Learn to "speak" the language of Western music and follow the often-intimidating language of key signatures, pitch, mode, melody, meter, and other parts of musical structure used by composers. In this course, Professor Greenberg offers a spirited introduction to this magnificent language—nimbly avoiding what for many of us has long been the principle roadblock, the need to read music.
Investigate the "fingerprints" of global climate change, ranging from borehole temperatures to melting glaciers to the altered behavior of plant and animal species. This course reviews the most up-to-date research on climate change, explaining the concepts, tools, data, and analysis that have led many climate scientists to conclude that Earth has been warming at an unprecedented rate in recent decades.
Explore classic masterpieces of the imaginative mind from famous authors such as Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Virginia Woolf, Franz Kafka, Jules Verne, J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and more. From talking frogs to human robots, from Mad Hatters to mad scientists, Professor Rabkin helps you discover the magic, wonder, and profound significance of that literature.
Are sleepwalkers, coma patients and autistic children conscious? Probe this mysterious mental state at the heart of human identity through riveting, real-world anecdotes. Drawing on the wisdom of the world's greatest thinkers from the ancient Greeks to today's top scientists, Daniel N. Robinson poses age-old conundrums and sheds light on ethical debates that dominate headlines.
In 96 richly illustrated half-hour lectures you will survey the main concepts, methods, and discoveries in astronomy—from the constellations drawn by the ancients, to the latest reports from planetary probes in our Solar System and the most recent images offered by telescopes probing the farthest frontiers of space and time. While updating this course, Professor Alex Filippenko added hundreds of images, including nearly 300 short movies and computer animations.
What could the beliefs and traditions of a Zoroastrian, a person of Jewish faith, a Buddhist, a follower of Confucius, or a Christian have in common? How do religions evolve over time? Religions of the Axial Age offers a rare opportunity to relate your own spiritual questions to a variety of ancient quests for meaning and transcendence. Professor Mark W. Muesse shows you the historical conditions in which the world religions arose, while letting you see how they answered shared metaphysical and human dilemmas.
Professor David J. Schenker presents a view of Greek literature that roams beyond a common definition of the word. By introducing us to a world that remains far closer than we might imagine, he opens up to us the epics of Homer; the dramatic genius of the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes; and the poems of Archilochus, Sappho, and many others. He also includes some of the world’s greatest works of history and philosophy, and he gives rhetoric and oratory their proper due as well.
Travel back in time and solve the mystery of what is now modern Iraq, once home to a succession of peoples. In a land where the real history is even more astounding than the imagined one, this journey helps us understand not only how and what we know, but also what we cannot know about this ancient world.
Now you can discover the secret of making numbers come alive. This course helps you to understand the random factors behind almost everything. Learn the answers to such intriguing, useful, and entertaining questions as: How much should you pay for a stock option? What do you do on third down with long yardage? When did the most recent common ancestor of all humans live?
Cycles of American Political Thought traces the full expanse of American history, showing how the definition of what it means to be an American has changed in response to the times. From the original 13 colonies through an epic expansion across the continent to the present day, you'll examine how the growth of the nation was mirrored by an expansion of "We the People" to include new segments of the population not considered by the founding fathers.
What made Holland in the 17th century so extraordinary as to produce the masters Vermeer, Hals, Steen, de Hooch, Rembrandt, and many other artists? Their paintings of still life, portraiture, and landscapes gleam with images of Dutch life and symbolism that continue to enchant today. You can find out from Professor William Kloss as he shows you the work of more than 100 artists and guides you through more than 450 masterful paintings.
Classical physics is about making sense of motion, gravity, light, heat, sound, electricity, and magnetism, and seeing how these phenomena interweave to create the rich tapestry of everyday experience. You already know more physics than you think, says award-winning science educator Steven Pollock. He discusses brilliant thinkers Galileo, Newton, Faraday, and Maxwell to show you that classical physics is an elegant system describing how the world is put together.
Is the Bible a divinely inspired message, the work of human authors, or both? Translated and distributed all over the world, it bears the mark of the many cultures that have debated its meaning and prized its wisdom. In this course, Luke Timothy Johnson can illuminate for you the remarkable and complicated process by which this great book came into being.
In achieving freedom from Great Britain, American colonists traded one set of problems for another. In the 1780s, the young nation could not pay its debts, craft an effective foreign policy, or forestall armed tax revolt from its western settlements. In Professor Peter C. Mancall's 48 lectures you can learn how this emerging nation astonished the world leaders of the day, broke away from their mother country, and fashioned a republic capable of sustaining itself generation after generation.
Philosopher Jeffrey L. Kasser launches an ambitious and exciting inquiry into what makes science science. But the route to the answers is a challenging, thought-provoking quest, requiring logic, persistence, intellectual rigor, and imagination. "Philosophy," says Professor Kasser, "is the art of asking questions that come naturally to children, using methods that come naturally to lawyers." The philosophy of science can be abstract and theoretical as well as unusually interesting and surprisingly practical.
In this course, Professor Ashton Nichols introduces us to two remarkable figures; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, as well as a diverse group of intellectual activists, literary figures and social reformers. Their ideas, often considered radical in the decades leading up to and immediately following the Civil War, would remake American society.
One of the most exciting scientific adventures of all time is the search for the ultimate nature of physical reality. The latest advance in this epic quest is string theory. Dr. S. James Gates, Jr., has presented more than 100 public talks on string theory, enhanced by a set of visual aids designed to convey to a lay audience the difficult mathematical ideas that underlie this subject. Are you eager to look over the shoulder of a prominent theorist at work—one who has a gift for explaining the subject to nonscientists? Prepare to be intrigued, enlightened, and amazed.
