BiblioVault - Books about Reflections

Genes And Human Self-Knowledge

Reflections On Modern Genetics

Robert F. Weir

University of Iowa Press, 1994

Contemporary developments in human genetics are profoundly meaningful, both for the rapidity of scientific discoveries and for their personal and social implications. The Human Genome Project, a worldwide effort to map the 50,000 to 100,000 genes making up the human blueprint, is creating new ways of understanding ourselves as individuals, as parents, as members of a family, an ethnic group, a species. Almost every day yet another medical detective finds a genetic clue to the long-running mystery of human identity.

In 1992, the University of Iowa Humanities Symposium provided a public forum to examine the issues—moral, conceptual, legal, and practical—in modern genetics that are crucial to all of us. This strong, challenging volume is a collection of the major essays presented by historians, philosophers, and other academic humanists to a multidisciplinary audience of molecular and clinical geneticists, genetic counselors, humanists, and members of the public. The essays explore the historical background, philosophical implications, and ethical issues related to the Human Genome Project as well as other developments in modern genetics.

The questions raised in these essays are dramatic and troubling. What kind of knowledge is being produced by molecular geneticists? Do individual human genomes differ significantly from each other? How much do females and males differ from each other at the molecular level? Is there any genetic basis for distinguishing among racial or ethical groups? Can current practices in genetics counseling be compared to the earlier eugenics movement? Will current research lead to updated views on genetic “normalcy” or even “superiority”?

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Geometry of Grief

Reflections on Mathematics, Loss, and Life

Michael Frame

University of Chicago Press, 2021

In this profound and hopeful book, a mathematician and celebrated teacher shows how mathematics may help all of us—even the math-averse—to understand and cope with grief.

We all know the euphoria of intellectual epiphany—the thrill of sudden understanding. But coupled with that excitement is a sense of loss: a moment of epiphany can never be repeated. In Geometry of Grief, mathematician Michael Frame draws on a career’s worth of insight—including his work with a pioneer of fractal geometry Benoit Mandelbrot—and a gift for rendering the complex accessible as he delves into this twinning of understanding and loss. Grief, Frame reveals, can be a moment of possibility.

Frame investigates grief as a response to an irrevocable change in circumstance. This reframing allows us to see parallels between the loss of a loved one or a career and the loss of the elation of first understanding a tricky concept. From this foundation, Frame builds a geometric model of mental states. An object that is fractal, for example, has symmetry of magnification: magnify a picture of a mountain or a fern leaf—both fractal—and we see echoes of the original shape. Similarly, nested inside great loss are smaller losses. By manipulating this geometry, Frame shows us, we may be able to redirect our thinking in ways that help reduce our pain. Small‐scale losses, in essence, provide laboratories to learn how to meet large-scale losses.

Interweaving original illustrations, clear introductions to advanced topics in geometry, and wisdom gleaned from his own experience with illness and others’ remarkable responses to devastating loss, Frame’s poetic book is a journey through the beautiful complexities of mathematics and life. With both human sympathy and geometrical elegance, it helps us to see how a geometry of grief can open a pathway for bold action.

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Give a Man a Fish

Reflections on the New Politics of Distribution

James Ferguson

Duke University Press, 2015

In Give a Man a Fish James Ferguson examines the rise of social welfare programs in southern Africa, in which states make cash payments to their low income citizens. More than thirty percent of South Africa's population receive such payments, even as pundits elsewhere proclaim the neoliberal death of the welfare state. These programs' successes at reducing poverty under conditions of mass unemployment, Ferguson argues, provide an opportunity for rethinking contemporary capitalism and for developing new forms of political mobilization. Interested in an emerging "politics of distribution," Ferguson shows how new demands for direct income payments (including so-called "basic income") require us to reexamine the relation between production and distribution, and to ask new questions about markets, livelihoods, labor, and the future of progressive politics.

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God Land

Reflections on Religion and Nationalism

Conor Cruise O'Brien

Harvard University Press, 1988

Going It Alone

Ramblings and Reflections from the Trail

Tim Hauserman

University of Nevada Press, 2022

Join author Tim Hauserman on his solo journeys through the Sierra Nevada and the forests of Minnesota. Hauserman shares his experiences hiking by himself through some of the most spectacular landscapes in the United States. Along the way, he confronts his conflicting desires to be alone in the wilderness, then facing profound loneliness and fear once he is there. In a single instant, he goes from enjoying a shimmering mountain lake to being petrified by the sound of a bear crunching through sticks right next to his tent.

Hauserman hikes the John Muir Trail through rainstorms and challenging climbs, explores the Tahoe Rim Trail on a fourteen-day excursion, and travels to Minnesota to conquer the Superior Hiking Trail, where he is inundated with bugs, faces drought, and is eerily alone on the trail with not a single other hiker in sight for days. Going It Alone combines his self-deprecating humor, what he identifies as “Stupid Tim Tricks,” and delightful descriptions of the natural surroundings.

Some might describe the wilderness as the middle of nowhere or as nothingness, but for Hauserman, it is everything. While his love for nature remains undaunted through these experiences, he also discovers that he has overly high expectations for his capabilities and that he cannot just wish his loneliness away. He eventually discovers that his long walks in the woods are less about hiking and more about learning how he wants to live his life.

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Going It Alone

Ramblings and Reflections from the Trail

Tim Hauserman

University of Nevada Press, 2022

Join author Tim Hauserman on his solo journeys through the Sierra Nevada and the forests of Minnesota. Hauserman shares his experiences hiking by himself through some of the most spectacular landscapes in the United States. Along the way, he confronts his conflicting desires to be alone in the wilderness, then facing profound loneliness and fear once he is there. In a single instant, he goes from enjoying a shimmering mountain lake to being petrified by the sound of a bear crunching through sticks right next to his tent.

Hauserman hikes the John Muir Trail through rainstorms and challenging climbs, explores the Tahoe Rim Trail on a fourteen-day excursion, and travels to Minnesota to conquer the Superior Hiking Trail, where he is inundated with bugs, faces drought, and is eerily alone on the trail with not a single other hiker in sight for days. Going It Alone combines his self-deprecating humor, what he identifies as “Stupid Tim Tricks,” and delightful descriptions of the natural surroundings.

Some might describe the wilderness as the middle of nowhere or as nothingness, but for Hauserman, it is everything. While his love for nature remains undaunted through these experiences, he also discovers that he has overly high expectations for his capabilities and that he cannot just wish his loneliness away. He eventually discovers that his long walks in the woods are less about hiking and more about learning how he wants to live his life.

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Good Naked

Reflections on How to Write More, Write Better, and Be Happier

Joni B. Cole

University Press of New England, 2017

In Good Naked, acclaimed author Joni B. Cole shows readers how to make the writing process not only more productive, but less maddening, more inviting, and even joyful, at least a good part of the time. She explains how sharing early drafts is “good naked”—you’re exposing your creative process in all its glory. Through a mix of engaging stories and practical wisdom, all delivered with sheer good humor, Cole addresses the most common challenges writers confront and offers disarmingly simple but effective solutions. She debunks popular misconceptions about how we are supposed to write and replaces them with strategies that actually work to get us started and stay motivated. (Searching for your muse? Try looking in the fridge.) With a do-this-not-that directness, she sets writers free from debilitating attitudes, counterproductive practices, and energy-draining habits that undermine confidence and creativity. Equipped with experience and a refreshing respect for anyone who wants to write, Cole also infuses every chapter with insights into craft and narrative technique—because the truly happy ending is not just that we write more, but that we write well. If you have ever experienced a sense of dread or intimidation at any stage of the creative process, or even if you simply want to write more, write better, and be happier, this intelligent, funny, and generous guide will not only inspire you to head over to your desk, but will also cheer you on once you’re there.

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The Grain of the Clay

Reflections on Ceramics and the Art of Collecting

Allen S. Weiss

Reaktion Books, 2016

Ceramics give pleasure to our everyday lives, from the beauty of a vase’s elegant curves to the joy of a meal served upon a fine platter. Ceramics originate in a direct engagement with the earth and maintain a unique place in the history of the arts. In this book, Allen S. Weiss sharpens our perception of and increases our appreciation for ceramics, all the while providing a critical examination of how and why we collect them.
Weiss examines the vast stylistic range of ceramics and investigates both the theoretical and personal reasons for viewing, using, and collecting them. Relating ceramics to other arts and practices—especially those surrounding food—he explores their different uses such as in the celebrated tea ceremony of Japan. Most notably, he considers how works previously viewed as crafts have found their rightful way into museums, as well as how this new-found engagement with finely wrought natural materials may foster an increased ecological sensitivity. The result is a wide-ranging and sensitive look at a crucial part of our material culture.

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Gunflint

Reflections on the Trail

Justine Kerfoot

University of Minnesota Press, 1991

“The best way to get to know Justine Kerfoot would be to explore a northern forest with her. The next best way to know ‘Just’ is on these pages. Here Justine is at her best, sharing with us her romantic and colorful, and sometimes a tad dangerous, life.” —Les Blacklock

Step off the Gunflint Trail, stride to a high point, and savor the view. Only the dark, cool waters and the rugged granite shores interrupt the panorama of the sweeping forest. In this engaging memoir, local pioneer Justine Kerfoot chronicled a year’s worth of experiences and insights while living on the legendary Gunflint Trail. The unique month-by-month chapters of Gunflint and Kerfoot’s rich memories provide a year-round view of a wilderness life that most of us glimpse only in all-too-short weekend interludes.

Justine Kerfoot (1906–2001) lived on Minnesota’s remote Gunflint Trail for more than six decades. She wrote of her adventures and travel in a weekly column for the Cook County News-Herald for forty-five years and is the author of Woman of the Boundary Waters (Minnesota, 1994).

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