The Book of Changes [I Ching or Chou I] was the first of the Five Confucian Classics and served as the wellspring of both Confucian and Taoist thought. Following in the tradition of his father, Richard Wilhelm, who made the best known and most respected translation of the I Ching, Hellmut Wilhelm came to be regarded as a preeminent authority on the Book of Changes. In these seven lectures, he carried forward his inquiry into its significance, both as a manual of divination and as a work of philosophy.

Explores the impressive adaptability of human societies and affirms the value of human diversity in an age of increasing uniformity.

Doing what most people only dream about, Chicago-born, Harvard-educated Leo dumped his dead-end office job and escaped to Alaska with his girlfriend and only $900 to his name. Edges of the Earth is an exhilarating true tale of adventure and survival in a harsh, wild land.

Beginning with ancient Egypt, the pyramids, and sphinxes, and a comparison of that epoch with our own, Steiner surveys a vast mental landscape in symphonic style. He leads us through the kingdoms of nature and the spiritual beings at work within them, the evolution of man in relation to the cosmos, the workings of the spirits of form, the relation among the post-Atlantean epochs, and much more. Through this panoramic survey, we discover how the changed conditions of human consciousness and its path into the future call for a new wisdom.

Self-styled adventurer, literary wit, philosopher, and statesman of science, Pierre-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759) stood at the center of Enlightenment science and culture. Offering an elegant and accessible portrait of this remarkable man, Mary Terrall uses the story of Maupertuis's life, self-fashioning, and scientific works to explore what it meant to do science and to be a man of science in eighteenth-century Europe. Beginning his scientific career as a mathematician in Paris, Maupertuis entered the public eye with a much-discussed expedition to Lapland, which confirmed Newton's calculation that the earth was flattened at the poles. He also made significant, and often intentionally controversial, contributions to physics, life science, navigation, astronomy, and metaphysics. Called to Berlin by Frederick the Great, Maupertuis moved to Prussia to preside over the Academy of Sciences there. Equally at home in salons, cafés, scientific academies, and royal courts, Maupertuis used his social connections and his printed works to enhance a carefully constructed reputation as both a man of letters and a man of science. His social and institutional affiliations, in turn, affected how Maupertuis formulated his ideas, how he presented them to his contemporaries, and the reactions they provoked. Terrall not only illuminates the life and work of a colorful and important Enlightenment figure, but also uses his story to delve into many wider issues, including the development of scientific institutions, the impact of print culture on science, and the interactions of science and government. Smart and highly readable, Maupertuis will appeal to anyone interested in eighteenth-century science and culture. “Terrall’s work is scholarship in the best sense. Her explanations of arcane 18th-century French physics, mathematics, astronomy, and biology are among the most lucid available in any language.”—Virginia Dawson, American Historical Review Winner of the 2003 Pfizer Award from the History of Science Society