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Books in Arts and humanities

Elsevier's Arts and Humanities titles encompass a rich spectrum of scholarship that explores human culture, history, philosophy, and creative expression. These works offer deep insights into language, literature, visual arts, and critical theory, supporting the academic community in understanding diverse perspectives and cultural legacies. Designed for scholars, educators, and students, this collection bridges classic studies with contemporary issues, fostering a deeper appreciation and knowledge of the human experience.

  • Education in the USSR

    International Studies in Education and Social Change
    • 1st Edition
    • May 20, 2014
    • Joseph I. Zajda
    • Edmund J. King
    • English
    Education in the USSR examines the current and official Soviet educational philosophy, with emphasis on social, moral, and political aspects of Soviet education. Organized into five chapters, this book begins with a discussion on the origins of Soviet educational philosophy. Then, the Soviet school as an organization is explained. Subsequent chapters elucidate the moral education and political socialization of Soviet schoolchildren, and the education for labor, patriotism, and defense. The education of Soviet teachers is also addressed.
  • Relativity: The Theory and Its Philosophy

    Foundations & Philosophy of Science & Technology
    • 1st Edition
    • May 20, 2014
    • Roger B. Angel
    • Mario Bunge
    • English
    Relativity: The Theory and its Philosophy provides a completely self-contained treatment of the philosophical foundations of the theory of relativity. It also surveys the most essential mathematical techniques and concepts that are indispensable to an understanding of the foundations of both the special and general theories of relativity. In short, the book includes a crash course in applied mathematics, ranging from elementary trigonometry to the classical tensor calculus. Comprised of 11 chapters, this book begins with an introduction to fundamental mathematical concepts such as sets, relations, and functions; N-tuples, vectors, and matrices; and vector algebra and calculus. The discussion then turns to the concept of relativity and elementary foundations of Newtonian mechanics, as well as the principle of special relativity and its interpretation by means of empiricism and rationalism. Subsequent chapters focus on the status of the doctrine of conventionalism in the theory of special relativity; the commensurability of classical and relativistic mechanics; mathematical foundations of special relativistic physics; and the classical or Newtonian theory of gravitation. The principle of general covariance and its relation to the principle of general relativity are also examined. The final chapter addresses the fundamental question as to the actual information concerning the structure of spacetime that is conveyed to us through the theory of general relativity. This monograph will be of interest to students, teachers, practitioners, and researchers in physics, mathematics, and philosophy.
  • Was There a Fifth Man?

    Quintessential Recollections
    • 1st Edition
    • May 20, 2014
    • Wilfrid Basil Mann
    • English
    Was There a Fifth Man? Quintessential Recollections presents the author's personal account of his professional life as an experimental physicist in the service, at different times, of each of the three countries that joined forces at the Quebec Conference in 1943 to produce the atom bomb. The author has been identified, though always in a way which was just short of actionable, with the so-called ""Fifth Man"" of the long-running British spy saga. For his sake and that of his family, he felt duty-bound to set the record straight before myth had time to trespass on history. Making extensive use of dated correspondence and publications, he shows precisely where he was at the times that an individual called ""Basil"" was supposed to have been operating in collusion with Donald Maclean at the British Embassy in Washington. He claims that the misfit between ""Basil"" and himself is epitomized by the fact that when Basil was supposed to be entering the scene in Washington for an extensive sojourn, the author was actually leaving Washington for the United Kingdom.
  • Conservation of Marine Archaeological Objects

    • 1st Edition
    • May 20, 2014
    • Colin Pearson
    • English
    Over the past twenty years there has been a significant increase in underwater activities such as scuba diving which, coupled with the adventure andromance always associated with shipwrecks, has led to rapid developments in the discovery and excavation of shipwrecked material. These shipwrecks are invaluable archaeological 'time capsules', which in themajoriety of cases have come to an equilibrium with their environment. As soon as artefacts on the wreck site are moved, this equilibrium is disturbed, and the artefacts may commence to deteriorate, sometimes in a rapid and devastating fashion. In fact excavation without having conservation facilities available is vandalism--the artefacts are much safer being left on the sea bed. Such famous shipwrecks as the Mary Rose (1545), the Wasa (1628) and the Batabia (1629) have not only brought the world's attention to these unique finds, but have also produced tremendous conservation problems. The treatment of a 30 metre waterlogged wooden hull or large cast iron cannon is still causing headaches to conservators.
  • The Development of Aesthetic Experience

    Curriculum Issues in Arts Education
    • 1st Edition
    • May 20, 2014
    • Malcolm Ross
    • English
    Curriculum Issues in Arts Education, Volume 3: The Development of Aesthetic Experience focuses on the processes, methodologies, and approaches involved in the development of aesthetic experience, including art education, developmental theories, and aesthetic assessment. The book first tackles the concept of aesthetic development and aesthetic dimension in art education. The text then explores the psychological viewpoint of aesthetic development and aesthetic development in music. Topics include music education, music and function, task of teachers, developmental relationships between processes or roles, and uses and misuses of developmental theories. The publication ponders on the role of teachers and students, aesthetic development in dance, and drama as learning, art, and aesthetic experience. The manuscript then examines emotional development in adolescence, meaning in aesthetic experience, and aesthetic assessment and the reliability factor. The book is a reliable source of information for educators and readers interested in the development of aesthetic experience.
  • Science and Convention

    Essays on Henri Poincaré's Philosophy of Science and the Conventionalist Tradition
    • 1st Edition
    • May 20, 2014
    • Jerzy Giedymin
    • Mario Bunge
    • English
    Science and Convention: Essays on Henri Poincare's Philosophy of Science and The Conventionalist Tradition contains essays concerned with Henri Poincare's philosophy of science, physics in particular, and with the conventionalist tradition in philosophy that he revived and reshaped, simultaneously with, but independently of, Pierre Duhem. Separating five essays as chapters, the book discusses the main ideas of the philosophy (Essays 1 and 5), traces at least some of its historical background (Essays 1, 2, and 3), and provides some of its developments (Essays 2 and 4).
  • Learning to Hear

    • 1st Edition
    • May 20, 2014
    • Edith Whetnall + 1 more
    • R. B. Niven
    • English
    Learning to Hear provides an introduction to the best methods of early detection of deafness. This book discusses the approach to the problems of congenital deafness. Organized into nine chapters, this book begins with an overview of the anatomy, physiology, and psychology of hearing and speech. This text then presents some basic ideas about the way in which speech works and shows the reasons why the position of the deaf child is by no means as hopeless as it would first appear. Other chapters consider all information about the acoustics of speech sounds and provide an account of the various types of deafness. This book discusses as well the effects that deafness introduces and shows how far these may be overcome. The final chapter deals with the use of binaural hearing aids from the moment of diagnosis to help handicapped child to learn to hear. This book is a valuable resource for otologists.
  • Roots and Branches

    Current Directions in Slave Studies
    • 1st Edition
    • May 20, 2014
    • Michael Craton
    • English
    Roots and Branches: Current Directions in Slave Studies discusses slavery including its history and impact on modern society. Organized into nine chapters, the book first covers slavery in the Americas, and then discusses slavery and its legacy. The first two chapters discuss the dispersion of African population and slavery within Africa, and the third chapter concerns itself with slave plantations. Chapter 4 discusses the Afro-American slave culture, while Chapter 5 covers the relationship between slavery and Protestant ethics. The sixth chapter covers the legacy of slave families in North America, and the next chapter relates slavery and peasantry as a process. Chapter 8 tackles the relationship between race and slavery in the Americas, and the last chapter deals with slavery and underdevelopment. Readers concerned with sociological issues, specifically slavery, will find this book a great source of insights.
  • Theory of Phase Transitions

    Rigorous Results
    • 1st Edition
    • May 20, 2014
    • Ya. G. Sinai
    • D. Ter Haar
    • English
    Theory of Phase Transitions: Rigorous Results is inspired by lectures on mathematical problems of statistical physics presented in the Mathematical Institute of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest. The aim of the book is to expound a series of rigorous results about the theory of phase transitions. The book consists of four chapters, wherein the first chapter discusses the Hamiltonian, its symmetry group, and the limit Gibbs distributions corresponding to a given Hamiltonian. The second chapter studies the phase diagrams of lattice models that are considered at low temperatures. The notions of a ground state of a Hamiltonian and the stability of the set of the ground states of a Hamiltonian are also introduced. Chapter 3 presents the basic theorems about lattice models with continuous symmetry, and Chapter 4 focuses on the second-order phase transitions and on the theory of scaling probability distributions, connected to these phase transitions. Specialists in statistical physics and other related fields will greatly benefit from this publication.
  • Safety in Museums and Galleries

    • 1st Edition
    • May 20, 2014
    • F. Howie
    • English
    Safety in Museums and Galleries is Special Supplement to The International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship and it was originally conceived as the ""Proceedings of the Safety in Museums Meeting."" Its content is based on the meeting organized in 1985 by the Museums Association (United Kingdom), the International Institute for Conservation (IIC), and the British Museum (Natural History) to review the state of play regarding both approaches to occupational safety in museums. This book is organized into four main sections. The first section provides an overview of the legal and administrative background and discusses the developments in safety legislation in the United Kingdom in the 1970s and 1980s. The second section discusses the particular experiences met by conservators in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. The third section deals with the basic elements of hazard recognition and control. The final section covers access to health and safety information and approaches to safety training by professional organizations. This book will be of interest to museum curators and others interested in museum safety.