Imprint Academic

Recent Titles

Laws of Form: Spencer-Brown at Esalen, 1973

Louis H. Kauffman

This Special Issue of Cybernetics and Human Knowing contains rare material related to G. Spencer-Brown's book Laws of Form and its contents. In 1973 there was a conference at Big Sur at which Spencer-Brown discussed his calculus with a group of scientists. In this issue we print Walter Barney’s transcripts of the conference.



Sortition and Democracy

History, Tools, Theories
Liliane Lopez-Rabatel

This book offers a historical analysis of sortition. It brings together a number of the best specialists on political sortition from antiquity to contemporary experiments, in Europe but also in the Ancient Middle East and in imperial China. It demonstrates that sortition has been a crucial device in political history.



Seeing

Beyond Dreaming to Religious Experiences of Light
George Gillespie

After years of lucid dreaming, the author spontaneously experiences a series of religious encounters with intense light which bring an awareness of the presence of God. He describes a number of these encounters in detail. The greater part of the book then presents an analysis of these experiences.



Michael Oakeshott as a Philosopher of the "Creative"

And Other Essays
Wendell John Coats, Jr.

This book is a collection of eight essays on the work of the twentieth-century English philosophic essayist, Michael Oakeshott. Six of them advance the view in different ways that Oakeshott's multifarious lifework may be understood as variations on a singular insight — that the structure of experiential reality is 'creative' or 'poetic'.



The Life and Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe

John Haldane

This volume in the St Andrews series contains a collection of essays from leading authors regarding the work of Elizabeth Anscombe, in particular issues in mind and metaphysics, and can be considered a partner work to 2016's The Moral Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe (also published by Imprint Academic).



Lady Mary Shepherd

Selected Writings
Deborah Boyle

A collection of works published by Lady Mary Shepherd, brought together in one volume with an introduction by the editor and published as part of the Library of Scottish Philosophy series.



Immigration Control in a Warming World

Realizing the Moral Challenges of Climate Migration
Johannes Graf Keyserlingk

In the 21st century, climate change is projected to increase the already significant immigration pressures that rich countries in Europe and North America face. However, the willingness of citizens in destination countries to let further foreigners immigrate is unlikely to keep pace with that increase. These issues are discussed in this book.



Laws of Form

Commentary and Remembrance for George Spencer-Brown
Louis H. Kauffman

This volume is a collection of articles on themes related to the book Laws of Form by George Spencer-Brown.



A Hospitable Universe

Addressing Ethical and Spiritual Concerns in Light of Recent Scientific Discoveries
Rodolfo Gambini

This book argues that new developments in the sciences, in particular twentieth-century physics and twenty-first-century biology, suggest revising several pessimistic outlooks for the development of a scientific understanding of the relationship of humans with the universe.



The Jaynes Legacy

Shining New Light Through the Cracks of the Bicameral Mind
Lawrence Wile

Following on from Jaynes, this book suggests that the evolution of the relationship between consciousnesses, mass, energy, and spacetime radically changed nearly 6,000 years ago during the epigenetic, evolutionary degeneration of a little-known, threadlike structure originating from the center of the central nervous system called Reissner's fiber.



The 'Other' Psychology of Julian Jaynes

Ancient Languages, Sacred Visions, and Forgotten Mentalities
Brian J. McVeigh

Brian J. McVeigh, a student of Jaynes, points out the blind spots of mainstream, establishment psychology by providing empirical support for Jaynes's ideas on sociohistorical shifts in cognition. He argues that from around 3500 to 1000 BCE the archaeological and historical record reveals features of hallucinatory super-religiosity.



Arthur Balfour's Ghosts

An Edwardian Elite and the Riddle of the Cross-Correspondence Automatic Writings
Trevor Hamilton

This book tells the incredible story of the cross-correspondence automatic writings, described by one leading scholar of the field, Alan Gauld, 'as undoubtedly the most extensive, the most complex and the most puzzling of all ostensible attempts by deceased persons to manifest purpose...'



Illusionism

as a theory of consciousness
Keith Frankish

Illusionism is the view that phenomenal consciousness is an illusion. This book is a reprint of a special issue of the Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted to this topic. It takes the form of a target paper by the editor, followed by commentaries from various thinkers representing various academic disciplines.



Michael Oakeshott: Notebooks, 1922-86

Michael Oakeshott

The sixth volume in the series Michael Oakeshott: Selected Writings. From the 1920s to the 1980s Oakeshott filled dozens of notebooks with his private reflections, both personal and intellectual. Their contents range from aphorisms to miniature essays, forming a unique record of his intellectual trajectory over his entire career.



Freedom's Progress?

A History of Political Thought
Gerard Casey

Freedom's Progress is a history of Western political thought, a conceptual map as it were, tracking the fitful journey of one particular concept — liberty — through time. The book covers the full philosophical canon — from Plato to Rawls — but is written from the perspective of the libertarian tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard.



Thomas Reid on Religion

James J.S. Foster

This volume — a companion to Thomas Reid: Selected Philosophical Writings (2012) — makes available material from Thomas Reid's autograph manuscripts and student notes of his lectures. It includes an introductory essay by Nicholas Wolterstorff.



The Many Faces of Coincidence

Laurence Browne

The Many Faces of Coincidence proposes an inclusive categorisation for coincidences of all shapes and sizes. At the same time, some of the implications arising from the various explanations are explored, including the possibility of an underlying unity of mind and matter constituting the ground of being.



The Place of Michael Oakeshott in Contemporary Western and Non-Western Thought

Noël O'Sullivan

Essays by contributors from Britain, Canada, Hong Kong, India, and the USA provide a comprehensive critical assessment of the principal aspects of Oakeshott's thought that account for his contemporary relevance.



Art, Morality and Human Nature

Writings by Richard W. Beardsmore
John Haldane

This collection brings together the text of the monograph Art and Morality by the philosopher Richard Beardsmore along with fourteen other essays (both published and previously unpublished) in which he explores further some of the themes of his seminal book.



Metapsychology of the Creative Process

Continuous Novelty as the Ground of Creative Advance
Jason W. Brown

This book discusses a process (microgenetic) theory of the mental state of creativity that differs markedly from mainstream (cognitive) psychology, but with the potential to clarify many features of thought and imagery, normal and exceptional. Creativity is not an isolated problem but touches many central issues in philosophical psychology.



Before Consciousness

In Search of the Fundamentals of Mind
Zdravko Radman

This book aims to integrate the non-conscious as a constitutive dimension of the mind and also to outline how it is indispensable in virtually everything we do.



Lord Kames

Selected Writings
Andreas Rahmatian

Library of Scottish Philosophy volume containing selected writings of Henry Home, Lord Kames, judge, jurist and philosopher.



The Singularity

Could artificial intelligence really out-think us (and would we want it to)?
Uziel Awret

Volume combining two special issues of the Journal of Consciousness Studies on the philosophical aspects of a possible artificial intelligence singularity.



What is Wrong with Us?

Essays in Cultural Pathology
Eric Coombes

The pieces collected in this volume are not presented as amounting to an overall account or theory of our cultural condition. They are offered merely as examples of serious criticism, of what we need if we are to begin to think more profitably about our condition.



Insides and Outsides

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Animate Nature
Maxine Sheets-Johnstone

Insides and Outsides brings together diverse aspects of animate nature, showing that scientific understandings of animate nature are — or can be — complementary to philosophical understandings.



Ranulph Glanville and How to Live the Cybernetics of Unknowing

Soren Brier

A festschrift issue of Cybernetics and Human Knowing focusing on the work of Ranulph Glanville, cybernetician, design researcher, theorist, educator and multi-platform artist/designer/performer.



The Moral Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe

Luke Gormally

In this collection of new essays deriving from a conference held in Oxford aspects of Elizabeth Anscombe's moral philosophy are examined. Anyone interested in Anscombe's work all want to read this volume.



Spinoza

Basic Concepts
Andre Santos Campos

Spinoza: Basic Concepts explores key concepts involved in Spinoza's thinking, relating it to his understanding of philosophy, outlining the arguments and explaining the implications of each concept. Together, the chapters cover the full range of Spinoza’s interdisciplinary system of philosophy.



Logic, Truth and Meaning

Writings of G.E.M. Anscombe
Mary Geach

This fourth and final volume of writings by Elizabeth Anscombe reprints her Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, together with a number of later essays on thought and language in which she explores issues of reason, representation, truth and existence.



Paradigm Shift

How expert opinions keep changing on life, the universe, and everything
Martin Cohen

This book offers vital clues for understanding not only the way knowledge develops, but also into the dangers of accepting too readily or too uncritically the claims of experts of all kinds — even philosophical ones! The claims are invariably presented as objective fact, yet are rooted in human subjectivity.



Social Radicalism and Liberal Education

Lindsay Paterson

The book examines why social radicals supported liberal education, why they have moved away from it, and what the implications are for the future of an intellectually stimulating and culturally literate education.



In Their Right Minds

The Lives and Shared Practices of Poetic Geniuses
Carole Brooks Platt

Based on nearly twenty years of scientific and literary research, this book enters the atypical minds of poetic geniuses — Blake, Keats, Hugo, Rilke, Yeats, Merrill, Plath and Hughes — by way of the visible signs in their lives, beliefs, and shared practices.



Thought Thinking

The Philosophy of Giovanni Gentile
Bruce Haddock

This book comprises eleven essays on Gentile's thought. Seven of these are new pieces written especially for Thought Thinking, supplemented by new English translations of four of Gentile's shorter works, selected to offer some direct insight into his ideas and style of writing.



The Decision Trap

Genetic Education and Its Social Consequences
Silja Samerski

The Decision Trap questions a dogma of our time: the assumption that genetic education empowers citizens and increases their autonomy.



Beyond the Subjectivity Trap

Martin O'Dea

Beyond the Subjectivity Trap challenges the paradigm of the hard problem of consciousness by contesting the relevance and primacy of human thought.



Orwell's Faded Lion

The Moral Atmosphere of Britain 1945-2015
Anthony James

This book confronts the actual direction taken by British society against the background of the high hopes of the generation that survived the war.



Church-going, Going, Gone!

A Movement of the Human Spirit Begins
Michael Horan

Church-going, Going, Gone! is concerned less with teaching than with learning. It provides atheists, agnostics and believers-in-exile, as well as those who have given little thought to belief, with a framework for collaborating as learners, working toward equality, peace and reconciliation, and dedicated to unselfish and imaginative social action.



Microgenetic Theory and Process Thought

Jason W. Brown

The chapters in this volume attempt to establish some foundational principles of a theory of the mind/brain grounded in evolutionary and process theory.



Giovanni Gentile and the State of Contemporary Constructivism

A Study of Actual Idealist Moral Theory
James Wakefield

Giovanni Gentile and the State of Contemporary Constructivism represents the first book-length treatment of actual idealist moral theory.



A Scientist in Wonderland

A Memoir of Searching for Truth and Finding Trouble
Edzard Ernst

This memoir provides a unique insight into the cutthroat politics of academic life and offers a sobering reflection on the damage already done by pseudoscience in the field of medicine.



Educating Character Through Stories

David Carr

This book argues that the narratives and stories of great literary works are of neglected significance and value for contemporary understanding of human moral association and character.



New Labour's Old Roots

Revisionist Thinkers in Labour's History
Patrick Diamond

Fully updated and revised edition of New Labour's Old Roots.



The Legendary Past

Michael Oakeshott on Imagination and Political Identity
Natalie Riendeau

The book explores Oakeshott's thought on the key role human imagination plays in relation to the political.



Francis Hutcheson

Selected Philosophical Writings
John McHugh

Known today mainly as a teacher of Adam Smith (1723–90) and an influence on David Hume (1711–76), Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746) was a first-rate thinker whose work deserves study on its own merit. Spanning his entire literary career, this collection brings together selections from Hutcheson's greater and lesser known works.



Mechanisms in World and Mind

Perspective Dualism, Systems Theory, Neuroscience, Reductive Physicalism
Bernd Lindemann

This book is about philosophical aspects of neuroscience, centred on perspective dualism.



Depression, Emotion and the Self

Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives
Matthew Ratcliffe

This volume addresses the question of what it is like to be depressed. Despite the vast amount of research that has been conducted into the causes and treatment of depression, the experience of depression remains poorly understood.



The Unleashed Scandal

The End of Control in the Digital Age
Hanne Detel

In an age of ubiquitous digital media and permanent mutual observation scandals are omnipresent. This books describes recent case-(hi)stories, discussing public figures such as Tiger Woods and Anthony Weiner, the powerful and the helpless that suddenly find themselves in a worldwide pillory.



The Pauli-Jung Conjecture

And its impact today
Harald Atmanspacher

Related to the key areas of Pauli's and Jung's joint interests, the book covers overlapping issues from the perspectives of physics, philosophy, and psychology. Of primary significance are epistemological questions connected to issues such as realism, measurement, observation, consciousness, and the unconscious.



Scottish Philosophy of Rhetoric

Rosaleen Keefe

The selected writings chosen for this volume show how Scottish rhetorical textbooks were a practical extension of the philosophy of language developed by 18th century Scottish philosophers.



History as Thought and Action

The Philosophies of Croce, Gentile, de Ruggiero and Collingwood
Rik Peters

This is the first book-length study of the relationship between Benedetto Croce (1866-1952), Giovanni Gentile (1875-1944), Guido de Ruggiero (1888-1948) and Robin George Collingwood (1889-1943).



General Will in Political Philosophy

Janusz Grygienc

This book deals with the role and place of the general will in modern and contemporary political thought.



Knowing, Doing, and Being

New Foundations for Consciousness Studies
Chris Clarke

Between 1965 and 2002 several key lines of research emerged which, taken together, can potentially revolutionise our understanding of the place of consciousness in the universe. In this book the author explains the close connections between these new ingredients.



God versus Particle Physics

A No-Score Draw
John Davies

This book presents the conclusions of a psychologist seeking to make sense of contemporary particle physics as described in a number of popular science texts and media articles, written by physicists, seeking to explain the workings of the sub-atomic world.



A Philosopher and Appeasement

R.G. Collingwood and the Second World War
Peter Johnson

The two volumes of A Philosopher at War examine the political thought of the philosopher and archaeologist, R G Collingwood, against the background of the First and Second World Wars.



Oakeshott on Rome and America

Gene Callahan

This book explores how the histories of Rome and America can help us to understand Oakeshott's claims about rational versus traditional politics.



Amputated Souls

The Psychiatric Assault on Liberty 1935-2011
Anthony James

Amputated Souls explores the subject of the assault upon human rights and human freedom by psychiatrists and the clinical methods they use. The book traces the history of lobotomy and ECT from their invention in southern Europe in the 1930s, under fascist and authoritarian regimes, to the present day.



Civil Society, Capitalism and the State

Part Two of the Liberal Socialism of T.H. Green
Colin Tyler

This book presents a critical reconstruction of the social and political facets of Thomas Hill Green's liberal socialism. It builds on Colin Tyler's The Metaphysics of Self-realisation and Freedom (2010), although it can also be read as a freestanding work.



Tell My Mother I'm Not Dead

A Case Study in Mediumship Research
Trevor Hamilton

This book divides into two parts. The first is a personal narrative of the impact of the death of the author's son Ralph on him and his family. The second is an attempt to evaluate that evidence objectively (based on an extensive survey of current and past scientific research in the UK and the USA).



Thomas Reid

Selected Philosophical Writings
Giovanni Grandi

The aim of this comprehensive selection of his writings is to make the key elements of Reid's philosophical work available to a new generation of readers.



Scottish Philosophy in America

James J.S. Foster

The Scottish Enlightenment provided the fledgling United States of America and its emerging universities with a philosophical orientation. This volume in the Library of Scottish Philosophy demonstrates the remarkable extent of this philosophical influence.