Epistola publishing house is a family-owned company founded in 2009. We seek to provide quality reading with variety of themes to enrich the lives of young readers. Our books have distinctively educational purpose, inspiring discussion with parents, teachers or other children. In order to provide the best possible reading and achieve quality, we collaborate with renowned domestic and foreign authors.
View Rights Portal
Singapore's largest independent publisher of fiction and non-fiction for all ages. Check out our latest catalogue here: July – December 2018 (PDF.)
View Rights Portal
— The seminal work reissued — A science and philosophy classic — On the occasion of the author's 80th birthday According to evolutionary epistemology, the fact that we can know the world is neither coincidence nor divine providence, but has a natural explanation. Thinking and cognition are achievements of the human brain. Our cognitive structures fit into our world because they have evolved in adaptation to this world. This fit is not ideal, but it is enough for survival under competition. Gerhard Vollmer was instrumental in developing evolutionary epistemology. In his standard work, he explains the achievements and failures of our cognitive apparatus.
This volume in the Critical Theory and Contemporary Society series explores the arguments between critical theory and epistemology in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Focusing on the first and second generations of critical theorists and Luhmann's systems theory, the book examines how each approaches epistemology. It opens by looking at twentieth-century epistemology, particularly the concept of lifeworld (Lebenswelt). It then moves on to discuss structuralism, poststructuralism, critical realism, the epistemological problematics of Foucault's writings and the dialectics of systems theory. This unique work takes a comparative look at structuralism and post-structuralism's epistemological theory with special reference to scientific reason. It also investigates Luhmann's works in epistemology. The aim is to explore whether the focal point for epistemology and the sciences remain that social and political interests actually form a concrete point of concern for the sciences as well.
Trusted Partner
Trusted Partner
This book provides a powerful diagnosis of why the global governance of science struggles in the face of emerging powers. Through unpacking critical events in China and India over the past twenty years, it demonstrates that the 'subversiveness' assumed in the two countries' rise in the life sciences reflects many of the regulatory challenges that are shared worldwide. It points to a decolonial imperative for science governance to be responsive and effective in a cosmopolitan world. By highlighting epistemic injustice within contemporary science, the book extends theories of decolonisation.
Trusted Partner
"Lao Tzu", also known as "moral classics," Taoist classics, according to legend, is the late Spring and Autumn Chu people Lao Ji, all received a total of 81 chapters. Lao Tzu is a speech collection of Lao Tzu's philosophical thoughts, systematically expounding Lao Tzu's outlook on the universe, politics and epistemology. "Tao" is the basic category in which Lao Zi-Zhe does not think. Lao-tzu believes that "Tao" is the origin of the universe. It is independent of anything else and changes constantly and continuously. And "virtue" Is the concrete application of "Tao" in life, social and political life. The English translation of this book is one of the more influential English versions, with some revisions made in the book. The book is accompanied by the silk book Laozi unearthed in the Mawangdui Han Tomb of Changsha in 1972.
Trusted Partner
This volume collects and revises the key essays of Gunther Teubner, one of the world's leading sociologists of law. Written over the past twenty years, these essays examine the 'dark side' of functional differentiation and the prospects of societal constitutionalism as a possible remedy. Teubner's claim is that critical accounts of law and society require reformulation in the light of the sophisticated diagnoses of late modernity in the writings of Niklas Luhmann, Jacques Derrida and select examples of modernist literature. Autopoiesis, deconstruction and other post-foundational epistemological and political realities compel us to confront the fact that fundamental democratic concepts such as law and justice can no longer be based on theories of stringent argumentation or analytical philosophy. We must now approach law in terms of contingency and self-subversion rather than in terms of logical consistency and rational coherence.
Trusted Partner
The mediated Arctic analyses the multiple relations between geography and cultural production that have long shaped - and are currently transforming - the circumpolar world. It explores how twenty-first-century cultural practitioners imagine and poeticise various elements of Arctic geography, and in doing so negotiate pressing environmental, (geo)political, and social concerns. From the plasmatic force of ice in Disney's Frozen films to the spatial vocabulary of circumpolar Indigenous hip hop, it addresses Arctic geographical imaginaries in a wide range of media, including literature, cinema, comic books, music videos, and cartographic art. The book brings together a plurality of voices from within and outside the circumpolar North, both in terms of the works analysed and in its own collaborative scholarly practice. The book bridges Indigenous and Southern mediations of the Arctic and combines different epistemologies to do justice to these imaginaries in their diversity.
Trusted Partner
Trusted Partner
Trusted Partner
Trusted Partner
Trusted Partner
Trusted Partner
Developing the concept of 'disobedient knowledge', this book provides new perspectives on activism and everyday struggles against racism and bordering. Drawing on empirical material from distinct contexts in Northern, Western and Southern Europe, the chapters explore how different kinds of (b)orders are challenged and possibly also maintained in everyday antiracism, activism and struggles against borders. The book examines resistance and disobedience in relation to borders, social orders, conventional practices and hegemonic discourses. It underscores the importance of studying racism and bordering as intertwined phenomena. With a focus on the historical layers of resistance, disobedient practices and ways of building shared struggles, the book provides invaluable knowledge about postcolonial Europe and its future possibilities.
Trusted Partner
Trusted Partner
Im Zentrum der traditionellen analytischen Philosophie steht die Suche nach hinreichenden und notwendigen Bedingungen des jeweils zu untersuchenden Begriffs. Craig zeigt, daß solche Untersuchungen im Hinblick auf den Wissensbegriff zwar nützliche Daten liefern können, bisher aber gescheitert sind und im Grunde genommen am Witz dieses Begriffs vorbeigehen. Statt der analytischen Untersuchung will Craig verstehen, auf welches (praktische) Bedürfnis die Menschen mit der Entwicklung des Wissensbegriffs reagieren. Dieser Ansatz wird im Sinne einer pragmatischen Untersuchung ausgebaut und anhand von Beispielen unter steter Berücksichtigung der klassischen Analyse (»Wissen« = »wahre Überzeugung mit triftiger Begründung«) erörtert. Der so gewonnene »pragmatische« Wissensbegriff wird sodann mit Gegenbeispielen konfrontiert, und es wird gezeigt, daß ein für Menschen brauchbarer Wissensbegriff objektiv sein muß. Der bei diesen Untersuchungen in Anspruch genommene und begründete Pragmatismus steht in gespannter Beziehung zu allen Formen des Skeptizismus. Bei der durch dieses Spannungsverhältnis ausgelösten Auseinandersetzung mit dem Skeptizismus unterscheidet Craig zwischen kulturgeschichtlichen Gründen für die skeptizistische Einstellung und solchen, die auf den pragmatischen Ursprung des Wissensbegriffs und die Deutung des Objektivierungsprozesses zurückgehen. Erörtert werden dabei einerseits theologisch/religiös und naturwissenschaftlich motivierte Formen des Skeptizismus und andererseits solche, die im Umkreis der Zweckfrage bezüglich des Wissens entstehen, womit der Zusammenhang zwischen der nie zur Ruhe kommenden skeptischen Problematik und den Ergebnissen der vorangehenden Untersuchungen hergestellt wird.
Trusted Partner
In the wake of 9/11, the Asian crisis and the 2004 tsunami, traditional analytical frameworks are increasingly unable to explain how individuals and communities are rendered insecure, or advance individual, global or environmental security. In the Asia-Pacific, the accepted wisdom of realism has meant that analyses rarely move beyond the statist, militarist and exclusionary assumptions that underpin traditional realpolitik. This innovative new book challenges these limitations and addresses the missing problems, people and vulnerabilities of the Asia-Pacific region. It also turns a critical eye on traditional interstate strategic dynamics. Critical security in the Asia-Pacific applies both a critical theoretical approach that interrogates the deeper assumptions underpinning security discourses, and a human-centred policy approach that focuses on the security, welfare and emancipation of individuals and communities. Leading Asia-Pacific researchers combine to apply these frameworks to the most pressing issues in the region, from the Korean peninsula to environmental change, Indonesian conflict, the 'war on terror' and the plight of refugees. The result is a sophisticated and accessible account of often-neglected realities of marginalization in the region, and a compelling argument for the empowerment and security of the most vulnerable.
Trusted Partner
Bajautopia is a book that aims to reflect on both the struggles and hopes of the Bajau Laut community. Bajautopia is both a manifesto and a provocation. This edited volume contains a collection of inspiring essays to reveal the life and culture of the Bajau Laut. The book brings together a wide range of essay contributors, led by the foremost writers and scholars from the fields of architecture, history, film studies, anthropology, tourism, political science, and urban planning in Malaysia. Considered as a dialogue between scholars/writers from different cultural backgrounds and epistemological contexts, this book explores a diverse range of topics integral to the livelihood of the Bajau Laut.
Trusted Partner
This volume brings together insights which look at the intersection of governance, culture and conflict resolution in India and the European Union. Two very different but connected epistemic, cultural and institutional settings, which have been divided by distance, colonialism and culture; yet have recently been brought closer together by ideas and practices of what is known as liberal peace, neoliberal state and development projects. The differences are obvious in terms of geography, culture, the nature and shape of institutions, and historical forces: and yet the commonalities between the two are surprising. This is the first book to compare contemporary Indian and European Union approaches to peace and is based on strong case studies and rigorous analysis. Postgraduate students, peace and conflict researchers, policy-makers and practitioners will benefit immensely from insights provided in this book. ;
Trusted Partner
This book aims to examine the nature of and resistance to gendered urban violence among Brazilian women in London and in the favelas of Maré, Rio de Janeiro. Drawing on the conceptualisation of translocational gendered urban violence framework, it highlights the importance of examining direct forms of gender-based violence across private, public and transnational spheres as interlinked with structural, symbolic and infrastructural violence. The book also explores the embodied and spatialised nature of gendered urban violence, explored through artistic engagements and arts-based methods. In developing a translocational feminist tracing methodological and epistemological approach across the social sciences and the arts, the book argues for the importance of a collaborative approach among academic, civil society organisations, artists and creative researchers with a view to engendering empathetic transformation to address gendered urban violence in the long-term.
Trusted Partner
Many early modern plays use poison, most famously Hamlet, where the murder of Old Hamlet showcases the range of issues poison mobilises. Its orchard setting is one of a number of sinister uses of plants which comment on both the loss of horticultural knowledge resulting from the Dissolution of the Monasteries and also the many new arrivals in English gardens through travel, trade, and attempts at colonisation. The fact that Old Hamlet was asleep reflects unease about soporifics troubling the distinction between sleep and death; pouring poison into the ear smuggles in the contemporary fear of informers; and it is difficult to prove. This book explores poisoning in early modern plays, the legal and epistemological issues it raises, and the cultural work it performs, which includes questions related to race, religion, nationality, gender, and humans' relationship to the environment.
