Truth In Motion

Embarking on an ethnographic journey to the inner barrios of Havana among practitioners of Ifá, a prestigious Afro-Cuban tradition of divination, Truth in Motion reevaluates Western ideas about truth in light of the practices and ideas of a wildly different, and highly respected, model. Acutely focusing on Ifá, Martin Holbraad takes the reader inside consultations, initiations, and lively public debates to show how Ifá practitioners see truth as something to be not so much represented, as transformed. Bringing his findings to bear on the discipline of anthropology itself, he recasts the very idea of truth as a matter not only of epistemological divergence but also of ontological difference—the question of truth, he argues, is not simply about how things may appear differently to people, but also about the different ways of imagining what those things are. By delving so deeply into Ifá practices, Truth in Motion offers cogent new ways of thinking about otherness and how anthropology can navigate it.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1865. A critique on the Hamiltonian Theory of limitation, including some strictures upon the theories of Rev. Henry L. Mansel and Mr. Herbert Spencer.

The United States is amid a defining moment that will irrevocably determine the future of the American democratic experiment. In 1787, when the constitution of the United States was adopted, Americans gathered on the steps of Independence Hall in Philadelphia and asked Benjamin Franklin what type of government had been fashioned by the Founding Fathers. Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” The American political system has held a firm grasp on the concept of representational government until now. In Jonathan Swift’s brilliant political satire, Gulliver’s Travels, rope by rope, Gulliver was imprisoned albeit imperceptibly. Now, judge by judge, the judicial system has been co-opted by the right wing, and the Department of Justice is occupied by a king maker. Elections are corrupted beyond measure both by domestic political machinations and foreign influence meddling. The American free press is under attack like never before. This book is an analysis and expose of forces at work that overtly and covertly are propelling America toward an authoritarian fascist state.

In the early 1690s Roger North was preparing to remove from London to Rougham, Norfolk, where he planned to continue his search for truth, which for him meant knowledge of nature, including human nature. But this search was interrupted by three events. First, between c.1704 and the early part of 1706, he read Newton’s book on rational (quantitative) mechanics and, afterwards, his book on optics in Clarke’s Latin translation. Second, towards the latter part of 1706, he and Clarke, a Norfolk clergyman, corresponded about matters relating to Newton’s two books, after which Clarke removed to London and the correspondence ceased. Third, in 1712 North received a letter from Clarke, requesting him to read and respond to his new publication on the philosophy of the Godhead. As Kassler details, each of these events presented a number of challenges to North’s values, as well as the way of philosophising he had learned as a student and practitioner of the common law. Because he never made public his responses to the challenges, her book also includes editions of North's notes on reading Newton’s books, as well as what now remains of the 1706 and later correspondence with Clarke. In addition, she presents analyses of some of North’s ’second thoughts’ about the issues raised in the notes and 1706 correspondence and, from an examination of Clarke’s main writings, provides a context for understanding the correspondence relating to the 1712 book.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Second International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention, MICCAI'99, held in Cambridge, UK, in September 1999. The 133 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 213 full-length papers submitted. The book is divided into topical sections on data-driven segmentation, segmentation using structural models, image processing and feature detection, surfaces and shape, measurement and interpretation, spatiotemporal and diffusion tensor analysis, registration and fusion, visualization, image-guided intervention, robotic systems, and biomechanics and simulation.

With a never-before published paper by Lord Henry Cavendish, as well as a biography on him, this book offers a fascinating discourse on the rise of scientific attitudes and ways of knowing. A pioneering British physicist in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Cavendish was widely considered to be the first full-time scientist in the modern sense. Through the lens of this unique thinker and writer, this book is about the birth of modern science.