We Walk

Author(s):  
Amy S. F. Lutz

In this collection of essays, the author writes openly about her experience as a mother of a now twenty-one-year-old son with severe autism. The author's human emotion drives through each page and challenges commonly held ideas that define autism either as a disease or as neurodiversity. The book is inspired by the author's own questions: What is the place of intellectually and developmentally disabled people in society? What responsibilities do we, as citizens and human beings, have to one another? Who should decide for those who cannot decide for themselves? What is the meaning of religion to someone with no abstract language? Exploring these questions, the book examines social issues such as inclusion, religion, therapeutics, and friendship through the lens of severe autism. In a world where public perception of autism is largely shaped by the “quirky geniuses” featured on television shows like The Big Bang Theory and The Good Doctor, this book demands that we center our debates about this disorder on those who are most affected by its impacts.

Author(s):  
John Marsh

By awe, philosophers and psychologists mean the sensation that overcomes someone in the presence of something simultaneously vast, powerful, and, when compared to humans, strangely humbling. The chapter begins with a review of amazing discoveries such as island universes, the expanding universe, and the Big Bang that altered the understanding of the universe and made the solar system “seem but a speck of dust in infinite space.” It then turns to other sources of awe, or the Depression sublime: the Empire State Building; Jesse Owens’s record-setting long jump at the 1936 Berlin Olympics; the moral heroism of the Joads in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath; and James Agee and Walker Evans’s deification of tenant farmers in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Whereas most accounts of the sublime involve the vastness of nature overwhelming human beings, during the Depression human beings themselves became a source of the sublime.


Author(s):  
Luigi Cajani

This article presents an overview of the different periodizations of world history. It discusses first world histories that originated as part and parcel of religious visions which connect Creation myths and human history; Greek and Roman historiography; the Christian synthesis of salvation; medieval European historiography of the Six Ages and the Four Empires; Muslim historiography; the European discovery of new histories; the challenges against biblical chronology; Voltaire and the Enlightenment; German Aufklärung; Eurocentrism during the nineteenth century; Marxist historiography; UNESCO's world history after World War II; and current trends. The discussion ends with the big history, which places human history within the wider framework of the history of the universe, thus starting with the Big Bang and going through the formation of the galaxies, the solar system, planet Earth, and the geological eras until the evolution of human beings, and down to the present day.


Think ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Richard Dawkins

Creationists believe that the Biblical account of the creation of the universe is literally true. God brought into existence the Earth and all its life forms in just six days. According to creationists, this event took place less than ten thousand years ago (they base their calculation of the age of the universe on the number of generations listed in the Bible).Creationists have succeeded in persuading large swathes of the general public that their theory is at least as scientifically respectable as the Big Bang/evolution alternative. A recent Gallup poll indicated that about 45% of US citizens currently believe that God created human beings ‘pretty much in [their] present form at one time or another within the last 10,000 years’.Two states, Arkansas and Louisiana, have even passed ‘balanced treatment’ laws requiring that creationism be taught alongside evolution in all state public schools. It was in Auburn, Alabama, shortly after that state required that a piece of paper be pasted into every biology school text book explaining why evolution is merely a ‘theory’ — and a highly questionable theory at that — that Richard Dawkins delivered the impromptu speech which forms the basis of the following.


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 458-470 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alberto Brodesco

The history of the Nobel Prize, since its establishment, interlaces with the history of the public image of science. The aim of this article is to illustrate cinematic scientists, portrayed precisely in their moment of maximum glory. The films and television shows upon which the study is based compose a corpus of 189 media texts. The article identifies three main areas that concern the relation between the Nobel Prize and its audiovisual representations: biopics of real Nobel laureates, the presence of real or fictional Nobel laureates in the film or the show plot, and films and TV series that depict the Nobel ceremony. The article then focuses on four texts that deserve a detailed examination: La fin du monde, The Prize, The Simpsons and The Big Bang Theory. The conclusion compares the representation of the Nobel scientist with general changes in the image of the scientist conveyed by cinema and television.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 19-52
Author(s):  
JHUNJHUNWALA, Bharat ◽  

This paper tries to comprehend Hindu narrative of creation in the framework of modern cosmology and psychology. The objective is to build a conversation for mutual understanding. The following concordance between the two streams is suggested. The state of the Primeval Being before It desired to become many is not known in the Hindu stream just as the state of the universe before the Big Bang is not known in the modern stream. The Primeval Being desired to grow according to the Hindu stream. Modern psychology says there is an innate desire to grow among human beings that we extrapolate backwards to suggest that the Singularity desired to grow. The Brahman pervades the entire Universe according to the Hindu stream. The panpsychists hold that every particle in the universe has consciousness. Brahman is the fused consciousness of all the particles in the universe according to the Hindu stream. In parallel the panpsychists hold that the fused consciousness is more than the sum of the parts. The collective consciousness of a subset of the universe is “devta” according to the Hindu stream. This concords with the “unconscious substrate” created in social organizations according to modern psychology. The collective consciousness of individuals having their consciousness at the Vishuddhi, Manipur and Anahata chakras is known as Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. These concord with the collective consciousness of individuals who have evolved to the needs of cognition, belonging and esteem according to Abraham Maslow. The devtas can descend into a living person who is then called an avatara. This concords with the descent of the libido into the unconscious as said by Carl G. Jung. In conclusion, Hindu Brahman is modern God. Hindu devtas are modern gods. Hindu avataras are modern individuals in whom the gods have descended. In this way we can make the Hindu cosmology understandable to the modern mind and vice versa.


580 entriesFrom the big bang to the 21st century, this renowned encyclopedia provides an integrated view of human and universal history. Eminent scholars examine environmental and social issues by exploring connections and interactions made over time (and across cultures and locales) through trade, warfare, migrations, religion, and diplomacy.Over 100 new articles, and 1,200 illustrations, photos, and maps from the collections of the Library of Congress, the World Digital Library, the New York Public Library, and many more sources, make this second edition a vital addition for world history-focused classrooms and libraries.


2006 ◽  
Vol 190 ◽  
pp. 15-15
Author(s):  
D CASTELVECCHI
Keyword(s):  
Big Bang ◽  

Author(s):  
Abraham Loeb ◽  
Steven R. Furlanetto

This book provides a comprehensive, self-contained introduction to one of the most exciting frontiers in astrophysics today: the quest to understand how the oldest and most distant galaxies in our universe first formed. Until now, most research on this question has been theoretical, but the next few years will bring about a new generation of large telescopes that promise to supply a flood of data about the infant universe during its first billion years after the big bang. This book bridges the gap between theory and observation. It is an invaluable reference for students and researchers on early galaxies. The book starts from basic physical principles before moving on to more advanced material. Topics include the gravitational growth of structure, the intergalactic medium, the formation and evolution of the first stars and black holes, feedback and galaxy evolution, reionization, 21-cm cosmology, and more.


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