The astronomy lecturing trade in Britain experienced a theatrical turn in the early 1800s, as practitioners relied on larger and more elaborate visual aids to enhance the scenic and dramatic effects of their traveling spectacles. Commercial and Sublime explores this phenomenon in the long nineteenth century, a time when astronomical shows rose in popularity and the lecturing trade developed a commercial side where business, profits, and competition took center stage. Astronomy lecturing during this period, Hsiang-Fu Huang reveals, also heavily exploited the notion of the sublime, where displays and the rhetoric of awe and wonder were meant to arouse religious sentiment by pointing to the sublimity of the universe and the Creator behind it. His book explores the various practitioners, sites, curriculums, apparatus, and audiences of popular astronomy lectures, focusing specifically on those outside the scientific elite whose commercial endeavors opened up a flourishing market for various types of performances, including Lent shows in theaters, courses in learned or mechanics' institutes, and itinerant lectures around provincial towns and in the surrounding countryside.

This book comprehensively explains the meaning, scope, and applications of all important clauses in business contracts. The clauses include, among others, integration, no oral modification, termination, damages and indemnity clauses. The book engages the reader with its innovative approach that the clauses are founded on common sense principles of contract law. It draws from the English court judgments, mostly the United Kingdom Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal, which have been at the forefront in expeditiously interpreting the contract terms. As the same clauses are being used everywhere, the book is relevant in all the jurisdictions. The contract terms are being borrowed, adopted and adapted globally and the courts are interpreting the meaning and scope of the terms. Business managers, business leaders, government officers and policy makers, world over, work with domestic and international contracts and will find take-aways from the book. Students of business management and business studies can use it as a textbook for elective courses in business management on negotiating and managing business contracts. It can also be used as a textbook for executive education of business managers and government officers.

This volume explores the work of Mary B. Hesse (1924-2016), a pivotal figure in twentieth-century philosophy of science. At a time when the foundations of an integrated approach to the history and philosophy of science were being established, Hesse, as a female philosopher, offered a distinctive and influential contribution grounded in a post-empiricist understanding of the natural sciences. Central to her thought was a focus on the metaphorical and analogical value of scientific language, in contrast to views assessing its literal significance. Hesse also departed from traditional hypothetico-deductive accounts of scientific methodology and theory structure, advancing instead perspectives rooted in both historical and contemporary scientific practices.
To mark the centenary of her birth, this book brings together an international group of scholars to re-examine and engage with Hesse's intellectual legacy. The chapters address the central themes of her work and situate them within her broader philosophical context. Each contribution adopts a cross-disciplinary perspective, highlighting the continued relevance of Hesse's ideas to current debates in the philosophy of science.
This volume will be of particular interest to scholars in the history and philosophy of science, as well as those engaged in gender studies and the study of women in philosophy.

This edited volume examines how recent technological innovations are transforming European insurance law, focusing on critical issues such as transparency, information duties, fairness, and the regulation of insurance contracts for both professional and private policyholders. While new business models, like digital platforms and robo-advisory services, are rapidly emerging, European law has yet to provide a sufficiently tailored regulatory response. The current sectoral framework, notably Directive (EU) 2016/97 on insurance distribution (IDD), offers a general, principle-based approach, but lacks the specificity needed to effectively address innovative digital insurance distribution models. In parallel, broader regulatory initiatives such as the EU Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) are poised to reshape the digital insurance ecosystem. The EU AI Act introduces horizontal rules governing AI systems, including those used in automated underwriting, risk profiling, and robo-advisory services, thereby directly affecting the design and accountability of algorithmic tools in insurance distribution, especially those deemed high-risk. The DSA imposes new responsibilities on digital platforms, with potential implications for InsurTech firms acting as intermediaries or aggregators. Additionally, there is ongoing uncertainty as to whether existing consumer protection instrument, such as the Unfair Contract Terms Directive (93/13/EEC), the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive (2005/29/EC), and the Omnibus Directive (2019/2161/EC), are sufficient to address the novel risks and challenges posed by digital insurance services. Meanwhile, regulatory guidance from supervisory bodies such as EIOPA and national authorities is increasingly addressing InsurTech-related legal questions in a more targeted manner. By providing a normative and comparative legal analysis, this volume addresses a significant gap in current scholarship. It calls on legal scholars and insurance experts to reassess the role of technology in shaping EU insurance law and to reflect on whether the regulatory principle of technological neutrality remains viable. Ultimately, the book argues for an integrated regulatory approach that aligns socio-technical governance with the specific demands of insurance law, ensuring effective consumer protection in an increasingly digital landscape.

This second edition of Norwood Russell Hanson's Constellations and Conjectures, a philosophical history of astronomy originally published in 1973, provides significant updates and corrections to the original text. The new edition also features an introduction by Matthew D. Lund, author of N.R. Hanson: Observation, Discovery, and Scientific Change (Humanity Books, 2010), that contextualizes the book and Hanson's legacy.

Hanson, a driving force behind the creation of History and Philosophy of Science (HPS) as a new subject of study in the post-war period, saw history and philosophy of science as mutually interdependent and illuminating. Hanson brought Wittgensteinian ordinary language philosophy to bear on the concepts of science, and his treatments of observation, discovery, and the theory-ladenness of scientific facts remain central to the philosophy of science. Additionally, Hanson was one of philosophy's great personalities, and his charm and sense of humor come through clearly in the pages of Constellations and Conjectures.

Hanson's vivid writing and drawings bring to life humanity's perennial fascination for the heavens. While some might view the history of science as a repository of error and confusion, Hanson argues that intelligibility emerges incrementally and, in the end, triumphantly, as history unfolds. Astronomy's history is viewed as a sort of grand romance where the ideals of prediction and explanation continually elude and evade each other, until their destined union. This book is of interest to scholars of philosophy and the history of astronomy.

From the perspective of the market, this book discusses the basic theories and operation mechanism of intellectual property transactions based on the behavior choice theory, aiming to deeply understand how the specific systems and rules of intellectual property are operated or applied beyond the external form of system application.

China's long-standing intellectual property legal doctrines and the corresponding knowledge system (whether legislative, judicial or theoretical research) deserve reflection in three aspects: (i) the neglect of market principles; (ii) the lack of behaviorism research perspectives and methods, and (iii) the lack of systematic degree of existing research. This book is an introspection on the basic theoretical research of intellectual property in China from the above three aspects.

This book closely focuses on the coupling relationship between "system implementation" and "behavior choice," along with the logical context of intellectual property transactions, the institutional mechanism behind the specific transaction forms is investigated, and its benefits are analyzed. And, the essence of the economic mechanism of the intellectual property system is deeply interpreted from both theoretical and practical aspects.

The target audience is intellectual property law researcher, and the content level is the theoretical foundation research.

Starting from the principles of the entitlement of intellectual property, this book tries to reveal the institutional implication of the creation of right, the boundary of right and the attribute of right. And, this book also tries to sort out the matching attribute between the existing intellectual property systems and the operation of the intellectual property market. Finally, by analyzing the correlation between the market environment and the subject's behavior choice, this book tries to clarify the internal logic between "system," "market" and "behavior." These aforesaid features will help IP researchers deeply understand how existing legal systems and rules affect specific intellectual property transactions.