have not read yet, am looking to reach the author i am a relative susan langsjoen

At the close of active life (well, near the close - Arne will turn 90 in Jan.2002!) Norwegian eco-political philosopher Arne Naess is interviewed by spry young American academic David Rothenberg.

Subjects span Arne's entire life consciousness. In easy-to-read, question-and-answer format, this slim volume tells the lay reader many fascinating personal details. Rothenberg & Naess discuss -- inter alia -- Arne's rejection of his mother, childhood obsession with tiny things, the financial help from his older wealthy businessman brothers that freed Arne to live a charmed "thinking" life, and Arne's subversive leadership in the WWII Norwegian Resistance.

Why are this old Norwegian man's memories so important? Although many in the USA do not yet know him, Arne Naess is considered the father of "Deep Ecology" - a philosophy of articulate ecological beliefs, which works to shape ecological dialog with non-ecological forces.

Today's ecological thinkers will find these interviews highly educational. It is intriguing to see how the 20th century movement called Deep Ecology was shaped not only by Naess' work in ethics and communication theory, but also by his spiritual communion with non-human intelligence, and his "Panzercharakter" defensive shell.

These personal interviews reveal that the spiritually transcendent militancy of Gandhi's "satyagraha" - which Naess has made so key to modern ecological activism - appealed to him emotionally as well as philosophically. Most importantly they confirm that the emotional life of the leading ecological philosopher of the 20th century, has been equally as influential as his intellectual power.

"Successful paintings express feelings. I think paintings without emotion content aren't worth the paper. Clever technique alone has little lasting value. Superficial dash and sparkle fade pretty rapidly in interest." That's what the artist states and is ever so true, true to the feelings and true to his faith to art. I am always inspired by this artist, through what he says, through his paintings and how he started his watercolour painting at his fifty! The light, the emotions, the people, and the whole feel of the picture... the painting itself tells!! I have read this book for many times and every time I read like is the first time. If you love watercolour painting, you should not miss this book!

Darwin's theory of evolution is hamstrung by its reductionist cast into positing theories of 'local action' with a mechanical metaphor. And yet a theory of global action, in a biospheric and mathematical sense, seems to haunt the data of evolution. Although it enters dangerous terrain, this work, by a qualified astrophysicist, embarks on this quest for the planetary and non-local factors in the evolution of life. Although I am wary of this kind of thinking, if only because it is hard to be exact, this work is so elegantly done, both as a critique of Darwinism, and an exposition of the Bergsonian theme, that it must stand guard on the genre, too liable to New Age confusions.
The problem is that what we suspect is not quite what we can demonstrate. However this wariness does not do justice to the importance of this perspective which must endure exile in a stone kingdom of positivist evolutionary trilobites.
In any case, the nicely illustrated presentation comprehensively covers the difficulties of Darwinian selection, the statistical problems pointed to by Hoyle and others, the strengths and limitations of theories of self-organization such as those of S. Kauffman, with a brief introduction to the ideas of Bergson and Whitehead.
A look at the history of philosophy will demonstrate a curious 'what happens then...' as far as the argument by design, pantheism, reductionism, and natural law is concerned. This concealed prophecy of the philosophers who skidded between the Spinozas, Kants, Hegels, before the Darwins will alert at least one of the three little piggies to warn the other two, and commence a quiet enquiry in this direction. The rest will soon follow, no doubt...

The story of how Arne Svenson found the glass negatives used to produce the images in his book Prisoners is wonderfully told. He discovered a few in an antigue store and was able, over the next few years, to track down hundreds more of these compelling images. The faces of the prisoners pictured so haunted him that he set out to discover who each man was, even though the photographs had been taken nearly 100 years previous. The information he discovered is extensive; through newspaper and legal records of the day he was able to reconstruct the crimes of each of these men. The stories are riveting; a boy of 14 accused and convicted of murder, a one-armed drifter jailed for stealing a blanket, an elderly opium fiend run out of town. But what I found even more moving than the sad stories of these men were the photographs of them. They look more like portraits than mug shots, I find myself going back to look at these faces over and over again. A thoroughly enjoyable and thought provoking book. Hopefully Svenson will stumble across another cache of fascinating images soon!

This is just a breif reflection over my reading of Dr Arne Wiigs book. In a world filled with violence and aggresion it seems to me that the use of warmetaphors in our days is quite difficult and confusing. However Dr Wiigs new perspective on Psalm 18 in the bible put the so called relationalmetaphors in a new light. Where thrilling Views on how God and men work together in battlesituations of life. God lifts men up and take on his behalf to protect and supply the human with tools for a succesful battle of life. And the amazing point is that God takes the lower rank as a protector and not role of a king och prince like in the reliefs of assyira where the shildbearer was of lower rank. In a modern society we need to reform the view of faithfulness that can help you in a struggle with life. Dr Wiigs interpretation of the ancient metaphors gives us a new active understanding of often forgotten concept. Modern interpretations are often so therapeutical oriented where men tends to be a passiv object for gods grace. Therefor we need to rediscover the perspectiv were men and God are fighting thogheter in an synergistic way. Man is the solider of Christ. I would thank Dr Arne Wiig for his contibuition to the study of a essential part of the history of religion, namely the field of metaphors, as I think not have been focused like this before. In fact war metaphors is not so bad if we have the tools to understand them. Such tools, I have found in this book.

Using the scepticism of Pyrrho as his model, Naess subjects the sceptical philosophy to a number of historic criticisms, such as Ayer's, Russell's, and Hume's -- only to conclude that scepticism is a good thing. It provides a level of mental peace that no dogmatic philosophy can offer, while permitting both a wide scientific view and strong emotional perception to co-exist on friendly terms. Naess takes Pyrrho's "abstaining from final judgement" style of scepticism as his model rather than other know-nothing forms of scepticism because the reserving-final-judgement type allows sanity in the real world, freedom from dogmatic extremism, and a wide-angle philosophical objectivity that Naess finds practically useful in an era of fundamentalism and other ideological tyranny. The college philosophy student will find Naess' treatment of scepticism clear, complete, and easy to digest with proper concentration.

For all purposes, this book can be considered the companion volume to the _Motif-Index_of_Folk-Literature_, Thompson's encyclopedic classification of all known myths and folk-tales. _Types_of_the_Folktale_ expounds the presence of syncretic motifs and themes cross-culturally, and then explains the basis of Aarne and Thompson's study, which resulted in the Motif-Index. Most books doing a study of mythography will simply presume you have read this first.

Although I've lived my whole life in rural Iowa and was well-supplied with information from my father and grandfather, I still learned things I never knew in this book. The author intended his memoirs to record how people lived in the second decade of the nineteenth century before those with first-hand experience of it were all gone. He includes many photos which liven up the text. This book would make a great gift for anyone with an interest in farming!

This was a text book for my Environmental Security class. I learned a heckuva lot, and I really enjoyed reading it, too. It's well organized and helps you understand some technical issues relating to the environment without going over the non-technical major's head. The study/homework questions at the end of each chapter weren't too difficult and helped a lot in learning the material.

I used this book as base for teaching of Environmental Technologies at university. It is really good, easy to follow and addresses the main aspects of environmental pollution control. The only aspect that it does not cover is soil pollution. One strong point: the figures, graphs, exercises are very good!