The Great Courses (Firm)

Logic is intellectual self-defense against such assaults on reason and also a method of quality control for checking the validity of your own views. But beyond these very practical benefits, informal logic—the kind we apply in daily life—is the gateway to an elegant and fascinating branch of philosophy known as formal logic, which is philosophy’s equivalent to calculus. Formal logic is a breathtakingly versatile tool. Much like a Swiss army...

Quantum mechanics gives us a picture of the world so radically counterintuitive that it has changed our perspective on reality itself. In Quantum Mechanics: The Physics of the Microscopic World, award-winning Professor Benjamin Schumacher gives you the logical tools to grasp the paradoxes and astonishing insights of this field.

Have we reached the point where robots are becoming just like—if not better than—human beings? Probe this fascinating question by examining recent developments in artificial intelligence, robot bipedalism and dexterity, the concept of the “uncanny valley,” and three imitation games (including the classic Turing test) to determine where we stand with humanoid robots..

What's the difference between green asparagus and white? Is rhubarb a vegetable or a fruit? Find out as Chef Briwa demonstrates grilled asparagus with heirloom tomatoes; white asparagus topped with browned bread crumbs and slivered lemon peel; a Korean spinach salad; and rhubarb chutney, or mostarda, with roasted pork loin.

Travel through time to the golden ages of 12 of Europe's most beautiful medieval cities. In 24 lessons that use extensive location footage, you'll discover the sights, sounds, and smells of teeming markets and mercantile centers, royal feasts and ritual, dramatic military engagements, magnificent religious pageantry, and the many colorful layers of daily medieval life.

Learn the gender of Spanish nouns by practicing each new noun with its masculine or feminine definite article. Grasp how the suffixes of nouns can help identify their gender. Study how to make nouns plural, practice pronouncing Spanish consonants, and learn the letters of the Spanish alphabet..

Explore ways that teachers and students behave in classrooms across the globe, focusing on what seems to work in a few key systems. Discover why practices that produce a great outcome in one place—such as lengthening the school year—don’t necessarily lead to success in another..

Travel enthusiasts take note: this is your ticket to capturing the beauty and awe of any scene, anywhere in the world. Filled with practical tips, techniques, and field demonstrations, this course, taught by National Geographic photographer Joel Sartore, helps you learn to see the world through the eyes of a professional photographer, so you can take compelling travel photographs worth framing and sharing.

Does it seem like a lot of the most popular books for young adults lately have been dystopias? In this lecture, explore why teens are so drawn to dystopia, what current anxieties are being tracked in this large body of YA literature, and what the impact of this literature on young adult readers has been. You'll also discover why this subgenre is so popular with adults.

Take a step beyond Aristotle to evaluate sentences whose truth cannot be proved by his system. Learn about truth-functional logic, pioneered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by the German philosopher Gottlob Frege. This approach addresses the behavior of truth-functional connectives, such as "not,"and,"or,"and "if"—and that is the basis of computer logic, the way computers "think.”