The Epic of Evolution is a course taught at Northern Arizona University. It engages the task of formulating a new epic myth that is based on the physical, natural, social, and cultural sciences. It aims to serve the need of providing meaning for human living in the vast and complex universe that the sciences now depict for us. It is an interdisciplinary effort in an academic setting that is often divided by specializations; it focuses on values in (...) a climate of relativism; and it concentrates on an enterprise for which there are few textbooks at hand. The course is presented in three segments: the cosmos before humans appeared, the human phenomenon, and scenarios for the future of evolution. (shrink)

This article sketches what is required of a world picture (religious or nonreligious) that is intended to provide orientation in the world for ongoing human life today. How do we move from conceptions and theories prominent in the modern sciences—such as cosmic and biological evolution—to an overall picture or cosmology which can orient us for the effective address of today's deepest human problems? A biohistoricalconception of the human is proposed in answer to this question.

This exhilarating tale of natural history illuminates the evolution of matter, life, and consciousness. In Everybody’s Story, Loyal Rue finds the means for global solidarity and cooperation in the shared story of humanity.

I argue that, because God is the author of history and has a purpose for his creation, evolution has a plot and can be analyzed with tools drawn from literary criticism. This necessitates engagement with the “epic of evolution” genre of scientific literature. I survey several prominent versions of the epic and distinguish between a purely naturalistic epic of evolution and a goal‐oriented Christian epic of evolution (CEE). In dealing with CEE, I (...) use the thought of J. R. R. Tolkien, along with Kevin Vanhoozer and Dorothy Sayers, to discuss the ways in which we can theologically legitimate speaking of God as the “author” of evolutionary history. (shrink)

. A partial analogy exists between the lifespan neuropsychological development of individuals and the biological evolution of species: In both of these major categories of growth, progressive emergence of wholes transcends inherently limited part‐processes. The remarkably small purview of each moment of consciousness experienced by an individual may be a crucial aspect of maintaining organization in that individual's cognitive development, protecting it from combinatorial chaos. In this essay I summarize experimental psychology research showing that working memory capacity comprises the (...) so‐called magical number 7±2 items, not only for words and digits but for spatial items and other sorts of cognitive materials, and not only in humans but also in other species. This is so to such an extent that 7±2 may be a “constant of nature.” The small quantity range 7±2 independent items, which builds upon a more elementary, instantaneous working memory capacity of three or four items, is surprisingly independent of the time duration of a cognitive task. Moreover, it is largely independent of ontogeny. Explanations of these powerful facts about working memory are offered here within both a functionalistic framework and a framework of hypothetical neural processes. At the neural level, working memory dynamics may comprise certain brain wave harmonics or topological relationships in the sheetlike cortex. Within the functionalistic framework, I suggest an additional analogy, pertaining to cultural evolution, with Tom Gilbert's work on risk analysis and “the global problematic” that follows from unforeseen consequences of the expansiveness of human ambition. Several connections are drawn with ideas presented by participants in the Chicago Religion and Science Group about how theologies and sciences try to understand the possibility of adaptive exercises of human freedom in the face of the extreme finiteness of each human individual. (shrink)

In the collection of poems entitled Psychodia Platonica, and in particular in the poem entitled Psychozoia, Henry More laid the groundwork for his life-long inquiry into the nature of the human self. He provided a poetic commentary of Plotinus’s Enneads in which three ontological dimensions – the life of nature, animal perception and the intellect – created an allegorical background against which one could articulate a systematic analysis of the individual human self in its relationships with God and created reality. (...) Psychozoia ended with a conversion, in which the soul of a Platonic pilgrim was released from its condition of ‘autaesthesia’ so that it was finally able to reach a state of ‘anautoaesthesia’. Significantly, More characterized this crucial shift from self-perception to the annihilation of the individual self as a motion towards ‘self-senslessnesse’ and ‘self-deadnesse’. Regardless of its aesthetic merits, More’s poem dramatizes key philosophical notions, while bringing to the fore the prodigious effervescence of his linguistic skills. In this sense, Psychozoia remains an important document to understand the evolution of More’s thought. (shrink)

Synopsis of Piṅgala Devāyaṇa, exhaustive work on Hindu mythology, cosmology, and evolution.

_ Source: _Volume 9, Issue 2, pp 196 - 219 In his 1978 On Human Nature, Edward Wilson defined the evolutionary epic as the scientific story of all life, a linear narrative beginning with the big bang and ending with the story of human history. Since that time several popular science writers have attempted to write that story of life producing such titles as The Universe Story and The Epic of Evolution. Historians have also gotten into the (...) act under the guise of “Big History,” which has resulted in a series of monographs and is taught at several universities and high schools throughout the world. While the evolutionary epic is often presented as a novel way of bringing the historical insights of modern science into a narrative form that transcends the humanities–natural science divide, the genre itself originates in the nineteenth century, just as new geological and cosmic timescales were being established and new sciences such as biology and anthropology were being formalized. Several German Naturphilosophen and Victorian naturalists imagined the history of life as one, as a “Cosmos,” and produced evolutionary epics that bare significant similarities with their more modern counterparts. By considering the various recurrences of the evolutionary epic, from its origins in early German Romanticism and Victorian naturalism to the degeneration narratives of the fin de siècle and on to the Wilsonian and Big History versions of the late twentieth century and beyond, this essay seeks to map out a shared intellectual genealogy while examining the genre’s conceptual commonalities. What is perhaps most compelling about the history of the genre is the striking persistence of non-Darwinian forms of evolution that are utilized to situate the emergence of humanity in these epic narratives of life. (shrink)

In antiquity, works of culture, created by the Greek-Roman people, passed centuries, the test of centuries and reached our era. Many samples of European literature, born in the Modern Age, have long been forgotten, and unique works, such as the Homeric epic and the tragedies of Sophocles, have been translated again and again, always bringing spiritual energy and aesthetic pleasure to readers’ hearts. Homer was unique among the poets of that time, and indeed the supposed author of the Iliad (...) and the Odyssey must undoubtedly be one of the world's greatest literary artists. The two epics formed the basis of Greek education and culture throughout the classical era and laid the foundation of human education up until the time of the Roman Empire and the spread of Christianity so this is proof that Homer is also one of the most influential authors in the broadest sense. The article reveals the ideological and artistic features of the ancient Greek poet Homer’s poems “Iliad” and “Odyssey”. The authors of this article analyze the thematic, ideological, and artistic features of these epic works. The methodological basis of the work is the principle of historicism, which contributes to the objective study and evaluation of literary phenomena in the process of evolutionary development. The scientific article uses a traditional set of analysis methods: typological, systemic, and comparative. (shrink)

It is quite impossible to consider human nature within an evolutionary perspective if we leapfrog over culture and establish some direct relation between cosmic and human evolution without taking culture into consideration. Culture holds a significant place within the structures of nature, as the “epic” of evolution portrays nature—cosmic, physical, and biological. Religion emerges within culture, and it plays a role in organizing the human consciousness and in generating the stories, rituals, and morality that constitute the organization (...) of consciousness. Since organization of consciousness determines how culture is conducted, and since we face a global crisis today because of the ways we are conducting our culture, religion's role is critical for the future of culture. Wherever it is attempted, whether in terms of traditional or posttraditional modes, the fashioning of adequate worldviews, rituals, and morality is an essentially religious activity. For both traditional and posttraditional modes, the task is to weave structures of meaning with the sciences of evolution so as to effect the most suitable organization of consciousness. (shrink)

This study situates Romantic literature in a historical narrative that runs from the Fall of the Bastille to Waterloo, and places Romantic texts against contemporary events like the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, and the rise of European imperialism in Africa and Asia that mark the period from 1789 to 1832. At the same time, this study considers the relation of the Romantic epic to narratives of universal history from Hegel to Marx. A central concern is the appearance of (...) the Romantic hero as a Promethean subject of history in the bourgeois social revolutions of the age. Napoleon's career provides a paradigm for the bildungsroman of the Romantic subject; while the life of Goethe expresses this dynamic life-history as an aesthetic narrative. Taken together, then, these narratives define the milieu in which the Romantic subject is constituted, and delineate the parameters of the revolutionary transformations of modernity. ;The concept of modernity as a process of development came into currency as a description of the radical changes undergone by European society during the emergence of industrial capitalism, the democratization of the public sphere, and the rise of a world-imperial order. The Romantic period thus constitutes an event like the postmodern break in which the narratives through which history is mediated to individuals are shattered by a traumatic shift in modes of cultural production. Romantic epics like Faust, Part II, Jerusalem, Don Juan and The Excursion respond to this crisis of representation by reinserting historical experience into an overarching narrative of development that describes the evolution of the representative individual or collective subject, "Man," in his fall into alienation and self-division in social forms, and his rise toward utopian self-unification as a figure of desire for restored human community. The contradictions of modernity are thus reproduced in the Romantic epic, which both projects the totalized form of an emancipatory metanarrative and records the deconstruction of that narrative by social change. Romanticism, then, is a displaced ideological afterimage of the inception of modernity as it is experienced by Romantic writers in all its apocalyptic violence and utopian promise. (shrink)

Like biological species, languages change over time. As noted by Darwin, there are many parallels between language evolution and biological evolution. Insights into these parallels have also undergone change in the past 150 years. Just like genes, words change over time, and language evolution can be likened to genome evolution accordingly, but what kind of evolution? There are fundamental differences between eukaryotic and prokaryotic evolution. In the former, natural variation entails the gradual accumulation of (...) minor mutations in alleles. In the latter, lateral gene transfer is an integral mechanism of natural variation. The study of language evolution using biological methods has attracted much interest of late, most approaches focusing on language tree construction. These approaches may underestimate the important role that borrowing plays in language evolution. Network approaches that were originally designed to study lateral gene transfer may provide more realistic insights into the complexities of language evolution.Editor's suggested further reading in BioEssaysLinguistic evidence supports date for Homeric epics Abstract. (shrink)

This book brings to focus one of the prominent 20th century Indian thinkers, Sri Aurobindo, by providing an overview of his philosophy on life and yoga, and by elucidating his thought in the context of contemporary society. This text is unique in approaching Sri Aurobindo as a problem solver and from a conflict resolution perspective, the latter being the author’s expertise. Sri Aurobindo’s contributions such as Ideal of Human Unity, Integral Yoga, Life Divine and his poetic vision as embodied in (...) his epic poem, Savitri, are explored in-depth. The book explores these ideas to seek possible solutions to the current predicaments of human life and society. This monograph attracts not only students and researchers in the fields of philosophy, religion, yoga, political science, international politics, Indian thought, and conflict resolution, but also general interest readers. (shrink)

An award-wining biologist takes us on the dramatic expeditions that unearthed the history of life on our planet. Just 150 years ago,most of our world was an unexplored wilderness.Our sense of how old it was? Vague and vastly off the mark. And our sense of our own species’ history? A set of fantastic myths and fairy tales. Fossils had been known for millennia, but they were seen as the bones of dragons and other imagined creatures. In the tradition of The (...) Microbe Hunters and Gods, Graves, and Scholars, Sean Carroll’s Remarkable Creatures celebrates the pioneers who replaced our fancies with the even more amazing true story of how our world evolved. Carroll recounts the most important discoveries in two centuries of national history — from Darwin’s trip around the world to CharlesWalcott’s discovery of pre-Cambrian life in the Grand Canyon; from Louis and Mary Leakey’s investigation of our deepest past in East Africa to the trailblazers in modern laboratories who have located a time clock in our DNA. Join him in a rousing voyage of discovery, from the epic journeys of pioneering naturalists to the breakthroughs making headlines today. (shrink)

The subject of the study is traditional Chinese costumes, their origin and forms of inheritance in the "new Chinese style". The object of the study is national clothing, the existence of which is a cultural epic spanning thousands of years and including the epochs of the reign of the largest Chinese dynasties. Turning to the past allows the author to demonstrate the depth and unique charm of oriental culture, to show the reasons for its relevance in the world of (...) modern fashion. Such aspects of the topic as the reflection of the history and spiritual values of the nation in the objects and elements of Chinese clothing, as well as their impact on the global fashion industry, are considered in detail. Special attention is paid to the aesthetics of the Hanfu costumes, the baturukongkamshurd vest, the dianzi hair ornament, the head with one hieroglyph hairstyle, the Zhongshan and Cheongsam costumes. The work uses historical, cultural, comparative and analytical research methods. They allow us to trace not only the evolution of Chinese clothing, but also how representatives of the "new Chinese style" skillfully embody traditional drawings in modern design concepts, creating works that combine both cultural heritage and current fashion trends. The novelty of the research lies in identifying ways to transform traditional Chinese costumes into the fashion trends of the "new Chinese style". The author analyzed its wide popularity among modern youth, as well as its large-scale presence in the global media space. The findings of the study reveal the value of clothing as a unique cultural medium, and also reflect the outstanding contribution of the "new Chinese style" in its innovative reinvention. The author's contribution to the study is observations on the use of "folk Chinese aesthetics" in world fashion, which include Zhongshan, Cheongsam, Qipao costumes, as well as ancient techniques for creating jacquard, knotted batik, and antique embroidery. The "New Chinese Style" not only gave national elements a new life in modern society, but also opened the way for the inheritance and development of Chinese culture. (shrink)

In 1871 the travel writer and anthropologist W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875) was inspired by his correspondence with Darwin to turn his narrow ethnological research on West African tribes into the broadest history imaginable, one that would show Darwin's great principle of natural selection at work throughout the evolutionary history of humanity, stretching back to the origins of the universe itself. But when Martyrdom of Man was published in 1872, Reade confessed that Darwin would not likely find him a very good (...) Darwinian, as he was unable to show that natural selection was anything more than a secondary law that arranges all details. When it came to historicising humans within the sweeping history of all creation, Reade argued that the primary law was that of development, a less contentious theory of human evolution that was better suited to Reade's progressive and teleological history of life. By focussing on the extensive correspondence between Reade and Darwin, this paper reconstructs the attempt to make an explicitly Darwinian evolutionary epic in order to shed light on the moral and aesthetic demands that worked to give shape to Victorian efforts to historicise humans within a vastly expanding timeframe. -/- . (shrink)

The Homeric epics are among the greatest masterpieces of literature, but when they were produced is not known with certainty. Here we apply evolutionary-linguistic phylogenetic statistical methods to differences in Homeric, Modern Greek and ancient Hittite vocabulary items to estimate a date of approximately 710–760 BCE for these great works. Our analysis compared a common set of vocabulary items among the three pairs of languages, recording for each item whether the words in the two languages were cognate – derived from (...) a shared ancestral word – or not. We then used a likelihood-based Markov chain Monte Carlo procedure to estimate the most probable times in years separating these languages given the percentage of words they shared, combined with knowledge of the rates at which different words change. Our date for the epics is in close agreement with historians' and classicists' beliefs derived from historical and archaeological sources. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 233-250 [Access article in PDF] Narrative Theory and Function: Why Evolution Matters Michelle Scalise Sugiyama I It may seem a strange proposition that the study of human evolution is integral to the study of literature, yet that is exactly what this paper proposes. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, the practice of storytelling is ancient, pre-dating not only the advent of (...) writing, but of agriculture and permanent settlement as well. Secondly, narrative is ultimately a product of the mind, which in turn is the product of a long history of evolution by natural selection. Thus, an understanding of why and how humans create and consume narrative requires an understanding of (1) features of ancestral environments and (2) features of the mind that made the emergence of this phenomenon possible.There can be little doubt that narrative emerged in human prehistory. Language, an obvious prerequisite for storytelling, is likely to have emerged by at least 50,000 and possibly 250,000 years ago, depending upon whether one places one's trust in archaeological or anatomical evidence. 1 The most reasonable estimate is offered by Geoffrey Miller, who points out that, given its universality, the language faculty must have emerged by the time ancestral Homo sapiens began migrating out of Africa approximately 100,000 years ago. 2 Although the oldest known written narrative (The Epic of Gilgamesh) dates back only 5,000 years, the written literary traditions of many ancient cultures are known to be rooted in longstanding oral traditions. 3 The fact that many modern foraging peoples have rich and complex oral traditions further suggests that the emergence of narrative is not linked to the development of agriculture 10,000 years ago. Moreover, other forms of symbolic expression, such as the cave paintings, Venus figurines, and engraved bone [End Page 233] and antler that have been found at various sites throughout Europe, date back approximately 30,000 years, and rock paintings in Australia may date back even farther. 4 Since humans were physiologically capable of speech long before they began producing these artifacts, storytelling is likely to be at least as ancient as these other representational forms. Indeed, one scholar situates the "dawn of the oral tradition" within this period (Pfeiffer, p. 189). Given, then, that modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) have been in existence for approximately 100,000 years 5 and are the only hominid species or subspecies known for certain to exhibit storytelling behavior, we can safely say that oral narrative is a product of our hunting-and-gathering past, likely to have emerged between 30,000 and 100,000 years ago.The universality of narrative is further testimony to its being an ancient cognitive phenomenon. Literate or not, all known cultures, past and present, practice storytelling. 6 Moreover, all normally developing humans acquire the ability to process and generate stories: studies of Western children indicate that the ability to tell stories emerges spontaneously between the ages of two-and-a-half and three, and children as young as thirty months can distinguish between narrative and non-narrative uses of language. 7 In contrast to reading, writing, and arithmetic, no special education is required for narrative competence to develop, nor is there any evidence that oral literacy is acquired through contact with other cultures; although subject matter is often exchanged between groups, the practice of storytelling itself arises independently among even the most isolated peoples. Nor does any type of culture have a monopoly on narrative sophistication: the stories of hunter-horticulturalist societies are no less observant, insightful, or artful than those of agrarian or industrial societies.As with language, narrative takes the same basic form across cultures, which David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson define as "a chain of events in cause-effect relationship occurring in time." Given the preponderance of human agents in narrative, most narrative theorists would probably modify this barebones description to include character (usually understood to have a human psychology), goal-oriented action, and resolution. Frank Kermode, for example, defines the "proprieties" of narrative as "connexity, closure, and character," and John... (shrink)

Despite the discredit into which the once famous theory of Niebuhr has long sincefallen, it is beginning to appear, both to historians and to students of literature, that Epic poetry was in full process of evolution at Rome before Livius Andronicus was inspired to translate the Odyssey. There is, indeed, ample evidence to warrant such a belief; our authorities may most conveniently be considered in two main divisions. The first calls for no more than the barest mention, for (...) it is concerned with those Naeniae and Cantus Conuiuiales the existence of which is not seriously challenged by even the most conservative criticism. They are well attested, and the evidence for their extreme antiquity is familiar to every reader of Cicero. In passing we may mention also Saturnian epitaphs like those of the Scipios, and the Tituli Triumphales set up in the Capitol. Typical lines are: Fundit, fugat, prosternit maximas legiones, from the inscription of M'Acilius Glabrio, and Summas opes qui regum regias refregit. (shrink)

Religious naturalism is an emerging construct that relies greatly on science and yet affirms attitudes and practices that are distinctly religious in nature. This article explores the meaning of the term as it is used by various proponents, contrasts it to some similar constructs , and examines some objections andoutstanding issues from within the science‐religion community: postmodernist objections; whether religious naturalism is sufficiently respectful of traditional religious expression; and whether religious naturalism seeks to be a descriptive or a prescriptive enterprise (...) or both. Overall, religious naturalism is affirmed as a potentially productive new variant of naturaltheology, one that can preserve religious sensibilities without relying on supernatural constructs while maintaining a basic affirmation of other religious traditions. (shrink)

We present here a cosmological myth, alternative to "the Universe Story" and "the Epic of Evolution", highlighting the roles of entropy and dissipative structures in the universe inaugurated by the Big Bang. Our myth offers answers these questions: Where are we? What are we? Why are we here? What are we to do? It also offers answers to a set of "why" questions: Why is there anything at all? and Why are there so many kinds of systems? - (...) the answers coming from cosmology and physics ; Why do systems not last once they exist? - the answer coming from a materialist interpretation of information theory; and, Why are systems just the way they are and not otherwise? - the answer coming from evolutionary biology. We take into account the four kinds of causation designated by Aristotle as efficient, final, and material formal, with the Second Law of thermodynamics in the role of final cause. Conceptual problems concerning reductionism, "teleology", and the choice/chance distinction are dealt with in the framework of specification hierarchy, and the moral implications of our story explored in the conclusion. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and Archaic Greece by Kirk OrmandAndromache KaranikaKirk Ormand. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women and Archaic Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. x + 265 pp. Cloth, $90.The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women, a text in fragmentary form that poses questions about its date, performance, and genre context, is put in new light in the rigorous study by Kirk Ormand, who traces the main themes (...) and mythological details of the Catalogue’s intriguing storytelling. With the external façade of a recounting poem largely connected to heroic genealogies, the Catalogue has attracted significant scholarly attention. Ormand breaks new ground by focusing consistently throughout his book not solely on matters of poetic production but rather on the “end result” and the social forces that produced and proliferated the poem. The key themes of contest, rape, marriage, and changes in the institution of marriage become the template on which the mythological structure of heroic genealogies is set. Ormand sees them not as a static platform but as the moving axis that problematizes female roles as women change home and status. The Catalogue presents largely the consumption of women without ever presenting a female point of view; the female figures are tools in creating heroic genealogies with the birth of the hero as a focal point without much interest in further births or other moments of the female life. As becomes clear from the first introductory chapter, Ormand assumes an authorial stance that is well aware of the oral hexametric epic tradition but is also consciously creating an act of aristocratic nostalgia of the past in the new political frame of the polis.The second chapter delves into much-needed research on the socioeconomic exchange of hedna, a practice often conflated with dowry and aristocratic wedding gift exchange. Ormand carefully disentangles the literary attestations and underlines how hedna was a marker of aristocratic values distinct from other forms of gifts. Influenced by Ian Morris’ view that oral poetry reflects social practices at the times of performance that resonate with audiences, Ormand brings a new understanding of hedna not as economic exchange in a bride-wealth social nexus (according to the anthropological work of Jack Goody) but rather as something that ensures a kind of membership, so to speak, in an aristocratic club. Functioning like a hidden auction, the offering of hedna creates a competitive framework that silently raises the price of aristocratic membership. Displaying and offering more wealth ensures belonging to the elite but also defines the measure that marks and solidifies aristocratic status while raising the bar for others. Marriage offers the forum of competition, and the bride becomes a marker of value (through her beauty) that enables such a kind of gift-giving, and, through it, belonging to the elite. By exploring the historical context and literary attestations of this type [End Page 171] of gift exchange, Ormand presents a convincing case that the Catalogue, an epic poem that can be largely seen functioning as a counterpart of sympotic poetry, has a similar role: within the early context of the rising polis it provides an elite ideology connecting aristocrats to heroes through the nexus of the poetic (undemocratic) device of hedna.In chapter 3, Ormand’s analysis of the story of Mestra, a well-known shape shifter in myth, lucidly illustrates his arguments about elite ideology and how marriage defines female identity in the narrative of the Catalogue. Connections between the female and mobility are of course not new, but Ormand brings a new point of view to a central issue in archaic and classical literature, namely, the implicit struggle between natal and spousal families for the woman (as in the myths of Demeter and Persephone, the Danaids, Antigone, and Electra, among others). In the Hesiodic narrative of Mestra, her shape-shifting and passage from rape to marriage exemplify social tensions and the evolution of social and legal thinking on citizenship, endogamy, and exogamy and ultimately the oikos as a unit of the polis.The fourth chapter shifts toward the fluidity in oral poetic production and culminates in a parallel reading of Atalanta’s race with Hippomenes as a recasting of the... (shrink)

A set of science‐inspired cosmic narratives referred to as the Epic of Evolution and the Universe Story or, collectively, the new cosmology, proposes to bring humans closer to nature by placing us into the broader narrative of the cosmos. This article responds to commentary and critique on my book Consecrating Science: Wonder, Knowledge, and the Natural World, which critically examines these science‐based cosmic narratives and their particular and problematic modes and objects of wonder. Themes include the relationship of (...) wonder to science and ethical engagement; the question of whether wonder, grounded in everyday sensory experience, can scale up to the level of global environmental problems; the relevance of wonder to nonideal environments and negative affects like fear or grief; and the importance of humanistic and religious studies scholarship for critiquing grand narratives of science, among other themes. I also respond to claims that my book misdiagnoses and distorts the work of the new cosmology and its claims to wonder. (shrink)

God, the sacred, is radically indwelling and immanent; therefore, nature is enough to satisfy our thirst for transcendence. The transcendent is the radically indwelling capacity of love to bring new life and a sense of being at home in the universe to us and to the people of the world. The epic of evolution, the scientific story of evolution understood as cosmogenesis, is the foundation of this position. However, my primary focus is on one particular practice of (...) internalizing the transforming power of the scientific story of evolution—that of story. Here the practice of story is understood as framing moments of our encounters with matters of faith and love, creating narratives out of these moments, embracing these narratives as a kind of personal scripture, and telling these narratives as a source of inspiration and of guidance about how we are to be of use in the world. (shrink)

This article is devoted to the study of the specific features of the display of social networks and computer technologies in the late 70s of the XX – early 20s of the XXI century in the fantastic Star Wars universe created by American filmmaker D. Lucas. In this scientific work, the authors argue for the relevance and scientific novelty of the problem under consideration. The study examines the peculiarities of the influence of social networks and computer technologies in modern conditions. (...) The article provides a justification for the need to analyze the reflection of this issue in fantasy art as an auxiliary factor in the development of the prognostic function of science. This paper provides a reasoned explanation of the choice of the Star Wars universe as an object of research, taking into account its importance in the fantasy genre, as well as in order to refute stereotypes according to which Star Wars is a collection of entertainment materials in which there is completely no semantic load. The authors analyze the fundamental differences in the coverage of the studied problem in such genres of art as literature and cinema in the context of Star Wars. The article examines the features of the evolution of the display of cybernetic technologies and communication network platforms in the Star Wars universe in the mid‑1970s – early 2020s, as a reflection of the real development of scientific and technological progress, as well as an example of the impact of political, socio‑economic and moral factors on the use of online platforms and computer technology during the period under study. In this article, using the example of the Star Wars universe, the features of the transformation of the role of specialists in the field of high technology through the prism of the attitude of artists to them – more specifically, writers and cinematographers – are also considered. The article also examines the moral and ethical aspect of the use of computer technology and social networks, considered by artists who have made a significant contribution to the development of the fantastic epic of Star Wars. (shrink)

A comparative study of the thinkers of China is meant to stimulate philosophical dialogue and not to deliver the observations of the “Man from Mars − the Western reader”. There has been an ongoing debate regarding the validity of interpreting the classical texts of China in the framework of Western philosophical categories and applying classical precepts to contemporary philosophical discussions. While it has been acknowledged that there are differences in cultural traditions, there is also an increasing awareness of the need (...) for sustained and systematic efforts toward formulating philosophical foundations which incorporate diverse intellectual perspectives. Specific topics discussed in the paper are: the parallels between Socrates as a gadfly and Confucius as a wooden bell; “confrontational hermeneutics” (a hermeneutics oriented toward having “a confrontation with a text or a tradition which pays careful attention to otherness of text or tradition”); convergent and divergent evolution of ideas; the parallels between the Book of Odes and Homeric epics; analogical reasoning from India, China, and Greece to Wittgenstein. Reflecting on the continuity of ideas between the philosophical thought of China and the West, we discover a vantage point from which the ideas can be approached with a fresh mind. In the philosophical legacy of China the familiar ideas and problems of Western philosophy are cast in a new light. Philosophical ideas, insofar as they are discoveries and inventions of the human mind, resonate across the ages and across geographical and cultural boundaries. (shrink)

A sermon on the wonders of creation? "But I don't know if I believe in creation any more, since I've been studying evolution in school," "Well, you do still think that Earth is a wonderland, don't you? Is there anything you have learned in your biology class that has talked you out of that?" The college student home for Easter puzzles a moment. "Not really. You know, I was wondering during the last lecture before I left. Wow! How is (...) it that DNA has generated such a wealth of biodiversity on Earth?" Nature on Earth has spun quite a story, going from zero through several billion species, evolving microbes into persons. M. J. Benton concludes: "Analysis of the fossil record of microbes, algae, fungi, protists, plants, and animals shows that the diversity of both marine and continental life-increased exponentially since the end of the Precambrian."1 Andrew H. Knoll celebrates "Earth's immense evolutionary epic": "The scientific account of life's long history abounds in both narrative verve and mystery."2.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:American Journal of Philology 122.4 (2001) 533-565 [Access article in PDF] Rome Personified, Rome Epitomized: Representations of Rome in the Poetry of the Early Fifth Century Michael Roberts The last years of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth century (the reigns of Theodosius and his sons) mark a crucial stage in the Christianization of Rome. 1 The hold of the city and all it stood for on (...) the imagination of the ruling classes was as strong as ever. But Theodosian legislation had definitively established the dominance of Christianity in the empire, and even in Rome the aristocracy was becoming progressively more Christian. 2 These changing circumstances find expression in the way Rome was represented in contemporary literature. While still indebted to the traditional language of the laudes Romae and to well-established literary traditions, the authors of the period find new ways to inflect the image of Rome that mirror their differing religious and cultural allegiances.Three poets make the largest contributions to that evolution in the representation of Rome. Claudius Claudianus was born in Alexandria (c. 370) but came to Rome in 394. His first Latin poem celebrated the consuls of 395, Probinus and Olybrius, but thereafter most of his poems served the interests of his patron and the emperor Honorius' chief minister, the Vandal general Stilicho. Of particular importance for the representation of Rome are his consular panegyrics, for the consulships of Honorius (396, 398, and 404) and Stilicho (400), and his two historical epics on the campaigns against the African warlord Gildo (De bello Gildonico 398) and against Alaric in 401-402 (De bello Getico 402). Claudian wrote his last dated poem in 404. Nothing is heard of him after that date and it is likely he died soon thereafter.Claudian's Christian contemporary, Aurelius Prudentius Clemens, was born, according to the verse preface he wrote to his collected works, in 348. After a successful career in the imperial administration, he [End Page 533] withdrew from public life to devote his poetic talents to the service of God. Two works are especially relevant to the representation of Rome, the Contra Symmachum, in two books, completed in 402 or early 403, though book 1 may have been written earlier, and the Peristephanon, a collection of poems on the martyrs, including the Roman martyrs Lawrence (Perist. 2), Hippolytus (Perist. 11), Peter and Paul (Perist. 12), and Agnes (Perist. 14). Peristephanon 9 and 11 refer to a journey the poet took to Rome, generally dated to 401/402, but it is quite possible that this was not his first trip to the capital. 3The third poet, Rutilius Namatianus, a traditionally minded pagan, was praefectus urbi in 414. His poem, the De reditu suo, which does not survive in its entirety, describes his return from Rome to his native Gaul in 417. 4 It is haunted by the destruction caused in northern Italy and Gaul by the recent barbarian invasions, but it begins with an extended paean of praise to Rome, the eternal city, which always grows stronger by its reverses. Rutilius' patriotic devotion to the city and the idea of Rome provides an optimistic counterpoint to the evidence of destruction and desolation that runs as a leitmotif through the poem.Rome figures in the three poets in two guises. It may appear personified as a woman, whose attributes index the power and status of the city and empire as well as the contemporary circumstances of the Roman state. 5 As an alternative to this metaphorical representation of Rome, the city may be encapsulated by certain, especially charged details of topography, in an epitome of its urban geography that stands in a metonymic (or synecdochic) relationship to the city as a whole. Thus, to take an example from a later period, when Paulinus of Pella came at an advanced age to write his life story in the Eucharisticos, he mentions a trip that he took to Rome in the company of his parents in a.d. 379. At the time he was not... (shrink)

The eminent philosopher and classical scholar Alexander Nehamas presents here a collection of his most important essays on Plato and Socrates. The papers are unified in theme by the idea that Plato's central philosophical concern in metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics was to distinguish the authentic from the fake, the original from its imitations. In approach, the collection displays Nehamas's characteristic combination of analytical rigor and sensitivity to the literary form and dramatic effect of Plato's work. Together, the papers represent Nehamas's (...) distinct and original contributions to scholarship on Plato and Socrates and serve as a comprehensive introduction to the thought of these two philosophers. In the book's opening section, Nehamas discusses Plato's representation of Socrates as a model of authentic human goodness, showing that Plato's Socrates is a more skeptical, troubling, and individualistic thinker than is usually supposed. The papers in the second section form a sustained defense of a new and important understanding of Plato's theory of the forms and the evolution of that theory in Plato's later writings. The third section examines Plato's contention that popular entertainment--by which he meant Greek epic and tragic poetry--misleads its audience into a debased life, an argument Nehamas relates to modern anxieties about television and other forms of popular culture. The collection also includes a discussion of Plato's use of the dialogue form in his representation of Socrates and carefully examines the combination of literary and philosophical elements in his work. Nehamas argues in the book that Plato's specific judgments of what is authentic are often flawed, but that his idea of authenticity as the mark of truth, beauty, and goodness is stronger than many modern scholars have assumed. In drawing together Nehamas's many influential ideas about Plato and Socrates, Virtues of Authenticity is a major contribution to the study of ancient Greek philosophy. (shrink)

European thought begins with the Greeks. Scientific and philosophic thinking--the pursuit of truth and the grasping of unchanging principles of life--is a historical development, an achievement; and, as Bruno Snell writes in The Discovery of the Mind, nothing less than a revolution. The Greeks did not take mental resources already at their disposal and merely map out new subjects for discussion and investigation. In poetry, drama, and philosophy they in fact discovered the human mind. The stages in man's gradual understanding (...) of himself are revealed in the course of ancient literature from Homer to Virgil. A rational view of the nature of man slowly established itself in the creations of epic and lyric poetry, tragedy and literary criticism, pre-Socratic thought, and early Greek ethics all the way to the discovery of humanitas and the spiritual landscape of Virgil's Arcadia. The Discovery of the Mind is a landmark work in tracing this evolution of consciousness--one of the distinguishing characteristics of the history of man. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Humanness of Heroes: Studies in the Conclusion of Virgil’s Aeneid by Michael C. J. PutnamAnne RogersonMichael C. J. Putnam. The Humanness of Heroes: Studies in the Conclusion of Virgil’s Aeneid. The Amsterdam Vergil Lectures 1. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011. 183 pp. Paper, $25.Michael Putnam’s latest book on the Aeneid arises from lectures given in 2009 to inaugurate a series of University of Amsterdam Lectures on Vergil. (...) Its central question is how to understand the Aeneid’s end, and in particular what to make of the evolution of Aeneas, the poem’s hero, from “an apparently stoical, self-effacing... victim” at the start of the epic into a “fury-driven, vengeful conqueror” at its close (12). As this opening statement of intent makes clear, Putnam here develops arguments first presented in his 1965 book, The Poetry of the Aeneid (Cambridge, Mass.), and since further extended and refined in numerous articles and chapters and in his 1995 book, Virgil’s Aeneid: Interpretation and Influence (Chapel Hill, N.C.). Putnam’s Aeneid is, broadly speaking, the Aeneid of the so-called Harvard school, the “pessimists” who read its ending as a betrayal of the instruction that Anchises gives Aeneas in the underworld to spare the humbled. But Putnam is not an extremist: his Aeneas rather than being a monster motivated by diabolical rage or inhumane pragmatism, is emotional and human, driven to fury by pietas towards Pallas and Evander. Putnam sees [End Page 675] this impulse, however, although not unjustified, as fundamentally incompatible with the duty enjoined by Anchises. In addition, and in justification of his project to judge the epic’s hero “by the standards that the poem itself sets” (17), Putnam stresses that the Aeneid confronts its readers repeatedly with this incompatibility. This book explores the details and the implications of that confrontation, and in Putnam’s sensitive and careful exploration of those details there is much of value, even for those who may take issue with his interpretation of Anchises’ dictum as an injunction that “the prideful... should be beaten down but spared” (20).The approach Putnam takes to the Aeneid is characteristic of his earlier work: he reads the epic closely, paying meticulous attention to words and images repeated throughout the poem and to echoes of earlier poetry, particularly—since his focus is primarily on Books 10 and 12—the Iliad. Thus in chapters 1 and 2, which treat the rampage of Aeneas in Book 10, Putnam is first concerned to draw out the parallels between Vergil’s hero and the vengeful Achilles. Much of chapter 1 contrasts the Aeneid and the Iliad, but Catullus 64 provides the initial link, a lexical one first discussed by Oliver Lyne in his 1989 Words and the Poet (Oxford): in Catullus’ epyllion Achilles appears as the harvester of men (353–55), while in Aeneid 10.513, the rampaging Aeneas harvests all in his vicinity with his sword. The way Putnam builds on this intertext provides an example of his approach throughout the book, where an understanding of Vergil’s epic is constructed upon a foundation both of allusion and of narrative similarity and difference between events in the later books of the Aeneid and elsewhere. Parallel piles of corpses rapidly amass after the harvesting image both in Catullus 64 and in Aeneid 10. This, Putnam suggests, shows us Vergil’s Aeneas absorbing the brutality of Catullus’ earlier hero, a theme he develops as he goes on to discuss narrative parallels between Vergil’s ferocious Aeneas of Book 10 and Achilles as he is depicted in Iliad 18 and 21. Taking victims for human sacrifice, Putnam argues, links Aeneas to Achilles “at his most savage” (23) and “most vindictive” (24). Worse (for Aeneas), his victims are named, and have families, while Achilles’ twelve captives in the Iliad are anonymous, and less pathetic. Worse still, the Aeneid focuses on the gruesomeness of Aeneas’ unproductive sacrifice of his eight victims, a contrast to the four bulls sacrificed for “productive good” (25) in the Georgics.As Aeneas’ eight and Aristaeus’ four Vergilian victims add up to Homer’s twelve, Putnam argues that the deliberate... (shrink)

With references to the theoretical framework of Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu, this book offers a critical investigation into such epic issues as the end of art and the inherent laws of literature's evolution, while conflating the two into one major argumentation. The book proceeds from Hegel's claim of "the end of art" to tackle the universal yet essential problem of literature: its legitimacy in a sociological sense. It invests Bourdieu's sociological terms -- power, capital, habitus, field, etc. (...) into the study of literature and art while taking on other theoretical enquiries, particularly the Marxist exploration into ideology, as well as aspects of economics and communication studies. This book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of the sociology of literature, cultural studies, and those with specific interests in Chinese literature, literary and art theory. (shrink)

The study presents a conceptual analysis of the main approaches to the study of the human brain and consciousness from the standpoint of modern domestic and foreign neuroscience. Relevant interpretations of such problematic issues and concepts as “the boundary of the human body”, “embodied knowledge”, “general artificial intelligence”, “self”, etc. From the standpoint of a body-oriented approach, the problem of co-evolution of the body, consciousness, technology and social environment is considered. The idea of the body as an artifact is (...) updated in the context of technological change in human nature, which entails the elimination of the living human body. On the example of the Homeric epic, it is shown that attempts to overcome vulnerability demonstrate one of the fundamental human needs. The realization of the need to expand and push the boundaries of the body in the anthropotechnological environment is presented in the form of a cyborg. It is suggested that, in terms of content, the idea of the “embodied mind”, as well as the project of creating a Hybrid reality and pan-communication, stem from the immanent human need for bodily involvement in the surrounding world. The features of the creation of Artificial Intelligence and Artificial General Intelligence at the present stage are revealed. The expediency of studying the results of neuroscientific comprehension of the organization of mental processes, first of all, in the field of visualization of brain processes and the mapping method, is noted. The main modern projects for the study of the brain, as well as the most effective methods for obtaining data on brain structures, are considered. The actual results of the research are described in such areas of neuroscience as: the study of mirror neurons and their systems; “reading the brain”, the study of neural correlates of consciousness. The results of studies of representatives of domestic neuroscience are presented. The human “I” is considered as a unique structure of the Ego-system of the brain (“self”). In conclusion, a conclusion is made about the significant influence of modern neuroscience on understanding the features of the functioning of the human brain, consciousness and cognitive processes; the effectiveness of applying the body-oriented approach to comprehending the integrity of “body-consciousness-technologies-social environment” is revealed. (shrink)

In this book, Eric Havelock presents a challenging account of the development of the idea of justice in early Greece, and particularly of the way justice changed as Greek oral tradition gradually gave way to the written word in a literate society. He begins by examining the educational functions of poets in preliterate Greece, showing how they conserved and transmitted the traditions of society, a thesis adumbrated in his earlier book Preface to Plato. Homer, he demonstrates, has much to say (...) about justice, but since that idea is nowhere in the epics directly stated or expressed, it must be deduced from the speech and actions of the characters. Havelock's careful reading of the Iliad and the Odyssey is original and revealing; it sheds light both on Homeric notions of justice and on the Archaic Greek society depicted in the poems. As Havelock continues his inquiry from Hesiod to Aeschylus, his findings become more complex. The oral Greek world shades into a literate one. Words lose some kinds of meanings, gain others, and steadily become more suited to the conceptualization that Plato strove for and achieved. This evolution of language itself, Havelock shows, was one of the principal accomplishments of the Greek world. Lucidly written and forcefully argued, this book is a major contribution to our knowledge of ancient Greece--its politics, philosophy, and literature, from Homer to Plato. (shrink)

Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus has traditionally been regarded as the poet's primary tragedy involving hero cult; this essay explores the more subtle but no less ritually explicit hero cult of the Aias first outlined by Burian. The passage, as Burian saw, occurs when the young Eurysakes kneels at his father's body and Teukros conducts an unusual combination of rites: supplication, curse, offering of hair, and magic . One crucial direction to the child, kai phulasse , however, is here not understood (...) to be a paradox of the suppliant who "protects" what he seizes but rather his physical attachment to the locus where he abides as well as his ritual dependence on the source of protection . By saying a curse and obtaining protection, Teukros and Eurysakes indicate how the still-warm body of the dead hero has already acquired special powers after death: specifically, the power to bestow both blessings and curses on mortals. The argument turns from the body to the tomb, the physical and lasting monument of hero cult, which the Sophoclean audience would know. The preceding scene ends with a pivotal choral passage where the hero's burial and cult are prescribed in highly Homeric terms . This passage forms an important link between the opposing views of the fate of the corpse and also between the hero's death and burial. This choral celebration of the hero's future status is cast in traditional Homeric language, but with some revealing inversions. One is the reversal of the verb whereby the earth "holds" or possesses heroes in Homer, while Aias occupies and possesses his tomb . The evolution of Homeric views of death is traced . In Sophocles' Aias the chorus performs the burial as a ritual act establishing a cult, long before it happens at the end of the play. The article concludes with a discussion of the historical cults of Aias known to the Athenians and of the more significant way that Aias becomes a hero: not self-consciously, as Oedipus did, but through rituals performed by his family and community. In the Aias, the poet's sense of hero cult lies closer to Homer and the epic tradition than it does, for instance, to Aeschylus. (shrink)

It is frequently noted that a “crisis in language” accompanied the profound changes in human consciousness everywhere evident near the turn of the century. As the nature of reality itself became problematic—or at least suspect, distrusted for its imposition of limits upon individual imagination—so, necessarily, did the relationship of language to reality. Thus in the later nineteenth century, the adequacy of an essentially standardized form of “classical” writing was increasingly questioned as an effective vehicle for artistic expression: even though often (...) in “elevated” form, such writing bore too close a connection to ordinary discourse. Indeed, it was precisely the mutually shared, conventional aspects of language that came to be most deeply distrusted for their failure to mirror the more subjective, obscure, and improbable manifestations of a transcendent reality or, rather, realities—the plural reflecting an insistence upon the optional and provisional nature of human experience. Language in its normal manifestations—with its conventionalized vocabulary and standardized rules for syntactical combination—proved inadequate for an artistic sensibility demanding, in Friedrich Nietzsche’s words, “a world of abnormally drawn perspectives.”This dissatisfaction with “normal” language received its classic statement through Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Lord Chandos. Writing in 1902, Hofmannsthal conveys through the figure of the aristocratic Chandos the loss of an encompassing framework within which the various objects of external reality are connected with one another and integrated with the internal reality of human feelings. Chandos’ world has become one of disparate, disconnected fragments, resistant to the abstractions of ordinary language. It is a world characterized by “a sort of feverish thought, but thought in a material that is more immediate, more fluid, and more intense than that of language.” Chandos longs for a new language in which not a single word is known to me, a language in which mute objects speak to me and in which perhaps one day, in the grave, I will give account of myself before an unknown judge.”2 The content and forms of art thus shifted away from exterior reality, which no longer provided a stable, “given” material, toward language itself—to “pure” language in a sense closely related to the symbolists’ “pure” poetry. “No artist tolerates reality,” Nietzsche proclaimed.3 And Gustave Flaubert’s farsighted advice to himself was that he should write “a book about nothing, a book dependent on nothing external, which would be held together by the internal strength of its style.”4 2. Hugo von Hofmannsthal, “Ein Brief,” Gesammelte Werke, ed. Bernd Schoeller with Rudolf Hirsch, 10 vols. , 7:471-72; my translation. All further translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.3. Friedrich Nitzsche, Complete Works, ed. Oscar Levy, 18 vols. , vol. 15, The Will to Power, trans. Anthony M. Ludovici, p. 74.4. Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert to Louise Colet, 16 Jan. 1852, The Letters of Gustave Flaubert 1830-1857, ed. and trans. Francis Steegmuller , p. 154. Other passages in this letter are equally remarkable for their “modernist” tone. Flaubert argues that from the standpoint of l’Art pur, “one might almost establish the axiom that there is no such thing as subject—style in itself being an absolute manner of seeing things” . Further:The finest works are those that contain the least matter; the closer expression comes to thought, the closer language comes to coinciding and merging with it, the finer the result. I believe the future of Art lies in this direction. I see it, as it has developed from its beginnings, growing progressively more ethereal …. Form, in becoming more skillful, becomes attenuated, it leaves behind all liturgy, rule, measure; the epic is discarded in favor of the novel, verse in favor of prose; there is no longer any orthodoxy, and form is as free as the will of its creator. This progressive shedding of the burden of tradition can be observed everywhere: governments have gone through similar evolution, from oriental despotisms to the socialisms of the future. [P. 154] Robert P. Morgan, professor of music at the University of Chicago, is currently writing a history of twentieth-century music and working on a study of form in nineteenth-century music. His previous contributions to Critical Inquiry are “On the Analysis of Recent Music” and “Musical Time/Musical Space”. (shrink)

The eminent philosopher and classical scholar Alexander Nehamas presents here a collection of his most important essays on Plato and Socrates. The papers are unified in theme by the idea that Plato's central philosophical concern in metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics was to distinguish the authentic from the fake, the original from its imitations. In approach, the collection displays Nehamas's characteristic combination of analytical rigor and sensitivity to the literary form and dramatic effect of Plato's work. Together, the papers represent Nehamas's (...) distinct and original contributions to scholarship on Plato and Socrates and serve as a comprehensive introduction to the thought of these two philosophers.In the book's opening section, Nehamas discusses Plato's representation of Socrates as a model of authentic human goodness, showing that Plato's Socrates is a more skeptical, troubling, and individualistic thinker than is usually supposed. The papers in the second section form a sustained defense of a new and important understanding of Plato's theory of the forms and the evolution of that theory in Plato's later writings. The third section examines Plato's contention that popular entertainment--by which he meant Greek epic and tragic poetry--misleads its audience into a debased life, an argument Nehamas relates to modern anxieties about television and other forms of popular culture. The collection also includes a discussion of Plato's use of the dialogue form in his representation of Socrates and carefully examines the combination of literary and philosophical elements in his work.Nehamas argues in the book that Plato's specific judgments of what is authentic are often flawed, but that his idea of authenticity as the mark of truth, beauty, and goodness is stronger than many modern scholars have assumed. In drawing together Nehamas's many influential ideas about Plato and Socrates, Virtues of Authenticity is a major contribution to the study of ancient Greek philosophy. (shrink)

An Epic of Technical Supremacy: Works and Words of Medieval Chinese Textile Technology. By Dieter Kuhn. Riggisberg (Switzerland): Abegg-Stiftung, 2022. Pp. 488. CHF 120.

Between 1918 and 1933, the masses became a decisive preoccupation of European culture, fueling modernist movements in art, literature, architecture, theater, and cinema, as well as the rise of communism and fascism and experiments in radical democracy. Spanning aesthetics, cultural studies, intellectual history, and political theory, this volume unpacks the significance of the shadow agent known as "the mass" during a critical period in European history. It follows its evolution into the preferred conceptual tool for social scientists, the ideal (...) slogan for politicians, and the chosen image for artists and writers trying to capture a society in flux and a people in upheaval. This volume is the second installment in Stefan Jonsson's epic study of the crowd and the mass in modern Europe, building on his work in _A Brief History of the Masses_, which focused on monumental artworks produced in 1789, 1889, and 1989. (shrink)

This dissertation is a heuristic and hermeneutic research paper on the evolution of consciousness and the individuation process. I begin by examining the question of the evolution of consciousness and its significance regarding individuation in the work of four different authors: Jung, Neumann, Sri Aurobindo, and Gebser. I then study the nature of the development of the Western mind since the period of the Greek philosophers up to postmodernism and beyond. Finally, I discuss the meaning of the individuation (...) process. ;All four of the authorities referred to on the evolution of consciousness emphasize the need to integrate life around the Self. From the point of view of this study, each brings forward different factors that help one appreciate how consciousness has evolved and how the individuation process can be fostered. An instructive aspect of Neumann's theory is the underlying error in his thinking involving his depiction of the evolution of consciousness as a direct, linear development from matriarchy to patriarchy. Both Sri Aurobindo and Jung saw it as a spiral-like process. The former also describes several different cultural attitudes, each of which can contribute to the realization of an integral consciousness. According to Gebser, the new integral awareness includes the integration of subjectively experienced time, a life of felt-intensity and the concrete realization of spiritual energy in life. ;Regarding the development of the Western mind, not only has there been a widening separation between the spirit and instincts over time, but the intellect has gradually descended from the realm of ideas to the physical universe. This has led to the modern mind and its offshoot, postmodernism. Jung takes us beyond both tendencies, while reconciling the split in the Western psyche. His psychology involves both following a superior will and the in-depth transformation of the chthonic feminine and realization of the chthonic spirit. I support Jung's view with the one held by Sri Aurobindo and his spiritual collaborator, the Mother, contrasting it with views held by Hillman, Ponce, and Fromm. (shrink)

The myths and tales relative to the Raven are among the most evident cultural elements which unite the peoples of Northeast Asia and those of Northwest America. In Asia as in America, the Raven appears in the role of civilizing hero and also in that of trickster and mythological rascal; moreover, a good number of subjects have a resonance on both sides of the Bering Sea. To identify these subjects, an attentive analysis of the folklore is often necessary, but the (...) results are quite clear. Legends of the Raven are to be found in all the tribes of Kamchatka, of the peninsula of the Chukchees and of Alaska: among the Itelmenes, the Koriaks, and the Chukchees, among the Athabascans of the North, the Eyaks, the Tlingits, the Haïdas, the Tsimshians, the Kwakiutls and other Indians of the northwest coast, and finally among the Eskimos and the Aleuts. These legends create a well-defined folklore region beyond whose limits we find either echoes of the different themes of the Raven (a result of the direct influence of Chukchee folklore or of the Indians of the Northwest) or very primitive tales in which the Raven does not appear as the civilizing hero, and is presented minus his religious-mythological halo primarily in a negative aspect. We find these kinds of stories not only on the periphery of the area of diffusion of the Raven epic but also in other folklore areas, often quite distant. (shrink)

Prompted by questions raised in the public arena concerning the validity of arguments for the existence of God based on “design” in the universe, I explore a traditional teleological argument for the existence of God. Using the arguments offered by Thomas Aquinas as fairly representative of this classical line of argumentation going back to Aristotle, I attempt to uncover the hidden premises and construct arguments for the existence of God which are deductive in nature. To justify the premises of Aquinas’s (...) argument, I begin by presenting an argument to justify the existence of “final causes,” with a focus on answering questions about the biological implications of these causes for evolutionary theory. Then, I attempt to construct two teleological proofs for the existence of God. Finally, I offer some implications of this reasoning for the contemporary disputes over ID/evolution in education. (shrink)