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Contemporary speech production theory is introduced as the basis for modelling expression and emotive content in speech. The necessity for a computational approach is argued, together with the need for adequate testing of the models. Adding naturalness to synthetic speech, in the form of expressive content, is outlined as well as ideas about the inseparable relationship between production and perception.

The development of musical capacity occurs through informal and spontaneous means (enculturation) as well as through deliberate learning activities (instruction and practice). This chapter reviews the evidence that enculturation plays a major role in the development of musical capacity, looking at the first year of life, pre-school development, and further development up to the age of ten. At these ages, similarities between children are more marked than differences. Deliberate practice is examined as a means of acquiring a wide range of automated procedural knowledge, and production system theory is applied to the learning of a musical instrument. The chapter also discusses the utility of a test of music ability as a means of assessing underlying cognitive capacity.

This chapter examines production regimes and their idiosyncracies, with particular reference to the co-evolution of economic and legal institutions in the varieties of capitalism. It first considers two theories that explain the institutional varieties of capitalism, namely, the theory of production regimes and the theory of institutional co-selection. It then looks at the theory of self-organising social systems as well as its critique of the theories of production regimes and co-selection. It also discusses the theory of autopoietic social systems and its emphasis on self-organisation and self-reproduction, together with the multi-polarity and cyclicity of production regimes. The chapter concludes by outlining the main assumptions of autopoiesis theory, focusing on just-in-time contracts in the United States and Germany.

Chief among Homberg’s long-term goals was the formulation of a comprehensive and experimentally-based theory of chymistry. Chapter 3 provides a close examination of Homberg’s first attempt, in the 1690s, to develop such a theory. In attempting to write a textbook, Homberg diverged significantly from the established seventeenth-century French didactic tradition, thus highlighting the distinctness of his own vision of chymistry. This chapter begins the examination (continued in Chapter 4) of how scientific theories develop and how individual observations are crafted into broader explanatory theories. Chymistry provides a special case, thanks to the complicated results that chymical experiments ordinarily provide, full of qualitative data and, as Homberg insisted, direct sensory information of sight, smell, touch, taste, and occasionally sound. Consequently, an important part of this study focuses on the dynamic character and changing content of scientific ideas and explanations of observations in response to experimental results. A close analysis of Homberg’s constantly changing ideas is made possible by the survival of four sequential versions of his “textbook” of chymistry, two of which, lost for nearly three hundred years, were recovered while carrying out the research for this book.

Chapter 4 recounts how Homberg’s social position changed dramatically at the start of the eighteenth century, and how that transformed his ability to pursue chymistry when Philippe II, Duc d’Orléans, became both his patron and his collaborator. With Homberg’s participation, Philippe transformed part of his residence at Palais Royal into a lavish chymical laboratory where Philippe and Homberg pursued an array of chymical endeavors, and where other academicians worked under Homberg’s guidance. Philippe equipped the laboratory with the most extraordinary scientific instrument of the day—a gigantic burning lens made by Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus capable of focusing concentrated sunlight onto chemical substances. Homberg’s first experiments with this device caused him to abandon his new textbook just a few months after he began writing it, and immerse himself in a fervent program of focused research, at the end of which he completely revised his chymical theory with the stunning claim that light incorporated with matter lay at the heart of all chymical change and activity. Significantly, the most profound changes to Homberg’s chymical system can be clearly and convincingly tied to the results of specific experiments.

This chapter focuses on Umberto Eco's semiotic approach to the distinction between linguistic activity and extralinguistic reality. Semiotics is divided into two parts: the theory of codes and the theory of sign production. The first part of the discussion analyzes the relationship between signifier and signified, while the latter part deals with the sign-referent relations. Eco's vocabulary is cautiously chosen to integrate a disciplined reduction of the world of referents to a continuously changing “semantic global universe.” His goal is to shift the examination of the pragmatics of reference from the analysis of the theory of codes to that of the theory of sign production. Eco discusses sign production in terms of the types of labor required to interpret signs or texts, stating that metaphor and metonymy falls under the category of rhetorical labor.

The major themes addressed in the book are summarized including how political and economic conditions shaped the sustainable agriculture movement and how the movement developed organizationally. Structural conditions during the first decades of the movement steered organic proponents towards a market-based reform strategy that relied upon private certification systems. Over time this decentralized grassroots movement developed a more formal organizational structure. This brought strategic and ideological differences to the fore, especially when organic advocates turned towards the state for support. “Spreaders” and “tillers” differed on whether it was better to rapidly expand the organic market with the support of state and corporate actors or if it was more important to safeguard strict standards even if that would limit organic growth. Organic movement strategy is examined through the lens of competing environmental sociology theories.

In her 1915 novel Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman devotes an entire chapter to the religion of her all-woman utopia but offers no clues as to industry and political economy. This creates contradictions and ambiguities, especially with respect to the actual level of industrial development and the nature of governance in Herland. This chapter examines gender and some of the political and economic theories that underpin Herland, along with its depiction of an all-female utopia. It argues that there is an ambivalence towards technology in the novel, as well as teasing gaps and absences in the narrative regarding precise methods of production. To convey her theories of production indirectly, Gilman exploits the literal and metaphorical meanings of forestry, which the chapter suggests is an industry suitable to her political and economic vision.