Renaissance and reformation

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Michael W. Charney

"Powerful Learning is the first intellectual history of one of the great Buddhist empires of Southeast Asia, Konbaung Burma, before the British conquest. The book challenges the notion of the court and the monastic order as static institutions by examining how competition within and between them prompted major rethinking about the intellectual foundations of indigenous society and culture. The catalyst for this reformation of indigenous thought was the rise of a small clique of Buddhist monks and lay people from the frontier to commanding positions in the state and monastic order over the course of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This clique had a major influence on the creation of state myths, the ways in which the throne ruled and presented itself, and, ultimately, the relationship between the throne and the state. The new state and monastic orthodoxy, however, was challenged by other Burmese literati, who, over the course of the nineteenth century, sought in Western science, technology, and political theory other ways in which to shape Burmese perspectives on state and society. In the process, the Burmese underwent a difficult transition from premodern to modern intellectual thought, one that helped usher in British rule." from publisher

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Nancy G. Siraisi

Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576), renowned as a mathematician, encyclopedist, astrologer, and autobiographer, was by profession a medical practitioner. His copious writings on medicine reflect both the complexity and diversity of the Renaissance medical world and the breadth of his own interests. In this book, Nancy Siraisi draws on selected themes in Cardano's medical writings to explore in detail the relation between medicine and wider areas of Renaissance culture. Cardano's medical advice included the suggestion that "the studious man should always have at hand a clock and a mirror" - a clock to keep track of the passage of time and a mirror to observe the changing condition of his body. The remark, which recalls his astrological and autobiographical interests, is emblematic of the many connections between his medicine and his other pursuits. Cardano's philosophical eclecticism, beliefs about occult forces in nature, theories about dreams, and free transactions between academic and popularizing scientific writing also contributed to his medicine.

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Patrick Grant

"This book makes an original contribution to the study of modern Northern Ireland by examining the complex relationships among religion, literature and ethnicity since 1967. Patrick Grant focuses on a contradiction within sectarianism between the Christian injunction to love one's enemies, and the scapegoating, stereotyping and mirror oppositions that result from an annexation of religion to ethnic exclusivism. In general, a 'post-critical' view of religion is offered, welcoming the critique provided by secularism and maintaining that the varieties of imagination - whether literary or religious - can be liberative and mutually supporting."--Jacket.

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James Gilbert

In this intriguing new work, James Gilbert examines the historical confrontation between modern science and religion as these disparate, sometimes hostile modes of thought have clashed in the arena of American culture. Beginning in 1925 with the infamous Scopes trial, Gilbert traces nearly forty years of competing American attitudes toward science and religion. From Harvard intellectuals to Hollywood, from UFOs to the USAF, from sci-fi thrillers to the nightly news, from liberal religion to Fundamentalism - American culture became a proving ground where the boundaries between science and religion were polemicized, propagandized, and contested. Ultimately, Gilbert argues, Catholics and Jews as well as Protestants were able to use the language of democracy to check the growing authority of science. They did this by appealing to American tolerance for contending views and by presenting a populist counterweight to what they portrayed as elitist claims to specialized knowledge. In the end, a kind of cultural paradox emerged in which conflicting systems of explanation were accepted, respected, and even encouraged. In Redeeming Culture, Gilbert has managed to convey not only the persistent ambiguities in American approaches to science and religion, but likewise the means by which these ambiguities continually reshape and invigorate our evolving experience.