Recovers a 15th-century thinker s original insights for theology and philosophy today Societies today, says Johannes Hoff, are characterized by their inability to reconcile seemingly black-and-white scientific rationality with the ambiguity of postmodern pop culture. In the face of this crisis, his book The Analogical Turn recovers the fifteenth-century thinker Nicholas of Cusa s alternative vision of modernity to develop a fresh perspective on the challenges of our time. In contrast to his mainstream contemporaries, Cusa s appreciation of individuality, creativity, and scientific precision was deeply rooted in the analogical rationality of the Middle Ages. He revived and transformed the tradition of scientific realism in a manner that now, retrospectively, offers new insights into the completely ordinary chaos of postmodern everyday life. Hoff s original study offers a new vision of the history of modernity and the related secularization narrative, a deconstruction of the basic assumptions of postmodernism, and an unfolding of a liturgically grounded concept of common-sense realism.

Since its birth, sociology has struggled vainly to achieve an encompassing intellectual 'synthesis' as it has fought against the explosion of ideas about the social world. This volume considers an alternative response that has recently developed to conditions of intellectual fragmentation: 'the dialogical turn,' a sociological approach that welcomes a plurality of orientations and perspectives as the essential basis for establishing productive dialogue. This volume explores this exciting approach, building on the ideas of Donald N. Levine, whose extensive writings on the forms and functions of intellectual dialogue provide the point of departure for an internationally renowned group of scholars. Their innovative chapters assess the role of sociology in the conversation across contemporary academic disciplines, exploring the fundamental structural and conceptual reconstructions now taking place in the social sciences.

This edited collection makes a progressive intervention into the interdisciplinary field of memory studies with a series of essays drawn from diverse theoretical, practitional and cultural backgrounds. The most seminal critical development within memory studies in recent years has arguably been the turn towards transculturalism. This movement engenders a series of methodologies that posit remembrance as a fluid process in which commemorative tropes work to inform the representation of diverse events and traumas beyond national or cultural boundaries, transcending – but not negating – spatial, temporal and ideational differences. Examining a wide range of historical and cultural contexts, the essays in this collection focus on the dialogues that shape processes of remembrance between and beyond borders, critiquing the problems and possibilities inherent in current discourses in memorial practice and theory as they approach the challenge of transculturalism.

Reclaiming the first century as common ground rather than the origin of deeply entrenched differences: liberating the past to speak to us in another way. Conventional readings of antiquity cast Athens against Jerusalem, with Athens standing in for “reason” and Jerusalem for “faith.” And yet, Susan Buck-Morss reminds us, recent scholarship has overturned this separation. Naming the first century as a zero point—“year one”—that divides time into before and after is equally arbirtrary, nothing more than a convenience that is empirically meaningless. In YEAR 1, Buck-Morss liberates the first century so it can speak to us in another way, reclaiming it as common ground rather than the origin of deeply entrenched differences. Buck-Morss aims to topple various conceptual givens that have shaped modernity as an episteme and led us into some unhelpful postmodern impasses. She approaches the first century through the writings of three thinkers often marginalized in current discourse: Flavius Josephus, historian of the Judaean War; the neo-Platonic philosopher Philo of Alexandria; and John of Patmos, author of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible. Also making appearances are Antigone and John Coltrane, Plato and Bulwer-Lytton, al-Farabi and Jean Anouilh, Nicholas of Cusa and Zora Neale Hurston—not to mention Descartes, Kant, Hegel, Kristeva, and Derrida. Buck-Morss shows that we need no longer partition history as if it were a homeless child in need of the protective wisdom of Solomon. Those inhabiting the first century belong together in time, and therefore not to us.

Analogy has been the focus of extensive research in cognitive science over the past two decades. Through analogy, novel situations and problems can be understood in terms of familiar ones. Indeed, a case can be made for analogical processing as the very core of cognition. This is the first book to span the full range of disciplines concerned with analogy. Its contributors represent cognitive, developmental, and comparative psychology; neuroscience; artificial intelligence; linguistics; and philosophy. The book is divided into three parts. The first part describes computational models of analogy as well as their relation to computational models of other cognitive processes. The second part addresses the role of analogy in a wide range of cognitive tasks, such as forming complex cognitive structures, conveying emotion, making decisions, and solving problems. The third part looks at the development of analogy in children and the possible use of analogy in nonhuman primates. Contributors Miriam Bassok, Consuelo B. Boronat, Brian Bowdle, Fintan Costello, Kevin Dunbar, Gilles Fauconnier, Kenneth D. Forbus, Dedre Gentner, Usha Goswami, Brett Gray, Graeme S. Halford, Douglas Hofstadter, Keith J. Holyoak, John E. Hummel, Mark T. Keane, Boicho N. Kokinov, Arthur B. Markman, C. Page Moreau, David L. Oden, Alexander A. Petrov, Steven Phillips, David Premack, Cameron Shelley, Paul Thagard, Roger K.R. Thompson, William H. Wilson, Phillip Wolff

Uses the concept of analogy to analyze how perspective taking functions in real life and in narrative.

In this book, Dr Ted Bailey uses his research to offer an analogical approach, which can guide and inspire teachers and trainers, both new and experienced, in their daily practice. Using analogies to explain things is implicitly part and parcel of our everyday communication so it makes sense to apply them when introducing new or complex ideas or skills. Drawing an analogy from the daily experience of students acts as a shortcut between what is familar to them and the unknown target, a key that can unlock any barriers to learning and often triggers later recall. The discussion is in two parts: practical and theoretical. The former includes a selection of analogies organised alphabetically for convenience, used by practitioners in varied learning contexts and from other sources and evaluates them. The underlying theory part is expressed in plain language and presents several inductive and deductive analogical models successfully applied and acting as solutions for further application. The author appeals to all educators, particularly those in high schools, colleges, or universities, to develop a repertoire of apposite analogies to help bridge learning difficulties and apply them whenever and wherever possible to the benefit of their students.