Evolution, Individuals, and the Kokutai

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Clinton Godart
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Meiji Period ◽  
Religious Elements

The Meiji period saw the development of political tensions between evolutionary theory and the emerging kokutai ideology of the Japanese state. Kokutai ideology emerged as an unstable hybrid of mainly Shintō, but also Confucianism, Bushidō, and other religious and semi-religious elements. Important ideological thinkers began to reject elements of evolutionary theory, finding the “struggle for survival,” materialism, and individualism in tension with kokutai ideology and its emphasis on harmony, obedience, and spirit. Herbert Spencer’s influence waned and his thought was criticized.

The Dharma after Darwin

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Clinton Godart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Scientific Thought ◽  
Evolutionary Theories ◽  
Meiji Period ◽  
Religious Plurality

Modernizing Buddhists such as Inoue Enryo in the Meiji period actively and creatively embraced, interpreted, and disseminated evolutionary theory. Buddhists also created new evolutionary theories. This was partly because of the competition between Buddhists and Christians. Religious plurality and competition stimulated the dissemination of scientific thought. Buddhism also stimulated creative biological thought, especially in the works of Minakata Kumagusu and Oka Asajiro. In contrast to associating evolutionary theory with nineteenth century progress, Buddhists often casted doubt on evolution as progressive.

The Religious Transmission of Evolutionary Theory in Meiji-Era Japan

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Clinton Godart
Keyword(s):  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Religious Context ◽  
Meiji Period ◽  
Meiji Era ◽  
Mediating Factor ◽  
Religious Transmission

Religion was a crucial mediating factor in the early transmission of evolutionary theory to Japan. Even before the Meiji period, certain evolutionary ideas appeared within a religious context. Evolutionary theory and Christianity arrived in Japan in the same period, and conflict ensued as the early conveyors of evolutionary theory, such as Edward S. Morse and Ernest Fenollosa presented the theory as one that delegitimized Christianity; simultaneously, several important Christian missionaries and Japanese Christian thinkers, presented science and Christian faith as part of one package necessary for the modernization of Japan.

Kornai, Schumpeter, and Economic Theory

2012 ◽  
pp. 145-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Maevsky
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Economic Models ◽  
Macro Level ◽  
Mainstream Economic ◽  
Level Of Analysis

The author claims that J. Kornai in his paper Innovation and Dynamism (Voprosy Ekonomiki. 2012. No 4) ignored the understanding of socialism as a specific type of culture and not just as an economic system. He also shows profound differences between Schumpeters theory and mainstream economic models. Evolutionary theory, he claims, may itself become mainstream if Schumpeters legacy is not interpreted straightforwardly and if evolutionary economists consider not only micro-, but also macro-level of analysis in studying macrogenerations of capital of a different age.

Revising Plants, man and life: Edgar Anderson reshapes a classic book

2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-96 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Kleinman
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Synthesis ◽  
Ernst Mayr ◽  
Active Participant ◽  
Evolutionary Mechanism ◽  
Popular Work ◽  
Scientific Attention ◽  
Key Events ◽  
Jesup Lectures

On at least four occasions, Edgar Anderson (1897–1969) began revising his book Plants, man and life (1952). Given both its place in Anderson's career and his place in the development of evolutionary theory in the mid-twentieth century, the emendations are noteworthy. Though a popular work, Plants, man and life served as the distillation of Anderson's ideas on hybridization as an evolutionary mechanism, the need for more scientific attention on domesticated and semi-domesticated plants, and the opportunities such plants provided for the study of evolution. Anderson was an active participant in several key events in what historians have come to call the Evolutionary Synthesis. For example, he and Ernst Mayr shared the 1941 Jesup Lectures on “Systematics and the origin of species”. Anderson's proposed revisions to his book reflect both an attempt to soften certain acerbic comments as well as an attempt to recast the book as a whole.

Siren canora: the mermaid and the mythical in late nineteenth-century science

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. BRINK-ROBY
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Focus Of Attention ◽  
British Association ◽  
Social Boundaries ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Darwinian Theory ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Century Science

This paper argues that, for a number of naturalists and lay commentators in the second half of the nineteenth century, evolutionary – especially Darwinian – theory gave new authority to mythical creatures. These writers drew on specific elements of evolutionary theory to assert the existence of mermaids, dragons and other fabulous beasts. But mythological creatures also performed a second, often contrapositive, argumentative function; commentators who rejected evolution regularly did so by dismissing these creatures. Such critics agreed that Darwin's theory legitimized the mythological animal, but they employed this legitimization to undermine the theory itself. The mermaid, in particular, was a focus of attention in this mytho-evolutionary debate, which ranged from the pages of Punch to the lecture halls of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Crossing social boundaries and taking advantage of a range of venues, this debate arose in response to the indeterminate challenge of evolutionary theory. In its discussions of mermaids and dragons, centaurs and satyrs, this discourse helped define that challenge, construing and constructing the meanings and implications of evolutionary theory in the decades following Darwin's publication.

The Continuum of Conscientiousness: The Antagonistic Interests among Obsessive and Antisocial Personalities

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven C. Hertler
Keyword(s):  
Personality Disorder ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Antisocial Personality Disorder ◽  
The Other ◽  
Antisocial Personality ◽  
Obsessive Compulsive ◽  
Demographic Differences ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
The Continuum

Abstract The five factor trait of conscientiousnessis a supertrait, denoting on one hand a pattern of excessive labor, rigidity, orderliness and compulsivity,and on the other hand a pattern of strict rectitude, scrupulosity, dutifulness and morality. In both respects the obsessive-compulsive personality is conscientious; indeed, it has been labeled a disorder of extreme conscientiousness (Widiger et al., 2009). Antisocial personality disorder, in the present paper, is described as occupying the opposite end of the conscientiousness continuum. The antisocial is impulsive rather than compulsive, illicit rather than licit, and furtive rather than forthright.After clinically comparing the obsessive and antisocial personalities, the present paper invokes evolutionary theory to explain their resultant behavioral, ideological, political and demographic differences.

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