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      • Cosmos Culture, Ltd.

        Cosmos Culture Ltd., established in March 1998, is composed of intellectuals from different professions. The staff is devoted to cultural education and hopes to make a significant contribution to the inheritance and development of world culture by providing knowledge and high quality reference books to our readers. Contributing to the world’s culture is an endless road. Today’s world is a global village. Skill with two or more languages is crucial if an individual wants to play a role in the rapid growth of worldwide human communication and cultural exchanges.

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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        July 2023

        The imperial Commonwealth

        Australia and the project of empire, 1867-1914

        by Wm. Matthew Kennedy

        From the late 1800s to the early 1900s, Australian settler colonists mobilised their unique settler experiences to develop their own vision of what 'empire' was and could be. Reinterpreting their histories and attempting to divine their futures with a much heavier concentration on racialized visions of humanity, white Australian settlers came to believe that their whiteness as well as their Britishness qualified them for an equal voice in the running of Britain's imperial project. Through asserting their case, many soon claimed that, as newly minted citizens of a progressive and exemplary Australian Commonwealth, white settlers such as themselves were actually better suited to the modern task of empire. Such a settler political cosmology with empire at its center ultimately led Australians to claim an empire of their own in the Pacific Islands, complete with its own, unique imperial governmentality.

      • Trusted Partner
        Fiction
        December 1999

        Library of Chinese Classics :Zhuang Zi

        by Qin Xuqing

        "Zhuangzi", also known as "South China Scriptures," is one of the Taoist classics by the philosopher Zhuang Zi of the Warring States Period and its later studies. The book includes 7 articles, 15 articles, 11 articles, a total of 33 articles. In this book, Chuang Tzu inherited and developed Lao Tzu's view of "nature of Taoism". Taking "Tao" as the origin of the world, Zhuangzi considered that "Tao" is self-contained and eternal. The difference between things is only relative. In conformity with this concept of cosmology, Zhuangzi advocates the concept of "nature inaction" and advocates the maintenance of individual physical and psychological freedom and the pursuit of a spirit of unrestrained and harmonious man and nature. This book takes Guo Qingfan's Zhuangzi Collection as the base and translates it. The English translation draws on the existing English translations and selection books. It is the current English version of Zhuangzi.

      • Trusted Partner
        July 2017

        Tell children about the universe

        by Li Miao Wang Shuang

        This is a universal cosmology book written by famous physicist Li Miao for children. For thousands of years, human beings have never stopped exploring the world they live in and the starry sky they see. From measuring the circumference of the earth with sunlight to confirming the origin of the universe with electromagnetic waves, from inferring the shape of the earth based on lunar eclipse to measuring the distance between celestial bodies with standard candlelight With vivid and interesting stories, uncle Miao brings us back to the thinking scene of generations of great talents and opens up extraordinary scientific thinking. The book is also equipped with artistic illustrations and precious pictures of the universe. Young readers can open their imagination wings, think of the mysterious and charming universe from afar, and marvel at the magic of creation and human's endless thirst for knowledge.

      • Trusted Partner

        The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss

        My Life with Terence McKenna

        by Dennis McKenna

        Tracing the McKenna brothers’ childhood in western Colorado during the 1950s and ’60s, Dennis chronicles their adolescent adventures and formative encounters with mind-altering substances, along with the people and ideas that shaped them both. Dennis, now world-renowned for this ethnobotanical work, describes his early interests in cosmology and astrology, his sometimes rocky relationship with his older brother, how their paths diverged later in life, and his mother’s and Terence’s battles with cancer. In his account of what has become known as “The Experiment at La Chorrera”—which Terence documented in his own 1989 book, True Hallucinations— Dennis describes visions of merging mushroom and human DNA, the brothers’ predictions for the future, and their evolving ideas about society and consciousness. In this updated edition, Dennis also reflects on scientific revelations, climate change, and the social and political crises of our time.

      • Trusted Partner
        Teaching, Language & Reference
        November 2023

        Pluriversal sovereignty and the state

        Imperial encounters in Sri Lanka

        by Ajay Parasram

        Presenting a case study of British colonial rule and its aftermath in Sri Lanka, this book explores the collision of competing ontologies in the making of the modern state system. It develops a decolonial theoretical framework informed by the idea of a 'pluriverse' to reveal the empirical and imperial avenues through which the idea of the modern/colonial state became normalised in Ceylon. The book contributes to three areas of scholarly discussion: the politics of ontology as related to sovereignty, postcolonial and decolonial international relations, and globalisation through the colonial encounter. It argues that in order to understand contemporary postcolonial crises rooted in territorial conflicts, we must first understand the historical and conceptual processes that depoliticised and universalised the norm of 'total territorial rule' rather than treating the modern state as a territorial and developmental inevitability.

      • Trusted Partner
      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2022

        Chinese religion in contemporary Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan

        The cult of the Two Grand Elders

        by Fabian Graham

        In Singapore and Malaysia, the inversion of Chinese Underworld traditions has meant that Underworld demons are now amongst the most commonly venerated deities in statue form, channelled through their spirit mediums, tang-ki. The Chinese Underworld and its sub-hells are populated by a bureaucracy drawn from the Buddhist, Taoist and vernacular pantheons. Under the watchful eye of Hell's 'enforcers', the lower echelons of demon soldiers impose post-mortal punishments on the souls of the recently deceased for moral transgressions committed during their prior incarnations. Chinese religion in contemporary Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan offers an ethnography of contemporary Chinese Underworld traditions, where night-time cemetery rituals assist the souls of the dead, exorcised spirits are imprisoned in Guinness bottles, and malicious foetus ghosts are enlisted to strengthen a temple's spirit army. Understanding the religious divergences between Singapore and Malaysia (and their counterparts in Taiwan) through an analysis of socio-political and historical events, Fabian Graham challenges common assumptions about the nature and scope of Chinese vernacular religious beliefs and practices. Graham's innovative approach to alterity allows the reader to listen to first-person dialogues between the author and channelled Underworld deities. Through its alternative methodological and narrative stance, the book intervenes in debates on the interrelation between sociocultural and spiritual worlds, and promotes the destigmatisation of spirit possession and discarnate phenomena in the future study of mystical and religious traditions.

      • Trusted Partner
        Social & cultural anthropology
        November 2014

        Framing cosmologies

        by Edited by Allen Abramson and Martin Holbraad

      • Trusted Partner
        Mind, Body, Spirit

        SOUND

        Profound Experiences with Chanting, Toning, Music and Healing Frequencies

        by Drs. JJ and Desiree Hurtak

        Sing the Sacred Song of Your Soul You are a musical instrument in the great song of a living universe. Join social scientists and futurists Drs. J.J. and Desiree Hurtak as they show you how sound is an integral part of who you are and how you got here-in fact, it is the sacred song of your soul.Witness the science of frequency and timeless art of sound as an instrument of-and entry point to-the Divine as Drs. J.J. and Desiree Hurtak, along with selected sacred storytellers, share their mystical experiences with sound. Sound is alive in everything, and it is tuning humanity to a brighter future. Discover how plants create music and how space is a symphony of creation. Understand archeo-acoustics and how sound is used in sacred temples. Raise your vibration as you chant mantras composed of sacred names, thoughts, and expressions. Create harmony in your life as you embrace the world of musical experience and come in tune with your truest vibrational nature.

      • September 2019

        Thomistic Existentialism and Cosmological Reasoning

        by John F. X. Knasas

        Cosmological reasoning is an important facet of classical arguments for the existence of God, but these arguments have been subject to many criticisms. The thesis of this book is that Thomas Aquinas can dodge many of the classic objections brought against cosmological reasoning. These objections criticize cosmological reasoning for its use of the Principle of Sufficient Reason; its notion of existence as a predicate; its use of ontological reasoning; its reliance on sense realism; its ignoring of the problem of evil; and its susceptibility to the critique of "ontotheology" as famously put forward by Heidegger. Secondly, the book proposes that the kind of reasoning found in Aquinas's De Ente can be formulated in a more robust version. Prompted by Aquinas’s admissions that philosophical knowledge of God is the prerogative of metaphysics, the second main portion of the book extensively illustrates how the more robust version of the De Ente is the interpretive key for Aquinas’s many arguments for God. Hence, the book should be of interest both to philosophers engaged in cosmological reasoning discussion and to Thomists interested in understanding Aquinas’s viae to God. Finally, the deep purpose of the book is to reawaken interest in Thomistic Existentialism, an interpretation of Aquinas that flourished in the 1950's in the works of Etienne Gilson, Jacques Maritain, and Joseph Owens. In this interpretation, a particular thing’s existence is the actuality of the thing in the sense of a distinctive actus not translatable into something else, for example, the fact of the thing or the thing having form. This book clearly explains how this interpretation looks at Thomas's metaphysics, and why it helps illuminate metaphysical realities.

      • Health & Personal Development
        October 2020

        Hindu Myths

        From Ancient Cosmology to Gods and Demons

        by MARTIN J. DOUGHERTY

        There is no clear start point for Hinduism, no single prophet or messiah who taughtpeople how to worship and the forms to follow. Nor is there a single text containingthe universal truths; instead, there are many different practices and innumerablevariants of common myths and tales.From the ancient Sanskrit texts of the Upanishads, Vedas, Mahabharata and Ramayana, the characters, gods and narratives of Hinduism emerged to demonstratethe moral precepts, duties and correct behaviour of Hinduism. Learn about Vediccosmology, which is divided into four cyclical Yugas, or epochs, and which has nobeginning or end; or the creation myth of Varaha, a powerful boar who saved theearth from primordial waters; or the legend of Rama, who against great odds rescueshis love Sita from the demon-king Ravana; or Vishnu, the greatest god in the HinduTrimurti (triad), who takes the form of nine different avatars and stops the earth frombeing destroyed through preserving Atman, the unchanging ultimate reality.Illustrated with 120 photographs and artworks, Hindu Myths is an accessible,engaging and highly informative exploration of the complex mythology underlyingone of the world’s oldest and most influential religions.

      • March 2018

        Final Causality in Nature and Human Affairs

        by Richard F. Hassing

        This study of the questions of final causality is arranged in historical order from Aristotle to contemporary anthropic-principle cosmology. It discusses such teleological issues as chance and providence, and Aristotle's definition of nature in relation t

      • Archaeology by period / region

        Stone Houses and Earth Lords

        Maya Religion in the Cave Context

        by Keith M Prufer (Editor) , James E Brady (Editor)

        This heavily illustrated compilation of current scholarship on cave archaeology in the Maya lowlands is the first dedicated to the subject and yields key insights into Maya ritual and cosmology. An important publication that fills a crucial niche in Maya scholarship and addresses issues important to archaeology, cave studies, religion, anthropology, global archaeology, and more.

      • June 2023

        Nature and Nature's God

        A Philosophical and Scientific Defense of Aquinas' Unmoved Mover Argument

        by Daniel Shields

        Aquinas’ first proof for God’s existence is usually interpreted as a metaphysical argument immune to any objections coming from empirical science. Connections to Aquinas’ own historical understanding of physics and cosmology are ignored or downplayed. Nature and Nature's God proposes a natural philosophical interpretation of Aquinas’ argument more sensitive to the broader context of Aquinas’ work and yielding a more historically accurate account of the argument. Paradoxically, the book also shows that, on such an interpretation, Aquinas’ argument is not only consistent with modern science, but actually confirmed by the history of science, from classical mechanics through 19th century thermodynamics to contemporary cosmology. The first part of the book considers Aquinas’ argument in its historical context, exploring the key principles that everything in motion is moved by something else and that an infinite regress of causes is impossible. The structure of the First Way is analyzed and the argument is connected both with Aquinas’ Third Way—a new interpretation of which is also proposed—and Aquinas’ second proof from motion in the Summa contra Gentiles. To complete the account of what natural philosophy—prior to metaphysics—can demonstrate about God, a chapter on Aquinas’ teleological argument (the Fifth Way) is also included. The second part of the book tracks the history of modern science from Copernicus to today, showing how Aquinas’ argument fared at each major turn. The first chapter shows how Newton’s understanding of inertia and conservation of momentum supports the idea that motion cannot continue forever without God’s causality, and integrates a modern understanding of inertia and gravity with the principles of Thomistic natural philosophy. The second chapter considers the first and second laws of thermodynamics, showing how they too support Aquinas’ contention that motion cannot continue forever without God’s causality. This chapter also discusses statistical mechanics and contemporary cosmology, demonstrating that science continues to support Aquinas’ unmoved mover argument. The final chapter turns to modern biology as well as cosmological fine-tuning to show that modern science also continues to support Aquinas’ teleological argument. The result is not only a satisfying defense of Aquinas’ natural philosophical proofs for God’s existence, but a primer on the broader project of integrating Thomistic natural philosophy with modern science.

      • Maya Creation Myths

        Words & Worlds of the Chilam Balam

        by Timothy Knowlton

        There is no Classical Yucatecan Maya word for myth . But around the close of the seventeenth century, an anonymous Maya scribe penned what he called u kahlay cab tu kinil, the world history of the era , before Christianity came to the Peten. He collected numerous accounts of the cyclical destruction and re-establishment of the cosmos; the origins of gods, human beings, and the rituals and activities upon which their relationship depends; and finally the dawn of the sun and the sacred calendar Maya diviners still use today to make sense of humanity's place in the otherwise inscrutable march of time. These creation myths eventually became part of the documents known today as the Books of Chilam Balam. This book provides not only new and outstanding translations of these myths but also an interpretative journey through these often misunderstood texts, providing insight into Maya cosmology and how Maya intellectuals met the challenge of the European clergy's attempts to eradicate their world-views. Unlike many scholars who focus primarily on traces of pre-Hispanic culture or Christian influence within the Books of Chilam Balam, Knowlton emphasises the diversity of Maya mythic traditions and the uniquely Maya discursive strategies that emerged in the Colonial period. This book will be of significant interest to Maya scholars, folklorists, and historians, as well as students and scholars of religion, cosmology, and anthropology.

      • Literary studies: fiction, novelists & prose writers

        C.S. Lewis Perelandra

        Reshaping the Image of the Cosmos

        by Judith Wolfe (author), Brendan Wolfe (author)

        C. S. Lewis considered his novel Perelandra (1943) among his best works. A triumph of imaginative science fiction, Perelandra—the second volume of Lewis’s “Space Trilogy”—is also theologically ambitious. C. S. Lewis’s Perelandra: Reshaping the Image of the Cosmos explores how the novel synthesizes the three traditions of cosmology, mythology, and Christianity. The first group of essays considers the cosmological implications of the world Lewis depicts in Perelandra while the second group examines the relationship between morality and meaning in Lewis’s created cosmology of the planet Perelandra.This work brings together a world-class group of literary and theological scholars and Lewis specialists that includes Paul S. Fiddes, Monika B. Hilder, Sanford Schwartz, Michael Travers, and Michael Ward. The collection is enhanced by Walter Hooper’s reminiscences of his conversations with Lewis about Perelandra and the possible provenance of the stories in Lewis’s imagination.C. S. Lewis scholars and devoted readers alike will find this volume indispensible to the understanding of this canonical work of speculative fiction.[tab: Editors]Judith Wolfe teaches theology at St. John’s College in the University of Oxford. She is the general editor of The Journal of Inkling Studies and coeditor of C. S. Lewis and the Church, as well as a contributor to numerous publications on Lewis, including the Cambridge Companion to C.S. Lewis. Brendan Wolfe is a past president and secretary of the Oxford C. S. Lewis Society and Executive Editor of the Journal of Inklings Studies. A DPhil candidate in church history at the University of Oxford, he is a regular contributor to the Bryn Mawr Classical Review and is coeditor of C. S. Lewis and the Church.

      • A history of where. Looking for the boundaries of the world

        Alla ricerca dei confine del mondo

        by Tommaso Maccacaro Claudio M. Tartari

        Since the very first time man began measuring the space around him, wonder never ceased. The question "Where are we?" looks like an easy one and yet the answer is anything but simple. The question is still open. Conclusions are always provisional, always questioned by new findings.The space gets bigger and bigger, the notion of "where" becomes broader. It is not just the Big Bang or the universe expanding: it is our perception of the space that broadened over time,becoming more and more complex and making us smaller and smaller, lost in a "where" now limitless.In this short but dense and enjoyable book, Maccacaro and Tartari bring us from the fuzzy space of the valleys inhabited by Homo Erectus to the cosmogonic myths of ancient cultures, introducing us to the first representations of the world. Leafing through their book we will learn that the great Empires of the Bronze Age already created sophisticated conceptual maps, while the stars already helped travellers to find their way. Heavenly space constantly intersectedwith the space on earth, and in classical antiquity the space began to dilate. During the Middle Ages calculation and navigation tools became more refined. Eventually, the discovery of a new continent radically changed our notion of "where", and subsequent exploration rapidly filled with names the spaces previously left blank on ancient parchment maps. In the Modern Age, lenses made the sky bigger, leading to the discovery of new planets. Stars quickly turned intogalaxies, while new theories literally reshaped the world. "Where" is now an elastic, time-related, limitless and ever changing concept.

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