Download e-book for iPad: The Matter of Air: Science and Art of the Ethereal by Steven Connor

By Steven Connor

ISBN-10: 1861897669

ISBN-13: 9781861897664

Take a deep breath. Air—without it, existence on the earth might stop to exist. even though now not frequently visible, its presence is relied upon. immediately either airy and actual, air has been linked to flight and spirit, and but it has steadily develop into a territory that may be claimed via communications, struggle, go back and forth, and medical exploration. even as, air is not any longer a totally trustworthy a part of our everyday life: like water, it has turn into an environmental aspect that needs to be watched heavily for caliber and purity.

A subject of Air investigates the meanings of air during the last 3 centuries, together with our sleek situation over emissions and weather switch. Steven Connor seems to be on the human courting with air, either optimistic and destructive. His explorations contain the hazards posed by means of radio atmospherics, poison gasoline, and haze in addition to our persevered fascination with effervescence and explosives. Drawing principles from faith, technological know-how, artwork, literature, and philosophy, a question of Air creates a entire background of the human notion of air. completely researched and written with wit and quirky enthusiasm, the booklet will attract quite a lot of common readers drawn to the surroundings, human heritage, and our such a lot crucial features of life.

Reviews:

'a vagrant examine that incorporates digressions on fuel lights, seances, explosions, our nonsensical worry of draughts and the Victorian controversy over cremation. but none of those wanderings detracts from a coherent account of the technological know-how of air ... within the subject of Air, we're consistently respiring the ambience of various kinds of wisdom or event straight away, and the result's inspiring.' - day-by-day Telegraph

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Additional resources for The Matter of Air: Science and Art of the Ethereal

Example text

From the gallery and a man had been hustled away by stewards. During his examination by the Bow Street magistrates, it emerged that the prisoner’s name was James Tilly Matthews, who had a wife and young son. Matthews had been a tea merchant, but claimed to have been in the service of the government since just before the outbreak of war against France, acting as an emissary conducting secret peace talks with the revolutionary government. Now the government had decided against peace, seeing their opportunity of crushing decisively the political threat from across the Channel and A Very Beautiful Pneumatic Machinery 47 halting the drift of revolution.

46 But if there is no once and for all progression in the matter of the air, there is a regular fluctuation. Repeatedly, the air will be conceived 40 The Matter of Air in terms of an antinomy or argument between openness and limit. The many forms in which the air has been finitized have retroactively produced dreams the of absolute openness of the air, of the air as the absolute apeiron, the undetermined itself, and therefore as the material form of our own embattled dream of the aperture, the ‘next degree to nothing’ that we want the air to be, in order to continue to take ourselves for it.

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The Matter of Air: Science and Art of the Ethereal by Steven Connor


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