the Philosophical Breakfast Club plotted to bring about a new scientific revolution. And to a remarkable extent, they succeeded, even in ways they never intended. Historian of science and philosopher Laura J. Snyder exposes the political passions, religious impulses, friendships, rivalries, and love of knowledge—and power—that drove these extraordinary men. Whewell (who not only invented the word “scientist,” but also founded the fields of crystallography, mathematical economics, and the science of tides), Babbage (a mathematical genius who invented the modern computer), Herschel (who mapped the skies of the Southern Hemisphere and contributed to the invention of photography), and Jones (a curate who shaped the science of economics) were at the vanguard of the modernization of science. This absorbing narrative of people, science and ideas chronicles the intellectual revolution inaugurated by these men, one that continues to mold our understanding of the world around us and of our place within it. Drawing upon the voluminous correspondence between the four men over the fifty years of their work, Laura J. Snyder shows how friendship worked to spur the men on to greater accomplishments, and how it enabled them to transform science and help create the modern world. "The lives and works of these men come across as fit for Masterpiece Theatre.” —Wall Street Journal "Snyder succeeds famously in evoking the excitement, variety and wide-open sense of possibility of the scientific life in 19th-century Britain...splendidly evoked in this engaging book.” —American Scientist "This fine book is as wide-ranging and anecdotal, as excited and exciting, as those long-ago Sunday morning conversations at Cambridge. The Philosophical Breakfast Club forms a natural successor to Jenny Uglow’s The Lunar Men...and Richard Holmes’s The Age of Wonder.” —Washington Post

A Secular Age

Author: Charles Taylor
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674986911
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 889

Book Description
The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.

Against the Modern World

Author: Mark J. Sedgwick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195396014
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 385

Book Description
Against the Modern World is the first history of Traditionalism, an important yet surprisingly little-known twentieth-century anti-modern movement. Comprising a number of often secret but sometimes very influential religious groups in the West and in the Islamic world, it affected mainstream and radical politics in Europe and the development of the field of religious studies in the United States, touching the lives of many individuals. French writer Rene Guenon rejected modernity as a dark age and sought to reconstruct the Perennial Philosophy - the central truths behind all the major world religions. Guenon stressed the urgent need for the West's remaining spiritual and intellectual elite to find personal and collective salvation in the surviving vestiges of ancient religious traditions. A number of disenchanted intellectuals responded to his call. In Europe, America, and the Islamic world, Traditionalists founded institutes, Sufi brotherhoods, Masonic lodges, and secret societies. Some attempted unsuccessfully to guide Fascism and Nazism along Traditionalist lines; others later participated in political terror in Italy. Traditionalist ideas were the ideological cement for the alliance of anti-democratic forces in post-Soviet Russia, and in the Islamic world entered the debate about the relationship between Islam and modernity. Although its appeal in the West was ultimately limited, Traditionalism has wielded enormous influence in religious studies, through the work of such Traditionalists as Ananda Coomaraswamy, Huston Smith, Mircea Eliade, and Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

A Short History of Western Thought

Author: Stephen Trombley
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781471201851
Category : Large type books
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
A Short History of Western Thought outlines the 2,500-year history of European ideas from the philosophers of Classical Antiquity to the thinkers of today; no major representative of any significant strand of Western thought escapes Trombley's attention. Included are the Christian Scholastic theologians of the Middle Ages, the German idealists from Kant to Hegel and the four shapers-in-chief of our modern world: the philosopher, historian and political theorist Karl Marx; the naturalist Charles Darwin, proposer of the theory of evolution; Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis; and the theoretical physicist Albert Einstein.