Know yourself -- that's great advice, but how do we get there? In a lively conversation about the meaning of life, three characters explore a wide range of concepts, including friendship and love, self-discipline and self-respect, trust and justice.

The Peri ideon (On Ideas) is the only work in which Aristotle systematically sets out and criticizes arguments for the existence of Platonic forms. Gail Fine presents the first full-length treatment in English of this important but neglected work . She asks how, and how well, and why and with what justification he favours an alternative metaphysical scheme. She also examines the significance of the Peri ideon for some central questions about Plato's theory of forms - whether, for example, there are forms corresponding to every property or only to some, then to which ones; whether forms are universals, particulars, or both; and whether they are meanings, properties, or both. In addition to discussing the Peri ideon and its sources in Plato's dialogues, Fine also provides a general discussion of Plato's theory of forms, and of our evidence about the date, scope, and aims of the Peri ideon. While she pays careful attention to the details of the text, she also relates the issues to current philosophical concerns. The book will be valuable for anyone interested in metaphysics ancient or modern.

In this book, Reuven Brenner argues that people bet on new ideas and are more willing to take risks when they have been outdone by their fellows on local, national, or international scales. Such bets mean that people deviate from the beaten path and either gamble, commit crimes, or come up with new ideas in art, business, or politics, and ideas concerning war and peace in particular. By using evidence on gambling, crime, and creativity now and during the Industrial Revolution, by examining innovations in English and French inheritance laws and the emergence of welfare legislation, and by looking at what has happened before and after wars, Brenner reaches the conclusion that hope and fear, envy and vanity, sentiments provoked when being leapfrogged, make humans race.

Return on Ideas is a practical guide to getting more from the resources you put into your innovation process. David Nichols clearly shows why current innovation funnel models stifle rather than encourage new ideas, and offers a new methodology, ‘rocketing’, to tackle the problem. The first book to look in detail at innovation as a business-driving imperative, Return on Ideas provides the tools, techniques and processes to actually upgrade the way you tackle innovation, illustrated with examples from innovative companies such as Yo! Sushi, Apple, Vodafone, Unilever, P&G, Danone, Amex and Ben & Jerry’s – as well as unconventional sources such as theatre and comedy.

This book of thoroughly engaging essays from one of today's most prodigious innovators provides a uniquely personal perspective on the lives and achievements of a selection of intriguing figures from the history of science and technology. Weaving together his immersive interest in people and history with insights gathered from his own experiences, Stephen Wolfram gives an ennobling look at some of the individuals whose ideas and creations have helped shape our world today. Contents includes biographical sketches of: Richard Feynman Kurt Godel Alan Turing John von Neumann George Boole Ada Lovelace Gottfried Leibniz Benoit Mandelbrot Steve Jobs Marvin Minsky Russell Towle Bertrand Russell Alfred Whitehead Richard Crandall Srinivasa Ramanujan Solomon Golomb