The presented study introduces a new theoretical model of collapse for social, cultural, or political systems. Based on the current form of quantum anthropology conceptualized by Heidi Ann Russell, further development of this field is provided. The new theoretical model is called the spiral model of collapses, and is suggested to provide an analytical framework for collapses in social, cultural, and political systems. The main conclusions of this study are: 1) The individual crises in the period before a collapse (...) of social, cultural, and political systems form the trajectory of a conical helix similar to a vortex. 2) The occurrences of crises in the period before a collapse have the shape of the trajectory on the surface of the circular cone with a convex wall narrowing up to its peak. The shape of this cone is based on the Fibonacci sequence coiled into the three-dimensional space. 3) The constant circular movement along the trajectory of crises can occur in exceptional situations in the development of social, cultural, and political systems; however, such a state is always temporary. In such cases, the trajectory of the crisis does not follow the Fibonacci sequence, but the shape of a regular helix. Remaining on the trajectory of a regular helix in the long-term is highly improbable for social, cultural, and political systems. 4) The creation of new potentialities after the final collapse of a system is explained by the conception of topological inversion, when the heretofore embodied part of the energy-information field returns to the global, wave-particle energy-information potential. 5) The global, wave-particle energy-information potential is a source of energy-information for future embodiments in the sense of the future collapses of wave functions. (shrink)

Building on research in anthropology and philosophy, one can make a distinction between type I and type II energy ethics as a framework for advancing public debate about energy. Type I holds energy production and use as a fundamental good and is grounded in the assumption that increases in energy production and consumption result in increases in human wellbeing. Conversely, type II questions the linear relationship between energy production and progress by examining questions of (...) equity and human happiness. The type I versus type II framework helps to advance public debates about energy that address broad questions of profitability, regulation, and the environment, and in the process poses fundamental questions about the reverence for energy growth in advanced technological societies. (shrink)

There are many theories of the drivers of energy use in buildings and how this evolves over different timescales. Moezzi and Lutzenhiser (2010, p. 4) characterized these perspectives as technology—in which energy use is determined by the characteristics of buildings and technologies; economics—in which the consumer is conceived as an economically rational utility maximizer; psychology—in which individuals' mental processes give rise to consumption choices; and sociology, anthropology, and social studies of technology—in which patterns of consumption are socially-negotiated (...) and larger social systems exert substantial influence. With these differences in theoretical approach come differences in epistemology, ranging .. (shrink)

Investigating the concepts and material realities of energy coursing through the arts: a foundational text. This book investigates energies—in the plural, the energies embedded and embodied in everything under the sun— as they are expressed in the arts. With contributions from scholars and critics from the visual arts, art history, anthropology, music, literature, and the history of science, it offers the first multidisciplinary investigation of the concepts and material realities of energy coursing through the arts. Just as (...) Douglas Kahn's earlier books helped introduce sound as a category for study in the arts, this new volume will be a foundational volume for future explorers in a largely uncharted domain. The modern concept of energy is only two hundred years old—an abstraction grounded in extraction—but this book takes a more expansive view. It opens with a clap: the sonic energies in a ceremony of the indigenous Goolarabooloo people of Australia. Other chapters explore the energies of photography; responses of artists in the early twentieth century—including Marcel Duchamp—to scientific discoveries in electricity and electromagnetism; the aestheticization of entropy in works by Hans Haacke and Robert Smithson; free-jazz musician Milford Graves's cross-cultural engagement with music, science, and spiritualism; energy field performance; and the self-generating energy of rumor and gossip as artwork. Contributors include such leading scholars as Linda Dalrymple Henderson, John Tresch, and Caroline A. Jones. Practicing artists and students of art history will find Energies in the Arts an essential work. Contributors Susan Ballard, Jennifer Biddle, Marcus Boon, Joan Brassil, Steven Connor, Milford Graves, Daniel Hackbarth, Linda Dalrymple Henderson, Caroline A. Jones, Douglas Kahn, David Mather, Stephen Muecke, James Nisbet, Daniela Silvestrin, Michael Taussig, John Tresch, Melissa Warak. (shrink)

Energy humanities is a field of scholarship that, like medical humanities and digital humanities before it, overcomes traditional boundaries between the disciplines and between academic and applied research. Like its predecessors, energy humanities highlights the essential contribution that the insights and methods of the human sciences can make to areas of study and analysis once thought best left to the natural sciences. This isn't a case of the humanities simply helping their cross-campus colleagues to learn the mechanics of (...) communication so that they might better articulate their ideas. Rather, these fields of scholarship are ones that demonstrate how the scale and complexity of the issues being explored demand insights and approaches that transcend old school disciplinary boundaries. Energy Humanities : A Reader offers a carefully curated selection of the best and most influential work in energy humanities that has appeared over the past decade. To stay true to the diverse work that makes up this emergent field, selections range from anthropology and geography to philosophy, history, and cultural studies to recent energy-focused interventions in art and literature. The three readers all agree that this is an important, ground-breaking collection of work"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

Peter Mandler’s Return from the Natives examines Margaret Mead mid-career when she devoted much energy to promoting anthropology and anthropologists to government and industry and positioned herself as a prominent social commentator. By the time she returned to the field after an interlude of 14 years, something had happened to her professionally: she was treated as a bit of an embarrassment, no longer a scientific heavyweight, and much of this stems from the rather hare-brained “culture cracking” she engaged (...) in during the war. So while honors and kudos enhanced her official image, behind the scenes, she complained of being neglected and shunted aside. Her discipline became radicalized, and her balanced and accommodating approach was rejected. (shrink)

In the latter part of the nineteenth century, diverse sciences grounded in natural history made a virtue of field research that somehow tested scientists' endurance; disciplinary change derived from the premise that witnesses were made reliable by character-molding trials. The turn to the field was a function of structural transformations in various quarters, including (but hardly limited to) global politics, communications systems, and scientific institutions, and it conduced to biogeographical explanations, taxonomic schemes that admitted of heterogeneity, and affective research styles. (...) Sociocultural anthropology, which took specialized shape at the beginning of the twentieth century, shared many properties with other field sciences, but its method—participant observation—was distinctive. Critical to the method's definition were the efforts of the British experimental psychologist-anthropologist W. H. R. Rivers, who relied on notions then widespread in Europe and the United States. The discipline's future mythic hero, Bronislaw Malinowski, embraced Rivers's model. For both men, proper fieldwork meant using the researcher's body as an instrument and entailed understanding both the anthropologist's body and the research subject's body as energy systems; this symmetry facilitated a relativist perspective. Participant observation remains central to sociocultural anthropology, but the discipline's pedagogic habits contributed to loss of memory of its energetic conceptualization. -/- . (shrink)

"A Helen and Kurt Wolff book." Translation of L'©♭nergie humaine.

In this article I examine the growth of the New Age movement as an example of an invented tradition similar to those of 19th century nationalists. Unlike earlier inventions, the New Age is global in cultural and political perspective especially in its emphases upon borrowing from many cultures and the interconnectedness of humans and the environment. I focus on a case study of the growth of the earth energies movement as an example of a New Age invented tradition. I show (...) this tradition to be a synthesis of orthodox and alternative theories about prehistory and modern New Age practices including the rediscovery of ley lines, the growth of astroarchaeology, Chinese geomancy or feng shui, occult theories of gematria, and dowsing. (shrink)

The article is devoted to the analysis of understanding of calling in the works of Skovoroda and its significance for the world-views and life choices of contemporary people. The current crisis phenomena are explicated in the light of the points of Skovoroda’s philosophy on the disparity between material and spiritual dimensions of human existence, irrelevance of work, devaluation of self-knowledge, individualism, and consumerism. The result is spiritual slavery and inability of people to respond to the challenges of contemporaneity. According to (...) Skovoroda’s principle of self-knowledge, a person has to hear the internal call of existential truth or “God’s Spirit” which motivates for work, public service, and moral improvement. The author explicates 3 semantic levels in Skovoroda’s philosophy of calling: individual, social, and spiritual. By Skovoroda, calling appears as a natural desire to act in a certain sphere, but its end is in the Kingdom of God. The author presents the results of the research of the experience of calling of contemporary Ukrainians and explicates the typology of that experience. The article states that the revealed structure of calling “desire-abilities-realization-good” corresponds in general with the understanding of calling by Skovoroda. Therefore, this structure is constant over time. Nevertheless and contrary to the ethics of Skovoroda, nowadays, the motivation of self-development prevails over the value of care for common good and spiritual goals in understanding of calling. The comparison of the experience of calling in the minds of student youth in Ukraine and in the USA confirms its identity on the basis of common Judaic-Christian tradition. The differences in the contemporary understanding of calling are determined along the lines of religiosity versus secularity, and Protestantism versus Eastern Christianity. In particular, noted moral rigorism of the protestant understanding of calling as an obligation, whereas Jews and the other Christians conceive calling in the forms of light, easiness, and happiness. The author reasoned the significant motivating and pedagogical capability of the idea of calling in the contemporary world. The article emphasizes the importance of Skovoroda’s critical philosophic attitude towards individualism and consumerism in the direction of overcoming problems of environment, particularly of climate change induced by unstoppable growth of energy consumption, and of anthropological crisis. (shrink)

In a wide range of contemporary debates on Japanese cultures of technological practice, brief reference is often made to distinct Shinto legacies, as forming an animist substratum of indigenous spiritual beliefs and cosmological imaginations. Japan has been described as a land of Shinto-infused ‘techno-animism’: exhibiting a ‘polymorphous perversity’ that resolutely ignores boundaries between human, animal, spiritual and mechanical beings. In this article, we deploy instances of Japanese techno-animism as sites of theoretical experimentation on what Bruno Latour calls a symmetrical (...) class='Hi'>anthropology of nature-cultures. In staging a dialogue between actor-network theory and Japanese techno-animism, we show how Shinto cosmograms provide an enlivening and alternative diffraction device on several of the ontological motifs manifested in Latour’s work. In particular, by mobilizing the territory of a ‘new’ animism debate in anthropology – manifested in the work of Philippe Descola and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro – we attempt to infuse Latourian ‘multinaturalism’ with new, other-than-western analytical energy. Extending actor-network theory, we argue, Shinto cosmograms offer an interesting vantage point for interpreting the immanent, affective, enchanting and enabling powers of non-humans in contributing to collective life. By thus broadening the ‘cosmopolitical’ imagination beyond Latour’s own European-Catholic frame of reference, Shinto techno-animism offers up a wider reflection on contemporary entanglements of science, politics, ecology and cosmos. This reflection, we conclude, opens up a new intellectual territory, allowing us to trace techno-animist streams of thinking both ‘East’ and ‘West’, beyond the confines of the scientific naturalism indigenous to European thinking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Tragic Evolutionary Logic of The IliadBrian BoydThe Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence, and the World of Homer, by Jonathan Gottschall; xii & 223 pp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, $32.00 paperback.Jonathan Gottschall has conquered the oldest and craggiest peak of Western literature, The Iliad, by a new face. He stakes out the Darwin route to Homer so directly and clearly that he makes the climb inviting and inspiring (...) even to curious newcomers without high-altitude evolutionary training. And the vista he opens up offers us a chance to look in multiple directions: at Homer, at literary evolutionism and its possibilities, and at Gottschall's role in exploring this new route to discovery.One previous monograph has investigated a single literary work from a Darwinian viewpoint: Brett Cooke's analysis of Evgeny Zamyatin's 1921 science-fiction classic, We.1 Cooke's Human Nature in Utopia, by showing how Zamyatin appeals to the evolved nature of readers, in the face of the denial of human nature in his imagined One State and in early Soviet Communism, deepens our natural response to a modern classic. But where Cooke merely succeeds, Gottschall triumphs. The Rape of Troy not only deepens our response to a classic discussed for almost three millennia but also explains the world of Homer in a way no one could have seen without the multi-million-year perspective evolution allows—and does so with conceptual clarity, tight argument, effortless imagery, and copious verbal energy. [End Page 234]Gottschall emphasizes that his "evolutionary anthropology of conflict in Homeric society" does not attempt a Homeric "theory of everything" (pp. 3, 9). There is much of interest in The Iliad he does not touch on, and much even in possible evolutionary approaches to Homer that he does not consider. He focuses intently on a single two-part question: Why is there so much violence in the Iliad, and what effect does it have on how those in Homeric society see their world?After a brilliant introductory overview, he shows in his first two chapters how over the last century Homerists have increasingly turned to comparative anthropology to augment the meagre direct data. They have clarified that the Iliad was long obscured by later Western assumptions about states and kings, and that the poem probably reflects something like Homer's own world, within (at about 800 BCE) the late Greek Dark Age, a pre-state society in many ways closer to Highland New Guinea than to the worlds of Caesar or Charlemagne.Everyone who knows about the Trojan War knows that the Greeks fight Troy because the Trojan prince Paris took Helen from her husband, the Greek lord Menelaus. But readers of the Iliad want to know why thousands of soldiers on both sides persisted through ten years of brutal battle. Surely war on this scale cannot have been over just a woman? Scholars have proposed many explanations of what was really at stake. Immortal honor for men all too aware, day after bloody day, of their own physical mortality? Power? Status? Material goods? Prestige goods? A chance to neutralize enemies?By drawing on evolutionary biology and anthropology, Gottschall can show that this war, like most human violence against other humans, and even like most intraspecies animal violence, stems ultimately from male competition over females. He introduces the powerful and far-reaching principle of differential parental investment developed by Robert Trivers.2 As Gottschall lucidly elaborates: "males will attempt to mate more promiscuously both because sex is cheaper for them, and because they have the potential to produce many offspring with multiple females. I emphasize the words 'attempt' and 'potential' because if every male adopts a relatively promiscuous strategy, and if some males succeed, then other males will not reproduce at all" (p. 44). The far more divergent rates of reproductive success among males than among females prove to be the key determinant. Gottschall sums up: "males typically face higher risks of total reproductive failure and higher hopes of extraordinary reproductive success. This creates strong incentives to compete for mates. Males who are better able to compete for access to [End Page 235] scarce female reproductive capacity, in whatever form... (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to analyse the people behaviour in different age buildings and different buildings typology. In the city of Kruja (Albania) exists mostly three types of buildings: the historical ones (medieval), the socialist ones (which belongs to the former communist regime) and the modern buildings. Each of them has different social and physics characteristics, different energy exchange and different building materials. The influence of all these characteristics in the exchange of energy and how they (...) reflect in changing the lifestyle of Kruja’s people is going to be analysed. A questionnaire will be undertaken to understand the way of life of Kruja’s people and to draw conclusions. A comparative analysis between all these typology of buildings will be undertaken in order to understand better the behaviour of Kruja’s people lifestyle living in these buildings. Although the conditions are not good, people tend to get a high level of place attachment and loyalty to the building they are living. The biggest energy consumers are the historical buildings and socialist ones; although the bills of the electricity are smaller than the third category they consume alternative energies and have major problems with thermal bridges. The most unfriendly categories are the socialist buildings. They prefer not to socialize much in comparison with the other two categories. (shrink)

This book proposes that aesthetics begin not with concepts of being or semblance, but with a concept of appearing. Appearing bespeaks of the reality that all aesthetic objects share, however different they may otherwise be. For Martin Seel, appearing plays its part everywhere in the aesthetic realm, in all aesthetic activity. In his book, Seel examines the existential and cultural meaning of aesthetic experience. In doing so, he brings aesthetics and philosophy of art together again, which in continental as well (...) as analytical thinking have been more and more separated in the recent decades. Within Seel’s framework, to apprehend things and events with respect to how they appear momentarily and simultaneously to our senses represents a genuine way for human beings to encounter the world. The consciousness that emerges here is an anthropologically central faculty. In perceiving the unfathomable particularity of a sensuously given we gain insight into the indeterminable of our lives. Attentiveness to what is appearing is therefore at the same time attentiveness to ourselves. This is also the case when works of art imagine past or future, probable or improbable presences. Artworks develop their transgressive energy from their presence as sense-catching forms. They bring about a special presence in which a presentation of close or distant presences comes about. (shrink)

The book discusses some of the stages in the development of genetics, biotechnology in terms of basic strategy of humanity towards the formation of a modern agrarian civilization. Agricultural civilization is seen as part of the biosphere and primary user of its energy flows. Consistently a steps of creation of management tools for live objects to increasing the number of food security of mankind are outlines. The elements of the biosphere degradation started in the results of human activities, and (...) the ways of their compensation. are discussed.The importance of the cooperation of experts in different areas of knowledge in the development of new approaches to the management of genetic resources of the planet is discussed too. (shrink)

With the originality and energy that have marked his earlier works, Eric Wolf now explores the historical relationship of ideas, power, and culture. Responding to anthropology's long reliance on a concept of culture that takes little account of power, Wolf argues that power is crucial in shaping the circumstances of cultural production. Responding to social-science notions of ideology that incorporate power but disregard the ways ideas respond to cultural promptings, he demonstrates how power and ideas connect through the (...) medium of culture. Wolf advances his argument by examining three very different societies, each remarkable for its flamboyant ideological expressions: the Kwakiutl Indians of the Northwest Pacific Coast, the Aztecs of pre-Hispanic Mexico, and National Socialist Germany. Tracing the history of each case, he shows how these societies faced tensions posed by ecological, social, political, or psychological crises, prompting ideological responses that drew on distinctive, historically rooted cultural understandings. In each case study, Wolf analyzes how the regnant ideology intertwines with power around the pivotal relationships that govern social labor. Anyone interested in the history of anthropology or in how the social sciences make comparisons will want to join Wolf in _Envisioning Power_. (shrink)

This book proposes that aesthetics begin not with concepts of being or semblance, but with a concept of _appearing_. _Appearing_ bespeaks of the reality that all aesthetic objects share, however different they may otherwise be. For Martin Seel, _appearing_ plays its part everywhere in the aesthetic realm, in all aesthetic activity. In his book, Seel examines the existential and cultural meaning of aesthetic experience. In doing so, he brings aesthetics and philosophy of art together again, which in continental as well (...) as analytical thinking have been more and more separated in the recent decades. Within Seel's framework, to apprehend things and events with respect to how they appear momentarily and simultaneously to our senses represents a genuine way for human beings to encounter the world. The consciousness that emerges here is an anthropologically central faculty. In perceiving the unfathomable particularity of a sensuously given we gain insight into the indeterminable of our lives. Attentiveness to what is _appearing_ is therefore at the same time attentiveness to ourselves. This is also the case when works of art imagine past or future, probable or improbable presences. Artworks develop their transgressive energy from their presence as sense-catching forms. They bring about a special presence in which a presentation of close or distant presences comes about. (shrink)

The sense of being stared at is the basis of evil eye beliefs, which are regarded as superstitions because the emission of any form of energy from the human eye has been rejected by Western science. However, brainwaves in the 1–40 Hertz, 1–10 microvolt range emitted through the eye can be detected using a high-impedance electrode housed inside electromagnetically insulated goggles. This signal, which the author calls “human ocular extramission,” is physiologically active and has distinct electrophysiological properties from simultaneous (...) brainwave recordings over the forehead. Western science's rejection of evil eye beliefs may be based on an erroneous rejection of a widespread component of human consciousness, the sense of being stared at, which may in turn be based on a real electrophysiological signal. The author proposes a series of future studies designed to determine whether human ocular extramission is the basis of evil eye beliefs. (shrink)

The Routledge Handbook of Science and Empire introduces readers to important new research in the field of science and empire. This compilation of inquiry into the inextricably intertwined history of science and empire reframes the field, showing that one could not have grown without the other. The volume expands the history of science through careful attention to connections, exchanges, and networks beyond the scientific institutions of Europe and the United States. These 27 original essays by established scholars and new talent (...) examine: scientific and imperial disciplines, networks of science, scientific practice within empires, and decolonised science. The chapters cover a wide range of disciplines, from anthropology and psychiatry to biology and geology. There is global coverage, with essays about China, Southeast Asia, the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, India, the Middle East, Russia, the Arctic, and North and South America. Specialised essays cover Jesuit science, natural history collecting, energy systems, and science in UNESCO. With authoritative chapters by leading scholars, this is a guiding resource for all scholars of empire and science. Free of jargon and with clearly written essays, the handbook is a valuable path to further inquiry for any student of the history of science and empire. (shrink)

This eighth volume in the highly praised Study of Time series presents articles that fall into three broad categories: life and time as they are understood in the biological, cognitive, and psychological dimensions; the experience of time and life in words, sounds, and images; and time and life as ordered according to sociological, historical, and anthropological perspectives. The International Society for the Study of Time (ISST) is largely composed of the very academics whose early training and research have encouraged them (...) to specialized in subjects of less and less scope. But the very interdisciplinary nature of a society of heterogenous scholars from over 30 countries in more than 20 disciplines committed to the study of time is bound to broaden the perspective of those who are thus engaged. Furthermore, the insistence on delivering papers in plenary session - and in a milieu which has always proved to be a delight to the eyes, the mind, and the body - invariably encourages highly productive, jargon free, and very profitable discussions throughout the day and in smaller groups often late into the night. How does time and life apply to music, technology, philosophy, physics, film, and so much more? The pleasant pain and the resulting creative energy that derive from being obliged to view one's subject in a newer and broader perspective produced the excellent papers chosen for presentation at the conference. And that same creative energy is presented here in the more Apollonian form of the papers selected by their external readers and the editors, as Dimensions of Time and Life. (shrink)

The object of this paper is partly to plead a cause, partly to proclaim a grievance. The last domain of ancient Greek life to attract the serious attention and study of modern scholars has been that of Greek Religion; and the exposition of it has revealed its many vital points of contact with the moral and spiritual energy and the artistic and poetic monuments of the ancient Hellenic race. An enthusiastic votary of this study might venture to hope that (...) some general acquaintance with its facts and ideas would henceforth be recognized as belonging to the general curriculum of Hellenic culture. But any one merely interested in the good workmanship of the classical commentary ought at least to insist that something more than a general acquaintance with this subject should be regarded by those who set themselves to edit certain portions of the Greek classics as an essential preliminary and as a necessary part of their scholarly equipment. The authors to whom this rule specially applies are Hesiod, Pindar and the Attic Dramatists. A satisfying commentary on Hesiod is still a desideratum; and for such an achievement a long apprenticeship in anthropology and religious studies would be a necessity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Theological Empiricism: Aspects ofJohann Georg Hamann's Reception of Hume Hans Graubner The philosophical Enlightenment in Germany executed in none of its phases as clean a break with the theological tradition as the English and especially the French. To its very end it pleaded for a theology of Creation, however thin this plea had become, that is, for an adherence to the first article of the Creed. On the other (...) hand, a philosophical adherence to the second article, that is, to christology, had no chance left owing to the rationalist Bible criticism of the 17th and 18th centuries and was not considered a serious philosophical position in the controversy between natural religion and revealed religion. Its mere link-up with historic facts that were considered epistemologically inferior made it unthinkable in the eyes of the dominating rationalists. In 18th century Königsberg this controversy determined the life-long argument between Hamann and Kant. Hamann attacks Kant and the German philosophy ofthe Enlightenmentfrom the position ofrevealed religion. In doing so, he refers to David Hume from the very beginning. In Hume's thoughts Hamann saw a chance of regaining a serious position for the Christian religion, that is, of its christology, in philosophical discussion. Thisveryaim ofHamann's shows thathe proceeds fromcompletely different philosophical interests than does Hume. But there are certain basic attitudes that make it understandable why Hamann refers to Hume, even declares him to be his philosopher. These attitudes, which they have in common, maybe called criticism ofreason, epistemological empiricism, and subjectivism. In spite of these attitudes, which they share, the difference between their ways ofthinkingleads to Hamann's practise of not adopting any of Hume's ideas unchanged. Instead of speaking ofreception it would be better to speak ofa transformation of Hume's thoughts into the totally different world of Hamann's ideas. The latter is determined by at least three basic motives: Firstly, by the sharp criticism of an over-estimation of reason in philosophy. This criticism is directed both against the rationalism of the recognized German philosophy as well as against Hume's scepticism and Kant's transcendental philosophy. Secondly,- by his personally being affected by Christianity, which renders itimpossible for him to separate the personal from the theoretiVolume XV Number 2 377 HANS GRAUBNER cal, and philosophy from the way a philosopher sees himself and from his own historical background. Thirdly, by a concentration of all philosophical energy on language as the fundamental empirical and historical fact, which, for Hamann, becomes the centre of his theological, ontological and anthropological reflection. It is my intention to show how Hamann unfolds his basic motives by following certain ideas of Hume's, for example, the idea of geometry, that of belief and that of image. In the end I shall summarize Hamann's criticism of scepticism and point out the significance ofanthropomorphism in Hume's and Hamann's understanding ofreligion. Referring to the understanding of Hamann's Hume-reception so far, I want to emphasize three results: 1.Hamann's Hume-reception is due, above all, to his repeated study ofthe Treatise, which musthave begun earlier than was assumed before. 2.Hamann's reference to Hume is not restricted to the discussion of the concept of belief, but is far more extensive. 3.Neither is Hamann's Hume-reception a total "misunderstanding "1 of Hume nor is his passing-on of Hume's ideas to the German romanticism "a strange paradox"; rather it is a conscious transformation ofempiricism into a theology oflanguage, which has had an effect even on romantic and idealistic secularization. Now I shall come to my first point. I. Geometry After having finished his studies in Königsberg and before his conversion experience at London in 1758 that was to determine his whole life, Hamann, from 1752 to 1756, became a private tutor for two aristocratic families in Courland. During this time he definitely read the German translations ofHume's "Political Essays" and ofhis Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. That Hamann, who had a good command of the English language, knew even the Treatise at this time, can, according to my hypothesis, be gathered from his use of Hume's conception ofgeometry in an unpublished philosophic... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Theological Empiricism: Aspects ofJohann Georg Hamann's Reception of Hume Hans Graubner The philosophical Enlightenment in Germany executed in none of its phases as clean a break with the theological tradition as the English and especially the French. To its very end it pleaded for a theology of Creation, however thin this plea had become, that is, for an adherence to the first article of the Creed. On the other (...) hand, a philosophical adherence to the second article, that is, to christology, had no chance left owing to the rationalist Bible criticism of the 17th and 18th centuries and was not considered a serious philosophical position in the controversy between natural religion and revealed religion. Its mere link-up with historic facts that were considered epistemologically inferior made it unthinkable in the eyes of the dominating rationalists. In 18th century Königsberg this controversy determined the life-long argument between Hamann and Kant. Hamann attacks Kant and the German philosophy ofthe Enlightenmentfrom the position ofrevealed religion. In doing so, he refers to David Hume from the very beginning. In Hume's thoughts Hamann saw a chance of regaining a serious position for the Christian religion, that is, of its christology, in philosophical discussion. Thisveryaim ofHamann's shows thathe proceeds fromcompletely different philosophical interests than does Hume. But there are certain basic attitudes that make it understandable why Hamann refers to Hume, even declares him to be his philosopher. These attitudes, which they have in common, maybe called criticism ofreason, epistemological empiricism, and subjectivism. In spite of these attitudes, which they share, the difference between their ways ofthinkingleads to Hamann's practise of not adopting any of Hume's ideas unchanged. Instead of speaking ofreception it would be better to speak ofa transformation of Hume's thoughts into the totally different world of Hamann's ideas. The latter is determined by at least three basic motives: Firstly, by the sharp criticism of an over-estimation of reason in philosophy. This criticism is directed both against the rationalism of the recognized German philosophy as well as against Hume's scepticism and Kant's transcendental philosophy. Secondly,- by his personally being affected by Christianity, which renders itimpossible for him to separate the personal from the theoretiVolume XV Number 2 377 HANS GRAUBNER cal, and philosophy from the way a philosopher sees himself and from his own historical background. Thirdly, by a concentration of all philosophical energy on language as the fundamental empirical and historical fact, which, for Hamann, becomes the centre of his theological, ontological and anthropological reflection. It is my intention to show how Hamann unfolds his basic motives by following certain ideas of Hume's, for example, the idea of geometry, that of belief and that of image. In the end I shall summarize Hamann's criticism of scepticism and point out the significance ofanthropomorphism in Hume's and Hamann's understanding ofreligion. Referring to the understanding of Hamann's Hume-reception so far, I want to emphasize three results: 1.Hamann's Hume-reception is due, above all, to his repeated study ofthe Treatise, which musthave begun earlier than was assumed before. 2.Hamann's reference to Hume is not restricted to the discussion of the concept of belief, but is far more extensive. 3.Neither is Hamann's Hume-reception a total "misunderstanding "1 of Hume nor is his passing-on of Hume's ideas to the German romanticism "a strange paradox"; rather it is a conscious transformation ofempiricism into a theology oflanguage, which has had an effect even on romantic and idealistic secularization. Now I shall come to my first point. I. Geometry After having finished his studies in Königsberg and before his conversion experience at London in 1758 that was to determine his whole life, Hamann, from 1752 to 1756, became a private tutor for two aristocratic families in Courland. During this time he definitely read the German translations ofHume's "Political Essays" and ofhis Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. That Hamann, who had a good command of the English language, knew even the Treatise at this time, can, according to my hypothesis, be gathered from his use of Hume's conception ofgeometry in an unpublished philosophic... (shrink)

One of the fundamental enigmas of our existence, and for that matter, God's existence, is the act of creation. Has the cosmos been created ex nihilo or was it an intelligent design by God? Does God, having created the world, let it evolve and develop on its own, subject to the rules of evolution and chance; or does God intervene in every step of evolution in a deus ex machina manner? What is the role of man in creation? Is it (...) as central as existentialism and quantum mechanics assure us: that without human consciousness interacting with energy-matter, there would not be any objects and life forms? Is man the crown of creation permanently, or once evolution forms a more effective connecting agent between spirit and energy-matter, will man be relegated to the world of fossils? The book concludes with a thorough examination of human norms, values and morals. As such, this book constitutes a comprehensive treatise on the genesis of the world, the birth of God, and the role of man. (shrink)

The article develops the hypothesis that Covid-19 is one of the most significant results of the Anthropocene era. Indifferent to nature’s veiled, but not inactive conditions, the human era advances over woods and forests, intensifying the increase of emerging infectious diseases, especially those caused by pathogens that generate zoonoses. In addition to health matters, this circumstance implies the urgent revision of the cultural tradition that conceives the energies of nature as availability. Based on these findings, the text criticizes the cultural (...) determination of anthropocentrism, suggesting that the crisis caused by the coronavirus also represents the possibility of new mediations with nature. The thesis defends that, despite the anguish caused by the proximity to death, the pandemic is an opportunity to open our ears anew to listen to the Earth’s thinking. (shrink)

Texts and textures: approaching an age of human-made nature through the particulate, the volatile, and the radiant. We have entered the Anthropocene era—a geological age of our own making, in which what we have understood to be nature is made by man. We need a new way to understand the dynamics of a new epoch. These volumes offer writings that approach the Anthropocene through the perspectives of grain, vapor, and ray—the particulate, the volatile, and the radiant. The first three volumes—each (...) devoted to one of the three textures—offer a series of paired texts, with contemporary writers responding to historic writings. A fourth volume offers a guide to the project as a whole. Grain: Granular materials add up to concrete forms; insignificant specks accumulate into complex entities. The texts in this volume narrate some of the fundamental qualities of the granular. In one pairing of texts, Robert Smithson compares the accumulation of thoughts to the aggregation of sediment, and an environmental historian writes about the stakes for earthly knowledge today. Other authors include Alfred Russel Wallace, Denis Diderot, and Georges Bataille. Vapor: The vaporous represents matter's transformations. In this volume, a political scientist compares Kafka's haunting “Odradek” to “vibrant matter”; a media theorist responds to poems and diagrams by Buckminster Fuller; and more, including texts by Hippocrates, Italo Calvino, and James Clerk Maxwell. Ray: A ray is an act of propagation and diffusion, encompassing a chain of interdependencies between energy and matter. This volume includes texts by Spinoza (with a reconceptualization by a contemporary philosopher), Jacques Lacan (followed by an anthropologist's reflections on temporality), Thomas Pynchon (accompanied by an interpretation of Pynchon's “electro-mysticism”), and others. These volumes constitute a unique experiment in design and composition as well as content. The mingling of texts and the juxtaposition of different areas of knowledge represented in a variety of forms express the dynamics of a world in change. (shrink)

This paper presents and explicates the theory of empathy found in Edith Stein’s early philosophy, notably in the book On the Problem of Empathy, published in 1917, but also by proceeding from complementary thoughts on bodily intentionality and intersubjectivity found in Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities published in 1922. In these works Stein puts forward an innovative and detailed theory of empathy, which is developed in the framework of a philosophical anthropology involving questions of psychophysical causality, social ontology (...) and moral philosophy. Empathy, according to Stein, is a feeling-based experience of another person’s feeling that develops throughout three successive steps on two interrelated levels. The key to understanding the empathy process á la Stein is to explicate how the steps of empathy are attuned in nature, since the affective qualities provide the energy and logic by way of which the empathy process is not only inaugurated but also proceeds through the three steps and carries meaning on two different levels corresponding to two different types of empathy: sensual and emotional empathy. Stein’s theory has great potential for better understanding and moving beyond some major disagreements found in the contemporary empathy debate regarding, for instance, the relation between perception and simulation, the distinction between what is called low-level and high-level empathy, and the issue of how and in what sense it may be possible to share feelings in the empathy process. (shrink)

This paper presents and explicates the theory of empathy found in Edith Stein’s early philosophy, notably in the book On the Problem of Empathy, published in 1917, but also by proceeding from complementary thoughts on bodily intentionality and intersubjectivity found in Philosophy of Psychology and the Humanities published in 1922. In these works Stein puts forward an innovative and detailed theory of empathy, which is developed in the framework of a philosophical anthropology involving questions of psychophysical causality, social ontology (...) and moral philosophy. Empathy, according to Stein, is a feeling-based experience of another person’s feeling that develops throughout three successive steps on two interrelated levels. The key to understanding the empathy process á la Stein is to explicate how the steps of empathy are attuned in nature, since the affective qualities provide the energy and logic by way of which the empathy process is not only inaugurated but also proceeds through the three steps and carries meaning on two different levels corresponding to two different types of empathy: sensual and emotional empathy. Stein’s theory has great potential for better understanding and moving beyond some major disagreements found in the contemporary empathy debate regarding, for instance, the relation between perception and simulation, the distinction between what is called low-level and high-level empathy, and the issue of how and in what sense it may be possible to share feelings in the empathy process. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Aestheticism, Homoeroticism, and Christian Guilt in The Picture of Dorian GrayJoseph CarrollSince the advent of the poststructuralist revolution some thirty years ago, interpretive literary criticism has suppressed two concepts that had informed virtually all previous literary thinking: (1) the idea of the author as an individual person and an originating source for literary meaning, and (2) the idea of "human nature" as the represented subject and common frame of (...) reference for literary depictions. Under the tutelage of Barthes, Derrida, and Foucault, literary critics learned to speak of authors, characters, settings, and plots not as individuals situated in a natural world but as discursive formations constituted by the circulation of linguistic, cultural, and ideological energies. In the three decades during which poststructuralism has dominated academic literary study, a different kind of revolution—evolutionary, Darwinian, and naturalistic—has been transforming the social sciences. Sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, Darwinian anthropology, behavioral ecology, cognitive archaeology, and behavioral genetics do not all agree with one another in every respect, but they are all nonetheless aspects or phases of a common research program. The central working hypothesis in this program is that the human species, like all other species, has evolved in an adaptive relation to its environment and that as a consequence it has a distinct, genetically transmitted, species-typical set of characteristics—anatomical, physiological, hormonal, neurological, and behavioral. That set of characteristics is what in common language is meant by "human nature." Literature has always given us subjectively evocative depictions of human nature, and Darwinian social science is now giving us a more comprehensive and scientifically precise account of it. The sense of [End Page 286] individual agency is one crucial aspect of human nature, and that aspect is now being explored in complementary ways by personality psychology and by cognitive neuroscience.1Over the past decade or so, a scattered handful of literary scholars has broken away from the dominant poststructuralist paradigm and has sought to make use of the new scientific information on human nature.2 The simplest and most obvious way to use this information is to examine the behavior depicted in literary texts and to correlate that behavior with "human universals," that is, with forms of behavior that appear in every known culture and that thus appear to be embedded in the nature of the species. Seeking depictions of universals has produced valuable results for literary study, but this first move in Darwinian criticism does not exhaust the range of possibility in the analysis of literary meaning. Human nature is complex and sometimes divided against itself; individuals vary, and some variations depart from species-typical patterns, even in the most adaptively crucial aspects of survival and reproduction. Moreover, literary meaning involves more than the represented subject matter. Authors imbue texts with meanings and affects peculiar to themselves; authors engage in communicative transactions with audiences; and texts have formal and aesthetic properties that are not reducible to represented subject matter. All of these aspects of the total literary situation are part of literary meaning, and all of them can and should fall within the range of analysis available to Darwinian literary study.3Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray offers two special challenges to Darwinian criticism. First, the novel is saturated with homoerotic sexual feeling, and it thus defies any simple reading in terms of behavior oriented to reproductive success. Second, the central conflicts in the novel involve two competing visions of human nature, and in their conceptual structure neither of those visions corresponds very closely to the quasi-Darwinian conceptual structure implicit in most realist and naturalist fiction. One vision derives from the aestheticist doctrines of Walter Pater, and the other from a traditional Christian conception of the soul. Pater's ideas about human motives and the human moral character are at variance both with Christianity and with Darwinism. Christianity and Darwinism share certain concepts of the human moral and social character, but they couch those concepts in different idioms, and they would invoke wholly different causal explanations for how human nature came to be the way it is. Wilde does not develop his themes in Darwinian terms, but the novel can still be read [End Page... (shrink)

This paper proposes that the human mind in its creativity and emotional self-awareness is the result of the evolutionary transition from sexuality to eroticism. Eroticism is arrived at and defined by the high amount of energy displayed in animal sexuality. We propose that the unique human emotional intelligence is due to this “overflow” of mating energy. What from the survival viewpoint looks like an enormous waste of time and energy reveals itself to be an unexpected psychological benefit. (...) The diversion of sexual energy from procreation — a process that results in erotic fantasies — turns intimacy into a source of human self -consciousness. This places different emphasis on the meaning of eroticism and provides a coherent scenario of mental development beyond mere cognitive capacities. Arguments are presented on how erotic imagination, or sexual excitation as an end in itself, promotes the human propensity for explorative curiosity; data from ethology, psychology, sociology, and neuroscience are presented to support these arguments. As philosophical anthropologists, we do not provide new empirical data, but the available results of comparative behavioral research confirm our hypothesis. (shrink)

In __Unearthed: The Economic Roots of Our Environmental Crisis_, _Kenneth M. Sayre argues that the only way to resolve our current environmental crisis is to reduce our energy consumption to a level where the entropy produced by that consumption no longer exceeds the biosphere’s ability to dispose of it. Tangible illustrations of this entropy buildup include global warming, ozone depletion, loss of species diversity, and unmanageable amounts of nonbiodegradable waste._ Degradation of the biosphere is tied directly to human (...) class='Hi'>energy use, which has been increasing exponentially since the Industrial Revolution. Energy use, in turn, is directly correlated with economic production. Sayre shows how these three factors are invariably bound together. The unavoidable conclusion is that the only way to resolve our environmental crisis is to reverse the present pattern of growth in the world economy. Economic growth is motivated by social values. Key among them are the desire for wealth and consumer values including gratification, convenience, and acquisition of goods. Sayre maintains that economic growth can be reversed only by eliminating these social values in favor of others more conducive to environmental health. Eliminating these values will involve major changes in lifestyle within industrial societies generally. Only with such changes in lifestyle, he argues, does human society as we know it have a chance of survival. Clearly written and thoroughly documented, this book provides a comprehensive overview of our complex environmental predicament. "With unerring logic and science, Kenneth Sayre dissects the origins of the ecological crisis and points to the necessary recalibration of industrial societies with the laws of thermodynamics and ecology. It is a radical book in that he gets to the heart of what ails us, and it charts a course toward a future grounded in authentic hope." — David W. Orr, Oberlin College__ “Sayre’s assessment forces all seeking a sustainable future to reexamine the preeminence accorded to clean energy. _ Unearthed __uniquely combines thermodynamics and ethics to challenge and broaden readers’ understandings of the systemic issues we face. Assembled and presented with piercing clarity, __Unearthed __constructs a brilliant framework for making sense of our quiet, but growing crises.” —_Felipe Witchger, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates__ “Kenneth M. Sayre’s _ Unearthed: The Economic Roots of Our Environmental Crisis__ constitutes a major and significant contribution to our understanding of the grave ecological crisis facing humanity. It covers the complete picture, from the basic physical causes of the destruction of our environment to the sociological or anthropological forces that condition our self-destructive actions. The work not only is a brilliant and mind-sweeping piece of diagnosis and prognosis, but it goes all the way to point towards possible solutions.” —_Fernando del Río Haza, Laboratorio de Termodinámica, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Iztapalapa, Mexico_. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 314-334 [Access article in PDF] The Epistemology of Cognitive Literary Studies F. Elizabeth Hart I Literary scholars have begun incorporating the insights of cognitive science into literary studies, bringing to bear on questions of literary experience the results of explorations within a wide range of fields that define today's cognitive science. The investigation of the human mind and its reasoning processes encompasses a rich (...) variety of empirical and speculative disciplines, including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, evolutionary psychology, developmental psychology, computer science, philosophy, and anthropology. These disciplines are all related to one another by the questions they ask about the brain and mind and the ground they cover in staking out their research agendas; but each also contributes uniquely in terms of individual scope and focus. Literary critics, eavesdropping on this maturing coalition, are now producing critical works that apply cognitive research to a similarly impressive range of literary concerns, with results so far that seem to span the gap between traditional and more contemporary literary critical approaches.All such criticism is dependent on scientific studies of the brain and mind and so accepts axiomatically some degree of epistemological efficacy in scientific empiricism. But this acceptance has not been naive or uncritical and has, in fact, been at times carefully qualified by critics' sensitivity to debate--to the lack of consensus among cognitive scientists, and to the fact that cognitive science is itself in its infancy stage, with its own practitioners often openly tentative about their results and descriptive capabilities. As it happens, such debate, in recent years, has even proven beneficial for literary scholarship since an important [End Page 314] paradigm shift has taken place that now makes some aspects of cognitive science more compatible than ever with the interests of literary studies. This is because, whereas an earlier phase of cognitive science focused its energies on Artificial Intelligence and on theories of language and psychology that supported AI, grounding its theories implicitly in a metaphor of the mind as a computer, today's cognitive scientists tend to concentrate instead on the more organic metaphor of the "embodiment" of mind, that is, of the mind's substantive indebtedness to its bodily, social, and cultural contexts, and on the figurative phenomena of metaphor, metonymy, image schemata, "fields," "frames," other "integrative mental spaces" (as they are called), and the gradient structures and prototypical bases of semantic categories, all of which contribute to recasting human reason into a set of highly imaginative--not logical but figural--processes. 1 For literary theory and criticism, this shift in cognitive science toward "the body in the mind" 2 --tantamount to a wholesale rejection of philosophical rationalism--has given rise to a new kind of interdisciplinary practice, to the potential for a sincere engagement between diverse sciences and even between literature and science that stretches all the bounds of what literary scholars generally mean when they speak of being interdisciplinary (e.g., exchanges with history, art history, anthropology, film studies, sociology).In the discussion that follows, I would like to explore this new interdisciplinarity in literary studies by examining its epistemological implications. I begin with a description of the kinds of criticism now being produced under the rubric of cognitive literary criticism or--to reflect the field's scope more accurately--cognitive and cognitive-evolutionary criticism. This description is not intended as a comprehensive or evaluative survey, since in-depth review articles of extant works are available elsewhere. 3 Rather, I hope to familiarize my readers with the basic orientations of this theory and criticism so that they can grasp the epistemological relations that will become the essay's focus. To lay a further groundwork for this focus, I will review various uses of the term "cognitive" (or "cognitivism") in the scholarship and offer an analysis of its meanings, first in cognitive science and then in literary theory. Building, then, on what "cognitive" might signify for literary studies, I show how a literary approach based on today's cognitive science is uniquely situated among other approaches because of its underlying theory of human... (shrink)

The last two centuries have been the centuries of the discovery of the cell evolution: in the XIX century of the germinal cells and in the XX century of two groups of somatic cells, namely those of the brain-mind and of the immune systems. Since most cells do not behave in this way, the evolutionary character of the brain-mind and of the immune systems renders human beings formed by two different groups of somatic cells, one with a deterministic and another (...) with an indeterministic (say Darwinian) behavior. An inherent consequence is that of the generation, during ontogenesis, of a dual biological identity. The concept of the dual biological identity may be used to explain the Kantian concept of the two metaphysical worlds, namely of the causal necessity and of the free will (Azzone, 2001). Two concepts, namely those of complex adaptive systems (CAS) and of emergence (Holland, 2002), are useful tools for understanding the mechanisms of adaptation and of evolution. The concept of complex adaptive systems indicates that living organisms contain series of stratified components, denoted as building blocks, forming stratified layers of increasing complexity. The concept of emergence implies the use of repeating patterns and of building blocks for the generation of structures of increasing levels of complexity, structures capable of exchanging communications both in the top-down and in the bottom-up direction. Against the concept of emergence it has been argued that nothing can produce something which is really new and endowed of causal efficacy. The defence of the concept of emergence is based on two arguments. The first is the interpretation of the variation-selection mechanism as a process of generation of information and of optimization of free energy dissipation in accord with the second principle of thermodynamics. The second is the objective evidence of the cosmological evolution from the Big Bang to the human mind and its products. Darwin has defended the concept of the continuity of evolution. However evolution should be considered as continuous when there is no increase of information and as discontinuous when there is generation of new information. Examples of such generation of information are the acquisition of the innate structures for language and the transition from absence to presence of morality. There are several discontinuity thresholds during both phylogenesis and ontogenesis. Morality is a relational property dependent on the interactions of human beings with the environment. Piaget and Kohlberg have shown that the generation of morality during childhood occurs through several stages and is accompanied by reorganization of the child mental organization. The children respect the conventions in the first stage and gradually generate their autonomous morality. The transition from absence to presence of morality, a major adaptive process, then, not only has occurred during phylogenesis but it occurs again in every human being during ontogenesis. The religious faith does not provide a logical justification of the moral rules (Ayala, 1987) but rather a psychological and anthropological justification of two fundamental needs of human beings: that of rendering Nature an understandable entity, and that of increasing the cooperation among members of the human societies. The positive effects of the altruistic genes in the animal societies are in accord with the positive effects of morality for the survival and development of the human societies. (shrink)

Preface/Introduction: The question under discussion is metaphysical and truly elemental. It emerges in two aspects — how did we come to be conscious of our own existence, and, as a deeper corollary, do existence and awareness necessitate each other? I am bold enough to explore these questions and I invite you to come along; I make no claim to have discovered absolute answers. However, I do believe I have created here a compelling interpretation. You’ll have to judge for yourself. -/- (...) What follows is the presentation of three essays I have worked on over the past several years seeing publication for the first time. “Hollows of Experience” was written first as an invited chapter for a collection on the ontology of consciousness. However, when cuts became necessary, my chapter got the knife. Its length has prohibited it from publication in any print journal. “Myth and Mind” was written next as a journal article, but as my involvement with it grew so did its length, so it has also idled on my websty awaiting its call. “From Panexperientialism to Conscious Experience” was written most recently, but it is the only one to have been available to the public elsewhere than my own website. Under the name, “The Continuum of Experience”, it was Target Article #95 on the recently closed Karl Jaspers Forum (for discussion purposes only). -/- I have put them in a different sequence here, for reasons of logical sense. Up first, “Panexperientialism” deals with an idea difficult for many to accept, namely that conscious experience is a particular mode of symbolically reflected experience that is largely unique to our species. However, I aver that experienced sensation in itself (as found, for example, in autonomic sensory response systems) goes “all the way down” into nature, and thus the title, panexperientialism. -/- Understanding this idea is helpful to dealing with the focus on language in Part I of “Hollows”, next, since here speech and general symbolic interaction in general are found to be the catalysts for the creation of our consciously experienced world (our “lived reality”). In Part II, however, I explore how experienced sensations must be coeval with existence, and, with even greater temerity, how all this sensational existence might have arisen within some literally inconceivable background of awareness-in-itself that yet has a dynamism that occasionally breaks into existence as experiential events and entities. (The latter may sound wacky, but physicists and cosmologists are themselves attempting to come to terms with that which seethes with vast potential energy in what they refer to as the quantum vacuum.) -/- “Myth and Mind” was put third since it deals with a major lacuna in “Hollows” — that presumed prehistoric period when members of our species made the painful crossing of the symbolic threshold into the beginnings of cultural consciousness. Speech plays a central role here, too, but I look more at narrative structures from the dawn of self-awareness when ritual and myth became vital to human survival. Why would fantastic stories and bizarre rituals be necessary? I speculate that growing foresight led to the unavoidable realization of certain mortality, from which, in turn, emerged the secondary realization that we were now alive. In contrast to our yet-to-come death, we have life here and now, and by ritually identifying with a symbolically expanded mythic, i.e., sacred, reality, we may continue to live on after bodily death, just as our ancestors and loved ones must also do. Language and mythmaking are necessary to avoid mortal despair and they remain at the core of human consciousness. -/- As Ernst Cassirer (1944) has noted, language and myth are “twin creatures”, both metaphoric webs over a reality we can never wholly comprehend. We live in the symbolic and construct our works of imagination and wars of conquest to make life meaningful, to feel immortal, and to sense that we ourselves participate in a reality greater than ourselves. No doubt we do, but this does not mean our culturally constructed self-identities survive the death of our bodies, and it does not imply that our symbolic concepts can ever indicate the ultimate truth. We simply must symbolize an extended reality that was sacred to our ancestors: “Is it not our way, as illusory as it may be, to force continuance on our world and our life in the face of their inevitable ending? Are we not compelled to extend those imaginary horizons as far as we can despite the terror and the sometime joy their extension incites? Is their closure not a form of death?” (Crapanzano, p. 210) -/- Of course, this leaves me in the uncomfortable position of being forced to admit that this venture of mine must inevitably be another attempt at meaningful mythmaking. But what else could it be? This is certainly not a scientific proof though it is indeed an academically rigorous exploration. (Just try to count the citations!) I hope the reader will judge my thesis on the basis of its coherence, the sense of meaning it evokes, my intellectual responsibility, and, finally, the engagement it inspires. If you have read my expositions and found yourself immersed in the timeless questions I here call forth, I would call these writings successful (even if you violently disagree with my answers). -/- I am very grateful to Huping Hu for granting me this special issue of JCER in which to present my ideas in some detail. He has patiently dealt with my exuberant approach and allowed the many changes I kept coming up with right until the final publication date. I also wish to thank the many potential commentators who politely replied to my invitation, and, even more, I thank those who made time to write actual commentaries. -/- References -/- Cassirer, E. (1944). An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. New Haven/London: Yale UP. -/- Crapanzano, V. (2004). Imaginative Horizons: An Essay in Literary-Philosophical Anthropology. Chicago: U of Chicago Press. -/- Gregory M. Nixon University of Northern British Columbia Prince George, British Columbia, Canada Email: [email protected] Websty: http://members.shaw.ca/doknyx. (shrink)

Introduction. Anthropotechnical turn in culture is based on educational practices that characterize a person as a subject and at the same time as an object of educational and corrective influence. Theoretical basis. We use the method of categorical analysis, which allows revealing the main outlook potentials of anthropotechnical turn as an essential transformation of modern socio-culture. Originality. For the first time, we conducted a categorical analysis of the glossary of anthropotechnical turn as dialectic of active and passive in the personal (...) and social modes such as education. Conclusions. The anthropotechnical turn of modern socio-culture means the actualization of the dialectic of active and passive in the process of socialization and formation of a person in a modern society. The world-view potential of the anthropotechnical turn is producing a new maxim and stratagem of person's behaviour through the formation of a new way of self-identification and self-esteem. The modern educational system, given the theory of anthropotechnical rotation, should change the content of timological energies from obedience to self-actualization and self-improvement. A prerequisite for this task is the change in the motivation of the education sector and the improvement of the social status of the teacher as an intellectual and leader of opinion. The analysis of the specificity of the information society and its determinatory impact on the individual provides grounds for identifying modern culture as a culture of lost opportunities. Thus, the main cause of disorientation and ignorance of a person is not the lack of information, but the lack of motivation. Therefore, the fundamental principles of anthropotechnical turn are productive in solving pressing problems of our time. (shrink)

The three volumes of The Accursed Share address what Georges Bataille sees as the paradox of utility: namely, if being useful means serving a further end, then the ultimate end of utility can only be uselessness. The first volume of The Accursed Share, the only one published before Bataille's death, treated this paradox in economic terms, showing that "it is not necessity but its contrary, luxury, that presents living matter and mankind with their fundamental problems." This Zone edition includes in (...) a single volume a reconstruction, based on the versions published in Bataille's posthumous collected works, of his intended continuation of The Accursed Share.In the second and third volumes, The History of Eroticism and Sovereignty, Bataille explores the same paradox of utility, respectively from an anthropological and an ethical perspective. He first analyzes the fears and fascination, the prohibitions and the transgressions attached to the realm of eroticism as so many expressions of the "uselessness" of erotic life. It is just this expenditure of excess energy that demarcates the realm of human autonomy, of independence relative to.useful" ends. The study of eroticism therefore leads naturally to the examination of human sovereignty, in which Bataille defines the sovereign individual as one who consumes and does not labor, creating a life beyond the realm of utility.Georges Bataille, a philosopher and novelist sui generis, died in 1962. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:_Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2402\INDEXISS.242 : 2005-05-19 13:34
ibliographies, rchival nventories, ndexes INDEX TO RUSSELL’S THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON SOCIETY R H Summerfields, The Glade Escrick, York  , .. @.. he edition of the richly allusioned The Impact of Science on Society Tindexed here is that of George Allen and Unwin, published in London in . The pagination of Simon and Schuster’s edition (New York, ) is (...) different and spans pages – instead of the first British edition’s –. The very first edition of the book (New York: Columbia U. P., ) contained two paragraphs comparing Catholicism and Communism that were overlooked for the British and all subsequent editions. Russell regarded them as important, and Sir Stanley Unwin wrote him that they would be incorporated in the next printing. The next printing was not until , and the paragraphs were again overlooked. They belong just before the paragraph on page  beginning “Every fanatical creed” in Chapter , “Science and Values”. These paragraphs are not indexed.—Ed. I meet many people who think that the evils of Communism can be combated by Catholicism. This seems to me a dangerous error. What are the evils of Communism as it has developed? First, adherence to a rigid and static system of doctrine, of which part is doubtful and part demonstrably false. Second, persecution as a means of enforcing orthodoxy. Third, a belief that salvation is only to be found within the Church and that the True Faith must be spread throughout the world, by force if necessary. (These are the beliefs of Communists.) Fourth, that the priesthood, which alone has the right to interpret the Scriptures, has enormous power, physical east of the Iron Curtain and spiritual over the faithful in partibus. Fifth, that this power is used to secure an undue share of wealth for the priesthood at the expense of the rest of the population. Sixth, that bigotry, and the hostility that it engenders, is a potent source of war. Every one of these evils was exhibited by the Catholic Church when it had power and would probably be exhibited again if it recovered the position it had in the Middle Ages. It is therefore irrational to suppose that much would be gained if, in the defeat of Communism, Catholicism were enthroned in its place. (Pp. –) russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s.  (winter –): – The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U.  - _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2402\INDEXISS.242 : 2005-05-19 13:34    Abraham  absolute monarchy  Adler, Alfred  adventure, impulse to ,  vs. rashness  aeroplanes  Africa cotton market  North, and Romans  age, average, in West – agriculture effects of  in history of man  integration into larger economy – wasteful of natural resources – see also soil conservation air power and governments  Alexander the Great and superstition  ambassadors, independence of  America see United States anaesthetics  anarchy  Anaxagoras ,  animals, and man  anthropology  apathy  Arab-Israeli conflict – Arabian Nights slaves of lamp in  Arabs and scientific technique  Archimedes , ,  Argentina agriculture  Arians  Aristotle  and causation – movement of heavenly bodies  armed forces and civil authorities  international, as concentration of power ,  perceptions of own/other nations’  in Russia –,  artillery  arts: authors and artists independence of –, –,  ascetic mentality  Asia: population and prosperity  astrology – astronomers Greek  prospects for life on earth  astronomical events indicating disaster  Atlantic Pact  atom bomb , , ,  atomic energy –, ,  Attica, history  Attlee, Clement  Augustine, Saint scientific argument against astrology – Auschwitz  Australia aborigines ,  agriculture  federal government  Austria: war with Prussia  Authority and the Individual (BR)  authority vs. observation –,  autonomy of physical world , – Aztecs and cannibalism  and infanticide  Babylonians and eclipses  Bacon, Francis and witchcraft  bacteriological war  Baltic–White Sea canal  barbarians, and late Roman Empire ,  Barbarossa (Frederick I)  , independence of  Bede, the Venerable on comets  belief(s) on basis of authority, as unscientific – science as determinant  in superstition  uncivilized peoples  benefits of scientific technique – _Russell_ journal (home office): E:CPBRRUSSJOURTYPE2402\INDEXISS.242 : 2005-05-19 13:34 Index to Impact of Science on Society  Bentham , ,  Bergson, Henri  Bible, false statements in  see also individual books of biological conditions of stability (of society) –, – biology technique(s) from – birth control and population , , – birth rate, low ,  Black Death , – Blimps, Col., Romans as  breeding, scientific – Bright, John  Britain, happiness in  British Empire... (shrink)

Summary In this paper we examine the reaction of the Leiden low-temperature laboratory of Heike Kamerlingh Onnes to new ideas in quantum theory. Especially the contributions of Albert Einstein (1906) and Peter Debye (1912) to the theory of specific heat, and the concept of zero-point energy formulated by Max Planck in 1911, gave a boost to solid state research to test these theories. In the case of specific heat measurements, Kamerlingh Onnes's laboratory faced stiff competition from Walter Nernst's Institute (...) of Physical Chemistry in Berlin. In fact, Berlin got the better of it because Leiden lacked focus. After the liquefaction of helium in 1908, Kamerlingh Onnes transformed his laboratory into an international facility for low temperature research, and for this reason it was impossible to make headway with the specific heat measurements. In the case of zero-point energy, Leiden developed a magnetic research programme to test the concept. Initially the balance of evidence seemed to be tipping in favour of zero-point energy. After 1914, however, Leiden would desert the theory in fovour, of a concept from calssical physics. A curious move that illustrates Kamerlingh Onnes's discomfort with the new quantum theory. (shrink)

ExcerptThe French political theorist George Sorel repeatedly prophesied that Europe would provide the future soil of armed cataclysms.1 Furthermore, he claimed that the catalyzing factors for the conflicts of political power that lay behind such eruptions of violence and anarchy were myths, conceived not in the anthropological sense but as a series of images formed into a dramatic narrative capable of mobilizing social movements and inspiring violence to change the status quo. Thomas Mann lent weight to such an analysis when (...) he predicted that “in the era of the masses, parliamentary discussion would necessarily prove utterly inadequate as a means of shaping political will.” Thus, “in the future what was needed in its place were mythic fictions, which would be fed to the masses as the primitive battle cries necessary for unleashing and activating political energies.” Henceforth “popular myths, or better, myths trimmed for the masses, would be the vehicle of political action—fables, chimeras, phantasms that needed to have nothing whatever to do with truth, reason, or science in order to be productive nonetheless.”. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Guest Editor's Introduction:The Time of Africana PhilosophyOmedi OchiengAfricana philosophy is in the main a philosophy of the present. Many will demur and with good reason. In the first place, in worrying about the definition and animating energies of Africana philosophers, Africana philosophers have looked to the past to furnish answers to the former, and to the future to motivate its orientation to the latter. For Lucius Outlaw, for example, (...) writing in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Africana philosophy is a third-order, metaphilosophical, umbrella-concept used to bring organizing oversight to various efforts of philosophizing—that is, activities of reflective, critical thinking and articulation and aesthetic expression—engaged in by persons and peoples African and of African descent who were and are indigenous residents of continental Africa and residents of the many African Diasporas worldwide" (2017, first paragraph).If, then, on the one hand, Outlaw's definition points to the past to make intelligible the contours of Africana philosophy—"persons and peoples... of African descent"—it is to the end of mobilizing toward the future. "In all cases," he argues, "the point of much of [Africana] philosophizings has been to confer meaningful orderings on individual and shared living and on natural and social worlds while resolving recurrent, emergent, and radically disruptive challenges to existence so as to survive, endure, and flourish across successive generations." It is striking, for all that, though, that he makes sure to insist on Africana philosophizing, the verb, rather than philosophy, the noun. For Outlaw, "the name [Africana philosophy] does not refer to a particular philosophy, philosophical system, method, or tradition" (2017). Rather, it is primarily a philosophizing, a doing. Where, then, the past and the future are invoked to give Africana philosophy its shape and contours, the doing of Africana philosophy—practices of the moment, of the present—are revealed to be its constitutive marrow.In the history of Africana philosophy few encounters clarify its present stakes as much as the bitter debate that erupted in post-independence African philosophy over whether there could be said to be an African philosophy. For the protagonists and other commentators, those debates seemed overwhelmingly to be fights about the past—specifically, over the [End Page 1] existence of African philosophy in the precolonial past. Those who came to be identified as ethnophilosophers held that worldviews of precolonial African societies constituted coherent systems of thought worthy of the name "philosophy." They were vehemently opposed by those who insisted on a universalist standpoint, led by the redoubtable Beninois Paulin Hountondji. These philosophers argued that those bent on the task of recuperating traditional worldviews were doing anthropology, not philosophy.At first glance, then, it would seem that these debates have little to tell us about the present of African philosophy. Indeed, there is overwhelming weariness among African philosophers regarding the pitched and factionalized disputations that tore through the discipline in the immediate post-independence era. And yet the view that these debates are now passé, relics and distractions from an immature era of a fledgling discipline, cannot account for their stakes; why precisely they were so rancorous, and why, even today, they occasion simmering tensions and embittered eruptions among African philosophers. Ethnophilosophers, after all, were not intent on recuperating the epistemes of traditional African societies out of sheer curiosity. Rather, they were intervening in deeply contested sociopolitical cleavages of their time.Alexis Kagame, for example, is renowned within the field of African philosophy as one of the most prominent ethnophilosophers to have emerged in the mid-twentieth century. His explication of the ontology of the Bantu, as revealed in Bantu languages, ought to be seen as all of a piece with his position as the central court historian and political theorist of the Kingdom of Rwanda. As historian Claudine Vidal (1991) established, Kagame's influential scholarship had as one of its primary goals the justification of a constitutional monarchy. Indeed, half a century after his writings, Rwandese leaders who came to power in the wake of the 1990s genocide would seize on his portrayal of precolonial Rwanda as a pastoral social formation and his testimony to the existence of a Greater Rwanda in justifying their political and... (shrink)

_ Purpose. _ The article highlights, on the one hand, the impact of the potential of a developed reflective identity on the processes of civilizational transformations, and on the other hand, the role of the transformational processes of a civilizational scale in the formation of a new type of reflective identity. Acute crisis processes in social development, which humanity has faced so far, in particular after 24.02.2022, indicate the beginning of a radical civilizational transformation. Therefore, in the article, it is (...) necessary to find out with the help of which mental, organizational and personal resources humanity can move to a more developed level of civilization without much loss. It is also necessary to show the importance of the philosophical understanding of reality in the formation of reflective identity because reflection has been the basic method of philosophy since its appearance. _Theoretical basis._ There is an understanding of the inextricable connection between the level of development of civilization and the level of reflective development of the individual fixed in a certain type of identity: a more historically developed stage of civilization corresponds to a more complex type of identity with multi-level reflection. At the same time, achieving a higher level of civilizational development is possible only under the condition of constructing a more complex and multi-level reflexive identity. _Originality._ It consists in establishing that the mental-cognitive mechanisms of reflection during the development of civilization passed through the stages of 1) reflexive forms of "the Axial Age", fixed in the corresponding forms of moral, logical, theological, political, etc. culture since the era of Ancient society; 2) reflexive forms of the Modern era with an emphasis on the inner world of man, the emergence of the reflective division into subject and object of knowledge as an essential feature of epistemology, as well as the formation of a modern type of identity; 3) the dual reflection of the post-industrial society and the Second Modern era, the mechanisms of which contribute to the formation of an active and self-sufficient network society and network crowdfunding economy. In this regard, at various stages of the development of civilization, in accordance with certain reflexive mechanisms, the corresponding types of identity are formed: 1) the basic identity of a person determined by his primary socialization; 2) reflective identity which is associated with the acquired cultural potential of a person and the opportunity to consciously choose special features of one’s own identity, and 3) identity which is associated with the existence in a given social culture of a mechanism of double reflection, which allows not only to make a valuable choice of the trajectory of development own identity but also to construct it. _Conclusions._ The aggravation of the identity problem in the modern world is the result of a civilizational crisis associated with the transformation of modern civilization, the technological basis of which is the introduction of renewable energy and artificial intelligence, as well as the development of network relationships in society. The hierarchical structure of modern identity is conditioned by the gradual historical and civilizational layering of the process of evolution of the reflexive component of identity. In each specific modern society, progressive civilizational transformations take place when an innovative type of identity coexisting with basic and modern types is activated and takes a leadership position. The growing role of network relations in society overcomes the identity crisis due to the reduction of social opposition and the harmonization of different aspects of the identity itself. Perceptible climatic changes and the destruction of the established security system in the world after 24.02.2022 made it obvious to the global thinking public that the world community is at the bifurcation point of a radical civilizational transformation. (shrink)

The essay, which consists of two parts, analyzes the female images of two great artists Botticelli and Picasso. The essay has the character of an art history study with memoir interweaves. In the first part, the author makes an attempt to decipher the genius of Botticelli using the technique of analyzing the prototype of the artist's heroine and comparing it with the image of a real woman, similar to the Botticelli model. The artist's genius is revealed through the type created (...) by him, in a sense — invariant, of a beautiful woman, the spiritual and material image of which is repeated in reality. The energy of Botticelli's paintings, which is their secret, allowed the author to see in life a real copy of the artist's heroine. Using the archive of preserved personal letters of a beautiful lady, as if she descended from Botticelli's paintings “Spring” and “The Birth of Venus”, the author draws an analogy the epistolary legacy with cinema, when events are described not in strict chronological order, but rather individual important moments and experiences are highlighted and are scaled. According to the letters, the author reconstructs the character of his heroine and hypothetically transfers these character traits to the Botticelli model, about whose character there is almost no evidence left. The second part of the essay is inspired by a photograph of Picasso's wife Olga Khokhlova, preserved in the personal archive of the author's friends. The author embeds his story about the muse and the great love of Picasso and about his other paradoxical models in the circumstances of his personal life, in the situation of his youth, comparing the revolutionary changes in art at the beginning of the XX century with the moods of the representatives of the artistic intelligentsia of the 70s of the past century. The heroines of Picasso and the strange interweaving of the fate of the participants in the author's narrative represent the content of this part of the essay. (shrink)

The question of energy is among the most vital for the future of humanity and the flourishing of life on this planet. Yet, only very rarely (if at all) do we ask what energy is, what it means, what ends it serves, and how it is related to actuality, meaning-making, and instrumentality. Energy Dreams interrogates the ontology of energy from the first coinage of the word energeia by Aristotle to the current practice of fracking and the (...) popularity of "energy drinks." Its sustained, multi-disciplinary investigation builds a theoretical infrastructure for an alternative energy paradigm. This study unhinges stubbornly held assumptions about energy, conceived in terms of a resource to be violently extracted from the depths of the earth and from certain living beings (such as plants, converted into biofuels), a thing that, teetering on the verge of depletion, sparks off movement and is incompatible with the inertia of rest. Consulting the insights of philosophers, theologians, psychologists and psychoanalysts, economic and political theorists, and physicists, Michael Marder argues that energy is not only a coveted object of appropriation but also the subject who dreams of amassing it; that it not only resides in the dimension of depth but also circulates on the surface; that it activates rest as much as movement, potentiality as much as actuality; and that it is both the means and the end of our pursuits. Ultimately, Marder shows that, instead of being grounded in utopian naïveté, the dreams of another energy—to be procured without devastating everything in existence—derive from the suppressed concept of energy itself. (shrink)

The text questions the idea of transgenderism, or more specifically, the positioning of the androgynous paradigm that is ecological , as a possible Utopian projection into the future; as a radical NO to the present that still has not, regardless of whether we like it or not, fulfilled the possibility of legal and political status for all forms of life.Naturally enough, apart from an interpretation of the androgyne as the archetype of the unity of oppossing energies , I also take (...) into account Kari Weil’s interpretation of the androgyne,according to whose unmasking the androgyne also figures as the misogynous ideal, a construct of the patriarchal ideosphere. Or, as Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar have proposed – the alternative term gynandrous , since the very structure of the lexeme androgyny reflects the power of the male symbolic vision over the female view of the Universe.Considering the circumstances in Croatia, transgenderism is perceived in the text as an ignored state of affairs, since intersexuals are not categorised in the »Statute on the Structure and Method of Work of the Expert Opinion Component in Implementing Rights from Social Welfare and Other Rights According to Specific Regulations«, which simply means that they have no specific rights under the present social welfare system.By way of the identity of the androgyne as a third gender, which unifies the categories of masculinity and femininity, or, more specifically, by the ecological androgynous paradigm, I consider the attempt to delete the dichotomy of neglected Nature versus culture, as explicated, for example,by the feminist biologist Lynda Birke, and the attempt to achieve a bioethical encounter between the human animal and the ‘nonhuman’ animal, which I define conditionally with the term transspeciesism, which covers the ethical negation of speciesism.Namely, within the framework of eco/feminist theory, the socio-cultural anthropologist Barbara Noske was one of the first to put forward the question of the human relation towards other animals, demanding the establishment of an anthropology of animals, since – even now – only an anthropology of humans exists in relation to animals. (shrink)

Global energy studies have produced a flurry of empirical analyses. However, the amount of theoretical reflection on the topic remains comparatively low. This article takes two specific limitations of the literature as its starting point: First, the often-unclear relationship between states and markets in global energy governance, and, second, the concept of energy as a material and external structure. With the aim of providing more nuanced perspectives on these issues, the article turns to the work of Niklas (...) Luhmann and Bruno Latour. Luhmann’s ideas of functional differentiation and structural coupling provide a new look at the interaction of states and markets. Latour’s symmetric anthropology allows us to rethink energy as a hybrid that is in the midst of instead of outside society. While these thinkers provide interesting ways forward for global energy studies, they also appear to be utterly incompatible. Instead of accepting this incompatibility, however, the article uses the tension between Luhmann and Latour’s work as a productive resource for further reflection on global energy governance. It develops a ‘Luhtourian’ approach, arguing that hybrid, issue-specific governance systems can emerge whenever a resistant hybrid instigates the emergence of symbolically generalized governance objects. (shrink)

I argue against Barbara Montero's claim that Conservation of Energy has nothing to do with physicalism. I reject her reconstruction of the argument for physicalism from CoE, and offer an alternative reconstruction that better captures the intuitions of those who believe that there is a conflict between interactionist dualism and CoE.

An infinite number of elastically colliding balls is considered in a classical, and then in a relativistic setting. Energy and momentum are not necessarily conserved globally, even though each collision does separately conserve them. This result holds in particular when the total mass of all the balls is finite, and even when the spatial extent and temporal duration of the process are also finite. Further, the process is shown to be indeterministic: there is an arbitrary parameter in the general (...) solution that corresponds to the injection of an arbitrary amount of energy (classically), or energy-momentum (relativistically), into the system at the point of accumulation of the locations of the balls. Specific examples are given that illustrate these counter-intuitive results, including one in which all the balls move with the same velocity after every collision has taken place. (shrink)

This article, based on grandparents' narratives collected in a doctoral research project, aims to weave together reflections on childhood, intergenerational bonding, and love. Seven grandmothers and three grandfathers, between fifty-one and seventy-one years old, participated in the research; nine residents of the city of Rio de Janeiro and one of Niterói, Brazil. In addition, narratives were collected from six of their grandchildren, all of them between five and twelve years old, and residents of Rio de Janeiro, Niterói, Brasília and Montevideo, (...) Uruguay. Conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic, our methodological strategy involved interviews conducted on Zoom. Interviews with the adults were conducted individually, and collectively with the children. The themes that emerged in the grandparents' narratives led to reflections on the relationship between adults and children that are emblematic of the conception of childhood found in Walter Benjamin's work, as well as the philosophical anthropology of Martin Buber and the psychoanalysis of Donald Winnicott. The emphasis of the research participants was on affective security, built on the basis of small, everyday gestures, which result in an atmosphere of mutual support between children and adults. From these affectionate encounters between the youngest and the oldest, what we characterize as a “childlike force” is established—an energy field that produces new existential possibilities. The narratives collected here teach us new ways of being adult through our relationships with children: in our encounter with the lifeworlds of the youngest among us, we re-encounter our own deeper sensibilities, and regain the ability to play, to create, and to reinvent ourselves in relearning the joy of beginnings. (shrink)