Insular Insight

RELIGION& CIVILITY: The Primacy of Conscience (the third book of the breakthrough "Second Enlightenment Trilogy") reveals trial-and-error failures and successes of past and present civilizations. Man inherits from nature hard-won intelligence (cortical consciousness) to learn from errors of irreligion and incivility. Though more painful, error is sometimes the most convincing teacher.

The islands of Naoshima, Teshima, and Inujima in Japan's Seto Inland Sea are places of pilgrimage for friends of contemporary art and architecture. Alongside works in public spaces as well as site-specific installations, the islands are also full of numerous museums and collections of contemporary art. This publication offers a comprehensive documentation of this unique cultural landscape surrounded by Japan's Inland Sea. The photographs by the Dutch photographer Iwan Baan, ranging from tiny details to giant panoramas, create a comprehensive portrait of the islands with their fluid transitions between nature, art, and architecture. Numerous texts introduce readers to the individual areas and projects that are either permanently on display on the islands or have taken place there temporarily. In addition, other essays deal with the island as a cultural concept and phenomenon. Among others, the book presents buildings by Kazuyo Sejima, Ruye Nishizawa, Tadao Ando, and Hiroshi Sambuichi. ILLUSTRATIONS: 300

Building a New Economy uses an evolutionary conceptual framework of states-and-markets, organizations-and-technology, and institutional change. It shows how the institutional coherence of the manufacturing-centred postwar model broke down, and was followed by the ideological and institutional dissonance of the 'lost decades'.

We are all familiar with the feeling of being stuck when a problem we are faced with seems intractable and we are unable to find a solution. But sometimes, a new way of seeing the problem pops into the mind from out of the blue. The missing piece of the puzzle is found, the gap is filled, and the solution is now obvious. This is the insight experience - the Aha! Moment - which has been a source of fascination to those who study problem solving for centuries. Written by leading researchers from around the world, this volume explores cutting-edge perspectives on insight, the processes that underlie it, and the conditions that promote it. Chapters draw on key themes: from attention, to memory and learning, to evolutionary perspectives. Students and researchers in applied, cognitive, and educational psychology, as well as those studying creativity, insight, and cognitive neuroscience, will benefit from these perspectives.

This book successfully explores cellular and molecular mechanisms of chronic pain based on recent basic neurobiological investigations. By focusing on major breakthroughs in basic neurosciences, it is believed to contain the promise for future new pain drug discovery.Instead of repeating extensive reviews of basic animal and clinical observations, the book provides a novel neuronal model that is believed to be the key target for treating chronic pain. In addition, it reviews and validates animal models developed for studying basic mechanisms of pain and chronic pain, and the current medicine used to treat chronic pain as well as alternative pain treatment. The final few chapters also cover how pain may interfere with other high brain functions, such as fear, anxiety, sleep, memory, etc.