The Great Courses (Firm)
Series
Great Courses volume 9
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
Logic is intellectual self-defense against such assaults on reason and also a method of quality control for checking the validity of your own views. But beyond these very practical benefits, informal logic—the kind we apply in daily life—is the gateway to an elegant and fascinating branch of philosophy known as formal logic, which is philosophy’s equivalent to calculus. Formal logic is a breathtakingly versatile tool. Much like a Swiss army...
Publisher
The Great Courses
Language
English
Description
We commonly define the Pythagorean theorem using the formula a2 + b2 = c2. But Pythagoras himself would have been confused by that. Explore how this famous theorem can be explained using common geometric shapes (no fancy algebra required), and how it’s a critical foundation for the rest of geometry.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Language
English
Description
Quantum mechanics gives us a picture of the world so radically counterintuitive that it has changed our perspective on reality itself. In Quantum Mechanics: The Physics of the Microscopic World, award-winning Professor Benjamin Schumacher gives you the logical tools to grasp the paradoxes and astonishing insights of this field.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2015.
Language
English
Description
With World War I bogged down in trench warfare, Britain attempted to break the stalemate—which had tragic results in the Gallipoli campaign, an infamous episode of military incompetence. See where the Brits went wrong, from poorly allocating resources to giving the Turks ample time to prepare..
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2015.
Language
English
Description
Music is an integral part of humanity. Every culture has music, from the largest society to the smallest tribe. Its marvelous range of melodies, themes, and rhythms taps into something universal. Babies are soothed by it. Young adults dance for hours to it. Older adults can relive their youth with the vivid memories it evokes. Music is part of our most important rituals, and it has been the medium of some of our greatest works of art. Yet even though...
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
Funeral rites are some of the most conservative components of a culture. Because they change so slowly, we can learn much from looking at a society’s funerals. Here, examine Etruscan tomb paintings to learn about their religious rituals, from which we can deduce much of their beliefs, cultural priorities, and more..
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
The Playboy of the Western World is now regarded as a classic of Modernism and one of Ireland’s defining plays, but when it premiered in 1907, it shocked Dublin and inspired riots. See what made this play so controversial to its original audience—and why the play is a truly great work of art.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
Discover the extraordinary beauties of the churches of the Russian Orthodox tradition. Learn about the religious culture that inspired these structures, with their characteristic gilded domes and striking decoration of sculpture, frescoes, and tile work. Visit outstanding cathedrals in Vladimir, Suzdal, and Yaroslavl, as well as the Kremlin churches of Moscow.
10) Patrick Kavanagh
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
The Irish Renaissance had largely succeeded in bringing folk life to the center of cultural consciousness by the 1930s. At that time, the poet Patrick Kavanagh—hailing from the rural farmland—emerged with a critique of the sentimentality and nostalgia of Yeats’s generation. Explore how the next wave of poets carved out their own views of Ireland.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2015.
Language
English
Description
Learn about Maya life through their art, studying such works as the fantastic painted murals at Bonampak and the famous sarcophagus lid on the tomb of Pakal. According to a best-selling book, the latter depicts an ancient astronaut on a rocket ship, but Dr. Barnhart decodes its real meaning.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2015.
Language
English
Description
Examine tools that professionals use to hedge against financial risk, such as forward contracts and financial options. Study the suitability of these instruments for individuals. Then probe a more flexible strategy: real options, which are opportunities that can be seized or declined as conditions warrant..
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2010.
Language
English
Description
Now that you've learned how to overcome obstacles and prepare, it's time to learn the essential elements of actually giving a speech. Here, Professor Hale uses famous historical figures, including Gandhi and President Kennedy, as models for how to deliver your speech to - and connect with - specific audiences.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2015.
Language
English
Description
Advancements in modern robotics have made robots useful, safe, reliable, easy to use, and affordable to have in our homes. So how exactly do different home robots—such as vacuum cleaners like Roomba, gutter cleaners like Looj, and lawn mowers like MowBot—adjust to the unique demands of their respective tasks?.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
Strengthen your skills as a family history detective with this in-depth look at the Genealogical Proof Standard, the five-step process that certified genealogists use for proving ancestral identities, relationships, life events, and other biographical details. Then, wrap up the lecture with a fascinating look at the nature of evidence.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
From the American dust bowl of the 1930s to the relentless expansion of the Sahara in Africa, drought represents severe weather that can stretch out for years. Explore what’s going on in the atmosphere to create extreme drought, which is associated with heat waves and dust storms.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
Encounter the imperative mood—the verb construction used for commands. Study the imperative endings in the present and aorist tenses. Find three aorist commands in Luke 22:36, and even more as you continue your reading of the Iliad with lines 39-47.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
Much like the setting and the character, the use or lack of violence, and the amount and intensity depicted, can provide more clarity into the mystery you’re trying to solve. And, much like the guidelines about using clues in suspense writing, there are so many exceptions to the rules of using violence that the rules themselves may need to be called into question.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2016.
Language
English
Description
Our journey continues with the westward expansion of American English, as the New England dialect spreads across the North, the South extends to the Southwest, and people in the middle increasingly intermingle. Along the way, dialect mixing and leveling lead to increasing standardization, or at least the ideal of a single, uniform standard, and "General American English"is born. But where is it, and who speaks it?
20) Impossible Sets
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2015.
Language
English
Description
Delve into Bertrand Russell's profoundly simple paradox that undermined Cantor's theory of sets. Then follow the scramble to fix set theory and all of mathematics with a new set of axioms, designed to avoid all paradoxes and keep mathematics consistent - a goal that was partly met by the Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory.