Some ground has to be broken before anything can grow.Sixteen-year-old Eli Harwell has learned to pay attention.He knows the sounds of the farm before daylight. He knows cattle, fence lines, red clay, and the steady work of his hands. He knows the quiet of the pond where a heron comes in the morning. And he has learned to read the changing atmosphere of home just as carefully.Some things are easier to carry when you don't give them a name.On...

This wide-ranging study explores the many meanings of silence through the work of visual artists, philosophers, theologians, writers, and composers.Mark C. Taylor's prolific output has delved into topics ranging from media to metaphysics and from postmodern theology to posthuman bodies. His latest explores the significance of silence amid the buzzing networks of our modern age. Have we forgotten how to listen to each other, to recognize the virtues of modesty and re...

The three essays in Image, written by leading philosophers of religion, explore the modern power of the visual at the intersection of the human and the technological.Modern life is steeped in images, image-making, and attempts to control the world through vision. Mastery of images has been advanced by technologies that expand and reshape vision and enable us to create, store, transmit, and display images. The three essays in Image, written by leadi...

A contemplation on "the durability of our fast-tracked, multitasked modern world . . . a stimulating cautionary report for the digital age."— Kirkus ReviewsWe live in an ever-accelerating world: faster computers, markets, food, fashion, product cycles, minds, bodies, kids, lives. When did everything start moving so fast? Why does speed seem so inevitable? Is faster always better?Drawing together developments in religion, philosophy, art, technology,...

A provocative look at the troubled present state of American higher education and a passionately argued and learned manifesto for its future.In Crisis on Campus, Mark C. Taylor—chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University and a former professor at Williams College—expands on and refines the ideas presented in his widely read and hugely controversial 2009 New York Times op-ed. His suggestions for the ivory tower are both thought-provoking and rigorous...

The world is on fire and time for avoiding impending disaster is rapidly running out. This catastrophe has deeply entrenched foundations: a belief in human exceptionalism and human mastery over the Earth. Accelerating technological changes ranging from genetic engineering, synthetic biology, and nanotechnology to biobots, neuroprosthetics, and artificial intelligence are creating new worlds in which human beings will either be radically transformed or become extinct.After the H...

" Erring is a thoughtful, often brilliant attempt to describe and enact what remains of (and for) theology in the wake of deconstruction. Drawing on Hegel, Nietzsche, Derrida, and others, Mark Taylor extends—and goes well beyond—pioneering efforts. . . . The result is a major book, comprehensive and well-informed."—G. Douglas Atkins, Philosophy and Literature"Many have felt the need for a study which would explicate in coherent and accessible fashion the principal ...

Digital and electronic technologies that act as extensions of our bodies and minds are changing how we live, think, act, and write. Some welcome these developments as bringing humans closer to unified consciousness and eternal life. Others worry that invasive globalized technologies threaten to destroy the self and the world. Whether feared or desired, these innovations provoke emotions that have long fueled the religious imagination, suggesting the presence of a latent spirituality in an ...

A quick start guide to marketing your business successfully using Social Media like Twitter, Pinterest, Tribes.Learn practical and effective techniques.For example,Twitter is one of the fastest growing social media platforms out there and many businesses are taking advantage of this massive marketing opportunity.Learn how to set up and use Twitter effectively for your business! We show you how to tweet and re-tweet, create a branded twitter feed, build your follower...

Where does my body begin? Where does it end? What is inside my body? What is outside? What is primary? What is secondary? What is natural? What is artificial?Science fiction has long imagined a future fusion of humanity with technology. Today, many of us—especially people with health issues such as autoimmune diseases—have functionally become hybrids connected to other machines and to other bodies. The combination of artificial intelligence with implants, transplants, pros...

A powerful consideration of the lessons imparted in the final works of essential writers and philosophersFor many today, retirement and the leisure said to accompany it have become vestiges of a slower, long-lost time. In a world where the sense of identity is tied to work and careers, to stop working often is to become nobody. In this deeply perceptive and personal exploration of last works, Mark C. Taylor poignantly explores the final reflections of writers and t...

In the fall of 2005, Mark C. Taylor, the controversial public intellectual and widely respected scholar, suddenly fell critically ill. For two days a team of forty doctors, many of whom thought he would not live, fought to save him. Taylor would eventually recover, but only to face a new threat: surgery for cancer. "These experiences have changed me in ways I am still struggling to understand," Taylor writes in this absorbing memoir. "After the past year, I am persuaded that I have done en...