The 17th century physician William Harvey wrote in the preface to his thesis
On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, a letter addressed to King Charles I. 'The heart of animals is the foundation of their life, the sovereign of everything within them...from which all power proceeds. The King, in like manner, is the foundation of his kingdom, the sun of the world around him, the heart of the republic, the foundation whence all power, all grace doth flow'.
Harvey was probably wise to address the King in this manner, for what he laid out in his groundbreaking text challenged scientific wisdom that had gone unquestioned for centuries about the true function of the heart. Organs had been seen in a hierarchical structure with the heart as the pinnacle. But Harvey transformed the metaphor into something quite different: the heart as a mechanistic pumping device.
How had the Ancient Greeks and Islamic physicians understood the heart? What role did the bodily humours play in this understanding? Why has the heart always been seen as the seat of emotion and passion? And why was it that despite Harvey's discoveries about the heart and its function, this had limited implications for medical therapy and advancement?
Added by: Maria | Karma: 3098.81 | Audiobooks | 7 June 2007
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ReInventing Yourself How to Become the Person You've Always Wanted to Be
[Read by the author]
Motivational speaker Steve Chandler helps you turn that way of thinking into "what will be."
Reinventing Yourself is filled with techniques for breaking down negative barriers and letting go of pessimistic thoughts that prevent you from fulfilling—or even allowing yourself to conceive of—your goals and dreams.
Within each of us is an inspiration, a spark of insight about the person we were meant to be.
Reinventing Yourself helps us to name that vision... to call it ours and to begin to make it come true.
We really can become the people we've always wanted to be.
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business By Neil Postman (audiobook)
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985), is a controversial book by Neil Postman in which he argues that mediums of communication inherently influence the conversations carried out over them. Postman posits that television is the primary means of communication for our culture and it has the property of converting conversations into entertainment so much so that public discourse on important issues has disappeared. Since the treatment of serious issues as entertainment inherently prevents them from being treated as serious issues and indeed since serious issues have been treated as entertainment for so many decades now, the public is no longer aware of these issues in their original sense, but only as entertainment. ("Conversations" in the sense here of a culture communicating with itself).
This week we are discussing the speed of light. The medium most of you are listening by, radio waves, travel at the speed of light. And those of you closer to the radio transmitter will hear In Our Time fractionally before someone further away. Here's another curious fact to ponder: For anybody listening who is aged 50, the light that reaches us from some of the stars in the galaxy left those stars before you were born.
Added by: Maria | Karma: 3098.81 | Audiobooks | 4 June 2007
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Daphne du Maurier - The Alibi
Charles Fenton is bored: bored by his job, by his wife and by his routine. In the middle of a Sunday afternoon walk by the Thames with his wife, Edna, he decides to kill somebody. Sending Edna home, he decides that he will walk down three streets and then stop at No. 16 – the same number as the day's date – and kill whoever answers the door.
