New and forthcoming publications
[Monographs marked with an asterisk can be downloaded for free.]
A flat p&p charge of £1.00 will be added to the cost of each monograph purchased online.
- The Universal Ego
- Conclusions from Controlled UFO Hoaxes
- Jokes and Groups
- Creative Translation
- The Crusades as Connection: Cultural transfer during the Holy Wars
- Baptised Sultans: The contribution of Frederick II of Sicily in the transfer and adaptation of Oriental ideas to the West
- Brain Development During Adolescence and Beyond
- Collective Behaviour and the Physics of Society
- Counter-Intuition
- Music, Pleasure and the Brain
Monograph Series No. 45
The Universal Ego
Alexander King
ISSN 0306 1906, ISBN 978-0-904674-37-8
Published 2005 A5, 20 pages
Price £5.00
Dr King, former Director General for Science, Technology and Education at the OECD, discusses the idea that at some point in time a ‘vivifying phenomenon’ – the Universal Ego of his title – entered the process of evolution to produce the Universe and the World as we now see it. He stresses the importance of developing an awareness of its continuing, and not always beneficial, operation in human life.
Alexander King CMG, CBE, DSc was born 1909 in Glasgow. He read science in the universities of London and Munich, later becoming a Senior Lecturer in Physical Chemistry at Imperial College, London. In World War 2 he was a science adviser to the Minister of Production and later head of The British Central Scientific Office and Councillor at the British Embassy in Washington. After the war he was head of the Central Scientific Secretariat and Science Adviser to the Lord President, during the Attlee Administration. Later he became Director of the European Productivity Agency during the reconstruction. Then, until his retirement in 1974, he was Director General for Science, Technology and Education at the OECD in Paris. In 1968 he co-founded the Club of Rome, of which he is now President Emeritus after 10 years of travel worldwide, lecturing, advising and negotiating. He was awarded the Erasmus Prize for cultural services to Europe.
Monograph Series No. 46
Conclusions from Controlled UFO Hoaxes
David Simpson
ISSN 0306 1906, ISBN 978-0-904674-38-5
Published 2005 A5, 32 pages
Price £5.00
The 1960s and 70s were a time of keen interest and belief in unidentified flying objects (UFOs). David Simpson, until 2001 on the staff of the National Physical Laboratory, describes how he and some friends were drawn to test these beliefs with a series of hoaxes. He shows how belief can persist even in the face of evidence which completely discredits it.
David Simpson spent most of his working life as a metrologist. For ten years before retiring in 2001 he was head of Pressure & Vacuum Standards at the UK’s National Physical Laboratory, developing state-of-the-art measuring instruments and devising experiments to compare their characteristics with the instruments used in the national metrology institutes of other countries. His interest in ‘ufology’ started in his youth, when he contrived hoaxes to measure the accuracy with which unexpected lights-in-the-sky were reported and investigated. The ramifications of these experiments remain valid today.
Monograph Series No. 47 *
Jokes and Groups
Christie Davies
ISSN 0306 1906, ISBN 978-0-904674-39-2
Published 2005 A5, 32 pages
Price £5.00
For many years Professor of Sociology at Reading University, Christie Davies here examines how jokes operate within social groups. Using many examples ranging from disaster jokes to jokes about social and ethnic groups, he suggests that the most significant aspect of jokes is not what they reveal about their tellers, but what they tell us about societies which object to them.
Christie Davies was educated at Emmanuel College Cambridge (MA, PhD) and was for many years Professor of Sociology at the University of Reading, as well as having been a visiting lecturer in India and the United States. He is the author of several books, including Jokes and their Relation to Society (1998), The Mirth of Nations (2002), Esuniku Joku (with Goh Abe, 2003) and The Strange Death of Moral Britain (2004); also of a large number of both academic and popular articles on humour and on morality.
Download Size: 2818.25 Kb
Monograph Series No. 48 *
Creative Translation
David Pendlebury
ISSN 0306 1906, ISBN 978-0-904674-40-8
Published 2005 A5, 24 pages
Price £5.00
The author examines the creative process involved in the translation of poetry, taking his examples from German and from the Persian classical poets. He contends that the difficulty of conveying the full range of meaning in such works in another language should not discourage people from making the attempt, and offers some practical advice to those who feel inspired to do so.
Mixed parentage and frequent moves in childhood probably contributed to David Pendlebury’s lifelong interest in language and cultural issues. After obtaining an MA in modern languages at Cambridge University, early jobs included a year as translator/interpreter in Germany and working on the team of Harrap’s Standard German Dictionary. A considerable part of his adult life has been spent teaching abroad, predominantly in the Islamic world. He has translated books from French, German, Persian and Arabic. In 1988 he obtained an MSc in Information Systems. He is currently interested in producing materials designed to make classical Persian more accessible.
Download Size: 2501.34 Kb
Monograph Series No. 49
The Crusades as Connection: Cultural transfer during the Holy Wars
Contributed by Cultural Research Services
ISSN 0306 1906, ISBN 978-0-904674-41-5
Published 2006 A5, 32 pages
Price £5.00
The time of the Crusades is often depicted as one of unrelenting animosity between Christianity and Islam. This monograph presents another view: in parallel with the savage hostility, there are many recorded instances of warm relationships between Franks and Muslims, as well as an acceptance of each others religious views and practices. Then, as today, the conflict between two cultures, while exposing their differences, offered an opportunity for greater study and understanding.
Monograph Series No. 50
Baptised Sultans: The contribution of Frederick II of Sicily in the transfer and adaptation of Oriental ideas to the West
Contributed by Cultural Research Services
ISSN 0306 1906, ISBN 978-0-904674-42-2
Published 2006 A5, 32 pages
Price £5.00
Born in the last years of the 12th Century, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily, has been called “the first modern man upon a throne”. Twice excommunicated, self-crowned King of Jerusalem, he maintained close contacts with the Muslim world in defiance of Papal authority, and provided a channel for bringing Islamic and Greek cultural, philosophical and scientific concepts to Europe.
Monograph Series No. 51
Brain Development During Adolescence and Beyond
Dr. Sarah-Jayne Blakemore
ISSN 0306 1906, ISBN 978-0-904674-43-9
Published 2007 A5, 20 pages
Price £5.00
Until relatively recently, it was widely believed that the brain ceases to develop after childhood. However, recent research has demonstrated that the human brain continues to develop during adolescence and beyond. Dr. Blakemore describes the developmental processes that occur in certain parts of the brain during adolescence, and the implications of this development for teenagers. She also describes recent studies showing that the human brain may retain its 'plasticity' throughout adult life.
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College London. She is currently engaged in research investigating development of the brain during adolescence, and social cognition in autism. She frequently gives public lectures, was scientific consultant on a BBC series on the Human Mind in 2003, worked with the Select Committee for Education in 2000, and has co-authored a book called The Learning Brain (Blackwell, Oxford, UK; April 2005). She was recently awarded the British Psychological Society Spearman Medal 2006 for published psychological research of outstanding merit.
Monograph Series No. 52
Collective Behaviour and the Physics of Society
Philip Ball
ISSN 0306 1906, ISBN 978-0-904674-44-6
Published 2007 A5, 32 pages
Price £5.00
In this monograph, Philip Ball suggests that certain kinds of social behaviour are collective phenomena that do not follow in any trivial or easily anticipated way from individual behaviour. They may best be analysed by importing some of the tools and techniques that have been developed in the physical sciences for describing systems composed of many interacting entities. Understanding such forms of collective behaviour may in the future be vital to the creation and maintenance of a stable, just and equitable society.
Philip Ball is a freelance science writer and a consultant editor for Nature. He can often be heard on radio and television, and is the author of several scientific books for the lay reader, including H2O: A Biography of Water, Bright Earth (shortlisted for a National Book Critics Circle Award), and Critical Mass (winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize). Philip graduated in chemistry from the University of Oxford, and holds a PhD in physics from the University of Bristol.
Monograph Series No. 53
Counter-Intuition
Dr. Kevin Byron
ISSN 0306 1906, ISBN 978-0-904674-45-3
Published 2008 A5, 26 pages
Price £5.00
Dr. Kevin Byron received his doctorate in applied physics from the University of Hull and after graduation spent some 25 years in research in the telecommunication industry. In 2001 he was awarded a research fellowship with The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA) in the UK for studies on creativity in education. Kevin is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a Visiting Senior Fellow to the Physical Sciences branch of the Higher Education Academy at the University of Hull.
Monograph Series No. 54
Music, Pleasure and the Brain
Dr. Harry Witchel
ISSN 0306 1906, ISBN 978-0-904674-46-0
Published 2008 A5, 19 pages
Price £5.00
Dr. Harry Witchel received his PhD in Physiology from the University of California at Berkeley. He continued his wide-ranging research at the Medical School in Bristol (UK). This included work on the effects of emotionally arousing stimuli (e.g.music) on autonomic activity. In 2003 he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Florence, Italy, and in 2004 he received the national honour of being chosen for The Charles Darwin Award Lecture by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He is a popular lecturer at science festivals throughout the UK, and has participated in many public programmes for The Royal Society, The Royal Institution, BBC Television, Midweek with Libby Purves on Radio 4, Café Scientifique, the Dana Centre for the Brain, and the University of Bristol. He is at present with the Brighton and Sussex Medical School, University of Sussex.
Autumn 2008 Lecture Series
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