This Key Concept pivot explores the trajectory of the semantic generation and evolution of two core concepts of ancient Chinese Confucianism, ‘Zhong’ (middle) and ‘Zhongyong’ (golden mean). In the pre-Qin period, Confucius advocated ‘middle line’ and ‘golden mean’ as the highest standards for gentlemanly behaviour and culture. In The Doctrine of the Mean the Confucian classic of the late Warring States Period, ‘middle’ obtained the ontological meaning of ‘great fundamental virtues of the w...

This book focuses on the synthetic and overall study of the history of literary theory, history of art or history of literary critics. Firstly, it proves itself a good combination of the history of thoughts of literature as well as thoughts of art. This book manages to break the barrier barring the two categories of literature and art apart by regarding the literature and art as the expressive form of the leading artistic spirit or aesthetic taste of one period. Secondly, the book makes it...

This book presents the state-of-the-art-knowledge on corrosion of steel, cast iron and ductile iron with a focus on corrosion-induced degradation of their mechanical properties. The information presented in the book is largely derived from the most current research on the effect of corrosion on degradation of mechanical properties. The book covers the basics of steel corrosion, including that of cast iron and ductile iron, that are not well covered in most literature. Models for corrosion-...

***Life-Cycle Performance of Structures and Infrastructure Systems in Diverse Environments***contains the lectures and papers presented at the Ninth International Symposium on Life-Cycle Civil Engineering (IALCCE 2025, Melbourne, Australia, 15–19 July, 2025). This book includes the full papers of 228 contributions presented at IALCCE 2025, including the Fazlur R. Khan Lecture, seven Keynote Lectures, and 220 technical papers.The papers cover recent advances and cutting-edge researc...