Simple, practical, down to earth tools to understand how life works and how to create the life you want. A blend of ancient wisdom and functional tools for today's world.

Concepts embody our knowledge of the kinds of things there are in the world. Tying our past experiences to our present interactions with the environment, they enable us to recognize and understand new objects and events. Concepts are also relevant to understanding domains such as social situations, personality types, and even artistic styles. Yet like other phenomenologically simple cognitive processes such as walking or understanding speech, concept formation and use are maddeningly complex. Research since the 1970s and the decline of the "classical view" of concepts have greatly illuminated the psychology of concepts. But persistent theoretical disputes have sometimes obscured this progress. The Big Book of Concepts goes beyond those disputes to reveal the advances that have been made, focusing on the major empirical discoveries. By reviewing and evaluating research on diverse topics such as category learning, word meaning, conceptual development in infants and children, and the basic level of categorization, the book develops a much broader range of criteria than is usual for evaluating theories of concepts.

Recognizing the vital importance of concepts in shaping our understanding of international relations, this ground-breaking new book puts concepts front and centre, systematically unpacking them in a clear, critical and engaging way. With contributions from some of the foremost authorities in the field, Concepts in World Politics explores 17 core concepts, from democracy to globalization, sovereignty to revolution, and covers: The multiple meanings of a concept, where these meanings come from, and how they are employed theoretically and practically The consequences of using concepts to frame the world in one way or another The method of concept analysis A challenging and stimulating read, Concepts in World Politics is an indispensable guide for all students of international relations looking to develop a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of world politics.

Research Methods in the Social Sciences is a comprehensive yet compact A-Z for undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking research across the social sciences, featuring 71 entries that cover a wide range of concepts, methods, and theories. Each entry begins with an accessible introduction to a method, using real-world examples from a wide range of academic disciplines, before discussing the benefits and limitations of the approach, its current status in academic practice, and finally providing tips and advice for readers on when and how to apply the method in their own research. Wide ranging and interdisciplinary, the text covers both well-established concepts and emerging ideas, such as big data and network analysis, for qualitative and quantitative research methods. All entries feature extensive cross-referencing, providing ease of navigation and, pointing readers to related concepts, and to help build their overall understanding of research methods.

"What a helpful book! This will be a ′friend ′ to many undergraduate students looking for clarification." - Helen Hazelwood, St Mary′s University College "This is a great book that really helps the students understand research and the complex processes that can often daunt even the most intelligent students." - Phil Barter, Middlesex University "Few can bring research methods to life like Mike Atkinson. His breadth of research interests and experience mean he can introduce you to all you need to know and inspire you to get down to doing some research yourself." - Dominic Malcolm, Loughborough University This book systematically demonstrates the significance and application of research methods in plain language. Written for students, it contains the core methodological concepts, practices and debates they need to understand and apply research methods within the field of sport and exercise. It provides a comprehensive panoramic introduction which will reassure and empower students. Written by a leading academic and drawing on years of teaching experience, it includes carefully cross-referenced entries which critically engage with interdisciplinary themes and data. Each concept includes: clear definitions suggestions for further reading comprehensive examples practical applications Pragmatic, lucid and concise the book will provide essential support to students in sports studies, sport development, sport and exercise science, kinesiology and health.

Only human beings have a rich conceptual repertoire with concepts like tort, entropy, Abelian group, mannerism, icon and deconstruction. How have humans constructed these concepts? And once they have been constructed by adults, how do children acquire them? While primarily focusing on the second question, in The Origin of Concepts , Susan Carey shows that the answers to both overlap substantially. Carey begins by characterizing the innate starting point for conceptual development, namely systems of core cognition. Representations of core cognition are the output of dedicated input analyzers, as with perceptual representations, but these core representations differ from perceptual representations in having more abstract contents and richer functional roles. Carey argues that the key to understanding cognitive development lies in recognizing conceptual discontinuities in which new representational systems emerge that have more expressive power than core cognition and are also incommensurate with core cognition and other earlier representational systems. Finally, Carey fleshes out Quinian bootstrapping, a learning mechanism that has been repeatedly sketched in the literature on the history and philosophy of science. She demonstrates that Quinian bootstrapping is a major mechanism in the construction of new representational resources over the course of childrens cognitive development. Carey shows how developmental cognitive science resolves aspects of long-standing philosophical debates about the existence, nature, content, and format of innate knowledge. She also shows that understanding the processes of conceptual development in children illuminates the historical process by which concepts are constructed, and transforms the way we think about philosophical problems about the nature of concepts and the relations between language and thought.

Over the last decade the notion of ‘threshold concepts’ has proved influential around the world as a powerful means of exploring and discussing the key points of transformation that students experience in their higher education courses and the ‘troublesome knowledge’ that these often present.

This new volume on logic follows a recognizable format that deals in turn with the topics of mathematical logic, moving from concepts, via definitions and inferences, to theories and axioms. However, this fresh work offers a key innovation in its ‘pyramidal’ graph system for the logical formalization of all these items. The author has developed this new methodology on the basis of original research, traditional logical instruments such as Porphyrian trees, and modern concepts of classification, in which pyramids are the central organizing concept. The pyramidal schema enables both the content of concepts and the relations between the concept positions in the pyramid to be read off from the graph. Logical connectors are analyzed in terms of the direction in which they connect within the pyramid. Additionally, the author shows that logical connectors are of fundamentally different types: only one sort generates propositions with truth values, while the other yields conceptual expressions or complex concepts. On this basis, strong arguments are developed against adopting the non-discriminating connector definitions implicit in Wittgensteinian truth-value tables. Special consideration is given to mathematical connectors so as to illuminate the formation of concepts in the natural sciences. To show what the pyramidal method can contribute to science, a pyramid of the number concepts prevalent in mathematics is constructed. The book also counters the logical dogma of ‘false’ contradictory propositions and sheds new light on the logical characteristics of probable propositions, as well as on syllogistic and other inferences.

In this book, Ewers provides students and professors with a new system of categorization for a differentiated description of children’s literature. In the early 1970s, Swedish children’s literature scholar Göte Kingberg worked to establish a system of scientific terminology for international use, but these terms are now somewhat antiquated. This book offers a much-needed update, systematically analyzing the field and articulating its key definitions, terms, and concepts. International in scope, this study touches on subjects including the distribution of primers and textbooks, the means by which children’s books are evaluated and classified, and the ways in which children’s literature can find an adult audience. Also discussed are the system of symbols, norms, concepts, and discourses that have evolved during the past two centuries, leading to an investigation of how authors and publishers have endeavored to make literature "appropriate" for children and of what it means to accommodate children’s needs, wishes, and values. Throughout, Ewers provides concrete examples and clear definitions of terms so that any scholar interested in children’s literature will find this book approachable, insightful, and one that crosses cultural boundaries.