The deceptively simple task of making a mechanism which would turn forever has fascinated many famous men and physicists throughout the centuries. In fact, the basic tenets of engineering grew from the failures of these perpetual motion machine designers. This work offers an illustrated overview of perpetual motion machines and their inventors.

Mankind is constantly facing different challenges in our dynamically changing world. What we pretty much need is cooperation and alliance to overcome the problems we have to face. Our conflicts of interest and ideological opposition have to be put aside. Without a wide-scale social alliance we will not be able to find the answers to the questions that have properly arisen because of our irresponsible behavior. In the Middle Ages natural resources were so abundantly available that mankind's needs were pretty easily met. We had to do nothing else than to cut out of nature everything we happened to need in a specific moment of time. Mankind snatched the opportunity but did not really chew the cud. They took away what they wanted. Nevertheless, with the onset of the industrial revolution, the rules of the game started to change. The energy output of the machines reached higher and higher levels, but at the same time, the rate of charge they exerted on the environment had also uninterruptedly increased. We opted for an "elegant" solution. We just simply hushed up the problem. For a long time, the protection of the environment had been a disregarded marginal field ignored completely by the political powers. Nevertheless, the environmental catastrophes warned us to take action in a very short while, but the fire extinguishing might have started too late; hence the operation of some of the energy-supplying systems produced an immense economic benefit for several lobby groups. Petrol, natural gas, and other common yet not really efficient sources of energy, which at the same time have had a deleterious influence on the environment, are constantly dwindling away. Fuel prices reach the stars. If we see a temporary price decrease, we take a deep breath. Nonetheless, this is nothing other than the end game. Remarkable changes are to come. If this does not happen or is delayed, a global catastrophe is expected to come. When might this downturn happen? What other sources can replace the petrol? For the moment, no one can answer these questions. Could anyone? According to some thinking the progress of history is not linear but cyclic. Many of the ideas had been born many centuries or even many millenniums ago in the heads of certain persons. Some of them put their ideas even on paper, or others might have built them. Who were they? If someone comes up with an idea that differs pretty much from the ordinary ones of his era, he cannot really be optimistic about a warm welcome. He is looked at as a weirdo at most. In the worst case he is burnt at the stake because of not having accepted the traditions. It is actually not worth going too far. In the past, the ones who were asking too many questions had to face the ecclesiastical or secular powers, whereas today these are replaced by the petroleum lobby. However, the end result is the same, unfortunately: a rented parcel in a quiet graveyard. Documents and experimental utensils are disappearing or are destroyed practically as a routine. Certain academic circles are declaring that "the idea is pure fantasy; this cannot be true because it contradicts the laws of nature!" Of course, they forget to mention what they exactly mean about "laws of nature" since "nature" or "universe" are boundless notions the full comprehension and mapping of which is impossible. Making use of our rules and laws we manage to get access to those parts about which we confidently state that we have managed to understand. Can we, however, talk about real comprehension? All our rules are based on semblances and simplifications. We want to humanize something that is totally independent of us. We overestimate our role. We abuse nature instead of serving it. Some recognized this problem in Hungary and abroad as well.

Why do people accept ideas that are contradicted by science or logic? In Implausible Beliefs, Allan Mazur offers a comparative look at the nature of irrational belief systems, their social roots, and their cultural and political impact. He begins by providing standards for judging beliefs implausible and assessing the impact of such belief systems onpolitics and social policy in the US. Mazur describes and defends commonsense criteria for establishing that certain views should not be sustained in the face of present-day understanding. He presents a statistical portrait of implausible beliefs rampant in the US, and who tends to accept them.Mazur applies criteria for implausibility to the Bible, astrology, and visitation to Earth of intelligent beings from other worlds. Pointing out that everyone "knows" the Bible but few actually read it, the author scrolls through the first five books of the text, noting points that undermine the scripture's natural history and moral guidance. Working on the assumption that implausible religious views are fundamentally no different from implausible secular views, he critiques secular beliefs in astrology and UFOs. Mazur concludes the volume with an attempt to explain why most people accept implausibility‘some more than others despite evidence and logic that refute them.Looking to mainstream sociology and psychology, Mazur shows how children are socialized into such beliefs, and how adults are influenced by spouses and friends. Personality is also a factor, sometimes abetted by stressful or lonely life situations. Lucidly written, this is a provocative and informative contribution to social psychology, sociology, religion, political science, and American studies.

In June of 1712, a previously obscure German-Polish inventor named Johann Ernst Elias Bessler first came to prominence in the town of Gera, Saxony, by publicly exhibiting a remarkable invention. It was a self-moving perpetual motion wheel whose secret mechanics had taken him a decade of sacrifice, toil, and the construction of about a hundred handmade models to finally obtain. In the years following, he continued to improve his successful invention and eventually constructed and demonstrated a twelve-foot-diameter wheel at a count’s castle in the town of Kassel, Saxony. By then, his marvelous wheels were the talk of European high society and had been witnessed by thousands of people. His dream was to sell one of his amazing machines and then use the money to found a religious university dedicated to teaching the many technical crafts he had learned during his life and travels. Bessler, however, fearing an unscrupulous buyer might try to learn the secret of his wheels before complete payment was made, demanded a single upfront sum that at the time was equal to the value of a ton of gold! It was an amount of money that only the richest could afford to pay, yet none seemed willing to do so unless he could know the secret of Bessler’s wheels before the sale was made in order to satisfy himself that he was not paying a king’s ransom for a worthless fake. As a consequence of this stalemate, the invention was never sold, and in November of 1745, Bessler, then sixty-five years of age, was killed in a tragic construction accident. He took the secret of his wheels to his grave, and it has remained there for the last three centuries despite the efforts of thousands of perpetual motion seekers to rediscover it. Now, however, with the publication of The Triumphant Orffyrean Perpetual Motion Finally Explained! this situation has changed. After discovering an unsuspected source of hidden instructions Bessler left to guide future reverse engineers of his wheels and then using them to construct and test over two thousand computer models, author and researcher Kenneth W. Behrendt can finally reveal the long-sought secret of Bessler’s wheels and do so with enough detail to allow them to be duplicated today! This groundbreaking treatment of the subject should be of great interest to anybody wondering about the possibility of self-motive machinery in general or seeking to explore the topic of Bessler’s wheels at a far deeper level than was previously possible.

Wittgenstein's Metaphysics offers a radical new interpretation of the fundamental ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein. It takes issue with the conventional view that after 1930 Wittgenstein rejected the philosophy of the Tractatus and developed a wholly new conception of philosophy. By tracing the evolution of Wittgenstein's ideas, Cook shows that they are neither as original nor as difficult as is often supposed. Wittgenstein was essentially an empiricist, and the difference between his early views (as set forth in the Tractatus) and the later views (as expounded in the Philosophical Investigations) lies chiefly in the fact that after 1930 he replaced his early version of reductionism with a subtler version. So he ended where he began, as an empiricist armed with a theory of meaning. This iconoclastic interpretation is sure to influence all future study of Wittgenstein and will provoke a reassessment of the nature of his contribution to philosophy.

Contains over 1300 entries on unexplained phenomena.

Faith Through the Prism of Psychology introduces readers to the structure and function of the inherent ability of our Self to invest objects with reality — existentialization (EXON). The author moves away from traditional ideas of existence and faith, arguing that it is an inherent ability of an individual mind to invest entities (both objective and subjective) with reality. The book treats faith as a psychological ability of the mind to upgrade the existential statuses of imaginary entities, such as ghosts or gods; the working of faith is operationalized and analyzed in empirical psychological studies. It presents a new model of investing objects with existence, with such structural elements as the belief in object permanence (BOP), magic/ordinary distinguisher (MOD), magic/trick distinguisher (MTD), imaginary/perceived distinguisher (IPD), BOP defense mechanism (BOP/DM) and realities distinguisher (RD). It will be essential reading for anyone interested in existence from psychology, philosophy, art, theology or psychotherapy backgrounds.