No other scientific theory has had as great an impact on our understanding of the world as Darwin's theory outlined in his Origin of Species. Yet the theory has been the subject of controversy from its very beginning. This book focuses on three issues of debate in Darwin's theory of evolution--the nature of selection, the nature and scope of adaptation, and the question of evolutionary progress. It traces the varying interpretations to which these issues were subjected historically through the fierce contemporary debates continuing to rage.
Literary Theory: The Basics
Tackling literary theory for the first time can seem a daunting task, but it is also one of the most rewarding. This accessible guide provides the ideal first step in understanding theory.
A Theory of Individual Behavior
The aim of this book is to present a new theory of individual behavior,with emphasis on testable implications. Discussed first is individual economic behavior--roughly, the subject matter of utility theory and the theory of the firm. The book then widens its scope to formulate a theory of individual behavior in general.
Syntactic Carpentry: An Emergentist Approach to Syntax Syntactic Carpentry: An Emergentist Approach to Syntax
presents a groundbreaking approach to the study of sentence formation.
Building on the emergentist thesis that the structure and use of
language is shaped by more basic, non-linguistic forces—rather than by
an innate Universal Grammar—William O'Grady shows how the defining
properties of various core syntactic phenomena (phrase structure,
co-reference, control, agreement, contraction, and extraction) follow
from the operation of a linear, efficiency-driven processor. This in
turn leads to a compelling new view of sentence formation that subsumes
syntactic theory into the theory of sentence processing, eliminating
grammar in the traditional sense from the study of the language
faculty. With this text, O'Grady advances a growing body
of literature on emergentist approaches to language, and situates this
work in a broader picture that also includes attention to key issues in
the study of language acquisition, psycholinguistics, and
agrammaticism. This book constitutes essential reading for anyone interested in syntax
and its place in the larger enterprise of cognitive science. The primary objective of this book is to advance the emergentist thesis
by applying it to a difficult and important set of problems that arise
in the syntax of natural language. The particular idea that I explore
is that the defining properties of many important syntactic phenomena arise from the operation of a
general efficiency-driven processor rather than from autonomous
grammatical principles. As I will try to explain in much more detail in
the pages that follow, this sort of approach points toward a possible
reduction of the theory of sentence structure to the theory of sentence
processing.
Naive Set Theory
Naive Set Theory is a mathematics textbook by Paul Halmos originally published in 1960. This book is an undergraduate introduction to not-very-naive set theory
which has lasted for decades. It is still considered by many to be the
best introduction to set theory for beginners. While the title states
that it is naive, which is usually taken to mean without axioms, the book does introduce all the axioms of Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory and gives correct and rigorous definitions for basic objects. Where it differs from a "true" axiomatic set theory
book is its character: There are no long-winded discussions of
axiomatic minutiae, and there is next to nothing about advanced topics
like large cardinals. Instead, it tries to be intelligible to someone who has never thought about set theory before.
Literary Theory: The Basics
