Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. This analysis of the historical formation of the observer is a compelling account of the prehistory of the society of the spectacle. In Techniques of the Observer Jonathan Crary provides a dramatically new perspective on the visual culture of the nineteenth century, reassessing problems of both visual modernism and social modernity. Inverting conventional approaches, Crary considers the problem of visuality not through the study of art works and images, but by analyzing the historical construction of the observer. He insists that the problems of vision are inseparable from the operation of social power and examines how, beginning in the 1820s, the observer became the site of new discourses and practices that situated vision within the body as a physiological event. Alongside the sudden appearance of physiological optics, Crary points out, theories and models of "subjective vision" were developed that gave the observer a new autonomy and productivity while simultaneously allowing new forms of control and standardization of vision. Crary examines a range of diverse work in philosophy, in the empirical sciences, and in the elements of an emerging mass visual culture. He discusses at length the significance of optical apparatuses such as the stereoscope and of precinematic devices, detailing how they were the product of new physiological knowledge. He also shows how these forms of mass culture, usually labeled as "realist," were in fact based on abstract models of vision, and he suggests that mimetic or perspectival notions of vision and representation were initially abandoned in the first half of the nineteenth century within a variety of powerful institutions and discourses, well before the modernist painting of the 1870s and 1880s.

Earthquakes have taught us much about our planet's hidden structure and the forces that have shaped it. This book explains how observing networks transformed an instant of panic and confusion into a field for scientific research, turning earthquakes into natural experiments at the nexus of the physical and human sciences.

More than 300,000 books sold! Genesis, the seven days of Creation ... Where does the text that makes up the first part of the Bible come from? Is its text a mere introductory poem ... or is it a narrative? What s behind its words? Alberto Canen has found an alternative way to answer these and other questions in the Genesis. He has found a route no one had been to before, and invites the reader to discover it and make their findings with him. The author has found that hidden in the bottom of the plot there is someone. Someone who observes; someone who tells. Someone who tells what he observes. And a place, a location from which he observes. The location of the observer. The key to an exciting puzzle. The Genesis has been a mystery for thousands of years. No one had been able to understand what the text spoke about, whether it was just an introductory poem to the Holy Scriptures, or it actually contained information about the Creation. The text of Genesis divided the waters of creationists and scientistics long until today. With this book I hope to dilute this separation between scientistics and creationists since I have discovered the key that unifies both worlds. I think the key to the mystery of Genesis is to understand that it is narrated by someone. A narrator of Genesis. Someone who observes the vision God gives him and from there he tells what he observes and he observes it from his human and earthly location. This earthly and accurate location is the key to understanding Genesis.

Time calls the shots. Unwitting time traveler Joseph Bridgeman is adjusting to life in the present and wondering if his traveling days are behind him. But when he’s contacted by the Continuum, an organized group of time travelers based in the future, he learns his career is just getting started. The Continuum needs Joe’s help. One of their operatives is missing, last seen in nineteenth-century Paris, and they believe Joe’s ability to see the past might be the only way to find him. Teamed up with Gabrielle Green, an acerbic, wisecracking traveler, Joe heads back to 1873 on his most dangerous mission yet, one that will take him deep inside a burning opera house. But how will Joe succeed when his new companion clearly hates his guts, the missing traveler disappears the second anyone sets eyes on him, and a familiar foe threatens to trap them in the past for good? With help on hand from his best friend, Vinny, and mysterious clues hidden in his sister Amy’s paintings, Joe must hone his gift, develop new skills, and figure out a way to complete his mission before the blazing inferno comes crashing down around them all.

Includes bibliographical referrences and index.