This book contains four short introductory works by the profound Swedish writer and thinker Emanuel Swedenborg, who lived and wrote in the 1700s. His works as a whole offer thoughtful Christians a richness of insight and spiritual development comparable to the greatest religious texts of Eastern religions, like the Bhagavad Gita, the Yogasutras, the Dhammapada. These short works on faith, spiritual life, sacred scripture and the Lord show the reader some of what Swedenborg's longer works offer - a thorough renewal and revaluation of Christianity, focusing on revelation, doctrine and charity. As with all spiritual texts, these give the reader back many times the value he or she puts into working with them.

This book was very informative. I learned the "behind the scenes" of the great historic preservation movement in action. The book was very in depth and very easy to read!

I really enjoyed reading this book.It has everything a beginner(me)looks for a in a book. I would recommend it to anyone who is wanting to learn Turbo Pascal Quickly and thoroughly.

I felt more comfortable in the course knowing that I had an edge. This study guide really clarified ideas brought up in the text and gave me practice in areas where I needed more clarification. Thanks to you, I passed with flying colors!

I may just be an armchair philosopher, but I don't think this book's challenge is nearly as radical as it's rhetoric would suggest. Surely, the authors are part of a wonderful project, and one with very important consequences; it seems they know this and with this book aim to convince a wider audience of this fact. It's a noble endeavor; the inclusion of the findings of cognitive science are impressive enough to warrant a reading by anyone who wants to broaden their base of informed philosophical opinion. Nevertheless, the authors' attempts to make this text more accessible tends to oversimplify their critique of philosophy and effectively weakens their overall argument. Many crucial movements - post-structuralism, for example - are merely paid lip service here, and the more comprehensive commentaries seem to be conveniently selected. It's not difficult to finish this book with the impression that these authors are better linguists than they are philosophers.

For over two millenia, nearly all worldly knowledge was regarded as falling under the general heading of philosophy. Physics, psychology, politics, and even economics were all regarded as various branches of study growing out of a single, philosophical trunk. Aristotle, the most systematic of the ancient philosophers, even dabbled in biology. But as human knowledge advanced, these various branches of study broke off from the philosophic stem and established themselves as independent sciences in their own right. Philosophy soon found itself reduced to metaphysics, morals, aesthetics, and epistemology. But now even epistemology is trying to break away. "Philosophy in the Flesh" documents the attempt of "cognitive science" to make epistemology an empirical science separate from philosophy. Its authors, Lakoff and Johnson, seek to challenge the largely introspective and "a priori" speculations of philosophical epistemology, which they regard as discreditable.

"Philosophy in the Flesh" commences by laying down three major findings of cognitive science: (1) that the mind is inherently embodied; (2) that thought is mostly unconscious; and (3) that abstract concepts are largely metaphorical. Assuming that these three findings are true (and, according to Lakoff & Johnson, they are empirically validated beyond any question), then it follows that many of the central tenets of the major philosophic traditions must be dismissed as hopelessly inadequate. "Once we understand the importance of the cognitive unconscious, the embodiment of mind, and metaphorical thought," our intrepid authors advice us, "we can never go back to a priori philosophizing about mind and language or to philosophical ideas of what a person is that are inconsistent with what we are learning about the mind."

All this is very important. If true, it constitutes one of the great revolutions in philosophy and science. But are Lakoff & Johnson the men to carry it out? No, I do not think so. They may be competent scholars and solid citizens within the academic fold, but their philosophical interpretation of the empirical data of cognitive science definitely leaves something to be desired. While I whole-heartedly agree with their contention that philosophy needs to become more empirically responsible, empiricism, though vital and necessary, is not enough. The empirical facts must by synthesized into a grand interpretive vision, and this can only be done by a philosopher of genius. And indeed, in some respects, it already has been done. Most of the valid points in Lakoff's & Johnson's book have been made by philosophers working within the critical realist tradition, especially the philosopher George Santayana. Lakoff and Johnson operate under the illusion that the findings of cognitive science are radically new, but they are not: they simply are new to those whose philosophical knowledge doesn't extend beyond the major traditions taught within academia. Yet well before second generation cognitive science, Santayana had been arguing that the mind has a natural locus within the body, that it contains a large "vegatative" (i.e., unconscious) component, and that concepts (and, indeed, all knowledge) are essentially metaphorical. Cognitive science, in discovering and validating these great truths, merely affirms what Santayana contended throughout his long philosophic career. If we could but merge the findings of cognitive science on the one hand with Santayana's philosophic vision of man and his spirit, we might at last have the honest, empirically responsible philosophy which Lakoff & Johnson are so eager to provide for us and which, thanks to analytic and rationalist philosophy, we have so desparately lacked.

Lakoff and Johnson's book "Philosophy in the Flesh" adds the voice of cognitive linguistics to the growing chorus of voices from science of mind that have informed philosophers: the Platonic World View is nearing the end of its reign over Western philosophy. The human mind is a product of its physical embodiment in the flesh, not some non-physical mystery.

In addition to its main story line, "Philosophy in the Flesh" also has a meta-story line. Lakoff and Johnson were well aware of the fact that many philosophers who remain bewitched by the West's Platonic legacy do not want to listen to what the science of mind has discovered. As Lakoff and Johnson clearly explain the situation, Platonic Idealism, Cartesian Dualism, and Anglo-American analytic philosophy are the natural products of a priori philosophical assumptions that are based on certain common sense metaphors such as 'seeing is believing'. Lakoff and Johnson carefully explain how the science of cognitive linguistics has accumulated data that show the limitations of such Folk Psychological views.

Within "Philosophy in the Flesh", Lakoff and Johnson included an anticipatory critique of their critics, explaining why these critics remain trapped in a dead-end philosophical world view. The key point is that many philosophers are still trained in the belief that science can have nothing useful to say about the mind. This attitude towards science is a fundamental part of the philosophical tradition that is invalidated by modern science of mind. Thus, we are dealing with the latest installment in the rather intriguing situation of an entire intellectual nation being declared intellectually bankrupt by another intellectual tribe. A perfect setting for a protracted battle! In addition, Lakoff and Johnson explicitly explain what is wrong with postmodernism and why it is at odds with their views. Amazingly, this has not stopped some from calling Lakoff's and Johnson's approach postmodern. There is exceptional irony in this kind of desperate attack on the ideas expressed in "Philosophy in the Flesh".

The meta-story line within "Philosophy in the Flesh" serves a useful role for potential buyers of the book. Many critics of "Philosophy in the Flesh" are adherents to the Platonic World View and they have voiced exactly the complaints about "Philosophy in the Flesh" that Lakoff and Johnson explicitly anticipated and accounted for with their meta-story line. What can we conclude when these critics of "Philosophy in the Flesh" fail to mention the meta-story line and how it anticipated their complaints? Most likely, such critics of this book did not read it. If they had, they would have seen the meta-story line and addressed IT in their reviews of the book.

If you are a member of the anti-science tribe of philosophers of mind and language, you will have been trained to ignore the arguments and scientific data that are presented by Lakoff and Johnson. If you are already devoted to an investigation of mind and language by making use of scientific studies of brains and human behavior, then you will enjoy this book as it explores the philosophical implications of physically embodied minds. If you are still thinking about mind and language with an open mind, this book will be useful to you. It presents a strong argument for a new way of doing philosophy that is rooted in the science of mind.

Here are some challenges to the philosophers who are upset by "Philosophy in the Flesh". Take the time to actually read the book. Come back and tell us what you think of how Lakoff and Johnson explained why you are upset. There is a close parallel to how the current philosophical debate over mind is playing out and how the debate over Vitalism played out in the last century. Many philosophers of mind argue that the mind is a special case in philosophy because of the mystery of subjective experience. In "Philosophy in the Flesh" Lakoff and Johnson explain why the old dualistic distinction between objective and subjective is bogus. The response of critics to this specific issue would be a good place to begin a dialog about the actual content of the book.

This is a thick book, not meant to be read, but to be used as a guide. You can cut and paste code snipits from the book to put together Javascript applications.

For people who need to get things done quickly using JavaScript, this book can be extremely helpful. It is best used as a reference text in conjunction with other lower-level handbooks. Unless you have some programming experience, I would not recommend this book as a tutorial or introduction to JavaScript, but it is a valuable source of many effective techniques that can shorten your development time.

I find JavaScript How-To very well organized and easy to read. I find the information I'm looking for fast, which is what I need to complete my web projects. Very good examples on almost every topic make this book one of the best.

There was quite a bit of interesting information in the book. The book is written as a chronology of Washington's life. This in itself is not a bad thing, but it is done with very little coherency, rendering the book very difficult to read. The only reason I read it was because it was required reading at my school. I give it three stars because, while the writing style was terrible, the quality of the information it contains redeems it to a certain degree.