The Great Chain of Life


Book Description

Originally published in 1956, The Great Chain of Life brings a humanist’s keen eye and ear to one of the great questions of the ages: “What am I?” Originally a scholar of literature and theater, toward the end of his career Joseph Wood Krutch turned to the study of the natural world. Bringing his keen intellect to bear on the places around him, Krutch crafted some of the most memorable and important works of nature writing extant. Whether anticipating the arguments of biologists who now ascribe high levels of cognition to the so-called lower animals, recognizing the importance of nature for a well-lived life, or seeing nature as an elaborately interconnected, interdependent network, Krutch’s seminal work contains lessons just as resonant today as they were when the book was first written. Lavishly illustrated with thirteen beautiful woodcuts by Paul Landacre, an all-but-lost yet important Los Angeles artist whom Rockwell Kent called “the best American wood engraver working,” The Great Chain of Life will be cherished by new generations of readers.




A Link in the Great Chain


Book Description




The Great Chain of Being


Book Description

From later antiquity down to the close of the eighteenth century, most philosophers and men of science and, indeed, most educated men, accepted without question a traditional view of the plan and structure of the world.In this volume, which embodies the William James lectures for 1933, Arthur O. Lovejoy points out the three principles—plenitude, continuity, and graduation—which were combined in this conception; analyzes their origins in the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, and the Neoplatonists; traces the most important of their diverse samifications in subsequent religious thought, in metaphysics, in ethics and aesthetics, and in astronomical and biological theories; and copiously illustrates the influence of the conception as a whole, and of the ideas out of which it was compounded, upon the imagination and feelings as expressed in literature.




Being Property Once Myself


Book Description

A prize-winning poet argues that blackness acts as the caesura between human and nonhuman, man and animal. Throughout US history, black people have been configured as sociolegal nonpersons, a subgenre of the human. Being Property Once Myself delves into the literary imagination and ethical concerns that have emerged from this experience. Each chapter tracks a specific animal figure—the rat, the cock, the mule, the dog, and the shark—in the works of black authors such as Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Jesmyn Ward, and Robert Hayden. The plantation, the wilderness, the kitchenette overrun with pests, the simultaneous valuation and sale of animals and enslaved people—all are sites made unforgettable by literature in which we find black and animal life in fraught proximity. Joshua Bennett argues that animal figures are deployed in these texts to assert a theory of black sociality and to combat dominant claims about the limits of personhood. Bennett also turns to the black radical tradition to challenge the pervasiveness of antiblackness in discourses surrounding the environment and animals. Being Property Once Myself is an incisive work of literary criticism and a close reading of undertheorized notions of dehumanization and the Anthropocene.




Human Chain


Book Description

A Boston Globe Best Poetry Book of 2011 Winner of the 2011 Griffin Poetry Prize Winner of the 2011 Poetry Now Award Seamus Heaney's new collection elicits continuities and solidarities, between husband and wife, child and parent, then and now, inside an intently remembered present—the stepping stones of the day, the weight and heft of what is passed from hand to hand, lifted and lowered. Human Chain also broaches larger questions of transmission, of lifelines to the inherited past. There are newly minted versions of anonymous early Irish lyrics, poems that stand at the crossroads of oral and written, and other "hermit songs" that weigh equally in their balance the craft of scribe and the poet's early calling as scholar. A remarkable sequence entitled "Route 101" plots the descent into the underworld in the Aeneid against single moments in the arc of a life, from a 1950s childhood to the birth of a first grandchild. Other poems display a Virgilian pietas for the dead—friends, neighbors, family—that is yet wholly and movingly vernacular. Human Chain also includes a poetic "herbal" adapted from the Breton poet Guillevic—lyrics as delicate as ferns, which puzzle briefly over the world of things and landscapes that exclude human speech, while affirming the interconnectedness of phenomena, as of a self-sufficiency in which we too are included.




The Great Chain of Unbeing


Book Description

Andrew Crumey’s novels are renowned for their unique blend of science, history, philosophy and humour. Now he brings the same insight and originality to this story cycle whose title offers an ironic twist on the ancient doctrine of connectedness, the great chain of being. Here we find a blind man contemplating the light of an atom bomb, a musician disturbed by a conspiracy of radio waves, a visitor to Moscow caught up in a comic case of mistaken identity, a woman on a Greek island trying to become a different person. We range across time, from the Renaissance to a globally-warmed future, across light-years in search of hallucinogenic space-plankton, and into magical worlds of talking insects and bottled fire. Fans of Crumey’s acclaimed novels will occasionally spot hints of themes and figures that have recurred throughout his fiction; readers new to his work will delight in finding subtle links within the pieces. Are they all part of some larger untold story? We have nothing to lose but the chains of our imagination: what lies beyond is a great change of being. ‘The Great Chain of Unbeing is unboring, unusual and quite brilliant.’ Adam Roberts in The Literary Review 'It is a delightful introduction to his singularly riddling work - and in Crumeyesque style it is an intermezzo that doubles as an overture.' Stuart Kelly in The Scotsman The Great Chain of Unbeing, a book bursting with fertile fusions of ideas by this Scottish Borges .' The Sunday Herald




Centaurs and Amazons


Book Description

DIVTraces the development of the Greek hierarchical view of life that continues to permeate Western society /div




Darwin, God and the Meaning of Life


Book Description

If you accept evolutionary theory, can you also believe in God? Are human beings superior to other animals, or is this just a human prejudice? Does Darwin have implications for heated issues like euthanasia and animal rights? Does evolution tell us the purpose of life, or does it imply that life has no ultimate purpose? Does evolution tell us what is morally right and wrong, or does it imply that ultimately 'nothing' is right or wrong? In this fascinating and intriguing book, Steve Stewart-Williams addresses these and other fundamental philosophical questions raised by evolutionary theory and the exciting new field of evolutionary psychology. Drawing on biology, psychology and philosophy, he argues that Darwinian science supports a view of a godless universe devoid of ultimate purpose or moral structure, but that we can still live a good life and a happy life within the confines of this view.




Links in the Chain of Life


Book Description

This book tells how Baroness Orczy creates the fictitious character of the Scarlet Pimpernel. In this book, Baroness Orczy explores how she creates the character of Scarlet Pimpernel, the other characters, and the story world. The author, in this book, links the creation of the character of the Pimpernel to her love for Britain.




The LIVING Supply Chain


Book Description

Creates a managerial compass for entering into the LIVING (Live, Intelligent, Velocity, Interactive, Networked, and Good) era of supply chain management and defines the imperative for creating Velocity and Visibility as the focal point for exploiting new digital, mobile, and cloud-based technologies Written by well-known researchers in the field, this book addresses the changes that have occurred and are still unfolding at various organizations that are involved in building real-time supply chains. The authors draw on their experiences with multiple companies, along with references to the natural evolution of ecosystems throughout to help identify the “new rules of supply chain management." The LIVING principles associated with the rapid digitization and technology changes occurring in the global economy are discussed, along with the push to become more sustainable and responsive to customer needs. “ Handfield and Linton reveal the “secret ingredient” to leveraging the power of a well managed supply chain....will revolutionize the way companies approach supply chain management.” Frank Crespo, Vice President, Global Supply Network Division (CPO/Logistics/IoT Analytics), Caterpillar Inc. “ The LIVING supply chain is a wake up call to any enterprise that depends on suppliers and contractors. Be fast, be nimble and make supply chain transparency the nucleus of your operations or become endangered.” Paul Massih, Vice President, BP PSCM “ ...a fascinating journey through the future of supply chain management ... a must read for every supplychain professional.” Yossi Sheffi, Professor, MIT Center for Transportation and Logistics “ ... a great “living” reading on how to bring supply chains to a powerful living state. The idea of Live-Interactive-Velocity–Intelligent–Networked-Good is the foundation of how supply chains can be agile, adaptive and aligned. ...of value to every supply chain executive and practitioner.” Hau Lee, Professor, Stanford University “ Successful businesses are those that support the success of their customers. This book captures the essence of our volatile, uncertain world and the opportunities that exist for the commercially astute, organizationally integrated business. More important, it offers insight to the recipe for 21st century operations and the management of complex supply ecosystems.” Tim Cummins, CEO, International Association of Commercial and Contract Management “ A LIVING supply chain requires a living company. The authors make a great case for how Flex is creating a living company to thrive in the living supply chain.” Tom Choi, Harold E. Fear on Eminent Scholar Chair of Purchasing Management, Arizona State University, Executive Director, CAPS Research “ To survive we need to have an adaptive supply chain and capability to both optimize and adapt simultaneously. This book begins to describe the ability to shift from functional silos to E2E Frictionless flow with the maturity to make E2E tradeoff decisions as a key enabler for success.” Wayne Rothman, Vice President, Enterprise Supply Chain Planning, Johnson & Johnson “A fantastic read and excellent stories from Dr. Handfield and Tom.” Joanne E. Wright, Vice President, IBM Supply Chain ROBERT HANDFIELD, PhD, is Bank of America University Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management and Director of the Supply Chain Resource Cooperative at North Carolina State University. The author of four books and over 150 journal articles, Dr. Handfield received his PhD in Operations Management from The University of North Carolina in 1990. TOM LINTON is Chief Procurement and Supply Chain Officer at Flex. A recognized industry and functional expert, he has 30 years of international industrial experience in procurement and supply chain management. Tom Linton is also the recipient of the Procurement Leaders Lifetime Achievement Award in May, 2017.