Describes changing language & rhetoric of English-speaking scientists across the 17th-20th centuries. Of interest to scholars of rhetoric, composition, communication, & applied linguistics, as well as historians, sociolinguists, and education researchers

Includes lists of members of the society.

Spoken language communication is arguably the most important activity that distinguishes humans from nonhuman species. While many animal species communicate and exchange information using sound, humans are unique in the complexity of the information that can be conveyed using speech, and in the range of ideas, thoughts and emotions that can be expressed. Despite the importance of speech communication for the entire structure of human society, there are many aspects of this process that are not fully understood. One problem is that research on speech and language is typically carried out by different groups of scientists working on separate aspects of the underlying functional and neural systems. On the one hand, research from an auditory perspective focuses on the acoustical properties of speech sounds, their representation in the auditory system, and how that representation is used to extract phonetic information. On the other hand, research from psycholinguistic perspectives examines the processes by which representations of meaning are extracted from the acoustic-phonetic sequence, and how these are linked to the construction of higher-level linguistic interpretation in terms of sentences and discourse. Till now, there has been relatively little interaction between speech researchers from these two groups, in spite of a dramatic expansion in recent years of research into the neural bases of auditory and linguistic functions. This book bridges the gap between these two lines of research, recognising that both have the same aims in understanding how the motor gestures of a speaker are transformed to sounds and how those are mapped onto meaning in the comprehension of spoken language. It presents the work of leading researchers specializing in a wide range of topics within speech perception and language processing - along with contributions from key researchers in neuroanatomy and neuro-imaging. This important new work cuts through the traditional boundaries and fosters crossdisciplinary interactions in this important and rapidly developing area of the biological and cognitive sciences.

Legal thinkers typically justify contract law on the basis of economics or promissory morality. But Peter Benson takes another approach. He argues that contract is best explained as a transfer of rights governed by a conception of justice. The result is a comprehensive theory of contract law congruent with Rawlsian liberalism.

In the past two decades, there have been astonishing advances in our understanding of the neurobiological basis and nature of drug addiction. We now know the initial molecular sites of action, at identified receptors, of virtually all of the major drugs of abuse including cocaine, heroin, and amphetamine, as well as legal drugs such as nicotine and alcohol. We also understand the main components of a 'reward system' and its connections to major brain regions involved in motivation and emotion, such as the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex. The Neurobiology of Addiction describes the latest advances in our understanding of addiction. It brings together world class researchers to debate the nature and extent of addiction, as well as its causes, consequences, and treatment. The focus of the book is on the brain processes underlying addiction, in terms of neural systems, neurochemical basis, and molecular changes. Several types of addiction are discussed ranging from illicit drugs - cocaine, amphetamine, and heroin to legal drugs - alcohol and nicotine. In addition, it explores increasingly common behavioural addictions such as gambling and obesity. Included are chapters on vulnerability to addiction, genetic factors, opponent motivational processes, animal models, relapse, cognitive deficits associated with drug abuse, new pharmacological treatments, and current controversies concerning different neuropsychological theories of addiction. Throughout, it reports on cutting edge research using brain imaging, and state of the art molecular methodology. The book will make fascinating reading for students and teachers in the field of neuroscience, pharmacology and psychology, as well as experts in the field.

"We owe Clerk Maxwell the precise formulation of the space-time laws of electromagnetic fields. Imagine his own feelings when the partial differential equations he formulated spread in the form of polarized waves with the speed of light! This change in the understanding of the structure of reality is the most profound and fruitful that has come to physics since Newton."--Albert Einstein

To perform my late promise to you, I shall without further ceremony acquaint you, that in the beginning of the Year 1666 (at which time I applyed my self to the grinding of Optick glasses of other figures than Spherical,) I procured me a Triangular glass-Prisme, to try therewith the celebrated Phænomena of Colours. And in order thereto having darkened my chamber, and made a small hole in my window-shuts, to let in a convenient quantity of the Suns light, I placed my Prisme at his entrance, that it might be thereby refracted to the opposite wall. It was at first a very pleasing divertisement, to view the vivid and intense colours produced thereby; but after a while applying my self to consider them more circumspectly, I became surprised to see them in an oblong form; which, according to the received laws of Refraction, I expected should have been circular. They were terminated at the sides with streight lines, but at the ends, the decay of light was so gradual, that it was difficult to determine justly, what was their figure; yet they seemed semicircular. Comparing the length of this coloured Spectrum with its breadth, I found it about five times greater; a disproportion so extravagant, that it excited me to a more then ordinary curiosity of examining, from whence it might proceed. I could scarce think, that the various Thickness of the glass, or the termination with shadow or darkness, could have any Influence on light to produce such an effect; yet I thought it not amiss, first to examine those circumstances, and so tryed, what would happen by transmitting light through parts of the glass of divers thicknesses, or through holes in the window of divers bignesses, or by setting the Prisme without so, that the light might pass through it, and be refracted before it was terminated by the hole: But I found none of those circumstances material. The fashion of the colours was in all these cases the same.