scholarly journals The key to the solution of the world crisis we face

Human Affairs ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-39
Author(s):  
Nicholas Maxwell

Abstract Humanity faces two fundamental problems of learning: learning about the universe, and learning to become civilized. We have solved the first problem, but not the second one, and that puts us in a situation of great danger. Almost all of our global problems have arisen as a result. It has become a matter of extreme urgency to solve the second problem. The key to this is to learn from our solution to the first problem how to solve the second one. This was the basic idea of the 18th century Enlightenment, but in implementing this idea, the Enlightenment blundered. Their mistakes are still built into academia today. In order to le arn how to create a civilized, enlightened world, the key thing we need to do is to cure academia of the structural blunders we have inherited from the Enlightenment. We need to bring about a revolution in science, and in academia more broadly so that the basic aim becomes wisdom, and not just knowledge.

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luiz Carlos Soares

Neste artigo, pretende-se relacionar o processo de emergência da Revolução Industrial inglesa ao desenvolvimento de uma concepção filosófico-científica Mecanicista, consagrada pela Física Newtoniana e pela Ilustração no século XVIII, que concebiam a Natureza, o Mundo, e o Universo a partir de uma ordem mecânica objetiva e exterior ao Homem. No decorrer do século XX, a ampla divulgação do Mecanicismo possibilitou que essa concepção se tornasse uma das poderosas alavancas intelectuais da grande transformação técnicoprodutiva e social que se verificou na Inglaterra a partir dos anos 1780 – a Revolução Industrial. Abstract This article intends to associate the emergency of the English Industrial Revolution to the development of a mechanical, philosophical and scientific conception - consecrated by the Newtonian Physics and the Enlightenment in the 18th century -, which conceived the Nature, the World and the Universe as an objective, mechanical and external order to the Man. Throughout the 18th century, the wide divulgation of the Mechanism enabled it to become one of the powerfull intelectual levers of the Industrial Revolution, the process of technical, economic and social transformation that had taken place in England from the 1780’s onwards.


1982 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald C. Newton

Between 1933 and the end of World War II, Argentina became the home of some 43,000 Jewish refugees from Nazism, almost all of them of German, Austrian, or West European origin. Measured against the country's total population, 13 million in 1931, 16 million according to the 1947 census, Argentina received more Jewish refugees per capita than any other country in the world except Palestine (Wasserstein, 1979: 7,45). This did not occur by design of the Argentine government; on the contrary, its immigration policies became interestingly restrictive as the years of the world crisis wore on.In practice, however, Argentina was unable to patrol effectively its long borders with the neighboring republics of Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, and Uruguay. The overseas consuls of these nations, especially the first three, did a brisk and lucrative trade in visas and entry permits for persons desperate to escape the Nazi terror.


2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Bergler

AbstractDuring the 1930s and 1940s, the Great Depression and the rise of communism and fascism in Europe convinced a broad spectrum of Americans that they were living through a prolonged “crisis of civilization” with real potential to destroy all they held dear. Meanwhile, they saw evidence that these global problems put young people especially at risk for immorality, loss of hope, and political subversion. Because the “youth problem” and the “world crisis” seemed to be inextricably linked, even the everyday behaviors of young people took on a heightened political significance in the eyes of many adults. Christian leaders from across the spectrum of churches—Mainline Protestant, Evangelical, Roman Catholic, and African American—did not just capitalize on this obsession with youth and the fate of civilization; they did all they could to fan those flames. They did so not cynically, but sincerely, believing that they could and should save the world by saving American youth. Yet these leaders were also making a bid for influence in American society and for control of the future of their churches. The resulting politicized views of youth and youth work would not only influence the outcomes of internal church battles, but they would also shape how various Christian groups responded to the Cold War.


Humaniora ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 190 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mia Angeline

This article describes the role of myth and some universal themes of myth, such as the creation of the world, a huge flood, death, and the end of the world. Almost all the world's myths concern this universal themes, as seen from the similarity of some of the myths followed by many cultures in the world. These myths have primary functions to human’s behavior and attitude because people keep telling almost the same myths to their predecessors. The goals for this research are (1) knowing the functions of myths with famous themes from various culture and (2) knowing the background and relationship between myths and modern culture. The result describes the relationship between the cultural myths, where the core of the story is the truth of humanity. In addition, myth acts as a template to organize their daily activities as well as human activity, but it also serves to introduce human to a greater power in the universe. The values in each story will be interpreted as rules and customs that must be met, and this has resulted in the emergence of a culture passed down from generation to generation. 


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 130-140
Author(s):  
S. V. Storozhuk ◽  
◽  
I. M. Hoian ◽  

The article shows that the modern mass interest in the occult is conditioned, on the one hand, by the world crisis, the lack of stable and reliable foundations for self-determination and human orientation in the world, and on the other – by the formation of impersonal man and the establishment of mass society. The lack of a stable worldview, universal values, ideals and social standards, and, at the same time, unwillingness to pose and solve complex socio-cultural problems, is the main reason why modern (postmodern) people choose occult ideals and norms that do not require deep reflection, however, they provide them with a sense of belonging to the universe. Most of them are offered by the modern mass culture industry. Although its products are of great concern to traditional Christian values and virtues, we have no reason to give them an unequivocally negative assessment at the moment, at least given that they offer models of The article shows that the modern mass interest in the occult is conditioned, on the one hand, by the world crisis, the lack of stable and reliable foundations for self-determination and human orientation in the world, and on the other – by the formation of impersonal man and the establishment of mass society. The lack of a stable worldview, universal values, ideals and social standards, and, at the same time, unwillingness to pose and solve complex socio-cultural problems, is the main reason why modern (postmodern) people choose occult ideals and norms that do not require deep reflection, however, they provide them with a sense of belonging to the universe. Most of them are offered by the modern mass culture industry. Although its products are of great concern to traditional Christian values and virtues, we have no reason to give them an unequivocally negative assessment at the moment, at least given that they offer models of The article shows that the modern mass interest in the occult is conditioned, on the one hand, by the world crisis, the lack of stable and reliable foundations for self-determination and human orientation in the world, and on the other – by the formation of impersonal man and the establishment of mass society. The lack of a stable worldview, universal values, ideals and social standards, and, at the same time, unwillingness to pose and solve complex socio-cultural problems, is the main reason why modern (postmodern) people choose occult ideals and norms that do not require deep reflection, however, they provide them with a sense of belonging to the universe. Most of them are offered by the modern mass culture industry. Although its products are of great concern to traditional Christian values and virtues, we have no reason to give them an unequivocally negative assessment at the moment, at least given that they offer models of social relations that due to testing by various occult organizations, may receive a public request, or be rejected.


2021 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 361-368
Author(s):  
Fedor I. Girenok

In the article the author analyzes the phenomenon of Russian cosmism and shows its difference from other possible varieties of cosmism. The author understands Russian cosmism as the idea of extending the definition of the universe by the human beings. A human being doesn’t simply have his place in history, on the Earth and in space, but also broadens it by means of his material and spiritual actions. The idea of the world broadening was popular among Russian naturalists in the 19th and the 20th centuries. The most prominent figures among the Russian cosmism followers were N.F. Fedorov and K. E. Tsiolkovsky. The author distinguishes three directions in the history of Russian cosmism – religious, natural-scientific and artistic-poetical. According to the author, only after Gagarin’s space flight the idea of Russian Icaria transferred itself into Russian cosmism. The article studies the sources of Russian cosmism and explains the meaning of anthropocosmism. The author arrives at the conclusion that Russian cosmism offers its own approach to solving modern global problems that differs from the ideas in the reports to the Roman club.


Author(s):  
Manuela Ribeiro Sanches ◽  

The paper deals with the representation of otherness in 18th Century Germany. Departing from an episode narrated in Georg Forster’s account of James Cook’s second voyage around the world, attention is paid to the way in which an uncanny experience for Europeans - eating dog food - is narrated, and translated according to European discursive premises. The analysis of Forster’s considerations on the relativity of customs, on what is to be attributed to nature or culture, on what is to be considered innate or acquired provide the departing point for the reconstruction (and questioning) of strategies of representing of otherness. In the following parts, diverse ways of representing otherness are briefly analyzed (anatomical studies, collections of bodies and artifacts in natural history cabinets) and emphasis is put on the way in which non-European peoples are always ultimately the object of a process of reification. The scientific implications of Contemporary debates on race are also taken into account, namely the controversy between Georg Forster and Kant. The tension between ethnographie empiricism (Forster) and anthropological rationalism (Kant) is stressed and brought onto relation with the Enlightenment discourse on the “Other”. The conclusion focuses on the limits and utopian possibilities of the Enlightenment discourse, by juxtaposing it to the critique of Western rationalism as proposed by postcolonial studies.


Author(s):  
Yakov I. Svirsky ◽  

Today, almost all spheres of human existence are interpreted – directly or indi­rectly – as permanently becoming, interpreted from a processing point of view realities that do not imply either final fixation or predetermined ultimate goals or states. The world appears not so much in the form of difficult composite dy­namic formation in mechanistic sense, but in the form of mobile, continuously becoming environment, which presupposes special technical researches and ways of staying in it. Such techniques and methods lead to the formation of a non-trivial vision of the universe. And such a vision, aimed at comprehending of emerging realities, presupposing conceptual shifts in modern natural science, technology, humanitarian activity, and more broadly in the very perception of na­ture and society, V.I. Arshinov endows with the epithet “complexity”. In the pro­posed text, a small fragment from the creative heritage of one of the most influ­ential philosophers J. Simondon will be considered, allowing to partially reveal the features of such complexitly oriented thinking. The central theme of Simon­don's philosophical strategy is the conceptualization of how the becomings of beings are realized, or how beings (inanimate, living, technical, mental, social) are individuated. Simondon begins the discussion of this plot with criticism of the hylemorphic scheme, which posits the genetic principle of existence in the form-matter dichotomy and, above all, in the interpretation and theoretical use of such a dichotomy by Aristotle, since, according to Simondon, it was this pair that contributed to the formation of a static view on the world, man and society. In different performances, the form-matter dichotomy can be interpreted in the form of mind-body dichotomies, artificial-natural, living-nonliving, etc. Note that Simondon begins his criticism with the technological substantiation of the hylemorphic scheme, referring to the operation of making a parallelepiped brick from clay


Author(s):  
Jacob Goldberg

This chapter evaluates the changes in the attitude of Polish society toward the Jews in the 18th century. The transformations in the social structure, politics and culture of 18th-century Poland had their impact upon the evolution of the predominant attitudes of Polish society towards the Jews. The large numbers of the latter constituted in the second half of the century the largest concentration of Jews in the world. They amounted to about ten per cent of the country's population, which means that their numbers roughly equalled those of the szlachta. This is why in the last century of the Commonwealth's existence, the demographic factor determined Polish attitudes towards the Jews far more than ever before. However, the growth in the demographic potential of the Jewish population coincided with the impact of the ideas of the Enlightenment, with the result that the two factors compounded one another in rendering all problems concerning the Jews highly visible and in considerably influencing the designs for social and political reforms at the time of the Four-Year Diet.


Author(s):  
Т.М. Демичева

В статье рассмотрен образ «благородного дикаря» на примере очерков о кругосветных плаваниях – «Кругосветном путешествии на фрегате “Будёз” и транспорте “Этуаль”» Луи Антуана де Бугенвиля и «Путешествии по всему миру на “Буссоли” и “Астролябии”» Жан-Франсуа де Лаперуза. Показано, как межкультурный контакт привел к возникновению шаблонов восприятия европейцами «других» народов. Отмечено, что эти очерки способствовали определению места и роли европейцев в мире. Данный шаблон включал как положительные, так и отрицательные элементы. Империя могла извлекать пользу из романтизированного образа «благородного дикаря», тем самым стимулируя новые колониальные захваты. В то же время на практике европейцы находили варваров агрессивными, лживыми и недалекими. Автор приходит к выводу, что межкультурный диалог, показанный во французских очерках о кругосветных путешествиях второй половины XVIII в., вряд ли можно назвать успешным, так как эти травелоги привели к возникновению очередного шаблона, рассматривающего «других» сквозь высоту европейского знания, основанного на привычной для европейского мира системе ценностей. In the article we use the round-the-world travel essays "Around-the-world trip on the frigate "Boudez" and the transport" Etoile" by Louis Antoine de Bougainville and "Travel all over the world to "Bussoli" and "Astrolabe" by Jean- Francois de La Perouse to show the image of the "noble savage". These travelogues show that the intercultural contact led to the emergence of patterns of perception of "Others" by Europeans. It is noted that travelogues contributed to self-examination and determined the place and the role of Europeans in the world. Moreover, this pattern includes positive and negative elements as well. The empire could have a benefit from a romanticized image of the "noble savage" thereby stimulating new colonial conquests. At the same time, travel essays could contradict the Enlightenment ideas, when Europeans found barbarians to be aggressive, deceitful and dimwitted. The purpose of this study is to consider the problematic aspects of describing "Others" and to define the role of travelogues in imperial politics. We will argue that the intercultural dialogue shown in French round-the-world travel essays of the second half of the 18th century can hardly be called successful. These travelogues led to the appearance of fascinating pattern of "other". That pattern looked at the “others” through the European knowledge based on system of values typical for the European world.


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