Bøger af Chris Mortensen

The movie companion book to Ayn Rand and the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged, a feature length documentary film that examines the resurgent interest in Ayn Rand's epic and controversial 1957 novel and the validity of its dire prediction for America.This book picks up where the documentary leaves off, featuring in-depth interviews and insights from 16 personalities, CEO's, educators, journalists, authors, biographers, philosophers, Rand associates, et al. All of them bring deep insight and unique perspective to the subject.Set in what Novelist and philosopher Rand called 'the day after tomorrow, ' Atlas Shrugged depicts an America in crisis, brought to her knees by a corrupt establishment of government regulators and businessmen with political pull - the 'looters' and the 'moochers' - who prey on individual achievement.Less a conventional work of fiction than a philosophical manifesto in the form of a romantic novel, over the course of a thousand-plus pages, Atlas tackles no less an essential argument than the one debated by philosophers and theologians since time immemorial: altruism vs. self-interest. Am I my brother's keeper - or not? For Ayn Rand, the answer is an emphatic no. To Rand and the disciples of her Objectivist philosophy, self-sacrifice is as heinous an act as murder....murder of the soul.Upon publication, Atlas Shrugged was widely scorned by critics for its 'preposterous' plot and one-dimensional characters. Intellectuals and academics from across the ideological spectrum roundly dismissed the new and original philosophy called 'Objectivism' that Rand so compellingly illustrated in the novel. Despite this pummeling, Atlas became a best seller and has remained in print ever selling a healthy 75,000 or so copies each year. Then with the new century, sales began to increase dramatically. In 2007, its fiftieth anniversary year, Atlas sold a record 180,000 copies. Since then Atlas Shrugged - published over a half century ago - has sold over a million copies.Why? Because - as evidenced by pointed and frequent references to Rand and Atlas Shrugged in the media - an increasing number of Americans - right or wrong - see their society devolving into a nightmare scenario like the one Rand projected over a half century ago.Ayn Rand and the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged looks into Rand's background for the ideas and philosophy that inspired and shaped her novel and seeks to determine whether America is indeed headed for the disastrous outcome she predicted.Writer/Director Chris Mortensen is a television producer and documentary filmmaker whose many programs have appeared worldwide. In the U.S. his documentary subjects have ranged from Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery, Hermann Goering and John Paul Jones to American Gangsters, the HIV crisis and the Iraq War. From Professional Wrestling to Halle Berry to the Suez Canal, his programs have appeared on Discovery, A&E, History Channel, ESPN, Fox Sports, BET, TV One, et al.

"The Impossible Arises explores the life and work of Oscar Reutersvèard (1916-2002), founder of the Impossible Figures movement. The movement began in Stockholm in 1934 when eighteen-year-old Reutersvèard drew the first impossible triangle. Over the course of his life he would go on to draw around 4000 impossible figures and be honored by the Swedish government with an issue of stamps showing his work. Based on a large collection of Reutersvèard's art and correspondence held at the Lilly Library at Indiana University Bloomington, the lavishly illustrated Impossible Arises examines the evolution of Reutersvèard's impossible figures and how they influenced other modern artists in the later twentieth century. The Impossible Arises offers a detailed look at the philosophy guiding Reutersvèard's art and presents a rich array of stories from his eccentric personal life. It is an essential introduction to the life and career of one of the most fascinating artists of the twentieth century"--

The Theory of Inconsistency has a long lineage, stretching back to Herakleitos, Hegel and Marx. In the late twentieth-century, it was placed on a rigorous footing with the discovery of paraconsistent logic and inconsistent mathematics. Paraconsistent logics, many of which are now known, are "inconsistency tolerant", that is, they lack the rule of Boolean logic that a contradiction implies every proposition. When this constricting rule was seen to be arbitrary, inconsistent mathematical structures were free to be described. This book continues the development of inconsistent mathematics by taking up inconsistent geometry, hitherto largely undeveloped. It has two main goals. First, various geometrical structures are shown to deliver models for paraconsistent logics. Second, the "impossible pictures" of Reutersvaard, Escher, the Penroses and others are addressed. The idea is to derive inconsistent mathematical descriptions of the content of impossible pictures, so as to explain rigorously how they can be impossible and yet classifiable into several basic types. The book will be of interest to logicians, mathematicians, philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and artists interested in impossible images. It contains a gallery of previously-unseen coloured images, which illustrates the possibilities available in representing impossible geometrical shapes. Chris Mortensen is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide. He is the author of Inconsistent Mathrmatics (Kluwer 1995), and many articles in the Theory of Inconsistency.