The Text of the World

2019 ◽  
pp. 55-84
Author(s):  
Stephanie Ann Frampton
Keyword(s):  
Atomic Composition ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Familiar Figure ◽  
The World

It has long been recognized that one of the governing images of Lucretius’s great natural-philosophical poem De rerum natura is the analogy between letters and atoms, both elementa (“elements”) in Latin. At several points in the poem, Lucretius explains the mystery of atomic composition by saying that the atoms are like letters, coming together into physical bodies just as letters come together into words, and words into poetry. Taking seriously the material-cultural roots of Lucretius’s materialist analogy, this chapter approaches the familiar figure in a new way. Using papyri that provide evidence for the methods by which children in antiquity learned to read and write, this chapter shows the debt that Lucretius’s description of writing—and thus his very ideas of atomism and the ; (clinamen) &#“swerve”—owe to one of the most common tools of ancient literate education: the syllabary.

scholarly journals Machiavelli e la lezione di Lucrezio

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Centanni
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Divine Providence ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
The World ◽  
Vita Activa ◽  
The Individual

Machiavelli’s knowledge of Lucretius’ text had been proven thanks to a very relevant discovery by Sergio Bertelli, who in 1961 published an article in which he recognized Machiavelli’s handwriting in the Vatican codex Rossianus 884. This paper analyses the possible repercussions of De rerum natura with respect to the political potential that Lucretius’ thought could had transmitted to Machiavelli, in view of his return to the vita activa. In particular, the notes posted by Machiavelli in the marginalia of the Lucretius’ text he transcribed, prove his reflection on the “clinamen theory”. In the various profiles of the world generated by the vital trigger that the clinamen causes, lies a possibility for us of having a libera mens: the possibility of intercepting and correcting, by our own virtue, the twists and turns of Fate, opposes the individual liberty to the whims of Fortuna, but also to the idea of an ineffable Divine Providence with its mysterious and intractable designs.

scholarly journals Metaphysic Dimension in Labuhan Ceremony of Yogyakarta Palace

2020 ◽  
Vol 202 ◽  
pp. 07051
Author(s):  
Sri Sudarsih
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Material Object ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
The World

The symbolic behavior in Javanese culture is reflected in labuhan ceremony which is done at certain moments by Yogyakarta Palace. This tradition is based on values and has a specific purpose. Labuhan ceremony has strong cultural roots associated with metaphysical meanings. The material object in this study is labuhan ceremony by Yogyakarta Palace, while the formalized object is metaphysics. This research is a qualitative research in philosophy. The method used is the method of analysis-synthesis with methodical interpretation. The existence of labuhan ceremony is regarded as the metaphysical type of communication between the world and the supernatural nature. Both have a reciprocal relationship so that labuhan ceremony is a form of communication to maintain harmony. Labuhan ceremony has a metaphysical meaning, which is a symbol of a harmonious relationship among human beings, supernatural nature, and God.

Nature

2016 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Bellamy Foster
Keyword(s):  
First Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Material World ◽  
Complex Word ◽  
Monthly Review ◽  
The World ◽  
Raymond Williams

This article is adapted from John Bellamy Foster, "Nature," in Kelly Fritsch, Clare O'Connor, and AK Thompson, ed., Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle (Chico, CA: AK Press, 2016), 279-86, http://akpress.org/keywords-for-radicals.html."Nature," wrote Raymond Williams in Keywords, "is perhaps the most complex word in the language." It is derived from the Latin natura, as exemplified by Lucretius's great didactic poem De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) from the first century BCE. The word "nature" has three primary, interrelated meanings: (1) the intrinsic properties or essence of things or processes; (2) an inherent force that directs or determines the world; and (3) the material world or universe, the object of our sense perceptions—both in its entirety and variously understood as including or excluding God, spirit, mind, human beings, society, history, culture, etc.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Directing in Underdeveloped California: the Watsonville Experience

1985 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-172
Author(s):  
R. G. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
San Jose ◽  
Underdeveloped Countries ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Unfair Dismissal ◽  
The World ◽  
The Sixties ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Founding Director

Workers in ‘conscientization’ through theatre in the so-called underdeveloped countries tend to assume that this form of theatre work has a potential unique to such circumstances. R. G. Davis, who was founding director of the San Francisco Mime Troupe in the ‘sixties, argues that the poorer sections of the richest nation in the world have no less been deprived of their cultural roots, and here describes his experiences when he was asked to direct a play dramatizing a workplace incident in the cannery town of Watsonville, northern California, when a Mexican worker was appealing for reinstatement against unfair dismissal. A regular contributor to the former Theatre Quarterly, most recently in TQ 40 (1981) on his productions of Dario Forin the USA, R. G. Davis's own version of We Won't Pay, We Won't Pay, was published last year by Samuel French, and he has recently directed a Native American play in San Jose, followed by a Brecht play in Australia.

scholarly journals MOVIES AND SERIES: AN AID FOR SECONDARY LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Dhanya A P, Et. al.
Keyword(s):  
Language Acquisition ◽  
Learning Process ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
English Language ◽  
Age Group ◽  
English Language Acquisition ◽  
Sample Group ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
The World

English, though an adopted language in colonized countries like India, has deep cultural roots there.  Not only has English enriched the languages of these nations but has also lend itself to the medium of creative expression in these countries. It has become part and parcel of intelligence as well as emotional makeup of the educated people there. It is the language required by the world for greater understanding. Today, the compulsions of learning English are no longer nearly political but scientific and technological. Watching videos is always entertaining. Apart from entertainment, video watching is thoroughly a teaching and learning process. Therefore English language acquisition can be made easy with videos as an aid. The research seeks to prove how far videos help in language acquisition and the quantitative research analyses a sample group of children belonging to the age group of 8-10 years

IV. TheAeneid

1998 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 53-101
Keyword(s):  
Golden Age ◽  
Formal Model ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Epic Tradition ◽  
Philosophical Account ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Literary Genealogy ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Roman Epic

At the heart of theAeneidthe hero descends to the world of the dead and in its innermost recess is reunited with his father. Anchises, Aeneas’s link to his destroyed Trojan past, reveals to his son the future of his race in the form of a procession of the souls of Roman heroes as yet unborn. In this place where time past, present, and future is held together, theAeneidalso comes to a heightened consciousness of its own literary genealogy, as literary memory is overlaid on family and racial memory. The whole of the Underworld episode is modelled on Odysseus’ visit to the land of the dead inOdyssey11: Aeneas’ meeting with his father reworks Odysseus’ meeting with his mother Anticleia (Od.11.152–224), which is immediately followed by the Catalogue of Heroines (Od.11.225–332), the formal model for Virgil’s very masculine Parade of Heroes. But the tears and words with which Anchises greets his son (6.684–9) allude to the Roman epic of Ennius and specifically to the scene at the opening of theAnnalsin which Ennius established his own place within the epic tradition, by narrating a dream in which the phantom of Homer explained to the sleeping poet how, through a Pythagorean metempsychosis, the true soul of Homer was reincarnated in the breast of Ennius himself. In restaging this scene of succession in the dreamlike setting of the Underworld Virgil hints at his own relationship to the dead epic poets to whose company he seeks admittance. The encounter of Aeneas and Anchises occurs within a set-piece of Homeric imitation; Anchises’ running commentary on the Parade of Heroes functions as a summary of the matter of Ennius’ historical epic, which it ‘completes’ by extending the story to Augustus’ achievement of world-empire and restoration of a Golden Age (6.791–800). Ennian historical epic is thus framed in a Homeric mythological episode; in the first part of his speech (6.724–51) Anchises encapsulates another branch of the hexameter tradition, with a philosophico-theological account of the nature of the world and of the soul that is indebted both to Anticleia’s explanation to Odysseus of what happens to humans after death (Od.11.216–24) and to the Ennian Homer’s more philosophical account of these matters, but couched in markedly Lucretian language: a miniature didactic ‘de rerum natura’ to set beside the miniatureAnnalsthat is to follow.

Ce´´zanne and Lucretius at the Red Rock

2002 ◽  
Vol 78 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-85
Author(s):  
Kathryn A Tuma
Keyword(s):  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Ancient Philosophy ◽  
Roman Poet ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Theoretical Terms ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
New Perspective

ARGUING AGAINST CRITICAL MODELS of Céézanne's pictorial tech nique that posit a delimitable ''unit'' of manufacture as the basis for the composition of his pictures, and challenging certain idéées reççues of Greenbergian modernism that continue to frame our view of Céézanne's art, ''Céézanne and Lucretius at the Red Rock'' offers a new perspective from which to think about meaning and form in Céézanne's painting. The essay takes as its starting point evidence that during the last decade of his life Céézanne was reading Lucretius, the Roman poet whose De rerum natura espouses the ancient philosophy of atomistic materialism. From this connection ''Céézanne and Lucretius at the Red Rock'' does not propose Céézanne as a painter of an atomistic worldview - an argument that would yield for the formal analysis of Céézanne's pictorial technique little more than yet another version of what is frequently characterized as Céézanne's ''constructive stroke.'' Instead, this essay turns on a Lucretius who was a poet profoundly attuned to the complex ways metaphorical figuration functioned in his materialist imagination of the world. On the basis of a scrupulous analysis of one late landscape by Céézanne, ''The Red Rock'' of circa 1895, this essay advances ways that such a materialism - one, in other words, acutely self-aware of its own construction on the basis of metaphor - can be seen as deeply resonant with formal and thematic concerns of Céézanne's art. Using Lucretian materialism as its heuristic in this manner, ''Céézanne and Lucretius at the Red Rock'' also sets forth new proposals about Céézanne's revolutionary use of color, contributes to the long-standing critical effort to articulate more precisely the elusive meaning of one of Céézanne's key theoretical terms, ''realization,'' and concludes with a meditation on the deeper issues involved in the melancholic preoccupations of so many of Céézanne's last canvases.

scholarly journals On the Indian Tradition of Mathematical Names: A Scientific Analysis

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ashish Karn ◽  
Brett Rosiejka ◽  
Pankaj Badoni ◽  
Raman Kumar Singh
Keyword(s):  
Indian Subcontinent ◽  
Simple Description ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
Cultural Roots ◽  
Indian Tradition ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
The World ◽  
Chance Events ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Shed Light

The current paper explores the potential interlink between names of individuals in a society and its collective social consciousness, particularly with reference to the pervasive occurrence of the ‘mathematical names’ in the current Hindu society in the Indian subcontinent and beyond. Initially, an attempt is made to put things into mathematical perspective by drawing a quick sketch of some of the stellar achievements of the Indian mathematicians. Under the six broad categories of geometry, trigonometry, numeration, arithmetic, algebra, and mathematics in the Vedic tradition, a concise simple description of these subdivisions is presented, underlining the names of the concepts and terms, sometimes by producing the textual references. Then, upon identification of such mathematical terms, an attempt is made to juxtapose these with the names current in the Indian Hindu society. By employing an extensive dataset of university student names in India and the directories of Facebook and LinkedIn, we produce both qualitative and quantitative evidence of the presence of such names in the Indian subcontinent. Evidently, these names reflect the impressions of the tremendously rich mathematical heritage left by the Hindu stalwart mathematicians. This hypothesis has also been examined by taking surveys of people bearing these mathematical names, as well as by documenting the ‘conscious procedures’ that go behind the naming of a Hindu Indian child. In trying to investigate if such a phenomenon is unique to the Indian tradition, a stark contrast with the ‘names in mathematics’ as prevalent in the European mathematical traditions is presented, as cultural roots of mathematics are explored. Further, we ascribe the presence of these names as the extant remains of the colossal impact of multifarious mathematical traditions existing in India. Interestingly, the present research also brings to the fore, certain unseen facets of the Indian Hindu society as regards the education of mathematics to women – through an indirect exploration of their names. We also show that the pervasive occurrence of these names is not merely the result of semantic chance events, but denotes the richness of the Indian mathematical legacy. Next, we also present cross-cultural comparisons to show the uniqueness of Indian mathematical and scientific traditions that led to the pervasiveness of ‘mathematical names’ in India. Finally, an attempt is made to clarify some subtle points on the associations between mathematics and religion in India and other cultures of the world. It is sincerely hoped that the present study may shed light on the cultural roots of mathematics and may furnish a new dimension in the study of mathematics, culture and civilizations across the world.

“The flaming ramparts of the world”

2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 221-243
Author(s):  
Melanie Hacke
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Religious Life ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Roman Poet ◽  
De Rerum Natura ◽  
Victorian Novels ◽  
Religious Consciousness ◽  
The World

The present article analyses Walter Pater’s novel Marius the Epicurean (1885), focusing particularly on the nexus between the story’s setting in Ancient Rome and its treatment of religion. Even though the abrupt ending of Marius’s Bildung suggests that Pater had not yet succeeded in reconciling his aesthetic philosophy with a religious life in community, the novel encourages its readers to adopt an eclectic religious consciousness. By examining Pater’s references to Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura, the article investigates how Pater used the Roman poet to reinforce this message, and to react against the materialism of post-Darwinian Britain. Moreover, it shows how Marius the Epicurean incorporates and subverts some of the motifs that can be found in popular Victorian novels set in Rome.

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