Limerence
- Lafyva
- May 17, 2019
- 56 min read
Updated: Aug 27
( "This class includes schemes known as post-Newtonian theory, which will be the main subject of this paper, and a related scheme known as post-Minkowki theory. The underlying idea is to treat spacetime as being that of flat"
Lorentz invariance of the displayed times of clocks can further prove within the framework of STR our earth based standard physical time is absolute, universal and independent of inertial reference frames as confirmed by both the physical fact of the universal synchronization of clocks on the GPS satellites and clocks on the earth, and the theoretical existence of absolute and universal Galilean time in STR which has proved that time dilation and space contraction are pure illusions of STR.
Thus, all relativistic spacetime model based physics theories (electromagnetic theory, quantum field theory, general theory of relativity, big bang theory, string theories, etc) become questionable.
Though there are arguments about the conclusion, the speed of the propagation of a gravitational force may very probably be much faster than the speed of light. Therefore, the speed of light may not be the speed limit of the universe either. All the problems of sound speed based STR would be shown in the light speed based STR, too.
The Photon Existence Paradox
A Search for an Einstein Relativity-Gravitational Effect in the Sun
2. Historical contextSoon after the successful formulation of the general theory of relativity (Einstein 1916), Einstein applied his new theory of gravity, space and time to the universe as a whole.4
Assuming a cosmos that was static over time,5 and that a consistent theory of gravitation should incorporate Mach’s principle,6 he found it necessary to add a new term to the general field equations in order to predict a universe with a non-zero mean density of matter - the famous ‘cosmological constant’ (Einstein 1917b).7 With judicious choice of the cosmological constant, Einstein was led to a model of a finite, static cosmos of spherical spatial geometry whose radius was directly related to the density of matter.8
IKAROS (Interplanetary Kite-craft Accelerated by Radiation Of the Sun) is a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) experimental spacecraft. The spacecraft was launched on 20 May 2010,
aboard an H-IIA rocket, together with the Akatsuki (Venus Climate Orbiter) probe and four other small spacecraft. IKAROS is the first spacecraft to successfully demonstrate solar sail technology in interplanetary space.[3][7]
The IKAROS probe is the world's first spacecraft to use solar sailing as the main propulsion.[13] It was designed to demonstrate four key technologies (comments in parentheses refer to figure):
Deployment and control of a large, thin solar sail membrane (grey-blue areas numbered 3)
Thin-film solar cells integrated into the sail to power the payload (black rectangles numbered 4)
Measurement of acceleration due to radiation pressure on the solar sail
Attitude control by varying the reflectance of 80 liquid crystal panels embedded in the sail (orange rectangles numbered 2)
Origin of Predators
"The Circle of Life is a lie
A pretty way to say
There are predators and prey"
Kiros, The Lion King
Some scientists now think that a small, perhaps temporary, increase in oxygen suddenly crossed an ecological threshold, enabling the emergence of predators. The rise of carnivory would have set off an evolutionary arms race that led to the burst of complex body types and behaviours that fill the oceans today. “This is the most significant event in Earth evolution,” says Guy Narbonne, a palaeobiologist at Queen's University in Kingston, Canada. “The advent of pervasive carnivory, made possible by oxygenation, is likely to have been a major trigger.”
Animal life at this point was simple, and there were no predators. But an evolutionary storm would soon upend this quiet world.
Prokaryotes and Eukaryotes
Oxygen is an energetic molecule. An environment with oxygen and creatures that can actually use that energetic molecule opens the possibility of developing more complex creatures. With the increase in the level of oxygen, we expect a leap in the rate of evolution and new life forms. Life up until this time had been prokaryotic slime. Prokaryotes are fairly simple life forms. Bacteria are prokaryotes. They show few internal modifications within the cell. Within a prokaryote, genetic material is randomly distributed through the cytoplasm. Eukaryotes, on the other hand, have complex structures within them, called organelles. The DNA of eukaryotes is nicely tidied away in a discrete nucleus. The question is: How did life progress from the rather simple prokaryotes to the much more complex eukaryotic cells? The endosymbiotic hypothesis attempts an answer. For example, imagine that two prokaryotes are in an ocean. One prokaryote approaches another and attempts to engulf the other prokaryote—perhaps attempting to eat it. According to the theory, the prokaryote that is being engulfed isn’t destroyed; instead, a symbiotic relation is set up between two creatures, resulting in eukaryotes.
Multicellularity and Differentiation
Not long after the Huronian glaciation, there is evidence of the earliest multicellularity. The stromatolites consisted only of loose associations of cyanobacteria; each bacterium was an independent unit. A truly multicellular creature differentiates the functions of
its cells. Possibly the earliest example of multicellularity is in the fossil Bangiomorphapubescens, a red alga, dated to about 1.2 billion years ago. The cells at the base of these algae are clearly differentiated into holdfasts, the cells used to cement the organisms to rocks. It has also been suggested that certain areas of these algae show that certain cells have been adapted to perform specific sexual functions. There was definite differentiation within the cell structure of this organism. Complex cells and multicellular creatures, such as Bangiomorphapubescens, most likely required elevated levels of oxygen. Elevated levels of oxygen would allow creatures to grow larger because, if creatures are multicellular, oxygen can penetrate through all the cells in the body and allow them to grow to a larger size.
The First Animal Eukaryote
The first animal eukaryote was probably the choanoflagellate, a free-living, single-celled organism. These, in fact, closely resembled some of the component cells found in sponges. The 67 theory is that associations of eukaryotes, such as choanoflagellates, eventually gave rise to sponges—thought to be some of the most primitive multicellular animals on the planet today. Diversification of the eukaryotes and the first truly multicellular creatures occurred with 1 percent of oxygen in the atmosphere about 1.2 billion years ago. However, not until 630 million years ago did we see truly complex creatures. Why did evolution stall for more than half a billion years?
Climate Catastrophism Scheme
This is from the APA in 2006, 2007, Showing 40,000
Samuel Eliot Morison was a singularly devoted worshipper of Columbus, and while he was alive it was virtually impossible to discuss pre-Columbian expeditions to the Western Hemisphere in any academic setting. It is still anathema to give the topic serious consideration. Ales Hrdlicka, longtime anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution, was a zealous foe of early dates for the populating of North America, and even today most anthropologists and archaeologists immediately run to their computers to discredit any digs that would suggest a date earlier than 12,000 B.C.- 50,000 B.c. The recent findings at Monte Verde in Chile were actually the reluctant admission by the dinosaurs of archaeology/ anthropology who grudgingly agreed to add 1,300 years to the acceptable date of human occupation of the Western Hemisphere—not a notable “advance” in scientific thinking considering the inaccuracies of c-14 dating techniques.
Firestone et al., 2007, PNAS 104(41): 16,016–16,021, proposed that a major cosmic impact, circa 10,835 cal. BCE, triggered the Younger Dryas (YD) climate shift along with changes in human cultures and megafaunal extinctions. Fourteen years after this initial work the overwhelming consensus of research undertaken by many independent groups, reviewed here, suggests their claims of a major cosmic impact at this time should be accepted. Evidence is mainly in the form of geochemical signals at what is known as the YD boundary found across at least four continents, especially North America and Greenland, such as excess platinum, quench-melted materials, and nanodiamonds. Their other claims are not yet confirmed, but the scale of the event, including extensive wildfires, and its very close timing with the onset of dramatic YD cooling suggest they are plausible and should be researched further. Notably, arguments by a small cohort of researchers against their claims of a major impact are, in general, poorly constructed, and under close scrutiny most of their evidence can actually be interpreted as supporting the impact hypothesis.
The debate surrounding catastrophism versus gradualism goes back at least as far as the great classical philosophers (Palmer, 2003). It was thought for many years to be resolved by Darwinian evolution and Hutton’s uniformitarian geological principles, at least within the general scientific community.
Therefore, the YD impact event need not involve any fragments large enough to create a crater, yet it could still produce the geochemical evidence observed as well as a mechanism for the YD cooling.
After a warm Mesozoic era and Pangaeadisintegration, and especially after Paleocene the climate cooled down again, large reptiles (dinosaurs) got extinct, and mammals rapidly evolved and bloomed during entire Cenozoic.
The paleontological record does not support the postulate of a catastrophic event that led to simultaneous extinctions of a significant portion of Paleozoic life forms. Rather, evolutionary changes were brought about by processes acting over several millions of years.
Prior to 1980, the explanation was that there were slow and natural changes in the climate that ultimately led to the demise of the dinosaurs. Part of the reason for the acceptance of the gradual decline theory was that uniformitarianism or gradualism was firmly established by Sir Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin, Spencer and Huxley. Herbert Spencer (1891) cites the following passage from a lecture by Professor Huxley in which Huxley discusses his disdain for those who support catastrophism along with his favorable view of uniformitarianism: The progress of scientific geology has elevated the fundament [sic] principle of uniformitarianism, that the explanation of the past is to be sought in the study of the present, into the position of an axiom; and the wild speculations of the catastrophists, to which we all listened with respect a quarter of a century ago, would hardly find a single patient hearer at the present day.
Lyons, Jeffrey K.. EVOLUTION MYTHS: A Critical View of neo-Darwinism (p. 47). Liberty Hill Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Uniformitarianism and Gradualism Challenged
Lyons, Jeffrey K.. EVOLUTION MYTHS: A Critical View of neo-Darwinism (p. 48). Liberty Hill Publishing. Kindle Edition.
In the first half of the twentieth century, German paleontology professor Otto H. Schindewolf (1896-1971) dared to go against the dominant view of uniformitarianism by asserting a neo-catastrophism, leading to mass extinction. Professor Schindewolf was boldly suggesting that mass extinctions that were evidenced in the fossil record (such as the dinosaurs 65 million years ago) were the result of catastrophe and not a gradual Darwinian process. In the 1950s, Schindewolf’s ideas were not well received in the United States among geologists, paleontologists and biologists (Benton, 2003). Unfortunately, Schindewolf never lived to see his ideas vindicated among the worldwide scientific community. Everything changed on June 6, 1980, when a remarkable paper was published in the scientific journal Science, by a team of researchers led by a physicist named Luis Alvarez (Luis W Alvarez, Alvarez, Asaro, & Michel, 1980). In that paper, Alvarez et al. claimed that they found evidence for the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The cause of the extinction was a catastrophic one; the researchers went out on a limb and claimed that they had discovered empirical evidence that suggested a spectacular meteor hit the earth approximately 65 million years ago and that this event impacted the entire planet, leading to the sudden extinction of the dinosaurs. Luis Alvarez was a physicist and he assembled a team of researchers that included: geologist Walter Alvarez, and two staff scientists in the Energy and Environmental Division of Lawrence Berkely Laboratory; Frank Asaro and Helen Michel. Initially, the team was looking for a more accurate way to measure and validate the age of sedimentary evidence that marked the barriers between geological epochs. The team knew that the element of iridium is rare today on the earth’s surface; they reasoned that an increased concentration of iridium would be evidence of older samples of the earth’s sedimentary layers. Alvarez (1980) and his team gathered evidence in clay samples retrieved from the Bottaccione George, near Gubbio, Italy; a second set of samples from the sea cliff of Stevns Klint, located 50 km south of Copenhagen, Denmark was also collected. What the researchers found was not what they expected. The researchers expected to see slow accumulations of iridium over time. Instead, the researchers were shocked to discover a sudden unaccounted for burst of iridium at the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary (C/T); this was the period of time 65 million years ago, when the dinosaurs became extinct. The team needed to confirm their findings, so they gathered samples from Denmark also. The Denmark samples confirmed the findings from Italy; both sets of samples showed an increase of iridium levels 65 million years ago at the C/T boundary. The researchers could not explain the high increase of iridium as a naturally occurring terrestrial event. Therefore, the Alvarez (1980) team made their shocking prediction to the scientific community: Impact of a large earth-crossing asteroid would inject about 60 times the object’s mass into the atmosphere as pulverized rock; a fraction of this dust would stay in the stratosphere for several years and be distributed worldwide. The resulting darkness would suppress photosynthesis, and the expected biological consequences match quite closely the extinctions observed in the paleontological record. . . Four different independent estimates of the diameter of the asteroid give values that lie in the range 10 + (-) 4 kilometers. (p. 1095) The effect of the Alvarez article in the 1980s is what Professor Kuhn (1962/1996) referred to as a scientific revolution. Uniformitarianism had been the reigning geological paradigm thanks to Lyell and Darwin. Now that paradigm was challenged with new scientific evidence. Over the next 20 years more research was done; it continued to support the hypothesis of the Alvarez team – earth had been hit by a giant asteroid 65 million years ago! The Alvarez et al. (1980) paper shook the current geological assumptions of the history of our planet to the core! Paleontologist, Michael Benton (2003) comments on the scientific revolution which resulted since 1980 in the fields of geology and the earth sciences: What a changed scientific world in 20 years! In 1980, despite the work of craterologists and the suggestion of a supernova explosion 65 million years ago, most earth scientists were still firmly in Charles Lyell’s camp. When I learnt my geology in the 1970s, my professors did not even mention impacts, craters or mass extinctions. Now my students hear about catastrophes, asteroids, giant eruptions, death and destruction every week in their lectures. (p. 122) Hundreds of scientific papers have been published since the Alvarez et al. article in 1980. As more research was conducted more craters were discovered on earth and an entirely new area of geology, studying “impact cratering” has now developed (Pälike, 2013; Reimold, 2003, 2007). An article by Urrutia-Fucugauchi and Perez-Cruz (2011) notes that between 170 and 180 impact craters have been identified on earth. There are certainly more since locating craters under the sea at the earth’s poles is exceedingly difficult.
Lyons, Jeffrey K.. EVOLUTION MYTHS: A Critical View of neo-Darwinism (pp. 48-50). Liberty Hill Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Darwin was well aware of what catastrophism is. His disdain for catastrophism and support of Lyell’s uniformitarianism are well documented in Darwin’s publications and journal. Darwin’s theory of descent with modification hinges on a gradual change of species over time. Catastrophism is antithetical to Darwin’s theories because descent with modification postulated slow changes over time while catastrophism did not. Therefore, Darwin opposed catastrophism vehemently. With the publication of the paper by Alvarez et al. (1980) everything changed. Alvarez and his research team demonstrated conclusively that a meteor had collided with the earth in the past and that this coincided with the extinction of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago. Lyell and uniformitarianism are now out. Catastrophism is back in. Darwin and Lyell would be turning over in their final resting places if they were aware of the radical shift in earth science.
Lyons, Jeffrey K.. EVOLUTION MYTHS: A Critical View of neo-Darwinism (pp. 53-54). Liberty Hill Publishing. Kindle Edition.
AI Overview
The Alvarez hypothesis, proposing a large asteroid impact caused the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction 66 million years ago, aligns with the theory of punctuated equilibrium, a concept in neo-Darwinism. Punctuated equilibrium suggests that evolutionary change occurs in bursts, not gradually, followed by periods of stasis, which contrasts with the traditional view of continuous evolution. The Alvarez hypothesis, with its sudden catastrophic event, provides a mechanism for these bursts of evolutionary change.
Elaboration:
Punctuated Equilibrium:
This theory, proposed by Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, suggests that evolutionary change is not gradual and continuous, as originally proposed by Darwin, but rather occurs in rapid bursts of change followed by long periods of stasis where species remain relatively unchanged.
Alvarez Hypothesis:
This theory, proposed by Luis and Walter Alvarez, posits that a large asteroid impact caused the mass extinction that marked the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods, approximately 66 million years ago. This event would have drastically altered the environment, leading to rapid evolutionary changes in the surviving species.
Alignment:
The catastrophic event described by the Alvarez hypothesis perfectly fits the punctuated equilibrium model. The sudden impact would have created conditions for rapid evolutionary change, followed by a period of relative stasis as the planet and its species adapted to the new environment.
Contrasting Traditional Darwinism:
Traditional Darwinian thought emphasized gradual, continuous evolution driven by natural selection over long periods of time. Punctuated equilibrium and the Alvarez hypothesis challenge this view by highlighting the role of sudden, catastrophic events in shaping evolutionary trajectories.
Evidence and Debate:
The Alvarez hypothesis is supported by the presence of a worldwide iridium layer, shocked minerals, and a large impact crater at Chicxulub in the Yucatan Peninsula, all dated to the Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary. However, the theory has also faced criticism and alternative explanations for the mass extinction have been proposed.
Implications:
The integration of punctuated equilibrium and the Alvarez hypothesis has broader implications for understanding evolutionary processes. It suggests that evolutionary change can be shaped by both gradual selection and sudden, catastrophic events.
AI Overview
The Alvarez hypothesis, explaining the K-Pg extinction event (dinosaur die-off) as a result of an asteroid impact, and the Younger Dryas event, a period of abrupt cooling around 12,800 years ago, are both examples of how catastrophic events can significantly impact Earth's climate and ecosystems, contributing to the concept of climate catastrophism.
Elaboration:
This theory, developed by Luis and Walter Alvarez, proposes that a large asteroid impact at the K-Pg boundary (the boundary between the Cretaceous and Paleogene periods) triggered a chain of events that led to widespread extinction, including the dinosaurs. The impact caused massive dust and debris to be ejected into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and leading to a global cooling period. This, along with other consequences of the impact, is believed to have drastically altered the Earth's climate and ecosystems, ultimately contributing to the extinction event. The Alvarez theory is a cornerstone of the concept of catastrophism in geosciences, emphasizing the role of sudden, large-scale events in geological and biological history.
This event, a period of sudden cooling that occurred after the last glacial period, is another example of a catastrophic climate shift. While not caused by an asteroid impact, it represents a dramatic and rapid change in Earth's climate, with significant consequences for both natural ecosystems and human societies. The Younger Dryas cooling period is believed to have been caused by disruptions in the ocean circulation, potentially due to freshwater influxes from melting glaciers. The abruptness and intensity of this cooling event, along with its regional variations, highlight the potential for sudden and dramatic changes in Earth's climate system.
Connection to Modern Climate Catastrophism:
Both the Alvarez hypothesis and the Younger Dryas event contribute to the understanding of climate catastrophism, which acknowledges the role of large, sudden events in shaping Earth's history.
This theory demonstrates how a single, catastrophic impact can have far-reaching consequences on the planet's climate and ecosystems, leading to mass extinction events and long-term changes in the environment.
This event highlights the potential for abrupt and significant climate shifts to occur, even in the absence of a large asteroid impact, showcasing the dynamic and responsive nature of the climate system.
Modern climate catastrophism, particularly in the context of anthropogenic climate change, also draws parallels to these past events. The current rapid changes in Earth's climate, driven by human activities, are seen by some as a new example of a potentially catastrophic event, with similar potential for long-term environmental and societal consequences as the past examples of sudden climate shifts. The study of the Alvarez hypothesis and Younger Dryas helps us understand the potential consequences of such events and the need to address climate change effectively.
AI Overview
Climate catastrophism, sometimes referred to as "climate doomerism," is the view that climate change is so severe and imminent that it will lead to a global collapse of civilization or, in some cases, human extinction. It's a term used to describe the belief that climate change poses a catastrophic threat, leading to widespread devastation and instability.
Here's a more detailed look:
Key Beliefs:
Severe Impacts:
Climate catastrophists believe that the effects of climate change will be far more devastating and widespread than many other climate change-related discussions acknowledge.
Global Collapse:
Some catastrophists envision a scenario where societal systems, such as food production, infrastructure, and governance, collapse due to the combined effects of climate change.
Potential for Extinction:
In extreme cases, climate catastrophism can include the belief that climate change could lead to the extinction of human species, a scenario sometimes referred to as "climate apocalypse".
Urgent Action Needed:
Catastrophists emphasize the need for immediate and drastic action to mitigate climate change, as they believe that delay will only exacerbate the crisis.
Examples of Scenarios:
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Climate change could destabilize existing societies through resource scarcity, mass migration, and conflict, leading to a breakdown of social structures and governance.
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The term "global catastrophe" can refer to a situation where a large portion of the global population is lost and global systems are severely disrupted.
This concept refers to the levels of global warming and societal fragility that could lead to climate change becoming an extinction threat.
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Certain scenarios, like the abrupt cessation of geoengineering, could lead to rapid warming that forces rapid adaptation to elevated temperatures, potentially causing catastrophic consequences.
Contrasting Views:
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Some argue that the severity of climate change is overstated and that the Earth has a natural capacity to adapt to such changes.
Climate Adaptation and Mitigation:
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Many focus on finding ways to mitigate the causes of climate change and adapt to the changes already underway, rather than viewing the situation as an imminent catastrophe.
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Others believe that technological advancements and societal changes can help us avoid the most severe consequences of climate change and maintain a livable planet.
In Summary: Climate catastrophism is a specific view of climate change that emphasizes the severity of its potential impacts, including societal collapse and potential extinction, and the urgent need for action. It contrasts with other views, including those that are more skeptical, optimistic, or focused on adaptation and mitigation.
https://www.apr.org/post/three-identical-strangers-nuanced-doc-tells-gripping-tale-triplicate#stream/0 The demonstrable sameness of siblings hatched from the same egg excites the friction between our insistence on individual uniqueness and our desire for a mirror-image Other who will understand and defend us and keep us company forever. Or so the fantasy goes. http://www.wvasfm.org/post/three-identical-strangers-nuanced-doc-tells-gripping-tale-triplicate They marvel at their similarities, in not just appearance, but mannerisms, hobbies (all three were high school wrestlers), and taste in food and women. https://www.baltimoremagazine.com/2018/8/6/movie-review-three-identical-strangers
Aliens!
Christianity puts Being above Good and also, at least some Fathers of the Church like Gregory of Nyssa equate Good with Beauty. Otherwise said, survival is above morals and aesthetics. At the same time, the so-called Neo-Platonists place Good above Being and Being above Beauty. Otherwise said, morals above survival and survival above aesthetics, also NOT equating morals with aesthetics, as Gregory of Nyssa and others do.
Also, these hierarchies... In fact, what we sacrifice is what we recognize we aren't worthy of, what we really place above the others. For Christianity it seems to be the worship of the moral aesthetics that gives survival, for Neo-Platonists the worship of genuine beauty, lethal beauty, that gives unshakeable ethics.
Plotinus taught that there is a supreme, totally transcendent "One", containing
no division, multiplicity or distinction; beyond all categories of being and nonbeing.
His "One" "cannot be any existing thing", nor is it merely the sum of all
things, but "is prior to all existents". Plotinus identified his "One" with the concept of
'Good' and the principle of 'Beauty'.
For apeiron is not the matter [ὕλη] of limit, but the δύναμις of it, and the limit is not the Form of the infinite, but its existence. - Proclus, The Platonic Theology 'For the end of the world is of no other power; there is no such thing as of the end, there is no existence'
This optimistic, “this-worldly” religion was taken into Classical Civilization at a time when the philosophic outlook of that society was quite incompatible with the religious outlook of Christianity. The Classical philosophic outlook, which we might call Neoplatonic, was derived from the teachings of Persian Zoroastrianism, Pythagorean rationalism, and Platonism.
Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (p. 99). GSG & Associates Publishers. Kindle Edition.
The hallmark of Nietzsche’s ‘positive’ ethics is a tendency to make ethical (-sounding) judgments that behave like aesthetic ones.
Governments and states emerged as rulers gained control over larger areas and more resources, often using writing and religion to maintain social hierarchies and consolidate power over larger areas and populations.
Psychologically speaking, religion is conceived, created and perpetuated by virtually every culture throughout history to provide meaning, comfort and succor in the face of the stark, disturbing, anxiety-provoking existential facts of life: suffering, misfortune, meaninglessness, isolation, insecurity, disease, evil, loss, and ultimately, death.
The ‘argument from design’ is one of the traditional types of reasoning in natural theology used to establish the existence of a divine principle. It usually infers, from the observation of order or purposefulness in nature, the existence of an intelligent agent as the designer of such order. The inference can be drawn on the basis of an analogy between cases of natural and artificial order, or it can take the form of an inference to the best explanation. In addition, the intelligent agent implied by the argument can either be said to have simply created the current cosmos, or to guiding the universe continually as a providential guardian. Arguments of this kind have been employed in various philosophical contexts, and the divine beings they have been thought to introduce were very different from one another. It is remarkable that the same type of argument can, with only slight modification, be held to justify the acceptance of an immanent providence pervading all of reality, the existence of a transcendent Platonic demiurge, or the belief in the God of Holy Scripture.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Aufklärung
His great creation, the retelling of the tale of Faust, who sells his soul to the devil for success and fame, became a kind of Enlightenment manifesto against the church and religion.
In his late career, his masterpiece, the epic poem Faust, would become so fundamental to German literature that many Germans would rank Goethe as the "William Shakespeare of Frankfurt."
Goethe's poetic work served as a model for an entire movement in German poetry termed Innerlichkeit ("introversion") and represented by, for example, Heinrich Heine. Goethe's words inspired a number of compositions by, among others, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig von Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Hector Berlioz, and Hugo Wolf. Perhaps the single most influential piece is "Mignon's Song" which opens with one of the most famous lines in German poetry, an allusion to Italy: "Kennst du das Land, wo die Zitronen blühn?" ("Do you know the land where the lemons bloom?").
His views make him, along with Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and Ludwig van Beethoven, a figure in two worlds: on one hand, devoted to the sense of taste, order, and finely crafted detail, which is the hallmark of the artistic sense of the Age of Reason and the neo-classical period of architecture; on the other, seeking a personal, intuitive, and personalized form of expression and polity, firmly supporting the idea of self-regulating and organic systems. Thinkers such as Ralph Waldo Emerson would take up many similar ideas in the 1800s. His ideas on evolution would frame the question which Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace would approach within the scientific paradigm.
Goethe was deeply interested in scientific method, realizing as he did that the answers one gets from inquiries into nature depend to a large extent on how one poses the questions. In his botanical work, he was of course concerned primarily with the “how” of vegetation and therefore investigated not only the diversity of physical forms but also the underlying unity from which they emerge. In a sketch of his distinctive approach to this type of investigation, written in the mid-1790s, he presents what he calls the “genetic method.” Th e term genetic here refers not to the science of genes, but rather to seeking the origin or genesis of things. He describes this method as follows:
If I look at the created object, inquire into its creation, and follow this process back as far as I can, I will find a series of steps. Since these are not actually seen together before me, I must visualize them in my memory so that they form a certain ideal whole. At first I will tend to think in terms of steps, but nature leaves no gaps, and thus, in the end, I will have to see this progression of uninterrupted activity as a whole. I can do so by dissolving the particular without destroying the impression itself.
And in spite of the glory of others, you dare to say the phenomenon more clearly, what is not the biggest measure of the soul, but what is in the mind?
And if one must dare to speak rather openly against the opinion of others, our soul did not descend entirely, but there is a part of it which is always in the intelligible.
- Plotinus, Enneads, 4.8.8.1–3
How many souls I was searching for you to be born, and the rest of them alone remains, not to be burned.
Every particular soul, when it descends into temporal process, descends entire: there is not a part of it which remains above and a part which descends.
- Proclus, Elements of Theology, 211
In this book is attempted for the first time the venture of predetermining history, of following the still untraveled stages in the destiny of a Culture, and specifically of the only Culture of our time and on our planet which is actually in the phase of fulfillment — the West European-American.
Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West, Vol. I: Form and Actuality . Rogue Scholar Press. Kindle Edition.
The most appropriate designation for this current West European scheme of history, in which the great Cultures are made to follow orbits round us as the presumed center of all world happenings, is the Ptolemaic system of history. The system that is put forward in this work in place of it I regard as the Copernican discovery in the historical sphere, in that it admits no sort of privileged position to the Classical or the Western Culture as against the Cultures of India, Babylon, China, Egypt, the Arabs, Mexico — separate worlds of dynamic being which in point of mass count for just as much in the general picture of history as the Classical, while frequently surpassing it in point of spiritual greatness and soaring power. VII The scheme “ancient-medieval-modern” in its first form was a creation of the Magian world sense. It first appeared in the Persian and Jewish religions after Cyrus, received an apocalyptic sense in the teaching of the Book of Daniel on the four world eras, and was developed into a World history in the post-Christian religions of the East, notably the Gnostic systems.11 This important conception, within the very narrow limits which fixed its intellectual basis, was unimpeachable. Neither Indian nor even Egyptian history was included in the scope of the proposition. For the Magian thinker the expression “World history” meant a unique and supremely dramatic act, having as its theater the lands between Hellas and Persia, in which the strictly dualistic world sense of the East expressed itself not by means of polar conceptions like the “soul and spirit,” “good and evil” of contemporary metaphysics, but by the figure of a catastrophe, an epochal change of phase between world creation and world decay.12 No elements beyond those which we find stabilized in the Classical literature, on the one hand, and the Bible (or other sacred book of the particular system), on the other, came into the picture, which presents (as “The Old” and “The New,” respectively) the easily grasped contrasts of Gentile and Jewish, Christian and Heathen, Classical and Oriental, idol and dogma, nature and spirit with a time connotation — that is, as a drama in which the one prevails over the other. The historical change of period wears the characteristic dress of the religious “Redemption.” This “World history” in short was a conception narrow and provincial, but within its limits logical and complete. Necessarily, therefore, it was specific to this region and this humanity, and incapable of any natural extension. But to these two there has been added a third epoch, the epoch that we call “modern,” on Western soil, and it is this that for the first time gives the picture of history the look of a progression. The oriental picture was at rest. It presented a self-contained antithesis, with equilibrium as its outcome and a unique divine act as its turning point. But, adopted and assumed by a wholly new type of mankind, it was quickly transformed (without anyone’s noticing the oddity of the change) into a conception of a linear progress: from Homer or Adam — the modern can substitute for these names the Indo-German, Old Stone Man, or the Pithecanthropus — through Jerusalem, Rome, Florence and Paris according to the taste of the individual historian, thinker or artist, who has unlimited freedom in the interpretation of the three part scheme. This third term, “modern times,” which in form asserts that it is the last and conclusive term of the series, has in fact, ever since the Crusades, been stretched and stretched again to the elastic limit at which it will bear no more.13 It was at least implied if not stated in so many words, that here, beyond the ancient and the medieval, something definitive was beginning, a Third Kingdom in which, somewhere, there was to be fulfillment and culmination, and which had an objective point. As to what this objective point is, each thinker, from Schoolman to Present day Socialist, backs his own peculiar discovery. Such a view into the course of things may be both easy and flattering to the patentee, but in fact he has simply taken the spirit of the West, as reflected in his own brain, for the meaning of the world. So it is that great thinkers, making a metaphysical virtue of intellectual necessity, have not only accepted without serious investigation the scheme of history agreed “by common consent” but have made of it the basis of their philosophies and dragged in God as author of this or that “world plan.” Evidently the mystic number three applied to the world ages has something highly seductive for the metaphysician’s taste. History was described by Herder as the education of the human race, by Kant as an evolution of the idea of freedom, by Hegel as a self-expansion of the world spirit, by others in other terms, but as regards its ground plan everyone was quite satisfied when he had thought out some abstract meaning for the conventional threefold order.
Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West, Vol. I: Form and Actuality . Rogue Scholar Press. Kindle Edition.
On the very threshold of the Western Culture we meet the great Joachim of Floris (c. 1145-1202),14 the first thinker of the Hegelian stamp who shattered the dualistic world form of Augustine, and with his essentially Gothic intellect stated the new Christianity of his time in the form of a third term to the religions of the Old and the New Testaments, expressing them respectively as the Age of the Father, the Age of the Son and the Age of the Holy Ghost. His teaching moved the best of the Franciscans and the Dominicans, Dante, Thomas Aquinas, in their inmost souls and awakened a world outlook which slowly but surely took entire possession of the historical sense of our Culture. Lessing — who often designated his own period, with reference to the Classical as the “afterworld”15 (Nachwelt) — took his idea of the “education of the human race” with its three stages of child, youth and man, from the teaching of the Fourteenth Century mystics. Ibsen treats it with thoroughness in his Emperor and Galilean (1873), in which he directly presents the Gnostic world conception through the figure of the wizard Maximus, and advances not a step beyond it in his famous Stockholm address of 1887. It would appear, then, that the Western consciousness feels itself urged to predicate a sort of finality inherent in its own appearance.
Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West, Vol. I: Form and Actuality . Rogue Scholar Press. Kindle Edition.
Everything is out-and-out imitation, yet with a cleverness stemming from centuries of practice, such that it can one day, with the ever-increasing ignorance, pass itself off as “creative.” Corresponding to this modern rescue of cultural Christianity are the “struggle” against and the “overcoming” of “Christianity.” These derive from an empty enlightenment or from a half-understood Nietzscheanism or from both and merely repeat the cultural Christianity in an inversion or on a much lower plane—(building in advance, for a “faith” and for a requirement of faith, a “spiritual world” mixed from all philosophies, dripping with “seriousness,” and overflowing with “decisions,” according to which everything is already decided by way of a decisionlessness). The rescue of cultural Christianity and the semblance of anti-Christian worldviews—belong | together. Their dovetailing is a sign that the conscious and unconditional instituting of the modern anthropormorphizing of the human being has started as a closed process. This dovetailing makes possible the “triumphant parade of technology.”
Black Notebooks 1938–1939
Heidegger, Martin. Ponderings VII–XI: 7-11 (Studies in Continental Thought) (p. 269). Indiana University Press. Kindle Edition.
Martin Heidegger (/ˈhaɪdɛɡər,ˈhaɪdɪɡər/;[12][13]German: [ˈmaʁtiːn ˈhaɪdɛɡɐ];[14][12] 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher who is best known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. He is among the most important and influential philosophers of the 20th century.[6][15] He has been widely criticized for supporting the Nazi Party after his election as rector at the University of Freiburg in 1933, and there has been controversy about the relationship between his philosophy and Nazism.[16][17]
Philosopher Martin Heidegger joined the Nazi Party (NSDAP) on May 1, 1933, ten days after being elected Rector of the University of Freiburg. A year later, in April 1934, he resigned the Rectorship and stopped taking part in Nazi Party meetings, but remained a member of the Nazi Party until its dismantling at the end of World War II.
In 2013, speaking about the Schneerson Collection at the Moscow Jewish Museum and the Center for Tolerance, Russian President Vladimir Putin erroneously[20][21][22] said:
"The decision to nationalize the library was made by the first Soviet government, and Jews were approximately 80–85% members".
Alfred Jensen said that in the 1920s "75 per cent of the leading Bolsheviks" were "of Jewish origin".
Jewish Bolshevism, also Judeo–Bolshevism, is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was a Jewish plot and that Jews controlled the Soviet Union and international communist movements, often in furtherance of a plan to destroy Western civilization. It was one of the main Nazi beliefs that served as an ideological justification for the German invasion of the Soviet Union and the Holocaust.[1]
Instances — besides that of Mithradates and the Cyprus massacre quoted above — are the Sepoy Mutiny in India, the Boxer Rebellion in China, and the Bolshevist fury of Jews, Letts, and other alien peoples against Tsarist Russia.
Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West: Perspectives of World-History . Arktos Media Ltd. Kindle Edition.
https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=D7CE534201D7954BDC11AED3F6DC1399 Byzantium has been pushed around a lot. Most overtly, as told in Chapter 1 below, it has been the target of western vilification and polemic starting from medieval times, going strong through the Enlightenment, and reaching all the way down to the twentieth century. Recent efforts to rehabilitate it have tended more to push back against bias than develop grounds for positive appreciation and engagement For example, Byzantium has been artificially cut off from its Roman roots Moreover, efforts by western medieval scholars to secure as western possessions the early Church Fathers (i.e., the Patristic period), the major Councils that defined the faith, and Justinian’s codification of Roman law created another artificial scheme that left behind a rump Byzantium, starting in the seventh century. This appropriation has been revived recently in the invention of “late antiquity” as an (alleged) period and field of study. I use the term “medieval” to refer to western Europe between 500 and 1500, roughly to wherever Latin was the learned language and the churches owed allegiance to Rome; I mean it in distinction to Byzantium and its own cultural orbit, as Chapter 4 will argue. What we call Byzantium was nothing other than the direct continuation of the Roman empire in the east. A Roman empire had existed in the Greek east since the second century BC and included the entire eastern Mediterranean by the end of the first century BC.
Recently, seminal publications highlighted the Romanitas of the Byzantines. However, it is not without importance that from the 12th century onwards the ethnonym Hellene (Ἓλλην) became progressively more popular. A number of influential intellectuals and political actors preferred the term Hellene to identify themselves, instead of the formal Roman (Ρωμαῖος) and the common Greek (Γραικός). While I do not intend to challenge the prevalence of the Romanitas during the long Byzantine era, I suggest that we should reevaluate the emerging importance of Hellenitas in the shaping of collective and individual identities after the 12th century. From the 13th to the 16th century, Byzantine scholars attempted to recreate a collective identity based on cultural and historical continuity and otherness. In this paper, I will seek to explore the ways Byzantine scholars of the Late Byzantine and Post Byzantine era, who lived in the territories of the Byzantine Empire and/or in Italy, perceived national identity, and to show that the shift towards Hellenitas started in the Greek-speaking East.
4.1. The Conciliatory Stance
At the turn of the 15th century, Manuel Chrysoloras (ca. 1350–1415), a seminal Byzantine scholar who contributed to the spread of Greek literature in Renaissance Italy, referred to the twofold identity of the Byzantines, highlighting the Hellenic and the Roman elements. The Byzantines would equally trace their heritage to the ancient Greeks and the Romans. Chrysoloras admitted that the Byzantines forgot their original name and adopted the ethnic name Romans. Despite his efforts in favor of shared identity, his conciliatory stance was not popular. Hellenization gradually gained ground among the Byzantines elites. Namely, Chrysoloras, in an epistle (1414) to the Emperor Manuel Palaeologus (Patrinelis and Sofianos 2001, p. 117, ΙΙ. 4–13), stated:
Let us remember from what men we are descended. If someone would like, he could say that we descended from the first and age-old, I mean from the most venerable and ancient Hellenes (no one has remained ignorant of their power and wisdom). If you please, you could also say that we descended from those who came after them, the ancient Romans, after whom we are named and who we are now named and who we, I suppose, claim to be, so that we even almost erased our ancient name. Rather both of these races came together in our times, I think, and whether someone calls us Hellenes or Romans, that is what we are, and we safeguard the succession of Alexander and that of those after him. (Lamers 2015, p. 32)
Chrysoloras entitled this part of his text Exhortation on behalf of the genos. Chrysoloras suggested that the Emperor revive the study of ancient literature, both pagan and Christian. He added that the Byzantines should not neglect their cultural inheritance, all the while the Italians were meticulously studying Greek texts (Patrinelis 1972, p. 501).
A few years later, namely in 1429, Isidore (1385–1463)—bishop of Kiev, humanist and theologian who promoted the Union of Orthodox and Catholic Christendom—entertained similar views. The Eastern Empire had two constitutive elements: the Hellenic and the Roman. He praised the Emperor Constantine the Great for mingling and uniting the best of the Romans with the best of the Hellenes, creating the Romellenes (Ρωμέλληνες), the best and most distinguished people (Lampros 1926, pp. 151.29–152.17).
When we talk about the tradition of Neoplatonic philosophy within the Islamic world, then we primarily refer to the comprehensive influence of the three philosophers: Aristotle (through the works of Porphyry), Plotinus and Proclus. Speaking of Christian Neoplatonism earlier and now elaborating Islamic Neoplatonism, we come to the conclusion that there is a continuity between Christian and Islamic philosophy both under the influence of earlier Greek philosophical tradition.1 Namely, Neoplatonism was the dominant intellectual philosophy in the West from the third to the sixth centuries in centers such as Athens, Rome, Alexandria and elsewhere. Subsequently, the Neoplatonic philosophy was assimilated within Christian intellectual culture where it was systematically suppressed for centuries by dogmatic church authorities both in the Christian West and in the East. Thus, Christian Neoplatonism appeared again in Europe at its full capacity only during the Renaissance. While this process of suppressing Neoplatonism was taking place in medieval Europe by institutions such as the Catholic and Orthodox Church, the Neoplatonic tradition has found fertile soil in Islamic culture where it will have a great influence on its philosophy and theology. In the Middle Ages, Islamic Neoplatonism also indirectly conditioned the preservation of the Neoplatonic tradition in Christian form by influencing Christian philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas but also through Arabic and Latin translations of Neoplatonic writings which influenced the development of the so-called Western Mysticism and other traditions like alchemy for example. It's not far from the truth if we say that Islamic philosophy carefully guarded the European philosophical tradition until Europe was ready to embrace it again.3 At the same time, Islamic philosophy has carefully studied and refined Neoplatonic tradition so we can confidently say that the medieval Neoplatonic philosophical development represents a common endeavor of Christian and Islamic culture. Alexandria, a city known for many prominent philosophers was occupied in 642. by the Arabs who for the first time have met the philosophy that has been infused with Aristotelianism in Neoplatonic form. The process of translating the crucial works such as "Aristotle's theology", "Book of causes", "Elements of theology", "Timaeus" and "Isagoge" from Greek into Arabic
1 Encyclopedia Of Philosophy, "Islamic Neoplatonism". 3 Nada Bulić, Povijesna predaja grčke filozofije, Sveučilište u Zadru, Odjel za klasičnu filologiju, 2013, 11.had a long-term impact on development of falsafa (Greek philosophy in Islam).4 The texts of Aristotle came to the Arab world in a form of synthesis made by Porphyry in "Isagoge" where the Alexandrian model of philosophy has been layed down. Alexandria was not the only major city in the Middle East where we have the tradition of Neoplatonism, so we should also mention the city of Gondeshapur (150 km northeast of Basra) which was a great center of Greek-Byzantine learning thanks to the great influence of seven philosophers which were previously expelled from Athens by emperor Justinian.5 In this period we also have the spread of certain religious and esoteric traditions such as astrology, alchemy, magic and theurgy within the Islamic world.6 This is especially true for Neoplatonic school in Harran where sources tell us about the existence of communities who possessed vast esoteric knowledge in the field of astrology and mathematics and it is also known that astrology was widespread and accepted by the majority of Arab intellectuals. On the other hand, the practice of alchemy was also treated in an allegorical way within mystical speculation as a symbol of human transformation into the divine. The last place that sources confirm the active Neoplatonic tradition was Baghdad where philosophers brought elements of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism from Alexandria and Harran. It is precisely in Baghdad that a serious "translation movement" is being created that has systematically assimilated Greek scientific and philosophical learning which contributed to the start of first Muslim university in 1065.7 Cities such as Alexandria, Gondeshapur and Harran illustrated how the Arab-Islamic Empire easily contacted Greek philosophical tradition, especially in its Aristotelian and Neoplatonic form. Alexandria, a city known for many prominent philosophers was occupied in 642. by the Arabs who for the first time have met the philosophy that has been infused with Aristotelianism in Neoplatonic form. The process of translating the crucial works such as "Aristotle's theology", "Book of causes", "Elements of theology", "Timaeus" and "Isagoge" The texts of Aristotle came to the Arab world in a form of synthesis made by Porphyry in "Isagoge" where the Alexandrian model of philosophy has been layed down. Alexandria was not the only major city in the Middle East where we have the tradition of Neoplatonism, so we should also mention the city of Gondeshapur (150 km northeast of Basra) which was a great center of Greek-Byzantine learning thanks to the great influence of seven philosophers which were previously expelled from Athens by emperor Justinian. In this period we also have the spread of certain religious and esoteric traditions such as astrology, alchemy, magic and theurgy within the Islamic world. This is especially true for Neoplatonic school in Harran where sources tell us about the existence of communities who possessed vast esoteric knowledge in the field of astrology and mathematics and it is also known that astrology was widespread and accepted by the majority of Arab intellectuals. On the other hand, the practice of alchemy was also treated in an allegorical way within mystical speculation as a symbol of human transformation into the divine. The last place that sources confirm the active Neoplatonic tradition was Baghdad where philosophers brought elements of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism from Alexandria and Harran. It is precisely in Baghdad that a serious "translation movement" is being created that has systematically assimilated Greek scientific and philosophical learning which contributed to the start of first Muslim university in 1065. Cities such as Alexandria, Gondeshapur and Harran illustrated how the Arab-Islamic Empire easily contacted Greek philosophical tradition, especially in its Aristotelian and Neoplatonic form.
Plotinus’ thought affected the Islamic world, not only through his
Neoplatonic successors, including Porphyry and Proclus, but through three works which derive from the Enneads iv-vi. These are: The Theology of Aristotle Sayings of the Greek Sage and The Letter on Divine Science
Plotinus is known as both a philosopher and a mystic, and it is crucial to explain his mysticism of henosis in the light of his metaphysics of the One. In this dissertation I investigate ἢlὁtiὀuὅ’ mysticism on this approach, while emphasizing that the Enneads is a text of mystical teaching which mediates the reality of henosis by giving spiruitual guidance. Thus, my investigation is orientated by two questions: First, what are the methods of ἢlὁtiὀuὅ’ mystical teaching? Second, how do these methods relate to henosis as their desired goal? I explain these questions in the light of ἢlὁtiὀuὅ’metaphysics, according to which the One is both transcendent and immanent such that man cannot and need not know It. The conclusions reached are as follows: The methods taught by Plotinus are the practices of philosophy and negative theology, which aim at knowing intelligible beings and the transcendent One. However, these practices do not help man to attain henosis, but remind him that his failure to attain henosis pertains to his natural condition in which he is united with the One. ἢlὁtiὀuὅ’ mystical teaching aims not at transforming man’s finite nature, but at changing man’s preconceptions concerning henosis.
C. The Basic Differences between Dionysius’ and Plotinus’ Negative Theologies In the light of the preceding analyses, we can sum up the basic differences between Dionysius’ and Plotinus’ negative theologies as follows. First, although Plotinus’ and Dionysius’ negative theologies are both based upon the doctrine that the intellect and the intelligible being are one and the same, they interpret this doctrine differently, thereby propounding different theories of the intellect. Dionysius adheres closely to said doctrine and derives from it the consequence that God, being that which is beyond all beings, must also transcend the intellect. Plotinus, by contrast, draws from this doctrine the more radical consequence that the intellect which becomes identical to the intelligible being must necessarily dissolve itself. Second, Plotinus’ negative theology also differs from Dionysius’ regarding the main method of negative theology. Dionysius’ method of unknowing is basically an
exercise of the intellect, although it is not strictly speaking the proper function of the intellect, namely apprehending the intelligible being. By contrast, the most crucial method in Plotinus’ negative theology is self-renunciation, which differs from unknowing in three aspects. (1) It does not aim at the theoretical knowledge of the First Principle. (2) It consists mainly in the ascetic practice of self-contemplation. (3) It is a method that paradoxically abandons all methods, whereas unknowing is a method that
puts to rest intellectual activities; the former operates on a meta-methodological level, while the latter on an objectual level.
Last not least, Dionysius and Plotinus have quite different ideas about what henosis is and how negative theology relates to it. For Dionysius, henosis is the mystical knowledge of God, namely the knowledge that that which is beyond all beings cannot be known as a being, and this knowledge is attained by means of the non-proper functioning of the intellect, namely unknowing. For Plotinus, on the other hand, henosis is man’s original condition in which the One is always already present to him as the conditio sine qua non of his whole existence. Since this condition is original, man cannot attain it by any methods. Self-renunciation is meant precisely as a reminder of this basic but easily overlooked fact.
The ideal criterion posits rhetoric as a mode of discourse capable of
civic tasks higher and more potent than mediating conflict—such tasks,
for example, as instructing mature, autonomous citizens in the real
choices, problems, and best interests of the polls-, establishing the authority
of rationality in the public realm; or even summoning the polls
into actuality as a community. With regard to the ideal criterion, rhetoric
must persuade the auditors, but mere persuasion does not suffice to
accomplish the higher tasks: what is wanted is the creation in the minds
of the audience of an enlightened self-understanding that actually dispels
conflict and realizes the politically harmonious community. This is
what I mean by "taming democracy," a phrase based on Plato's metaphor
of how the successful rhetor handles the beastlike demos-, without quite
using this metaphor Thucydides and Demosthenes consider the same
problem of controlling the demos through language. All three adopt ideal
criteria when they propose their models of political rhetoric. All are well
versed in the uses of language; none countenances the use of charisma
or a mystical kind of persuasion to conjure an end to political conflict
and create a community sustained by emotion or faith. All three seek
a rational, instructive political discourse, a discourse that applies human
intelligence and will to make the citizen-community wiser, and
therefore better.
The central section of Taming Democracy then traces with great subtlety
the shifts in Plato's attitude toward rhetoric from the Gorgias to the
Laws, arguing against the generally held conception of the Greek philosopher
as simply being antirhetorical.
2. Plato Compares Rhetoric to Empire
By means of a brief digression in the midst of the argument against Pericles, Plato distances himself from the ideological controversy that usually motivated criticism of democracy in the late fifth century (II. i-4). It is convenient to mention this minor but significant point before examining the main argument. Socrates reports that some charge Pericles for "having made the Athenians idle and cowardly and talkative and covetous, because he was the first to establish pay for [political] service among them" (G. 51 SE). Pericles was indeed the author of the daily wage for Athenians serving in the mass jury panels. This and similar measures undertaken by later democratic leaders substantially increased the ability of the poorer members of the demos to play a full role in the political life of the polis. Upper-class oligarchical sympathizers found these payments for service in the democracy intolerable. Callicles notes that the charge of idleness reported by Socrates stems from "those with the battered ears," that is, the wealthy proponents of oligarchy who imitated Spartan fashion (51 SE). Given his opposition to democracy, it is certain that Plato would not approve these payments to the demos. But both Callicles and Socrates are content to drop this ideologically charged issue; it is irrelevant to the discussion and plays no role in the assessment of Pericles. Plato is indicating that his criticism of Pericles has nothing to do with ideological quarrels between oligarchs and democrats, but is based strictly on the novel positions on rhetoric and politics developed in the Gorgias.8 To assess Pericles' career as rhetor, Socrates focuses on the question whether the Athenians became "better" (beltious) as a result of his speeches to them (G. 5O2E-3D, 5150-160). Socrates summarizes the distinction between the two opposed forms of discourse under consideration in the Gorgias and asks Callicles which of the two is found in Athens and elsewhere among the Greeks (5O2D-3A): But what of the rhetoric addressed to the Athenian people and other free peoples in various cities—what does that mean to us? Do the rhetores seem to you [i] always to speak with an eye to what is best, their sole aim being to render the citizens as perfect as possible by their speeches, or [2] is their impulse rather to gratify the citizens, and do they neglect the common good for their personal interest and treat the people like children, attempting only to please them, with no concern whatever whether such conduct makes them better or worse?9 The two alternatives correspond to (i) the discourse of the political expert, that is, the "expert and good" rhetor, and (2) the discourse of the ordinary, corrupt rhetor. Does any Athenian politician exemplify the first alternative? Callicles denies that any living politician makes use of the good kind of rhetoric, but he claims that four great Athenian leaders of the past—Themistocles, Cimon, Miltiades, and Pericles—all answer Socrates7 description of the good kind of rhetor (50360). If Callicles is correct, then their speeches to the demos over a period of time should have had the effect of "making the citizens better" than they were at the time when they began to address them (5036); that is, as true practitioners of the political techne they will have succeeded in improving the polis, which means they will have succeeded in improving the citizens. Although Plato is careful not to let the three earlier Athenian leaders drop entirely from sight, Callicles and Socrates eventually concentrate on Pericles. Later in the conversation Callicles asserts specifically that during the time that Pericles addressed the demos the citizens went from a worse condition to a better condition (5150); hence Pericles made the Athenians better. At that point the "recently dead" Pericles becomes the focus and the arguments that apply to him are tacitly or explicitly extended to the other three. In what follows I too concentrate on Pericles. But why these four? Plato has Callicles group the three earlier leaders with Pericles because they were instrumental in building up the empire which reached its height during Pericles' leadership. Together the four politicians span the period from 490 to 430 when Athens repelled the Persians, acquired her naval empire, and established herself as the wealthiest and most powerful polls of the Greek world; each of the four had particular associations with an important aspect of the growth of the empire.11 Plato's cardinal objection to Periclean rhetoric is fundamentally an objection to the public, authoritative encouragement of brute power and wealth—empire—in preference to the real political virtues of knowledge and justice. Socrates' question regarding rhetores who "make the Athenians better" takes Callicles by surprise. In response, he merely repeats conventional wisdom (5030): "What, have you never been told that Themistocles was a good man, as well as Cimon, Miltiades, and Pericles?" The conventional wisdom endorsed by Callicles and targeted by Socrates had (at the time of the composition of the Gorgias) recently been given its most potent formulation in the eulogy of imperial Athens in Pericles' last speech in Thucydides. The sublime Athens of the funeral oration is not of primary significance here. Callicles is presumably too cynical to place any faith in the pieties of the funeral oration's account of a humane, enlightened Athens; and although the funeral oration hints at the empire several times, the empire remains distinctly in the background. 12 But Callicles could have nothing but admiration for Pericles' eulogy of the empire. It is in Thucydides' account of Pericles that Plato found the politician who pursued the same goals that Callicles advocates, the politician who someone like Callicles would claim had benefited Athens. Plato condemns Pericles by associating him with Callicles, and Thucydides' account allows—or rather, encourages—Plato to do this. At the climax of his panegyric on the Athenian empire, Pericles dazzles the Athenians with an impressive list of their own achievements: Athens, says Pericles in a single long sentence, "has the greatest name, . . . has expended the most bodies and pains in war,... has acquired the greatest power,... rules the most Greeks,... has fought the greatest wars," and is quite simply "the richest and greatest (megiste) polls" (Th.2.64.3). In one of the few references to the empire in the funeral oration, Pericles encourages the citizens to be ready to sacrifice their lives in war "observing the power of the polis every day" and realizing that the poll's is "great" (megale) (2.43.1). Thucydides endorses this view in his own voice: "during [Pericles'] time [as leader] Athens became greatest" (megiste} (2.65.5).
The first Christian communities were "inspirationally democratic", see the Athenian origion of core Christian terminology, ekklasia, leitourgia.
The Platonic Seventh Letter1, much of which is dedicated to an explanation
of Plato’s motivations for undertaking his three Sicilian journeys, indicates that
the philosopher’s visits to Sicily and his encounters with the Syracusan tyrants
provoked much discussion among his contemporaries2. Extant fragments and
paraphrases of Hellenistic anti-Platonic writings allow us to identify some of
the charges raised against Plato: he was accused of being an associate of tyrants
and a treacherous friend to Dion, he was depicted as a parasite at the court of
Dionysius, and he was censured for gluttony and greed3.
Socrates' advocacy of philosophy-his assertion in the face of all poets and philosophers except Parmenides that there is something that is not in flux, but that endures and can, therefore, be known. (C( Thaetetus 152d-e)
Parmenides "On the Nature of Things" are remarkable for two reasons: they are the first thorough-going attempt to prove that reality is a unity, and they are the earliest expression of an idea which was to dominate philosophy with tremendous consequences for nearly two thousand years afterward.
THE FATHER OF MONISM
Aristotle
Ethnic nationalism, evolutionary psychology and Genetic Similarity Theory
Prefrontal cortex interactions with the amygdala in primates
At the neural level, the prefrontal cortex (PFC) is considered the
central brain region for several executive functions (EFs). Hence, it plays
a vital role in creative ideation and problem-solving by providing a
control mechanism (Cassotti et al., 2016; Diamond, 2013; Khalil et al.,
2018b, 2019, 2020).
A neurocomputational model of creative processes
Phylogenomic data acquisition: principles and practice
Molecular phylogenies map to biogeography better than morphological ones
Synthetic receptors with both engineered sensing and engineered
actuation. Synthetic receptor systems that signal with both engineered
sensing and actuation can be orthogonal to, or completely independent
of, endogenous sensing and actuation. This strategy enables
construction of signaling pathways with both user-defined input and
output that do not rely on pre-existing natural receptors (Fig. 2).
Synthetic receptor development has evolved substantially from
modest modifications of natural proteins to design-driven construction,
refinement and integration of modular technologies that
increasingly enable true engineering of customized cellular functions.
Notably, key choices in the iterative refinement of CARs were
uniquely informed by evaluations in their final application context
(in this case, in clinical trials4). Evaluating other synthetic receptor
systems in application-specific contexts may prove similarly
useful for guiding both the development and use of these technologies.
These advances reflect a qualitative shift in the broader field
of mammalian synthetic biology, wherein progress is increasingly
guided by rational exploration and knowledge building, as opposed
to trial and error, toward new applications of greatest clinical,
scientific and societal benefit.
This study was inspired by a short passage from one of Nicholas of Cusa’s
(1401–1464) treatises, Idiota. De mente (1450):
For, clearly, we experience that there is a mental power [spiritus] speaking
within our mind and judging this thing to be good, that thing to be
just, another thing to be true – and reproving us if we veer from what
is just. The mind did not at all learn this discourse and this judgment;
rather, they are innate to it.1
5 To Know Is to Number
5.1 Senses, Reason and Intellect
Idiota. De Sapientia, the first of the Idiotae libri, begins when the Layman meets
an Orator in the forum. They soon engage in conversation, and the Layman
tells his interlocutor that his erudition is vain, that is, empty. True knowledge,
which leads to the awareness of one’s ignorance, does not come from books
written by men but from those written by God. When the Orator asks where
one can find these books, the Layman points to the forum and to the activities
that take place there. This gesture shows us, Cusanus readers, that the author
has given a new meaning to the traditional notion of divine vestiges. The book
written by God toward which the Layman points is not a natural phenomenon
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The Cognitive Dimension of the Inna te Power of Judgment 123
but a very specific one, the activity of the human mind that shows itself in
the market.
And after they had entered the place and had turned to face the Forum,
the Layman began to speak as follows: “Since I told you that wisdom proclaims
[itself] in the streets, and since its proclamation is that it dwells
in the highest places, I will endeavor to get you to see this point. But first
I would like for you to say what you see being done there in the Forum.”
Orator: I see money being counted there; and in another spot I see goods
being weighed; and in an opposite spot I see oil and other items being
measured out.
Layman: These are the works of that power-of-reason by which men excel
the beasts. For brute animals cannot number, weigh, and measure. Look,
now, O Orator, and see by means of what, in reference to what, and from
what these [activities] are done, and tell me [what you find].
Orator: [They are done] by means of discriminating.
Layman: Correct. But by means of what is there discriminating? Don’t we
discriminate numerically [numerare] by means of one?48
As mentioned before, the “one” that the Layman speaks about here is the oneness
previous to any number, the oneness that is the condition of possibility
of all numbering, that is to say, the human mind. Idiota. De sapientia is not
the first place that Cusanus refers to numbering as the activity that separates
humans from animals. In De coniecturis, completed between 1440 and 1445,49
he gives a definition of “number” that agrees with his later views:
48 De sap. (h v, n. 5): “Et intrantes locum aspectum in forum vertente sic exorditus est Idiota
sermonem: Quoniam tibi dixi sapientiam clamare ‘in plateis,’ et clamor eius est ipsam ‘in
altissimis’ habitare, hoc tibi ostendere sic conabor. Et primum velim dicas: Quod hic fieri
conspicis in foro?
Orator: Video ibi numerari pecunias, in alio angulo ponderari merces, ex opposito | mensurari
oleum et alia.
Idiota: Haec sunt opera rationis illius, per quam homines bestia antecellunt; nam numerare,
ponderare et mensurare bruta nequeunt. Attende nunc, orator, per quae, in quo et ex
quo haec fiant, et dicito mihi.
Orator: Per discretionem.
Idiota: Recte dicis. Per quae autem discretio? Nonne per unum numeratur?” Trans.
Hopkins, On Wisdom and Knowledge, 500.
49 I follow Clyde Lee Miller’s datation in Reading Cusanus: Metaphor and Dialectic in a
Conjectural Universe, 68. The date is not certain. As the author says there, Cusanus completed
the treatise between 1440 and 1445.
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Number is a certain natural, originated beginning that is of reason’s making;
for those [creatures] that lack a mind, e.g., brute animals, do not
number. Nor is number anything other than reason unfolded; for number
is proved to be the beginning of those things that are attained by reason –
proved to such an extent that if number is removed, then reason shows
that none of those things [attained by reason] would remain.
Moreover, reason’s unfolding of number and its using number to make
surmises is nothing other than reason’s using itself and mentally fashioning
all [surmised] things in a natural, supreme likeness [similitudo] of
itself – just as in and through His Co-eternal Word, God (who is Infinite
Mind) communicates being to things.50
In order not to understand this passage as if Cusanus held the objects of
knowledge to be ontologically dependent on the activity of the mind, it must
be understood that for him the process of knowledge begins with sensory perception,
and the senses are awakened by material phenomena. This process
is best described by him in Idiota. De mente, where it becomes apparent that
similitudo and assimilatio are expressed in more than one way.
When knowing through the senses, imagination and reason, the mind likens
or assimilates itself (as if it were flexible wax, says Cusanus)51 to the corresponding
aspects in the things that it finds in the outside world. While in
the sensory-rational level of knowledge there is a necessary interaction with
the material world on which the mind passively depends, the epistemological
foundation of this sensory-rational knowledge is the relation of proportion
in which the mind’s oneness unfolds when the material world awakens it. All
cognitive activity, even the most elementary, involves the action of oneness,
which introduces at each level the unity of knowledge. We would not have
even the perception of a color if the active aspect of the mind did not identify
it as such (for example, red) and not others (for example, green or blue). The
mind’s oneness is present as discernment in all cognitive steps, making them
possible. Therefore, even the degree of knowledge most immediately linked to
50 De coni. (h iii, n. 7): “Rationalis fabricae naturale quoddam pullulans principium numerus
est; mente enim carentes, uti bruta, non numerant. Nec est aliud numerus quam ratio
explicata. Adeo enim numerus principium eorum, quae ratione attinguntur, esse probatur,
quod eo sublato nihil omnium remanisse ratione convincitur. Nec est aliud rationem
numerum explicare et illo in constituendis coniecturis uti, quam rationem se ipsa uti
ac in sui naturali suprema similitudine cuncta fingere, uti deus, mens infinita, in verbo
coaeterno rebus esse communicat.” Trans. Hopkins, Metaphysical Speculations ii, 166.
51 See De mente (h v, nn. 100–101).
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The Cognitive Dimension of the Inna te Power of Judgment 125
material experience, sensory perception, is not purely passive; on the contrary,
to be specifically human it depends on the activity of the mind.
The epistemological priority of the mind does not imply, however, that its
activity is completely autonomous; it needs to be awakened by the material
world. Not only sensory-rational knowledge depends on the outside world and
therefore is, in Cusanus’ words, an “assimilation of all things”;52 to a different
degree, mathematical knowledge also needs the world. Both numbers and
geometric shapes are “abstract assimilations,” which are not “altogether free of
material associations.”53
However, once mathematical concepts have been conceived, the relation
between them and the figures and quantities they represent is comparable to
that between an exemplar and its image.54 Although the mind is stimulated
by the material world to unfold mathematical concepts, the world is not the
foundation for the certainty and universality that belong to mathematical
knowledge, nor are mathematical concepts a representation of extramental
beings. The essence of a mathematical entity is given by its definition, and this
definition unfolds from the mind’s own power. For example, the definition of a
circle as “the set of all points in a plane that are equidistant from a fixed point”
does not fit any sensory circle, be it drawn, carved or imagined. The perfect
circle, which is identified with its definition, does not exist in any place other
than in the mind that conceived it. This is what allows Nicholas to say: “Hence,
the circle in the mind is the exemplar, and measure of truth, of a circle in a
[patterned] floor.”55
The creation of mathematical entities, however, is still linked to what De
docta ignorantia understands as a rational function of the mind. When the
mind conceives mathematical entities, it still moves in the rational world
of definitions, a world in which the triangle is not a circle and the circle is
not a line. The mind’s creatures are many and various and, when producing
them, the mind is still at the threshold of the symbolic procedure designed
by Cusanus to guide it towards self-awareness of its being an image of God.
52 De mente (h v, n. 72): “Si mentem divinam universitatem veritatis rerum dixeris, nostram
dices universitatem assimilationis rerum, ut sit notionum universitas.”
53 De doc. ig. (h i, n. 31): “Abstractiora autem istis, ubi de rebus consideratio habetur, – non ut
appendiciis materiallbus, sine quibus imaginari nequeunt, penitus careant neque penitus
possibilitati fluctuanti subsint – firmissima videmus atque nobis certissima, ut sunt ipsa
mathematicalia.” Trans. Hopkins, On Learned Ignorance, p. 18.
54 De mente (h v, n. 104).
55 Ibid. (h v, n. 103): “Sicut dum concipit circulum esse figuram, a ciuius centro mones lineae
ad circumferentiam ductae sunt aequales,quo modo essendi circulus extra mentem in
materia esse nequit.” Trans. Hopkins, On Wisdom and Knowledge ii.
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At this stage, the mind creates but is oblivious to the fact that its oneness is
the condition that makes its mathematical creatures possible. The symbolic
procedure teaches the mind first to examine its own creatures from a rational
point of view (one thing is the triangle, another the circle), then to break the
limits of reason through conceiving the mathematical entities as infinite (the
infinite triangle is and is not a triangle), and, in the last place, to jump towards
the absolute infinite, freeing itself from any limit. Throughout this process, the
mind is guided by the desire to find the truth, that is, oneness. It has not found
it in material things, nor in its own mathematical creatures. Both types of entities
are what they are in relation to others, and in this multiplicity, even if it is
organized as an interconnected system, the mind cannot intuit the truth in its
oneness and simplicity. Frustrated by multiplicity and still moved by its desire
to attain its goal, the mind turns towards its own creative force. There it sees
the genesis of its notional creatures.
The desire for oneness directs the mind from the material world toward
itself, and from its own multiple creatures toward the oneness that makes them
possible. At this stage, the word “assimilation” takes another meaning. While
at the sensory-rational level of knowledge the human mind assimilates or likens
itself to things known, when creating pure notions the mind assimilates
its operation to God’s. At the intellectual level, the mind not only creates but
knows that it creates, and it intuits its own operation as an image of the divine.
The following passage from De coniecturis, quoted before, refers to this level:
[…] Reason’s unfolding of number and its using number to make surmises
is nothing other than reason using itself and mentally fashioning
all [surmised] things in a natural, supreme likeness [similitudo] of itself –
just as in and through His Co-eternal Word, God (who is Infinite Mind)
communicates being to things.56
AI Overview
Nicholas of Cusa's concept of "oneness" is deeply rooted in Neoplatonism, where he argues that all things ultimately originate from and are united in a single, divine source, which he refers to as the "Coincidence of Opposites" - a state where all contradictions and distinctions dissolve into a unified whole, representing the absolute nature of God.
Key points about Nicholas of Cusa and Neoplatonism:
The One and the Many:Like other Neoplatonists, Cusa believed that the divine "One" is the ultimate reality, and all individual things in the universe are emanations or expressions of this One, creating the "many".
"Coincidence of Opposites":Cusa's unique contribution is the concept of the "Coincidence of Opposites," where seemingly contradictory ideas or aspects of reality are seen as ultimately unified within God, who transcends all limitations and distinctions.
Human striving for unity:Cusa believed that humans, through philosophical contemplation and seeking God, can progressively approach this state of oneness, even though they can never fully comprehend it.
Infinite God:Cusa emphasized the infinite nature of God, stating that God is beyond all human concepts and cannot be fully grasped by the finite human mind.
According to Donald, the key element in the emergence of a theoretic culture is the invention of external symbolic memory technology.4,14 The development of external memory in the form of writing, lists, scriptures, etc., massively enhanced individuals’ abilities to reflect on their own thoughts and challenge prior beliefs, which eventually led to a new kind of culture and a new way of dealing with the world.
What is Axial about the Axial Age?
Capitalism, also called free market economy or free enterprise economy, economic system, dominant in the Western world since the breakup of feudalism, in which most means of production are privately owned and production is guided and income distributed largely through the operation of markets.
The flat Earth model is an archaic conception of Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period (323 BC), the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period (31 BC), India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD), and China until the 17th century.
Myth of flat-Earth prevalence
Beginning in the 19th century, a historical myth arose which held that the predominant cosmological doctrine during the Middle Ages was that the Earth was flat. An early proponent of this myth was the American writer Washington Irving, who maintained that Christopher Columbus had to overcome the opposition of churchmen to gain sponsorship for his voyage of exploration. Later significant advocates of this view were John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who used it as a major element in their advocacy of the thesis[129] that there was a long-lasting and essential conflict between science and religion.[130] Some studies of the historical connections between science and religion have demonstrated that theories of their mutual antagonism ignore examples of their mutual support.[131][132]
Subsequent studies of medieval science have shown that most scholars in the Middle Ages, including those read by Christopher Columbus, maintained that the Earth was spherical.[133]
"The stereotype of the Middle Ages as "the Dark Ages" fostered by Renaissance humanists and Enlightenment philosophes has, of course, long since been abandoned by scholars."
The New Dark Age History
The Popular (and Wrong) Interpretation of the "Industrial Revolution"
Monopoly Myth
Tuning the Rainbow:
Isaac Newton’s Search for
“…all that Order and Beauty which we see in the World”
Charles R. Adams
Essentialism
Epigenetic mechanisms of character origination
S A Newman 1, G B Müller
Affiliations expand
PMID: 11144279
DOI: 10.1002/1097-010X(20001215)288:4<304::AID-JEZ3>3.0.CO;2-G
Abstract The close mapping between genotype and morphological phenotype in many contemporary metazoans has led to the general notion that the evolution of organismal form is a direct consequence of evolving genetic programs. In contrast to this view, we propose that the present relationship between genes and form is a highly derived condition, a product of evolution rather than its precondition. Prior to the biochemical canalization of developmental pathways, and the stabilization of phenotypes, interaction of multicellular organisms with their physicochemical environments dictated a many-to-many mapping between genomes and forms. These forms would have been generated by epigenetic mechanisms: initially physical processes characteristic of condensed, chemically active materials, and later conditional, inductive interactions among the organism's constituent tissues. This concept, that epigenetic mechanisms are the generative agents of morphological character origination, helps to explain findings that are difficult to reconcile with the standard neo-Darwinian model, e.g., the burst of body plans in the early Cambrian, the origins of morphological innovation, homology, and rapid change of form. Our concept entails a new interpretation of the relationship between genes and biological form.
Chapter 5 Most Successful Mammals in the Making: A Review of the Paleocene Glires Łucja Fostowicz-Frelik Abstract Glires, the most speciose clade of placental mammals nowadays includes the conservative, uniformly shaped lagomorphs and widely diversified rodents. Both groups are recognized in the fossil record since the early Paleogene, but Rodentia appeared slightly earlier (the late Paleocene) than lagomorphs of modern aspect (the early Eocene). The earliest Glires currently recognized come from Asia (East China), where they were scarce and relatively poorly diversified. They are basal taxa of neither rodent nor lagomorph clear affiliations, although probably ancestral for both. In contrast, the earliest record of North American Glires consists of scarce Rodentia formes (known also from the late Paleocene of Asia) and the primitive basal rodents Ischyromyidae, the latter a widely diversified and abundant group. Ischyromyid rodents differ from other basal Glires lineages in generally large size, approximately that of ground squirrels or marmots. Ischyromyids are an important example of “the Paleocene Paradox” in the fossil record, which is a discrepancy between the fact that the earliest fossil rodents are known from North America while it is widely presumed that the Rodentia originated in Asia from earlier gliroid mammals. Here, I provide a brief review of the early diversification of Glires both in Asia and North America, and discuss the earliest morphologies in this group. Two related important points in the beginning of the evolutionary history of Glires are the skull structure as a whole and the dentition.
Chapter 6 Continuous Spectrum of Lifestyles of Plant-Associated Fungi Under Fluctuating Environments:What Genetic Components Determine the Lifestyle Transition? Kei Hiruma Abstract Plants interact with diverse fungal species, ranging from pathogens to beneficial endophytes. The pathogenic and beneficial lifestyles of fungi have often been studied separately and independently, so the aspects of genetic basis that contribute to lifestyle transitions in plant-associated fungi have not been generally addressed. The Colletotrichum genus comprises a highly diverse group of pathogens that infect and cause anthracnose diseases in a wide range of plant hosts. On the other hand, some of the Colletotrichum species act as beneficial endophytes and promote plant growth under conditions of stress. The presence of diverse Colletotrichum species with contrasting infection strategies thus provides a suitable model system in which to explore the molecular basis for discriminating pathogenic and beneficial lifestyles of plant-associated fungi. This chapter reviews recent molecular-based research related to pathogenic and beneficial Colletotrichum species and discusses the possible molecular basis underlying the lifestyle determination, based on the results of comparative genomics and in planta transcriptome analysis.
Evidence of Common Ancestry:
All Life-Forms Are Related Our evidence for macroevolution necessarily included some evidence for common ancestry. The amphibious blenny Praealticus, for example, connects extant aquatic and terrestrial blennies not in an ancestor–descendant relationship but as related descendants of a shared ancestor. The theory of descent with modification ultimately connects all organisms to a single common ancestor. Humans, butterflies, lettuce, and bacteria all trace their lineages back to the same primordial stock. The crucial evidence for universal common ancestry is homology.
Evolutionary Developmental Biology
"One of the most striking elements of angiosperm evolution is the diversity of
floral forms represented. Beyond modifications of existing structures, flowers can
evolve novel elements that are often linked with functions associated with
effective or efficient pollination."
The concept of burden was developed around the 1970s by Austrian zoologist
Rupert Riedl, based on morphological insights rooted in Karl Ernst von Baer’s
embryological tradition. Burden’s main tenet is that as a morphological character
evolves, it develops more relationships with other characters, becoming more and
more interconnected. Through this process, the morphological character acquires
more biological “responsibilities” within the organism. Two main consequences
of the burden hypothesis are that (1) a character’s evolvability will be limited by
these responsibilities and (2) a set of heavily burdened characters could be
considered as part of the body plan of a taxonomic group. The concept of burden
is intimately related to that of developmental constraint, and as such, it is central
to evo-devo.
Effects of Adaptive Eco-Devo Responses on Evolutionary Diversification
Paradoxically, adaptive plasticity may either oppose or promote evolutionary
diversification at larger spatial scales. If plastic norms of reaction provide for
sufficiently diverse phenotypes, populations may be able to establish in different
habitats without undergoing selective divergence into local ecotypes or, eventually,
adaptively distinct taxa. In such cases, the existence of adaptive plasticity may both
maintain genetic diversity locally and inhibit among-population adaptive diversification,
as seen in certain geographically widespread colonizing species. In highly
plastic systems, genetic divergence among populations and species may result
largely from population structure rather than adaptive differentiation.
The market economy as such does not respect political frontiers. Its field is the world. —Ludwig Edler von Mises
McFate, Sean. The Modern Mercenary (p. 8). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.
To answer this question, we have to realize there has been a proliferation of small enterprises entering the AI fray obtaining and providing cloud-based services—or machine learning as a service—that will alter the human response to marketplace adjustments in ways we cannot deny are making markets more free.
What happens when AI becomes a customizable tool that everyone can access and becomes a standard feature of the marketplace? This is AIaaS for everything! The marketplace for entrepreneurship as we have known it historically will not in the future consist of insular small shops ; rather, AI will amplify markets, increasing the flow of capital between buyers and sellers, opening up exchange and the flow of knowledge and information. This will lead to new production technologies that will span the globe—basically enabling free markets.
"While warfare remains a contentious subject, considerable evidence supports the view that warfare is a strategy by which coalitions of males cooperate to acquire and defend resources necessary for reproduction."
This strategy is not the result of a single “instinct” for war, but is instead an emergent property resulting from evolved psychological mechanisms (such as xenophobia and parochial altruism). These mechanisms are sensitive to ecological and social conditions such that the prevalence and patterns of warfare vary according to subsistence strategies, military technology, cultural institutions, and political and economic relations. When economic conditions enable intergroup relations to change from zero-sum to positive-sum games, peaceful intergroup relations can emerge.
If, as many evolutionary anthropologists suppose, the roots of warfare extend deeper than the origin of our species (ca. 300,000 years ago), warfare is likely to have shaped the evolution of human psychology, including traits such as courage, risk-taking, parochial altruism, patriarchy and xenophobia
AI Overview
In the context of evolutionary biology, intragroup conflict, or conflict within a group, is indeed linked to increased competition and is considered a natural and inevitable part of the evolutionary process for humans. This perspective suggests that humans, like all species, have evolved with a mix of cooperative and competitive tendencies, and intragroup conflict arises from the competition for resources, mates, and social status within the group.
Here's a more detailed explanation:
Evolutionary Basis:
Evolutionary biology posits that traits that enhance survival and reproduction are favored by natural selection. In humans, this includes both the ability to cooperate within groups and the capacity for conflict within groups.
Competition and Conflict:
Competition for resources (like food, territory, or mates) and social status within a group can lead to conflict. This conflict can manifest in various forms, from subtle social maneuvering to overt aggression.
Natural and Inevitable:
From an evolutionary perspective, this conflict is not necessarily "bad" or abnormal. It's a natural outcome of the pressures of natural selection, where individuals compete to maximize their own fitness (survival and reproduction).
Examples:
Consider the dynamics of a hunting band. Individuals may compete for the best hunting spots, leading to some conflict. However, the group also needs to cooperate to be successful in hunting.
Beyond Humans:
This dynamic is not unique to humans. Many animal species exhibit both cooperative and competitive behaviors within their groups.
Not Always Destructive:
While conflict can be destructive, it can also be a catalyst for positive change within a group. It can lead to the development of new social structures, strategies, and norms.
Modern Implications:
Understanding the evolutionary roots of intragroup conflict can help us better understand human social dynamics, including workplace dynamics, political systems, and even international relations.
Noah Webster and America's First Dictionary
