Rather than a neutral value-free quest for "Truth", Thomas Kuhn reduced science to puzzle-solving within belief systems. This introduction provides an analysis of the conflict and shows how science has become a contested cultural symbol.
This is a review of the facts and arguments surrounding Heidegger's politics and his advocacy of Nazism. Reason, modernity, humanism, subjectivity and identity are among the issues.
It is Stephen Hawking's belief that when the theory of everything is discovered, we will at last know the mind of God. Peter Coles explains and examines this belief.
The allegation that psychotherapists may sometimes have fostered false memories of childhood sexual abuse has caused a scientific and legal controversy. This essay explores Freud and his understanding of memory.
This introduction shows how Trotsky predicted the Holocaust and foresaw events in Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Eastern bloc. It explains how he saw the Stalinist system as a transitional state which would either move toward socialism or revert to capitalism.
Understanding the events in post-Communist Russia and Eastern Europe at the turn of the millennium requires a basic grasp of the Russian Revolution and Lenin's role in it. This reference aims to make that part of history accessible.
The existence now of "virtual" communities underlines what McLuhan predicted, and the philosophical questions that become apparent make a reassessment of his work rather timely. This text attempts to do this by discussing Marshall McLuhan and the subject of "virtuality".
Jacques Lacan's influence has spread far from the clinical psychology that his theories were rooted in, to become a touch point in English, social science, philosophy, and perhaps most radically, feminism. This text looks at Lacan and feminism.
In this book, Peter Coles examines insights into the sociological conflict between "Big Science" and popular culture that are as real today as they were in the 1920s.
In this text, George Myerson examines the media hype surrounding genetically-modified foods in the light of Donna Haraway's postmodern, but critical work becoming ever more essential as we watch technology engulf our lives.
A mini-essay which illuminates the psychoanalytical concept of the unconscious and its relationship to the way people lead real lives. It is jargon-free and includes examples taken from the lives of well-known people, and from art, music, poetry and literature.
This book examines the use of Darwinist ideas in a plethora of regimes, and considers his legacy and reception outside the scientific community in which he ostensibly worked.
A mini-essay which illuminates the idea of Phantasy in psychoanalysis and its relationship to the way people lead real lives. It is jargon-free and includes examples taken from the lives of well-known people, and from art, music, poerty and literature.
A mini-essay which illuminates the psychoanalytical concept of perversion and its relationship to the way people lead real lives. It is jargon-free and includes examples taken from the lives of well-known people, and from art, music, poetry and literature.
This biography of Walter Benjamin encompasses political, philosophical and artistic events of the 20th century. He was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, lived in Moscow and Paris while engaging with leading modernists artists, and committed suicide after fleeing the Nazis.
This work examines the origins of Fascism in the 19th century, and the path leading to the "logic" of the Holocaust.
A mini-essay which illuminates the psychoanalytical concept of guilt and its relationship to the way people lead real lives. It is jargon-free and includes examples taken from the lives of well-known people, and from art, music, poetry and literature.
A mini-essay which illuminates the psycoanalytical concept of anxiety in psychoanalysis. It relates, according to Freud, not to everyday worries but to a threat to the Ego and to our sense of self. It includes examples taken from the lives of well-known people, and from art, music, and literature.
Does postmodernism, with its relativism and claims that historical study is little mor than a discourse of political power, promote and defend thinking that denies the occurrence of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany? This book argues not.
For Jean-Francois Lyotard, the cyborg is a symbol of fear Mankind must be aware that it has transgressed the boundaries between the organic and technological, inhabiting a world which views machine implantation in humans as normal and necessary. It implies a future, Lyotard warns, which may dangerously negate the value of humanity itself.
