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Genes, Mind, and Culture
The Coevolutionary Process
Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson
Harvard University Press, 1981

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Goethe
Journeys of the Mind
Gabrielle Bersier, Nancy Boerner, and Peter Boerner
Haus Publishing, 2018
The German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is often seen as the quintessential eighteenth-century tourist, though with the exception of a trip to Italy he hardly left his homeland. Compared to several of his peripatetic contemporaries, he took few actual journeys, and the list of European cities in which he never set foot is quite long. He never saw Vienna, Paris, or London, for example, and he only once visited Berlin. During the last thirty years of his life he was essentially a homebound writer, but his intensive mental journeys countered this sedentary lifestyle, and the misconception of Goethe as a traveler springs from the uniquely international influence of his writing.

While Goethe’s Italian Journey is a classic piece of travel writing, it was the product of his only extended physical journey. The majority, rather, were of the mind, taken amid the pages of books by others. In his reading, Goethe was the prototypical eighteenth-century armchair traveler, developing knowledge of places both near and far through the words and eyewitness accounts of others. In Goethe: Journeys of the Mind, Nancy Boerner and Gabrielle Bersier explore what it was that made the great writer distinct from his peers and offer insight into the ways that Goethe was able to explore the cultures and environments of places he never saw with his own eyes.
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Greek Models of Mind and Self
A. A. Long
Harvard University Press, 2014

This lively book offers a wide-ranging study of Greek notions of mind and human selfhood from Homer through Plotinus. A. A. Long anchors his discussion in questions of recurrent and universal interest. What happens to us when we die? How is the mind or soul related to the body? Are we responsible for our own happiness? Can we achieve autonomy? Long asks when and how these questions emerged in ancient Greece, and shows that Greek thinkers’ modeling of the mind gave us metaphors that we still live by, such as the rule of reason or enslavement to passion. He also interrogates the less familiar Greek notion of the intellect’s divinity, and asks what that might mean for us.

Because Plato’s dialogues articulate these themes more sharply and influentially than works by any other Greek thinker, Plato receives the most sustained treatment in this account. But at the same time, Long asks whether Plato’s explanation of the mind and human behavior is more convincing for modern readers than that contained in the older Homeric poems. Turning to later ancient philosophy, especially Stoicism, Long concludes with an exploration of Epictetus’s injunction to live life by making correct use of one’s mental impressions.

An authoritative treatment of Greek modes of self-understanding, Greek Models of Mind and Self demonstrates how ancient thinkers grappled with what is closest to us and yet still most mysterious—our own essence as singular human selves—and how the study of Greek thought can enlarge and enrich our experience.

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A Greenhouse for the Mind
Jacquelyn Seevak Sanders
University of Chicago Press, 1989
The Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School has won worldwide recognition for its treatment of emotionally disturbed children. The school and its continuing work at the University of Chicago have been chronicled in Bruno Bettelheim's now classic books Love Is Not Enough (1950), Truants from Life (1955), The Empty Fortress (1967), and A Home for the Heart (1972).
A Greenhouse for the Mind continues the story of the school, focusing on how its teachers and counselors create an educational environment in which children will want and be able to learn. Jacquelyn Seevak Sanders worked closely with Bettelheim for thirteen years as a counselor and assistant principal and since 1973 has been director of the Orthogenic School. She offers her interpretation of Bettelheim's vision of a healing world for children, as well as her own ideas and new perspectives from the last decade.

In a warm and anecdotal style, Sanders relates the experiences and overarching theoretical principles that have shaped the school and its curriculum. She describes how the staff, schedules, and physical appearance of the school have been developed to create a stable and safe place to learn; how teachers confront their own emotional vulnerability; how the staff accepts the children themselves while disciplining unacceptable behavior; and how the attention of the inattentive can be gained. She chronicles the successes and setbacks of the staff in developing a curriculum that includes reading, science, and physical education, and she exemplifies the school's principles and practices through a story of an imaginary student's educational development.

In addition to her experience at the Orthogenic School, Sanders has worked with teachers at all levels from nursery schools to universities, and in A Greenhouse for the Mind she passes on what she has learned about educating difficult children—principles that have been helpful to both disturbed children in a unique setting and more typical children in ordinary settings. Her attention to the role of emotions in the learning process adds an often neglected dimension to traditional cognitive and instructional approaches.
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