Aural Philology and the Latin Recordings of the Harvard Vocarium

PMLA ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 135 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-369
Author(s):  
Joseph A. Howley
Keyword(s):  
Intentional Content ◽  
History Of Reading ◽  
Sound Recordings ◽  
Written Text ◽  
Walter Ong ◽  
History Of ◽  
Reading Culture ◽  
The Way

Philology is Often Taken to Be a Matter of Eyes and Hands: We Make Sense of Written Text, And Then Write Down Our Findings. This essay is interested in philology as a matter of the ear. Since Walter Ong declared the fundamental opposition of orality and literacy, humanists have located the lost, spoken origins of written text in the realm of orality. By contrast, aurality, the way texts are encountered by the ear, is a condition of consumption, which is to say reading, and so by considering aurality we are also considering the history of reading.Sound recordings, created by phonographic technology, provide a useful critical framework for the history of reading. In addition to what we think of as the legible or intentional content of a recording, sound recordings have what audio engineers call “room tone”—the sonic signature of the space in which the recording was made, the equipment used to make it, and the specific placement of that equipment in relation to a subject. Although we learn to unhear room tone by means of what Jonathan Sterne calls “audile techniques” (137), its presence is always felt. By attuning our ears to the room tone of historical phonography, then, we can practice attuning our historians' ears to the barely perceptible silences, markers of space, and context in textual artifacts of historical reading culture.

The Cultural Aesthetic of Virtual Reality

2011 ◽  
pp. 214-231
Author(s):  
Ron Purser
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Bourgeois Society ◽  
Walter Ong ◽  
History Of ◽  
Main Factors ◽  
The Way

The cultural significance of Virtual Reality (VR) extends far beyond the fact that it is an innovative technological device. Indeed, VR technology is embedded in, and a byproduct of, a much larger social, cultural, and scientific milieu. Changes in tehcnological devices have paralleled the shifts in the way human cultures have ordered and represented their worlds. Historically, the emergence of new technologies often provides the base for profound changes in the structure of the self, as well as radical alterations in the collective field of perception. Donald Lowe (1982), in his study, The History of Bourgeois Perception, argues that perception is shaped by a collective interplay of factors. Communication media, one of the main factors in Lowe’s theory, acts to frame and filter the way we perceive the world. Basing much of his theory on the work of Walter Ong (1988), Lowe traces shifts in culture that correspond to changes in media: from orality to chirography in the Middle Ages; from chirography to typography in the Renaissance; from typography to photography in bourgeois society; and from photography to cinema and television in the modern world.

scholarly journals La insostenible soledad del lector. La lectura como trabajo individual y colectivo

2019 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Mirko Lampis
Keyword(s):  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Cultural Practice ◽  
General Definition ◽  
Individual Experience ◽  
History Of Reading ◽  
Learning To Read ◽  
Reading Processes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Reading Culture ◽  
Definition Of

El objetivo de este trabajo es estudiar la lectura en tanto que experiencia individual (yo leo) y, a la vez, práctica cultural (todos leemos solo porque y en la medida en que integramos una cultura escribiente y leyente). Por lo tanto, tras ofrecer una definición general de la noción de lectura (apartado 1) y examinar algunas cuestiones pertinentes relativas a la historia de la lectura (apartado 2), trataremos los siguientes temas (apartado 3): la enseñanza y el aprendizaje del leer y de la lectura, los procesos de lectura orientada y la comprensión de lo leído.The goal of this paper is to study the reading as individual experience (I read) and, at the same time, cultural practice (we all read only because and insofar as we integrate a writing and reading culture). So, after giving a general definition of the notion of reading (section 1) and after examining some pertinent questions concerning the history of reading (section 2), we will address the following topics (section 3): the teaching and learning to read and reading, the oriented reading processes and the reading understanding.

scholarly journals The birth of language or the necessity of rule

2018 ◽  
Vol 81 (3) ◽  
pp. 413-424
Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Martinon
Keyword(s):  
Categorical Imperative ◽  
Language Games ◽  
Not Given ◽  
Moral Imperative ◽  
Written Text ◽  
The Bible ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way ◽  
Name Of God

AbstractAs is well known, the biblical sixth commandment, “Thou shall not kill”, is intimately linked to the First Commandment, “I am the Lord”. By linking the two at the top of Moses's two-column table, language is given priority: the name of God can be uttered only when the possibility of death has been set aside. In this way, the linking of these two commandments marks not only the birth of language, but also, more importantly, the start of ethics. As such, commandments one and six form the basis of practically all Western ethics from Kant's categorical imperative (the unconditional maxim needs a First Word to enter into force) to Lyotard's language games (for which all utterances are charged with the moral imperative to respond), for example. But how on earth does this famous linguistic and ethical structure fare in a context whereby the written text is not given priority, in a situation where prohibitions are inherited orally? This paper will attempt to expose the thorny issue of the role of the sixth commandment in the context of Rwanda. This will imply neither the exposition of the history of the arrival of the Bible in Rwanda nor the way it helped to consolidate the colonial regime. This paper will also not examine the neglect of the prohibition against murder during the genocide of 1994. Instead, the essay will examine the linguistic and cultural problems one faces when determining the birth of ethics in two radically different contexts.

Rorschach Assessment of Complex Trauma in Youth

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-41
Author(s):  
David Ephraim
Keyword(s):  
Psychological Assessment ◽  
Complex Trauma ◽  
Personality Development ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

Abstract. A history of complex trauma or exposure to multiple traumatic events of an interpersonal nature, such as abuse, neglect, and/or major attachment disruptions, is unfortunately common in youth referred for psychological assessment. The way these adolescents approach the Rorschach task and thematic contents they provide often reflect how such experiences have deeply affected their personality development. This article proposes a shift in perspective in the interpretation of protocols of adolescents who suffered complex trauma with reference to two aspects: (a) the diagnostic relevance of avoidant or emotionally constricted Rorschach protocols that may otherwise appear of little use, and (b) the importance of danger-related thematic contents reflecting the youth’s sense of threat, harm, and vulnerability. Regarding this last aspect, the article reintroduces the Preoccupation with Danger Index ( DI). Two cases are presented to illustrate the approach.

Life as a Raw Material: Illusions of Control

Somatechnics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-262 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oron Catts ◽  
Ionat Zurr
Keyword(s):  
Synthetic Biology ◽  
Cognitive Engineering ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Future Scenarios ◽  
Short History ◽  
Know How ◽  
Political Forces ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Way

The paper discusses and critiques the concept of the single engineering paradigm. This concepts allude to a future in which the control of matter and life, and life as matter, will be achieved by applying engineering principles; through nanotechnology, synthetic biology and, as some suggest, geo-engineering, cognitive engineering and neuro-engineering. We outline some issues in the short history of the field labelled as Synthetic Biology. Furthermore; we examine the way engineers, scientists, designers and artists are positioned and articulating the use of the tools of Synthetic Biology to expose some of the philosophical, ethical and political forces and considerations of today as well as some future scenarios. We suggest that one way to enable the possibilities of alternative frames of thought is to open up the know-how and the access to these technologies to other disciplines, including artistic.

FBI and Religion

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Assessment ◽  
Civic Religion ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

This volume is an interdisciplinary assessment of the relationship between religion and the FBI. We recount the history of the FBI’s engagement with multiple religious communities and with aspects of public or “civic” religion such as morality and respectability. The book presents new research to explain roughly the history of the FBI’s interaction with religion over approximately one century, from the pre-Hoover period to the post-9/11 era. Along the way, the book explores vexed issues that go beyond the particulars of the FBI’s history—the juxtaposition of “religion” and “cult,” the ways in which race can shape the public’s perceptions of religion (and vica versa), the challenges of mediating between a religious orientation and a secular one, and the role and limits of academic scholarship as a way of addressing the differing worldviews of the FBI and some of the religious communities it encounters.

The Beginnings of Islam in Afghanistan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arezou Azad
Keyword(s):  
Paradigm Shift ◽  
Political System ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Early Islam ◽  
History Of ◽  
Initial Conversion ◽  
The Way

Covering the period from 709 to 871, this chapter traces the initial conversion of Afghanistan from Zoroastrianism and Buddhism to Islam. Highlighting the differential developments in four regions of Afghanistan, it discusses the very earliest history of Afghan Islam both as a religion and as a political system in the form of a caliphate.  The chapter draws on under-utilized sources, such as fourth to eighth century Bactrian documents from Tukharistan and medieval Arabic and Persian histories of Balkh, Herat and Sistan. In so doing, it offers a paradigm shift in the way early Islam is understood by arguing that it did not arrive in Afghanistan as a finished product, but instead grew out of Afghanistan’s multi-religious context. Through fusions with Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, early Abrahamic traditions, and local cult practices, the Islam that resulted was less an Arab Islam that was imported wholesale than a patchwork of various cultural practices.

On Purpose

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ruse
Keyword(s):  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Thought ◽  
The Way

Can we live without the idea of purpose? Should we even try to? Kant thought we were stuck with it, and even Darwin, who profoundly shook the idea, was unable to kill it. Indeed, purpose seems to be making a comeback today, as both religious advocates of intelligent design and some prominent secular philosophers argue that any explanation of life without the idea of purpose is missing something essential. This book explores the history of purpose in philosophical, religious, scientific, and historical thought, from ancient Greece to the present. The book traces how Platonic, Aristotelian, and Kantian ideas of purpose continue to shape Western thought. Along the way, it also takes up tough questions about the purpose of life—and whether it's possible to have meaning without purpose.

The Art of Chinese Philosophy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Goldin
Keyword(s):  
Chinese Philosophy ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Current Form ◽  
Han Feizi ◽  
Textual History ◽  
Classical Chinese ◽  
History Of ◽  
Crucial Characteristic ◽  
The Way

This book provides an unmatched introduction to eight of the most important works of classical Chinese philosophy—the Analects of Confucius, Mozi, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Sunzi, Xunzi, and Han Feizi. The book places these works in rich context that explains the origin and meaning of their compelling ideas. Because none of these classics was written in its current form by the author to whom it is attributed, the book begins by asking, “What are we reading?” and showing that understanding the textual history of the works enriches our appreciation of them. A chapter is devoted to each of the eight works, and the chapters are organized into three sections: “Philosophy of Heaven,” which looks at how the Analects, Mozi, and Mencius discuss, often skeptically, Heaven (tian) as a source of philosophical values; “Philosophy of the Way,” which addresses how Laozi, Zhuangzi, and Sunzi introduce the new concept of the Way (dao) to transcend the older paradigms; and “Two Titans at the End of an Age,” which examines how Xunzi and Han Feizi adapt the best ideas of the earlier thinkers for a coming imperial age. In addition, the book presents explanations of the protean and frequently misunderstood concept of qi—and of a crucial characteristic of Chinese philosophy, nondeductive reasoning. The result is an invaluable account of an endlessly fascinating and influential philosophical tradition.

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