Best Selling Books by John Foster

In "An Essay on the Evils of Popular Ignorance," John Foster presents a compelling examination of the societal ramifications of widespread ignorance, articulating a call for intellectual engagement and enlightenment. Employing a blend of persuasive rhetoric and poignant philosophical insights, Foster critiques the complacency often found within the populace, revealing how ignorance can lead to moral decay and hinder progress. The literary style reflects the early 19th-century Enlightenment values, marked by clarity and depth, as Foster navigates the topics of education, civic responsibility, and the pursuit of knowledge within a rapidly changing societal landscape. John Foster, a prominent essayist and critic of his time, was influenced by the tumultuous socio-political climate of early 19th-century England. His experience in witnessing the struggles surrounding education and public discourse deeply informed his perspective on the importance of intellectual awakening. Foster''s passion for literature and moral philosophy is evident throughout the essay, as he strives to illuminate the dangers of passive ignorance while promoting enlightenment as a vehicle for social progress. Readers seeking a profound understanding of the intersections between knowledge, morality, and social responsibility will find Foster''s essay both enlightening and relevant. This work not only stimulates critical thought but also serves as a timely reminder of the importance of fostering an informed and thoughtful society.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.

The famous bone beds of the Morrison Formation, formed one hundred and fifty million years ago and running from Wyoming down through the red rock region of the American Southwest, have yielded one of the most complete pictures of any ancient vertebrate ecosystem in the world. Jurassic West, Second Edition tells the story of the life of this ancient world as scientists have so far been able to reconstruct it. Aimed at the general reader, Jurassic West, Second Edition recounts the discovery of many important Late Jurassic dinosaurs such as Apatosaurus, Allosaurus, and Stegosaurus. But dinosaurs compose barely a third of the more than 90 types of vertebrates known from the formation, which include crocodiles and turtles, frogs and salamanders, dinosaurs and mammals, clams and snails, and ginkgoes, ferns, and conifers. Featuring nearly all new illustrations, the second edition of this classic work includes new taxa named since 2007, updates to the naming and classifications of some old taxa, and expanded sections on numerous aspects of Morrison Formation paleontology and geology.

John Foster presents a clear and powerful discussion of a range of topics relating to our understanding of the universe: induction, laws of nature, and the existence of God. He begins by developing a solution to the problem of induction - a solution whose key idea is that the regularities in the workings of nature that have held in our experience hitherto are to be explained by appeal to the controlling influence of laws, as forms of natural necessity. His second line of argumentfocuses on the issue of what we should take such necessitational laws to be, and whether we can even make sense of them at all. Having considered and rejected various alternatives, Foster puts forward his own proposal: the obtaining of a law consists in the causal imposing of a regularity on theuniverse as a regularity. With this causal account of laws in place, he is now equipped to offer an argument for theism. His claim is that natural regularities call for explanation, and that, whatever explanatory role we may initially assign to laws, the only plausible ultimate explanation is in terms of the agency of God. Finally, he argues that, once we accept the existence of God, we need to think of him as creating the universe by a method which imposes regularities on it in the relevantlaw-yielding way. In this new perspective, the original nomological-explanatory solution to the problem of induction becomes a theological-explanatory solution.The Divine Lawmaker is bold and original in its approach, and rich in argument. The issues on which it focuses are among the most important in the whole epistemological and metaphysical spectrum.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1883.