Welcome to TiddlyWiki created by Jeremy Ruston, Copyright © 2007 UnaMesa Association
attented a lecture of Dr. Sloman today. check out his work at http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axs/
slides of todays lecture: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/talks/#aisb08
this is realy good stuff!!!!
some notes: "helping chimp" and "helping child" - spacial and intentional representation - claim: evolving systems! not going directly to "adult systems" - understanding spacial competence - statistical learning not sufficient in order to practice true understanding - babys are not blank! - see: [[inqueries in AI - THE WELL-DESIGNED CHILD]]
Blue
Blue, but you are Rose, too,
and buttermilk, but with blood
dots showing through.
A little salty your white
nape boy-wide. Glinting hairs
shoot back of your ears' Rose
that tongues like to feel
the maze of, slip into the funnel,
tell a thunder-whisper to.
When I kiss, your eyes' straight
lashes down crisp go like doll's
blond straws. Glazed iris Roses,
your lids unclose to Blue-ringed
targets, their dark sheen-spokes
almost green. I sink in Blue-
black Rose-heart holes until you
blink. Pink lips, the serrate
folds taste smooth, and Rosehip-
round, the center bud I suck.
I milknip your two Blue-skeined
blown Rose beauties, too, to sniff
their berries' blood, up stiff
pink tips. You're white in
patches, only mostly Rose,
buckskin and saltly, speckled
like a sky. I love your spots,
your white neck, Rose, your hair's
wild straw splash, silk spools
for your ears. But where white
spouts out, spills on your brow
to clear eyepools, wheel shafts
of light, Rose, you are Blue.
From Nature: Poems Old and New
by May Swenson
Discuss critically whether rituals that divide
gender into two categories always divide into male and female.
hmmm...
- found TiddlyWiki. looks damn cool. will try to use it - non-linear souns cool to me - makes lots of clicks in my Brain right now actually!!!!!!!.
means here though that i need to type the terms I want to link as WikiWords. (more options?) wonder how to: say ArtHistory is easy, but what about Islam - truns to IsLam? hmmm... ok. gives a nice formatting twist while reading!
- TiddlyLearn
- trying to set up http://abdn-anthro.wikispaces.com/ @ wikispaces - see how it goes.
- posted http://sleeponit.wordpress.com/2008/01/12/sys_opti/ with StumbleUpon and visitors stats of my blog to this post are more then 126 views in less then 5 hours!!! and rising exponentialy!!!
added: [[dance, gender and embodiment]]
I'm adding this email because I'll be writing a review about Veiled Sentiments, Lila Abu-Lughod - dealing with the Honour/Shame complex in Muslim Societies. this email is also posted on http://anthrolog.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/honour-killings/
Dr. Marranci said he'll try to find time to reply...
Dear Dr. Marranci,
if I got you right, you were arguing at the end of the lecture today that we can observe a relation between honour-killings and land-owenership (or other strong bounds to a location) in certain Islamic cultures. And that therefore, if I got you right, honour-killings in the case of Islamic migrants are ad-hoc justifications for killings performed in affect - Not like the calculated killings that occur in the "homeland" environment.
Does this imply then that the idea of honour killing does not play any role in the considers of the killer as a possible solution for the conflict in question in order to uphold his family's honour? Isn't that what enables him to perform the act in the first place? His "familiarity" with the "nessecity" of upholding honour? Isn't this a circular argument?
does the fact that the killings in casas of immigrants occur "formally" in a different way mean that the whole notion can be droped? a reason for the "prozessual" change could have something to do with the fact that the new environment does not recognize/tolerate honour killings as a legitimate solution?
anecdote: I grew up in Israel, and I remember my best friend Anan, who was arab, telling me that if his cousin would sleep with me, he would killing her - and me as well of course :) he wasn't very sirious about this, but he said it. Why do children, and also migrant children talk about this then in such ways? they own no land. After that, I moved to Germany and I came across this subject the context of second- or third generation migrant Turks, Kurds and Palestinians.
I can see though that there is a relation to agricultural socities in all this, but...
As you pointed out, upholding honour is more a specific cultural than an "Islamic" notion. My question: wasn't the contribution of the pre-islamic sunna to Islamic law exactly that: a system based on upholding tribal and ancestral honour? and in regard to that: isn't it interesting that Bedouin cultures today do not go as far as honour-killings?
an argument against me: I know of some cases in which Arab Christian families have performed an honour-killing. But nevertheless, it does seem to be rooted in "Islamic" in diffrent ways. Isn't the origin and function of honour killing related to cultural, economic and religous factor?
The Noble Qur'an - Sâd 38:44
[To Job]: And take in your hand a bundle of thin grass and strike therewith (your wife),...
Sorry for the long email, -- but I would appreciate if you find the time for some comments,
Grazie,
Daniel
I gues what I’m driving at is trying to avoid both “culturalism” and “essentialism” and look more at the dynamic relation of esp. culture & religion but also environment, economy, history etc. in terms of a constant re-negotiation of individual behaviour within these ambivalent spaces. I’m not satisfied with the answer: “it’s cultural! not muslim!”
In an essay I wrote in 2007 I was trying to make a link between the pre-Islamic sunnah and the way this notion was rendered into Islam. I think that this link is relevant to understand the imporantance of upholding honour in Islamic law. read [[sunnah]].
Assignemnt 2 - Essay (1500-2000 words)
Deadline for this assignment is Monday,12th May.
Choose one title for your essay:
1. Is there such a thing as universal human nature?
2.a Explain, using one or more detailed examples, the kinds of misunderstandings that can occur in ‘first contact’ situations. Are they of any relevance to understanding our everyday lives?
2b. What killed Captain Cook?
3. To have little does not mean to be poor. Explain this statement using examples from hunter-gatherers’ societies.
4. The environment is never static, it is always developing through the activities of people. Discuss this statement using ethnographic examples.
5a. Discuss two or more ways of understanding time. Relate that understanding to other aspects of the social and cultural life of the people you describe.
b. What constitutes an Event? How does that relate to notions of history and notions of culture?
6. The eyes can hear and the ears can see. Argue for or against this view.
7. Language shapes the way people think. Critically evaluate the statement.
8. Hobbes based his political philosophy on the assumption that human beings were naturally aggressive and violent creatures. Was he right to do so?
9. What is the link that anthropologists have made between moral norms and social expectations, and the belief in witchcraft and sorcery?
10. Compare and contrast Clifford Geertz’s understanding of culture to Tim Ingold’s understanding of culture.
11. ‘Film gives its viewer an undistorted picture of reality’. For what reasons might this statement be untrue? Discuss using Asch and Chagnon’s film about a fight among Yanomami as your focus.
12. ‘Nature and culture are universal categories of human thought’. How true is this statement? What difference does it make if it is untrue?’
*wonder how soon how messed up the structure of this document will get... or can I keep it up? do I need to? - here http://webscripts.softpedia.com/script/Wikis/ccTiddly-36394.html - not sure! does this solve anything?? - this might though! http://ask.metafilter.com/58375/faster-d3-tiddlywiki
*ok I'm starting this. Let's see where it's going -> :)
*imported and reorganized tiddlers from http://pakua.tiddlyspot.com
*got new theme: http://tiddlythemes.com/empties/Blackicity.html
*where is this going????????????????????
*can't fucking import tiddlers from local file. why not??
*file size problem!: the IncludePlugIn by Udo will do the thing! http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de/#%5B%5BIncludePlugin%20Documentation%5D%5D but maybe so does this server-side tiddlywiki anyway???
[>img[http://sleeponit.wordpress.com/files/2008/01/screenshot001.jpg]]
I have been observing seals coming up the river Don lately. I've been trying to figure out a couple of things about them: if they come up the river from the sea only at high tide, (''tide-tables'' for Aberdeen are here: ''http://tinyurl.com/ytrvha'') and if they're not, then how far do they go up the river at high/low tide? where do they hang out? do they dive longer in the river than they do in the sea? how long can they dive anyway?
here's a first graph I jotted down in my notebook - in case you've ever wondered. I enjoy watching their diving habits. Apparently they can dive up to 10 minutes - but the one's I've been timing so far haven't. Hanna has been wondering though how often they can do that in a row? Do they make a couple of long dives and than a couple of short ones to recover?
.
''01 - A Tribe Called Quest - Can I kick it?'' 1991
*from debut album ''People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm''
*A Tribe Called Quest very influential American hip-hop group, formed in 1988. disbanded in 1998.
*The group is generally regarded as pioneers of alternative rap music
*The song was not a hit at the time of its release but has become much more popular over the years.
*theme music for the Nike commercial which launched the company's famous tagline, "Just Do It".
*It is also well known for containing a sample from Lou Reed's 1972 single, "Walk on the Wild Side".
*In 2006, the group reunited and toured the US and plan to release an album after some works in the studio.
''02 - Kriss Kross - Jump'' 1992
*album: ''Totally Krossed Out''
*Kris Kross was a teenage rap duo of the early 1990s. The duo is most famous for their 1992 hit "Jump," and their fashion styling—consisting of wearing their clothes backwards.
*my first CD
''03 - Snow - Informer'' 1993
* Canadian reggae musician Snow,
*album: 12 Inches of Snow.
*The single was released shortly before Snow was imprisoned for a year on an assault charge.
*No one has ever worked out what Snow says in the breakdown in the middle eight with the most popular estimate as "Come with a nice young lady, intelligent? yes, she gentle and irie".
''04- Sugar Hill Gang - Rapper's delight'' 1979
* the first hip hop single to become a Top 40 hit.
*sample the bass line from "Good Times" by Chic. some trouble with that.
*'The members: Wonder Mike, Big Bank Hank, and Master Gee.
*Some claim that "Rapper's Delight" is the first hip hop single ever, but it was actually preceded by "King Tim" by the Fatback Band. The Sugarhill Gang's place in music history seems secure as the first hip hop group to have a gold single.
*"if your girl acts up, then you take her friend"
''05 - Alliance Ethnic - Respect'' (1995)
*great album hiphop and funk: ''Simple & Funky''
*French hip hop group - five members of diverse origins; from Algeria, Congo, and Italy
''06 - Fugees - FugeeLa'' 1996
*album ''THE SCORE'' one of the best-selling hip hop albums of all time
*soul and Caribbean music, particularly reggae.
*members: Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill, and rapper Pras Michel.
*solo projects from 1997.
**Hill: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill;
**Wyclef recorded his debut album The Carnival;
**Michel, with Ol' Dirty Bastard, recorded the single "Ghetto Supastar"
''Wu-Tang Clan'' tracks 7 and 8
*cousins
*added six more friends to the Clan,
*debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) in 1993.
*36 Chambers received enormous critical praise, and is now widely regarded as one of the best and most influential albums of any genre to be released in the 1990s, as well as one of the best hip hop albums of all time.
''07 - Ol' Dirty Bastard - Shimmy Shimmy Ya'' 1995 (Wu Tang)
*died 2004
*(often shortened to ODB).
*He was one of the founding members of the hip hop group Wu-Tang Clan.
''08 - Method Man feat.Mary J. Blige - You're All I Need'' 2003 (WU Tang Clan)
*this version: remixed for comedey film HowHigh 1991
''09 -Cypress Hill - Insane in the Brain'' 1993
*album: Black sunday
*mostly-Latin American hip hop group from California.
*Their consistent advocacy around the legalization of cannabis -
*"I Wanna Get High" another great track
''10 - House of Pain - Jump Around'' 1992
*Irish-styled American hip-hop group
*Everlast decided to pursue his solo career again.
*The group is best known for its 1992 hit single "Jump Around".
''11 - Luniz - I got five on it'' 1995
*album: Operation Stackola
*"I got 5 on it" is a phrase used to mean putting in five dollars along with another person to buy a dime bag, i.e. ten dollars worth of marijuana. The lyrics in the original song clearly convey this meaning.
“Kinda broke so ya know all I gots five, I got five”
“Unless you pull out the phat, crispy five dollar bill on the real before its history”
“I got 5 on it, let's go half on a sack”
about ''G-Funk''
or "Gangsta Funk", is a type of hip hop music that emerged from West Coast gangsta rap in the early 1990s. G-funk (largely derived from slowing the tempo down of funk music) incorporates multi-layered and melodic synthesizers, slow hypnotic grooves, a deep bass, background female vocals, the extensive sampling of p-funk tunes, and a high portamento sine wave keyboard lead—a feature that became the genre’s notable trademark. Additionally, unlike other earlier rap acts that also utilized funk samples(such as EPMD or The Bomb Squad), G-funk often utilized fewer, unaltered samples per song [1].
''12 - Waren G - Regulate'' 1994
*album: Regulate...G Funk Era
*intressting backgorund: in 1991, Warren G formed the group 213 with Nate Dogg and Snoop Dogg. In 1992, Warren G introduced the group to his stepbrother Dr. Dre. Dr. Dre was impressed and signed Snoop Dogg to his record company, Death Row Records. But 213 broke up before releasing any records, and the three artists pursued separate careers. Even though Death Row Records did not sign Warren G, his career began with some contributions to Dr. Dre's album The Chronic, released 1992. Warren G was a regular contributor to many Death Row albums.
''13 - Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang - Dr. Dre & Snoop Dog'' 1993
*debut solo album: The Chronic.
*one of the most important and influential albums of the 1990s and maybe best produced hip-hop album of all time
*All Music Guide named the song as "the archetypal G-funk single" and added "The sound, style, and performances of "Nuthin' but a 'G' Thang" were like nothing else on the early-'90s hip-hop scene".
''optional 13.1 - Still D.R.E'' 2001
*Dr. Dre and Snoop Dog
''14 - MC's Act Like They Don't Know - KRS-One'' 1995
*album: KRS-One
*probably most succesful track
*critic of commercial hiphop and not "keeping it real" and criminality
''15 - The Roach - Dr. DRE'' 1993
album: The Chronic (outro)
The Quiet World
In an effort to get people to look
into each other's eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
the government has decided
to allot each person exactly a hundred
and sixty-seven words, per day.
When the phone rings, I put it to my ear
without saying hello. In the restaurant
I point at chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting well to the new way.
Late at night, I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.
I saved the rest for you.
When she doesn't respond,
I know she's used up all her words,
so I slowly whisper I love you
thirty-two and a third times.
After that, we just sit on the line
and listen to each other breathe.
Jeffrey McDaniel
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OK. So I did this HipHop Easter Special with my mate Cearuil today. It was really good fun, a two hour show with all -or at least some of the more essential - hiphop tracks we grew up with in da 90z. We were bouncing all over the studio! tune in! hope you enjoy it. And have a good Pesach / Easter or whatever is comming up for you and gime a shout and tell me how you're doin :) be happy PeeaaaassssseYo
download here: http://www.divshare.com/download/4070643-762
show-notes here: [[19 March 2008 - HipHop from daYoot track-list and show-notes]]
<html><a href="http://www.divshare.com/download/4092074-744"><img src="http://www.divshare.com/img/4092074-744.jpg" border="0" /></a></html>
[>img[http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2234/2202078091_6d7e81ca5b_o.jpg]] Ello Ello! This web-page is an attempt to construct an interrelated, non-linear documentation of my ongoing studies in AnthropoLogy, (and ReligiOns, PhilosoPhy, ArtHistory and other subjects). While you're reading you'll be creating your own path according to the jumps and links you'll be intressted in - thus reconnecting my [[journal]]-entries, [[essays]], [[articles]] and RandomJots - creating variable connections and patterns which you can than, if you wish, expand, edit, comment and re-explore. I know it might be a bit confusing at first, but as soon as you get the concept behind the TiddlyWiki and some orientation you'll see it is worth the effort and it might reward you with a new kind of reading/writing expierience and a new way to access information. EnjoY.
[[greeeni]]
stumbled upon this: <html><a href="http://www.stopwebpollution.org"><img src="http://www.stopwebpollution.org/butterfly/medium.png" alt="stop web pollution" title="STOP WEB POLLUTION!" width="120" height="70" style="border:0" about=blank /></a></html>
added: [[Islam - Origin and Originality]], [[Ian Vermeer - The Geographer]]
I've been doing some bird watching lately around here in Aberdeen. Especially around the mouth of the River Don.
here are some of the BirDs I've been watching and some of the notes I've been talking.
<html><iframe src="http://jyte.com/widget/claim/thinking-too-much-about-things-and-too-little-about-relations" style="width:400px;height:60px;border:1px solid #777;" scrolling="no"></iframe></html>
''The Story Effect''
I think that our library system - http://becycle.wordpress.com/library/ - has an interesting side effect. Think about it: we’re not only giving each bicycle a mini-blog (@ Twitter) through which people can contact each other and exchange the bicycles (that’s the functional side of it), but we’re also giving them a certain //independence//, a ("personal") name and the possibility to tell their own //stories// - a story which gradually creates //itself// over time.
Take a look at [[SturdyRalfi’s blog|http://twitter.com/sturdyRalfi]] for example (in a slightly modified version here):
**I’m ready to go. contact becycle [25 days ago]
**I think Helena’s got me now. Have to find out her email address though [23 days ago]
**Oh no. I’m actually back in the shed. Can have me straight away! contact becycle [21 days ago]
**I got a bit lost because some CouchSurfer I was given to didn’t bring me back. But I should be back in the shed today. contact becycle [7 days ago]
**a guy called Fabio is riding me around campus. Want me? contact u02fl5. [1 day ago]
''Get Creative''
So what we’d like to encourage you to do is to get creative and assume that you are the bicycle’s voice while you are using it. When you update the bicycle’s blog, write the post in the first-person (as the bicycle) and think of yourself in the third-person (as the bicycle’s user). Let the bicycle write and continue it’s own story. Just for the fun of it. And you could also post a photo and other bits of narrative, say if you had a really exciting day on the bicycle for example.
Now, you don’t have to do this if you think this is silly, but consider this somewhat philosophical idea I have in mind, which we could call
''The Community Effect''
Think about the relation of the person = the bicycle = the story = the community
in which the bicycles and their stories become part of the community.
Now, because the library works the way that it does, it is “decentralized” so to speak, people who exchange the bicycles among themselves not only get to know and interact with each other but also //to write a story with each other//. And this in a sense creates a new understanding of what a community is.
We mentioned in the [[guideline|http://becycle.wordpress.com/library/terms-and-conditions/]] that one way to understand what a community is, a notion on which this whole project is based upon, is in an ecological sense. Meaning that a community is “a group of interdependent organisms inhabiting the same region and interacting with each other”. But now a new element comes into the game: a community is based not only on “shared space”, “interdependence” and “interaction” but also on the “story” which links the members of a community to each other over time.
So by creating these blogs, by creating and writing these stories, we might come to see that the same thing that links us to ourselves is what links us to one another: a story! But not only the stories we tell about ourselves and about others, but also the stories that //things// tell about us - the pathes of interaction and expirience we create behind and around us, which are not only embodied in us but also in the //things// which become part of us.
By recording the stories in those blogs, which in other cases might be somehow recorded somewhere “out-there” (but not verbaly recorded), we might be manifesting a hidden dimension of our own identity which has something to do with //sharing// and something to do with //community// and someting to do with //stories// - or with our //common story// if you’d like - with ThePatternWhichConnects.
Overview
A brief history of twentieth-century linguistics. An introduction to the different ways that language can be studied, and the contributions of Saussure and Jakobson in context.
Introduction
Linguistics is the study of language, sometimes called the science of language. {1} The subject has become a very technical, splitting into separate fields: sound (phonetics and phonology), sentence structure (syntax, structuralism, deep grammar), meaning (semantics), practical psychology (psycholinguistics) and contexts of language choice (pragmatics). {2} But originally, as practised in the nineteenth century, linguistics was philology: the history of words. {3} Philologists tried to understand how words had changed and by what principle. Why had the proto-European consonants changed in the Germanic branch: Grimm's Law? Voiceless stops went to voiceless fricatives, voiced stops to voiceless stops, and voiced aspirates to voiced stops. What social phenomenon was responsible? None could be found. Worse, such changes were not general. Lines of descent could be constructed, but words did not evolve in any Darwinian sense of simple to elaborate. One could group languages as isolating (words had a single, unchanging root), agglutinizing (root adds affixes but remains clear) and inflecting (word cannot be split into recurring units), but attempts to show how one group developed into another broke down in hopeless disagreement.
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913)
So linguistics might have ended: documenting random changes in random directions. But that was hardly a science, only a taxonomy. When therefore Ferdinand de Saussure tentatively suggested that language be seen as a game of chess, where the history of past moves is irrelevant to the players, a way though the impasse was quickly recognized. Saussure sketched some possibilities. If the word high-handed falls out of use, then synonyms like arrogant and presumptuous will extend their uses. If we drop the final f or v the results in English are not momentous (we might still recognize belie as belief from the context), but not if the final s is dropped (we should then have to find some new way of indicating plurals).
Saussure's suggestion was very notional: his ideas were put together by students from lecture notes and published posthumously in 1915. But they did prove immensely fruitful, even in such concepts as langue (the whole language which no one speaker entirely masters) and parole (an individual's use of language). Words are signs, and in linguistics we are studying the science of signs: semiology. And signs took on a value depending on words adjacent in use or meaning. English has sheep and mutton but French has only mouton for both uses. Above all (extending the picture of a chess game) we should understand that language was a totality of linguistic possibilities, where the "move" of each word depended on the possible moves of others.
Saussure had a theory of meaning. He envisaged language as a series of contiguous subdivisions marked off on the indefinite planes of ideas and sounds. A word (sign) was a fusion of concept (signified) and sound-image (signifier) the two being somehow linked as meaning in the mind. Both signifieds and signifiers independently played on their own chess board of possibilities — i.e. they took up positions with regard to other pieces, indeed owed their existence to them. Though championed by the Structuralists, this theory of semantics was a disastrous one, raising the problems recognized by linguistic philosophy. But that was not Saussure's fault. He was not a philosopher, but a philologist, one whose simple idea, though much anticipated by Michel Bréal and perhaps Franz Boas, largely recast linguistics in its present form. {3}
The Structuralists
Saussure's ideas spread first to Russia, being brought there and developed by Ramon Jacobson (1896-1982). Strictly speaking, the product was not Structuralism, which dates from Jakobson's acquaintance with Lévi-Strauss in the 1960's, but formalism: study of the devices by which literary language makes itself distinctive. Poetry was the great love of the Russian formalists (who knew personally the revolutionary poets) and they looked intensively and dispassionately at the structures and devices that literature employs, whether Pushkin or seemingly artless fairy stories. But as Marxist ideology tightened its grip, the member of the Russian school, never a very tightly knit group, either recanted or fled abroad. Jakobson went to Czechoslovakia and then to the USA, but took with him the very speculative nature of Russian formalism: brilliant theories, but poor documentation and few laboratory studies.
Jakobson made little impact in Prague, which had its own traditions, but in America was able to draw on and develop the ideas of structural anthropology: that the behaviour of societies is governed by deep, scarcely visible rules and understandings. As such, Jakobson's views merged with those of continental philosophy and sociology — with Althusser's reinterpretation of Marx, that language was ideology, a hidden reality, an alternative source of state power. Also with Barthes's attempt to explain the multiplicity of French society from a few underlying suppositions. And with Foucault's genealogy. Meanwhile, Emile Benaviste had rewritten Saussure (as most Structuralists and Post-structuralists were to do) to conceive the signified as not inside individual minds but part of any ever-present social reality. Gradually it is not the individual, nor the society, but language itself that becomes the defining reality: a view that leads on to Postmodernism.
Jakobson had some novel ideas of his own. There was, he proposed, a relatively simple, orderly and universal psychological system underlying the three to eight thousand odd languages in the world. Despite the many ways phonemes (basic units of sound) are produced by human mouths, all could be represented in binary structures (open-closed, back-front, etc.) governed by 12 levels of precedence. Binary structures are written into Lévi-Strauss's views, and these notions fitted with information theory and sound spectrography. But languages in fact use a good deal more than two of any"mouth settings", phonemes do not have an independent existence, and 12 levels will not serve. Chomsky and Halle (1968) proposed 43 such rules, often complex, before abandoning the approach. Jakobson also defined poetic language as the projection onto the horizon syntagmatic axis (how words fit together in a sentence) of the vertical paradigmatic (how word are associated and can replace each other), another audacious theory that proved largely vacuous. {4}.
Descriptionists
The besetting sin of Structuralism (as of current literary theory) is its want of evidence: theories are dreamt up in the study rather than fashioned to meet field observations or laboratory experiment. That criticism cannot be laid at the door of Boas, Bloomfield and other American researchers who in the first half of this century went out to closely observe languages as native speakers use them. Indeed, so concerned were they to avoid the strictures of Logical Positivism, that they adopted a behaviourist approach, excluding mind altogether. Language was simply inputs and outputs: how the brain handled its data was not something one could observe, and was therefore not science. Huge dossiers of information were built up, particularly on native American languages, but little that resolved itself into laws or general principles. {5}
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
One exception was an hypothesis of Edward Sapir (1884-1934) and Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897-1941). Man's language, they argued, moulds his perception of reality. The Hopi Indians of Arizona plurialize clouds as though they were animate objects, do not use spatial metaphors for time, and have no past tense as such. Do they not view the world in these terms? And there were more spectacular examples. The Bororó of northern Brazil believe they are red parakeets — evidence, said anthropologists, that primitive societies were not aware of logical contradictions. Modern Europeans have words for the seven basic colours of the rainbow, whereas other societies have from two to eleven.
The matter is still debated. {6} The Hopi Indians do not seem to be poor timekeepers, and the Romance languages have a feminine gender for objects not seen as animate: la cerveza for beer, etc. Parakeets is no doubt used metaphorically by the Bororó. Even the evidence of colours, subject of a massive study by Berlin and Kay, {7} seems now not so clear-cut, since language may reflect purpose more than perception. Lakoff, however, (see below) has indeed resurrected Whorf's hypothesis through the concept of commensurability, adducing some striking if limited experimental evidence. Understanding, our ability to translate between diverse languages, is not the only factor. Equally important are use, framing and organization {8}, and behaviour here can be governed by different conceptual systems. Languages widely employ spatial conceptions, for example, and these conceptions differ between cultures.
Functional Linguistics: The Prague School
As early as 1911 in Czechoslovakia, and independently of Saussure and Jakobson, Vilém Mathesius (1882- 1945) founded a non-historical approach to linguistics. The Prague School looked at the structural components as they contributed to the entire language. There was a need for a standard language once Czechoslovakia had acquired independence, and Czech had the curiosity of being very different in its colloquial and literary forms. Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy (1890-1938) investigated paradigmatic relations between phonemes and classified functions on the purposes they served — keeping words apart, signalling stress, etc.
Like the Russian Formalists, members of the Prague School were keenly concerned with literature, but they were not hermetic in their approach — i.e. did not see literature as a self-enclosed, stand-alone entity, but something reflecting social and cultural usage. That was also a view developed by the American anthropologist William Labor in investigating the colloquial language of New York. He found that listeners to tape recordings could very accurately place speakers by geography and social stratum. As both reflected social movement in the recent past — i.e. history: this was one rare exception to Saussure's assertion that language speakers do not take past usage into consideration. {9}
The London School
The London School of Harry Sweet (1845-1912) and David Jones (1881-1967) stressed the practical side of phonetics, and trained its students to perceive, transcribe and reproduce each minute sound distinction very precisely — far more than the American behaviourists, for example, and of course the Chomskians, who are extending models rather than testing them. And this phonetic competence was much needed when J.R. Firth (1891-1960) and others at the School of Oriental and African Studies helped to plan the national languages and their writing systems for the new Commonwealth countries. Overall, the School has been very far ranging — noting, for example how stress and tone co-occur with whole syllables, and developing a terminology to cope: a basis for poetic metre. Firthian analysis also finds a place for aesthetic considerations and develops a system of mutually exclusive options, somewhat like Saussure but more socially and purposively orientated.
Firth himself tried to base a theory of meaning on such choice-systems, but the approach has not been generally accepted. Not only was it rather simplistic, but confused the scientific invariance of linguistic rules with the unregimented and creative way that human beings get their meaning across. {10}
Noam Chomsky and Generative Grammar
Avram Noam Chomsky (1928- ) and his followers have transformed linguistics. Indeed, despite many difficulties and large claims later retracted, the school of deep or generative grammar still holds centre stage. Chomsky came to prominence in a 1972 criticism of the behavourist's B.F. Skinner's book Verbal Behaviour. Linguistic output was not simply related to input. Far from it, and a science which ignored what the brain did to create its novel outputs was no science at all. Chomsky was concerned to explain two striking features of language — the speed with which children acquire a language, and its astonishing fecundity, our ability to create a endless supply of grammatically correct sentences without apparently knowing the rules. How was that possible? Only by having a) an underlying syntax and b) rules to convert syntax to what we speak. The syntax was universal and simple. A great diversity of sentences can be constructed with six symbols. Take a cats sits on the mat. Older readers will remember their parsing exercises at school: indefinite article, noun, verb, preposition, definite article, noun. Chomsky uses a similar approach but his "parsing" applies to all languages. But how we convert to the mat was sat on by a cat? The answer, argued Chomsky, were innate transformation rules by which a fundamental deep structure is converted to the surface sentence. Matters are not usually so straightforward, of course, and the rules can be very complex indeed, but Chomsky and his coworkers have now provided them.
If many languages are now classified along Chomsky lines, why hasn't the approach entirely swept the board, bringing all linguists into the fold of orthodoxy? First there are procedural problems. The American behaviourists, and more so the London school, had a very thorough training in gathering field evidence. Speech was what native speakers actually spoke, not what the anthropologist thought they might accept as correct usage. The Chomskians use introspection (i.e. the linguists themselves decide whether a sentence is good grammar), an approach which can allow "facts" to be fitted to theory and which has somewhat restricted application to the European languages that Chomskians regard themselves as familiar with. Then there is the matter of laboratory testing. Surface sentences that are generated by the more convoluted transformation rules should take speakers longer to produce. The evidence is somewhat contradictory.
But more important than these are the theoretical issues. What are these deep structures and transformation rules — i.e. are they something "hardwired" into the brain or simply a propensity to perform in ways we can view along Chomskian lines? Chomsky is undecided. And, if the structures are real, is this the philosopher's goal: we can base semantics on deep grammar? Some have done so, though Chomsky himself has now abandoned these hopes. Chomsky is not a Structuralist, and there is more to understanding than the ability to recast sentences — an appreciation of the world outside, for example, which we perceive and judge on past experience. {11}
Relational Grammar
One interesting development from the London School was that of Sydney Lamb and Peter Reich. Lamb charted language as networks of relationships. By using a very simple set of "nodes" he was able to represent phonology, syntax and semantics, and to explain linguistic patterning at various levels. Reich used computer modelling to simulate this approach and explain the difficulties we experience with multiply embedded sentences — I spoke to the girl whose mother's cat which I didn't know was run over when she wasn't looking sort of thing. But neither approach coped properly with the prevailing Chomskian structural picture, and wasn't pursued. {12}
The Contemporary Scene
What's the scene today? A very lively but confused picture of new dimensions, difficulties and antagonisms. One comparatively new approach is that of brain physiology. Much, perhaps the greater part, remains to be understood of precisely how the brain functions. But it is clear that consciousness (being aware of the world, having mental images, and feelings and intentions) proceeds by a complex system of neural loops and feedbacks. Speech comes with the development of the mouth and larynx, concomitantly with the growth of the cortex and its networks through to the hippocampus, amygdala and brainstem. Sounds are linked by learning with concepts and gestures to give meaning. Syntax emerges to connect conceptual learning with lexical learning. Language allows us to elaborate, refine, connect, create and remember. All this happens together. {13} Animals learn as they need to. Dogs, for example, reared in total isolation, have no understanding of pain and will sniff repeatedly at a lighted match. And for human beings the sense of self comes through the joint development of social and linguistic behaviour, each operating on the other, so that attempts to study speech in narrow disciplines — physiology, psychology, linguistics, information theory, structuralism , etc. — are doomed to failure. {14}
What is to be done, given the mountain of complex and technical data each discipline brings to the total picture? One promising start is the hypothesis of Lakoff and Johnson, sometime students of Chomsky's but working more from their studies of metaphor. Human beings, they suppose, create models of cognition that reflect concepts developed in the interaction between brain, body and environment. These models, which they call schemas, operate through bodily activities prior to speech development, and are very various, if not amorphous. Very tentatively, they suggest that the schema may operate so as to provide our five different conceptual approaches — through images, metaphors, part for whole, propositional and symbolic. Linguistic functions are propositional and symbolic. Grammatical constructions are idealized schemas. And so on. The approach is technical and preliminary, but overcomes some of the difficulties noted above. {15}
Is this optimism widely shared? Not at present. Scientists and academics have invested too much in chosen disciplines to lightly abandon their positions. Nor perhaps should they. But what is emerging is the folly of believing that any one approach provides all the answers. Or that any simplistic, navel-gazing theory like Structuralism will serve. As with linguistic philosophy, more problems emerge the deeper we look, which is perhaps not surprising given the creative, ad-hoc way language develops and our use necessarily of one small part of it to investigate the whole.
References
1. William O'Grady, Michael Dobrovolsky and Francis Katamba's Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction (1987) and R.H. Robins's A Short History of Linguistics (1994). Also Geoffrey Sampson's Schools of Linguistics: Competition and Evolution (1980) — on which this account is broadly modelled — and Michael Devitt and Kim Sterelny's An Introduction to the Philosophy of Language (1987).
2. F.R. Palmer's Semantics (1976, 1981), Simon Blackburn's Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language (1984), Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct: The New Science of Language and Mind (1994), Stephen Levinson's Pragmatics (1983), and Andrew Ellis and Geoffrey Beattie's The Psychology of Language and Communication (1986, 1992).
3. See, in addition to the above, Raymond Tallis's Not Saussure: A Critique of Post-Saussurean Literary Theory (1988, 1995), Chapter 1 of J.G. Merquior's From Prague to Paris (1986), and Hans Arslef's From Locke to Saussure (1982). A contrary view is argued by Paul Thibault's Rereading Saussure: The Dynamics of Signs in Social Life (1997).
4. David Lodge's The Modes of Modern Writing (1977), Richard Harland's Superstructuralism: The Philosophy of Structuralism and Post-Structuralism (1987) and Stephen Levinson's Pragmatics (1983). Also Sampson 1980.
5. Chapter 3 in Sampson 1980.
6. Chapter 4 of Sampson 1980, and Dale Pesmen's Reasonable and Unreasonable World: Some Expectation of Coherence in Culture Implied in the Prohibition of Mixed Metaphor in James Fernandez's Beyond Metaphor: The Theory of Tropes in Anthropology (1991).
7: pp. 95-102 in Sampson.
8. pp.304-337 in George Lakoff's Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind (1987).
9. Chapter 5 of Sampson 1980.
10. Chapter 9 of Sampson 1980.
11. Chapter 6 of Sampson 1980.
12. Chapter 7 of Sampson 1980.
13. Edelman 1992.
14. pp 53- 54 in Ellis and Beattie 1988, 1992, and Gerald Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On the Matter of the Mind (1992).
15. G. Lakoff and M. Johnson's Metaphors We Live By (1980), G. Lakoff's Woman, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal About the Mind (1987), and M. Johnson's The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Bias of Meaning, Imagination and Reason (1987).
Internet Resources
1. Linguistics. 2001. http://www.bartleby.com/65/li/linguist.html. Brief introduction in The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition.
2. On history and historicity in modern linguistics: Formalism versus functionalism revisited. Robert de Beaugrande. 1997. http://www.beaugrande.bizland.com/History.htm. General but still somewhat technical paper in Functions of Language, 4/2, 1997, 169-213.
3. Boas, Franz. http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/B/Boas-F1ra.asp. Encyclopedia.com entry with brief listings.
4. Franz Boas. 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Boas. Wikipedia entry with in-text links.
5. Leonard Bloomfield, Language And Linguistics, Biographies. http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/
B/BloomfldL.html. Brief AllRefer Encyclopedia entry.
6. Structuralism and Saussure. Mary Klages. 2001. http://www.colorado.edu/English/
ENGL2012Klages/saussure.html. Simple introduction.
7. Ferdinand de Saussure. Dec. 2003. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure. Wikipedia entry with in-text links.
8. Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1997. http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/ferdinand_de_saussure.html. Johns Hopkins Guide entry with links and bibliography.
9. Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics. Ferdinand de Saussure. Oct.1910. http://www.marxists.org/reference/
subject/philosophy/works/fr/saussure.htm. Excerpt from Saussure's Third Course of Lectures on General Linguistics (1910-1911) Pergamon Press. 1993.
10. Russian Formalism. Dec. 2003. http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Formalism. Brief Wikipedia entry, with many links.
11. Russian Formalism. Karen A. McCauley. 1997. http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/russian_formalism.html. Detailed account and bibliography.
12. Russian Formalism. http://martin.cnidc.net/russian.ppt. An extended slide show summarising salient features and terminology.
13. Prague School Structuralism. Lubomír Dolezel. 1997. http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/prague_school_structuralism.html. History of the school and its main ideas.
14. The Prague Linguistic Circle. http://www.bohemica.com/plk/plchome.htm. Society homepage, with links.
15. Jakobson, Roman. Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth. 1997.
http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/
hopkins_guide_to_literary_theory/roman_jakobson.html. Brief account, with bibliography.
16. Semiotics for Beginners. Daniel Chandler. Jun. 2002. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem-gloss.html. A glossary of key terms, including note on Prague School.
17. Reminiscences by Pike on Early American Anthropological Linguistics. Ken Pike. May 2001. http://www.sil.org/silewp/2001/001/
SILEWP2001-001.html. Survey of key figures.
18. Bloomfield's "Meaningless" Science of Sounds. Spring 1998. http://kalin.jeffer.org/ba_thesis/korz2.html. Part of Univ. of Alberta PhD. thesis.
19. Noam Chomsky. Jan. 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noam_Chomsky. Wikipedia entry: importance for linguistics, his criticism of Postmodernism, and his political activities, includes references and listings.
20. Universal Grammar in Prolog. Ray C. Dougherty. http://www.nyu.edu/pages/linguistics/ling.html. Computer modelling of Chomsky's concepts: has helpful diagrams.
21. Could Chomsky be Wrong? Timothy Mason. Feb. 2002. http://perso.club-internet.fr/tmason/WebPages/LangTeach/CounterChomsky.htm. Summaries of alternative views and good listings.
22. The Anatomy of a Revolution in the Social Sciences: Chomsky in 1962. E. F. Konrad Koerner. Winter. 1994. http://www.tlg.uci.edu/%7Eopoudjis/Work/KK.html. The politics of linguistics.
23. Published Papers & Articles on Linguistics, Including Machine Translation, NLP, AI, TGG, etc. Alexander Gross. http://language.home.sprynet.com/lingdex.htm#tggchom. Articles critical of simplifications in Chomsky, etc.
24. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. Daniel Chandler. 1994. http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/short/whorf.html. Introduction in terms of mould and cloak theories.
25. Regarding Benjamin Lee Whorf. Danny Alford. 1980. http://www.enformy.com/alford.htm#papers. Argues for a reexamination.
26. Schools of Linguistics by Geoffrey Sampson. Aug. 2001. http://www.mlc-wels.edu/czer/Sampson_review.htm. Review/summary of Sampson's 1980 book by Larry Czer.
27. There is No Language Instinct. Geoffrey Sampson. 2000. http://www.grsampson.net/ATin.html. Critique of Steven Pinker's arguments in 'The Language Instinct'.
28. We speak prosodies and we listen to them (J R Firth 1948). Nov. 2001. http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~rao1/Uppsala.script.pdf. Firthian application presented as Uppsala conference paper.
29. Sidney Lamb. Dec. 2002. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_M._Lamb. Brief Wikipedia article.
30. Language and the Brain: Neurocognitive Linguistics. Rice University. Apr. 2002. http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lngbrain/main.htm. Includes an interview with Sidney Lamb.
31. Sydney M. Lamb. http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lamb/sketch.htm. Biography, bibliography and a few links.
32. "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Janice E. Patten. 2003. http://theliterarylink.com/metaphors.html. Review/summary of first four chapters of the book.
33. Metaphors of Terror. George Lakoff. Sep. 2001. http://www.press.uchicago.edu/News/911lakoff.html. President Bush and the framing of US response to September 11th attack.
34. Cognitive Linguistics and the Marxist approach to ideology. Peter E Jones. http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LangIdeo/Jones/JonesAbs.html. Cognitive linguistics and a Marxist critique of ideologies.
35. Does Cognitive Linguistics live up to its name? Bert Peeters. http://www.tulane.edu/~howard/LangIdeo/
Peeters/Peeters.html. Review of current work in cognitive linguistics.
36. Metaphor, Metonymy, and Experientialist Philosophy: Challenging Cognitive Semantics. Verena Haser.
http://www.anglistik.uni-freiburg.de/institut/
lskortmann/abstract_haser.htm. Synopsis of thesis critically examining Lakoff and Johnson's ideas.
37. Center for the Cognitive Science of Metaphor Online. Tim Rohrer. May 2002. http://zakros.ucsd.edu/~trohrer/metaphor/metaphor.htm. Detailed articles and links.
38. George Lakoff: The Theory of Cognitive Models. Francis F. Steen. Apr. 1997. http://cogweb.ucla.edu/CogSci/Lakoff.html. Critical review of Lakoff's work.
39. Semantics Web Resources. Kai von Fintel. http://web.mit.edu/fintel/resources.html. Technical nature of current research.
40. Sounds of English. Sharon Widmayer and Holly Gray. Jul. 2002. http://www.soundsofenglish.org/. Useful handouts, illustrations and links for linguistics in action.
© C. John Holcombe 2007. Material can be freely used for non-commercial purposes if cited in the usual way.
how many customers do we have in the west coast? computer says: 2000
how many are female? computer says: 800
how many sales people do we have? computer says: 10
how many are female? comp says: staff doesn't have sex,only customers do
Author: DanielGrunfeld
essay about the historical development of the concept of race (2007)
abstract
In this essay I will deal with the concept of race as a cultural construct and will try to show why and how the conception of human "races" originates in social rather than biological ideas by considering its early origins and by drawing upon two historical periods, namely (i) European Colonialism and (ii) The Third Reich.
read here: Race-a-Cultural-Construct or view as pdf @ http://www.divshare.com/download/3444660-1f1
this essay also relates to ConfusionsAboutHumanRaces, by R.C. Lewontin (Published on: Jun 07, 2006)
1 Caravaggio Supper at Emmaus, 1601
2 Annibale Carracci:Domine Quo Vadis, c.1601/02
Adam Elsheimer Flight into Egypt 1609 Oil on copper,
Adam Elsheimer "Rest on the Flight into Egypt", c.1607
5 Rubens: Descent from the Cross, 1611-14
6 Polykleitos: Spear Bearer
7 Venus (Capitoline)
8 Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus
9Raphael Madonna with the Goldfinch
10Giotto The Annunciation to Anna
11Giambologna Rape of the Sabines
12Masaccio's Trinity 1427
13Durer - Four Horseman
14Durer - St Jerome in His Study
15Durer - Betrothal of the Virgin
16Durer - Fall of Man
17David - Mme. Récamier
18Chardin - Girl with a Racket
19Fragonard - The Swing
20Van Gogh, Sunflowers, 1888,
21Cezanne, Still Life with Onions 1895-1900
22cezanne still life with plaster cupid
23Virgin of the Rocks, DaVinci 1483
24‘Madonna of the Meadow’, Raphael, 1507
25‘Mona Lisa’, ca.1504-6, Paris
Ayaan Hirsi Ali
My View of Islam
On holy war, apostasy and the rights of women in Islam.
The undisputed definition of Islam by all her adherents is “submission to the will of Allah.” This divine will is outlined in the Koran and in the teachings and deeds of Muhammad, as recorded in the Hadith or Sunna.
While the Koran is considered to be the true, undiluted word of God revealed to Muhammad through the angel Gabriel, the Sunna carry less weight and have always been a cause for disagreement amongst Muslim scholars. Theologians of Islam have, however, reached consensus on the authority of a set of six volumes from the Sunna called the Sahih Sita, or authentic six.
On the issues of holy war (jihad), apostasy and the treatment of women, the Koran and Sunna are clear. It is the obligation of every Muslim to spread Islam to unbelievers first through dawa, or proselytizing, then through jihad, if the unbelievers refuse to convert. It is the obligation of the unbelievers to accept Islam. Exempted from this edict of conversion are the people of the book: Christians and Jews. Both peoples have a choice. They may adopt Islam and enjoy the same rights as other Muslims, or they may stick to their book and lead the life of a dhimmi (lower citizen). Legally, the rights of the dhimmi are not equal to those of a Muslim. For instance, a Muslim man may take a Jewish or Christian wife, but Jews and Christians are not allowed to marry Muslim women. If a Christian or a Jew kills a Muslim man, they should be killed immediately. In contrast, the blood of a Muslim should never be shed in recompense for the blood of Christians or Jews.
It is also the obligation of every Muslim to command virtue and forbid vice. Apostasy, the worst possible vice a Muslim can commit, should be punished by death. The punishment need not be carried out by a state, but can easily be enforced by civilians. When it is a question of Islamic law, justice is in the hands of every Muslim.
As for the treatment of women, in the Koran and more elaborately in the Sunna, Islam assigns to girls a position in the family that requires them to be docile, makes them dependent on their male relatives for money and gives dominion over their bodies to these same male kin.
In Islam there is a strict hierarchy of subservience. First and foremost, all humans are required to be the slaves of Allah. In Muslim societies, all children must obey their parents. Beyond this, women and girls must obey and serve without question their male guardians and especially their husbands. This decree of marital obedience is not in any way reciprocal.
A woman in Islam is not competent and must always have a guardian. The responsibility of guardianship may pass from father to brother to uncle before a girl is married off, at which point she must answer to her husband. Marriage is typically arranged, with no choice given to the girl, and there is often an exchange of money in the process. Thus, under the religious rule of Islam, it is still common today that a woman’s rights are essentially sold to a man she may not know, and most likely does not love.
As for education of girls under Islam, there is a clear program of indoctrination of inequality. Under Islam, education is the passing on of the rules of submission to the will of Allah. Intrinsic in this “education” is the dictation of gender roles. Girls are instructed in subservience first to God, then to the family and finally to the husband. There is strict emphasis on modesty, defined by virginity. A Muslim girl is taught to guard fiercely her virginity as an expression of loyalty to her creator and to her family and husband.
This form of education hampers her chances of ever becoming self-reliant or financially independent. A woman’s lack of social equality and freedom is a direct consequence of the teachings of Islam. Under Islam, a wife must always ask her husband for permission and she must obey indefinitely. This stricture is lifted in the unique event that he asks her to forsake God, wherein she is allowed the right of disobedience. While it is true that in Islam, technically speaking, women have the right to trade and own property, the condition of total obedience to guardians makes this “freedom” hypothetical, at best.
The goal of education given to girls under Islam is the achievement of control over female sexuality. The result of this indoctrination is that Muslim girls believe legitimate and often vocally defend their position of subordination. The lengths a Muslim society will go to in the pursuit of sexual control often cross into the territory of the absurd and, by western standards, criminal. In Islam the minimum age of marriage for a girl is after her first menstruation. Muhammad was engaged to his wife Aisha when she was six years old, and he married her (had intercourse with her) when she turned nine. Millions of Muslim men across the world follow Muhammad in this deed, one of the most prominent examples being the late Ayatollah Khomeini.
Under sharia law (Islamic law), such as governs in Saudi Arabia, Iran and parts of Nigeria, the civil rights of women are dramatically reduced. Threat of violent punishment in the form of whipping and stoning makes the prospect of financial independence and sexual freedom for women all but impossible. Miraculously, even in such harsh circumstances you will find women who are relatively well educated, have some say in choosing a husband and manage to earn a living. Let us be clear that these exceptions are due to the compassion and progressiveness of families who have been influenced by the West, and not to rules derived from Islam.
In the quest for reconciliation between Muslim and western societies, it is important to recognize that Muslims are as diverse as Islam is monolithic. Islam attempts to unify more than a billion people of different geographical origins, languages, ethnicities, and cultural and educational backgrounds into one religious tribe. And while I acknowledge that generally stereotyping believers is difficult since belief is subjective, for the sake of discussion I would like to distinguish between five types of Muslims.
The first group includes those Muslims who leave the faith because they cannot reconcile it with their conscience or with modernity. This group is important for the evolution of the Islamic world because they ask the urgent and critical questions believers usually avoid. Ex-Muslims living in the west are just beginning to find their voice and to take advantage of the spiritual and social freedoms available to them.
The second group is comprised of genuine Muslim reformers, such as Irshad Manji, who acknowledge the theological out-datedness of the Koranic commands and the immorality of the prophet. They tend to emphasize the early chapters in the Koran urging goodness, generosity and spirituality. They argue that the latter chapters wherein Islam is politicized and the concepts of sharia, jihad and martyrdom are introduced should be read in the context in which they were written, some 1,400 years ago.
The third group is made up of those Muslims who support the gradual perpetuation and domination of Islam throughout the world. They use the freedoms offered in democracy to undermine social modernity and, though initially opposed to the use of violence, foresee that once the number of believers reaches a critical mass the last remnants of unbelievers may then be dealt with in violence, and sharia law may be universally implemented. Ayatollah Khomeini used this method successfully in Iran. Erdogan of Turkey is following in his footsteps. Tariq Ramadan, deeply rooted in his Muslim Brotherhood heritage, is devoted to such a program among European Muslims.
The fourth group is the most obvious and immediately threatening. In this group we find a growing number of hard-line Muslims who have defined martyrdom as their only goal. This is an army of young men whipped into a frenzy of suicidal violence by power hungry clergy. These clergy have public platforms and work with impunity from institutions untouched and often funded by national authorities.
''The fifth group is largely ineffective and only threatening in their refusal to acknowledge the truth. Here we find the elite clergy who make a show of trying to reconcile Islam with modernity. They are motivated by self-preservation and have no interest in true reform. They take selective passages from the holy books to make a case for a peaceful Islam, ignoring the many passages inciting violence, such as those verses which command the death of apostates.''
It is through the first two of these five groups that progress and reform will come. As for the rest, the western world would be wise to recognize the realities of Islam, a religion laid down in writing over a millennium ago with violence and oppression at its heart.
Born in Somalia and raised a devout Muslim, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is an active critic of Islam, an advocate for women’s rights and a leader in the campaign to reform Islam. Her willingness to speak out and her abandonment of the Muslim faith have made her a target for violence and threat of death by Islamic extremists. She is currently a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, in Washington D.C., and is the author of the bestselling memoir "Infidel."
Posted by Ayaan Hirsi Ali on August 2, 2007 9:39 AM
"It is to the Riddle of the Sphinx that I have devoted fifty years of professional life as an anthropologist. It is of first-class importance that our answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx should be in step with how we conduct our civilisation, and this should in turn be in step with the actual workings of living systems.
A major difficulty is that the answer to the Riddle of the Sphinx is partly a product of the answers that we already have given to the riddle in its various forms. Kurt Vonnegut gives us wary advice - that we should be careful what we pretend because we become what we pretend. And something like that, some sort of self-fulfilment, occurs in all organisations and human cultures. What people presume to be ‘human’ is what they will build in as premises of their social arrangements, and what they build in is sure to be learned, is sure to become a part of the character of those who participate.
And along with this self-validation of our answers, there goes something still more serious - namely, that any answer which we promote, as it becomes partly true through our promoting of it, becomes partly irreversible. There is a lag in these affairs."
Gregory Bateson - Innocence & Experience. 1987 - p.178
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HTML Edition by Dan Baruth
Since I am not a sinologue, a foreword to the Book of Changes from my hand must be a testimonial of my individual experience with this great and singular book. It also affords me a welcome opportunity to pay tribute again to the memory of my late friend, Richard Wilhelm. He himself was profoundly aware of the cultural significance of his translation of the I Ching, a version unrivaled in the West.
If the meaning of the Book of Changes were easy to grasp, the work would need no foreword. But this is far from being the case, for there is so much that is obscure about it that Western scholars have tended to dispose of it as a collection of "magic spells," either too abstruse to be intelligible, or of no value whatsoever. Legge's translation of the I Ching, up to now the only version available in English, has done little to make the work accessible to Western minds.[1]Wilhelm, however, has made every effort to open the way to an understanding of the symbolism of the text. He was in a position to do this because he himself was taught the philosophy and the use of the I Ching by the venerable sage Lao Nai-hsüan; moreover, he had over a period of many years put the peculiar technique of the oracle into practice. His grasp of the living meaning of the text gives his version of the I Ching a depth of perspective that an exclusively academic knowledge of Chinese philosophy could never provide.
I am greatly indebted to Wilhelm for the light he has thrown upon the complicated problem of the I Ching, and for insight as regards its practical application as well. For more than thirty years I have interested myself in this oracle technique, or method of exploring the unconscious, for it has seemed to me of uncommon significance. I was already fairly familiar with the I Ching when I first met Wilhelm in the early nineteen twenties; he confirmed for me then what I already knew, and taught me many things more.
I do not know Chinese and have never been in China. I can assure my reader that it is not altogether easy to find the right access to this monument of Chinese thought, which departs so completely from our ways of thinking. In order to understand what such a book is all about, it is imperative to cast off certain prejudices of the Western mind. it is a curious fact that such a gifted and intelligent people as the Chinese has never developed what we call science. Our science, however, is based upon the principle of causality, and causality is considered to be an axiomatic truth. But a great change in our standpoint is setting in. What Kant's Critique of Pure Reason failed to do, is being accomplished by modern physics. The axioms of causality are being shaken to their foundations: we know now that what we term natural laws are merely statistical truths and thus must necessarily allow for exceptions. We have not sufficiently taken into account as yet that we need the laboratory with its incisive restrictions in order to demonstrate the invariable validity of natural law. If we leave things to nature, we see a very different picture: every process is partially or totally interfered with by chance, so much so that under natural circumstances a course of events absolutely conforming to specific laws is almost an exception.
The Chinese mind, as I see it at work in the I Ching, seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events. What we call coincidence seems to be the chief concern of this peculiar mind, and what we worship as causality passes almost unnoticed. We must admit that there is something to be said for the immense importance of chance. An incalculable amount of human effort is directed to combating and restricting the nuisance or danger represented by chance. Theoretical considerations of cause and effect often look pale and dusty in comparison to the practical results of chance. It is all very well to say that the crystal of quartz is a hexagonal prism. The statement is quite true in so far as an ideal crystal is envisaged. But in nature one finds no two crystals exactly alike, although all are unmistakably hexagonal. The actual form, however, seems to appeal more to the Chinese sage than the ideal one. The jumble of natural laws constituting empirical reality holds more significance for him than a causal explanation of events that, moreover, must usually be separated from one another in order to be properly dealt with.
The manner in which the I Ching tends to look upon reality seems to disfavor our causalistic procedures. The moment under actual observation appears to the ancient Chinese view more of a chance hit than a clearly defined result of concurring causal chain processes. The matter of interest seems to be the configuration formed by chance events in the moment of observation, and not at all the hypothetical reasons that seemingly account for the coincidence. While the Western mind carefully sifts, weighs, selects, classifies, isolates, the Chinese picture of the moment encompasses everything down to the minutest nonsensical detail, because all of the ingredients make up the observed moment.
Thus it happens that when one throws the three coins, or counts through the forty-nine yarrow stalks, these chance details enter into the picture of the moment of observation and form a part of it -- a part that is insiguificant to us, yet most meaningful to the Chinese mind. With us it would be a banal and almost meaningless statement (at least on the face of it) to say that whatever happens in a given moment possesses inevitably the quality peculiar to that moment. This is not an abstract argument but a very practical one. There are certain connoisseurs who can tell you merely from the appearance, taste, and behavior of a wine the site of its vineyard and the year of its origin. There are antiquarians who with almost uncanny accuracy will name the time and place of origin and the maker of an objet d'art or piece of furniture on merely looking at it. And there are even astrologers who can tell you, without any previous knowledge of your nativity, what the position of sun and moon was and what zodiacal sign rose above the horizon in the moment of your birth. In the face of such facts, it must be admitted that moments can leave long-lasting traces.
In other words, whoever invented the I Ching was convinced that the hexagram worked out in a certain moment coincided with the latter in quality no less than in time. To him the hexagram was the exponent of the moment in which it was cast -- even more so than the hours of the clock or the divisions of the calendar could be -- inasmuch as the hexagram was understood to be an indicator of the essential situation prevailing in the moment of its origin.
This assumption involves a certain curious principle that I have termed synchronicity,[2] a concept that formulates a point of view diametrically opposed to that of causality. Since the latter is a merely statistical truth and not absolute, it is a sort of working hypothesis of how events evolve one out of another, whereas synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers.
The ancient Chinese mind contemplates the cosmos in a way comparable to that of the modern physicist, who cannot deny that his model of the world is a decidedly psychophysical structure. The microphysical event includes the observer just as much as the reality underlying the I Ching comprises subjective, i.e., psychic conditions in the totality of the momentary situation. Just as causality describes the sequence of events, so synchronicity to the Chinese mind deals with the coincidence of events. The causal point of view tells us a dramatic story about how D came into existence: it took its origin from C, which existed before D, and C in its turn had a father, B, etc. The synchronistic view on the other hand tries to produce an equally meaningful picture of coincidence. How does it happen that A', B', C', D', etc., appear all in the same moment and in the same place? It happens in the first place because the physical events A' and B' are of the same quality as the psychic events C' and D', and further because all are the exponents of one and the same momentary situation. The situation is assumed to represent a legible or understandable picture.
Now the sixty-four hexagrams of the I Ching are the instrument by which the meaning of sixty-four different yet typical situations can be determined. These interpretations are equivalent to causal explanations. Causal connection is statistically necessary and can therefore be subjected to experiment. Inasmuch as situations are unique and cannot be repeated, experimenting with synchronicity seems to be impossible under ordinary conditions.[3] In the I Ching, the only criterion of the validity of synchronicity is the observer's opinion that the text of the hexagram amounts to a true rendering of his psychic condition. It is assumed that the fall of the coins or the result of the division of the bundle of yarrow stalks is what it necessarily must be in a given "situation," inasmuch as anything happening in that moment belongs to it as an indispensable part of the picture. If a handful of matches is thrown to the floor, they form the pattern characteristic of that moment. But such an obvious truth as this reveals its meaningful nature only if it is possible to read the pattern and to verify its interpretation, partly by the observer's knowledge of the subjective and objective situation, partly by the character of subsequent events. It is obviously not a procedure that appeals to a critical mind used to experimental verification of facts or to factual evidence. But for someone who likes to look at the world at the angle from which ancient China saw it, the I Ching may have some attraction.
My argument as outlined above has of course never entered a Chinese mind. On the contrary, according to the old tradition, it is "spiritual agencies," acting in a mysterious way, that make the yarrow stalks give a meaningful answer.[4] These powers form, as it were, the living soul of the book. As the latter is thus a sort of animated being, the tradition assumes that one can put questions to the I Ching and expect to receive intelligent answers. Thus it occurred to me that it might interest the uninitiated reader to see the I Ching at work. For this purpose I made an experiment strictly in accordance with the Chinese conception: I personified the book in a sense, asking its judgment about its present situation, i.e., my intention to present it to the Western mind.
Although this procedure is well within the premises of Taoist philosophy, it appears exceedingly odd to us. However, not even the strangeness of insane delusions or of primitive superstition has ever shocked me. I have always tried to remain unbiased and curious -- rerum novarum cupidus. Why not venture a dialogue with an ancient book that purports to be animated? There can be no harm in it, and the reader may watch a psychological procedure that has been carried out time and again throughout the millennia of Chinese civilization, representing to a Confucius or a Lao-tse both a supreme expression of spiritual authority and a philosophical enigma. I made use of the coin method, and the answer obtained was hexagram 50, Ting, THE CALDRON.
In accordance with the way my question was phrased, the text of the hexagram must be regarded as though the I Ching itself were the speaking person. Thus it describes itself as a caldron, that is, as a ritual vessel containing cooked food. Here the food is to be understood as spiritual nourishment. Wilhelm says about this:
The ting, as a utensil pertaining to a refined civilization, suggests the fostering and nourishing of able men, which redounded to the benefit of the state. . . . Here we see civilization as it reaches its culmination in religion. The ting serves in offering sacrifice to God. . . . The supreme revelation of God appears in prophets and holy men. To venerate them is true veneration of God. The will of God, as revealed through them, should he accepted in humility.
Keeping to our hypothesis, we must conclude that the I Ching is here testifying concerning itself.
When any of the lines of a given hexagram have the value of six or nine, it means that they are specially emphasized and hence important in the interpretation.[5] In my hexagram the "spiritual agencies" have given the emphasis of a nine to the lines in the second and in the third place. The text says:
Nine in the second place means:
There is food in the ting.
My comrades are envious,
But they cannot harm me.
Good fortune.
Thus the I Ching says of itself: "I contain (spiritual) nourishment." Since a share in something great always arouses envy, the chorus of the envious[6] is part of the picture. The envious want to rob the I Ching of its great possession, that is, they seek to rob it of meaning, or to destroy its meaning. But their enmity is in vain. Its richness of meaning is assured; that is, it is convinced of its positive achievements, which no one can take away. The text continues:
Nine in the third place means:
The handle of the ting is altered.
One is impeded in his way of life.
The fat of the pheasant is not eaten.
Once rain falls, remorse is spent.
Good fortune comes in the end.
The handle [German Griff] is the part by which the ting can be grasped [gegriffen]. Thus it signifies the concept[7] (Begriff) one has of the I Ching (the ting). In the course of time this concept has apparently changed, so that today we can no longer grasp (begreifen) the I Ching. Thus "one is impeded in his way of life." We are no longer supported by the wise counsel and deep insight of the oracle; therefore we no longer find our way through the mazes of fate and the obscurities of our own natures. The fat of the pheasant, that is, the best and richest part of a good dish, is no longer eaten. But when the thirsty earth finally receives rain again, that is, when this state of want has been overcome, "remorse," that is, sorrow over the loss of wisdom, is ended, and then comes the longed-for opportunity. Wilhelm comments: "This describes a man who, in a highly evolved civilization, finds himself in a place where no one notices or recognizes him. This is a severe block to his effectiveness." The I Ching is complaining, as it were, that its excellent qualities go unrecognized and hence lie fallow. It comforts itself with the hope that it is about to regain recognition.
The answer given in these two salient lines to the question I put to the I Ching requires no particular subtlety of interpretation, no artifices, no unusual knowledge. Anyone with a little common sense can understand the meaning of the answer; it is the answer of one who has a good opinion of himself, but whose value is neither generally recognized nor even widely known. The answering subject has an interesting notion of itself: it looks upon itself as a vessel in which sacrificial offerings are brought to the gods, ritual food for their nourishment. It conceives of itself as a cult utensil serving to provide spiritual nourishment for the unconscious elements or forces ("spiritual agencies") that have been projected as gods -- in other words, to give these forces the attention they need in order to play their part in the life of the individual. Indeed, this is the original meaning of the word religio - a careful observation and taking account of (from relegere [8]) the numinous.
The method of the I Ching does indeed take into account the hidden individual quality in things and men, and in one's own unconscious self as well. I have questioned the I Ching as one questions a person whom one is about to introduce to friends: one asks whether or not it will be agreeable to him. In answer the I Ching tells me of its religious significance, of the fact that at present it is unknown and misjudged, of its hope of being restored to a place of honor -- this last obviously with a sidelong glance at my as yet unwritten foreword,[9] and above all at the English translation. This seems a perfectly understandable reaction, such as one could expect also from a person in a similar situation.
But how has this reaction come about? Because I threw three small coins into the air and let them fall, roll, and come to rest, heads up or tails up as the case might be. This odd fact that a reaction that makes sense arises out of a technique seemingly excluding all sense from the outset, is the great achievement of the I Ching. The instance I have just given is not unique; meaningful answers are the rule. Western sinologues and distinguished Chinese scholars have been at pains to inform me that the I Ching is a collection of obsolete "magic spells." In the course of these conversations my informant has sometimes admitted having consulted the oracle through a fortune teller, usually a Taoist priest. This could be "only nonsense" of course. But oddly enough, the answer received apparently coincided with the questioner's psychological blind spot remarkably well.
I agree with Western thinking that any number of answers to my question were possible, and I certainly cannot assert that another answer would not have been equally significant. However, the answer received was the first and only one; we know nothing of other possible answers. It pleased and satisfied me. To ask the same question a second time would have been tactless and so I did not do it: "the master speaks but once." The heavy-handed pedagogic approach that attempts to fit irrational phenomena into a preconceived rational pattern is anathema to me. Indeed, such things as this answer should remain as they were when they first emerged to view, for only then do we know what nature does when left to herself undisturbed by the meddlesomeness of man. One ought not to go to cadavers to study life. Moreover, a repetition of the experiment is impossible, for the simple reason that the original situation cannot be reconstructed. Therefore in each instance there is only a first and single answer.
To return to the hexagram itself. There is nothing strange in the fact that all of Ting, THE CALDRON, amplifies the themes announced by the two salient lines.[10] The first line of the hexagram says:
A ting with legs upturned.
Furthers removal of stagnating stuff.
One takes a concubine for the sake of her son.
No blame.
A ting that is turned upside down is not in use. Hence the I Ching is like an unused caldron. Turning it over serves to remove stagnating matter, as the line says. Just as a man takes a concubine when his wife has no son, so the I Ching is called upon when one sees no other way out. Despite the quasi-legal status of the concubine in China, she is in reality only a somewhat awkward makeshift so likewise the magic procedure of the oracle is an expedient that may be utilized for a higher purpose. There is no blame, although it is an exceptional recourse.
The second and third lines have already been discussed. The fourth line says:
The legs of the ting are broken.
The prince's meal is spilled
And his person is soiled.
Misfortune.
Here the ting has been put to use, but evidently in a very clumsy manner, that is, the oracle has been abused or misinterpreted. In this way the divine food is lost, and one puts oneself to shame. Legge translates as follows: "Its subject will be made to blush for shame." Abuse of a cult utensil such as the ting (i.e., the I Ching) is a gross profanation. The I Ching is evidently insisting here on its dignity as a ritual vessel and protesting against being profanely used.
The fifth line says:
The ting has yellow handles, golden carrying rings.
Perseverance furthers.
The I Ching has, it seems, met with a new, correct (yellow) understanding, that is, a new concept (Begriff) by which it can be grasped. This concept is valuable (golden). There is indeed a new edition in English, making the book more accessible to the Western world than before.
The sixth line says:
The ting has rings of jade.
Great good fortune.
Nothing that would not act to further.
Jade is distinguished for its beauty and soft sheen. If the carrying rings are of jade, the whole vessel is enhanced in beauty, honor, and value. The I Ching expresses itself here as being not only well satisfied but indeed very optimistic. One can only await further events and in the meantime remain content with the pleasant conclusion that the I Ching approves of the new edition.
I have shown in this example as objectively as I can how the oracle proceeds in a given case. Of course the procedure varies somewhat according to the way the question is put. If for instance a person finds himself in a confusing situation, he may himself appear in the oracle as the speaker. Or, if the question concerns a relationship with another person, that person may appear as the speaker. However, the identity of the speaker does not depend entirely on the manner in which the question is phrased, inasmuch as our relations with our fellow beings are not always determined by the latter. Very often our relations depend almost exclusively on our own attitudes, though we maybe quite unaware of this fact. Hence, if an individual is unconscious of his role in a relationship, there may be a surprise in store for him; contrary to expectation, he himself may appear as the chief agent, as is sometimes unmistakably indicated by the text. It may also occur that we take a situation too seriously and consider it extremely important, whereas the answer we get on consulting the I Ching draws attention to some unsuspected other aspect impllcit in the question.
Such instances might at first lead one to think that the oracle is fallacious. Confucius is said to have received only one inappropriate answer, i.e., hexagram 22, GRACE -- a thoroughly aesthetic hexagram. This is reminiscent of the advice given to Socrates by his daemon -- "You ought to make more music" -- whereupon Socrates took to playing the flute. Confucius and Socrates compete for first place as far as reasonableness and a pedagogic attitude to life are concerned; but it is unlikely that either of them occupied himself with "lending grace to the beard on his chin," as the second line of this hexagram advises. Unfortunately, reason and pedagogy often lack charm and grace, and so the oracle may not have been wrong after all.
To come back once more to our hexagram. Though the I Ching not only seems to be satisfied with its new edition, but even expresses emphatic optimism, this still does not foretell anything about the effect it will have on the public it is intended to reach. Since we have in our hexagram two yang lines stressed by the numerical value nine, we are in a position to find out what sort of prognosis the I Ching makes for itself. Lines designated by a six or a nine have, according to the ancient conception, an inner tension so great as to cause them to change into their opposites, that is, yang into yin, and vice versa. Through this change we obtain in the present instance hexagram 55, Chin, PROGRESS.
The subject of this hexagram is someone who meets with all sorts of vicissitudes of fortune in his climb upward, and the text describes how he should hehave. The I Ching is in this same situation: it rises like the sun and declares itself, but it is rebuffed and finds no confidence -- it is "progressing, but in sorrow." However, "one obtains great happiness from one's ancestress." Psychology can help us to elucidate this obscure passage. In dreams and fairy tales the grandmother, or ancestress, often represents the unconscious, because the latter in a man contains the feminine component of the psyche. If the I Ching is not accepted by the conscious, at least the unconscious meets it halfway, and the I Ching is more closely connected with the unconscious than with the rational attitude of consciousness. Since the unconscious is often represented in dreams by a feminine figure, this may be the explanation here. The feminine person might be the translator, who has given the book her maternal care, and this might easily appear to the I Ching as a "great happiness." It anticipates general understantling, but is afraid of misuse -- "Progress like a hamster." But it is mindful of the admonition, "Take not gain and loss to heart." It remains free of "partisan motives." It does not thrust itself on anyone.
The I Ching therefore faces its future on the American book market calmly and expresses itself here just about as any reasonable person would in regard to the fate of so controversial a work. This prediction is so very reasonable and full of common sense that it would be hard to think of a more fitting answer.
All of this happened before I had written the foregoing paragraphs. When I reached this point, I wished to know the attitude of the I Ching to the new situation. The state of things had been altered by what I had written, inasmuch as I myself had now entered upon the scene, and I therefore expected to hear something referring to my own action. I must confess that I had not been feeling too happy in the course of writing this foreword, for, as a person with a sense of responsibility toward science, I am not in the habit of asserting something I cannot prove or at least present as acceptable to reason. It is a dubious task indeed to try to introduce to a critical modern public a collection of archaic "magic spells," with the idea of making them more or less acceptable. I have undertaken it because I myself think that there is more to the ancient Chinese way of thinking than meets the eye. But it is embarrassing to me that I must appeal to the good will and imagination of the reader, inasmuch as I have to take him into the obscurity of an age-old magic ritual. Unfortunately I am only too well aware of the arguments that can be brought against it. We are not even certain that the ship that is to carry us over the unknown seas has not sprung a leak somewhere. May not the old text be corrupt? Is Wilhelm's translation accurate? Are we not self-deluded in our explanations?
The I Ching insists upon self-knowledge throughout. The method by which this is to be achieved is open to every kind of misuse, and is therefore not for the frivolous-minded and immature; nor is it for intellectualists and rationalists. It is appropriate only for thoughtful and reflective people who like to think about what they do and what happens to them -- a predilection not to be confused with the morbid brooding of the hypochondriac. As I have indicated above, I have no answer to the multitude of problems that arise when we seek to harmonize the oracle of the I Ching with our accepted scientific canons. But needless to say, nothing "occult" is to be inferred. My position in these matters is pragmatic, and the great disciplines that have taught me the practical usefulness of this viewpoint are psychotherapy and medical psychology. Probably in no other field do we have to reckon with so many unknown quantities, and nowhere else do we become more accustomed to adopting methods that work even though for a long time we may not know why they work. Unexpected cures may arise from questionable therapies and unexpected failures from allegedly reliable methods. In the exploration of the unconscious we come upon very strange things, from which a rationalist turns away with horror, claiming afterward that he did not see anything. The irrational fullness of life has taught me never to discard anything, even when it goes against all our theories (so short-lived at best) or otherwise admits of no immediate explanation. It is of course disquieting, and one is not certain whether the compass is pointing true or not; but security, certitude, and peace do not lead to discoveries. It is the same with this Chinese mode of divination. Clearly the method aims at self-knowledge, though at all times it has also been put to superstitious use.
I of course am thoroughly convinced of the value of self-knowledge, but is there any use in recommending such insight, when the wisest of men throughout the ages have preached the need of it without success? Even to the most biased eye it is obvious that this book represents one long admonition to careful scrutiny of one's own character, attitude, and motives. This attitude appeals to me and has induced me to undertake the foreword. Only once before have I expressed myself in regard to the problem of the I Ching: this was in a memorial address in tribute to Richard Willielm.[11] For the rest I have maintained a discreet silence. It is by no means easy
to feel one's way into such a remote and mysterious mentality as that underlying the I Ching. One cannot easily disregard such great minds as Confucius and Lao-tse, if one is at all able to appreciate the quality of the thoughts they represent; much less can one overlook the fact that the I Ching was their main source of inspiration. I know that previously I would not have dared to express myself so explicitly about so uncertain a matter. I can take this risk because I am now in my eighth decade, and the changing opinions of men scarcely impress me any more; the thoughts of the old masters are of greater value to me than the philosophical prejudices of the Western mind.
I do not like to burden my reader with these personal considerations; but, as already indicated, one's own personality is very often implicated in the answer of the oracle. Indeed, in formulating my question I even invited the oracle to comment directly on my action. The answer was hexagram 29, K'an, THE ABYSMAL. Special emphasis is given to the third place by the fact that the line is designated by a six. This line says:
Forward and backward, abyss on abyss.
In danger like this, pause at first and wait,
Otherwise you will fall into a pit in the abyss.
Do not act in this way.
Formerly I would have accepted unconditionally the advice, "Do not act in this way," and would have refused to give my opinion of the I Ching, for the sole reason that I had none. But now the counsel may serve as an example of the way in which the I Ching functions. It is a fact that if one begins to think about it, the problems of the I Ching do represent "abyss on abyss," and unavoidably one must "pause at first and wait" in the midst of the dangers of limitless and uncritical speculation; otherwise one really will lose his way in the darkness. Could there be a more uncomfortable position intellectually than that of floating in the thin air of unproved possibilities, not knowing whether what one sees is truth or illusion? This is the dreamlike atmosphere of the I Ching, and in it one has nothing to rely upon except one's own so fallible subjective judgment. I cannot but admit that this line represents very appropriately the feelings with which I wrote the foregoing passages. Equally fitting is the comforting beginning of this hexagram -- "If you are sincere, you have success in your heart" -- for it indicates that the decisive thing here is not the outer danger but the subjective condition, that is, whether one believes oneself to be "sincere" or not.
The hexagram compares the dynamic action in this situation to the behavior of flowing water, which is not afraid of any dangerous place but plunges over cliffs and fills up the pits that lie in its course (K'an also stands for water). This is the way in which the "superior man" acts and "carries on the business of teaching."
K'an is definitely one of the less agreeable hexagrams. It describes a situation in which the subject seems in grave danger of being caught in all sorts of pitfalls. Just as in interpreting a dream one must follow the dream text with utmost exactitude, so in consulting the oracle one must hold in mind the form of the question put, for this sets a definite limit to the interpretation of the answer. The first line of the hexagram notes the presence of the danger: "In the abyss one falls into a pit." The second line does the same, then adds the counsel: "One should strive to attain small things only." I apparently anticipated this advice by limiting myself in this foreword to a demonstration of how the I Ching functions in the Chinese mind, and by renouncing the more ambitious project of writing a psychological commentary on the whole book.
The fourth line says:
A jug of wine, a bowl of rice with it;
Earthen vessels
Simply handed in through the window.
There is certainly no blame in this.
Wilhelm makes the following comment here:
Although as a rule it is customary for an official to present certain introductory gifts and recommendations before he is appointed, here everything is simplified to the utmost. The gifts are insignificant, there is no one to sponsor him, he introduces himself; yet all this need not be humiliating if only there is the honest intention of mutual help in danger.
Wilhelm niakes the following comment here:
Although as a rule it is customary for an official to present certain introductory gifts and recommendations before he is appointed, here everything is simplified to the utmost. The gifts are insignificant, there is no one to sponsor him, he introduces himself; yet all this need not be humiliating if only there is the honest intention of mutual help in danger.
It looks as if the book were to some degree the subject of this line.
The fifth line continues the theme of limitation. If one studies the nature of water, one sees that it fills a pit only to the rim and then flows on. It does not stay caught there:
The abyss is not filled to overflowing,
It is filled only to the rim.
But if, tempted by the danger, and just because of the uncertainty, one were to insist on forcing conviction by special efforts, such as elaborate commentaries and the like, one would only be mired in the difficulty, which the top line describes very accurately as a tied-up and caged-in condition. Indeed, the last line often shows the consequences that result when one does not take the meaning of the hexagram to heart.
In our hexagram we have a six in the third place. This yin line of mounting tension changes into a yang line and thus produces a new hexagram showing a new possibility or tendency. We now have hexagram 48, Ching, THE WELL. The water hole no longer means danger, however, but rather something beneficial, a well:
Thus the superior man encourages the people at their work,
And exhorts them to help one another.
The image of people helping one another would seem to refer to the reconstruction of the well, for it is broken down and full of mud. Not even animals drink from it. There are fishes living in it, and one can shoot these, but the well is not used for drinking, that is, for human needs. This description is reminiscent of the overturned and unused ting that is to receive a new handle. Moreover, this well, like the ting, is cleaned. But no one drinks from it:
This is my heart's sorrow,
For one might draw from it.
The dangerous water hole or abyss pointed to the I Ching, and so does the well, but the latter has a positive meaning: it contains the waters of life. It should he restored to use. But one has no concept (Begriff) of it, no utensil with which to carry the water; the jug is broken and leaks. The ting needs new handles and carrying rings by which to grasp it, and so also the well must be newly lined, for it contains "a clear, cold spring from which one can drink." One may draw water from it, because "it is dependable."
It is clear that in this prognosis the speaking subject is again the I Ching, representing itself as a spring of living water. The preceding hexagram described in detail the danger confronting the person who accidentally falls into the pit within the abyss. He must work his way out of it, in order to discover that it is an old, ruined well, buried in mud, but capable of being restored to use again.
I submitted two questions to the method of chance represented by the coin oracle, the second question being put after I had written my analysis of the answer to the first. The first question was directed, as it were, to the I Ching: what had it to say about my intention to write a foreword? The second question concerned my own action, or rather the situation in which I was the acting subject who had discussed the first hexagram. To the first question the I Ching replied by comparing itself to a caldron, a ritual vessel in need of renovation, a vessel that was finding only doubtful favor with the public. To the second question the reply was that I had fallen into a difficulty, for the I Ching represented a deep and dangerous water hole in which one might easily be mired. However, the water hole proved to be an old well that needed only to be renovated in order to be put to useful purposes once more.
These four hexagrams are in the main consistent as regards theme (vessel, pit, well); and as regards intellectual content they seem to be meaningful. Had a human being made such replies, I should, as a psychiatrist, have had to pronounce him of sound mind, at least on the basis of the material presented. Indeed, I should not have been able to discover anything delirious, idiotic, or schizophrenic in the four answers. In view of the I Ching's extreme age and its Chinese origin, I cannot consider its archaic, symbolic, and flowery language abnormal. On the contrary, I should have had to congratulate this hypothetical person on the extent of his insight into my unexpressed state of doubt. On the other hand, any person of clever and versatile mind can turn the whole thing around and show how I have projected my subjective contents into the symbolism of the hexagrams. Such a critique, though catastrophic from the standpoint of Western rationality, does no harm to the function of the I Ching. On the contrary, the Chinese sage would smilingly tell me: "Don't you see how useful the I Ching is in making you project your hitherto unrealized thoughts into its abstruse symbolism? You could have written your foreword without ever realizing what an avalanche of misunderstanding might be released by it."
The Chinese standpoint does not concern itself as to the attitude one takes toward the performance of the oracle. It is only we who are puzzled, because we trip time and again over our prejudice, viz., the notion of causality. The ancient wisdom of the East lays stress upon the fact that the intelligent individual realizes his own thoughts, but not in the least upon the way in which he does it. The less one thinks about the theory of the I Ching, the more soundly one sleeps.
It would seem to me that on the basis of this example an unprejudiced reader would now be in a position to form at least a tentative judgment on the operation of the I Ching.[12] More cannot be expected from a simple introduction. If by means of this demonstration I have succeeded in elucidating the psychological phenomenology of the I Ching, I shall have carried out my purpose. As to the thousands of questions, doubts, and criticisms that this singular book stirs up -- I cannot answer these. The I Ching does not offer itself with proofs and results; it does not vaunt itself, nor is it easy to approach. Like a part of nature, it waits until it is discovered. It offers neither facts nor power, but for lovers of self-knowledge, of wisdom -- if there be such -- it seems to be the right book. To one person its spirit appears as clear as day; to another, shadowy as twilight; to a third, dark as night. He who is not pleased by it does not have to use it, and he who is against it is not obliged to find it true. Let it go forth into the world for the benefit of those who can discern its meaning.
C. G. JUNG
Zurich, 1949
[1] Legge makes the following comment on the explanatory text for the individual lines: "According to our notions, a framer of emblems should be a good deal of a poet, but those of Yi only make us think of a dryasdust. Out of more than three hundred and fifty, the greater numbers are only grotesque" (The Sacred Books of the East, XVl: The Yi King, 2nd edn., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1899, p.22). Of the "lessons"' of the hexagrams, the same author says: "But why, it may be asked, why should they be conveyed to us by such an array of lineal figures, and in such a farrago of emblematic representations"' (ibid., p. 25). However, we are nowhere told that Legge ever bothered to put the method to a practical test.
[2] Cf. "Syndironicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle," The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche (Coll. Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 8).
[3] Cf. J. B. Rhine, The Reach of the Mind (New York and London, 1928).
[4] They are shên, that is "spirit-like." "Heaven produced the 'spirit-like things' " (Legge, p.41).
[5] See the explanation of the method in Wilhelm's text, p.721.
[6] For example, the invidi ("the envious") are a constantly recurring image in the old Latin books on alchemy, especially in the Turba philosophorum (eleventh or twelfth century).
[7] From the Latin concipere, "ito take together," e.g., in a vessel: concipere derives from capere,"to take," "to grasp."
[8] This is the classical etymology. The derivation of rehgio from religare, "bind to," originated with the Church Fathers.
[9] I made this experiment before I actually wrote the foreword.
[10] The Chinese interpret only the changing lines in the hexagram obtained by use of the oracle. I have found all the lines of the hexagram to be relevant in most cases.
[11] Cf. R. Wilhelm and C. G. Jung, The Secret of the Golden Flower, tr. Gary F. Baynes (London and New York, 1931; new edn., revised, 1962), in which this address appears as an appendix. The book did not appear in English until a year after Wilhelm's death. The address is also in The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature (Coll. Works of C. G. Jung, vol.15).
[12] The reader will find it helpful to look up all four of these hexagrams in the text and to read them together with the relevant commentaries.
One does not inhabit a country;
one inhabits a language.
That is our country, our fatherland - and no other.
Cioran, E. M. //Anathemas and Admirations//
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http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Lewontin/
Confusions About Human Races
By R.C. Lewontin
Published on: Jun 07, 2006
R.C. Lewontin, Alexander Agassiz Professor Emeritus of Zoology at Harvard University, has written a number of books and articles on evolution and human variation, including Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA and The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment
Over the last thirty five years a major change has taken place in our biological understanding of the concept of human “race,” largely as a consequence of an immense increase in our knowledge of human genetics. As a biological rather than a social construct, “race” has ceased to be seen as a fundamental reality characterizing the human species. Nevertheless, there appear from time to time claims that racial categories represent not arbitrary socially and historically defined groups but objective biological divisions based on genetic differences. The most recent widely noticed rebirth of such claims is an essay by Armand Marie Leroi on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times (March 14, 2005), an essay that illustrates both the classical confusions about the reality of racial categories and the more recent erroneous conclusions about the relevance of such racial identifications for medical practice.
There are four facts about human variation upon which there is universal agreement. First, the human species as a whole has immense genetic variation from individual to individual. Any two unrelated human beings differ by about 3 million distinct DNA variants.
Second, by far the largest amount of that variation, about 85%, is among individuals within local national or linguistic populations, within the French, within the Kikuyu, within the Japanese. There is diversity from population to population in how much genetic variation each contains, depending upon how much immigration into the population has occurred from a variety of other groups and also on the size of the population. The United States, with a very large population whose ancestors came from all over the earth including the original inhabitants of the New World, is genetically very variable whereas small populations of local Amazonian tribes are less genetically variable, although they are by no means genetically uniform. Despite the differences in amount of genetic variation within local populations, the finding that on the average 85% of all human genetic variation is within local populations has been a remarkably consistent result of independent studies carried out over twenty-five years using data from both proteins and DNA.
Of the remaining 15% of human variation, between a quarter and a half is between local populations within classically defined human “races,” between the French and the Ukrainians, between the Kikuyu and the Ewe, between the Japanese and the Koreans. The remaining variation, about 6% to 10% of the total human variation is between the classically defined geographical races that we think of in an everyday sense as identified by skin color, hair form, and nose shape. This imprecision in assigning the proportion of variation assigned to differences among population within ”races” as compared to variation among “races,” arises precisely because there is no objective way to assign the various human populations to clear-cut races. Into which “race” do the Hindi and Urdu speakers of the Indian sub-continent fall? Should they be grouped with Europeans or with Asians or should a separate race be assigned to them? Are the Lapps of Finland and the Hazari of Afghanistan really Europeans or Asians? What about Indonesians and Melanesians? Different biologists have made different assignments and the number of “races” assigned by anthropologists and geneticists has varied from 3 to 30.
Third, a small number of genetic traits, such as skin color, hair form, nose shape (traits for which the genes have not actually been identified) and a relatively few proteins like the Rh blood type, vary together so that many populations with very dark skin color will also have dark tightly curled hair, broad noses and a high frequency of the Rh blood type R0. Those who, like Leroi, argue for the objective reality of racial divisions claim that when such covariation is taken into account, clear-cut racial divisions will appear and that these divisions will correspond largely to the classical division of the world into Whites, Blacks, Yellows, Reds and Browns. It is indeed possible to combine the information from covarying traits into weighted averages that take account of the traits' covariation (technically known as "principal components" of variation). When this has been done, however, the results have not borne out the claims for racial divisions. The geographical maps of principal component values constructed by Cavalli, Menozzi and Piazza in their famous The History and Geography of Human Genes show continuous variation over the whole world with no sharp boundaries and with no greater similarity occurring between Western and Eastern Europeans than between Europeans and Africans! Thus, the classically defined races do not appear from an unprejudiced description of human variation. Only the Australian Aborigines appear as a unique group.
A clustering of populations that does correspond to classical continental "races" can be acheived by using a special class of non-functional DNA, microsatellites. By selecting among microsatellites, it is possible to find a set that will cluster together African populations, European populations, and Asian populations, etc. These selected microsatellite DNA markers are not typical of genes, however, but have been chosen precisely because they are "maximally informative" about group differences. Thus, they tell us what we already knew about the differences between populations of the classical "races" from skin color, face shape, and hair form. They have the added advantage of allowing us to make good estimates of the amount of intermixture that has occurred between populations as a result of migrations and conquests.
The every-day socially defined geographical races do identify groups of populations that are somewhat more closely similar to each other genetically. Most important from the standpoint of the biological meaning of these racial categories, however, most human genetic variation does not show such "race" clustering. For the vast majority of human genetic variations, classical racial categories as defined by a combination of geography, skin color, nose and hair shape, an occasional blood type or selected microsatellites make no useful prediction of genetic differences. This failure of the clustering of local populations into biologically meaningful "races" based on a few clear genetic differences is not confined to the human species. Zoologists long ago gave up the category of "race" for dividing up groups of animal populations within a species, because so many of these races turned out to be based on only one or two genes so that two animals born in the same litter could belong to different "races."
In his article, Leroi is inconsistent and shifting in his notion of race. Sometimes it corresponds to the classical social definitions of major races, but elsewhere he makes “race” coincident with a small local group such as the Negritos or Inuit. In this shifting concept of “race” he goes back to the varying use of the term in the 19th century. Then people spoke of the “Scots race,” “the Irish race” and the “race of Englishmen.” Indeed “race” could stand for a family group defined by male inheritance, as in the description of the last male in a family line as “the last of his race.” This inconsistent usage arises from the fact that there is no clear criterion of how much difference between groups of genetically related individuals should correspond to the category “race.” If it had turned out that groups of related populations were clearly different in the great majority of their genes from other groups, then racial categories would be clear and unambiguous and they would have great predictive power for as yet unstudied characters. But that is not the way it has turned out, at least for the human species.
The fourth and last fact about genetic differences between groups is that these differences are in the process of breaking down because of the very large amount of migration and intergroup mating that was always true episodically in the history of the human species but is now more widespread than ever. The result is that individuals identified by themselves or others as belonging to one “race,” based on the small number of visible characters used in classical race definitions, are likely to have ancestry that is a mixture of these groups, a fact that has considerable significance for the medical uses of race identification.
A common claim, repeated by Leroi, is that racial categories are of considerable medical use, especially in diagnostic testing because some genetic disorders are very common in ancestral racial populations. For example sickle cell anemia is common among West Africans, who were brought as slaves to the New World, and Tay-Sachs disease is common among Ashkenazi Jews. So, it is argued, racial information can be a useful diagnostic indicator. Certainly classical “race” contains some medically relevant information in some cases, as for example “white” as opposed to “African American” if the contrast is between Finland and West Africa, but not if it is a contrast between a “white” Mediterranean and an “Asian” Indian. There is a confusion here between race and ancestry. Sickle cell anemia is in high frequency not only in West Africans but also in some “white” Middle Eastern and Indian populations. Moreover, a person with, say, one African great-grandparent, but who is identified by herself and others as “white” has a one in eight chance of inheriting a sickle-cell mutation carried by that ancestor. There are, in addition, a number of other simply inherited hemoglobin abnormalities, the thalassemias, that are in high frequency in some places in the Mediterranean (Sardinia), Arabia and southeast Asia. The highest frequency known for a thalassemia (80%) is in Nepal, but it is rare in most of Asia. The categorization of individuals simply as “white” or “Afro-American” or “Asian” will result in a failure to test for such abnormal hemoglobins because these abnormalities do not characterize the identified “race” of the patient. Even group identities below the level of the conventional races are misleading. Two of my incontrovertibly WASP grandchildren have a single Ashenazi Jewish great-grandparent and so have a one in eight chance of inheriting a Tay-Sachs abnormality carried by that ancestor. For purposes of medical testing we do not want to know whether a person is “Hispanic” but rather whether that person’s family came from a Caribbean country such as Cuba, that had a large influx of West African slaves, or one in which there was a great deal of intermixture with native American tribes as in Chile and Mexico, or one in which there was only a negligible population of non-Europeans. Racial identification simply does not do the work needed. What we ought to ask on medical questionnaires is not racial identification, but ancestry. “Do you know of any ancestors who were (Ashkenazi Jews, or from West Africa, from certain regions of the Mediterranean, from Japan)?” Once again, racial categorization is a bad predictor of biology.
There has been an interesting dialectic between the notion of human races and the use of race as a general biological category. Historically, the concept of race was imported into biology, and not only the biology of the human species, from social practice. The consciousness that human beings come in distinct varieties led, in the history of biology, to the construction of “race” as a subgrouping within species. For a long time the category “race” was a standard taxonomic level. But the use of “race” in a general biological context then reinforced its application to humans. After all, lots of animal and plant species are divided into races, so why not Homo sapiens? Yet the classification of animal and plant species into named races was at all times an ill-defined and idiosyncratic practice. There was no clear criterion of what constituted a race of animals or plants that could be applied over species in general. The growing realization in the middle of the twentieth century that most species had some genetic differentiation from local population to local population led finally to the abandonment in biology of any hope that a uniform criterion of race could be constructed. Yet biologists were loathe to abandon the idea of race entirely. In an attempt to hold on to the concept while make it objective and generalizable, Th. Dobzhansky, the leading biologist in the study of the genetics of natural populations, introduced the “geographical race,” which he defined as any population that differed genetically in any way from any other population of the species. But as genetics developed and it became possible to characterize the genetic differences between individuals and populations it became apparent, that every population of every species in fact differs genetically to some degree from every other population. Thus, every population is a separate “geographic race” and it was realized that nothing was added by the racial category. The consequence of this realization was the abandonment of “race” as a biological category during the last quarter of the twentieth century, an abandonment that spread into anthropology and human biology. However, that abandonment was never complete in the case of the human species. There has been a constant pressure from social and political practice and the coincidence of racial, cultural and social class divisions reinforcing the social reality of race, to maintain “race” as a human classification. If it were admitted that the category of “race” is a purely social construct, however, it would have a weakened legitimacy. Thus, there have been repeated attempts to reassert the objective biological reality of human racial categories despite the evidence to the contrary.
email to: greeeni (at) eml (dot) cc
1. A mind is an aggregate of interacting parts or components.
2. The interaction between parts of mind is triggered by difference.
3. Mental process requires collateral energy.
4. Mental process requires circular (or more complex) chains of determination.
5. In mental process, the effects of difference are to be regarded as transforms (i.e. coded versions) of events which preceded them.
6. The description and classification of these processes of transformation disclose a hierarchy of logical types immanent in the phenomena
MindAndNature, chap. II The World of Mental Process
http://www.oikos.org/angelsmental.htm
Name: DanielGrunfeld
born:1981
what I'm doing:
After several years of cycling, travelling and shallow autodidactic exploration attempts I came to study AnthropoLogy and religions at the University of Aberdeen (Scotland), where I’m trying to follow an inspiring idea, towards which many different little bits and loose ends were leading me: ScienCe
Readers coming to Capital expecting to read the work of a ‘material determinist’ are often rather surprised to discover that the book starts out with what can only be called a series of detailed symbolic analyses: of commodities, money and fetishism. But what sort of theory of symbolism, exactly, is Marx working with? The best way to think about it, perhaps, is to say that, like his theory of productive action, it combines elements of two traditions… One might call them theories of meaning, and theories of signification.
The first, which had its roots in Hegel but also gave rise to hermenutics, sees meaning as essentially identical with intentionality. The meaning of a statement is what the speaker meant to say. One reads a text in order to understand the author’s intent; it is this intentionality that unifies the parts of the text into a coherent whole. Hermeneutics first developed in biblical scholarship, where this would have to be true if one assumes (as biblical scholars did) that what the Bible ultimately conveys is the will of God. ‘Signification’ which later found its exponent in F de Saussure is based on a notion of contrast, the signification of a term being the way it is different from the other terms in a set (slicing the pit of reality again). What Marx is talking about combines elements of both. Money has meaning for the actors, then, because it sums up their intentions (or, the importance of their intentional actions, which comes down to pretty much the same thing). However, it can do so only by integrating them into a contrastive totality, the market, since it is only by means of money that my individual actions and capacities become integrated as a proportion of the totality of everyone’s.
Dreamworld and Catastrophe: The Passing of Mass Utopia in East and West (Paperback)
by S BuckMorss (Author) http://tinyurl.com/yq8ybw
seems to make a point I've been thinking about once...
synopsis
The dream of the twentieth century was the construction of mass utopia. As the century closes, this dream is being left behind; the belief that industrial modernization can bring about the good society by overcoming material scarcity for all has been challenged by the disintegration of European socialism, capitalist restructuring, and ecological constraints. The larger social vision has given way to private dreams of material happiness and to political cynicism.Developing the notion of dreamworld as both a poetic description of a collective mental state and an analytical concept, Susan Buck-Morss attempts to come to terms with mass dreamworlds at the moment of their passing. She shows how dreamworlds became dangerous when their energy was used by the structures of power as an instrument of force against the masses. Stressing the similarities between the East and West and using the end of the Cold War as her point of departure, she examines both extremes of mass utopia, dreamworld and catastrophe.The book is in four parts. "Dreamworlds of Democracy" asks whether collective sovereignty can ever be democratic. "Dreamworlds of History" calls for a rethinking of revolution by political and artistic avant-gardes. "Dreamworlds of Mass Culture" explores the affinities between mass culture's socialist and capitalist forms. An "Afterward" places the book in the historical context of the author's collaboration with a group of Moscow philosophers and artists over the past two tumultuous decades. The book is an experiment in visual culture, using images as philosophy, presenting, literally, a way of seeing the past. Its pictorial narratives rescue historical data that with the end of the Cold War are threatened with oblivion and challenge common conceptions of what this century was all about.
The thing is that you can download (see menu at you right) this Wiki and
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*or make new links
*or edit exsiting ones
*or start your own TiddlyWiki and
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*and make new things only you can think about with it!
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http://fwbo.org/articles/sexualevolution.html
For me, moving to a single-sex lifestyle went along with giving up sex. For others it meant engaging in same-sex sex. Some people did this for a while, perhaps realising they were more bisexual than they had thought, while others discovered their true orientation was towards their own gender. Other people remained heterosexual, and still others became celibate. We were trying to break taboos, perhaps derived from Christian and social attitudes to sex, which sometimes resulted in irrational guilt. Some people began to speculate that homosexuality might be in some way more ′spiritual′ than heterosexuality, because it was less likely to lead to domesticity and settling down. We also discussed whether spiritual friendship and sexual involvement could go together.
To what extent did these ideas derive from Sangharakshita? In assessing this I have looked back at transcripts of the seminars he led between the mid-Seventies and mid-Eighties. These were intensive and intimate retreats when Sangharakshita led the participants through a Buddhist text, discussing its meaning and its relevance to our spiritual lives. Seminars also provided an opportunity to discuss anything of interest to us. Sexual relationships, sexual orientation, gender, friendship, community life, and lifestyle were all crucial issues as we set up our new Buddhist movement. They were discussed openly and frankly.
These transcripts show how careful was Sangharakshita′s thinking. In one discussion he was asked if he thought homosexuality was more ′spiritual′ than heterosexuality. He commented that we had to consult our own experience and be honest, and he was not sure that there was less psychological projection in homosexuality. However, he suggested, men often fear expressing their feelings for each other in case they are seen as sexual, and this fear can lead to a general emotional repression. He thought that a man having strong feelings towards another man, even if those feelings are tinged with sexual attraction, need not mean he is homosexual. Sangharakshita concluded that spiritually speaking there is probably not much difference between heterosexual and homosexual relationships, and that we must be equally mindful in either. What is important, he said, is that we cultivate friendship, which will help us to leave sex behind.
Dharmacharini Dhammadinna wonders whether the current debate over the ordination of women into the Theravada Sangha is missing the point.
Issues concerning the position of women in Buddhism are currently being keenly debated throughout the Buddhist world. One of the main topics of discussion concerns the re-establishment of the bhikshuni Order (or order of nuns) as a means for women to commit themselves fully to the Dharma. There is support for this both in the East and the West among Dharma practitioners. Supporters maintain that the move is crucial so as to complete the four traditional divisions of the Sangha, even if there are technical difficulties associated with recreating the bhikshuni order in accordance with the Vinaya. Others believe that the creation of new orders is irrelevant since it does not provide a solution within the tradition. On top of this there is resistance from some sections of the Bhikkhu Sangha.
In the West, especially, where there are many women Dharma practitioners, the re- creation of the bhikshuni order is obviously a controversial subject. Traditionally, the bhikshuni order is subordinate to that of the bhikkhus. The fact that the bhikshunis take extra rules, including the eight gurudharinas imposed by the Buddha, seems to many Westerners to assert the inferiority of women.
Thus the original creation of the bhikshuni order is also a subject for debate. The Buddha certainly acknowledged that women could become enlightened. He was, however, reluctant to allow them to go forth, and only did so upon their acceptance of the eight gurudharmas. These precepts give primacy to the bhikkhus both socially and ecclesiastically. Opinions vary as to whether this passage is a later interpolation of the bhikkhus, or whether it reflects the cultural norms of the time of the Buddha. Many women firmly believe that since the Buddha acknowledged that women could gain Enlightenment, the crucial question is how to provide women with supports for their practice in the present cultural situation.
While the re-creation of the bhikshuni Sangha raises questions about the position of women in Buddhism, it also raises some much broader questions as to the value of maintaining the traditional Sangha, as defined by the Vinaya, in the modern world.
The Buddha, shortly before his Parinirvana, said that it was necessary only to keep the major rules. Buddhism has, throughout its history, had to adapt to a variety of different cultures. It must be possible, therefore, for changes to take place concerning particular rules, provided, of course, that basic Dharmic principles are recognized and maintained.
It would seem that supporters of the re-creation of the bhikshuni order may be making the common mistake of identifying the spiritual life with ordination, monastic life, and the number of precepts taken. The result of such a view is a Sangha divided by the fact that different sections take a varying number of precepts. What seems to be necessary is to discover some common ground which can unify the Sangha spiritually. If, for example, we place Going for Refuge as the central act in our spiritual lives, and our ethical practice in terms of precepts and Lifestyle as an expression of that Going for Refuge, the result is a Sangha united by spiritual commitment, even though this may be expressed in different ways.
It was Sangharakshita's understanding of the significance of Going for Refuge which inspired him to found the Western Buddhist Order in 1968. In this order the act of Going for Refuge is expressed ethically through the taking of the ten precepts under which all aspects of the transformation of body, speech, and mind can be subsumed.
Sangharakshita began to appreciate the significance of Going for Refuge from his contact with Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhists place an emphasis upon Going for Refuge to the extent of making it a crucial part of their foundation practice. He also discovered that married Lamas could be as spiritually committed as monks.
Moreover, he was deeply impressed by the sincerity with which the ex-Untouchable Buddhists of India, who were mainly lay people, took Refuge in the Three Jewels.
The Western Buddhist Order consists, therefore, of both men and women who go for Refuge and take the same ten precepts. Women within the Order are as free as men to practise and express their commitment, and are not subordinate in any way.
Since in the Western Buddhist Order we are trying to avoid the creation of a false-or at least superficial- distinction between monastic and lay followers, the re- creation of the bhikshuni order would seem, from this perspective, to be unduly concerned with lifestyle rather than with central commitment. From this point of view it can also sometimes seem that a great deal of energy is going into re-creating something which cannot offer women practising in the modern world the best opportunity for commitment.
Although the Western Buddhist Order is a mixed order, we have discovered, from experience, the value of women-only Dharma activities. These began as an experiment in 1972. Now they are a central feature of womens practice in the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. We have also formed womens communities and right- livelihood businesses. Since those early days our activities have gone from strength to strength. We have raised funds for, bought, and established a womens retreat centre, Taraloka. We run our own pre- ordination courses for women, which this year will culminate in ordinations conducted by senior women Order members. Today, women coming along to our Dharma centres quickly accept and enjoy women-only activities because of the obvious support and strength they provide.
Single-sex activities in the FWBO are therefore not merely a support for celibacy in the narrower sense. They benefit all women whether single, celibate, or with relationships, children, and family. It is by taking part in these activities that we gain confidence in ourselves as women, free from the distorted images of femininity prevalent in society. It is here that we can also develop the spiritual friendships which are so essential to our spiritual lives.
Practising the Dharma together we take a middle way and avoid the extremes of some forms of feminism. We are not trying to become like, or equal to, men-in their conditioned aspect, nor are we lauding spiritual femininity as the paradigm of spirituality. The strengthening of our confidence and friendships also helps us to relate more straightforwardly and co- operatively with men. The more independent of each other men and women are, individually and collectively, the better the communication between them tends to become.
Looking at the discussions taking place concerning women in Buddhism, and at my own experience within the WBO as a woman, I am more convinced than ever that we have something special to say, and to offer to the Buddhist world. The Order offers a middle way between the traditional subordination of women within the Sangha, which no longer seems appropriate, and a demand for equality in a purely secular sense. Within the FWBO all women, regardless of lifestyle, can fully commit themselves to the spiritual life and find friendship and the strength of collective practice alongside other women. As women in the Order we are free to conduct our own affairs, as well as to lead and take part in mixed activities at centres. Naturally, we also have a voice in the overall shaping and direction of the FWBO.
I therefore tend to disagree with the notion of recreating the traditional bhikshuni order for women. At worst, this could not only sanction traditional cultural attitudes towards women, but also emphasize the split between monastic and lay women-at the expense of the central principle of commitment. Perhaps we should not be afraid to create new styles of order, in keeping with the principles of Buddhism. We could be inspired to seek to create a new type of Dharma worker, and a Sangha which offers independence, friendship, and commitment to women as well as to men
Reprinted from Golden Drum 15
Does Buddhism treat women as second-class citizens? Dr B R Ambedkar, founder of the Indian Mass-conversion movement, thought not.
Dharmacharini Padmasuri explains. http://fwbo.org/articles/breath_of_liberty.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminist-power/
First published Wed 19 Oct, 2005
Although any general definition of feminism would no doubt be controversial, it seems undeniable that much work in feminist theory is devoted to the tasks of critiquing women's subordination, analyzing the intersections between sexism and other forms of subordination such as racism, heterosexism, and class oppression, and envisioning the possibilities for both individual and collective resistance to such subordination. Insofar as the concept of power is central to each of these theoretical tasks, power is clearly a central concept for feminist theory as well. And yet, curiously, it is one that is not often explicitly discussed in feminist work (exceptions include Allen 1998, 1999, Hartsock 1983 and 1996, Yeatmann 1997, and Young 1992). This poses a challenge for assessing feminist perspectives on power, as those perspectives often have to be reconstructed from feminist discussions of other topics. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify three main ways in which feminists have conceptualized power: as a resource to be (re)distributed, as domination, and as empowerment, both individual and collective. After a brief discussion of theoretical debates amongst social and political theorists over how to define power, this entry will survey each of these feminist conceptions; it will concentrate, as does the literature, on feminist conceptions of domination.
/***
|''Name:''|ForEachTiddlerPlugin|
|''Version:''|1.0.8 (2007-04-12)|
|''Source:''|http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de/#ForEachTiddlerPlugin|
|''Author:''|UdoBorkowski (ub [at] abego-software [dot] de)|
|''Licence:''|[[BSD open source license (abego Software)|http://www.abego-software.de/legal/apl-v10.html]]|
|''Copyright:''|© 2005-2007 [[abego Software|http://www.abego-software.de]]|
|''TiddlyWiki:''|1.2.38+, 2.0|
|''Browser:''|Firefox 1.0.4+; Firefox 1.5; InternetExplorer 6.0|
!Description
Create customizable lists, tables etc. for your selections of tiddlers. Specify the tiddlers to include and their order through a powerful language.
''Syntax:''
|>|{{{<<}}}''forEachTiddler'' [''in'' //tiddlyWikiPath//] [''where'' //whereCondition//] [''sortBy'' //sortExpression// [''ascending'' //or// ''descending'']] [''script'' //scriptText//] [//action// [//actionParameters//]]{{{>>}}}|
|//tiddlyWikiPath//|The filepath to the TiddlyWiki the macro should work on. When missing the current TiddlyWiki is used.|
|//whereCondition//|(quoted) JavaScript boolean expression. May refer to the build-in variables {{{tiddler}}} and {{{context}}}.|
|//sortExpression//|(quoted) JavaScript expression returning "comparable" objects (using '{{{<}}}','{{{>}}}','{{{==}}}'. May refer to the build-in variables {{{tiddler}}} and {{{context}}}.|
|//scriptText//|(quoted) JavaScript text. Typically defines JavaScript functions that are called by the various JavaScript expressions (whereClause, sortClause, action arguments,...)|
|//action//|The action that should be performed on every selected tiddler, in the given order. By default the actions [[addToList|AddToListAction]] and [[write|WriteAction]] are supported. When no action is specified [[addToList|AddToListAction]] is used.|
|//actionParameters//|(action specific) parameters the action may refer while processing the tiddlers (see action descriptions for details). <<tiddler [[JavaScript in actionParameters]]>>|
|>|~~Syntax formatting: Keywords in ''bold'', optional parts in [...]. 'or' means that exactly one of the two alternatives must exist.~~|
See details see [[ForEachTiddlerMacro]] and [[ForEachTiddlerExamples]].
!Revision history
* v1.0.8 (2007-04-12)
** Adapted to latest TiddlyWiki 2.2 Beta importTiddlyWiki API (introduced with changeset 2004). TiddlyWiki 2.2 Beta builds prior to changeset 2004 are no longer supported (but TiddlyWiki 2.1 and earlier, of cause)
* v1.0.7 (2007-03-28)
** Also support "pre" formatted TiddlyWikis (introduced with TW 2.2) (when using "in" clause to work on external tiddlers)
* v1.0.6 (2006-09-16)
** Context provides "viewerTiddler", i.e. the tiddler used to view the macro. Most times this is equal to the "inTiddler", but when using the "tiddler" macro both may be different.
** Support "begin", "end" and "none" expressions in "write" action
* v1.0.5 (2006-02-05)
** Pass tiddler containing the macro with wikify, context object also holds reference to tiddler containing the macro ("inTiddler"). Thanks to SimonBaird.
** Support Firefox 1.5.0.1
** Internal
*** Make "JSLint" conform
*** "Only install once"
* v1.0.4 (2006-01-06)
** Support TiddlyWiki 2.0
* v1.0.3 (2005-12-22)
** Features:
*** Write output to a file supports multi-byte environments (Thanks to Bram Chen)
*** Provide API to access the forEachTiddler functionality directly through JavaScript (see getTiddlers and performMacro)
** Enhancements:
*** Improved error messages on InternetExplorer.
* v1.0.2 (2005-12-10)
** Features:
*** context object also holds reference to store (TiddlyWiki)
** Fixed Bugs:
*** ForEachTiddler 1.0.1 has broken support on win32 Opera 8.51 (Thanks to BrunoSabin for reporting)
* v1.0.1 (2005-12-08)
** Features:
*** Access tiddlers stored in separated TiddlyWikis through the "in" option. I.e. you are no longer limited to only work on the "current TiddlyWiki".
*** Write output to an external file using the "toFile" option of the "write" action. With this option you may write your customized tiddler exports.
*** Use the "script" section to define "helper" JavaScript functions etc. to be used in the various JavaScript expressions (whereClause, sortClause, action arguments,...).
*** Access and store context information for the current forEachTiddler invocation (through the build-in "context" object) .
*** Improved script evaluation (for where/sort clause and write scripts).
* v1.0.0 (2005-11-20)
** initial version
!Code
***/
//{{{
//============================================================================
//============================================================================
// ForEachTiddlerPlugin
//============================================================================
//============================================================================
// Only install once
if (!version.extensions.ForEachTiddlerPlugin) {
if (!window.abego) window.abego = {};
version.extensions.ForEachTiddlerPlugin = {
major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 8,
date: new Date(2007,3,12),
source: "http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de/#ForEachTiddlerPlugin",
licence: "[[BSD open source license (abego Software)|http://www.abego-software.de/legal/apl-v10.html]]",
copyright: "Copyright (c) abego Software GmbH, 2005-2007 (www.abego-software.de)"
};
// For backward compatibility with TW 1.2.x
//
if (!TiddlyWiki.prototype.forEachTiddler) {
TiddlyWiki.prototype.forEachTiddler = function(callback) {
for(var t in this.tiddlers) {
callback.call(this,t,this.tiddlers[t]);
}
};
}
//============================================================================
// forEachTiddler Macro
//============================================================================
version.extensions.forEachTiddler = {
major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 8, date: new Date(2007,3,12), provider: "http://tiddlywiki.abego-software.de"};
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Configurations and constants
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
config.macros.forEachTiddler = {
// Standard Properties
label: "forEachTiddler",
prompt: "Perform actions on a (sorted) selection of tiddlers",
// actions
actions: {
addToList: {},
write: {}
}
};
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
// The forEachTiddler Macro Handler
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
config.macros.forEachTiddler.getContainingTiddler = function(e) {
while(e && !hasClass(e,"tiddler"))
e = e.parentNode;
var title = e ? e.getAttribute("tiddler") : null;
return title ? store.getTiddler(title) : null;
};
config.macros.forEachTiddler.handler = function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
// config.macros.forEachTiddler.traceMacroCall(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler);
if (!tiddler) tiddler = config.macros.forEachTiddler.getContainingTiddler(place);
// --- Parsing ------------------------------------------
var i = 0; // index running over the params
// Parse the "in" clause
var tiddlyWikiPath = undefined;
if ((i < params.length) && params[i] == "in") {
i++;
if (i >= params.length) {
this.handleError(place, "TiddlyWiki path expected behind 'in'.");
return;
}
tiddlyWikiPath = this.paramEncode((i < params.length) ? params[i] : "");
i++;
}
// Parse the where clause
var whereClause ="true";
if ((i < params.length) && params[i] == "where") {
i++;
whereClause = this.paramEncode((i < params.length) ? params[i] : "");
i++;
}
// Parse the sort stuff
var sortClause = null;
var sortAscending = true;
if ((i < params.length) && params[i] == "sortBy") {
i++;
if (i >= params.length) {
this.handleError(place, "sortClause missing behind 'sortBy'.");
return;
}
sortClause = this.paramEncode(params[i]);
i++;
if ((i < params.length) && (params[i] == "ascending" || params[i] == "descending")) {
sortAscending = params[i] == "ascending";
i++;
}
}
// Parse the script
var scriptText = null;
if ((i < params.length) && params[i] == "script") {
i++;
scriptText = this.paramEncode((i < params.length) ? params[i] : "");
i++;
}
// Parse the action.
// When we are already at the end use the default action
var actionName = "addToList";
if (i < params.length) {
if (!config.macros.forEachTiddler.actions[params[i]]) {
this.handleError(place, "Unknown action '"+params[i]+"'.");
return;
} else {
actionName = params[i];
i++;
}
}
// Get the action parameter
// (the parsing is done inside the individual action implementation.)
var actionParameter = params.slice(i);
// --- Processing ------------------------------------------
try {
this.performMacro({
place: place,
inTiddler: tiddler,
whereClause: whereClause,
sortClause: sortClause,
sortAscending: sortAscending,
actionName: actionName,
actionParameter: actionParameter,
scriptText: scriptText,
tiddlyWikiPath: tiddlyWikiPath});
} catch (e) {
this.handleError(place, e);
}
};
// Returns an object with properties "tiddlers" and "context".
// tiddlers holds the (sorted) tiddlers selected by the parameter,
// context the context of the execution of the macro.
//
// The action is not yet performed.
//
// @parameter see performMacro
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.getTiddlersAndContext = function(parameter) {
var context = config.macros.forEachTiddler.createContext(parameter.place, parameter.whereClause, parameter.sortClause, parameter.sortAscending, parameter.actionName, parameter.actionParameter, parameter.scriptText, parameter.tiddlyWikiPath, parameter.inTiddler);
var tiddlyWiki = parameter.tiddlyWikiPath ? this.loadTiddlyWiki(parameter.tiddlyWikiPath) : store;
context["tiddlyWiki"] = tiddlyWiki;
// Get the tiddlers, as defined by the whereClause
var tiddlers = this.findTiddlers(parameter.whereClause, context, tiddlyWiki);
context["tiddlers"] = tiddlers;
// Sort the tiddlers, when sorting is required.
if (parameter.sortClause) {
this.sortTiddlers(tiddlers, parameter.sortClause, parameter.sortAscending, context);
}
return {tiddlers: tiddlers, context: context};
};
// Returns the (sorted) tiddlers selected by the parameter.
//
// The action is not yet performed.
//
// @parameter see performMacro
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.getTiddlers = function(parameter) {
return this.getTiddlersAndContext(parameter).tiddlers;
};
// Performs the macros with the given parameter.
//
// @param parameter holds the parameter of the macro as separate properties.
// The following properties are supported:
//
// place
// whereClause
// sortClause
// sortAscending
// actionName
// actionParameter
// scriptText
// tiddlyWikiPath
//
// All properties are optional.
// For most actions the place property must be defined.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.performMacro = function(parameter) {
var tiddlersAndContext = this.getTiddlersAndContext(parameter);
// Perform the action
var actionName = parameter.actionName ? parameter.actionName : "addToList";
var action = config.macros.forEachTiddler.actions[actionName];
if (!action) {
this.handleError(parameter.place, "Unknown action '"+actionName+"'.");
return;
}
var actionHandler = action.handler;
actionHandler(parameter.place, tiddlersAndContext.tiddlers, parameter.actionParameter, tiddlersAndContext.context);
};
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
// The actions
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Internal.
//
// --- The addToList Action -----------------------------------------------
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.actions.addToList.handler = function(place, tiddlers, parameter, context) {
// Parse the parameter
var p = 0;
// Check for extra parameters
if (parameter.length > p) {
config.macros.forEachTiddler.createExtraParameterErrorElement(place, "addToList", parameter, p);
return;
}
// Perform the action.
var list = document.createElement("ul");
place.appendChild(list);
for (var i = 0; i < tiddlers.length; i++) {
var tiddler = tiddlers[i];
var listItem = document.createElement("li");
list.appendChild(listItem);
createTiddlyLink(listItem, tiddler.title, true);
}
};
abego.parseNamedParameter = function(name, parameter, i) {
var beginExpression = null;
if ((i < parameter.length) && parameter[i] == name) {
i++;
if (i >= parameter.length) {
throw "Missing text behind '%0'".format([name]);
}
return config.macros.forEachTiddler.paramEncode(parameter[i]);
}
return null;
}
// Internal.
//
// --- The write Action ---------------------------------------------------
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.actions.write.handler = function(place, tiddlers, parameter, context) {
// Parse the parameter
var p = 0;
if (p >= parameter.length) {
this.handleError(place, "Missing expression behind 'write'.");
return;
}
var textExpression = config.macros.forEachTiddler.paramEncode(parameter[p]);
p++;
// Parse the "begin" option
var beginExpression = abego.parseNamedParameter("begin", parameter, p);
if (beginExpression !== null)
p += 2;
var endExpression = abego.parseNamedParameter("end", parameter, p);
if (endExpression !== null)
p += 2;
var noneExpression = abego.parseNamedParameter("none", parameter, p);
if (noneExpression !== null)
p += 2;
// Parse the "toFile" option
var filename = null;
var lineSeparator = undefined;
if ((p < parameter.length) && parameter[p] == "toFile") {
p++;
if (p >= parameter.length) {
this.handleError(place, "Filename expected behind 'toFile' of 'write' action.");
return;
}
filename = config.macros.forEachTiddler.getLocalPath(config.macros.forEachTiddler.paramEncode(parameter[p]));
p++;
if ((p < parameter.length) && parameter[p] == "withLineSeparator") {
p++;
if (p >= parameter.length) {
this.handleError(place, "Line separator text expected behind 'withLineSeparator' of 'write' action.");
return;
}
lineSeparator = config.macros.forEachTiddler.paramEncode(parameter[p]);
p++;
}
}
// Check for extra parameters
if (parameter.length > p) {
config.macros.forEachTiddler.createExtraParameterErrorElement(place, "write", parameter, p);
return;
}
// Perform the action.
var func = config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction(textExpression, context);
var count = tiddlers.length;
var text = "";
if (count > 0 && beginExpression)
text += config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction(beginExpression, context)(undefined, context, count, undefined);
for (var i = 0; i < count; i++) {
var tiddler = tiddlers[i];
text += func(tiddler, context, count, i);
}
if (count > 0 && endExpression)
text += config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction(endExpression, context)(undefined, context, count, undefined);
if (count == 0 && noneExpression)
text += config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction(noneExpression, context)(undefined, context, count, undefined);
if (filename) {
if (lineSeparator !== undefined) {
lineSeparator = lineSeparator.replace(/\\n/mg, "\n").replace(/\\r/mg, "\r");
text = text.replace(/\n/mg,lineSeparator);
}
saveFile(filename, convertUnicodeToUTF8(text));
} else {
var wrapper = createTiddlyElement(place, "span");
wikify(text, wrapper, null/* highlightRegExp */, context.inTiddler);
}
};
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Helpers
// ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.createContext = function(placeParam, whereClauseParam, sortClauseParam, sortAscendingParam, actionNameParam, actionParameterParam, scriptText, tiddlyWikiPathParam, inTiddlerParam) {
return {
place : placeParam,
whereClause : whereClauseParam,
sortClause : sortClauseParam,
sortAscending : sortAscendingParam,
script : scriptText,
actionName : actionNameParam,
actionParameter : actionParameterParam,
tiddlyWikiPath : tiddlyWikiPathParam,
inTiddler : inTiddlerParam, // the tiddler containing the <<forEachTiddler ...>> macro call.
viewerTiddler : config.macros.forEachTiddler.getContainingTiddler(placeParam) // the tiddler showing the forEachTiddler result
};
};
// Internal.
//
// Returns a TiddlyWiki with the tiddlers loaded from the TiddlyWiki of
// the given path.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.loadTiddlyWiki = function(path, idPrefix) {
if (!idPrefix) {
idPrefix = "store";
}
var lenPrefix = idPrefix.length;
// Read the content of the given file
var content = loadFile(this.getLocalPath(path));
if(content === null) {
throw "TiddlyWiki '"+path+"' not found.";
}
var tiddlyWiki = new TiddlyWiki();
// Starting with TW 2.2 there is a helper function to import the tiddlers
if (tiddlyWiki.importTiddlyWiki) {
if (!tiddlyWiki.importTiddlyWiki(content))
throw "File '"+path+"' is not a TiddlyWiki.";
tiddlyWiki.dirty = false;
return tiddlyWiki;
}
// The legacy code, for TW < 2.2
// Locate the storeArea div's
var posOpeningDiv = content.indexOf(startSaveArea);
var posClosingDiv = content.lastIndexOf(endSaveArea);
if((posOpeningDiv == -1) || (posClosingDiv == -1)) {
throw "File '"+path+"' is not a TiddlyWiki.";
}
var storageText = content.substr(posOpeningDiv + startSaveArea.length, posClosingDiv);
// Create a "div" element that contains the storage text
var myStorageDiv = document.createElement("div");
myStorageDiv.innerHTML = storageText;
myStorageDiv.normalize();
// Create all tiddlers in a new TiddlyWiki
// (following code is modified copy of TiddlyWiki.prototype.loadFromDiv)
var store = myStorageDiv.childNodes;
for(var t = 0; t < store.length; t++) {
var e = store[t];
var title = null;
if(e.getAttribute)
title = e.getAttribute("tiddler");
if(!title && e.id && e.id.substr(0,lenPrefix) == idPrefix)
title = e.id.substr(lenPrefix);
if(title && title !== "") {
var tiddler = tiddlyWiki.createTiddler(title);
tiddler.loadFromDiv(e,title);
}
}
tiddlyWiki.dirty = false;
return tiddlyWiki;
};
// Internal.
//
// Returns a function that has a function body returning the given javaScriptExpression.
// The function has the parameters:
//
// (tiddler, context, count, index)
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction = function (javaScriptExpression, context) {
var script = context["script"];
var functionText = "var theFunction = function(tiddler, context, count, index) { return "+javaScriptExpression+"}";
var fullText = (script ? script+";" : "")+functionText+";theFunction;";
return eval(fullText);
};
// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.findTiddlers = function(whereClause, context, tiddlyWiki) {
var result = [];
var func = config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction(whereClause, context);
tiddlyWiki.forEachTiddler(function(title,tiddler) {
if (func(tiddler, context, undefined, undefined)) {
result.push(tiddler);
}
});
return result;
};
// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.createExtraParameterErrorElement = function(place, actionName, parameter, firstUnusedIndex) {
var message = "Extra parameter behind '"+actionName+"':";
for (var i = firstUnusedIndex; i < parameter.length; i++) {
message += " "+parameter[i];
}
this.handleError(place, message);
};
// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.sortAscending = function(tiddlerA, tiddlerB) {
var result =
(tiddlerA.forEachTiddlerSortValue == tiddlerB.forEachTiddlerSortValue)
? 0
: (tiddlerA.forEachTiddlerSortValue < tiddlerB.forEachTiddlerSortValue)
? -1
: +1;
return result;
};
// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.sortDescending = function(tiddlerA, tiddlerB) {
var result =
(tiddlerA.forEachTiddlerSortValue == tiddlerB.forEachTiddlerSortValue)
? 0
: (tiddlerA.forEachTiddlerSortValue < tiddlerB.forEachTiddlerSortValue)
? +1
: -1;
return result;
};
// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.sortTiddlers = function(tiddlers, sortClause, ascending, context) {
// To avoid evaluating the sortClause whenever two items are compared
// we pre-calculate the sortValue for every item in the array and store it in a
// temporary property ("forEachTiddlerSortValue") of the tiddlers.
var func = config.macros.forEachTiddler.getEvalTiddlerFunction(sortClause, context);
var count = tiddlers.length;
var i;
for (i = 0; i < count; i++) {
var tiddler = tiddlers[i];
tiddler.forEachTiddlerSortValue = func(tiddler,context, undefined, undefined);
}
// Do the sorting
tiddlers.sort(ascending ? this.sortAscending : this.sortDescending);
// Delete the temporary property that holds the sortValue.
for (i = 0; i < tiddlers.length; i++) {
delete tiddlers[i].forEachTiddlerSortValue;
}
};
// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.trace = function(message) {
displayMessage(message);
};
// Internal.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.traceMacroCall = function(place,macroName,params) {
var message ="<<"+macroName;
for (var i = 0; i < params.length; i++) {
message += " "+params[i];
}
message += ">>";
displayMessage(message);
};
// Internal.
//
// Creates an element that holds an error message
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.createErrorElement = function(place, exception) {
var message = (exception.description) ? exception.description : exception.toString();
return createTiddlyElement(place,"span",null,"forEachTiddlerError","<<forEachTiddler ...>>: "+message);
};
// Internal.
//
// @param place [may be null]
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.handleError = function(place, exception) {
if (place) {
this.createErrorElement(place, exception);
} else {
throw exception;
}
};
// Internal.
//
// Encodes the given string.
//
// Replaces
// "$))" to ">>"
// "$)" to ">"
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.paramEncode = function(s) {
var reGTGT = new RegExp("\\$\\)\\)","mg");
var reGT = new RegExp("\\$\\)","mg");
return s.replace(reGTGT, ">>").replace(reGT, ">");
};
// Internal.
//
// Returns the given original path (that is a file path, starting with "file:")
// as a path to a local file, in the systems native file format.
//
// Location information in the originalPath (i.e. the "#" and stuff following)
// is stripped.
//
config.macros.forEachTiddler.getLocalPath = function(originalPath) {
// Remove any location part of the URL
var hashPos = originalPath.indexOf("#");
if(hashPos != -1)
originalPath = originalPath.substr(0,hashPos);
// Convert to a native file format assuming
// "file:///x:/path/path/path..." - pc local file --> "x:\path\path\path..."
// "file://///server/share/path/path/path..." - FireFox pc network file --> "\\server\share\path\path\path..."
// "file:///path/path/path..." - mac/unix local file --> "/path/path/path..."
// "file://server/share/path/path/path..." - pc network file --> "\\server\share\path\path\path..."
var localPath;
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"What a given religion is - its specific content - is embodied in the images and metaphors its adherents use to characterize reality... But such a religion's career - it's historical course - rests in turn upon the institutions which render these images and metaphors available to those who thus employ them"
Cliiford Geetz, Islam Observed, 1968, pp.2-3
is the construction of gender substancialy diffrent in modern western Buddhist groups such as the FWBO in comparison to the gender roles of Asian Buddhist monasticism (esp. in the Theravada tradition)?
consider:
*ritual of ordination in FWBO: does it presume a diffrent model of gender? - does it create a diffrent model of gender as "Dharmachari"? different then bikhu, bikhuni, upasaka?
*homosexuality and celibacy
*Buddhism in Britain
*gender and monasticism in Theravada (see article about Taiwaneese nuns)
matrix:
gender, person and selflessness
gender and sexuality (sexual DESIRES)
homosexuality and celibacy (contratictions)
gender and monasticism (east vs west)
reading:
[[FWBO Essay, Sexual Evolution]]
[[FWBO on Women in Buddhism]]
[[bikhuni]]
http://www.thatreligiousstudieswebsite.com/Articles/Key_Facts/buddhism_fwbo.html
The FWBO encourages the use of art as a means and expression of religious devotion. In 1978 they opened the London Buddhist Art Centre. In 1993 the Evolution Arts & Health Centre was opened in Brighton (England).
Something to do: Spend some time browsing pictures of FWBO centres, events and art. A link to these photographs can be found here.
The FWBO has been described as both a 'cult' and a pseudo-Buddhist movement. The former criticism is due to the fact that it was centered around a charismatic leader; the latter is due to the nature of some of its radical teachings (in particular the idea that one is free to discard any of the traditional Buddhist teachings which are deemed to be irrelevant in modern life).
"Buddhism will only become firmly rooted in the west, when it has learned to speak the language of western culture." (Sangharakshita)
http://fwbodiscussion.blogspot.com/2007/04/fwbo-academic-bibliography.html
This is a list of books and academic articles that deal wholly or in part with the FWBO. It excludes treatments by FWBO writers in non-academic contexts.
Barrett D. V. (2001) The New Believers: Sects, 'Cults' and Alternative Religions, Cassell, 307-310.
Batchelor S. (1993) The Awakening of the West, HarperCollins, London.
Baumann M (1996) ‘Buddhist Dissemination in the West: Phases, Orders and Integrative Buddhism’, Day Internacionales Asienforum 27/ 3-4: 345-62.
(1998) ‘Working in the Right Spirit: The Application of Buddhist Right Livelihood in the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order,’ The Journal of Buddhist Ethics, 5.
(2000) ‘Work as Dharma Practice: Right Livelihood Cooperatives in the FWBO,’ in Queen CS (Ed.) Engaged Buddhism in the West, Wisdom Publications, pp. 372-93.
(2002) ‘Buddhism in Europe: Past, Present, Prospects.” In Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia, edited by M. Baumann and C. Prebish, 85-105. London: University of California Press.
Bell S. (1996) ‘Change and Identity in the Western Buddhist Order,’ Scottish, Journal of Religious Studies vol. XVII no 2, pp.87-107.
(1997) Review of Extending the Hand of Friendship, The Journal of Buddhist Ethics, March 1997.
(2002) ‘Scandals in Emerging Western Buddhism’ in Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia, edited by M. Baumann and C. Prebish, 230-242. London: University of California Press.
Bluck, R. (2006) British Buddhism: Teachings, Practices and Developments, Routledge, Oxford, 2006.
Chen C.M. (ed. Khantipalo) (1967) Buddhist Meditation Systematic and Practical, Free Distribution.
Clarke P. (2005) Encyclopedia of New Religious Movements, Routledge, London, 2005.
Coleman J.W. (2001) ‘The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition,’ OUP, Oxford,
Conze E. (1979) Memoirs of a Modern Gnostic, Samizdat Publishing Co.
Cush D. (1996) ‘British Buddhism and the New Age’, Journal of Contemporary Religion, 11(2):195-208
Ganguly D. ‘Yet Another English ‘Gift’: The Role of English Bhikkhus in Indian Dalit
Buddhist Conversions (1970-2000)’ Paper for the 15 Biennial Conference of the Asian Studies Association of Australia Conference, 2004, http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/ASAA/biennial-conference/2004/Ganguly-D-ASAA2004.pdf
Harris E. (1998) What Buddhists Believe, Oneworld, Oxford.
Harvey P. (1990) An Introduction to Buddhism, CUP, Cambridge.
Henry P. (2006) ‘The Sociological Implications for Contemporary Buddhism in the United Kingdom: Socially Engaged Buddhism, a Case Study,’ Journal of Buddhist Ethics. Volume 13, 2006
Humphreys C. (1978) Both Sides of the Circle, Allen & Unwin, London.
Inaba K. (2005) Altruism in New Religious Movements: The Jesus Army and the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order in Britain, University Education Press.
Kulananda (1992) 'Protestant Buddhism' [A Response to Philip Mellor], Religion 22
McAra, Sally (2007) Land of Beautiful Vision: Making a Buddhist Sacred Place in New Zealand. Published by University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu.
Mellor P. ‘Protestant Buddhism? The Cultural Translation of Buddhism in England,’
Religion, 21(1): 73-93.
‘The FWBO and Tradition: a Reply to Kulananda, Religion, 22, 104-107.
Olle H. (2001) ‘The Lotus in the West,’ Sheffield Online Papers in Social Research, No 4, July 2001, http://www.shef.ac.uk/socstudies/Shop/olle.pdf
Ratnaprabha (1987) ‘A Re-emergence of Buddhism: the case of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order', in Clarke P, (ed.) The New Evangelists: Recruitment and Aims of New Religious Movements, London, Ethnographica, 57-75.
Rawlinson A. (1997) The Book of Enlightened Masters, Open Court, Chicago.
Smith, S. (2003) “Widening the Circle: Communities of Color and Western Buddhist Convert Sanghas.” In Action Dharma: New Studies in Engaged Buddhism, edited by C. Queen, C. Prebish and D. Keown, 220-236. London: RoutledgeCurzon.
Snelling J. (1987) The Buddhist Handbook, Rider, London.
Sponberg A. (1996) Engaged Buddhism, Ed. Queen C. and King S. SUNY, New York.
Aberdeen
Email: aberdeenbuddhistgroup@yahoo.co.uk
Phone: Alan on 01224 276 810
TO UPDATE MAILING LIST: Derek -
attis25@hotmail.com
MEETINGS are held at 7.30pm (unless otherwise stated) at the QUAKER MEETING HOUSE on Crown Street (Next to Shirlaw's Motorcycle Shop). The doors are shut at 7.40pm for reasons of safety
Aberdeen FWBO Buddhist Group Programme
What about Sangharakshita’s sexual behaviour?
For twenty years Sangharakshita lived the celibate life of a Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition. When he disrobed in 1960, Sangharakshita started to experiment with sexuality and remained sexually active for the following 10- 15 years. At that time, he was engaged in setting up a new Buddhist movement the FWBO (Friends of the Western Buddhist order) and the WBO - the ordained members. Sangharakshita’s sexual partners were men friends and acquaintances in the FWBO.
Although Sangharakshita made no secret of his sexual behaviour at the time, neither was it widely known throughout the movement the extent to which he was sexually active. In effect, while some knew, many did not.
In 1986 an issue of ‘The Golden Drum (an FWBO magazine) carried an interview with Sangharakshita in which he spoke about his sexual ‘experimentation’. On reading the article, most people in the FWBO took the experimentation to have been limited to a few people, of short duration, and without negative consequences. Peoples’ confidence in their founder was not fundamentally shaken by the knowledge that he had been sexually active.
That is, until three major communications - the Guardian article of 1997, the FWBO files and a letter written by an order member (Yashomitra) to the order journal, Shabda in 2003.
http://discussion.fwbo.org/wp-content/order_gender_balance.jpg
http://discussion.fwbo.org/western-buddhist-order/the-western-buddhist-order-some-facts-and-figures/
http://discussion.fwbo.org/western-buddhist-order/the-western-buddhist-order-some-facts-and-figures/
The FWBO, feminism, and gender issues
Dhammaketu, chairman of Ghent FWBO, offers his reflections on Sangharakshita and Croydon in his article Of the Shadows of the of the Past, and the Road That Goes on, first published in 2003 the Order’s journal Shabda.
the FWBO and Feminism - Richard Hayes (Dharmachari Dayamati) This is a link to a well-argued and thought-provoking discussion of the differences between the FWBO and American feminist approaches to Buddhism and Buddhist practice in the West. The author is Dharmachari Dayamati, aka Professor Richard Hayes of the University of New Mexico. He begins by stating his position that “the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order appear to provide an alternative theoretical framework to that articulated by Rita Gross in Buddhism After Patriarchy”.
Feminism & Buddhism - Maitreyi. An alternative (and less scholarly) treatment of the same subject can be found in an article by Maitreyi on Akasavana, the website of the FWBO’s women’s ordination retreat centre.
Quietly Radical is an article from the FWBO’s Dharma Life magazine exploring the vexed question of women and ordination in Buddhism, and the FWBO’s answer - a single ordination for men and women.
A series of three videos are available from ClearVision - Women and the Spiritual Life, Buddhist Women Speak on Ordination, and Buddhist Women speak on Motherhood. They can be ordered for 11 pounds each.
Sexual Evolution First published in Dharma Life in 1998, this is a frank account by Dhammadinna recalling experiments in the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order around sex, celibacy and lifestyle, also discussing how its collective experience has matured.
single ordination for men and women !!!!!!!
http://www.dharmalife.com/issue16/ordination.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fwbo/sets/72157594513081714/
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=4jg6EB--upsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=gender+studies+in+western+buddhism&source=gbs_summary_r
and article on HD
The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition (Paperback)
James William Coleman
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9-Q6bCGIPhkC
Synopsis
In our multicultural society, faiths formerly seen as exotic have become attractive alternatives for many people seeking more satisfying spiritual lives. This is especially true of Buddhism, which is the focus of constant media attention-thanks at least in part to celebrity converts, major motion pictures, and the popularity of the Dalai Lama. Following this recent trend in the West, author James Coleman argues that a new and radically different form of this ancient faith is emerging. The New Buddhism sheds new light on this recent evolution of Buddhist practice in the West. After briefly recounting the beginnings and spread of Buddhism in the East, Coleman chronicles its reinterpretation by key Western teachers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ranging from the British poet Sir Edwin Arnold to the Beat writer Alan Watts. Turning to the contemporary scene, he finds that Western teachers have borrowed liberally from different Buddhist traditions that never intersect in their original contexts. Men and women practice together as equals; ceremonies and rituals are simpler, more direct, and not believed to have magical effects.
Moreover, the new Buddhism has made the path of meditation and spiritual awakening available to everyone, not just an elite cadre of monks. Drawing on interviews with noted teachers and lay practitioners, as well as a survey completed by members of seven North American Buddhist centers, Coleman depicts the colorful variety of new Buddhists today, from dilettantes to devoted students and the dedicated teachers who guide their spiritual progress. He also details the problems that have arisen because of some Western influences-especially with regard to gender roles, sex, and power. Exploring the appeal of this exotic faith in postmodern society and questioning its future in a global consumer culture, The New Buddhism provides a thorough and fascinating guide to Western Buddhism today.
<html><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/dgruenfeld/Birds/photo#5158696185841684290"><img src="http://lh6.google.com/dgruenfeld/R5de2V1Bj0I/AAAAAAAAAXU/Ogg-hDNzt9g/s144/Goldeneye.jpg" align="right" /></a></html><html><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/dgruenfeld/Birds/photo#5158696190136651602"><img src="http://lh3.google.com/dgruenfeld/R5de2l1Bj1I/AAAAAAAAAXc/Ve13ZyjOvfk/s144/Goldeneye_female.jpg" align="right" /></a></html>my notes:
*b/w duck-like
*head: black, white spot under the eye
*eyes: golden
*diving often, dive/resurface 3-5 meter apart
*gregarious but also alone
*female: braunish, same head shape
*more infos: http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Common_Goldeneye.html
*observed behavior: two males, one female - males throw head back quickly (touching their wings) and open their bill / then stretch head/neck far forward (mating?? observed: 23.Jan.08, bridge of balgownie)
In other words, the "logic" of metaphor is something very different from the logic of the verities of Augustine and Pythagoras. Not, you understand, "wrong," but totally different. [It may be, however, that while particular metaphors are local, the process of making metaphor has some wider significance -- may indeed be a basic characteristic of Creatura.]
Let me point up the contrast between the truths of metaphor and the truths that the mathematicians pursue by a rather violent and inappropriate trick. Let me spell out metaphor into syllogistic form: Classical logic named several varieties of syllogism, of which the best known is the "syllogism in Barbara." It goes like this:
Men die;
Socrates is a man;
Socrates will die.
The basic structure of this little monster -- its skeleton -- is built upon classification. The predicate ("will die") is attached to Socrates by identifying him as a member of a class whose members share that predicate.
The syllogisms of metaphor are quite different, and go like this:
Grass dies;
Men die;
[[Men are grass]].
MindAndNature, chap. II The World of Mental Process
http://www.oikos.org/angelsmental.htm
<html><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/dgruenfeld/Birds/photo#5158698432109580130"><img src="http://lh5.google.com/dgruenfeld/R5dg5F1Bj2I/AAAAAAAAAXk/bhs1GlboEd4/s144/gcormorant.jpg" align="right" /></a></html> Status in Europe:Common
Where and When:Breeds widely across Europe in areas with water
Habitat: Sea
Notes: Large dark long-necked seabird - often seen inland at lakes in winter - Adults are glossy black with white face patch stout hooked bill and yellowish facial skin around bill - Immatures are paer below - Flies with neck extended - feeds by diving for fish - often holds wings out to dry after fishing (seen this!)
from: http://www.surfbirder.com/cgi-bin/ukbirdid2/readcsv.pl?name=great+cormorant
*diffrent types?? - the one I have seen today had white/grey/braun spotted breast, yellowish facial skin around bill, head: balck, wings: black
ThePatternWhichConnects
“I picked up a vague mystical feeling that we must look for the same sort of processes in all fields of natural phenomena - that we might expect to find the same sort of laws at work in the structure of a crystal or in the structure of society, or that the segmentation of an earthworm might really be comparable to the process by which basalt pillars are formed.” (GregoryBateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 1972)
“[…] it becomes evident that MetaPhor is not just pretty poetry. It is not either good or bad logic, but is in fact the logic upon which the biological been built, the main characteristic and organizing glue of this world of mental process.” (GregoryBateson, Angels Fear, 1988)
read more @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregory_Bateson
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Gegraphy Militant ch. 3
= jstor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Ching
The text of the I Ching is a set of predictions represented by a set of 64 abstract line arrangements called hexagrams (卦 guà). Each hexagram is a figure composed of six stacked horizontal lines (爻 yáo), where each line is either Yang (an unbroken, or solid line), or Yin (broken, an open line with a gap in the center). With six such lines stacked from bottom to top there are 26 or 64 possible combinations, and thus 64 hexagrams represented.
The hexagram diagram is conceptually subdivided into two three-line arrangements called trigrams (卦 guà). There are 23, hence 8, possible trigrams. The traditional view was that the hexagrams were a later development and resulted from combining the two trigrams. However, in the earliest relevant archaeological evidence, groups of numerical symbols on many Western Zhou bronzes and a very few Shang oracle bones, such groups already usually appear in sets of six. A few have been found in sets of three numbers, but these are somewhat later. Note also that these numerical sets greatly predate the groups of broken and unbroken lines, leading modern scholars to doubt the mythical early attributions of the hexagram system (see, e.g., Shaugnessy 1993).
Each hexagram represents a description of a state or process. When a hexagram is cast using one of the traditional processes of divination with I Ching, each of the yin or yang lines will be indicated as either moving (that is, changing), or fixed (that is, unchanging). Moving (also sometimes called “old”, or “unstable”) lines will change to their opposites, that is “young” lines of the other type -- old yang becoming young yin, and old yin becoming young yang.
[[Carl Gustav Jung - I-Ching]]
[<img(150px,auto)[http://sleeponit.files.wordpress.com/2007/12/geographer.jpg]] Author: DanielGrunfeld (2007)
abstract
Considering the question of influence upon artists and their works of art, I will discuss a genre painting from the Netherlands of the seventeenth-century. It is commonly called The Geographer and was completed around 1668-69 by Ian Vermeer during the Dutch Golden Age. It is painted with oil on canvas and is 53 x 46.6 cm in size. Nowadays, it is displayed in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. There are several intriguing aspects of influence which I noticed while studying The Geographer and in this paper I will try to show (i) the influence of Vermeer's hometown Delft, (ii) the role of science in his art and (iii) the influence of two artistic styles, namely that of Caravaggism and that of the Dutch tradition.
read [[The Question of Influence in The Geographer]] or download pdf @ http://www.divshare.com/download/3568774-fbd
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<<<
!!!!!Revision History
<<<
2008.01.19 [1.1.0] added support for evaluated width/height values!!
2008.01.18 [1.0.1] code cleanup plus improved regexp for matching "(width,height)" by eliminating hard-coded recognition of [px,em,cm,in,%] CSS units. Syntax now accepts ANY values for width/height, and leaves it to the browser's CSS processing to handle any invalid values.
2008.01.17 [1.0.0] initial release
<<<
!!!!!Code
***/
//{{{
version.extensions.imageSize = {major: 1, minor: 1, revision: 0, date: new Date(2008,1,19)};
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config.formatters[f].match="\\[[<>]?[Ii][Mm][Gg](?:\\([^,]*,[^\\)]*\\))?\\[";
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config.formatters[f].handler=function(w) {
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var lookaheadMatch = this.lookaheadRegExp.exec(w.source)
if(lookaheadMatch && lookaheadMatch.index == w.matchStart) {
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var floatRight=lookaheadMatch[2];
var XY=lookaheadMatch[3];
var tooltip=lookaheadMatch[4];
var src=lookaheadMatch[5];
var link=lookaheadMatch[6];
// Simple bracketted link
var e = w.output;
if(link) { // LINKED IMAGE
if (config.formatterHelpers.isExternalLink(link)) {
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e = createExternalLink(w.output,link);
e.href=config.macros.attach.getAttachment(link);
e.title = config.macros.attach.linkTooltip + link;
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e = createTiddlyLink(w.output,link,false,null,w.isStatic);
addClass(e,"imageLink");
}
var img = createTiddlyElement(e,"img");
if(floatLeft) img.align="left"; else if(floatRight) img.align="right"; // FLOAT LEFT/RIGHT
if(XY) { // CUSTOM SIZE with optional EVAL'ED width/height ({{...}},{{...}})
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src=config.macros.attach.getAttachment(src); // see [[AttachFilePluginFormatters]]
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// (avoids security messages for initial filesystem access)... otherwise, attempt to
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img.onerror=(function(){
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[img[http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2234/2202078091_6d7e81ca5b_o.jpg]]
yo! this place is my notebook and sort of a junk-yard TiddlyWiki.
-- I just throw notes, ideas, essays and random jots at it and then rediscover
and reconnect them at some point. feel free to surf around.
In this essay I will discuss a highly debated question in regard to Islam, which in fact is an interesting question in regard to any religion: can Islam be entirely explained as a product of the economic and religious conditions of seventh century Arabia and Muhammad's social and religious context. Or are there other aspects to Muhammad's message which have to be considered in order to understand Islam which might even be of divine origin as believers might claim.
I will be approaching this question by looking at three key elements of Islam: Muhammad's initial message, the conception of God and Islamic law, and will try to see if we can track back their origins to the traditions and schools of thought of the time, such as the pre-Islamic understanding of sunnah, hanif thought as well as Jewish and Christian influences. Furthermore, I will consider the relation of these concepts to the economic and political situation in Mecca and Medina where Muhammad came to formulate (or reveal, depending on how we look at it) his doctrine. And finally, I will argue with a rather poetic question of Rainer Maria Rilke, whether such a comparative explanation can ever be valid or if it might contain a very basic problem which should not be ignored.
When Muhammad's message started to spread around Mecca beyond the boundaries of his own family and a few close followers, he very soon encountered quite massive opposition. This opposition came especially from the wealthiest among the merchants of Mecca (WATT 1960, p. 59 ff.), and eventually led to the hijra, Muhammad's emigration to Medina.
But what was Muhammad initially teaching in Mecca? And why was his teaching rejected by the Meccans? Or even more, perceived as a threat? There are two aspects I would like to consider:
Firstly, Muhammad spoke in the name of Allah and preached the total submission (islam) to Allah. Now, Allah was present in the Meccan pantheon but in a rather different context. Meccan society was polytheistic at the time, and the Kab'ah which existed long before the conquest of Islam, was an important centre of worship for the entire region to more than threehundred deities and idols .Yet Muhammad spoke not in the name of a god, but of the God, "Allah, (the) One, The Self-Sufficient Master, Whom all creatures need, He neither eats nor drinks; He begets not, nor was He begotten; And there is none co-equal or comparable unto Him" (At-Tauhid, sura 112) . The only God, who is unique, uncreated and yet the powerful creator of all things and beings. One is of course reminded of the Jewish monotheistic conception of Elohim, the God of Abraham whom "You shall love ... with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (Deuteronomy 6:5).
Therefore, one could easily suspect that by preaching such concepts some Meccans would have perceived this as a threat to their own religious beliefs and the gods they were worshipping, as well as to their trade relations and economy. As Waines argues: "the shrine of the Kab'ah with only one god, they would reason, could not possibly have the same attraction for potential pagan pilgrims as the present edifice housing hunderts of idols." (WAINES 1995, p. 16) Yet, other scholars are not conclusive about the historical evidence for this assumption at this stage and tend to reject it (WATT, M.).
What the Meccans would have primarily been concerned about though, was the way that such a message would question the political and moral authority of the tribal sunnah. On the one hand, tribal chiefs would be forced to recognize that the authority of forefathers and tradition would no longer decide about questions of morality, rather Allah will. And this would definitely question their way of life and threaten the importance of upholding tribal honour. On the other hand, as Watt argues, a considerable threat was seen "in Muhammad's very claim to receive revelations from God" (WATT 1960, p. 59) which would inevitably lead to a contradiction of authority and question the chiefs' leadership of their tribes and clans. Watt argues that, "if they accepted Muhammad's claim, would they not also have to admit in the long run that he was the best man fitted to direct all the affairs of Mecca?" (WATT 1960, p. 59)
The second aspect of Muhammad's initial message I would like to consider, which also stood in contradiction to the tribal sunnah, is the rather Christian idea of judgement and resurrection. In the context of seventh-century Arabia it meant in consequence, as Waines puts it, "that actions in this world bore significance and consequences for the life to come; actions were no longer relevant only to immediate tribal context..." and therefore "the threat to the Meccans' way of life was the replacement of the sunnah of their forefathers with the sunnah of Allah." (WAINES 1995, p. 17)
It is important to acknowledge though, that the original conception of sunnah in the sense of tribal customs was not abandoned as a whole but rather adopted and rendered into Muhammad's doctrine, despite of the contradictions mentioned above. What used to be the "trodden path" following the example of ancestors became "to mean the normative practice of the prophet Muhammad, the authoritative example of the way a Muslim should live" (WAINES 1995, Glossary).
Thus, in regard to Islamic law, as Endress argues, "the legal conceptions of the pre-Islamic Bedouin are amongst the most important elements which ancient Arabia bequeathed to Islam" (ENDRESS 1939, p. 25). And it is important to understand, that from the beginning, and especially after Muhammad's activities in Medina, the conception of laws plays a central role in Muslim thought, as "those who profess Islam (muslimun) form a religious and political community (the umma) which was founded by His prophet according to God's will" (ENDRESS 1939, p. 21). And furthermore, as Waines argues, that there was "no separation between religious and political activity... throughout Islamic history" (WAINES 1995, p. 30).
Muhammad's time in Medina was very significant in this respect. His successful role as a mediator in the ongoing conflict between several Arab and Jewish tribes shaped the first Muslim community (umma). A community which on the one hand was held together by a common belief (!) and on the other hand by contracts between the tribes and Muhammad himself. What is interesting to note is that, as Waines argues, "these pacts were heavily laden with the tribal values of Muhammad's day. Their novelty was the attempt to forge a community which cuts across tribal blood lines but sub-mitted to the final arbitration of Allah and his Prophet (nabi), Muhammad" (WAINES 1995, p. 19).
The fact that the Jewish tribes of Medina accepted Muhammad's mediation and judgement shows the relation of his message to their tradition rather clearly. In the first place, as I mentioned earlier, because Muhammad spoke in the name of Allah. And it is important to understand that 'Allah' is simply the Arab word for 'God' and refers to The One God of the Jews and Christians. Furthermore, Muhammad's self-understanding was that he was a prophet in the very same tradition, a part of the chain of prophets that started with Adam, Abraham and Moses and included Christ.
In fact, one could argue that Muhammad's main intention was the return to and purification of the Abrahamic tradition. An intention which he might have adopted from hanif thinkers, who were in turn motivated by Jewish and Christian paradigms that penetrated the Arab Peninsula long before his time. Hanif thinkers criticised the wide spread paganism in their society and introduced the concept of monotheism as well as the notion of afterlife and judgement. They preached, like Muhammad, to return to The One and Only God, the God of Abraham. Later on, in the Qur'an, the term hanif is used "for a true 'monotheist', associated with the prophet Abraham and others who lived in pagan times, but followed a belief in God" (WAINES 1995, Glossary).
I believe that by now we can legitimately argue that the origins of Islam, or at least of these few key elements I made mention of, are indeed in one way or the other conditioned by either Jewish or Christian traditions or by the pre-Islamic society of the Arab Peninsula. Yet, there is a basic problem I would like to address, which might lead to a certain conclusion in regard to the origins and 'originality' of Islam. I would like to use a quote from Rilke's "The Notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge" to make my point:
"Is it possible that there are people who speak of 'God' and mean something they have in common? Take a couple of schoolboys: one buys a pocket knife and his companion buys another exactly like it on the same day. And after a week they compare knifes and find that there is now only a very distant resemblance between them - so different has been their lot in different hands. ('Well', says the mother of one of them, 'if you always must wear everything out immediately -') Ah, then is it possible to believe that one can have a God without using Him?" (RILKE, 1910)
An orthodox Muslim would probably argue that Muhammad's message, as revealed through the Qur'an is divine and thus eternal. He would argue that "Islam, which was founded before Moses and Jesus, before Judaism and Christianity, took precedence over the religions of other 'possessors of scripture' who had distorted the revelation" (ENDRESS 1939, p. 29). And thus, Islam's Arab, Jewish and Christian roots might not be of particular importance.
What I personally would like to add to this though, is that, as Rilke shows, the usage and application of a thing or of a concept is of rather great importance and even changes the thing or the concept itself. Wherever Muhammad's understanding of God originated, from hanif and Judaeo-Christian conceptions or from his own mystical experience at Mount Hira and other revelations, what is of greater importance I believe, is the way he made use of these concepts and the way he approached the problems of his time. I would argue that his social and personal context shaped his understanding of 'God' and his striving in a unique way and that one can therefore not claim that Islam is a mere product of its Jewish, Christian and Arab conditions. It is rather a result of the way Muhammad and each and every Muslim after him in turn applies and lives out his own understanding of Allah and Allah's will.
REFRENCES
Endress, Gerhard, An introduction to Islam (1939), translated from German by Carole Hillenbrand, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1988.
Khan , Muhammad Muhsin, Dr. (translator), The Noble Quran, English/Arab, a summarized version of At-Tabari, Al-Qurtubi and Ibn Kathir with comments from Sahih Al-Bukhari, translated by Dr. Muhammad Taqi-ud-Din Al-Hilali, Ph.D.
Rilke, Rainer Maria, The notebook of Malte Laurids Brigge (1910), Orig. title: "Die Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge", Linton, J. (translator), London : Hogarth, 1930.
The Holy Bible, New International Version, New York: International Bible Society, 1984
Waines, David, An introduction to Islam (1995), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001
Watt, Montgomery W., Muhammad - Prophet and Statesman (1960), Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press , 1960
Author:DanielGrufneld (2007)
essay about the birth/historical development of Islam
abstract
"In this essay I will discuss a highly debated question in regard to Islam, which in fact is an
interesting question in regard to any religion: can Islam be entirely explained as a product of the
economic and religious conditions of seventh century Arabia and Muhammad's social and religious
context. Or are there other aspects to Muhammad's message which have to be considered in order to
understand Islam which might even be of divine origin as believers might claim."
read IsLam-OrginAndOriginality or download as a pdf @ http://www.divshare.com/download/3568721-7ee
<<forEachTiddler
where
'tiddler.tags.contains("journal")>>
Heiner Müller-Merbach1
1Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany
One of the famous phrases by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is: 'Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind' (Kant 1781, p. A 51, B 75; in the original German: 'Gedanken ohne Inhalt sind leer, Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind').
This sentence was frequently replaced by other authors during the epoch of Kant's criticism by Sensations are blind without concepts,
concepts empty without sensations (original: 'Anschauungen ohne Begriffe sind blind, Begriffe ohne Anschauungen leer.').
'Sensations' are perceptions by the senses or 'awareness ... by means of the nervous system' (Chambers Pocket Dictionary), while a 'concept' is meant as a term or designation or 'a notion, an abstract or general idea' (Chambers Pocket Dictionary).
Sensations and concepts correspond with one another – in both directions. As soon as we sense anything, we complete it by a concept – if available. As soon as we hear or read a term (i.e. a concept), we try to supplement it by a sensational image (Boulding, 1956).
Based upon sensations we all build pictures or images at our 'internal stages' – and add concepts: If we see a bird, for example, a sparrow, we immediately add the concept or term 'bird' or 'sparrow'. If – on the other hand – we hear somebody talk about a bird or a sparrow, we immediately add the image of a bird or a sparrow in our brain. In both cases, there is mutual interaction between the concept and the sensation.
It can also be that we sense an airplane or a helicopter or a kite that flies above our heads, and we can immediately recognise it as an airplane, a helicopter, or a kite, respectively; that is, we conceptualise. Only if any kind of UFO is flying above our heads, it is an 'unidentified flying object', a case of 'blind' sensation, that is, a sensation without a (realistic) concept.
If – on the other hand – we hear or read some news about a 'nignag' (not a knickknack!), we have no sensual equivalent at our internal stage. The nignag is an 'empty' concept, that is, a concept without sensation. We do not understand the sentences about the nignag unless it is described in such a way that we can build an image of a nignag.
It was 200 years after Kant's Critique of Pure Reason that medical doctors discovered that the two hemispheres of the brain function in quite different ways.
They found that the left hemisphere (of a right-handed person) deals with logic, language, mathematics, etc. while the right hemisphere deals with holistic impressions, pictures, images, and (less structured) wholes. Both hemispheres are connected by the 'corpus callosum' bridging the fissure between the two hemispheres. Mutual compensation seems to occur through the 'corpus callosum': sensations are mirrored and supplemented by concepts, while concepts are mirrored and supplemented by sensational images.
As a consequence of this crossing of nervous tracts, the left hemisphere of the brain is connected with the right eye – and vice versa.
If the right hemisphere 'sees' (through the left eye) a square, the left hemisphere will add the concept 'square', 'four 90° angles', 'four sides of equal length', etc. Or the left hemisphere might remember the name 'Hyde Park', and the right hemisphere will add images of the Hyde Park, etc. The right hemisphere might recall paintings of French impressionist artists, and the left hemisphere will add the names, such as Degas, Cézanne, Manet, Monet, Pissaro, Renoir, Seurat, Signac, Sisley.
The discovery of the different functions of the two hemispheres of the brain includes that one hemisphere tends to dominate the other one, either the left dominates the right one or the right the left one. This discovery led to the frequently quoted paper 'Planning on the left side and managing on the right' by Henry Mintzberg (1976). The analysts, planners, researchers, etc. tend to be dominated by the left hemisphere, the leaders, decision makers, and managers by the right hemisphere.
Isn't it surprising that Kant and his school of criticism anticipated the research results of brain surgery and brain-psychological research, some 200 years ahead: the separation of sensations (the domain of the right hemisphere of the brain) from concepts (the domain of the left hemisphere of the brain)? Sensations provide holistic impressions and entire images, while concepts depend on language, logic, and mathematics. The 'corpus callosum' is busy to find the concepts corresponding with the sensations as well as the sensual images corresponding with the concepts.
It seems as if Kant's sensations-concepts correspondence has not as yet been related to the division of labour between the right and the left hemisphere of the brain.
The distinction between sensations and concepts has consequences for knowledge management:
1. In many cases, concepts (i.e. terms or designations) tend to be easier to be made explicit while sensations or sensual images may tend to remain tacit.
2. Software for the support of knowledge management should include some of the functions of the 'corpus callosum' in that they help to find corresponding sensations for concepts as well as concepts for sensations.
Top of page
References
1. Boulding KE (1956) The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor.
2. Kant I (1781) Kritik der reinen Vernunft (in German). Various English translations (Critique of Pure Reason) available.
3. Mintzberg H (1976) Planning on the left side and managing on the right. Harvard Business Review 54(4), 49–58.
<div class="kwout" style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://kwout.com/cutout/u/6b/4x/5az_bor_rou_sha.jpg" alt="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/environment" height="394" title="Environment Office" width="578" style="border:none;" usemap="#kwout_u6b4x5az"/><map name="kwout_u6b4x5az" id="kwout_u6b4x5az"><area coords="398,182,444,191" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/estates/environment/resources/index.php" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="463,41,567,56" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/estates/environment/" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="13,13,119,56" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="224,182,250,191" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/estates/environment/water/home.php" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="190,182,217,191" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/estates/environment/waste/home.php" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="451,182,496,191" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/estates/environment/contact.php" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="115,182,151,191" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/estates/environment/about/intro.php" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="293,182,334,191" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/estates/environment/transport/index.php" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="257,182,286,191" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/estates/environment/energy/home.php" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="13,6,16,7" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/cgi-bin/betsie.cgi" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="83,182,107,191" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/estates/environment/index.php" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="159,182,182,191" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/estates/environment/news.php" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="342,182,391,191" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/estates/environment/biodiversity/index.php" shape="rect" alt=""/><area coords="17,385,165,385" href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/environment/news.php#news1" shape="rect" alt=""/></map><p style="text-align:center;margin-top:10px;"><a href="http://www.abdn.ac.uk/environment">Environment Office</a> via <a href="http://kwout.com/quote/u6b4x5az">kwout</a></p></div>
/***
| Name|LessBackupsPlugin|
| Description|Intelligently limit the number of backup files you create|
| Version|3.0 ($Rev: 2320 $)|
| Date|$Date: 2007-06-18 22:37:46 +1000 (Mon, 18 Jun 2007) $|
| Source|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#LessBackupsPlugin|
| Author|Simon Baird|
| Email|simon.baird@gmail.com|
| License|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#TheBSDLicense|
!!!Description
You end up with just backup one per year, per month, per weekday, per hour, minute, and second. So total number won't exceed about 200 or so. Can be reduced by commenting out the seconds/minutes/hours line from modes array
!!!Notes
Works in IE and Firefox only. Algorithm by Daniel Baird. IE code by by Saq Imtiaz.
!!!Code
***/
//{{{
window.getSpecialBackupPath = function(backupPath) {
var MINS = 60 * 1000;
var HOURS = 60 * MINS;
var DAYS = 24 * HOURS;
// comment out the ones you don't want
var modes = [
["YYYY", 365*DAYS], // one per year for ever
["MMM", 31*DAYS], // one per month
["ddd", 7*DAYS], // one per weekday
//["d0DD", 1*DAYS], // one per day of month
["h0hh", 24*HOURS], // one per hour
["m0mm", 1*HOURS], // one per minute
["s0ss", 1*MINS], // one per second
["latest",0] // always keep last version. (leave this).
];
var now = new Date();
for (var i=0;i<modes.length;i++) {
// the filename we will try
var specialBackupPath = backupPath.replace(/(\.)([0-9]+\.[0-9]+)(\.html)$/,
'$1'+now.formatString(modes[i][0]).toLowerCase()+'$3')
// open the file
try {
if (config.browser.isIE) {
var fsobject = new ActiveXObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
var fileExists = fsobject.FileExists(specialBackupPath);
if (fileExists) {
var fileObject = fsobject.GetFile(specialBackupPath);
var modDate = new Date(fileObject.DateLastModified).valueOf();
}
}
else {
netscape.security.PrivilegeManager.enablePrivilege("UniversalXPConnect");
var file = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/file/local;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsILocalFile);
file.initWithPath(specialBackupPath);
var fileExists = file.exists();
if (fileExists) {
var modDate = file.lastModifiedTime;
}
}
}
catch(e) {
// give up
return backupPath;
}
// expiry is used to tell if it's an 'old' one. Eg, if the month is June and there is a
// June file on disk that's more than an month old then it must be stale so overwrite
// note that "latest" should be always because the expiration period is zero (see above)
var expiry = new Date(modDate + modes[i][1]);
if (!fileExists || now > expiry)
return specialBackupPath;
}
}
// hijack the core function
window.getBackupPath_orig = window.getBackupPath;
window.getBackupPath = function(localPath) {
return getSpecialBackupPath(getBackupPath_orig(localPath));
}
//}}}
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,' it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master - that's all.'
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything; so after a minute Humpty Dumpty began again. 'They've a temper, some of them - particularly verbs: they're the proudest - adjectives you can do anything with, but not verbs - however, I can manage the whole lot of them! Impenetrability! That's what I say!'
'Would you tell me, please,' said Alice, 'what that means?'
'Now you talk like a reasonable child,' said Humpty Dumpty, looking very much pleased. 'I meant by "impenetrability" that we've had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you'd mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don't mean to stop here all the rest of your life.'
'That's a great deal to make one word mean,' Alice said in a thoughtful tone.
'When I make a word do a lot of work like that,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'I always pay it extra.'
'Oh!' said Alice. She was too much puzzled to make any other remark.
'Ah, you should see 'em come round me of a Saturday night,' Humpty Dumpty went on, wagging his head gravely from side to side, 'for to get their wages, you know.'
(Alice didn't venture to ask what he paid them with; so you see I can't tell you.)
'You seem very clever at explaining words, Sir' said Alice. 'Would you kindly tell me the meaning of the poem called "Jabberwocky"?'
'Let's hear it,' said Humpty Dumpty. 'I can explain all the poems that ever were invented just yet.'
This sounded very hopeful, so Alice repeated the first verse:--
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
'That's enough to begin with,' Humpty Dumpty interrupted: 'there are plenty of hard words there. "Brillig" means four o'clock in the afternoon - the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.'
'That'll do very well,' said Alice: 'and "slithy"?'
'Well, "slithy" means "lithe and slimy." "Lithe" is the same as "active." You see it's like a portmanteau - there are two meanings packed up into one word.'
'I see it now,' Alice remarked thoughtfully: 'and what are "toves"?'
'Well, "toves" are something like badgers - they're something like lizards - and they're something like corkscrews.'
'They must be very curious-looking creatures.'
'They are that,' said Humpty Dumpty: 'also they make their nests under sundials - also they live on cheese.'
'And what's to "gyre" and to "gimble"?'
'To "gyre" is to go round and round like a gyroscope. To "gimble" is to make holes like a gimlet.'
'And "the wabe" is the grass-plot round a sundial, I suppose?' said Alice, surprised at her own ingenuity.
'Of course it is. It's called "wabe," you know, because it goes a long way before it, and a long way behind it-----'
'And a long way beyond it on each side,' Alice added.
'Exactly so. Well then, "mimsy" is "flimsy and miserable" (there's another portmanteau for you). And a "borogove" is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all around - something like a live mop.'
'And then "mome raths"?' said Alice. 'I'm afraid I'm giving you a great deal of trouble.'
'Well, a "rath" is a sort of green pig: but "mome" I'm not certain about. I think it's short for "from home" - meaning that they'd lost their way, you know.'
'And what does "outgrabe" mean?'
'Well, "outgrabing" is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle; however you'll hear it done, maybe - down in the wood yonder - and, when you've once heard it, you'll be quite content. Who's been repeating all that hard stuff to you?'
'I read it in a book,' said Alice.
Lewis Caroll, //Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There//, 1872
http://consc.net/online
http://www.ted.com
http://ase.tufts.edu/cogstud/papers/varela.htm
http://www.oikos.org/baten.htm
http://www.visuwords.com/
http://www.collectiveperception.com/
http://www.oikos.org/mind&nature.htm
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This essay will examine the significance of symbols for the way we relate to each other and the world around us. I will first look at the usage of symbols in language and than distinguish between private and shared meanings of symbols. I will then take up an exampletory case of an argument between Tarzan and Jane, in which the symbol "snake" is used and will analyse possible classifications of this symbol (LEACH 1964, DOUGLAS 1966) within its Judeo-Christian cultural context. Finally, I will conclude with an argument of Durkheim, why the study of symbolism can lead us to a general understanding of culture and human behaviour.
When we speak we reveal a great deal of our cultural background and our world-views. And mostly we are not even aware of it. We are so accustomed to think and speak analogically or even metaphorically that we are not aware to which extent our use of language reflects and expresses different symbolic meanings and many aspects of our cultural and religious background, our customs, our history and even of our environment. "Human thought (by contrast to the thought of other species) depends upon the capacity to generalize beyond the obvious or immediate. This generalization is facilitated by language, which of all symbolic systems is the most important." (Lecron Foster 1996, p. 367)
Therefore, when we communicate with each other with the help of language, it is important to note that we use a specific language, like English, Hebrew or Swahili, which is part of a larger symbolic system, or in other words, part of the culture we belong to. And if we speak of language and of culture as symbolic systems (Lecron Foster 1966) or "a system of representations" to use Durkheim's terminology, "with which men have pictured themselves the world and themselves" (DURKHEIM, 1963, p. 9), we should further take note of the fact that in order to understand each other, we have to have a shared meaning of the symbols we use, at least to a certain extent.
Symbols of course may also have a private meaning and it is interesting to observe how language can still operate so successfully and precisely in spite of the fact that each of the used symbols simultaneously bears different meanings for each participant of a communication process.
If for instance I would tell you something about the beautiful green leaves of a tree I saw yesterday, each of us will probably have a slightly different tone of green and a different type of tree in mind. Furthermore, each of us will associate different experiences and different (private) symbolic meanings with the word "tree". And yet language does its work, and we would understand each other perfectly well, because apart from these private meanings and associations, we share the meaning of the word "tree" to a large extent.
In anthropology we are particularly interested in these shared or public meanings of symbols, and "we are particularly concerned with the variety of ways in which symbols may be interpreted in different societies, and between different groups in the same wider society." (HENDRY 1999, p. 82)
Some symbols bear more meaning, or let us say are used more metaphorically than others. To stick with examples of colours, I would say that in our cultural context the colour blue for instance carries less symbolic meaning than white, which stands for purity, or red, which symbolizes danger. And so I would further argue that examining such examples of very "strong" symbols, symbols with a widely shared meaning is particularly interesting for anthropological analyses.
So let us now look at an example: let us say that Jane and Tarzan have had an argument. We do not know what their argument was about (and we do not particularity care), but what we do know is that in effect Tarzan refused to speak to Jane for more than a week because Jane called him a "lowlife snake."
For an anthropologist this is a very interesting case to study. We understand that Tarzan was insulted by Jane's statement, which means that he understood what the symbol "snake" represents. Or in other words, that Jane and Tarzan share the meaning of the symbol "snake". And we can see that Tarzan sanctioned Jane because she called him a "lowlife snake", by not speaking to her for a week.
So what we as anthropologists would want to be looking at, is what the symbol "snake" means in Tarzan's and Jane's cultural context and furthermore try to generalize from this and other examples in which the same symbol is used, to what it tells us about their culture and their understanding of the world.
Edmund Leach argues that, "when an animal name is used in this way as an imprecation, it indicates that the name itself is credited with potency. It clearly signifies that the animal category is in some way taboo and sacred." (LEACH 1964, p. 29) Furthermore, Leach argues that in most languages there are three categories of obscenity: "(1) dirty words - usually referring to sex and excretion; (2) blasphemy and profanity; (3) animal abuse - in which a human being is equated with an animal of another species." (LEACH 1964, p. 28) Leach is well aware that "these categories are not in practice sharply distinguished" (LEACH 1964, p. 29) and in our case I believe, we could count the symbol "snake" to both the second and third category - assuming that Tarzan and Jane both share a "western" Judo-Christian background.
In this specific cultural context the "snake" appears to the first couple, Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden to tempt Eve to eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. The snake thus stands for lie and seduction, for saying one thing and meaning another. The snake can be seen as a symbol of Satan. So in general the symbol of the snake stands for lie, evil and even for the devil himself. And mentioning the devil is indeed a form of blasphemy and thus, the snake would belong to Leach's second category.
Following another interpretation we could refer the symbol "snake" to Leach's third category, arguing that snakes are regarded as impure animals in Jane's and Tarzan's society. On one hand, we could say that snakes are impure, because again in the Judo-Christian tradition the entire category of creeping animals are not edible ("Every swarming thing that swarms upon the earth is an abomination" - Leviticus xi:41) and thus eating them would withdraw Gods blessing, which is seen as the "source of all dangers" (DOUGLAS 1966) . This of course goes back to the Jewish origin of dietary (or so called kashrut) rules, and although the Christian tradition does not follow these rules entirely, I am yet not aware of any creeping animals being eaten in the Christian tradition.
On the other hand we could categorize the snake as impure or dirty by arguing again with Leach, that the snake belongs to the set of "wild animals" which in terms of their relationship to us are most remote and thus often tabooed (LEACH 1964, p. 34-37).
So what can we make of this example? What do we learn from it in regard to the way Tarzan and Jane make sense of their world and to the way symbols are used?
We first come to understand that in Jane's and Tarzan's language, and we of course take Jane and Tarzan as representatives of any specific society, there are certain sets of words which are regarded as taboo. And that if somebody breaks such a taboo he will be sanctioned in some way or another. This applies not only to words, but to actions as well, as Leach argues: "such 'taboo' may be either behavioural or linguistic and it deserves note that the protective sanctions are very much the same in either case." (Leach 1964, p. 24). From this point on we could proceed to examine how symbols, taboos and rules in general shape and organize society and the way we relate to each other.
Furthermore we get a sense of how symbols help Tarzan and Jane to classify and categorize the world around them. They for example divide the world of living beings into pure and impure beings aswell as into sacred and profane. We may argue that the symbol "snake" is so meaningful, because it received its negative connotation within the cosmology of their religious background, which in turn shapes their general understanding of the world - even if Tarzan and Jane may not be aware of that.
Thus, the study of symbolism can lead us to a general understanding of human behaviour and how, as Durkheim puts it: "at the roots of all our judgement there are a certain number of essential ideas which dominate all our intellectual life; they are what philosophers since Aristotle have called the categories of the understanding: ideas of time, space, class, number, cause, substance, personality, etc." (DURKHEIM 1963, p. 9). As we have seen in our example, by studying the use and manipulation of public symbols within their cultural and linguistic context, we can learn a great deal about culture, which itself is nothing else than a system of symbols, about human behaviour, as it is reflected through the use of language and symbolic behavior, and also about the way our understanding of the world is shaped or even, as some might argue, about the way we shape reality itself with our symbols.
REFERENCES
Durkheim, E. 1963 (1915) Elementary Forms of Religious Life. London: Allen and Unwin.
Hendry, J. 1999. An Introduction to Social Anthropology: Other People’s Worlds. London: MacMillan.
Leach, Edmund R. 1964. Anthropological Aspects of Language: Animal categories of verbal abuse. In New Directions in the Study of Language, edited by E.H. Lenneberg. Cambridge, Mass: M.I.T. Press.
Lecron Foster, Mary. 1996. Symbolism: the foundations of culture. In Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by T. Ingold. London: Routledge.
Leviticus xi:41, as cited in Douglas, Mary. 1966. The Abominations of Leviticus. In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Purity and Taboo. New York: Praeger.
[[journal]] ReSearch [[essays]] RandomJots LinKs [[greeeni]]
"Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories." -- Mary Catherine Bateson, 1994 --
UNITS, CLUSTERS AND STORIES
a brief review of anthropological approaches
to the concept of person: from Mauss to autopeiosis,
to non-cohesive concepts and the problem of narratives
notes:-------------------------
question at stake!! [-- What can a study of the concept of the person in different societies reveal? --]
- in F. Myers: intergration of objective person (Mauss), that is "the person in society" "law and morality" in Mauss' terms, and the SUBJECTIVE person, the "self" and how an individual experienceses itself to be part of soc. - this also can be tracked back to DURKEHIM: Collective Cons.
- the problem of self-representation vs self-experience (see Ewing:1990)
- set of concepts / categories available in our "tradition of knowledge" (Barth) esp. in apllicable narratives / self-representations (the problem of tempral unity / identity).
- Aristotle, Kant, Durkheim: on the nature of "categories"
"at the roots of all our judgement there are a certain number of
essential ideas which dominate all our intellectual life; they are what philosophers since Aristotle have called the categories of the understanding: ideas of time, space, class, number, cause, substance, personality, etc." (DURKHEIM 1963, p. 9). Durkheim, E. 1963 (1915) Elementary Forms of Religious Life. London: Allen and Unwin.
- Kant's most famous categories of REASON: (in fact 12 categories!) vs Aristo. 10 ontological categories
- include sidenote to Kant's "Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View" as published by Kant in 1798
- INDEED! in contrast to Durkheim's universal categories, Mauss' essay on the person stresses the variability and social as well as historical construction of the "basic category"
vgl. : p. 5 of "Durkheim Categories"
Allen, N. J. (1985) ‘The Category of the Person: A Reading of Mauss’s Last Essay’ in Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes (eds.) The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
Csordas, Thomas (1994) ‘Self and Person’ in Philip Bock (ed.) Psychological Anthropology (Praeger, Westport) 331-350
Fortes, Meyer (1973) ‘On the Concept of the Person among the Tallensi’ in G. Dieterlen (ed.) La Notion de la Personne en Afrique Noire (Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris) 283-319
La Fontaine J.S. (1985) ‘Person and Individual: Some Anthropological Reflections’ in Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes (eds) The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
Mauss, Marcel (1985) ‘A category of the Human Mind: The Notion of Person; The Notion of Self’ (Translated by W. D. Halls) in Michael Carrithers, Steven Collins, and Steven Lukes (eds) The Category of the Person: Anthropology, Philosophy, History (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge)
Read, K. E. (1967) ‘Morality and the Concept of the Person among the Gahuku-Gama’ in J. Middleton (ed.) Myth and Cosmos: Readings in Mythology and Symbolism (University of Texas Press, Austin) 185-229
Adams, Glyn (2002) ‘Shiatsu in Britain and Japan: Personhood, Holism and Embodied Aesthetics’ in Anthropology and Medicine Vol. 9 (3) 245-265
Busby, Cecilia (1997) ‘Permeable and Partible Persons: A Comparative Analysis of Gender and Body in South India and Melanesia’ in The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Vol. 3(2) 261-278
Carsten, Janet (1995) ‘The Substance of Kinship and the Heat of the Hearth: Feeding, Personhood and Relatedness among Malays in Pulau Langkawi’ in American Ethnologist Vol. 22(2) 223-241
Comaroff J. and Comaroff J. (2001) ‘On Personhood: an Anthropological Perspective from Africa’ in Social Identities Vol. 7(2) 267-283
Ewing, Katherine (1990) ‘The Illusion of Wholeness: Culture, Self and the Experience of Inconsistency’ in Ethos Vol. 18(3) 251-278
Roseman, Marina (1990) ‘Head, Heart, Odor and Shadow: The Structure of the Self, the Emotional World, and Ritual Performance among Senoi Temiar’ in Ethos Vol. 18(3) 227-250
Stephen, Michele (1996) ‘The Mekeo “Man of Sorrow”: Sorcery and the Individuation of the Self’ in American Ethnologist Vol. 23(1) 83-101
Reading [from the encyc.]
Geertz, C. ([1966] 1972) 'Person, Time and Conduct in Bali' in The Interpretation of Culture
Rosaldo, M. (1984) 'Toward an Anthropology of Self and Feeling', in Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion
Wikan, U. (1990) Managing Torbulent Hearts: A Balinese Formula for Living
<html><a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4087/is_200801/ai_n21279753">FindArticles - Men Are Grass: Bateson, Erickson, Utilization and Metaphor</a>
<cite>American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Jan 2008, by Roffman, Andrew E</cite></html>
Abstract
The relationship between metaphor and the practice of utilization in therapy and hypnosis can be seen as dependent on metaphor's role in structuring experience. The work of Gregory Bateson and others is used to illustrate how metaphor functions. Bateson's comparison of two forms of syllogistic logic provides a background for distinguishing between the experiential effects of metaphor in contrast to the categorical thinking inherent in simile and analogy. Clinical examples are given to demonstrate how utilization is structured by metaphor, particularly as Bateson has described it in his analysis of the Syllogism in Grass.
5. Merleau-Ponty And Saussure
The sound image (signifier) and the concept (signified) must be what they are, not in reference to ‘the piece of furniture that one sits on’, but in reference to other signifiers and signifieds within the same language. If there were a motivated relationship between the word and the concept, then one word would be more or less adequate; this is, in fact, not the case since there are many different languages. Lacking any motivated relationship, the identity of both word and concept must be thought of in terms of other words and other concepts within the same phonetic and conceptual system. The identity of the signifier and the signified exists on the level of a set of differentiations within the same media. Different pronunciations of the word "chair" remain pronunciations of the same word, so long as none of the differences are marked as ‘significant within the system’ of the English language.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/merleau-ponty/#4
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" <span macro='toolbar closeTiddler closeOthers +editTiddler deleteTiddler > fields syncing permalink references jump'></span> <span macro='newHere label:\"new here\"'></span>",
" <span macro='newJournalHere {{config.mptwJournalFormat?config.mptwJournalFormat:\"MM/0DD/YY\"}}'></span>",
"</div>",
"",
"<div class=\"tagglyTagged\" macro=\"tags\"></div>",
"",
"<div class='titleContainer'>",
" <span class='title' macro='view title'></span>",
" <span macro=\"miniTag\"></span>",
"</div>",
"",
"<div class='subtitle'>",
" <span macro='view modifier link'></span>,",
" <span macro='view modified date {{config.mptwDateFormat?config.mptwDateFormat:\"MM/0DD/YY\"}}'></span>",
" (<span macro='message views.wikified.createdPrompt'></span>",
" <span macro='view created date {{config.mptwDateFormat?config.mptwDateFormat:\"MM/0DD/YY\"}}'></span>)",
"</div>",
"",
"<div macro=\"showWhenExists ViewPanelTemplate\">[[ViewPanelTemplate]]</div>",
"",
"<div macro=\"hideWhen tiddler.tags.containsAny(['css','html','pre','systemConfig']) && !tiddler.text.match('{{'+'{')\">",
" <div class='viewer' macro='view text wikified'></div>",
"</div>",
"<div macro=\"showWhen tiddler.tags.containsAny(['css','html','pre','systemConfig']) && !tiddler.text.match('{{'+'{')\">",
" <div class='viewer'><pre macro='view text'></pre></div>",
"</div>",
"",
"<div macro=\"showWhenExists ViewDashboardTemplate\">[[ViewDashboardTemplate]]</div>",
"",
"<div class=\"tagglyTagging\" macro=\"tagglyTagging\"></div>",
"",
"<!--}}}-->"
].join("\n")
});
//}}}
For upgrading directly from tiddlyspot. See [[ImportTiddlers]].
URL: /proxy/mptw.tiddlyspot.com/upgrade.html
For upgrading. See [[ImportTiddlers]].
URL: http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/upgrade.html
BRIAN GOODWIN
Biologist, Schumacher College, Devon, UK; Author, How The Leopard Changed Its Spots
Nature Is Culture.
I believe that nature and culture can now be understood as one unified process, not two distinct domains separated by some property of humans such as written or spoken language, consciousness, or ethics. Although there is no proof of this, and no consensus in the scientific community or in the humanities, the revelations of the past few years provide a foundation for both empirical and conceptual work that I believe will lead to a coherent, unified perspective on the process in which we and nature are engaged. This is not a take-over of the humanities by science, but a genuine fusion of the two based on clear articulations of basic concepts such as meaning and wholeness in natural and cultural processes, with implications for scientific studies, their applications in technology and their expression in the arts.
For me this vision has arisen primarily through developments in biology, which occupies the middle ground between culture and the physical world. The key conceptual changes have arisen from complexity theory through detailed studies of the networks of interactions between components within organisms, and between them in ecosystems. When the genome projects made it clear that we are unable to make sense of the information in DNA, attention necessarily shifted to understanding how organisms use this in making themselves with forms that allow them to survive and reproduce in particular habitats. The focus shifted from the hereditary material to its organised context, the living cell, so that organisms as agencies with a distinctive kind of organisation returned to the biological foreground.
Examination of the self-referential networks that regulate gene activities in organisms, that carry out the diverse functions and constructions within cells through protein-protein interactions (the proteome), and the sequences of metabolic transformations that make up the metabolome, have revealed that they all have distinctive properties of self-similar, fractal structure governed by power-law relationships. These properties are similar to the structure of languages, which are also self-referential networks described by power-laws, as discovered years ago by G.K. Zipf. A conclusion is that organisms use proto-languages to make sense of both their inherited history (written in DNA and its molecular modifications) and their external contexts (the environment) in the process of making themselves as functional agencies. Organisms thus become participants in cultures with histories that have meaning, expressed in the forms (morphologies and behaviours) distinctive to their species. This is of course embodied or tacit meaning, which cognitive scientists now recognise as primary in human culture also.
Understanding species as cultures that have experienced 3.7 billion years of adaptive evolution on earth makes it clear that they are repositories of meaningful knowledge and experience about effective living that we urgently need to learn about in human culture. Here is a source of deep wisdom about living in participation with others that is energy and resource efficient, that recycles everything, produces forms that are simultaneously functional and beautiful, and is continuously innovative and creative. We can now proceed with a holistic science that is unified with the arts and humanities and has at its foundation the principles that arise from a naturalistic ethic based on an extended science that includes qualities as well as quantities within the domain of knowledge.
There is plenty of work to do in articulating this unified perspective, from detailed empirical studies of the ways in which organisms achieve their states of coherence and adaptability to the application of these principles in the organic design of all human artefacts, from energy-generating devices and communication systems to cars and factories. The goal is to make human culture as integrated with natural process as the rest of the living realm so that we enhance the quality of the planet instead of degrading it. This will require a rethinking of evolution in terms of the intrinsic agency with meaning that is embodied in the life cycles of different species, understood as natural cultures. Integrating biology and culture with physical principles will be something of a challenge, but there are already many indications of how this can be achieved, without losing the thread of language and meaning that runs through living nature. The emphasis on wholeness that lies at the heart of quantum mechanics and its extensions in quantum gravity, together with the subtle order revealed as quantum coherence, is already stimulating a rethinking of the nature of wholeness, coherence and robust adaptability in organisms as well as quality of life in cultures. Furthermore, the self-similar, fractal patterns that arise in physical systems during phase transitions, when new order is coming into being, have the same characteristics as the patterns observed in organismic and cultural networks involved in generating order and meaning. The unified vision of a creative and meaningful cosmic process seems to be on the agenda as a replacement for the meaningless mechanical cosmos that has dominated Western scientific thought and cultural life for a few hundred years.
<html><a href="http://www.netvibes.com/greeeni" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.netvibes.com/img/add2netvibes.gif" border="none" width="91" height="17" alt="Add to Netvibes" /></a></html>
some of my feeds collected on netvibes:
my del.icio.us bookmarks,
a couple of podcasts I listen to,
jyte claims, ~StumbleUpon favorites, Twitter post...
/***
| Name:|NewHerePlugin|
| Description:|Creates the new here and new journal macros|
| Version:|3.0 ($Rev: 1845 $)|
| Date:|$Date: 2007-03-16 15:19:22 +1000 (Fri, 16 Mar 2007) $|
| Source:|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#NewHerePlugin|
| Author:|Simon Baird <simon.baird@gmail.com>|
| License|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#TheBSDLicense|
***/
//{{{
merge(config.macros, {
newHere: {
handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
wikify("<<newTiddler "+paramString+" tag:[["+tiddler.title+"]]>>",place,null,tiddler);
}
},
newJournalHere: {
handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
wikify("<<newJournal "+paramString+" tag:[["+tiddler.title+"]]>>",place,null,tiddler);
}
}
});
//}}}
/***
| Name:|NewMeansNewPlugin|
| Description:|If 'New Tiddler' already exists then create 'New Tiddler (1)' and so on|
| Version:|1.0 ($Rev: 2263 $)|
| Date:|$Date: 2007-06-13 04:22:32 +1000 (Wed, 13 Jun 2007) $|
| Source:|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/empty.html#NewMeansNewPlugin|
| Author:|Simon Baird <simon.baird@gmail.com>|
| License|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#TheBSDLicense|
***/
//{{{
String.prototype.getNextFreeName = function() {
var numberRegExp = / \(([0-9]+)\)$/;
var match = numberRegExp.exec(this);
if (match) {
var num = parseInt(match[1]) + 1;
return this.replace(numberRegExp," ("+num+")");
}
else {
return this + " (1)";
}
}
config.macros.newTiddler.getName = function(newName) {
while (store.getTiddler(newName))
newName = newName.getNextFreeName();
return newName;
}
config.macros.newTiddler.onClickNewTiddler = function()
{
var title = this.getAttribute("newTitle");
if(this.getAttribute("isJournal") == "true") {
var now = new Date();
title = now.formatString(title.trim());
}
title = config.macros.newTiddler.getName(title); // <--- only changed bit
var params = this.getAttribute("params");
var tags = params ? params.split("|") : [];
var focus = this.getAttribute("newFocus");
var template = this.getAttribute("newTemplate");
var customFields = this.getAttribute("customFields");
story.displayTiddler(null,title,template,false,null,null);
var tiddlerElem = document.getElementById(story.idPrefix + title);
if(customFields)
story.addCustomFields(tiddlerElem,customFields);
var text = this.getAttribute("newText");
if(typeof text == "string")
story.getTiddlerField(title,"text").value = text.format([title]);
for(var t=0;t<tags.length;t++)
story.setTiddlerTag(title,tags[t],+1);
story.focusTiddler(title,focus);
return false;
};
//}}}
The PaKua are the eight trigrams described in the I-Ching aka "Book of Changes", the oldest of the Chinese classic texts. The Trigrams are combinations of whole and broken lines (Yin and Yang lines) which represent the ever-fluctuating, ever-changing elemental forces of the universe.
<!--{{{-->
<div id='topMenu' refresh='content' tiddler='MainMenu'></div>
<div id='sidebar'>
<div id='sidebarOptions' refresh='content' tiddler='SideBarOptions'></div>
<div id='sidebarTabs' refresh='content' force='true' tiddler='SideBarTabs'></div>
</div>
<div id='displayArea'>
<div id='messageArea'></div>
<div id='tiddlerDisplay'></div>
</div>
<!--}}}-->
/***
| Name|QuickOpenTagPlugin|
| Description|Changes tag links to make it easier to open tags as tiddlers|
| Version|3.0.1 ($Rev: 2342 $)|
| Date|$Date: 2007-07-05 10:57:49 +1000 (Thu, 05 Jul 2007) $|
| Source|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#QuickOpenTagPlugin|
| Author|Simon Baird <simon.baird@gmail.com>|
| License|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#TheBSDLicense|
***/
//{{{
config.quickOpenTag = {
dropdownChar: (document.all ? "\u25bc" : "\u25be"), // the little one doesn't work in IE?
createTagButton: function(place,tag,excludeTiddler) {
// little hack so we can to <<tag PrettyTagName|RealTagName>>
var splitTag = tag.split("|");
var pretty = tag;
if (splitTag.length == 2) {
tag = splitTag[1];
pretty = splitTag[0];
}
var sp = createTiddlyElement(place,"span",null,"quickopentag");
createTiddlyText(createTiddlyLink(sp,tag,false),pretty);
var theTag = createTiddlyButton(sp,config.quickOpenTag.dropdownChar,
config.views.wikified.tag.tooltip.format([tag]),onClickTag);
theTag.setAttribute("tag",tag);
if (excludeTiddler)
theTag.setAttribute("tiddler",excludeTiddler);
return(theTag);
},
miniTagHandler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
var tagged = store.getTaggedTiddlers(tiddler.title);
if (tagged.length > 0) {
var theTag = createTiddlyButton(place,config.quickOpenTag.dropdownChar,
config.views.wikified.tag.tooltip.format([tiddler.title]),onClickTag);
theTag.setAttribute("tag",tiddler.title);
theTag.className = "miniTag";
}
},
allTagsHandler: function(place,macroName,params) {
var tags = store.getTags(params[0]);
var filter = params[1]; // new feature
var ul = createTiddlyElement(place,"ul");
if(tags.length == 0)
createTiddlyElement(ul,"li",null,"listTitle",this.noTags);
for(var t=0; t<tags.length; t++) {
var title = tags[t][0];
if (!filter || (title.match(new RegExp('^'+filter)))) {
var info = getTiddlyLinkInfo(title);
var theListItem =createTiddlyElement(ul,"li");
var theLink = createTiddlyLink(theListItem,tags[t][0],true);
var theCount = " (" + tags[t][1] + ")";
theLink.appendChild(document.createTextNode(theCount));
var theDropDownBtn = createTiddlyButton(theListItem," " +
config.quickOpenTag.dropdownChar,this.tooltip.format([tags[t][0]]),onClickTag);
theDropDownBtn.setAttribute("tag",tags[t][0]);
}
}
},
// todo fix these up a bit
styles: [
"/*{{{*/",
"/* created by QuickOpenTagPlugin */",
".tagglyTagged .quickopentag, .tagged .quickopentag ",
" { margin-right:1.2em; border:1px solid #eee; padding:2px; padding-right:0px; padding-left:1px; }",
".quickopentag .tiddlyLink { padding:2px; padding-left:3px; }",
".quickopentag a.button { padding:1px; padding-left:2px; padding-right:2px;}",
"/* extra specificity to make it work right */",
"#displayArea .viewer .quickopentag a.button, ",
"#displayArea .viewer .quickopentag a.tiddyLink, ",
"#mainMenu .quickopentag a.tiddyLink, ",
"#mainMenu .quickopentag a.tiddyLink ",
" { border:0px solid black; }",
"#displayArea .viewer .quickopentag a.button, ",
"#mainMenu .quickopentag a.button ",
" { margin-left:0px; padding-left:2px; }",
"#displayArea .viewer .quickopentag a.tiddlyLink, ",
"#mainMenu .quickopentag a.tiddlyLink ",
" { margin-right:0px; padding-right:0px; padding-left:0px; margin-left:0px; }",
"a.miniTag {font-size:150%;} ",
"#mainMenu .quickopentag a.button ",
" /* looks better in right justified main menus */",
" { margin-left:0px; padding-left:2px; margin-right:0px; padding-right:0px; }",
"#topMenu .quickopentag { padding:0px; margin:0px; border:0px; }",
"#topMenu .quickopentag .tiddlyLink { padding-right:1px; margin-right:0px; }",
"#topMenu .quickopentag .button { padding-left:1px; margin-left:0px; border:0px; }",
"/*}}}*/",
""].join("\n"),
init: function() {
// we fully replace these builtins. can't hijack them easily
window.createTagButton = this.createTagButton;
config.macros.allTags.handler = this.allTagsHandler;
config.macros.miniTag = { handler: this.miniTagHandler };
config.shadowTiddlers["QuickOpenTagStyles"] = this.styles;
store.addNotification("QuickOpenTagStyles",refreshStyles);
}
}
config.quickOpenTag.init();
//}}}
Despite of significant shifts in our biological understanding of the concept of race that have taken place over the last decades, especially as a consequence of new insights in the field of genetics; and despite of our increasing knowledge of the historical and cultural aspects involved as well as many ethnographic examples to compare with, "racial thinking and the myth of racial divergence" still persist in our world today (KEITA & KITTLES 1997).
In discussions about "race" different aspects might be mentioned, which seem to be involved in our conception of it. On the one hand, some pick up a link to individual psychology (me/others) and to group behaviour (us/them) or to the search for identity. On the other hand, others argue that either nature is organized in classes and types or that our minds have the natural tendency to classify nature in this way. Hence the division of all species into "races" and the possibility to define all things in the classical genus/differentia manner. Others again use a distorted understanding of biology or genetics to reinforce racial differences.
Defining race from an anthropological perspective, we can generally say that "when an ethnic group is assumed to have a biological basis (shared "blood" or genetic material), it is called race. (KOTTAK 1996:57)" Yet, often enough the definition of a race includes or links members which are not part of one particular ethnic group, simply because they seem to share some phenotypical trait with each other. A careful look though quickly reveals that such traits are defined arbitrarily and that both conceptions - race as an ethnic or a geographic group - is not a valid classification.
In this essay I will deal with the concept of race as a cultural construct and will try to show why and how the conception of human "races" originates in social rather than biological ideas by considering its early origins and by drawing upon two historical periods, namely (i) European Colonialism and (ii) The Third Reich.
As R.C. Lewontin points out in his article Confusions About Human Races, it is important to understand that "historically, the concept of race was imported into biology, and not only the biology of the human species, from social practice. (LEWONTIN 2006)" Nowadays, "race" is no longer a valid taxonomy not only in regard to a possible classification of biological differences among humans but in regard to the classification of any species.
What we need to realize is that on the one hand biological data simply leads the concept of race ad absurdum, making it impossible to draw any clear lines between races; and that on the other hand, when looking at the origins of racial classification we come to understand that the division of humans into "races" is based on a set of metaphysical and socio-political developments - and it is these developments I will focus on in this essay. For an overview of the biological evidence speaking against the concept of race, I suggest reading the short paper already mentioned above by R.C. Lewontin (Emeritus of Zoology at Harvard University) ConfusionsAboutHumanRaces, published on-line by the Social Science Research Council at http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Lewontin/.
origins of racial thinking
One could argue that we can track racial ideas as
far back as popular medieval concepts such as the Great Chain of Beings which was conceived as a universal, God-given hierarchy ranking all life from lower (inanimate) to higher forms (animals, humans, angels). Or even further back in history to Greek philosophy and to Platonic ideas of type and classification or to the Aristotelian theory that civility can be identified with urban life (SAMSON 2005:14). There is much debate about what can actually be identified as the origins of racial concepts, but it does seem to me that the general tendency of Western philosophy and science to define, classify and categorize has led to the conception of race as a "logical" consequence. Besides, I reckon that it is important to realize that before Lamarck and Darwin introduced the concept of the "common ancestor" in the early nineteenth-century, it was generally believed in Western science that there was no mixture between species and that every species either existed as it is from the time of its divine creation or if it indeed developed in some way, than merely as a variation of its archetype. The Idea that the hare and the horse for example - and likewise all other species with each other - could have a common ancestor and thus share genetic material and an evolutionary background was inconceivable. It seems that it is merely a small step from such ideas and world-views to the classification of humans into a hierarchy of divergent races.
Colonialism
As Samson points out, "there is little agreement among scholars about exactly when racism began, but all would agree that it was evident by 1700. (SAMSON 2005:3)" The eighteenth-century was the time of the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the peak of Colonialism in the New-World. The decline of the Ottoman Empire is significant in so far as it gradually led to the formation of political nation-states in Europe and "national identities shifted form an emphasis on royal subjecthood or religious affinities to ethnic ties. (SAMSON 2005:4)".
As mentioned in the Statement on Race of the American Anthropological Association, "today, many scholars in many fields argue that "race" [...] was a social mechanism invented during the 18th century to refer to those populations brought together in colonial America: the English and other European settlers, the conquered Indian peoples, and those peoples of Africa brought in to provide slave labour. (AAA 1998)"
If we refer to Colonialism as "an alleged policy of exploitation of backward or weak peoples by a large power (OED On-line)" than it becomes obvious that the moral and theoretical legitimisation of such an endeavour is rather crucial. Although there has been considerable debate since the early sixteenth-century, especially within the Christian Church about the status of indigenous people encountered in the Americas and elsewhere, eventually, the fear of rebellion and the need of indigenous labour decided upon these question to the favour of such arguments following Aristotle, who believed that some people were slaves by nature or Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) who in the same manner described "unequal power relations as natural and inevitable [...] (SAMSON 2005:17)"
The historical consequences of the colonialist period, such as the ethnocides in South and North America, the massive exploitation and enslavement of Native Americans and 12 million Africans, are well known and I believe that we can clearly see why white people "needed" to ideologically place themselves at the very top of that Great Chain of Beings.
In the same time, social developments correlated and enforced the formation of racial ideologies. Thus, having black skin correlated and was identified with being a slave and likewise having Indian phenotypes with being a savage. "Ultimately 'race' as an ideology about human differences was subsequently spread to other areas of the world. It became a strategy for dividing, ranking, and controlling colonized people used by colonial powers everywhere. (AAA 1998)"
The Third Reich
It is amazing to realize that racial ideologies developed side by side with great achievements in science and philosophy such as the Age of Enlightenment or the conception of evolution theory by Charles Darwin
(1859 ), and that instead of being revised and abounded they were more and more affirmed, finding their way into scientific thought.
Thus, in the mid nineteenth-century, almost coinciding with the publication of Darwin's On The Origin of Species we come across a milepost of racist "scientific" theory in Gobineau's Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races (1855) which is seen as the first formulation of "biological racism" stating the supremacy of the Aryan Race.
Supported by other schools of thought of the nineteenth-century, such as Social Darwinism and eugenics (founded by Darwin's half-cousin Francis Galton), the cultural-political ideologies of National Socialism came into being in Germany, well reflected in Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (1925). There is not much novelty to be found in his racial ideas except of taking them to their utter logical consequence by turning racism and eugenics into the foundation of a political program. The following terrors and systematic mass extermination of 11 million people considered to belong to inferior races such as the Semites and the Sinti and Roma are rather well known.
Conclusion
I believe that by now we can clearly identify some of the key cultural conceptions and the way they are linked to specific historical episodes that came to form our understanding of "race". And that we can clearly see how this concept evolved over the centuries as a result of social practice and cultural beliefs rather than a "real" biological category.
The division of humans into races, is not something that the mind simply does, nor something that nature or species are divided into. When referring to "racial differentiation" or even to "racism" we do not refer to the fact that we distinguish between "me" and "others" or between "us" and "them", but rather to the way we explain what that difference is!
"Racial beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the human species and about the abilities and behaviour of people homogenized into 'racial' categories. The myths fused behaviour and physical features together in the public mind, impending our comprehension of both biological variations and cultural behaviour, implying that both are genetically determined. (AAA 1998)"
But as R.C. Lewontin points out, it is important to understand that throughout history and even today "there has been a constant pressure from social and political practice and the coincidence of racial, cultural and social class divisions reinforcing the social reality of race, to maintain “race” as a human classification. If it were admitted that the category of “race” is a purely social construct, however, it would have a weakened legitimacy. Thus, there have been repeated attempts to reassert the objective biological reality of human racial categories despite the evidence to the contrary. (LEWONTIN 2006)"
REFERENCES
American Anthropological Association, 1998, Statement on 'Race', http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm
KEITA, S.O.Y and R.A. Kittles, 1997, The Persistence of Racial Thinking and the Myth of Racial Divergence, American Anthropologist, 99(3):534-544
Kottak, Conrad P., 1996, The Cultural Construction of Race, in Mirror for humanity: a consice introduction to cultural anthropology, New York: McGraw-Hill
Lewontin, Richard C., 2006, Confusions About Human Races, http://raceandgenomics.ssrc.org/Lewontin/
Samson, Jane, 2005, Race and Empire, Seminar Studies in History, Harlow, England; New York: Pearson/Longman (Chapter 1,2)
OED online, Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com/
ILLUSTRATIONS
Illustration 1: Charles Bonnet , The chain of being,, Œuvres d'histoire naturelle et de philosophie, 1779-83
Illustration 2: Rev. K. J. Stewart (Kensey Johns) A Geography for Beginners. Richmond, Va.: J.W. Randolph, 1864 - http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/stewart/
Illustration 3: Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau , An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races, 1853-1855 - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=JeM_1BCeffAC&dq=gobineau&pgis=1
<html><a href="http://picasaweb.google.com/dgruenfeld/Birds/photo#5158691285283999538"><img src="http://lh5.google.com/dgruenfeld/R5daZF1BjzI/AAAAAAAAAXI/q86vNCaseJE/s144/MPR_123003_100075_S.jpg" align="right"/></a></html> my notes:
*bill: straight, long, color: braun/orange
*head:black, shaggy crest on back of head
*wings: black with white at sides
*breast: beigé - b/w stipes at beging of wings
*eyes: orange/red shiny
*feet: red/orange
*good friend of [[Goldeneye]]
*more infos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-breasted_Merganser / http://www.birds.cornell.edu/AllAboutBirds/BirdGuide/Red-breasted_Merganser.html
/***
| Name:|RenameTagsPlugin|
| Description:|Allows you to easily rename or delete tags across multiple tiddlers|
| Version:|3.0 ($Rev: 1845 $)|
| Date:|$Date: 2007-03-16 15:19:22 +1000 (Fri, 16 Mar 2007) $|
| Source:|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#RenameTagsPlugin|
| Author:|Simon Baird <simon.baird@gmail.com>|
| License|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#TheBSDLicense|
Rename a tag and you will be prompted to rename it in all its tagged tiddlers.
***/
//{{{
config.renameTags = {
prompts: {
rename: "Rename the tag '%0' to '%1' in %2 tidder%3?",
remove: "Remove the tag '%0' from %1 tidder%2?"
},
removeTag: function(tag,tiddlers) {
store.suspendNotifications();
for (var i=0;i<tiddlers.length;i++) {
store.setTiddlerTag(tiddlers[i].title,false,tag);
}
store.resumeNotifications();
store.notifyAll();
},
renameTag: function(oldTag,newTag,tiddlers) {
store.suspendNotifications();
for (var i=0;i<tiddlers.length;i++) {
store.setTiddlerTag(tiddlers[i].title,false,oldTag); // remove old
store.setTiddlerTag(tiddlers[i].title,true,newTag); // add new
}
store.resumeNotifications();
store.notifyAll();
},
storeMethods: {
saveTiddler_orig_renameTags: TiddlyWiki.prototype.saveTiddler,
saveTiddler: function(title,newTitle,newBody,modifier,modified,tags,fields) {
if (title != newTitle) {
var tagged = this.getTaggedTiddlers(title);
if (tagged.length > 0) {
// then we are renaming a tag
if (confirm(config.renameTags.prompts.rename.format([title,newTitle,tagged.length,tagged.length>1?"s":""])))
config.renameTags.renameTag(title,newTitle,tagged);
if (!this.tiddlerExists(title) && newBody == "")
// dont create unwanted tiddler
return null;
}
}
return this.saveTiddler_orig_renameTags(title,newTitle,newBody,modifier,modified,tags,fields);
},
removeTiddler_orig_renameTags: TiddlyWiki.prototype.removeTiddler,
removeTiddler: function(title) {
var tagged = this.getTaggedTiddlers(title);
if (tagged.length > 0)
if (confirm(config.renameTags.prompts.remove.format([title,tagged.length,tagged.length>1?"s":""])))
config.renameTags.removeTag(title,tagged);
return this.removeTiddler_orig_renameTags(title);
}
},
init: function() {
merge(TiddlyWiki.prototype,this.storeMethods);
}
}
config.renameTags.init();
//}}}
Extending WLAN Range with Repeaters
By Jim Geier
January 17, 2003
Access points, which require interconnecting cabling, generally play a dominate role for providing radio frequency (RF) (define) coverage in most wireless LAN (WLAN) deployments. Wireless repeaters, though, are an alternative way to extend the range of an existing WLAN instead of adding more access points. There are very few stand-alone 802.11 wireless repeaters on the market, but some access points have a built-in repeater mode. Here's the basic information you need to know when using wireless repeaters.
In general, a repeater (define) simply regenerates a network signal in order to extend the range of the existing network infrastructure. A WLAN repeater does not physically connect by wire to any part of the network. Instead, it receives radio signals (802.11 frames) from an access point, end user device, or another repeater and retransmits the frames. This makes it possible for a repeater located in between an access point and distant user to act as a relay for frames traveling back and forth between the user and the access point.
As a result, wireless repeaters are an effective solution to overcome signal impairments such as RF attenuation (define). For example, repeaters provide connectivity to remote areas that normally would not have wireless network access. You may have one access point in a home or small office that doesn't quite cover the entire area where users need connectivity, such as a basement or patio. The placement of a repeater between the covered and uncovered areas, however, will provide connectivity throughout the entire space. The wireless repeater fills holes in coverage, enabling seamless roaming.
A recent review of the repeating function of the D-Link DWL-900AP+ access point identifies a range increase of 160%. In the review, the original signal was lost at about 55feet from the router/access point. With the placement of a DWL-900AP+ set to repeater mode at the site of the original signal loss, the signal strength was still around 72% at 140 feet. The repeater provides the extra kick in situations where you need to reach remote users.
Nearly all WLAN repeaters currently available today are actually built-in functions of access points. For example, the Cisco 350 and 1200 allow you to configure the access point to behave as a repeater (and not as an access point). Buffalo Technology, however, does offer a stand alone repeater in their AirStation Pro Series WLA-AWCG. The advantage of the stand alone repeaters is that they are generally less expensive.
One downside of wireless repeaters, though, is that they reduce throughput on the WLAN. A repeater must receive and retransmit each frame on the same RF channel, which effectively doubles the number of frames that are sent. This problem compounds when using multiple repeaters because each repeater will duplicate the number of frames sent. Thus, be sure to plan the use of repeaters sparingly.
The configuration of a repeater is relatively straight forward. After switching the access point to repeater mode, you set the service set identifier (SSID) (define) of the repeater to match the SSID of the specific (root) access points that the repeater will associate with. Most repeaters will, similar to wireless network cards, automatically associate with the access point with the strongest signal. However, you can designate specific MAC addresses of the preferred and secondary access points as an option. If the repeater cannot connect with the preferred access point, it will try to associate with the next one, and so on.
All in all, wireless repeaters are an excellent way to increase the radio range of an existing WLAN, especially if it's not practical to install an additional access point to fully cover the location. Just don't get carried away with installing too many repeaters to keep performance up and users smiling.
HaCk
http://www.hackaday.com/2005/08/23/how-to-greyhat-wifi-repeater/
This how-to gives the steps needed to put together a simple man-in-the-middle wireless repeater. You can use this to hang your wired network off of someone else's wireless router and serve their wireless connection back to them. Do not do this. It here as a silly geek trick and will probably just annoy you every time your connection goes down because you're too cheap to pay for a good wired connection.
This involves three wireless routers:
Your neighbor is in possession of router A. It is set to factory defaults initially. This is important because it shows the victim isn't technically savvy and won't notice your intrusion. You have router B, a Linksys WRT54G that you will be putting into client mode and connecting to router A. The final component, router C, is plugged into router B and acts as a wireless access point.
To start you need to upgrade the firmware on router B so you can use client mode. Follow the client mode HOW-TO over at Engadget.
After that you need to scan for a victim access point. Linksys, D-Link, and Netgear make most consumer routers you'll find so if you see an SSID of "linksys", "default", or "NETGEAR" it is most likely set to factory defaults. This is router A. Connect to the router and go to the default IP address in you web browser, usually "192.168.1.1" or "192.168.0.1". The Phenoelit Crew maintains a huge list of default admin passwords. Use the admin interface to change the default local IP to a different subnet like "192.168.2.1". You'll have to get a new IP after this. Reconnect to the router and give it a new SSID and admin password. You might as well set up WEP while you're at it since you've commited to being an ass. You need to be careful during this process since you could very easily lock yourself out of the box and without physical access you won't be able to do a hard reset.
Now that router A is set up we can move onto router B. If you followed the client mode how-to exactly you will have to switch the local IP back to "192.168.1.1" or whatever router A originally had as a local IP. Also set the default gateway to the new local IP of router A. Configure client mode to connect to router A's SSID and then set up WEP.
You are now connected to router B through a wired connection and it is connected to router A wirelessly. You should have internet access.
Now for the final step; giving your neighbor his wireless access back. Plug into router C and go to the admin page. Turn off the dhcp server and change the local IP to one in the subnet, something like "192.168.1.10". Change the SSID to router A's original i.e. "linksys". Now plug a cable into one of router B's LAN ports and the other end into the uplink port on router C; if it is a Linksys router, port 4 will work. Router C is now rebroadcasting the wireless connection.
When your neighbor fires up his wireless laptop it will still say he is connected to "linksys", but your wired network is "securely" connected to the internet. You could always uplink to another router and set it up as a secure access point.
Once again: do not do this. If you are looking to legitimately expand your wireless coverage with WRT54Gs, you should investigate mesh networking with WDS. It may not work with WPA though.
/***
| Name|SaveCloseTiddlerPlugin|
| Description|Provides two extra toolbar commands, saveCloseTiddler and cancelCloseTiddler|
| Version|3.0 ($Rev: 2134 $)|
| Date|$Date: 2007-04-30 16:11:12 +1000 (Mon, 30 Apr 2007) $|
| Source|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#SaveCloseTiddlerPlugin|
| Author|Simon Baird <simon.baird@gmail.com>|
| License|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#TheBSDLicense|
To use these you must add them to the tool bar in your EditTemplate
***/
//{{{
merge(config.commands,{
saveCloseTiddler: {
text: 'done/close',
tooltip: 'Save changes to this tiddler and close it',
handler: function(e,src,title) {
config.commands.saveTiddler.handler(e,src,title);
config.commands.closeTiddler.handler(e,src,title);
return false;
}
},
cancelCloseTiddler: {
text: 'cancel/close',
tooltip: 'Undo changes to this tiddler and close it',
handler: function(e,src,title) {
config.commands.cancelTiddler.handler(e,src,title);
config.commands.closeTiddler.handler(e,src,title);
return false;
}
}
});
//}}}
in GregoryBateson’s words:
“I picked up a vague mystical feeling that we must look for the same sort of processes in all fields of natural phenomena - that we might expect to find the same sort of laws at work in the structure of a crystal or in the structure of society, or that the segmentation of an earthworm might really be comparable to the process by which basalt pillars are formed.” (GregoryBateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 1972)
“[…] it becomes evident that metaphor is not just pretty poetry. It is not either good or bad logic, but is in fact the logic upon which the biological been built, the main characteristic and organizing glue of this world of mental process.” (GregoryBateson, Angels Fear, 1988)
These notions of "mind" "process", "MetaPhor", "MindAndNature" / "NatureCulture", "structure", "relation", "nagotiation", "[[embodiment]]", etc. are the buzzwords that brought me here.
What I’m really intressted in is accessing different frameworks of knowledge, studying their methodologies and theories and trying to web them together to a holistic approach to the phenomenon of ‘mind’.
I’m trying to follow the idea that the study of mind should not only be directed inwards, applying third-person methods as in psychology or neuroscience but also first-person, introspective methods which are suggested by Buddhist practice and other religious and philosophical approaches as well as several recent scientific theories such as GregoryBateson’s, FrancescoVarela’s, HumbertoMaturana’s and others.
In the same time though, I'll try to keep track of the dynamic relations of mind, practice and embodiment, looking at the manifestation, organization and effects of mental processes as seen in language, culture, religion (AnthropoLogy), art and philosophy as well as in other types of processes which traditionally are not considered to be mental processes or phenomena, in order to surpass the NatureCulture dichotomy which still seems to prevail and fragment scientific approaches and our general concepts of understanding.
more buzzwords: CulTure, ReligiOns, MythoLogy and EcoLogy, SystemTheory, CyberNetics etc. and picking up on ideas and approaches such as ‘AbduCtion’ (Pierce, GregoryBateson), the ‘EmbodiedCognitionThesis’, GregoryBateson’s ‘CriteriaOfMind’, the ‘SantiagoSynthesis’ - trying to make these elements the core of my studies.
to be continued…
/*{{{*/
/*Blackicity Theme for TiddlyWiki*/
/*Design and CSS by Saq Imtiaz*/
/*Version 1.0*/
/*}}}*/
/*{{{*/
body{ font-family: "Neue Helvetica", Helvetica, "Lucida Grande", Verdana, sans-serif;
background-color: #fff;
color: #333;}
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#topMenu br {display:none;}
#topMenu a{ color: #999;
padding: 0px 8px 0px 8px;
border-right: 1px solid #444;}
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#displayArea {margin-left:1em; margin-bottom:2em; margin-top:0.5em;}
a, a:hover{
color:#333;
text-decoration: none; background:transparent;
}
.viewer a, .viewer a:hover {border-bottom:1px dotted #333; font-weight:bold;}
.viewer .button, .editorFooter .button{
color: #333;
border: 1px solid #333;
}
.viewer .button:hover,
.editorFooter .button:hover, .viewer .button:active, .viewer .highlight,.editorFooter .button:active, .editorFooter .highlight{
color: #fff;
background: #333;
border-color: #333;
}
.tiddler .viewer {line-height:1.45em;}
.title {color:#222; border-bottom:1px solid#222; font-family:'Lucida Grande', Verdana, Sans-Serif; font-size:1.5em;}
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.shadow .title{color:#999;}
.toolbar {font-size:90%;}
.selected .toolbar a {color:#999999;}
.selected .toolbar a:hover {color:#333; background:transparent;border:1px solid #fff;}
.toolbar .button:hover, .toolbar .highlight, .toolbar .marked, .toolbar a.button:active{color:#333; background:transparent;border:1px solid #fff;}
/***
!Sidebar
***/
#sidebar { margin-bottom:2em !important; margin-bottom:1em; right:0;
}
/***
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***/
#sidebarOptions { padding-top:2em;background:#f3f3f3;padding-left:0.5em;}
#sidebarOptions a {
color:#333;
background:#f3f3f3;
border:1px solid #f3f3f3;
text-decoration: none;
}
#sidebarOptions a:hover, #sidebarOptions a:active {
color:#222;
background-color:#fff;border:1px solid #fff;
}
#sidebarOptions input {border:1px solid #ccc; }
#sidebarOptions .sliderPanel {
background: #f3f3f3; font-size: .9em;
}
#sidebarOptions .sliderPanel input {border:1px solid #999;}
#sidebarOptions .sliderPanel .txtOptionInput {border:1px solid #999;width:9em;}
#sidebarOptions .sliderPanel a {font-weight:normal; color:#555;background-color: #f3f3f3; border-bottom:1px dotted #333;}
#sidebarOptions .sliderPanel a:hover {
color:#111;
background-color: #f3f3f3;
border:none;
border-bottom:1px dotted #111;
}
/***
!SidebarTabs
***/
.listTitle {color:#222;}
#sidebarTabs {background:#f3f3f3;}
#sidebarTabs .tabContents {background:#cfcfcf;}
#sidebarTabs .tabUnselected:hover {color:#999;}
#sidebarTabs .tabSelected{background:#cfcfcf;}
#sidebarTabs .tabContents .tiddlyLink, #sidebarTabs .tabContents .button{color:#666;}
#sidebarTabs .tabContents .tiddlyLink:hover,#sidebarTabs .tabContents .button:hover{color:#222;background:transparent; text-decoration:none;border:none;}
#sidebarTabs .tabContents .button:hover, #sidebarTabs .tabContents .highlight, #sidebarTabs .tabContents .marked, #sidebarTabs .tabContents a.button:active{color:#222;background:transparent;}
#sidebarTabs .txtMoreTab .tabSelected,
#sidebarTabs .txtMoreTab .tab:hover,
#sidebarTabs .txtMoreTab .tabContents{
color: #111;
background: #f3f3f3; border:1px solid #f3f3f3;
}
#sidebarTabs .txtMoreTab .tabUnselected {
color: #555;
background: #AFAFAF;
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/***
!Tabs
***/
.tabSelected{color:#fefefe; background:#999; padding-bottom:1px;}
.tabSelected, .tabSelected:hover {
color: #111;
background: #fefefe;
border: solid 1px #cfcfcf;
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color: #999;
background: #eee;
border: solid 1px #cfcfcf;
padding-bottom:1px;
}
.tabUnselected:hover {text-decoration:none; border:1px solid #cfcfcf;}
.tabContents {background:#fefefe;}
.tagging, .tagged {
border: 1px solid #eee;
background-color: #F7F7F7;
}
.selected .tagging, .selected .tagged {
background-color: #f3f3f3;
border: 1px solid #ccc;
}
.tagging .listTitle, .tagged .listTitle {
color: #bbb;
}
.selected .tagging .listTitle, .selected .tagged .listTitle {
color: #333;
}
.tagging .button, .tagged .button {
color:#ccc;
}
.selected .tagging .button, .selected .tagged .button {
color:#aaa;
}
.highlight, .marked {background:transparent; color:#111; border:none; text-decoration:underline;}
.tagging .button:hover, .tagged .button:hover, .tagging .button:active, .tagged .button:active {
border: none; background:transparent; text-decoration:underline; color:#333;
}
.popup {
background: #cfcfcf;
border: 1px solid #333;
}
.popup li.disabled {
color: #000;
}
.popup li a, .popup li a:visited {
color: #555;
border: none;
}
.popup li a:hover {
background: #f3f3f3;
color: #555;
border: none;
}
#messageArea {
border: 4px dotted #282826;
background: #F3F3F3;
color: #333;
font-size:90%;
}
#messageArea a:hover { background:#f5f5f5; border:none;}
#messageArea .button{
color: #333;
border: 1px solid #282826;
}
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color: #fff;
background: #282826;
border-color: #282826;
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.tiddler {padding-bottom:10px;}
.viewer blockquote {
border-left: 5px solid #282826;
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.viewer table, .viewer td {
border: 1px solid #282826;
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.viewer th, thead td {
background: #282826;
border: 1px solid #282826;
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.viewer pre {
border: 1px solid #ccc;
background: #f5f5f5;
}
.viewer code {
color: #111; background:#f5f5f5;
}
.viewer hr {
border-top: dashed 1px #222; margin:0 1em;
}
.editor input {
border: 1px solid #ccc; margin-top:5px;
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border: 1px solid #ccc;
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h1,h2,h3,h4,h5 { color: #282826; background: transparent; padding-bottom:2px; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; }
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/*}}}*/
Author: DanielGrunfeld
"LowLifeSnake" - my first essay in Anthropology (2007)
abstract
This essay will examine the significance of symbols for the way we relate to each other and
the world around us. I will first look at the usage of symbols in language and than distinguish
between private and shared meanings of symbols. I will then take up an exampletory case of
an argument between Tarzan and Jane, in which the symbol "snake" is used and will analyse
possible classifications of this symbol (LEACH 1964, DOUGLAS 1966) within its Judeo-Christian
cultural context. Finally, I will conclude with an argument of Durkheim, why the study of
symbolism can lead us to a general understanding of culture and human behaviour.
read here: LowLifeSnake or view as pdf @ http://www.divshare.com/download/3445037-2f9
<<tabs txtMoreTab "Tags" "All Tags" TabAllTags "Miss" "Missing tiddlers" TabMoreMissing "Orph" "Orphaned tiddlers" TabMoreOrphans "Shad" "Shadowed tiddlers" TabMoreShadowed>>
<<allTags excludeLists [a-z]>>
/***
| Name|TagglyTaggingPlugin|
| Description|tagglyTagging macro is a replacement for the builtin tagging macro in your ViewTemplate|
| Version|3.1 ($Rev: 2351 $)|
| Date|$Date: 2007-07-12 10:18:02 +1000 (Thu, 12 Jul 2007) $|
| Source|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#TagglyTaggingPlugin|
| Author|Simon Baird <simon.baird@gmail.com>|
| License|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#TheBSDLicense|
!Notes
See http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#TagglyTagging
***/
//{{{
config.taggly = {
// for translations
lingo: {
labels: {
asc: "\u2191", // down arrow
desc: "\u2193", // up arrow
title: "title",
modified: "modified",
created: "created",
show: "+",
hide: "-",
normal: "normal",
group: "group",
commas: "commas",
sitemap: "sitemap",
numCols: "cols\u00b1", // plus minus sign
label: "Tagged as '%0':",
excerpts: "excerpts",
contents: "contents",
sliders: "sliders",
noexcerpts: "title only"
},
tooltips: {
title: "Click to sort by title",
modified: "Click to sort by modified date",
created: "Click to sort by created date",
show: "Click to show tagging list",
hide: "Click to hide tagging list",
normal: "Click to show a normal ungrouped list",
group: "Click to show list grouped by tag",
sitemap: "Click to show a sitemap style list",
commas: "Click to show a comma separated list",
numCols: "Click to change number of columns",
excerpts: "Click to show excerpts",
contents: "Click to show entire tiddler contents",
sliders: "Click to show tiddler contents in sliders",
noexcerpts: "Click to show entire title only"
}
},
config: {
showTaggingCounts: true,
listOpts: {
// the first one will be the default
sortBy: ["title","modified","created"],
sortOrder: ["asc","desc"],
hideState: ["show","hide"],
listMode: ["normal","group","sitemap","commas"],
numCols: ["1","2","3","4","5","6"],
excerpts: ["noexcerpts","excerpts","contents","sliders"]
},
valuePrefix: "taggly.",
excludeTags: ["excludeLists","excludeTagging"],
excerptSize: 50,
excerptMarker: "/%"+"%/"
},
getTagglyOpt: function(title,opt) {
var val = store.getValue(title,this.config.valuePrefix+opt);
return val ? val : this.config.listOpts[opt][0];
},
setTagglyOpt: function(title,opt,value) {
if (!store.tiddlerExists(title))
// create it silently
store.saveTiddler(title,title,config.views.editor.defaultText.format([title]),config.options.txtUserName,new Date(),null);
// if value is default then remove it to save space
return store.setValue(title,
this.config.valuePrefix+opt,
value == this.config.listOpts[opt][0] ? null : value);
},
getNextValue: function(title,opt) {
var current = this.getTagglyOpt(title,opt);
var pos = this.config.listOpts[opt].indexOf(current);
// a little usability enhancement. actually it doesn't work right for grouped or sitemap
var limit = (opt == "numCols" ? store.getTaggedTiddlers(title).length : this.config.listOpts[opt].length);
var newPos = (pos + 1) % limit;
return this.config.listOpts[opt][newPos];
},
toggleTagglyOpt: function(title,opt) {
var newVal = this.getNextValue(title,opt);
this.setTagglyOpt(title,opt,newVal);
},
createListControl: function(place,title,type) {
var lingo = config.taggly.lingo;
var label;
var tooltip;
var onclick;
if ((type == "title" || type == "modified" || type == "created")) {
// "special" controls. a little tricky. derived from sortOrder and sortBy
label = lingo.labels[type];
tooltip = lingo.tooltips[type];
if (this.getTagglyOpt(title,"sortBy") == type) {
label += lingo.labels[this.getTagglyOpt(title,"sortOrder")];
onclick = function() {
config.taggly.toggleTagglyOpt(title,"sortOrder");
return false;
}
}
else {
onclick = function() {
config.taggly.setTagglyOpt(title,"sortBy",type);
config.taggly.setTagglyOpt(title,"sortOrder",config.taggly.config.listOpts.sortOrder[0]);
return false;
}
}
}
else {
// "regular" controls, nice and simple
label = lingo.labels[type == "numCols" ? type : this.getNextValue(title,type)];
tooltip = lingo.tooltips[type == "numCols" ? type : this.getNextValue(title,type)];
onclick = function() {
config.taggly.toggleTagglyOpt(title,type);
return false;
}
}
// hide button because commas don't have columns
if (!(this.getTagglyOpt(title,"listMode") == "commas" && type == "numCols"))
createTiddlyButton(place,label,tooltip,onclick,type == "hideState" ? "hidebutton" : "button");
},
makeColumns: function(orig,numCols) {
var listSize = orig.length;
var colSize = listSize/numCols;
var remainder = listSize % numCols;
var upperColsize = colSize;
var lowerColsize = colSize;
if (colSize != Math.floor(colSize)) {
// it's not an exact fit so..
upperColsize = Math.floor(colSize) + 1;
lowerColsize = Math.floor(colSize);
}
var output = [];
var c = 0;
for (var j=0;j<numCols;j++) {
var singleCol = [];
var thisSize = j < remainder ? upperColsize : lowerColsize;
for (var i=0;i<thisSize;i++)
singleCol.push(orig[c++]);
output.push(singleCol);
}
return output;
},
drawTable: function(place,columns,theClass) {
var newTable = createTiddlyElement(place,"table",null,theClass);
var newTbody = createTiddlyElement(newTable,"tbody");
var newTr = createTiddlyElement(newTbody,"tr");
for (var j=0;j<columns.length;j++) {
var colOutput = "";
for (var i=0;i<columns[j].length;i++)
colOutput += columns[j][i];
var newTd = createTiddlyElement(newTr,"td",null,"tagglyTagging"); // todo should not need this class
wikify(colOutput,newTd);
}
return newTable;
},
createTagglyList: function(place,title) {
switch(this.getTagglyOpt(title,"listMode")) {
case "group": return this.createTagglyListGrouped(place,title); break;
case "normal": return this.createTagglyListNormal(place,title,false); break;
case "commas": return this.createTagglyListNormal(place,title,true); break;
case "sitemap":return this.createTagglyListSiteMap(place,title); break;
}
},
getTaggingCount: function(title) {
// thanks to Doug Edmunds
if (this.config.showTaggingCounts) {
var tagCount = store.getTaggedTiddlers(title).length;
if (tagCount > 0)
return " ("+tagCount+")";
}
return "";
},
getExcerpt: function(inTiddlerTitle,title,indent) {
if (!indent)
indent = 1;
if (this.getTagglyOpt(inTiddlerTitle,"excerpts") == "excerpts") {
var t = store.getTiddler(title);
if (t) {
var text = t.text.replace(/\n/," ");
var marker = text.indexOf(this.config.excerptMarker);
if (marker != -1) {
return " {{excerpt{<nowiki>" + text.substr(0,marker) + "</nowiki>}}}";
}
else if (text.length < this.config.excerptSize) {
return " {{excerpt{<nowiki>" + t.text + "</nowiki>}}}";
}
else {
return " {{excerpt{<nowiki>" + t.text.substr(0,this.config.excerptSize) + "..." + "</nowiki>}}}";
}
}
}
else if (this.getTagglyOpt(inTiddlerTitle,"excerpts") == "contents") {
var t = store.getTiddler(title);
if (t) {
return "\n{{contents indent"+indent+"{\n" + t.text + "\n}}}";
}
}
else if (this.getTagglyOpt(inTiddlerTitle,"excerpts") == "sliders") {
var t = store.getTiddler(title);
if (t) {
return "<slider slide>\n{{contents{\n" + t.text + "\n}}}\n</slider>";
}
}
return "";
},
notHidden: function(t,inTiddler) {
if (typeof t == "string")
t = store.getTiddler(t);
return (!t || !t.tags.containsAny(this.config.excludeTags) ||
(inTiddler && this.config.excludeTags.contains(inTiddler)));
},
// this is for normal and commas mode
createTagglyListNormal: function(place,title,useCommas) {
var list = store.getTaggedTiddlers(title,this.getTagglyOpt(title,"sortBy"));
if (this.getTagglyOpt(title,"sortOrder") == "desc")
list = list.reverse();
var output = [];
var first = true;
for (var i=0;i<list.length;i++) {
if (this.notHidden(list[i],title)) {
var countString = this.getTaggingCount(list[i].title);
var excerpt = this.getExcerpt(title,list[i].title);
if (useCommas)
output.push((first ? "" : ", ") + "[[" + list[i].title + "]]" + countString + excerpt);
else
output.push("*[[" + list[i].title + "]]" + countString + excerpt + "\n");
first = false;
}
}
return this.drawTable(place,
this.makeColumns(output,useCommas ? 1 : parseInt(this.getTagglyOpt(title,"numCols"))),
useCommas ? "commas" : "normal");
},
// this is for the "grouped" mode
createTagglyListGrouped: function(place,title) {
var sortBy = this.getTagglyOpt(title,"sortBy");
var sortOrder = this.getTagglyOpt(title,"sortOrder");
var list = store.getTaggedTiddlers(title,sortBy);
if (sortOrder == "desc")
list = list.reverse();
var leftOvers = []
for (var i=0;i<list.length;i++)
leftOvers.push(list[i].title);
var allTagsHolder = {};
for (var i=0;i<list.length;i++) {
for (var j=0;j<list[i].tags.length;j++) {
if (list[i].tags[j] != title) { // not this tiddler
if (this.notHidden(list[i].tags[j],title)) {
if (!allTagsHolder[list[i].tags[j]])
allTagsHolder[list[i].tags[j]] = "";
if (this.notHidden(list[i],title)) {
allTagsHolder[list[i].tags[j]] += "**[["+list[i].title+"]]"
+ this.getTaggingCount(list[i].title) + this.getExcerpt(title,list[i].title) + "\n";
leftOvers.setItem(list[i].title,-1); // remove from leftovers. at the end it will contain the leftovers
}
}
}
}
}
var allTags = [];
for (var t in allTagsHolder)
allTags.push(t);
var sortHelper = function(a,b) {
if (a == b) return 0;
if (a < b) return -1;
return 1;
};
allTags.sort(function(a,b) {
var tidA = store.getTiddler(a);
var tidB = store.getTiddler(b);
if (sortBy == "title") return sortHelper(a,b);
else if (!tidA && !tidB) return 0;
else if (!tidA) return -1;
else if (!tidB) return +1;
else return sortHelper(tidA[sortBy],tidB[sortBy]);
});
var leftOverOutput = "";
for (var i=0;i<leftOvers.length;i++)
if (this.notHidden(leftOvers[i],title))
leftOverOutput += "*[["+leftOvers[i]+"]]" + this.getTaggingCount(leftOvers[i]) + this.getExcerpt(title,leftOvers[i]) + "\n";
var output = [];
if (sortOrder == "desc")
allTags.reverse();
else if (leftOverOutput != "")
// leftovers first...
output.push(leftOverOutput);
for (var i=0;i<allTags.length;i++)
if (allTagsHolder[allTags[i]] != "")
output.push("*[["+allTags[i]+"]]" + this.getTaggingCount(allTags[i]) + this.getExcerpt(title,allTags[i]) + "\n" + allTagsHolder[allTags[i]]);
if (sortOrder == "desc" && leftOverOutput != "")
// leftovers last...
output.push(leftOverOutput);
return this.drawTable(place,
this.makeColumns(output,parseInt(this.getTagglyOpt(title,"numCols"))),
"grouped");
},
// used to build site map
treeTraverse: function(title,depth,sortBy,sortOrder) {
var list = store.getTaggedTiddlers(title,sortBy);
if (sortOrder == "desc")
list.reverse();
var indent = "";
for (var j=0;j<depth;j++)
indent += "*"
var childOutput = "";
for (var i=0;i<list.length;i++)
if (list[i].title != title)
if (this.notHidden(list[i].title,this.config.inTiddler))
childOutput += this.treeTraverse(list[i].title,depth+1,sortBy,sortOrder);
if (depth == 0)
return childOutput;
else
return indent + "[["+title+"]]" + this.getTaggingCount(title) + this.getExcerpt(this.config.inTiddler,title,depth) + "\n" + childOutput;
},
// this if for the site map mode
createTagglyListSiteMap: function(place,title) {
this.config.inTiddler = title; // nasty. should pass it in to traverse probably
var output = this.treeTraverse(title,0,this.getTagglyOpt(title,"sortBy"),this.getTagglyOpt(title,"sortOrder"));
return this.drawTable(place,
this.makeColumns(output.split(/(?=^\*\[)/m),parseInt(this.getTagglyOpt(title,"numCols"))), // regexp magic
"sitemap"
);
},
macros: {
tagglyTagging: {
handler: function (place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
var refreshContainer = createTiddlyElement(place,"div");
// do some refresh magic to make it keep the list fresh - thanks Saq
refreshContainer.setAttribute("refresh","macro");
refreshContainer.setAttribute("macroName",macroName);
refreshContainer.setAttribute("title",tiddler.title);
this.refresh(refreshContainer);
},
refresh: function(place) {
var title = place.getAttribute("title");
removeChildren(place);
if (store.getTaggedTiddlers(title).length > 0) {
var lingo = config.taggly.lingo;
config.taggly.createListControl(place,title,"hideState");
if (config.taggly.getTagglyOpt(title,"hideState") == "show") {
createTiddlyElement(place,"span",null,"tagglyLabel",lingo.labels.label.format([title]));
config.taggly.createListControl(place,title,"title");
config.taggly.createListControl(place,title,"modified");
config.taggly.createListControl(place,title,"created");
config.taggly.createListControl(place,title,"listMode");
config.taggly.createListControl(place,title,"excerpts");
config.taggly.createListControl(place,title,"numCols");
config.taggly.createTagglyList(place,title);
}
}
}
}
},
// todo fix these up a bit
styles: [
"/*{{{*/",
"/* created by TagglyTaggingPlugin */",
".tagglyTagging { padding-top:0.5em; }",
".tagglyTagging li.listTitle { display:none; }",
".tagglyTagging ul {",
" margin-top:0px; padding-top:0.5em; padding-left:2em;",
" margin-bottom:0px; padding-bottom:0px;",
"}",
".tagglyTagging { vertical-align: top; margin:0px; padding:0px; }",
".tagglyTagging table { margin:0px; padding:0px; }",
".tagglyTagging .button { visibility:hidden; margin-left:3px; margin-right:3px; }",
".tagglyTagging .button, .tagglyTagging .hidebutton {",
" color:[[ColorPalette::TertiaryLight]]; font-size:90%;",
" border:0px; padding-left:0.3em;padding-right:0.3em;",
"}",
".tagglyTagging .button:hover, .hidebutton:hover, ",
".tagglyTagging .button:active, .hidebutton:active {",
" border:0px; background:[[ColorPalette::TertiaryPale]]; color:[[ColorPalette::TertiaryDark]];",
"}",
".selected .tagglyTagging .button { visibility:visible; }",
".tagglyTagging .hidebutton { color:[[ColorPalette::Background]]; }",
".selected .tagglyTagging .hidebutton { color:[[ColorPalette::TertiaryLight]] }",
".tagglyLabel { color:[[ColorPalette::TertiaryMid]]; font-size:90%; }",
".tagglyTagging ul {padding-top:0px; padding-bottom:0.5em; margin-left:1em; }",
".tagglyTagging ul ul {list-style-type:disc; margin-left:-1em;}",
".tagglyTagging ul ul li {margin-left:0.5em; }",
".editLabel { font-size:90%; padding-top:0.5em; }",
".tagglyTagging .commas { padding-left:1.8em; }",
"/* not technically tagglytagging but will put them here anyway */",
".tagglyTagged li.listTitle { display:none; }",
".tagglyTagged li { display: inline; font-size:90%; }",
".tagglyTagged ul { margin:0px; padding:0px; }",
".excerpt { color:[[ColorPalette::TertiaryDark]]; }",
"div.tagglyTagging table,",
"div.tagglyTagging table tr,",
"td.tagglyTagging",
" {border-style:none!important; }",
".tagglyTagging .contents { border-bottom:2px solid [[ColorPalette::TertiaryPale]]; padding:0 1em 1em 0.5em;",
" margin-bottom:0.5em; }",
".tagglyTagging .indent1 { margin-left:3em; }",
".tagglyTagging .indent2 { margin-left:4em; }",
".tagglyTagging .indent3 { margin-left:5em; }",
".tagglyTagging .indent4 { margin-left:6em; }",
".tagglyTagging .indent5 { margin-left:7em; }",
".tagglyTagging .indent6 { margin-left:8em; }",
".tagglyTagging .indent7 { margin-left:9em; }",
".tagglyTagging .indent8 { margin-left:10em; }",
".tagglyTagging .indent9 { margin-left:11em; }",
".tagglyTagging .indent10 { margin-left:12em; }",
"/*}}}*/",
""].join("\n"),
init: function() {
merge(config.macros,this.macros);
config.shadowTiddlers["TagglyTaggingStyles"] = this.styles;
store.addNotification("TagglyTaggingStyles",refreshStyles);
}
};
config.taggly.init();
//}}}
/***
InlineSlidersPlugin
By Saq Imtiaz
http://tw.lewcid.org/sandbox/#InlineSlidersPlugin
// syntax adjusted to not clash with NestedSlidersPlugin
***/
//{{{
config.formatters.unshift( {
name: "inlinesliders",
// match: "\\+\\+\\+\\+|\\<slider",
match: "\\<slider",
// lookaheadRegExp: /(?:\+\+\+\+|<slider) (.*?)(?:>?)\n((?:.|\n)*?)\n(?:====|<\/slider>)/mg,
lookaheadRegExp: /(?:<slider) (.*?)(?:>)\n((?:.|\n)*?)\n(?:<\/slider>)/mg,
handler: function(w) {
this.lookaheadRegExp.lastIndex = w.matchStart;
var lookaheadMatch = this.lookaheadRegExp.exec(w.source)
if(lookaheadMatch && lookaheadMatch.index == w.matchStart ) {
var btn = createTiddlyButton(w.output,lookaheadMatch[1] + " "+"\u00BB",lookaheadMatch[1],this.onClickSlider,"button sliderButton");
var panel = createTiddlyElement(w.output,"div",null,"sliderPanel");
panel.style.display = "none";
wikify(lookaheadMatch[2],panel);
w.nextMatch = lookaheadMatch.index + lookaheadMatch[0].length;
}
},
onClickSlider : function(e) {
if(!e) var e = window.event;
var n = this.nextSibling;
n.style.display = (n.style.display=="none") ? "block" : "none";
return false;
}
});
//}}}
The Question of Influence in
The Geographer (Ian Vermeer, 1669)
Considering the question of influence upon artists and their works of art, I will discuss a genre painting from the Netherlands of the seventeenth-century. It is commonly called The Geographer and was completed around 1668-69 by Ian Vermeer during the Dutch Golden Age. It is painted with oil on canvas and is 53 x 46.6 cm in size. Nowadays, it is displayed in the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Very much like the geographer in The Geographer, it seems that Vermeer was a very patient and attentive painter and a rather contemplative observer. Many of his works reveal those deep qualities of a simple and silent moment which lay hidden within the observable and The Geographer is a good example of such a moment.
There are several intriguing aspects of influence which I noticed while studying The Geographer and in this paper I will try to show (i) the influence of his hometown Delft, (ii) the role of science in his art and (iii) the influence of two artistic styles, namely that of Caravaggism and that of the Dutch tradition.
Delft
It appears that Vermeer has spent most of his life - which unfortunately was not all too long - in the southern Dutch town of Delft (close to Den-Haag). There, he was baptised on the 31st of October 1632 and there, in the very same neighbourhood, he died forty-three years later. It seems he had not travelled to other countries at all, nor visited other cities too often.
Obviously, it is very difficult to know such things with certainty about a man who lived more than 370 years ago, but this biographical detail does fit in rather well when looking at The Geographer in the context of a life spent mostly in one place, as well as in the context of his other works. Thirty-three out of Thirty-five paintings attributed to him are interior paintings, and most of them are genre paintings. Yet, in The Geographer there appears an interesting contrast: Vermeer portraits a man who studies the earth, who is an expert in navigation and topography, who is aware of vast distances, the heights of mountains and the endlessness of oceans, while he himself is "a man of Delft"1.
But than again, The Geographer and Ian Vermeer the painter acctualy appear to be of one and the same kind. The geographer deals not only with the territory, but, as depicted here, with maps, the accurate representation of (the earth's) surface. He sits there, in his room, bent over his nautical charts and maps, with his dividers and books to hand, engaged in a combination of intellectual and manual activity. He knows the earth without leaving his chamber. He travels not outwards through the world, but rather inwards through his thoughts and problems which are represented in his notebooks and skatches. He is a man of knowledge and even so much more in this very moment of insight, in which he might be discovering something of utter importance.
In the same manner, Vermeer seems to be seeking to represent (or map) a fading moment or a simple, inconspicuous action from the surface of time - and like the geographer, as accurately as possible. I would argue that this repeated theme, capturing a moment in an interior, as well as his inclination to work with such fine and minute detail even beyond that which appears to the naked eye (such as creating the mood by interrelation of adjoining colours, or the hidden colouring of the black curtain which serves as a repoussoir), can be seen as the result of a life spent mainly in one location, which enabled him to observe daily activities very closely and render such fine nuances of ephemeral moments and actions (the complex illumination for instance or the soft indication of movement) into paintings which invoke a feeling of great significance and beauty for the seemingly unimportant and profane.
Science
Science, if considered as a way of gaining knowledge about the world through "systematized observation"2 and practice, may describe Vermeer's approach to art rather well.
The Geographer can be regarded as depicting a particular scientist as well as maybe the archetype of a scientist. It is hypothesized in the literature that Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, a famous contemporary of Vermeer, modelled for this painting. A more allegorical interpretation tough might suggest that "the geographer, student of the earth, charts the proper course for temporal life."3
Furthermore, Vermeer seems to have applied considerable scientific knowledge of optics, colour and perspective in his work. As mentioned in Gardner's Art Through the Ages, "Vermeer realized that shadows are not colorless and dark, that adjoining colors affect each other, and that light is composed of colors."4
Much is speculated about his use of the camera obscura, and his knowledge of such photographic effects as the "circles of confusion". In The Geographer one can see so called pointillés especially well in the brighter areas of the oriental carpet covering the geographer's desk. These, among other hints, and as his mellow, almost photographic style, seem to approve Vermeer's employment of the camera obscura, as pointillés appear as an ocular effect of the camera. Van Leeuwenhoek by the way, is considered to be one of the founders of microbiology. He has developed and improved many microscopes in his life time and might have shared his knowledge about lenses and light with Vermeer.
Yet another reason for assuming the importance of science and technology in Vermeer's work is the period Vermeer has lived in. In the history of the Nederlands, the seventeenth-century is considered to be the Dutch Golden Age, a time in which Dutch science and philosophy flourished and were among the most reputable in Europe.
Art
Briefly considering two artistic styles which probably have influenced Vermeer's work, I would like to point out the influence of Caravaggism, which Vermeer might have encountered in the school of Utrecht during his time of apprenticeship and the Dutch style, which in contrast to the Italian style of the Renaissance, which was more concerned with form and perspective, dealt more with colour and emotion and the detailed rendering of objects.
Like Vermeer, Cravaggio (1571-1610), who had a great impact on art throughout Europe, specialized in genre painting and still life. He was guided by nature, rather than the example of the old masters or a particular school, and brought a new dimension to the study of nature through his extremely naturalist paintings. His art was about representation rather than interpretation, and in the same manner The Geographer is a very detailed and realistic work.
The influence of the Dutch tradition can be found in the application of complex colours (as seen for example in the geographer's Japanese robe), the amazing play of light falling through the window, the careful rendering of objects (such as the globe on top of the closet, the details of the map on the wall, or the patterns of the chair beneath it) and by the profound intimacy of the scene in general.
In conclusion, I would say that it is this combination of precise, naturalistic or even scientific representation and the sensitive, contemplative ability of observation and rendering of an artist who seems to have been able to recognize the sheer beauty of even the most trivial moments of daily life which make Vermeer's works so unique and original. As Ernst Gombrich puts it: "It is hard to argue the reasons that make such a simple and unassuming picture one of the greatest masterpieces of all time. But few who have been lucky enough to see the original will disagree with me that it is something of a miracle."5
see pdf file for annotations
Bibliography
Bailey, Anthony, A View of Delft, London: Pimlico 2002
Dominiczak, Marek H. , Painting, Poetry and Optics: Johannes Vermeer, CCLM ArtSience Section, 2002
Gardner, Helen, Gardner’s Art through the Ages, 10th ed. / Richard G. Tansey, Fred S. Kleiner, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1996
Gombrich, E. M., The Story of Art, 13th edition , London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 1979
Koning, Hans, The World of Vermeer, Nederland: Time-Life International 1977
Nash, John, Vermeer, London: Scala Pub. Ltd. 1991
Websites
www.essentialvermeer.com (accesed on 2.12.2007)
www.artchive.com - article about Vermeer: The Geogarpher (accesed on 2.12.2007)
www.vermeerscamera.co.uk - Chapter 3: Who taught Vermeer about optics? (accesed on 2.12.2007)
© Copyright 2002, Jim Loy
In Greek mythology, the Sphinx sat outside of Thebes and asked this riddle of all travelers who passed by. If the traveler failed to solve the riddle, then the Sphinx killed him/her. And if the traveler answered the riddle correctly, then the Sphinx would destroy herself. The riddle:
What goes on four legs in the morning, on two legs at noon, and on three legs in the evening?
Oedipus solved the riddle, and the Sphinx destroyed herself.
The solution: A man, who crawls on all fours as a baby, walks on two legs as an adult, and walks with a cane in old age.
Of course morning, noon, and night are metaphors for the times in a man's (person's) life. Such metaphors are common in riddles. There were two Thebes, apparently this Thebes was the one in Greece. And this Sphinx was apparently not the one at Giza, in Egypt.
GregoryBateson, from MindAndNature
read more: http://www.oikos.org/mind&nature.htm
What pattern connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose and all the four of them to me? And me to you? And all the six of us to the amoeba in one direction and to the back-ward schizophrenic in another?
I want to tell you why I have been a biologist all my life, what it is that I have been trying to study. What thoughts can I share regarding the total biological world in which we live and have our being? How is it put together?
What now must be said is difficult, appears to be quite empty, and is of very great and deep importance to you and to me. At this historic juncture, I believe it to be important to the survival of the whole biosphere which you know is threatened.
What is the pattern which connects all the living creatures?
[...]
"Break the pattern which connects the items of learning and you necessarily destroy all quality."
I offer you the phrase the pattern which connects as a synonym, another possible title for this book.
The pattern which connects. Why do schools teach almost nothing of the pattern which connects? Is it that teachers know that they carry the kiss of death which will turn to tastelessness whatever they touch or teach anything of real-life importance? Or is it that they carry the kiss of death because they dare not teach anything of real-life importance? What’s wrong with them?
more GregoryBateson in ScienCe
PlugIn catalog - http://tiddlyvault.tiddlyspot.com/
add comments PlugIn - http://www.tiddlytools.com/
TiddlyWiki is an ingenious free application that is ideal for taking and organizing notes, organizing to-do lists, and even managing small personal databases. It is basically an html file (a webpage) stuffed with special code that allows you to create small snippets of information called Tiddlers. These tiddlers can be linked by tags and hyperlinks, and tucked away. When you need them again, you can use a search window, your own personalized tables of contents, or any number of handy tiddler indexes to find them quickly. Think ofTiddlyWiki as an easily-searchable catalog of 3x5 cards and post-it notes all linked together in one file.
You don't need to buy a program to use TiddlyWiki. It is an html file that you can read and edit using nothing more than your Internet browser. And you don't need to be online to useTiddlyWiki. You can quickly download any TiddlyWiki to your computer to use offline. You can then take it with you wherever you go, on a USB memory stick (called a “Wiki on a Stick”) and edit it on any computer that has a relatively recent web browser, preferably Mozilla’s free browser Firefox. http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/
TiddlyWiki was invented by Jeremy Ruston. His site, with the original documentation and other information, can be found at http://www.tiddlywiki.com/.
/***
| Name|ToggleTagPlugin|
| Description|Makes a checkbox which toggles a tag in a tiddler|
| Version|3.0 ($Rev: 1845 $)|
| Date|$Date: 2007-03-16 15:19:22 +1000 (Fri, 16 Mar 2007) $|
| Source|http://tiddlyspot.com/mptw/#ToggleTagMacro|
| Author|Simon Baird <simon.baird@gmail.com>|
| License|http://mptw.tiddlyspot.com/#TheBSDLicense|
!Usage
{{{<<toggleTag }}}//{{{TagName TiddlerName LabelText}}}//{{{>>}}}
* TagName - the tag to be toggled, default value "checked"
* TiddlerName - the tiddler to toggle the tag in, default value the current tiddler
* LabelText - the text (gets wikified) to put next to the check box, default value is '{{{[[TagName]]}}}' or '{{{[[TagName]] [[TiddlerName]]}}}'
(If a parameter is '.' then the default will be used)
Examples:
|Code|Description|Example|h
|{{{<<toggleTag>>}}}|Toggles the default tag (checked) in this tiddler|<<toggleTag>>|
|{{{<<toggleTag TagName>>}}}|Toggles the TagName tag in this tiddler|<<toggleTag TagName>>|
|{{{<<toggleTag TagName TiddlerName>>}}}|Toggles the TagName tag in the TiddlerName tiddler|<<toggleTag TagName TiddlerName>>|
|{{{<<toggleTag TagName TiddlerName 'click me'>>}}}|Same but with custom label|<<toggleTag TagName TiddlerName 'click me'>>|
|{{{<<toggleTag . . 'click me'>>}}}|dot means use default value|<<toggleTag . . 'click me'>>|
Notes:
* If TiddlerName doesn't exist it will be silently created
* Set label to '-' to specify no label
* See also http://mgtd-alpha.tiddlyspot.com/#ToggleTag2
!Known issues
* Doesn't smoothly handle the case where you toggle a tag in a tiddler that is current open for editing
***/
//{{{
merge(config.macros,{
toggleTag: {
doRefreshAll: true,
createIfRequired: true,
shortLabel: "[[%0]]",
longLabel: "[[%0]] [[%1]]",
handler: function(place,macroName,params,wikifier,paramString,tiddler) {
var tag = (params[0] && params[0] != '.') ? params[0] : "checked";
var title = (params[1] && params[1] != '.') ? params[1] : tiddler.title;
var defaultLabel = (title == tiddler.title ? this.shortLabel : this.longLabel);
var label = (params[2] && params[2] != '.') ? params[2] : defaultLabel;
label = (label == '-' ? '' : label);
var theTiddler = title == tiddler.title ? tiddler : store.getTiddler(title);
var cb = createTiddlyCheckbox(place, label.format([tag,title]), theTiddler && theTiddler.isTagged(tag), function(e) {
if (!store.tiddlerExists(title)) {
if (config.macros.toggleTag.createIfRequired) {
var content = store.getTiddlerText(title); // just in case it's a shadow
store.saveTiddler(title,title,content?content:"",config.options.txtUserName,new Date(),null);
}
else
return false;
}
store.setTiddlerTag(title,this.checked,tag);
return true;
});
}
}
});
//}}}
/***
Contains the stuff you need to use Tiddlyspot
Note you must also have UploadPlugin installed
***/
//{{{
// edit this if you are migrating sites or retrofitting an existing TW
config.tiddlyspotSiteId = 'greeeni';
// make it so you can by default see edit controls via http
config.options.chkHttpReadOnly = false;
window.readOnly = false; // make sure of it (for tw 2.2)
// disable autosave in d3
if (window.location.protocol != "file:")
config.options.chkGTDLazyAutoSave = false;
// tweak shadow tiddlers to add upload button, password entry box etc
with (config.shadowTiddlers) {
SiteUrl = 'http://'+config.tiddlyspotSiteId+'.tiddlyspot.com';
SideBarOptions = SideBarOptions.replace(/(<<saveChanges>>)/,"$1<<tiddler TspotSidebar>>");
OptionsPanel = OptionsPanel.replace(/^/,"<<tiddler TspotOptions>>");
DefaultTiddlers = DefaultTiddlers.replace(/^/,"[[WelcomeToTiddlyspot]] ");
MainMenu = MainMenu.replace(/^/,"[[WelcomeToTiddlyspot]] ");
}
// create some shadow tiddler content
merge(config.shadowTiddlers,{
'WelcomeToTiddlyspot':[
"This document is a ~TiddlyWiki from tiddlyspot.com. A ~TiddlyWiki is an electronic notebook that is great for managing todo lists, personal information, and all sorts of things.",
"",
"@@font-weight:bold;font-size:1.3em;color:#444; //What now?// @@ Before you can save any changes, you need to enter your password in the form below. Then configure privacy and other site settings at your [[control panel|http://" + config.tiddlyspotSiteId + ".tiddlyspot.com/controlpanel]] (your control panel username is //" + config.tiddlyspotSiteId + "//).",
"<<tiddler TspotControls>>",
"See also GettingStarted.",
"",
"@@font-weight:bold;font-size:1.3em;color:#444; //Working online// @@ You can edit this ~TiddlyWiki right now, and save your changes using the \"save to web\" button in the column on the right.",
"",
"@@font-weight:bold;font-size:1.3em;color:#444; //Working offline// @@ A fully functioning copy of this ~TiddlyWiki can be saved onto your hard drive or USB stick. You can make changes and save them locally without being connected to the Internet. When you're ready to sync up again, just click \"upload\" and your ~TiddlyWiki will be saved back to tiddlyspot.com.",
"",
"@@font-weight:bold;font-size:1.3em;color:#444; //Help!// @@ Find out more about ~TiddlyWiki at [[TiddlyWiki.com|http://tiddlywiki.com]]. Also visit [[TiddlyWiki Guides|http://tiddlywikiguides.org]] for documentation on learning and using ~TiddlyWiki. New users are especially welcome on the [[TiddlyWiki mailing list|http://groups.google.com/group/TiddlyWiki]], which is an excellent place to ask questions and get help. If you have a tiddlyspot related problem email [[tiddlyspot support|mailto:support@tiddlyspot.com]].",
"",
"@@font-weight:bold;font-size:1.3em;color:#444; //Enjoy :)// @@ We hope you like using your tiddlyspot.com site. Please email [[feedback@tiddlyspot.com|mailto:feedback@tiddlyspot.com]] with any comments or suggestions."
].join("\n"),
'TspotControls':[
"| tiddlyspot password:|<<option pasUploadPassword>>|",
"| site management:|<<upload http://" + config.tiddlyspotSiteId + ".tiddlyspot.com/store.cgi index.html . . " + config.tiddlyspotSiteId + ">>//(requires tiddlyspot password)//<<br>>[[control panel|http://" + config.tiddlyspotSiteId + ".tiddlyspot.com/controlpanel]], [[download (go offline)|http://" + config.tiddlyspotSiteId + ".tiddlyspot.com/download]]|",
"| links:|[[tiddlyspot.com|http://tiddlyspot.com/]], [[FAQs|http://faq.tiddlyspot.com/]], [[announcements|http://announce.tiddlyspot.com/]], [[blog|http://tiddlyspot.com/blog/]], email [[support|mailto:support@tiddlyspot.com]] & [[feedback|mailto:feedback@tiddlyspot.com]], [[donate|http://tiddlyspot.com/?page=donate]]|"
].join("\n"),
'TspotSidebar':[
"<<upload http://" + config.tiddlyspotSiteId + ".tiddlyspot.com/store.cgi index.html . . " + config.tiddlyspotSiteId + ">><html><a href='http://" + config.tiddlyspotSiteId + ".tiddlyspot.com/download' class='button'>download</a></html>"
].join("\n"),
'TspotOptions':[
"tiddlyspot password:",
"<<option pasUploadPassword>>",
""
].join("\n")
});
//}}}
| !date | !user | !location | !storeUrl | !uploadDir | !toFilename | !backupdir | !origin |
| 03/09/2008 15:53:15 | greeeni | [[/|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/]] | [[store.cgi|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/store.cgi]] | . | [[index.html | http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/index.html]] | . | ok |
| 03/09/2008 15:57:56 | greeeni | [[/|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/]] | [[store.cgi|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/store.cgi]] | . | [[index.html | http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/index.html]] | . |
| 10/09/2008 22:58:24 | greeeni | [[/|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/]] | [[store.cgi|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/store.cgi]] | . | [[index.html | http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/index.html]] | . |
| 16/10/2008 14:07:30 | greeeni | [[/|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/]] | [[store.cgi|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/store.cgi]] | . | [[index.html | http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/index.html]] | . |
| 09/11/2008 14:44:39 | greeeni | [[/|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/]] | [[store.cgi|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/store.cgi]] | . | [[index.html | http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/index.html]] | . | ok |
| 09/11/2008 18:20:51 | greeeni | [[/|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/]] | [[store.cgi|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/store.cgi]] | . | [[index.html | http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/index.html]] | . |
| 18/11/2008 11:25:48 | GreeEni | [[/|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/]] | [[store.cgi|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/store.cgi]] | . | [[index.html | http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/index.html]] | . | ok |
| 18/11/2008 11:30:37 | GreeEni | [[/|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/]] | [[store.cgi|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/store.cgi]] | . | [[index.html | http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/index.html]] | . |
| 09/12/2008 14:29:56 | greeeni | [[/|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/]] | [[store.cgi|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/store.cgi]] | . | [[index.html | http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/index.html]] | . |
| 12/12/2008 13:59:05 | GreeEni | [[/|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/]] | [[store.cgi|http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/store.cgi]] | . | [[index.html | http://greeeni.tiddlyspot.com/index.html]] | . |
/***
|''Name:''|PasswordOptionPlugin|
|''Description:''|Extends TiddlyWiki options with non encrypted password option.|
|''Version:''|1.0.2|
|''Date:''|Apr 19, 2007|
|''Source:''|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#PasswordOptionPlugin|
|''Author:''|BidiX (BidiX (at) bidix (dot) info)|
|''License:''|[[BSD open source license|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#%5B%5BBSD%20open%20source%20license%5D%5D ]]|
|''~CoreVersion:''|2.2.0 (Beta 5)|
***/
//{{{
version.extensions.PasswordOptionPlugin = {
major: 1, minor: 0, revision: 2,
date: new Date("Apr 19, 2007"),
source: 'http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#PasswordOptionPlugin',
author: 'BidiX (BidiX (at) bidix (dot) info',
license: '[[BSD open source license|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#%5B%5BBSD%20open%20source%20license%5D%5D]]',
coreVersion: '2.2.0 (Beta 5)'
};
config.macros.option.passwordCheckboxLabel = "Save this password on this computer";
config.macros.option.passwordInputType = "password"; // password | text
setStylesheet(".pasOptionInput {width: 11em;}\n","passwordInputTypeStyle");
merge(config.macros.option.types, {
'pas': {
elementType: "input",
valueField: "value",
eventName: "onkeyup",
className: "pasOptionInput",
typeValue: config.macros.option.passwordInputType,
create: function(place,type,opt,className,desc) {
// password field
config.macros.option.genericCreate(place,'pas',opt,className,desc);
// checkbox linked with this password "save this password on this computer"
config.macros.option.genericCreate(place,'chk','chk'+opt,className,desc);
// text savePasswordCheckboxLabel
place.appendChild(document.createTextNode(config.macros.option.passwordCheckboxLabel));
},
onChange: config.macros.option.genericOnChange
}
});
merge(config.optionHandlers['chk'], {
get: function(name) {
// is there an option linked with this chk ?
var opt = name.substr(3);
if (config.options[opt])
saveOptionCookie(opt);
return config.options[name] ? "true" : "false";
}
});
merge(config.optionHandlers, {
'pas': {
get: function(name) {
if (config.options["chk"+name]) {
return encodeCookie(config.options[name].toString());
} else {
return "";
}
},
set: function(name,value) {config.options[name] = decodeCookie(value);}
}
});
// need to reload options to load passwordOptions
loadOptionsCookie();
/*
if (!config.options['pasPassword'])
config.options['pasPassword'] = '';
merge(config.optionsDesc,{
pasPassword: "Test password"
});
*/
//}}}
/***
|''Name:''|UploadPlugin|
|''Description:''|Save to web a TiddlyWiki|
|''Version:''|4.1.0|
|''Date:''|May 5, 2007|
|''Source:''|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#UploadPlugin|
|''Documentation:''|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#UploadPluginDoc|
|''Author:''|BidiX (BidiX (at) bidix (dot) info)|
|''License:''|[[BSD open source license|http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#%5B%5BBSD%20open%20source%20license%5D%5D ]]|
|''~CoreVersion:''|2.2.0 (#3125)|
|''Requires:''|PasswordOptionPlugin|
***/
//{{{
version.extensions.UploadPlugin = {
major: 4, minor: 1, revision: 0,
date: new Date("May 5, 2007"),
source: 'http://tiddlywiki.bidix.info/#UploadPlugin',
author: 'BidiX (BidiX (at) bidix (dot) info',
coreVersion: '2.2.0 (#3125)'
};
//
// Environment
//
if (!window.bidix) window.bidix = {}; // bidix namespace
bidix.debugMode = false; // true to activate both in Plugin and UploadService
//
// Upload Macro
//
config.macros.upload = {
// default values
defaultBackupDir: '', //no backup
defaultStoreScript: "store.php",
defaultToFilename: "index.html",
defaultUploadDir: ".",
authenticateUser: true // UploadService Authenticate User
};
config.macros.upload.label = {
promptOption: "Save and Upload this TiddlyWiki with UploadOptions",
promptParamMacro: "Save and Upload this TiddlyWiki in %0",
saveLabel: "save to web",
saveToDisk: "save to disk",
uploadLabel: "upload"
};
config.macros.upload.messages = {
noStoreUrl: "No store URL in parmeters or options",
usernameOrPasswordMissing: "Username or password missing"
};
config.macros.upload.handler = function(place,macroName,params) {
if (readOnly)
return;
var label;
if (document.location.toString().substr(0,4) == "http")
label = this.label.saveLabel;
else
label = this.label.uploadLabel;
var prompt;
if (params[0]) {
prompt = this.label.promptParamMacro.toString().format([this.destFile(params[0],
(params[1] ? params[1]:bidix.basename(window.location.toString())), params[3])]);
} else {
prompt = this.label.promptOption;
}
createTiddlyButton(place, label, prompt, function() {config.macros.upload.action(params);}, null, null, this.accessKey);
};
config.macros.upload.action = function(params)
{
// for missing macro parameter set value from options
var storeUrl = params[0] ? params[0] : config.options.txtUploadStoreUrl;
var toFilename = params[1] ? params[1] : config.options.txtUploadFilename;
var backupDir = params[2] ? params[2] : config.options.txtUploadBackupDir;
var uploadDir = params[3] ? params[3] : config.options.txtUploadDir;
var username = params[4] ? params[4] : config.options.txtUploadUserName;
var password = config.options.pasUploadPassword; // for security reason no password as macro parameter
// for still missing parameter set default value
if ((!storeUrl) && (document.location.toString().substr(0,4) == "http"))
storeUrl = bidix.dirname(document.location.toString())+'/'+config.macros.upload.defaultStoreScript;
if (storeUrl.substr(0,4) != "http")
storeUrl = bidix.dirname(document.location.toString()) +'/'+ storeUrl;
if (!toFilename)
toFilename = bidix.basename(window.location.toString());
if (!toFilename)
toFilename = config.macros.upload.defaultToFilename;
if (!uploadDir)
uploadDir = config.macros.upload.defaultUploadDir;
if (!backupDir)
backupDir = config.macros.upload.defaultBackupDir;
// report error if still missing
if (!storeUrl) {
alert(config.macros.upload.messages.noStoreUrl);
clearMessage();
return false;
}
if (config.macros.upload.authenticateUser && (!username || !password)) {
alert(config.macros.upload.messages.usernameOrPasswordMissing);
clearMessage();
return false;
}
bidix.upload.uploadChanges(false,null,storeUrl, toFilename, uploadDir, backupDir, username, password);
return false;
};
config.macros.upload.destFile = function(storeUrl, toFilename, uploadDir)
{
if (!storeUrl)
return null;
var dest = bidix.dirname(storeUrl);
if (uploadDir && uploadDir != '.')
dest = dest + '/' + uploadDir;
dest = dest + '/' + toFilename;
return dest;
};
//
// uploadOptions Macro
//
config.macros.uploadOptions = {
handler: function(place,macroName,params) {
var wizard = new Wizard();
wizard.createWizard(place,this.wizardTitle);
wizard.addStep(this.step1Title,this.step1Html);
var markList = wizard.getElement("markList");
var listWrapper = document.createElement("div");
markList.parentNode.insertBefore(listWrapper,markList);
wizard.setValue("listWrapper",listWrapper);
this.refreshOptions(listWrapper,false);
var uploadCaption;
if (document.location.toString().substr(0,4) == "http")
uploadCaption = config.macros.upload.label.saveLabel;
else
uploadCaption = config.macros.upload.label.uploadLabel;
wizard.setButtons([
{caption: uploadCaption, tooltip: config.macros.upload.label.promptOption,
onClick: config.macros.upload.action},
{caption: this.cancelButton, tooltip: this.cancelButtonPrompt, onClick: this.onCancel}
]);
},
refreshOptions: function(listWrapper) {
var uploadOpts = [
"txtUploadUserName",
"pasUploadPassword",
"txtUploadStoreUrl",
"txtUploadDir",
"txtUploadFilename",
"txtUploadBackupDir",
"chkUploadLog",
"txtUploadLogMaxLine",
]
var opts = [];
for(i=0; i<uploadOpts.length; i++) {
var opt = {};
opts.push()
opt.option = "";
n = uploadOpts[i];
opt.name = n;
opt.lowlight = !config.optionsDesc[n];
opt.description = opt.lowlight ? this.unknownDescription : config.optionsDesc[n];
opts.push(opt);
}
var listview = ListView.create(listWrapper,opts,this.listViewTemplate);
for(n=0; n<opts.length; n++) {
var type = opts[n].name.substr(0,3);
var h = config.macros.option.types[type];
if (h && h.create) {
h.create(opts[n].colElements['option'],type,opts[n].name,opts[n].name,"no");
}
}
},
onCancel: function(e)
{
backstage.switchTab(null);
return false;
},
wizardTitle: "Upload with options",
step1Title: "These options are saved in cookies in your browser",
step1Html: "<input type='hidden' name='markList'></input><br>",
cancelButton: "Cancel",
cancelButtonPrompt: "Cancel prompt",
listViewTemplate: {
columns: [
{name: 'Description', field: 'description', title: "Description", type: 'WikiText'},
{name: 'Option', field: 'option', title: "Option", type: 'String'},
{name: 'Name', field: 'name', title: "Name", type: 'String'}
],
rowClasses: [
{className: 'lowlight', field: 'lowlight'}
]}
}
//
// upload functions
//
if (!bidix.upload) bidix.upload = {};
if (!bidix.upload.messages) bidix.upload.messages = {
//from saving
invalidFileError: "The original file '%0' does not appear to be a valid TiddlyWiki",
backupSaved: "Backup saved",
backupFailed: "Failed to upload backup file",
rssSaved: "RSS feed uploaded",
rssFailed: "Failed to upload RSS feed file",
emptySaved: "Empty template uploaded",
emptyFailed: "Failed to upload empty template file",
mainSaved: "Main TiddlyWiki file uploaded",
mainFailed: "Failed to upload main TiddlyWiki file. Your changes have not been saved",
//specific upload
loadOriginalHttpPostError: "Can't get original file",
aboutToSaveOnHttpPost: 'About to upload on %0 ...',
storePhpNotFound: "The store script '%0' was not found."
};
bidix.upload.uploadChanges = function(onlyIfDirty,tiddlers,storeUrl,toFilename,uploadDir,backupDir,username,password)
{
var callback = function(status,uploadParams,original,url,xhr) {
if (!status) {
displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.loadOriginalHttpPostError);
return;
}
if (bidix.debugMode)
alert(original.substr(0,500)+"\n...");
// Locate the storeArea div's
var posDiv = locateStoreArea(original);
if((posDiv[0] == -1) || (posDiv[1] == -1)) {
alert(config.messages.invalidFileError.format([localPath]));
return;
}
bidix.upload.uploadRss(uploadParams,original,posDiv);
};
if(onlyIfDirty && !store.isDirty())
return;
clearMessage();
// save on localdisk ?
if (document.location.toString().substr(0,4) == "file") {
var path = document.location.toString();
var localPath = getLocalPath(path);
saveChanges();
}
// get original
var uploadParams = Array(storeUrl,toFilename,uploadDir,backupDir,username,password);
var originalPath = document.location.toString();
// If url is a directory : add index.html
if (originalPath.charAt(originalPath.length-1) == "/")
originalPath = originalPath + "index.html";
var dest = config.macros.upload.destFile(storeUrl,toFilename,uploadDir);
var log = new bidix.UploadLog();
log.startUpload(storeUrl, dest, uploadDir, backupDir);
displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.aboutToSaveOnHttpPost.format([dest]));
if (bidix.debugMode)
alert("about to execute Http - GET on "+originalPath);
var r = doHttp("GET",originalPath,null,null,null,null,callback,uploadParams,null);
if (typeof r == "string")
displayMessage(r);
return r;
};
bidix.upload.uploadRss = function(uploadParams,original,posDiv)
{
var callback = function(status,params,responseText,url,xhr) {
if(status) {
var destfile = responseText.substring(responseText.indexOf("destfile:")+9,responseText.indexOf("\n", responseText.indexOf("destfile:")));
displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.rssSaved,bidix.dirname(url)+'/'+destfile);
bidix.upload.uploadMain(params[0],params[1],params[2]);
} else {
displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.rssFailed);
}
};
// do uploadRss
if(config.options.chkGenerateAnRssFeed) {
var rssPath = uploadParams[1].substr(0,uploadParams[1].lastIndexOf(".")) + ".xml";
var rssUploadParams = Array(uploadParams[0],rssPath,uploadParams[2],'',uploadParams[4],uploadParams[5]);
bidix.upload.httpUpload(rssUploadParams,convertUnicodeToUTF8(generateRss()),callback,Array(uploadParams,original,posDiv));
} else {
bidix.upload.uploadMain(uploadParams,original,posDiv);
}
};
bidix.upload.uploadMain = function(uploadParams,original,posDiv)
{
var callback = function(status,params,responseText,url,xhr) {
var log = new bidix.UploadLog();
if(status) {
// if backupDir specified
if ((params[3]) && (responseText.indexOf("backupfile:") > -1)) {
var backupfile = responseText.substring(responseText.indexOf("backupfile:")+11,responseText.indexOf("\n", responseText.indexOf("backupfile:")));
displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.backupSaved,bidix.dirname(url)+'/'+backupfile);
}
var destfile = responseText.substring(responseText.indexOf("destfile:")+9,responseText.indexOf("\n", responseText.indexOf("destfile:")));
displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.mainSaved,bidix.dirname(url)+'/'+destfile);
store.setDirty(false);
log.endUpload("ok");
} else {
alert(bidix.upload.messages.mainFailed);
displayMessage(bidix.upload.messages.mainFailed);
log.endUpload("failed");
}
};
// do uploadMain
var revised = bidix.upload.updateOriginal(original,posDiv);
bidix.upload.httpUpload(uploadParams,revised,callback,uploadParams);
};
bidix.upload.httpUpload = function(uploadParams,data,callback,params)
{
var localCallback = function(status,params,responseText,url,xhr) {
url = (url.indexOf("nocache=") < 0 ? url : url.substring(0,url.indexOf("nocache=")-1));
if (xhr.status == httpStatus.NotFound)
alert(bidix.upload.messages.storePhpNotFound.format([url]));
if ((bidix.debugMode) || (responseText.indexOf("Debug mode") >= 0 )) {
alert(responseText);
if (responseText.indexOf("Debug mode") >= 0 )
responseText = responseText.substring(responseText.indexOf("\n\n")+2);
} else if (responseText.charAt(0) != '0')
alert(responseText);
if (responseText.charAt(0) != '0')
status = null;
callback(status,params,responseText,url,xhr);
};
// do httpUpload
var boundary = "---------------------------"+"AaB03x";
var uploadFormName = "UploadPlugin";
// compose headers data
var sheader = "";
sheader += "--" + boundary + "\r\nContent-disposition: form-data; name=\"";
sheader += uploadFormName +"\"\r\n\r\n";
sheader += "backupDir="+uploadParams[3] +
";user=" + uploadParams[4] +
";password=" + uploadParams[5] +
";uploaddir=" + uploadParams[2];
if (bidix.debugMode)
sheader += ";debug=1";
sheader += ";;\r\n";
sheader += "\r\n" + "--" + boundary + "\r\n";
sheader += "Content-disposition: form-data; name=\"userfile\"; filename=\""+uploadParams[1]+"\"\r\n";
sheader += "Content-Type: text/html;charset=UTF-8" + "\r\n";
sheader += "Content-Length: " + data.length + "\r\n\r\n";
// compose trailer data
var strailer = new String();
strailer = "\r\n--" + boundary + "--\r\n";
data = sheader + data + strailer;
if (bidix.debugMode) alert("about to execute Http - POST on "+uploadParams[0]+"\n with \n"+data.substr(0,500)+ " ... ");
var r = doHttp("POST",uploadParams[0],data,"multipart/form-data; boundary="+boundary,uploadParams[4],uploadParams[5],localCallback,params,null);
if (typeof r == "string")
displayMessage(r);
return r;
};
// same as Saving's updateOriginal but without convertUnicodeToUTF8 calls
bidix.upload.updateOriginal = function(original, posDiv)
{
if (!posDiv)
posDiv = locateStoreArea(original);
if((posDiv[0] == -1) || (posDiv[1] == -1)) {
alert(config.messages.invalidFileError.format([localPath]));
return;
}
var revised = original.substr(0,posDiv[0] + startSaveArea.length) + "\n" +
store.allTiddlersAsHtml() + "\n" +
original.substr(posDiv[1]);
var newSiteTitle = getPageTitle().htmlEncode();
revised = revised.replaceChunk("<title"+">","</title"+">"," " + newSiteTitle + " ");
revised = updateMarkupBlock(revised,"PRE-HEAD","MarkupPreHead");
revised = updateMarkupBlock(revised,"POST-HEAD","MarkupPostHead");
revised = updateMarkupBlock(revised,"PRE-BODY","MarkupPreBody");
revised = updateMarkupBlock(revised,"POST-SCRIPT","MarkupPostBody");
return revised;
};
//
// UploadLog
//
// config.options.chkUploadLog :
// false : no logging
// true : logging
// config.options.txtUploadLogMaxLine :
// -1 : no limit
// 0 : no Log lines but UploadLog is still in place
// n : the last n lines are only kept
// NaN : no limit (-1)
bidix.UploadLog = function() {
if (!config.options.chkUploadLog)
return; // this.tiddler = null
this.tiddler = store.getTiddler("UploadLog");
if (!this.tiddler) {
this.tiddler = new Tiddler();
this.tiddler.title = "UploadLog";
this.tiddler.text = "| !date | !user | !location | !storeUrl | !uploadDir | !toFilename | !backupdir | !origin |";
this.tiddler.created = new Date();
this.tiddler.modifier = config.options.txtUserName;
this.tiddler.modified = new Date();
store.addTiddler(this.tiddler);
}
return this;
};
bidix.UploadLog.prototype.addText = function(text) {
if (!this.tiddler)
return;
// retrieve maxLine when we need it
var maxLine = parseInt(config.options.txtUploadLogMaxLine,10);
if (isNaN(maxLine))
maxLine = -1;
// add text
if (maxLine != 0)
this.tiddler.text = this.tiddler.text + text;
// Trunck to maxLine
if (maxLine >= 0) {
var textArray = this.tiddler.text.split('\n');
if (textArray.length > maxLine + 1)
textArray.splice(1,textArray.length-1-maxLine);
this.tiddler.text = textArray.join('\n');
}
// update tiddler fields
this.tiddler.modifier = config.options.txtUserName;
this.tiddler.modified = new Date();
store.addTiddler(this.tiddler);
// refresh and notifiy for immediate update
story.refreshTiddler(this.tiddler.title);
store.notify(this.tiddler.title, true);
};
bidix.UploadLog.prototype.startUpload = function(storeUrl, toFilename, uploadDir, backupDir) {
if (!this.tiddler)
return;
var now = new Date();
var text = "\n| ";
var filename = bidix.basename(document.location.toString());
if (!filename) filename = '/';
text += now.formatString("0DD/0MM/YYYY 0hh:0mm:0ss") +" | ";
text += config.options.txtUserName + " | ";
text += "[["+filename+"|"+location + "]] |";
text += " [[" + bidix.basename(storeUrl) + "|" + storeUrl + "]] | ";
text += uploadDir + " | ";
text += "[[" + bidix.basename(toFilename) + " | " +toFilename + "]] | ";
text += backupDir + " |";
this.addText(text);
};
bidix.UploadLog.prototype.endUpload = function(status) {
if (!this.tiddler)
return;
this.addText(" "+status+" |");
};
//
// Utilities
//
bidix.checkPlugin = function(plugin, major, minor, revision) {
var ext = version.extensions[plugin];
if (!
(ext &&
((ext.major > major) ||
((ext.major == major) && (ext.minor > minor)) ||
((ext.major == major) && (ext.minor == minor) && (ext.revision >= revision))))) {
// write error in PluginManager
if (pluginInfo)
pluginInfo.log.push("Requires " + plugin + " " + major + "." + minor + "." + revision);
eval(plugin); // generate an error : "Error: ReferenceError: xxxx is not defined"
}
};
bidix.dirname = function(filePath) {
if (!filePath)
return;
var lastpos;
if ((lastpos = filePath.lastIndexOf("/")) != -1) {
return filePath.substring(0, lastpos);
} else {
return filePath.substring(0, filePath.lastIndexOf("\\"));
}
};
bidix.basename = function(filePath) {
if (!filePath)
return;
var lastpos;
if ((lastpos = filePath.lastIndexOf("#")) != -1)
filePath = filePath.substring(0, lastpos);
if ((lastpos = filePath.lastIndexOf("/")) != -1) {
return filePath.substring(lastpos + 1);
} else
return filePath.substring(filePath.lastIndexOf("\\")+1);
};
bidix.initOption = function(name,value) {
if (!config.options[name])
config.options[name] = value;
};
//
// Initializations
//
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Generally we can say that AnthropoLogy deals with human diversity. It is a holistic approach to the condition humaine and is most interested in human adaptation which involves the interplay of biological, environmental and probably most important, cultural aspects. In fact, anthropological studies have shown over the years that differences between peoples, such as gender roles or kinship-systems for instance arise from cultural learning rather than biology.
So in other words, AnthropoLogy mostly deals with cultures (cultural-anthropology). It studies the different cultural aspects and changes within a given society (e.g. language, customs, mythology, art, world-views, exchange-systems, etc. - hence the diffrent subdivision of AnthropoLogy into SymBolism, AnthropologyOfRace, etc.). Furthermore AnthropoLogy then tries to compare and contrast its data in order to formulate more general theories about human behavior, assuming that “no sound conclusions can be drawn from a single cultural tradition” (KOTTAK xxxx:3)
Anthropological research includes a number of methods aiming at the recording of a (as far as this is possible ) complete picture of the InterConnectedness of cultural and social life (called a EthnoPicture). In a broader sense, putting it in GregoryBateson's words: we look for ThePatternWhichConnects.
AnthropoLogy therefore often involves long periods of FieldWork in which learning the language of the studied society and participating in daily community life are rather important.
Anthropological research focuses around the principle of ParticipantObservation: “The idea is to find out exactly what it is like to be a member of the society in question,” based on the assumption, “that the best way to do this is to live with them and share their lives.” (HENDRY, J., An Introduction to Social Anthropology, p.3)
The product of anthropological research will mostly be presented in the form of an ethnographic monograph: “a report based on ethnographic fieldwork” (p.17). Whereas ethnography means “...a research process in which the anthropologist closely observes, records and engages in the daily life of another culture – an experience labelled as the fieldwork method – and then writes accounts of this culture, emphasizing descriptive detail” (p.5 / Marcus and Fischer, 1986 p.18)
Ethnographic research techniques include: establishing rapport, participant observation, conversation and interviews, working with informants, genealogies, life histories, emic and etic approaches, problem oriented research, etc.
1. A figure of speech in which a term is transferred from the object it ordinarily designates to an object it may designate only by comparison or analogy, as in the phrase "evening of life". 2. Figurative language; allegory or parable: the prophets used much by metaphors to set forth truth. Bunyan. -- American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
Metaphor describes the relationship between two unlike objects, ideas of situations. For example, "life is a roller coaster, full of ups and downs, is a metaphor. -- Carole Cooper with Julie Boyd, Mindful Learning, 1996
A metaphor calls a thing something it isn't life is a bowl for of cherries, Metaphors are not logical, but they create an image that can challenge what is blindly accepted, allow new links to develop and generate new ways of thinking. Metaphors are a way of understanding a situation you are a part of and helped create. They give a new language, a more poetic, less scientific language, for discussion of life. -- H. B Gellat, Creative Decision-Making
"When people say it's "just a metaphor," we really have to look at that because all science is metaphor. When you say that nature is an array of mechanisms, that's absolutely as metaphorical as saying it's a living entity. There is no way of talking about anything new without invoking metaphors. All of science is based on metaphor. If you talk about an atom as a little solar system with planets around it, or as whirlpools of energy, in the more recent descriptions, these are all metaphors. Metaphor simply means that "you take something that is familiar to you and use it as a pictograph or an image of what you are trying to describe that you don't yet understand well." -- Elisabet Sahtouris
http://www.west.net/~insight/elsa.htm
"The fact is that when you work with body and mind, or you've been forced to because you've been ill, you find that the connector is metaphor. Metaphor is the language of the soul. Shakespeare talks in metaphors, the Bible talks in metaphors. Metaphor is a physical picture of a spiritual condition." -- Marion Woodman--
http://www.now.com/issues/15/42/Ent/cover.html
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#Pri
Three celebrated notions, which are closely related, ensue in the Wittgensteinian conversation: private language, form of life, and the notion of grammar. Directly following the rule-following sections in PI, and therefore easily thought to be the upshot of the discussion, are those sections called by interpreters "the private-language argument". Whether it be a veritable argument or not (and Wittgenstein never labeled it as such), these sections point out that for an utterance to be meaningful it must be possible in principle to subject it to public standards and criteria of correctness. For this reason, a private- language, in which "individual words … are to refer to what can only be known to the person speaking; to his immediate private sensations … " (PI 243), is not a genuine, meaningful, rule-governed language. The signs in language can only function when there is a possibility of judging the correctness of their use, "so the use of [a] word stands in need of a justification which everybody understands" (PI 261).
Wittgenstein adopts the term ‘grammar’ in his quest to describe the workings of this public, socially governed language, using it in a somewhat idiosyncratic manner. Grammar, usually taken to consist of the rules of correct syntactic and semantic usage, becomes, in Wittgenstein's hands, the wider — and more elusive — network of rules which determine what linguistic move is allowed as making sense, and what isn't. This notion replaces the stricter and purer logic which played such an essential role in the Tractatus in providing a scaffolding for language and the world. Indeed, "Essence is expressed by grammar … Grammar tells what kind of object anything is. (Theology as grammar)" (PI 371, 373). The "rules" of grammar are not mere technical instructions from on-high for correct usage; rather, they express the norms for meaningful language. Contrary to empirical statements, rules of grammar describe how we use words in order to both justify and criticize our particular utterances. But as opposed to grammar-book rules, they are not idealized as an external system to be conformed to. Moreover, they are not appealed to explicitly in any formulation, but are used in cases of philosophical perplexity to clarify where language misleads us into false illusions. Thus, "I can know what someone else is thinking, not what I am thinking. It is correct to say ‘I know what you are thinking’, and wrong to say ‘I know what I am thinking.’ (A whole cloud of philosophy condensed into a drop of grammar.)" (PI, p.222).
Grammar is not abstract, it is situated within the regular activity with which language-games are interwoven: " … the term ‘language-game’ is meant to bring into prominence the fact that the speaking of language is part of an activity, or of a form of life" (PI 23). What enables language to function and therefore must be accepted as "given" is precisely forms of life. In Wittgenstein's terms, agreement is required "not only in definitions but also (queer as this may sound) in judgments" (PI 242), and this is "not agreement in opinions but in form of life" (PI 241). Used by Wittgenstein sparingly — five times in the Investigations — this intriguing concept has given rise to interpretative quandaries and subsequent contradictory readings. Forms of life can be understood as changing and contingent, dependent on culture, context, history, etc; this appeal to forms of life grounds a relativistic reading of Wittgenstein. On the other hand, it is the form of life common to humankind, "the common behavior of mankind" which is "the system of reference by means of which we interpret an unknown language" (PI 206). This is clearly a universalistic turn, recognizing that the use of language is made possible by the human form of life. Lest this universalism be taken to an extreme, Wittgenstein reminds the reader that as philosophers " … we are not doing natural science, nor yet natural history" (PI p.230).
It is here that Wittgenstein's rejection of general explanations, and definitions based on sufficient and necessary conditions, is best pronounced. Instead of these symptoms of the philosopher's "craving for generality", he points to ‘family resemblance’ as the more suitable analogy for the means of connecting particular uses of the same word. There is no reason to look, as we have done traditionally — and dogmatically — for one, essential core in which the meaning of a word is located and which is, therefore, common to all uses of that word. We should, instead, travel with the word's uses through "a complicated network of similarities, overlapping and criss-crossing" (PI 66). Family resemblance also serves to exhibit the lack of boundaries and the distance from exactness that characterize different uses of the same concept. Such boundaries and exactness are the definitive traits of form — be it Platonic form, Aristotelian form, or the general form of a proposition adumbrated in the Tractatus. It is from such forms that applications of concepts can be deduced, but this is precisely what Wittgenstein now eschews in favor of appeal to similarity of a kind with family resemblance.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/#Pri
- ANATTA -
the concept of
non-essence in Buddhist thought
In this essay I will discuss a concept which can generally be considered as an intrinsic factor for understanding Buddhist thought, and which in a way can be seen as part of the very foundation of the Buddha's teaching (Dhamma). Anatta, in Pali, or anatman, as it is called in Sanskrit, is a rather specific Buddhist idea, which appears to be essentially distinguished in the context of most other schools of thought in fifth-century BC India. From the time of the Vedic scriptures and the Upanishads, "Hindu" teachings can generally be defined through their emphasis on the substantial union or oneness of the atta or atman (self) with the ultimate reality or truth (brahman).
Yet Gotama, the Buddha, was teaching (as it seems) a very different concept: anatta, "not-self, non-ego, egolessness, impersonality [...]" which means "that neither within the bodily and mental phenomena of existence, nor outside of them, can be found anything that in the ultimate sense could be regarded as a self-existing real ego-entity, soul or any other abiding substance (NYANATILOKA 1952)".
The first account of anatta can be found as early as within the Buddha's second sermon (Anatta-lakkhana Sutta), given in the dear-park near Varansi to his very first five disciples. Thus, the Buddha was sometimes referred to as the anatta-vadi (the Teacher of Impersonality).
Yet, although fundamental, anatta is a rather complex concept within the Buddhist teaching and properly understanding its actual meaning is quiet difficult. I will try to explain it in this essay by relating the concept of anatta to [i] the construct of personality (kandha), [ii] the three characteristics of existence (ti-lakhanna) and finally [iii] to Buddhist ethics (sila and vinaya).
Although the concept of anatta is central to all Buddhist traditions, drawing upon the Pali and the Sanskrit canons, in this essay I will mostly make use of the Pali terminology and quote passages from the Tipitaka. Comparing and contrasting different aspects of the concept of anatta between the Buddhist traditions would be rather interesting, but is not the topic of this essay.
anatta and the construct of personality
The difficulty in understanding the concept of anatta properly, or gaining a 'right' or skillful view of it (samma-ditthi) as a Buddhist would put it, begins when trying to grasp personality from a Buddhist perspective.
On the one hand, there seems to be a clear concept of the construct of personality, as dependent on the five aggregates, khandha (otherwise called "groups of existence" NYANATILOKA 1952). There are different renderings of khandha into English, but a very common way to translate the five groups is: [i] form or body (rupa), [ii] sensation or feeling (vedana), [iii] cognition or memory and perception (sanna), [iv] mental formations (sankhara) and [v] consciousness (vinnana).
It is within these five aspects that the Buddha summarizes all physical and mental phenomena of human existence and yet, when relating the concept of anatta to the five khandha it means in consequence that the ego, or the "I" can not be found in any one of them separately, nor as a result of all of them combined. And this is where the difficulty begins.
There seems to be a strong emphasis on the concept of 'dependence' or 'condition' (paccaya) in Buddhist thought. A concept which reflects not only a linear, physical-temporal causation, as we are used to consider in modern western thought, but also something which is sometimes referred to as "synchronic" or "holistic" causation. I will try to clarify this aspect later when considering the relation of anatta to the basic factors of existence (ti-lakhanna).
At this point though, when taking the idea of 'dependence' into account, Nagasena's "Simile of the Chariot" (ca. 150 BC) explains the relation of anatta to the construct of personality rather well.
The sage Nagasena answers to questions about personal identity in the Buddha's teaching posed by Menander I (Pali: Milinda), the Indo-Greek king. When asked about who he was, Nagasena replies: "As Nagasena I am known, O Great King ... nevertheless ... this word 'Nagasena' is just a denomination, a designation, a conceptual term, a current appellation, a mere name. For no real person can here be apprehended."
King Milinda is confused and tries to ridicule Nagasena's answer, assuming that a very 'real' Nagasena obviously does exist, standing right there in front of him: "This Nagasena tells me that he is not a real person! How can I be expected to agree with that!"
But to that Nagasena replies with the simile of the chariot. He points out that one can not say what exactly a chariot is, as it is not the pole or the axle or the wheels or the framework, nor the yoke, nor the reins. But that does not mean that there is no chariot.
Thus, Milinda comes to understand that "it is in dependence on the pole, the axle, the wheels, the framework, the flag-staff, etc., there takes place this denomination 'chariot'... this conceptual term..." And Nagasena concludes that "it is just so with me. In dependence there takes place this denomination 'Nagasena.' ... In ultimate reality, however, this person cannot be apprehended."
Furthermore, Milinda realizes in the course of his dialogue with Nagasena that "Nagasena" can not be found in the five khandha nor in any combination thereof. On the other hand, "Nagasena" does not stand for anything other than ("outside the combination") of the khandha.
I believe though that there are two things which are rather important to understand at this point.
On the one hand, Buddhist thought does not object the use of every-day terms in order to refer to "things" of our every-day experience, such as "myself" or "mine" or "body", which thus are very "real". The Buddhist perspective seems to rather try to question the reality of these "things" by analysing our own experiences and conceptions of them, revealing their conditionality and dependence on other "things".
As another example from the Nikayas illustrates:
"Just as when milk comes from a cow, curds from milk, butter from curds, ghee from butter, and the skimmings of ghee from ghee. When there is milk, it's not classified as curds, butter, ghee, or skimmings of ghee. It's classified just as milk. When there are curds... When there is butter... When there is ghee... When there are the skimmings of ghee, they're not classified as milk, curds, butter, or ghee. They're classified just as the skimmings of ghee. [...] Citta, these are the world's designations, the world's expressions, the world's ways of speaking, the world's descriptions, with which the Tathagata expresses himself but without grasping to them. (DN9, Potthapada Sutta)
On the other hand, although the Buddhist teaching is encouraging one to analyse these fundamental concepts of our understanding, it makes no categorical statement about the existence or non-existence of a soul.
Furthermore, it seems that the point is not to speculate about such metaphysical phenomena nor simply try to grasp them by mere logics. One is rather encouraged to gain knowledge from direct experience (bahvana-maya-panna) and application of the concept of anatta in order to make an end to suffering and stress and reach nibbana - an aspect which the Buddhist doctrine, being a soteriology, is primarily and utterly concerned with.
Thus, as another passage from the Nikayas demonstrates, the Buddhist statement about anatta is not a categorical nor a speculative statement:
"I have a self... I have no self... It is precisely by means of self that I perceive self... It is precisely by means of self that I perceive not-self... It is precisely by means of not- self that I perceive self... or... This very self of mine — the knower that is sensitive here & there to the ripening of good & bad actions — is the self of mine that is constant, everlasting, eternal, not subject to change, and will endure as long as eternity. This is called a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. Bound by a fetter of views, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person is not freed from birth, aging, & death, from sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair. He is not freed, I tell you, from suffering & stress. (MN2, Sabbasava Sutta)
anatta as one of three characteristics of existence
Anatta, 'not-self' is not only understood in relation to the construct of personality, but also in a much broader, phenomenological context, as being one of three characteristics of all compounded entities (dhammas).
These three "basic facts of all existence", ti-lakkhana (ti meaning three), are: impermanence (annica), suffering or satisfactoriness (dukkha) and non-essence or no-self (anatta) (NYANATILOKA 1952).
In this context, anatta means that any given thing or phenomenon (! our experience of a thing) is compounded and does not exist in and of itself. We can not find its essence nor anything which exists independently within it nor outside of it. All things are conditioned by and depended on other things. And it is here that the full significance of the concept of anatta can be seen for the entire structure of Buddhist thought.
I mentioned above that the Buddhist understanding of conditionality (paccaya) is quiet complicated because it includes a synchronic aspect which is rather alien to the linear thinking mind. I will try to point it out briefly.
All "things", a Buddhist scholar might explain, have no essence and are dependent on other "things" that preceded them (in the past) and thus condition them, as well as on things that co-arise with them and condition them (in the present). Thus, from a Buddhist perspective, one does not speak so much of "things" as more of events or processes (THANISSARO 1996:36). The nature of "things" is anatta, not substantial, non-essential, otherwise called sunnyata: empty. Their dependence on eachother is the key point.
The fact that past and present causes coincide, because events are not self-dependent, are anatta, are conditioned, one becomes part of a complex (linear and non-linear!) structure of conditionality which gives the mind the possibility of interaction. Thus, the mind can gradually change and putt an end to its conditioned, habitual pattern of desiring (tanha) "things" which are dukkha, annica and anatta, and eventually reach a state of nibbana ("√ nir + vana - freedom from desire" NYANATILOKA 1952).
anatta in relation to Buddhist ethics
Considering "ethics" from a Buddhist perspective is rather difficult. Is Buddhist thought concered with "ethics", in our western understanding of the term, at all?
What would come close to "ethics" is the Pali term sila, usually translated as "morality" or "virtuous behaviour (NYANATILOKA 1952)". The concept of anatta relates to it in a rather problematic way though.
There is a well known verse in Buddhagosa's commentary work from the fifth-century AD, the Vissudhi-Magga, which reflects the different aspects of anatta mentioned so far and rises another, rather important question in regard to morality:
"Mere suffering exists, yet no sufferer is found;
The deeds are, but no doer of the deeds is there;
Nibbana is, but not the man that enters it;
The path is, but no traveller on it is seen. (Vis.M. XVI:)"
How than, one might ask, can "I" be taken responsible for my actions?
One the one hand, as shown earlier, Buddhist thought does not deny an empirical, conventional self or personality. Thus, in a worldly sense, if "you" kill, "you" will be punished.
Yet, the influence of anatta leads to an absence of a normative ethical authority in Buddhist thought, and thus Buddhism is rather concerned with skillful (kusala) and unskillful (akusala) consequences of actions (kamma), especially in regard to "intentions" rather than "actions".
Actions are not "good" or "bad" in and of themselves (because they are empty), but in dependence with their (esp. mental) causes and consequences, which are their natural result, they may lead to suffering (thus akusala) or be beneficial (kusala).
.....but, unffortunatly I don't have any time left to go into this, because it's 14:40 on Dec. 13 and I have to hand in this essay...
conclusion
It is beyond my ability to grasp or explain the concept of anatta entirely, especially because if I would be able to truly understand it (through direct experience), from a Buddhist perspective I would be "enlightened" - at least to a certain degree. The fact that I am not, implies that I do not understand anatta entirely. However, in this essay I tried to provide a definition and an overview of this central Buddhist concept. I tried to show how our personality can be explained although there is "no-self" (khanda) and how furthermore the concept of anatta helps to explain the basic characteristics (ti-lakkhana) of all contidioned (paccaya) existence and experience, which from a Buddhist perspective all phenomena share. I have taken into account several passages and examples from the Pali Canon and other sources, and finally tried to explain the implications of anatta upon Buddhist ethics.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Buddhagosa, Vissudhi-Magga, XVI
Nagasena, The Questions of Kind Melinda, course handout
Nynatiloka, Thera, 1952, Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines, Kandy/Sri Lanka: Buddhist Publication Society
Thanissaro, Bikkhu, 1996, The Wings To Awekening - An Anthology from the Pali Canon, free distribution
Nikayas:
Digha Nikaya, Sutta #9, Potthapada Sutta, translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bikkhu
Mahajima Nikaya, Sutta #2, Sabbasava Sutta, translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bikkhu
- ANATTA -
the concept of
non-essence in Buddhist thought
In this essay I will discuss a concept which can generally be considered as an intrinsic factor for understanding Buddhist thought, and which in a way can be seen as part of the very foundation of the Buddha's teaching (Dhamma). Anatta, in Pali, or anatman, as it is called in Sanskrit, is a rather specific Buddhist idea, which appears to be essentially distinguished in the context of most other schools of thought in fifth-century BC India. From the time of the Vedic scriptures and the Upanishads, "Hindu" teachings can generally be defined through their emphasis on the substantial union or oneness of the atta or atman (self) with the ultimate reality or truth (brahman).
Yet Gotama, the Buddha, was teaching (as it seems) a very different concept: anatta, "not-self, non-ego, egolessness, impersonality [...]" which means "that neither within the bodily and mental phenomena of existence, nor outside of them, can be found anything that in the ultimate sense could be regarded as a self-existing real ego-entity, soul or any other abiding substance (NYANATILOKA 1952)".
read essay here: [[anatta]] or as pdf @ http://www.divshare.com/download/4047322-449
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3431217.stm
"It was taboo - the word itself was taboo - nobody wanted it, nobody knew it," she says of the title "Bhikuni", which she was the first to use in Sri Lanka in modern times.
D:\filez_greeeni\UNI\courses_TERM_II_07\DR1534\nun in japan.pdf
Current Religious Trends in China.pdf
The lines of objection we've looked at so far invoke (C) directly in arguing against soul-body interaction. A more contemporary version of the problem of interaction invokes (C) indirectly. Imagine two qualitatively identical minds M1 and M2 and the bodies B1 and B2 to which they are "attached", that is, the bodies with which they causally interact. In virtue of what is it true that M1 is causally paired with B1 and M2 with B2? This is not the epistemological question of how we could know that these are the pairings (though this is troublesome too); rather, the question is metaphysical: in virtue of what are these the pairings? If the minds are, like the bodies, located in space, causal pairing could be achieved by the relative spatial locations of the substances. But if the minds are non-spatial souls, then relative spatial location is unavailable to fill the pairing role. And since M1 and M2 are, by hypothesis, qualitatively identical, we cannot appeal to the different intrinsic properties that they might possess. This "Pairing Problem" (Foster 1991; Kim 2001) invokes (C) indirectly, for it's the lack of an available nexus that makes causal pairing problematic here. If there were such a nexus, we could appeal to it to connect M1 to B1 and M2 to B2. (It should be noted that this line of argument assumes that a nonextended entity — a Cartesian mind — is not spatially locatable. But minds could resemble spatial points in being nonextended but locatable (cf. Chisholm 1978). In that case M1 might be paired with B1 by being located in B1.)
These versions of the problem of interaction appeal to (C), the claim that causation requires a nexus. But such a claim can be challenged. Philosophers inspired by David Hume's (1748/1993, §7) famous critique of causality will ask whether the notion of a causal nexus is intelligible (see, e.g., Blackburn 1990). If causation is at the most fundamental level merely a regular succession of events, if no connection is required, then the problem of interaction need not arise. (What would a regularity theorist say about the pairing case above? The example is perhaps underdescribed, but such a theorist might have to say that M1 and M2 are each causally connected to both bodies.) To the extent that one finds soul-body interaction metaphysically suspect, however, one will also find the regularity theory implausible. That is, a regularity theory of causality does not preserve the prima facie problems with soul-body interaction. For this reason, a Humean solution to the problem will strike many as too easy.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-causation/
Dear Dr. Mills,
here's again a brief sketch of the idea I'd like to discuss with you:
There is a rather important notion in modern western thought called "causal closure" - the idea that the physical world is a closed system in which one physical event can be sufficiently explained thorugh another physical event. Rather recently Jaegwon Kim (2001) uses this argument to refute cartesian dualism and argue against the possibility of interactionism (interaction between mind and body).
The idea is that we can not establish a causal relation between one mind (non-physical substance) and one body (physical substance) and that we don't need to because we can see (maybe if not yet then in near future) that all that we call "mental-states" are in fact "brain-states" which in turn are caused by other "brain-states" (physcial events). The argument goes something like this: if there was a mind interacting with the body, we would need to be able to observe gaps in the causal chains of "body-events" - but if we can establish a gapless causal relation between any body-event and another body-event, there is no such thing as mind (in the dualist sense of "mind-substance" diffrent then the body).
Now although I am not a dualist myself, I would like to discuss with you the buddhist notion of "dependence" and "conditioning" - which I mentioned briefly in my essay about [[anatta]] last term - because I believe that in regard to "mental-events" the logical/physical idea of "causality" fails to explain certain mental phenomena (such as thinking metaphorically for example, which might be as important as thinking logically) and that the buddhist term (is it "paccaya" ?) which could be translated as dependece would fit better and explain such things as: events that have more than one causal origin, phenomena/events which co-arise, events which do not "cause" other events imediatly but in a distant future, events which are SIMILAR to other events although they are not caused by them -- and maybe a couple more.
So my question is: is there any diffrence between our western understanding of causality and the buddhist notion of dependence?
matrix
*causation vs association
*causation and correlation
*caussation and contiguity
*attribution and causal relation
*causal relation and processes
*etiology
*causes and conditions
*causality and dependence
*causation and counterfactuality
*causation and interconectivity (codependence - Varela)
articles:
*http://plato.stanford.edu/search/searcher.py?query=causation
*http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mental-causation/
*http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/view/subjects/causation.html
*CAUSAL MODELS, TOKEN-CAUSATION AND PROCESSES http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00001039/00/PSA2002_long.pdf PDF
*CAUSES AND CONDITIONS http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/archive/00003725/01/Broadbent_New_Riddle_of_Causation.pdf
*http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contiguity
!!
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence - to solve Kim's dilemma and the causal pairing problem we must consider the interaction of emergent systems.
*this question also concerns the unity of science: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-unity/
*emergence: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/properties-emergent/#PosApp
... William Hasker (1999) goes one step further in arguing for the existence of the mind conceived as a non-composite substance which ‘emerges’ from the brain at a certain point in its development. He dubs his position ‘emergent dualism,’ and claims for it all the philosophical advantages of traditional, Cartesian substance dualism while being able to overcome a central difficulty, viz., explaining how individual brains and mental substances come to be linked in a persistent, ‘monogamous’ relationship. Here, Hasker, is using the term to express a view structurally like one (vitalism) that the British emergentists were anxious to disavow, thus proving that the term is capable of evoking all manner of ideas for metaphysicians. http://tinyurl.com/2bryw6
*are mental processes causaly closed? GOEDEL
*interconnectivity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interconnectivity
Type the text for [[contentFooter]]
A review of
Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece, Jane K. Cowan, Oxford: Princeton University
Press, 1990, 252 pp. with illustrations and index, paperback, ISBN 0-691-02854-0
One might be well aware that a dance is more than just a dance; That there is something more
to it than just a pattern of rhythmical movements to music and the expression of personal
emotions. Yet, it might not be obvious how a "dance-event" can be both a physical and a
conceptual site in which gender and sexuality are not only socially constructed and reinforced
on the one hand but also (physically) embodied on the other.
Through a rich analysis of Greek dance, Jane K. Cowan explores the "asymmetrical social
relations" of gender and gendered sexuality as they are visibly and verbally rendered in the
traditional dance-events of the Macedonian community of Sohos, a provincial town in northern
Greece.
What makes the examination of gender in a dance-event interessting - as well as complicated,
she explains, is it's ambiguous status as a site of social action that is both set apart and embeded
in ordinary social relations and meanings (p.5).
Thus, Cowan focuses her detailed study around the relation between structure and human
agency especially "in the context of a broader asymmetry of male dominance and of the
androcentric and patriarchal institutions through which it is manifested (p.188)".
She reflects upon gender-relations in terms of power-relations, informed by the work of
Foucault, and upon the process of gender construction in terms of a notion of hegemony, rather
than a consensual notion of culture (p.12) - a concept which she borrows from Gramsci.
She argues that within the framework of a dance-event celebrants are performing and witnessing
in gendered ways; and that it is within this framework that they come to experience themselves
and especially their bodies as gendered subjects . Cowan therefore seeks to explore the social
and physical construction of "gender practices" rather than "gender roles" - "the 'doing' rather
then the 'thinking' of gender (p.16)" - and accordingly the dance as a "framed" event rather than
a medium or a kinetic pattern.
She draws her basic assumptions from the discourse of "practice anthropology" (Ortner) and
centers around three key-notions as the theoretical foundations of her rather structuralist
approach: (i) "ambiguity", of the female & male dance, individuality & collectivity, freedom &
control, pleasure & conflict, (ii) "frame", in the sense of ordinary/nonordinary, embeded/setapart,
serious/play, dance as exhibition / dance as entertainment, drawing upon works of
Bateson and G. Simmel, and (iii) "embodiment", based on the concept of "habitus" developed
by Mauss and Bourdieu.
Her work is a valuable contribution not only to the body of literature on dance-events and
dance-theory, gender construction and sexuality in dance but also to the study of Greek social
life and customs. Furthermore, her book is a wonderful piece of anthropological reflexivity, in
which she repeatedly examines her own embodiment as both an ethnographer and a female .
After "entering the dance" with such complex notions and conceptions about gender, power,
dance and the body, Cowan proceeds with an outline of Sohos' ethnic distinctions, political and
commercial history, class structure and labour divisions (chapters 1 and 2).
In chapter three she provides a detailed account of everyday sociability as it is practiced and
gendered through coffee drinking, hospitality (kerasma), conversation, et cetera. Furthermore,
Cowan links sociability and the manifestation of Sohonian class and labour divisions not only to
specific gendered practices but also to a gendered geography and organization of space. Thus,
for example men drink their coffee and play cards in the kafenio whereas women enjoy their
sweet coffee when visiting each other's homes to gossip.
Interestingly, Cowan does not miss to repeatedly point out that she is studying a "moving
target", a vivid and fluid tradition which is subject to change and development. She therefore for
example contrasts the traditionally gendered division of leisure spaces such as the masculine
kafenio and the feminine zaharoplastio (sweet shop) to the rather "modern" kafeteria, which
reflects modern feminine independence. Respectively, she reflects upon changes in the
traditional structure of dance-events as a response to the feminist movements of the 1980's.
Against this historical and social background, Cowan engages into the analysis of three types of
dance-events: the wedding celebration, and especially the patinadha, the wedding procession
(chapter 4), the horoesperidha, a formal evening dance which in her case-study is sponsored by
a businesspeople's-association (chapter 5), and a kano strapezi, a "table", in the sense of a
private feast or party (chapter 8).
Applying the narrative strategy of Geerzian "thick description" she not only describes specific
dance patterns such as the kalamantianos, the zeibekiko or the tsifte teli, but also sets them into
the context of language, history and everyday sociability, thus approaching these events as a
"cultural text" (Geertz).
One of Cowan's stronger arguments about gender derives from her emphasis on ambiguity upon
which she reflects throughout her account and more specifically in chapters 6 and 7.
She develops her argument by demonstrating in which ways dancing is problematic for both
females and males. She points out that not only the contradictory constitution of the dance-event
itself makes it an ambiguous site, but that also the ambivalent expectations poured upon the
members of the community and the ways they themselves feel about these contradictory
demands create ambiguous experiences.
For a man, for instance, the central notion of masculine eghoismus (self-regard) is conceived as
both negativ and positiv. He is expected to simultaneously display dominance and obey to social
demands and gain prestige during the dance-event . His behaviour can quickly transform the
pleasurable event into a site of conflict. For a woman on the other hand, who in general is
supposed to adhere to an ideal of passivity, the dance becomes an ambivalent experience
because she is expected to both constrain and display her feminine sexuality.
Furthermore, the dance-event as such becomes an ambiguous site because of these coexisting
notions of formality, pleasure, exhibition of individual as well as political power, eghoismus and
expectation, conflict potential and the transformation of as well as reliance on everyday
sociality, even though the event as such takes place in a "framed" and "bounded sphere".
Hence, Cowan argues that gender in general is in fact based on such ambiguous practices and
relations. She points out that it is "by pushing at or playing with this boundary between the
dance and the everyday that a man finds out what it is to be male and a woman what it is to be
female (p.226)."
She argues that dancing thus not only embodies specific social types and ideas into certain skills
and ways of control and coordination of the body, but also that the dancer comes to an
"embodied experience" in which she becomes aware of herself as a body and herself as an
embodied female (or male respectively).
Furthermore, Cowan (in contradiction to Bourdieu) suggests that the nonordinary dance-event
(or ritual!) enables social actors to become conscious, to a certain extent at least, of the ways in
which they physically embody social constructions of gender, as well as other cultural aspects,
through specific poses and gestures, which otherwise remain unconscious in everyday situations
and relations.
It is one of the book's "central arguments that dance-events can be read as an embodied
discourse on the moral relations between the individual and some larger collectivity (p.131)" as
well as an embodiment of gender-experience through specific gender-practices.
Cowan's complex analysis of gender and sexuality is well-informed and thoroughly supported
by her extensive ethnographic research. Her focus on embodiment is highly original. Even
though her approach is clearly feminist, her study remains true to the examination of genderrelations
and does not tend to focus too exclusively on women's experiences. She keeps this
healthy balance by shifting the focal point of her analysis between the relations of men with
men and women with women as well as men with women - a shift that an analysis of dance, in
which men and women perform collectively, should necessary allow for. More then anything
though, her intricate approach and lucid textual representation are theoretically as well as
methodically intriguing and innovative.
At the end though, no matter how well one might understand her complex argument and the
ways she makes sense of gender, community and dance-events, one remains with a very tenuous
impression of what it feels like to dance at a wedding procession through the streets of Sohos, or
to play cards at midday in a crowded kafenio. Her writing style remains rather distant, dissective
and theoretical throughout the book. Somewhat frigid one might say. And even when she does
allow for some descriptive prose one can feel nothing but disconnected and uninvolved, as if
hovering somewhere beyond the events she describes. Skillful writing though, one might argue,
should consist not only of statements about things but also of representations and evocative
descriptions, especially when one tackles something which is as fluid, vivid, aesthetic and
metaphorical as dance. And that might make the whole difference between theorizing about or
gaining insights into a topic.
Nevertheless, "Dance and the Body Politic" is a highly fastinating and valuable analysis of the
social and physical constitution of person, gender and community. It illustrates the significance
of dance and the process of embodiment as a site of "worldmaking" in an original and intricate
way and approaches the notion of gender in a manner which one could almost conceive as
liberating as dancing itself can be.
A review of
Dance and the Body Politic in Northern Greece, Jane K. Cowan, Oxford: Princeton University
Press, 1990, 252 pp. with illustrations and index, paperback, ISBN 0-691-02854-0
One might be well aware that a dance is more than just a dance; That there is something more
to it than just a pattern of rhythmical movements to music and the expression of personal
emotions. Yet, it might not be obvious how a "dance-event" can be both a physical and a
conceptual site in which gender and sexuality are not only socially constructed and reinforced
on the one hand but also (physically) embodied on the other.
read the whole thing here: [[dance, gender and embodiment]] or as a pdf @ http://www.divshare.com/download/4047359-05c
Dear Dr. Mills,
here's my question again: would you say there's any diffrence between our western understanding of causality and the buddhist notion of dependence?
Could you suggest some reading?
Unffortunately I have a tutorial every Monday from 11-12. Could we maybe meet at 12.10? or some other time?
Here's again a brief sketch of the idea I'd like to discuss with you:
There is a rather important notion in modern western thought called "causal closure" - the idea that the physical world is a closed system in which one physical event can be sufficiently explained through another physical event. Rather recently Jaegwon Kim (2001) uses this argument to refute Cartesian dualism and argue against interactionism (interaction between mind and body).
The idea is that we can not establish a causal relation between one mind (non-physical substance) and one body (physical substance) - this is called the "pairing problem" - and that we don't need to because we can see (maybe if not yet then in near future) that all that we call "mental-states" are in fact "brain-states" which in turn are caused by other "brain-states" (or other physical events).
The argument goes something like this: if there was a mind interacting with the body, we would need to be able to observe gaps in the causal chains of "body-events" - but if we can establish a gapless causal relation between any body-event and another body-event, the mind (in the dualist sense of "mind-substance" diffrent then the body) plays no role.
Now, although I'm not a dualist, I would like to discuss with you the buddhist notion of "dependence" and "conditioning" - which I mentioned briefly in my essay about "anata" last term - because I believe that in regard to "mental-events" the logical/physical idea of linear causality fails to explain a whole range of mental phenomena (such as thinking metaphorically for example). The buddhist term (is it "paccaya" ?) which could be translated as dependece seems to fit better and explain such things as: events that have more than one causal origin, phenomena/events which co-arise, events which do not "cause" other events imediatly but in a distant future, events which are SIMILAR to other events although they are not caused by them -- and maybe a couple more.
But to be honest, I don't entirely understand the buddhist idea.
regards,
Daniel Grunfeld
ESSAY QUESTIONS
Critically evaluate Durkheim’s influence on theory in anthropology.
To what extent are Radcliffe-Brown’s ideas on structure and function useful for studying social relations?
Discuss the proposition inspired by Marxist theory that ‘culture’ is merely an ideology which supports the interests of dominant sectors in society.
How have anthropologists attempted to deal with the tension between structure and agency?
What can a study of the concept of the person in different societies reveal?
Witchcraft is not only about magic but is also a response to social, economic and political processes. Discuss with reference to ethnographic examples.
To what extent is illness socially and culturally constructed?
What can a study of spirit possession reveal? Discuss with reference to ethnographic examples.
How can the issue of ethnic identity be studied most productively?
How have anthropologists dealt with the concept of culture? Discuss with reference to at least two different theories.
lit:
http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/city.2000.12.2.129
"What was needed, rather, was an orientation and a chosen set of cultural attributes that would allow me to move back and forth between form and process, concept and enactment, individual effort and collective attachment and such a way as to capture the living quality of my subject."
Rosen, L., Bargaining for Reality: The Construction of Social Relations in a Muslim Community, 1984, p. 2
"...Rosen shows how, for the people of this Muslim Community, reality consists of the network of obligations formed by individuals out a repertoire of relational possibilities whose defining terms are comprised by a set of essentially negotiable concepts. ... that statements about relationship are no more true than a price mentioned in the marketplace until properly validated; that the relations between men and women, Arabs and Berbers, Muslims and Jews test the limits of interpersonal negotation..."
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Die Religion ist die Kunst der Nichtschaffenden. Im
Gebete werden sie produktiv: sie formen ihre Liebe
und ihren Dank und ihre Sehnsucht und befreien
sich so. Sie erwerben auch eine Art kurzlebiger Kul-
tur; denn sie lösen sich von vielen Zielen zu einem
los. Aber dies eine Ziel ist nicht ihr eingeborenes,
und es ist allen gemeinsam. Eine gemeinsame Kul-
tur gibt es aber nicht. Kultur ist Persönlichkeit; das,
was man bei einer Menge so nennt, ist gesellschaft-
liches Übereinkommen ohne innere Begründung.Der Nichtkünstler muß eine Religion – im tiefin-
nern Sinn – besitzen, und sei es auch nur eine, die
auf gemeinsamem und historischem Vereinbaren
beruht. Atheist sein in seinem Sinne ist Barbar sein
Rilke, 1898, Florenzer Tagebuch
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email me @ ''greeeni [äht] eml [daht] cc''
.
see Jeff Hearn, //From hegemonic masculinity to the
hegemony of men//, Feminist Theory 2004; 5; 49 [pdf]
Mike Donaldson (1993: 645) has described the concept as:
. . . about the winning and holding of power and the formation (and destruction)
of social groups in that process. It is about the ways in which the ruling class
establishes and maintains its domination. The ability to impose a definition of
the situation, to set the terms in which events are understood and issues
discussed, to formulate ideals and define morality is an essential part of the
process. Hegemony involves persuasion of the greater part of the population,
particularly through the media, and the organization of social institutions in
ways that appear ‘natural’, ‘ordinary’, ‘normal’. The state, through punishment
for non-conformity, is crucially involved in this negotiation and enforcement.
Robert Bocock (1986: 63) has neatly summed up this process, saying that
hegemony occurs ''"when the intellectual, moral and philosophical leadership
provided by the class or alliance of class fractions which is ruling
successfully achieves its objective of providing the fundamental outlook of
the whole society".'' I will return to this definition but at this stage it is worth
noting that the idea of society having a ‘fundamental outlook’ is now much
more problematic than when Gramsci was writing, within his own particular
political context.
[...]
Judith Butler has specifically contrasted the ''"view that casts the
operation of power in the political field exclusively in terms of discrete
blocs which vie with one another for control of policy questions’ with a
concept of hegemony that ‘emphasizes the ways in which power operates
to form our everyday understanding of social relations, and to orchestrate
the ways in which we consent to (and reproduce) those tacit and covert
relations of power"'' (Butler, 2000: 13–14).
http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/
Out of the Blue
Can a thinking, remembering, decision-making, biologically accurate brain be built from a supercomputer?
In the basement of a university in Lausanne, Switzerland sit four black boxes, each about the size of a refrigerator, and filled with 2,000 IBM microchips stacked in repeating rows. Together they form the processing core of a machine that can handle 22.8 trillion operations per second. It contains no moving parts and is eerily silent. When the computer is turned on, the only thing you can hear is the continuous sigh of the massive air conditioner. This is Blue Brain.
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2008/03/out_of_the_blue.php?page=all&p=y
THE WELL-DESIGNED CHILD
John McCarthy, Stanford University
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/child/child.html
Abstract:
The innate mental structure that equips a child to interact succesfully with the world includes more than universal grammar. The world itself has structures, and nature has evolved brains with ways of recognizing them and representing information about them. For example, objects continue to exist when not being perceived, and children (and dogs) are very likely "designed" to interpret sensory inputs in terms of such persistent objects. Moreover, objects usually move continuously, passing through intermediate points, and perceiving motion that way may also be innate. What a child learns about the world is based on its innate mental structure.
This article concerns designing adequate mental structures including a language of thought. This design stance applies to designing robots, but we also hope it will help understand universal human mental structures. We consider what structures would be useful how the innateness of a few of the structures might be tested experimentally in humans and animals.
4.2 The priority between language and concepts
Even if it's agreed that it is possible to have concepts in the absence of language, there is a dispute about how the two are related. Some maintain that concepts are prior to and independent of natural language, and that natural language is just a means for conveying thought (Fodor 1975, Pinker 1994). Others maintain that at least some types of thinking (and hence some concepts) occur in the internal system of representation constituting our natural language competence (Carruthers 1996, 2002, Spelke 2003).
The arguments for deciding between these two positions involve a mixture of theoretical and empirical considerations. Proponents of the first view have claimed that language is ambiguous in ways that thought presumably is not. For example, the natural language sentence everyone loves someone could be interpreted to mean that everyone loves someone or other, or to mean that everyone loves one and the same person (Pinker 1994). Proponents of the first view have also argued that since language itself has to be learned, thought is prior to language (Fodor 1975; Pinker 1994). A third and similar consideration is that people seem to be able formulate novel concepts which are left to be named later; the concept comes first, the name second (Pinker 1994).
Proponents of the alternative view—that some thinking occurs in language—have pointed to the phenomenology of thought. It certainly seems as if we are thinking in language when we “hear” ourselves silently talking to ourselves (Carruthers 1996). There is also intriguing data that success on certain tasks (e.g., spatial reorientation that relies on combining landmark information with geometrical information) is selectively impaired when the linguistic system is engaged but not when comparable attention is given to non-linguistic distractors. The suggestion is that solving these tasks requires thinking in one's natural language and that some of the crucial concepts must be couched linguistically (Hermer-Vazquez, Spelke, & Katsnelson 2001; Shusterman & Spelke 2005; Carruthers 2002).
4.3 Linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity
Finally, one further issue that bears mentioning is the status of various claims regarding linguistic determinism and linguistic relativity. Linguistic determinism is the doctrine that the language a person speaks causes her to conceptualize the world in certain ways while delimiting the boundaries of her conceptual system; as a result, people who speak very different languages are likely to conceptualize the world in correspondingly different ways. Linguistic relativity is the weaker doctrine that the language one speaks influences how one thinks.
Linguistic determinism is historically associated with the writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (Whorf 1956). Whorf was especially interested in the languages of the indigenous people of America. He famously argued that the Hopi both speak and think about time in ways that are incongruent with European languages and thought. Rather than viewing time as a continuum that flows evenly throughout the universe and that can be broken up into countable events occurring in the past, present, and future, the Hopi are supposed to focus on change as a process. Their conceptual system is also supposed to differ from ours in that it embodies a distinction between things that are or have been accessible to perception versus things that are not, where the latter category includes things in the future as well as mythical and mental constructs.
The claim that the Hopi lack our concept of time has not stood up to scrutiny. Whorf used clumsy translations of Hopi speech that concealed the extent to which they talk about time (references to yesterday, tomorrow, days of the week, lunar phases, etc.). More interestingly, Whorf provided no direct evidence of how the Hopi think. Instead, he used the circular reasoning that they don't think about time as we do because they don't talk about time as we do. In fact, the Hopi use numerous familiar devices for time keeping, such as calendar strings and sun dials, and their sensitivity to time is evident a wide variety of cultural practices (Malotki 1983).
Linguistic determinism isn't an especially promising doctrine and has few adherents these days, but linguistic relativity is the subject of a spirited debate (see Gumperz & Levinson 1996, Bowerman & Levinson 2001, and Gentner & Goldin-Meadow (2003)). Some recent examples of particular interest include whether language influences how we conceptualize space (non-linguistic spatial reasoning) (e.g., Munnich & Landau 2003; Levinson 2003), motion (non-linguistic reasoning about motion) (e.g., Papafragou, Massey, & Gleitman 2002), and sex (the impact of grammatical gender) (e.g., Boroditsky, Schmidt, & Phillips 2003)
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concepts/#TheConWitLan
http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/CommunitySupport/NCC/SC3META.html#ref
What is a Metaphor?
Why is Metaphor Important in Systemic Change and Learning?
References on metaphor
Metaphors of Dominant World Views AND Paradigm Shifts
* Metaphors for the Scientific Mechanistic Reductionist World View or Paradigm
* Metaphors for Old Economic Paradigm Affluence and Overconsumption
* Metaphors for the Shifting World View or Paradigm Shift
* Metaphors for the Emerging Systemic Paradigm
http://anthrolog.wordpress.com (blogging with others about AnthropoLogy)
http://sleeponit.wordpress.com/ (my old blog - dead)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13016918@N07/show/ (my flickr gallery)
http://jyte.com/profile/greeeni.myopenid.com (making claims with the geeks)
http://twitter.com/greeeni (twitter - but not really using it - maybe one day when I have more friends)
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some of my favorite feeds gathered here
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The Perry Bible Fellowship, //Nicholas Gurewitch//
.
parents give.
forests give.
forests are parents.
She also argues about how metaphors are derived from and applied to society... see [[Geertz - Religion MetaPhor and embodiment]]
Nurit Bird-David, 1990, The giving environment: another perspective on the economic system of gatherer-hunters. In: Current Anthropolog, vol 31, pp. 189-196
http://www.jstor.org/view/00113204/dm991481/99p00296/0
technical note: on both becycle and eANDe I used rss to do some funny things: on becycle the bike library is based on Twitter blogs, and on eANDe... well if you go to the pageflakes version you'll see...
''http://becycle.wordpress.com/''
"Growing on scratch but with plenty of enthusiasm we gather orphaned bikes, fix them up and bring them back to life. We run a community based workshop which is not only home to the bikes we rent out for free, but also offers tools, spare parts, guidance and assistance for anyone coming down the road keen on fixing their own bike (or wanting to learn how to it), or just looking for a place to hang out."
''http://eande.jottit.com/''
"This space has been set up with the hope to create a more united Environmental and Ethical community on Campus, with the idea that united we can all achieve more!"
http://psychmethod.tiddlyspot.com/
not sure where - and if - this is going to end
http://anthrolog.wordpress.com
an anthropology group I'm trying to get going
SO you let go
and you make space
you're an example for the human race
you can do what no one dares
you're invisibale
but no one cares
living in your cardboard home
in Memphis, Tenesee
look at the mantic bagger
from across the street
he's got the whole world /a crowd of people /
listening to his speech /wits /rambling speech /crazy shit
I think that an interesting side effect of our library system - http://becycle.wordpress.com/library/ -
is that it graduatly creates a story, written by diffrent persons, for each of the bicycles.
Take a look at http://twitter.com/sturdyRalfi for example.
from [[Islam - Origin and Originality]]
What the Meccans would have primarily been concerned about though, was the way that such a message would question the political and moral authority of the tribal sunnah. On the one hand, tribal chiefs would be forced to recognize that the authority of forefathers and tradition would no longer decide about questions of morality, rather Allah will. And this would definitely question their way of life and threaten the importance of upholding tribal honour. On the other hand, as Watt argues, a considerable threat was seen "in Muhammad's very claim to receive revelations from God" (WATT 1960, p. 59) which would inevitably lead to a contradiction of authority and question the chiefs' leadership of their tribes and clans. Watt argues that, "if they accepted Muhammad's claim, would they not also have to admit in the long run that he was the best man fitted to direct all the affairs of Mecca?" (WATT 1960, p. 59)
The second aspect of Muhammad's initial message I would like to consider, which also stood in contradiction to the tribal sunnah, is the rather Christian idea of judgement and resurrection. In the context of seventh-century Arabia it meant in consequence, as Waines puts it, "that actions in this world bore significance and consequences for the life to come; actions were no longer relevant only to immediate tribal context..." and therefore "the threat to the Meccans' way of life was the replacement of the sunnah of their forefathers with the sunnah of Allah." (WAINES 1995, p. 17)
It is important to acknowledge though, that the original conception of sunnah in the sense of tribal customs was not abandoned as a whole but rather adopted and rendered into Muhammad's doctrine, despite of the contradictions mentioned above. What used to be the "trodden path" following the example of ancestors became "to mean the normative practice of the prophet Muhammad, the authoritative example of the way a Muslim should live" (WAINES 1995, Glossary).
Thus, in regard to Islamic law, as Endress argues, "the legal conceptions of the pre-Islamic Bedouin are amongst the most important elements which ancient Arabia bequeathed to Islam" (ENDRESS 1939, p. 25). And it is important to understand, that from the beginning, and especially after Muhammad's activities in Medina, the conception of laws plays a central role in Muslim thought, as "those who profess Islam (muslimun) form a religious and political community (the umma) which was founded by His prophet according to God's will" (ENDRESS 1939, p. 21). And furthermore, as Waines argues, that there was "no separation between religious and political activity... throughout Islamic history" (WAINES 1995, p. 30).
*veiled sentiments, Abu-Lughod's account of the Awlad Ali Bedouis of Northern Egypt is, more than anything, an honest study of personal emotions and their embodiment in cultural ideal. It shows how two levels of discourse, one of honor and modesty, the other of sentiment and poetry, which are seemingly contratictory, interwined with eatch other and how both are rooted in human sentiments. The stories she collected, including her own personal and very modest account, show how everyday life bla bla
* ... nagotiated - etc.
*it is a smart, lucid argument and a excelent, evocative narrative...
*writing against culture (the other book!)
-----------------------------------------------------------
CU 3011 / CU 3511
SCIENCE AND RELIGION: FROM GALILEO TO CREATIONISM
CREDIT POINTS 30
Course Co-ordinator: Dr R O'Connor
Pre-requisite(s): Available to students in Programme Year 3 or above.
Note(s):This course will run in session 2007/08 as CU 3011.
What is the relationship between science and religion, and why have Westerners so rarely agreed on it? This course, based on the close study of primary sources between the Renaissance and the present day, takes a historical perspective on this troubled and fertile relationship and uncovers the true stories behind the simplistic myths often promoted in today's media. Famous episodes in this history (such as the Galileo and Darwin controversies) wil be reexamined, and categories we often take for granted - 'science', 'religion', even 'Biblical literalism' - will be questioned and set in their historical contexts. Broad trends will be outlined and examined, but with close attention paid to the ways in which individual people experienced the science-religion nexus. The course will conclude by bringing this historical perspective to bear on present-day controversies.
1 one-hour lecture, 1 one-hour seminar and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.
1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%); 1 essay (40%); class participation (10%).
Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%), and satisfactory completion of al continuous assessment.
-----------------------------------------------------------
AT 3018 / AT 3518
SOCIETY AND NATURE
CREDIT POINTS 30
Course Co-ordinator: Dr R Wishart
Pre-requisite(s): AT 2003 and AT 2508 or by permission of the Head of Department.
Note(s):This course will run in the second semester of 2008/09 as AT 35XX. It is also coded as AT 30XX.
This course examines how the guiding ideas of Western thought and science have emerged historically out of European encounters with the indigenous inhabitants of other lands, and how these ideas have, in turn, influenced contemporary anthropological understandings of ‘other cultures’. We will focus, in particular, on ways of describing and analysing the relations between people and their environment, and between human beings and non-human animals. Through a review of the ways in which the concept of society has been set against that of nature in the work of several prominent anthropologists, the course will lay foundations for subsequent study of history of anthropological thought, while also introducing students to basic techniques of genealogical inquiry, library research and ethnographical writing.
1 two-hour lecture and 1 one-hour tutorial per week.
1st Attempt: 1 three-hour examination (60%) and in-course assessment: two essays (40%).
Resit: In-course grades will be carried forward unless the student opts to resubmit course work.
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for ext year 3
DR 3090
SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF RELIGIONS
CREDIT POINTS 30
Course Co-ordinator: Dr M Mills
Pre-requisite(s): Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above.
Note(s):Students ar not permitted to register for this course after the end of week 2 of teaching. This course will be available in session 2007/08.
This course closely analyses the methodologies and theories developed by social anthropologists for studying religion and how those have influenced how we think about religion in the modern day. It particularly focuses on ritual, symbolism and myth. The course introduces a wide range of ethnographic material and the opportunity for the fieldwork study of religious communities.
2 two-hour seminars per week.
1st Attempt: 1 two-hour written examination (50%); one essay (40%); one presentation (10%).
Resit: 1 two-hour written examination (100%), provided each element of assessment is CAS 6 or above. New coursework can be submitted.
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DR 3571
SOUTH ASIA: RELIGION, POLITICS & HISTORY
CREDIT POINTS 30
Course Co-ordinator: Dr M Mills
Pre-requisite(s): DR 1027 or DR 2535 (or its precursors). Students with relevant experience in other disciplines may join, conditional on agreement from the Course Coordinator. This course is available to students in Programme Year 3 or above.
Note(s):Students are not permitted to register for this course after the end of week 2 of teaching. This course will be available in 2008/09 and in alternate years thereafter.
An ethnographic and historical examination of the relationship between religious traditions and political and social power in Tibet, Nepal and India. The course will concentrate on three areas:
* The structure and history of pre-colonial Hindu and Buddhist rule in South Asia, and the nature of religious conflict in this context.
* An examination of the rise of South Asian religious nationalism within the colonial and post-colonial period, centering on (a) the religious disputes of Partition in the sub-continent, and the subsequent influence of Hindu and Muslim fundamentalism; (b) the Hindu-Buddist conflict in Sri Lanka, and the origins of Buddhist nationalism; and (c) the history of invasion and ethnic conflict within modern Tibet.
2 one-hour lectures and 1 two-hour seminar per week.
1st Attempt: 1 three-hour written examination (50%); in-course assessment (50%).
Resit: 1 three-hour written examination paper (100%), provided each element of assessment is CAS 6 or above. New coursework can be submitted.
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CU 3506
CULTURE, IDENTITY AND TECHNOLOGY
CREDIT POINTS 30
Course Co-ordinator: Dr B Marsden
Pre-requisite(s): Students are not permitted to register for this course after the end of week 2 of teaching. Available only to students in Programme Year 3 or above.
In order to construct a general framework within which to set about understanding how people have found meaning in their lives, the course is based on five persvasive themes whose mutual relevance is explored through historical instances. They are: symbols; spatio-temporal orientation; growth and development; technology and collective or individual identity. Thus, the significance of technology is analysed in terms of what (for example) clockwork has symbolised, and how Western culture's increasing reliance on accurate time-measurement has been associated with pursuit of greater economic rationality, which in turn affects people's sense of who they are.
2 one-hour lectures, 1 one-hour seminar per week.
1st Attempt: 1 three-hour written examination (50%) and in-course assessment (50%).
Resit: 1 three-hour written examination (50%) and in-course assessment (50%). NB: New in-course assessment must be submitted.