- Dante and Violence: Domestic, Civic, Cosmic
- By , distinguished professor emerita of comparative literature
From the publisher: “This ambitious overview of violence in Dante’s literary works and his world examines cases of violence in the domestic, communal and cosmic spheres while taking into account medieval legal approaches to rights and human freedom that resonate with the economy of justice developed in the Commedia. ... This study, primarily focused on Dante’s representation of his contemporary reality, demonstrates that the punishments and rewards in Dante’s heaven and hell, while ostensibly a staging of his vision of eternal justice, may in fact be a direct appeal to his readers to recognize the crimes that pervade their own world.â€
‘Dante and Violence’ directly engages with important recent studies and the related domains of medieval legal, political and religious thought. Close reading of passages from Dante and cross-references to episodes or figures from his work help to demonstrate how and why the explanations of contemporary medieval thought inform the analysis of the poema sacro. — Catherine Keen, author of ‘Dante and the City
- The World in the Wave Function: A Metaphysics for Quantum Physics
- By , professor of cognitive science and philosophy
Nearly a century after the development of quantum theories, a consensus has yet to emerge about what these theories tells us about ourselves and our places in the universe. Ney develops a framework — wave function realism — initially suggested by Schrödinger in the 1920s — that we, and all objects, are ultimately constituted out of the wave function, and that quantum worlds consist of many more than three dimensions.
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