From abortion to same-sex marriage, today's most urgent political debates will hinge on this two-part question: What did the United States Constitution originally mean and who now understands its meaning best? Rakove chronicles the Constitution from inception to ratification and, in doing so, traces its complex weave of ideology and interest, showing how this document has meant different things at different times to different groups of Americans.

Pathways to the Origin and Evolition of Meanings in the Universe The book explains why meaning is a part of the universe populated by life, and how organisms generate meanings and then use them for creative transformation of the environment and themselves. This book focuses on interdisciplinary research at the intersection of biology, semiotics, philosophy, ethology, information theory, and the theory of evolution. Such a broad approach provides a rich context for the study of organisms and other semiotic agents in their environments. This methodology can be applied to robotics and artificial intelligence for developing robust, adaptable learning devices. In this book, leading interdisciplinary scholars reveal their vision on how to integrate natural sciences with semiotics, a theory of meaning-making and signification. Developments in biology indicate that the capacity to create and understand signs is not limited to humans or vertebrate animals, but exists in all living organisms - the fact that inspired the integration of biology and semiotics into biosemiotics. The authors discuss the nature of semiotic agents (organisms and other autonomous goal-directed units), meaning, signs, information, memory, evolution, and consciousness. Also discussed are issues including the origin of life, potential meaning and its actualization, top-down causality in physics and biology, capacity of organisms to encode their functions, the strategy of organisms to combine homeostasis with direct adaptation to new life-cycle phases or new environments, multi-level memory systems, increase of freedom via enabling constraints, creative modeling in evolution and learning, communication in animals and humans, the origin and function of language, and the distribution and transfer of life in space. This is the first book on biosemiotics in its global conceptual and spatial scope. Biosemiotics is presented using the language of natural sciences, which supports the scientific grounding of semiotic terms. Finally, the cosmic dimension of life and meaning-making leads to a reconsideration of ethical principles and ecological mentality here on earth and in space exploration. Audience Theoretical biologists, ethologists, astrobiologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, philosophers, phenomenologists, semioticians, biosemioticians, molecular biologists, linguists, system scientists and engineers.

Preliminary material -- THE MITHRAIC ORIGIN AND MEANINGS OF THE ROTAS-SATOR SQUARE -- APPENDIX -- BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE ROTAS-SATOR/SATOR-ROTAS SQUARE -- LIST OF PLATES -- PLATES I-V.

This book examines the fundamental issues of Marxism in the 21st century and explores its contributions through the explanatory framework of the unity of continuity and stages, spatial and temporal analysis, and the dialectical relationship of universality and particularity of Marxist historical development. Marxism in the 21st century is a concept closely related to the historical changes of capitalism and the historical shift of the centre of the socialist movement. Marxism in the 21st century should be developed on the basis of the continuation of the fundamental position, value orientation, ideals and beliefs, basic principles and methodological principles of Marxism. This book explores the logic of the development of modernisation in contemporary China and the world, the communication and interaction between contemporary China and the world, and the coexistence of socialism and capitalism. It also examines the relationship between the adaptation of Marxism to the Chinese context, Marxism in contemporary China and in the 21st century. The book also discusses Xi Jinping's Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, which provides a scientific theoretical system for interpreting the contemporary world and could become the core theoretical form of Marxism in the 21st century. The book will be essential reading for students and scholars of Marxism, Chinese studies and modernisation theory.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

A Federalist Notable Book “An important contribution to our understanding of the 14th Amendment.” —Wall Street Journal “By any standard an important contribution...A must-read.” —National Review “The most detailed legal history to date of the constitutional amendment that changed American law more than any before or since...The corpus of legal scholarship is richer for it.” —Washington Examiner Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment profoundly changed the Constitution, giving the federal judiciary and Congress new powers to protect the fundamental rights of individuals from being violated by the states. Yet, the Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ignored the original meaning of its key Section I clauses. Barnett and Bernick contend that the Fourteenth Amendment must be understood as the culmination of decades of debate about the meaning of the antebellum Constitution. In the course of this debate, antislavery advocates advanced arguments informed by natural rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the common law, as well as what is today called public-meaning originalism. The authors show how these arguments and the principles of the Declaration in particular eventually came to modify the Constitution. They also propose workable doctrines for implementing the amendment’s key provisions covering the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process, and equal protection under the law.

This book traces the origins and the evolutions of many popular children stories; the history and hidden meaning of the world's greatest fairy tales. There are tales we heard as children that we tell to our children, but where did they come from. More importantly what do they mean? An excellent resource for anyone interested in children's literature or world folklore.