scholarly journals Fire in the mind: changing understandings of fire in Western civilization

2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1696) ◽  
pp. 20150166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Pyne

For most of human history, fire has been a pervasive presence in human life, and so also in human thought. This essay examines the ways in which fire has functioned intellectually in Western civilization as mythology, as religion, as natural philosophy and as modern science. The great phase change occurred with the development of industrial combustion; fire faded from quotidian life, which also removed it from the world of informing ideas. Beginning with the discovery of oxygen, fire as an organizing concept fragmented into various subdisciplines of natural science and forestry. The Anthropocene, however, may revive the intellectual role of fire as an informing idea or at least a narrative conceit. This article is part of the themed issue ‘The interaction of fire and mankind’.

Author(s):  
Halyna Berehova

The article claims that the assimilation of knowledge from the natural philosophy should help future professionals to form worldviews in the range of "man - nature", namely: to grasp the integrity of nature and its fundamentality rationally, to comprehend nature as a general, limiting concept that explains the scheme of understanding individual things; as a regulatory idea that allows us to understand all things and all objects in their unity and in different forms, to build a rational scientific picture of the world, by filling in the data of natural science and discovering the internal principles of interconnection and determination of things, to reveal different levels of nature as a whole – from inorganic nature to life in general and human life in particular. It is a fragment of a pragmatist-instrumentalist philosophicaleducational system, which consists in effective purposeful influence on the individual through a specific tool - philosophical knowledge. Here, natural philosophy becomes an instrument of intellectual discourse of the individual, and its study is a pragma (action) on the way to forming the world outlook of the individual and the universal picture of the world. It is the natural and philosophical knowledge that shapes the worldviews of the new (modern) personality, helping to understand the totality of the objective conditions of humanity's existence and to define its survival as a pressing problem of the present.


Author(s):  
Ronald Hoinski ◽  
Ronald Polansky

David Hoinski and Ronald Polansky’s “The Modern Aristotle: Michael Polanyi’s Search for Truth against Nihilism” shows how the general tendencies of contemporary philosophy of science disclose a return to the Aristotelian emphasis on both the formation of dispositions to know and the role of the mind in theoretical science. Focusing on a comparison of Michael Polanyi and Aristotle, Hoinski and Polansky investigate to what degree Aristotelian thought retains its purchase on reality in the face of the changes wrought by modern science. Polanyi’s approach relies on several Aristotelian assumptions, including the naturalness of the human desire to know, the institutional and personal basis for the accumulation of knowledge, and the endorsement of realism against objectivism. Hoinski and Polansky emphasize the promise of Polanyi’s neo-Aristotelian framework, which argues that science is won through reflection on reality.


Apeiron ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Woodcox

AbstractThis paper offers a novel interpretation of the nature and role of logical (logikôs) argumentation in Aristotle’s natural philosophy. In contrast to the standard domain interpretation, which makes logikôs argumentation the contrary of phusikôs, relying on principles drawn from outside the domain of natural science, I propose that the essential or defining feature of logikôs argumentation is the use of principles that are general relative to the question under investigation. My interpretation is developed and illustrated with a close textual analysis of Aristotle’s explanation of mule sterility in Generation of Animals II 8.


Author(s):  
Vidhi Nagar

In the modern era, it would be like glorifying the media to include every media related to human life from fingernail to fire. It is the medium that has the ancient ideology and values ​​of society as popular with globalization and modern thought stream The society, which is inhabited by the rajas, has also been plunged to the present day, seeing the reach and impact of media in particular, a frazzled Schmimiya state has been born, especially in order to achieve the concept of global global culture of Mishwa. It is from these media that we can see the news of events at the far end of the world, as far as music is concerned, it is possible that we can cope with many ages, ages and lives. When it is achieved in its present form, in the same continuous stream of time, it is infectious, sometimes Pallimat and Sushobhamat are the modern communication mediums in this stream are also pushing it deeper.Achayat Sharangadei has said in his famous book, Song Ratnakaresh आधुमनक काल में मानि जीिन से संबंमधत हर क्षेत्र को नख से मशख तक प्रभामित करने िाले संचार माध्यमों को ममहमादृमंमित करनाए सूरज को मदया मदखाने जैसा होगा द्य यह िह माध्यम है मजसने िैश्वीकरण ि आधुमनक मिचार धारा से लबरेज समाज के सार्थ ही पुरातन मिचारधाराए मान्यताओं ि रीमत ररिाजों से सराबोर समाज को भी तह तक प्रभामित मकया है द्य िततमान समय में संचार माध्यमों कीए मिशेषकर मीमिया की पह ंच और प्रभाि को देखते ह ए ही एक फ्रेज़ श्मीमिया स्टेटश् का जन्म ह आ है द्य मिशेषकर मिश्व के श्ग्लोबल मिलेजश् की पररकल्पना को प्राप्त करने में सबसे महत्िपूणत हार्थए इन्हीं संचार माध्यमों का हैए इन्हीं की बदौलत हम कोसों दूर की क्याए मिश्व के दूरस्र्थ छोर की खबरोंए घटनाओं का उसी पल अिलोकन कर सकते है द्य जहां तक संगीत का सम्बन्ध हैए यह सित मिमदत है मक अनेकों युगोंए कालोंए ि पररमस्तमर्थयों का सामना करते ह ए यह अपने िततमान स्िरुप को प्राप्त ह आ है द्य समय की इसी सतत प्रिामहत धारा में कभी यह संक्रममत ह आए तो कभी पल्लमित ि सुशोमभत द्य इसी धारा क्रम में आधुमनक संचार माध्यम भी इसे गहरे तक प्रभामित कर रहे है द्यआचायत शारंगदेि ने अपने प्रमसद्ध ग्रन्र्थ श्संगीत रत्नाकरश् में कहा है


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (11) ◽  
pp. 2840-2843
Author(s):  
Pramod Kumar ◽  
Pramod Kumar Prasad ◽  
Gupta S.S

The word “Purush" in its most social sense means man but in the aspect of Ayurveda, the term purush is repre- sented as atma or chetana dhatu (chetana-life and dhatu-element). The concept of the existence of atman (soul) is generally not accepted by modern science. According to Indian philosophy, the ultimate truth or absolute soul is one and he is Chetana (Sarvam Khalu Idam Brahm). Treatment of Panchmahabhut Sharir with presence of purush is known as Chikitsya Purush. Purush is supreme soul, pure conscious, unchanging, immortal neither birth nor death. It is essential for the creation of the universe and the living world. In the presence of purush gains knowledge through the mind. All the actions through karmendriyas, desire, pleasure, pain, life and death are per- formed. The purush (Kshetrajy) is lord of the house (Kshetra). The role of Purush in Srusti is laya & parlay which is the same as catalyst’s work in a reversible reaction. Keywords: Purush, Types, Karma Chikitsa, Chaturvinshatika, Rashi, Punarjanma


2018 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy Wajcman

This article explores how the shift from print to electronic calendars materializes and exacerbates a distinctively quantitative, “spreadsheet” orientation to time. Drawing on interviews with engineers, I argue that calendaring systems are emblematic of a larger design rationale in Silicon Valley to mechanize human thought and action in order to make them more efficient and reliable. The belief that technology can be profitably employed to control and manage time has a long history and continues to animate contemporary sociotechnical imaginaries of what automation will deliver. In the current moment we live in the age of the algorithm and machine learning, so it is no wonder, then, that the contemporary design of digital calendars is driven by a vision of intelligent time management. As I go on to show in the second part of the article, this vision is increasingly realized in the form of intelligent digital assistants whose tracking capacities and behavioral algorithms aim to solve life’s existential problem—how best to organize the time of our lives. This article contributes to STS scholarship on the role of technological artifacts in generating new temporalities that shape people’s perception of time, how they act in the world, and how they understand themselves.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (6) ◽  
pp. 46-59
Author(s):  
Nur Laila Molla

COVID-19 is the most devastating pandemic in human history. Every aspect of human life on earth is disrupted, with little or no education. Many countries have decided to close schools, colleges, and universities, including Indonesia. The crisis came as a shock to governments in every part of the world, including Indonesia, which had to make drastic decisions to close their schools and save lives or to reopen schools in order to save workers’ livelihoods. The purpose of this study was to analyze the impact of the spread of covid-19 in the world of education. 75 respondents used for sample. The sample selection method used was the target sample. An analytical tool used to assess product duration and determination. Test results show that the spread of Covid-19 has a positive impact on the education world. The study found that the spread of covid-19 affects the world of education.


Author(s):  
Natalia Gavrilyuk

Within the anthropocentric paradigm of modern linguistics there is a steady interest in the human factor in language, which, among other things, is realized through the close attention of researchers to the theory of linguistic pictures of the world, which fully reflects the uniqueness of peoples Human life and activity are inseparable from nature. Nature is one, but manifests itself in various forms. In the process of learning about nature, man tries to realize both its unity and diversity. A special place in the perception of the world by man is occupied by climatic and weather phenomena that affect human behavior in the world, various aspects of his life, including economic, as well as well-being. In the IV century. BC became aware of the impact of fluctuations in weather conditions on human health. For example, Hippocrates established a close link between human disease and the weather conditions in which he lives. Over the centuries, people have gathered a variety of knowledge about nature: from misunderstanding of natural phenomena, fear of them, inherent in ancient people, to today’s scientific knowledge of nature, from the first folk signs of weather to the formation of modern science — meteorology. Nature as a source of everything necessary for man has an impact on both the material and spiritual culture of society. Therefore, knowledge of meteorological phenomena occupies an important place in the awareness of reality. The article considers the peculiarities of meteorological vocabulary in Chinese and Ukrainian languages, as well as the peculiarities of meteorological vocabulary translation in two languages.


Author(s):  
Vyshnevetska Maryna ◽  

The paper considers the issue of developing aesthetic needs of a future music teacher in the course of professional training. The author defines notions such as culture, aesthetic culture, aesthetic activity as well as explores the essence of the notion of an aesthetic need of a future music teacher. The paper substantiates the role of art and aesthetic activity as the main factor for aesthetic needs development. The study reveals that there is a reason for the interest to human needs since a large number of branches in material and spiritual culture of society depend on defining the nature of needs and trends in their development. The author emphasises that the functioning of all levels of human life requires needs that would meet human development both physically and emotionally, thus, there should be an aesthetic form of activity because it harmoniously combines both spiritual and functional aspects. The paper substantiates the role of art as the main factor for development of aesthetic needs that can be met in various activities, but it is in art that they find the greatest expression. The author supports the idea that art is a special area of human existence and it combines knowledge and communication, intelligence, a sense of morality, and imagination of people. Involvement of a person in art is a necessary condition for development of aesthetic consciousness since elevation of the spirit and actualization of an essential aesthetic force take place during the process of perception, experience and understanding of works of art. Art integrates a dialogue of a person with the world. Considering the concept of an aesthetic need, the author defines it as an internal need to comprehend certain aesthetic values, development of certain skills, because an aesthetic need is based on aesthetic feelings that are embodied in aesthetic tastes and consist of individual selection of those aesthetic phenomena and objects that best suit views and interests of a person. The paper emphasises that an aesthetic need embodies richness and diversity of spirituality of a person who seeks to fulfill their potential in all fullness of life and if a person has a need for personal fulfillment, they will find the strength and ways to do that. It has been proved that an aesthetic need has semantic and aesthetic properties and has an artistic and perceptual nature, which provides an opportunity to obtain pleasure, enjoyment, joy, delight from beauty. It has been established that the process of perception or direct creativity of art are characterized by a combination of a goal and means, where the means develop into the goal, and the goal is the process itself when spiritual, functional and aesthetic needs of the individual are met, i.e. a person reaches a certain level in their activity when they create products and forms of cultural activity that meet more and more of their needs. The paper outlines that an emerging aesthetic need motivates a music teacher to create conditions and means for achieving satisfaction with their own creative activities, because an aesthetic need is a desire of a future music teacher to harmonize the internal and external world as well as development of aesthetic awareness of the world: to perceive and appreciate the beauty, to live and create according to the laws of beauty.


1998 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 35-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy Clark

Cognitive science is in some sense the science of the mind. But an increasingly influential theme, in recent years, has been the role of the physical body, and of the local environment, in promoting adaptive success. No right-minded cognitive scientist, to be sure, ever claimed that body and world were completely irrelevant to the understanding of mind. But there was, nonetheless, an unmistakeable tendency to marginalize such factors: to dwell on inner complexity whilst simplifying or ignoring the complex inner-outer interplays that characterize the bulk of basic biological problem-solving. This tendency was expressed in, for example, the development of planning algorithms that treated real-world action as merely a way of implementing solutions arrived at by pure cognition (more recent work, by contrast, allows such actions to play important computational and problem-solving roles). It also surfaced in David Marr's depiction of the task of vision as the construction of a detailed threedimensional image of the visual scene. For possession of such a rich inner model effectively allows the system to ‘throw away’ the world and to focus subsequent computational activity on the inner model alone.


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