Ballooning, like the Enlightenment, was a Europe-wide movement and a massive cultural phenomenon. Lynn argues that in order to understand the importance of science during the age of the Enlightenment and Atlantic revolutions, it is crucial to explain how and why ballooning entered and stayed in the public consciousness.

The history of humanity can be written in terms of discovery and invention. They are very different cognitive processes—search for order and problem solving. This book is a search for explanation of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions. It surveys seven civilizations in terms of both their achievements and their failures. What were the characteristics they shared that promoted progress? What prevented or discouraged progress in discovery and or in invention? Sumer was creative, the mother of civilizations. Egypt was not. In Sumer, authority was divided, and it was a trading economy. Egypt was authoritarian and closed. Rome and Islam inherited the Greek legacy. Rome was not interested; it had a different agenda. Islam progressed, but civilization conflicted with religion and then regressed. China led in inventions but then stagnated and always lagged in discovery. Its ultimate failure has multiple explanations that include the scope of authority, structure of society and economy, and of language and script. But so was its preference for intuition over logic or evidence as the method of seeking the truth. It is Greek capacity for abstraction origin a mystery that was essential for its achievements: discoveries of the structure of the universe and the cognitive approach to truth seeking. Much invention was a byproduct of discovery. It is Greek achievements in discovery and abstract reasoning that Europe adopted and advanced, leading to the scientific and subsequent industrial revolutions. Ours is a new phase in human history. What were some of its consequences, and what are its prospects?

Detailed new account of the historical emergence and conceptual reach of the sublime both before and after Longinus.

Examines the concept of rhetorical invention from an affirmative, nondialectical perspective.

In the English-speaking world, Jacques Derrida’s writings have most influenced the discipline of literary studies. Yet what has emerged since the initial phase of Derrida’s influence on the study of English literature, classed under the rubric of deconstruction, has often been disowned by Derrida. What, then, can Derrida teach us about literary language, about the rhetoric of literature, and about questions concerning style, form, and structure? The Derrida Reader draws together a number of Derrida’s most interesting and idiosyncratic essays that treat literary language, the idea of the literary, and questions of poetics and poetry. The essays discuss single tropes or concepts, a figure such as metaphor, the ideas of titles and signatures, proper names, and Derrida’s thinking on such subjects as undecidability or aporia. The editor’s introduction is a demonstration in practice of how Derrida reads and how he adapts the act of reading to the text or figure in question. The introduction also outlines each essay’s main points, its usefulness for reading literary texts, and its particular area of interest. The Derrida Reader thus provides students of literature with a focused, contextualized, and readily understandable volume.