Tom Nichols

People are now exposed to more information than ever before, provided both by technology and by increasing access to every level of education. These societal gains, however, have also helped fuel a surge in narcissistic and misguided intellectual egalitarianism that has crippled informed debates on any number of issues. Today, everyone knows everything: with only a quick trip through WebMD or Wikipedia, average citizens believe themselves to be on an equal intellectual footing with doctors and diplomats. All voices, even the most ridiculous, demand to be taken with equal seriousness, and any claim to the contrary is dismissed as undemocratic elitism. As Tom Nichols shows in The Death of Expertise, this rejection of experts has occurred for many reasons, including the openness of the internet, the emergence of a customer satisfaction model in higher education, and the transformation of the news industry into a 24-hour entertainment machine. Paradoxically, the increasingly democratic dissemination of information, rather than producing an educated public, has instead created an army of ill-informed and angry citizens who denounce intellectual achievement. Nichols has deeper concerns than the current rejection of expertise and learning, noting that when ordinary citizens believe that no one knows more than anyone else, democratic institutions themselves are in danger of falling either to populism or to technocracy-or in the worst case, a combination of both. The Death of Expertise is not only an exploration of a dangerous phenomenon but also a warning about the stability and survival of modern democracy in the Information Age.

The Death of Expertise

A contrarian yet highly engaging account of the spread of illiberal and anti-democratic sentiment throughout our culture that places responsibility on the citizens themselves. Over the past three decades, citizens of democracies who claim to value freedom, tolerance, and the rule of law have increasingly embraced illiberal politicians and platforms. Democracy is in trouble--but who is really to blame? In Our Own Worst Enemy, Tom Nichols challenges the current depictions of the rise of illiberal and anti-democratic movements in the United States and elsewhere as the result of the deprivations of globalization or the malign decisions of elites. Rather, he places the blame for the rise of illiberalism on the people themselves. Nichols traces the illiberalism of the 21st century to the growth of unchecked narcissism, rising standards of living, global peace, and a resistance to change. Ordinary citizens, laden with grievances, have joined forces with political entrepreneurs who thrive on the creation of rage rather than on the encouragement of civic virtue and democratic cooperation. While it will be difficult, Nichols argues that we need to defend democracy by resurrecting the virtues of altruism, compromise, stoicism, and cooperation--and by recognizing how good we've actually had it in the modern world. Trenchant, contrarian, and highly engaging, Our Own Worst Enemy reframes the debate about how democracies have ended up in this dire state of affairs and what to do about it.

The Assault from Within on Modern Democracy

Our Own Worst Enemy

Seberapa pentingkah vaksinasi? Benarkah bumi itu datar? Apakah telur baik untuk dikonsumsi? Pada era informasi seperti sekarang yang menjawab pertanyaan-pertanyaan semacam itu bukan hanya pakar, melainkan juga para penganut teori konspirasi orang awam sok tahu, hingga pesohor yang menyesatkan. Kadang, dalam rimba informasi masa kini penjelasan pakar tidak didengar, sementara jawaban dari tokoh yang mempunyai banyak pengikut justru lebih dipercaya dan membahayakan banyak orang. Tom Nichols memotret dengan baik realitas tersebut menggunakan istilah matinya kepakaran. Profesor US Naval War College dan Harvard Extension School itu menunjukkan bagaimana pendapat yang salah bisa dianggap sebagai kebenaran. Parahnya, pihak-pihak yang seharusnya memberikan pencerahan, seperti perguruan tinggi, media, hingga kalangan pakar itu sendiri, kadang justru memiliki andil dalam membunuh kepakaran. Matinya kepakaran adalah pesan agar semua orang mencari dan memperoleh informasi dari sumber yang tepat demi kebaikan dirinya sendiri dan orang lain. Pesan tersebut penting bukan hanya untuk kegiatan sehari-hari, melainkan juga untuk menentukan arah suatu negeri. Saat pakar dimusuhi dan anti intelektualisme kian marak, jalan menuju kekuasaan yang korup terbuka lebar, dan nasib demokrasi pun terancam. Informasi Buku Judul : Matinya Kepakaran Penulis : Tom Nichols ISBN : 9786024810733 Penerbit : Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia Tahun Terbit : 2018 Jumlah Halaman : 312 halaman Berat : 0.610 kg Jenis Cover : Soft Cover Dimensi : 23 x 15 cm Bahasa : Bahasa Indonesia

Matinya Kepakaran

The fifteenth century saw the evolution of a distinct and powerfully influential European artistic culture. But what does the familiar phrase Renaissance Art actually refer to? Through engaging discussion of timeless works by artists such as Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo, and supported by illustrations including colour plates, Tom Nichols offers a masterpiece of his own as he explores the truly original and diverse character of the art of the Renaissance.

A Beginner's Guide

Renaissance Art

Art and architecture have always been central to Venice but in the Renaissance period, between c.1440 and 1600, they reached a kind of apotheosis when many of the city's new buildings, sculpture, and paintings took on distinctive and original qualities. The spread of Renaissance values provided leading artists such as Gentile and Giovanni Bellini, Giorgione, Palladio, Titian, and Tintoretto with a licence for artistic invention. This inventiveness however also needs to be understood in relation to the artists and artworks that still conformed to the more traditional, corporate, and public values of "Venetianness"' (Venezianità). By adopting a chronological approach, with each chapter covering a successive twenty-five year period, and focusing attention on the artists, Tom Nichols presents a vivid and easily navigable study of Venetian Renaissance art. Through close visual analyses of specific works from architecture to illuminated manuscripts, he puts the formative power of art back at the heart of this remarkable story.

From Tradition to Individualism

Renaissance Art in Venice

Giorgione's Ambiguity

This book examines how sustainability has the potential to transform both the fashion system and the innovators who work within it. Sustainability is arguably the defining theme of the twenty-first century. The issues in fashion are broad-ranging and include labour abuses, toxic chemicals use and conspicuous consumption, giving rise to an undeniable tension between fashion and sustainability. The book is organized in three parts. The first part is concerned with transforming fashion products across the garment's lifecycle and includes innovation in materials, manufacture, distribution, use and re-use. The second part looks at ideas that are transforming the fashion system at root into something more sustainable, including new business models that reduce material throughput. The third section is concerned with transforming the role of fashion designers and looks to examples where the designer changes from a stylist or creator into a communicator, activist or facilitator.

"In the early 1990s, a small group of "AIDS denialists," including a University of California professor named Peter Duesberg, argued against virtually the entire medical establishment's consensus that the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) was the cause of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Science thrives on such counterintuitive challenges, but there was no evidence for Duesberg's beliefs, which turned out to be baseless. Once researchers found HIV, doctors and public health officials were able to save countless lives through measures aimed at preventing its transmission"--

The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters

Picturing the Social Margins

Others and Outcasts in Early Modern Europe

AA. VV.

Giorgio Tagliaferro

Marie-Louise Lillywhite

Over the past twenty years or so it has finally been understood that Jacopo Tintoretto (1518/19-1594) is an old master of the very highest calibre, whose sharp visual intelligence and brilliant oil technique provides a match for any painter of any time. Based on papers given at a conference held at Keble College, Oxford, to mark the quincentenary of Tintoretto’s birth, this volume comprises ten new essays written by an international range of scholars that open many fresh perspectives on this remarkable Venetian painter. Reflecting current ‘hot spots’ in Tintoretto studies, and suggesting fruitful avenues for future research, chapters explore aspects of the artist’s professional and social identity; his graphic oeuvre and workshop practice; his secular and sacred works in their cultural context; and the emergent artistic personality of his painter-son Domenico. Building upon the opening-up of the Tintoretto phenomenon to less fixed or partial viewpoints in recent years, this volume reveals the great master’s painting practice as excitingly experimental, dynamic, open-ended, and original.

Jacopo Tintoretto: Identity, Practice, Meaning

Jacopo Tintoretto (1518–94) is an ambiguous figure in the history of art. His radically unorthodox paintings are not readily classifiable, and although he was a Venetian by birth, his standing as a member of the Venetian school is constantly contested. But he was also a formidable maverick, abandoning the humanist narratives and sensuous color palette typical of the great Venetian master, Titian, in favor of a renewed concentration on core Christian subjects painted in a rough and abbreviated chiaroscuro style. This generously illustrated book offers an extensive analysis of Tintoretto’s greatest paintings, charting his life and work in the context of Venetian art and the culture of the Cinquecento. Tom Nichols shows that Tintoretto was an extraordinarily innovative artist who created a new manner of painting, which, for all of its originality and sophistication, was still able to appeal to the shared emotions of the widest possible audience. This compact, pocket edition features sixteen additional illustrations and a new afterword by the author, and it will continue to be one of the definitive treatments of this once grossly overlooked master.

Tradition and Identity

Tintoretto

Titian is best known for paintings that embodied the tradition of the Venetian Renaissance—but how Venetian was the artist himself? In this study, Tom Nichols probes the tensions between the individualism of Titian’s work and the conservative mores of the city, showing how his art undermined the traditional self-suppressing approach to painting in Venice and reflected his engagement with the individualistic cultures emerging in the courts of early modern Europe. Ranging widely across Titian’s long career and varied works, Titian and the End of the Venetian Renaissance outlines his radical innovations to the traditional Venetian altarpiece; his transformation of portraits into artistic creations; and his meteoric breakout from the confines of artistic culture in Venice. Nichols explores how Titian challenged the city’s communal values with his competitive professional identity, contending that his intensely personalized way of painting resulted in a departure that effectively brought an end to the Renaissance tradition of painting. Packed with 170 illustrations, this groundbreaking book will change the way people look at Titian and Venetian art history.

And the End of the Venetian Renaissance

Titian

Others and Outcasts in Early Modern Europe is the first book to focus directly on the visual representation of marginal and outcast people in early modern Europe. The volume offers a comprehensive and groundbreaking analysis of a wide range of images featuring Jews and Turks, roguish beggars, syphilitics and plague victims, the 'deserving poor', toothpullers, beggar philosophers, black slaves, itinerant actors and street hawkers. Its broad geographical and chronological scope allows the reader to build a wider picture of visual strategies and conventions for the depiction of the poor and the marginal as they developed in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Britain and Ireland. While such types had often been depicted in earlier centuries, the essays show that they came to play a newly significant and formative role in European art between 1500 and 1750. Marking a clear departure from much previous scholarship on the subject - which has tended to view representations of poverty as passive by-products of non-visual forces - these essays place the image itself at the centre of the investigation. The studies show that many depictions of socially marginal people operated in essentially hegemonic fashion, as a way of controlling or fixing the social and moral identity of those living on the edge. At the same time, they also reveal the inventiveness and originality of many early modern artists in dealing with this subject matter, showing how the sophisticated visuality of their representations could render meaning ambiguous in relation to such controlling discourses.

Tom Nichols

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