Scientific Babel

Scientific Babel PDF Author: Michael D. Gordin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022600032X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 424

Book Description
English is the language of science today. No matter which languages you know, if you want your work seen, studied, and cited, you need to publish in English. But that hasn’t always been the case. Though there was a time when Latin dominated the field, for centuries science has been a polyglot enterprise, conducted in a number of languages whose importance waxed and waned over time—until the rise of English in the twentieth century. So how did we get from there to here? How did French, German, Latin, Russian, and even Esperanto give way to English? And what can we reconstruct of the experience of doing science in the polyglot past? With Scientific Babel, Michael D. Gordin resurrects that lost world, in part through an ingenious mechanism: the pages of his highly readable narrative account teem with footnotes—not offering background information, but presenting quoted material in its original language. The result is stunning: as we read about the rise and fall of languages, driven by politics, war, economics, and institutions, we actually see it happen in the ever-changing web of multilingual examples. The history of science, and of English as its dominant language, comes to life, and brings with it a new understanding not only of the frictions generated by a scientific community that spoke in many often mutually unintelligible voices, but also of the possibilities of the polyglot, and the losses that the dominance of English entails. Few historians of science write as well as Gordin, and Scientific Babel reveals his incredible command of the literature, language, and intellectual essence of science past and present. No reader who takes this linguistic journey with him will be disappointed.

Tower of Babel

Tower of Babel PDF Author: Bodie Hodge
Publisher: New Leaf Publishing Group
ISBN: 0890517150
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 211

Book Description
The Tower of Babel: The Cultural History of Our Ancestors reveals our shared ancestry as never before! Many are familiar with the Biblical account of Babel, but after the dispersal, there was a void beyond Biblical history until empires like Rome and Greece arose. Now, discover the truth of these people groups and their civilizations that spread across the earth and trace their roots back to Babel as well as to the sons and grandsons of Noah. Many of today's scholars write off what occurred at the Tower of Babel as mythology and deny that it was a historical event. Beginning with the Biblical accounts, author Bodie Hodge researched ancient texts, critical clues, and rare historic records to help solve the mystery of what became of the failed builders of Babel. For the purpose of defending the Bible, Hodge presents these and other vital historical facts surrounding this much-debated event. Teens and older can use this layman's reference for Biblical classes, ancient history, apologetics training, and to realize their own cultural connection to the Bible.

The Ark Before Noah

The Ark Before Noah PDF Author: Irving Finkel
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385537123
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 446

Book Description
The recent translation of a Babylonian tablet launches a groundbreaking investigation into one of the most famous stories in the world, challenging the way we look at ancient history. Since the Victorian period, it has been understood that the story of Noah, iconic in the Book of Genesis, and a central motif in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, derives from a much older story that existed centuries before in ancient Babylon. But the relationship between the Babylonian and biblical traditions was shrouded in mystery. Then, in 2009, Irving Finkel, a curator at the British Museum and a world authority on ancient Mesopotamia, found himself playing detective when a member of the public arrived at the museum with an intriguing cuneiform tablet from a family collection. Not only did the tablet reveal a new version of the Babylonian Flood Story; the ancient poet described the size and completely unexpected shape of the ark, and gave detailed boat building specifications. Decoding this ancient message wedge by cuneiform wedge, Dr. Finkel discovered where the Babylonians believed the ark came to rest and developed a new explanation of how the old story ultimately found its way into the Bible. In The Ark Before Noah, Dr. Finkel takes us on an adventurous voyage of discovery, opening the door to an enthralling world of ancient voices and new meanings.

Before Babel [Videorecording].

Before Babel [Videorecording]. PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description


The Library of Babel

The Library of Babel PDF Author: Jorge Luis Borges
Publisher: Pocket Paragon
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 56

Book Description
"Not many living artists would be sufficiently brave or inspired to attempt reflecting in art what Borges constructs in words. But the detailed, evocative etchings by Erik Desmazieres provide a perfect counterpoint to the visionary prose. Like Borges, Desmazieres has created his own universe, his own definition of the meaning, topography and geography of the Library of Babel. Printed together, with the etchings reproduced in fine-line duotone, text and art unite to present an artist's book that belongs in the circle of Borges's sacrosanct Crimson Hexagon - "books smaller than natural books, books omnipotent, illustrated, and magical.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Slow Fall of Babel

The Slow Fall of Babel PDF Author: Yuliya Minets
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108833462
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 435

Book Description
Explores how early Christianity sought to define its relationship to speakers of foreign languages.

I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood

I Studied Inscriptions from Before the Flood PDF Author: Richard S. Hess
Publisher: Eisenbrauns
ISBN: 9780931464881
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 502

Book Description


Before and After Babel

Before and After Babel PDF Author: Marc Van De Mieroop
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197634664
Category : Cuneiform writing
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Book Description
"The Lord confused the language of all the earth," so the Tower of Babel story in the Hebrew Bible's book of Genesis tells us to explain why the world's people communicate in countless languages while previously they all spoke only one. This book argues that the biblical confusion reallyhappened in the ancient Near East, not in speech, however, but in writing. It examines the millennia-long history of writing in the region and shows a radical change from the third and second millennia to the first millennium BC.Before "Babel" any intellectual who wrote did so as a participant in a cosmopolitan tradition with its roots in Babylonia, its language, and its cuneiform script. After "Babel" scribes from all over the eastern Mediterranean, including Greece, used a profusion of vernacular languages and scripts toexpress themselves. Yet they did so in dialogue with the Babylonian cuneiform tradition still maintained by the successive Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian empires that controlled their world, oftentimes as acts of resistance, aware of cosmopolitan ideas and motifs but subverting them. In order toframe the rich intellectual history of this region in the ancient past Before and after Babel describes and analyzes the Babylonian cosmopolitan system, how ancient Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and other vernacular systems interacted with it in multiple and intricate ways, and their consequences.

The First Book of Moses, Called Genesis

The First Book of Moses, Called Genesis PDF Author:
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 9780802136107
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Book Description
Hailed as "the most radical repackaging of the Bible since Gutenberg", these Pocket Canons give an up-close look at each book of the Bible.

After Babel

After Babel PDF Author: George Steiner
Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press
ISBN:
Category : Language and languages
Languages : en
Pages : 530

Book Description
When it first appeared in 1975, After Babel created a sensation, quickly establishing itself as both a controversial and seminal study of literary theory. In the original edition, Steiner provided readers with the first systematic investigation since the eighteenth century of the phenomenology and processes of translation both inside and between languages. Taking issue with the principal emphasis of modern linguistics, he finds the root of the "Babel problem" in our deep instinct for privacy and territory, noting that every people has in its language a unique body of shared secrecy. With this provocative thesis he analyzes every aspect of translation from fundamental conditions of interpretation to the most intricate of linguistic constructions.For the long-awaited second edition, Steiner entirely revised the text, added new and expanded notes, and wrote a new preface setting the work in the present context of hermeneutics, poetics, and translation studies. This new edition brings the bibliography up to the present with substantially updated references, including much Russian and Eastern European material. Like the towering figures of Derrida, Lacan, and Foucault, Steiner's work is central to current literary thought. After Babel, Third Edition is essential reading for anyone hoping to understand the debates raging in the academy today.