Passages From The Life Of A Philosopher

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1864 edition. Excerpt: ... 170 EXHIBITION OF AUTOMATON. the best definitions of chance by the philosopher and the poet: -- "Chance is but the expression of man's ignorance."--Laplace. "All chance, design ill understood."--Pope. Having fully satisfied myself of the power of making: such an automaton, the next step was to ascertain whether there was any probability, if it were exhibited to the public, of its producing, in a moderate time, such a sum of money as would enable me to construct the Analytical Engine. A friend, to whom I had at an early period communicated the idea, entertained great hopes of its pecuniary success. When it became known that an automaton could beat not merely children but even papa and mamma at a child's game, it seemed not unreasonable to expect that every child who heard of it would ask mamma to see it. On the other hand, every mamma, and some few papas, who heard of it would doubtless take their children to so singular and interesting a sight. I resolved, on my return to London, to make inquiries as to the relative productiveness of the various exhibitions of recent years, and also to obtain some rough estimate of the probable time it would take to construct the automaton, as well as some approximation to the expense. It occurred to me that if half a dozen were made, they might be exhibited in three different places at the same time. Each exhibitor niight then have an automaton in reserve in case of accidental injury. On my return to town I made the inquiries I alluded to, and found that the English machine for making Latin verses, the German talking-machine, as well as several others, were entire failures in a pecuniary point of view. I also found that the most profitable exhibition which had occurred for many years was that of the...

Pulitzer Prize–winning author Will Durant chronicles the lives and ideas of several key philosophical thinkers throughout history in this informative yet eminently readable text. An essential read for anyone fascinated by the development of Western philosophy.

The author of Straw Dogs, famous for his provocative critiques of scientific hubris and the delusions of progress and humanism, turns his attention to cats—and what they reveal about humans' torturous relationship to the world and to themselves. The history of philosophy has been a predictably tragic or comical succession of palliatives for human disquiet. Thinkers from Spinoza to Berdyaev have pursued the perennial questions of how to be happy, how to be good, how to be loved, and how to live in a world of change and loss. But perhaps we can learn more from cats--the animal that has most captured our imagination--than from the great thinkers of the world. In Feline Philosophy, the philosopher John Gray discovers in cats a way of living that is unburdened by anxiety and self-consciousness, showing how they embody answers to the big questions of love and attachment, mortality, morality, and the Self: Montaigne's house cat, whose un-examined life may have been the one worth living; Meo, the Vietnam War survivor with an unshakable capacity for "fearless joy"; and Colette's Saha, the feline heroine of her subversive short story "The Cat", a parable about the pitfalls of human jealousy. Exploring the nature of cats, and what we can learn from it, Gray offers a profound, thought-provoking meditation on the follies of human exceptionalism and our fundamentally vulnerable and lonely condition. He charts a path toward a life without illusions and delusions, revealing how we can endure both crisis and transformation, and adapt to a changed scene, as cats have always done.

'Passages from the Life of a Philosopher' is a fascinating autobiography of Charles Babbage, an English polymath known for his groundbreaking work in mathematics, philosophy, engineering, and invention. Babbage is credited with originating the concept of a digital programmable computer and is considered by many to be the "father of the computer." This book provides a unique insight into Babbage's life, interests, and achievements, including his invention of the first mechanical computer, the Difference Engine, and his development of the Analytical Engine, which contained all the essential ideas of modern computers. Babbage's wide range of interests and contributions in other fields make him a prominent figure among the many polymaths of his time. Although he died before the completion of many of his designs, his legacy lives on in the field of computing, and his work continues to inspire generations of inventors and engineers.