Hommes et dieux

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G.W. Leibniz

Offering an invaluable introduction to Leibniz's philosophy, this volume collects many of his most important texts, beginning with the Discourse on Metaphysics (1686), which marks the beginning of maturity in his ideas, and ending with the Monadology (1714), which was written in response to requests for a systematic, organized account of his overall philosophy. Also included in this volume are critical reactions to Leibniz's work by his contemporaries (Antoine Arnauld, Pierre Bayle, and Simon Foucher), together with Leibniz's responses. All the texts are newly translated into English for this edition, and each is preceded by a summary explaining its background, structure, and content.

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David Midgley

"This anthology includes carefully chosen selections from Mary Midgley's selling books, including Wickedness, Beast and Man, Science and Poetry and The Myths We Live By. It provides insight into questions she has returned to again and again in her renowned prose, from the roots of human nature, reason and imagination to the myths of science and the importance of holism in thinking about science and the environment."--Jacket.

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Clive Gamble

"Fully updated, Archaeology: The Basics 2nd edition has been revised to reflect growth in areas such as material culture, human evolution and the political use of the past." "From everyday examples to the more obscure, this is essential reading for all students, independent archaeologists and all those who want to know more about archaeological thought, history and practice."--Jacket.

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Donald N. Levine

This book is a masterful account of the social science enterprise by one of its most accomplished practitioners. Moving from the origins of systematic knowledge in ancient Greece to the present day, Donald Levine offers a richly detailed, ingeniously organized introduction to the cornerstone works of Western social thought. Visions has three meanings, each of which corresponds to a part of the book. In Part One, Levine presents the ways sociologists have rendered accounts of their discipline, as a series of narratives - or life stories - that build upon each other, in an effort to envisage a coherent past for the sake of a purposive present. In Part Two, Levine offers his own narrative, a dialogue among the strands of the sociological tradition: Hellenic, British, French, German, Marxian, Italian, and American. Clearly and concisely, he tracks the sociological imagination through a series of conversations across generations. From classic philosophy to pragmatism, Levine maps the web of a visionary statements from which social science has grown in response to three recurring questions: How shall we live? What makes humans moral creatures? How do we understand the world? He anchors the creation of social knowledge to ethical foundations, and shows how differences in those foundations disposed the shapers of modern social science to proceed in vastly different ways. In Part Three, Levine sets the crisis of fragmentation in social science against the fragmentation of experience and community. By reconstructing the history of social thought as a series of fundamentally moral engagements with common themes, he suggests new uses for sociology's resources: not only as insight about the nature of modernity, but also as a model of mutually respectful communication in an increasingly fractious world.