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.

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.

From New Anarchism to Post-anarchism

Kropotkin ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Kinna
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Class Struggle ◽  
Political Theorist ◽  
Contemporary Politics ◽  
The 1960S

This chapter examines contemporary anarchist critiques of Kropotkin, especially post-anarchist analysis. It argues that science has become a byword to describe Kropotkin's political theory, providing an exemplar for classical anarchism. This theory is described as teleological, based on a particular concept of human nature and linked to a form of revolutionary utopianism that promises the realisation of anarchy. Post-anarchists dissolve the distance between Kropotkin and Bakunin that advocates of his evolutionary theory invented in the 1960s in order to rescue anarchism from its reputation for violence. This repackaging of historical traditions underpins judgments about the irrelevance of anarchism to contemporary politics and political theory. In response, critics of post-anarchism have sought to defend nineteenth-century revolutionary traditions. The result of this argument is that Kropotkin emerges as a political theorist of class struggle. This defence raises significant questions about the coherence of Kropotkin's position on the war in 1914.

The Legacy of the ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians’

2019 ◽  
pp. 156-195
Author(s):  
Bill Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Medical Student ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

The penultimate chapter looks at the longer-term impact of the efflorescence of evolutionary speculation in early-nineteenth-century Edinburgh on later generations of natural historians. First it examines the evangelical reaction against progressive models of the history of life and its role in the eclipse of the ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians.’ Next it examines to the evolutionary theory proposed by Robert Chambers in his anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) to assess its possible debt to the Edinburgh transformists of the 1820s and 1830s. Finally it turns to the important question of the possible influence of the ‘Edinburgh Lamarckians’ on Charles Darwin during his time as a medical student in Edinburgh in the years 1825 to 1827, during which period he rubbed shoulders with many of the key proponents of evolutionary ideas in the city.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Bill Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theories ◽  
Evolutionary Thought ◽  
History Of

The introduction sets the scene by exploring the role of Edinburgh as a centre for the development and propagation of pre-Darwinian evolutionary theories. It gives essential background on natural history in the Scottish capital in early nineteenth century and the history of evolutionary thought and outlines the aims and objectives of the book. In addition, it explores some of the historiographical issues raised by earlier historians of science who have discussed the role of Edinburgh in the development of evolutionary thought in Great Britain.

scholarly journals Gender and evolutionary theory in workplace health promotion

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (8) ◽  
pp. 893-905
Author(s):  
Erika Björklund ◽  
Jan Wright
Keyword(s):  
Health Promotion ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Workplace Health Promotion ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Stone Age ◽  
Workplace Health ◽  
Evolutionary Theories ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Health Promotion Interventions ◽  
Health Promotion Practice

Objective: Ideas from evolutionary theories are increasingly taken up in health promotion. This article seeks to demonstrate how such a trend has the potential to embed essentialist and limiting stereotypes of women and men in health promotion practice. Design: We draw on material gathered for a larger ethnographic study that examined how discourses of health were re-contextualised in four workplace health promotion interventions in Sweden. Method: This study provided the opportunity to investigate how ideas derived from evolutionary theories produced particular constructs of the healthy employee. A Foucauldian notion of governmentality was used to examine the rationalities, truths and techniques that informed what we have called a ‘Stone Age’ discourse as these contributed to shaping the desires, actions and beliefs of lecturers and participants in the interventions. Results: We focus on one intervention which used the Stone Age discourse as an organising idea to constitute differences in women’s and men’s health through references to women as gatherers and men as hunters, thereby positioning men as the physical, emotional and mental ideal and women as the problematic and lacking ‘other’. Conclusion: The paper concludes by discussing the implications of such ideas about health and gender for interventions aimed at changing behaviour and lifestyles.

The Conceptual Formation of the Category “Religion” in Modern Japan: Religion, State, Shintō

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 226-245 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun’ichi Isomae
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
English Word ◽  
Science And Religion ◽  
The State ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
The West ◽  
Meiji Period ◽  
Religious Issues ◽  
Japanese Word

Abstract The Japanese word shūkyō was originally a coined word occurring in Chinese Buddhist dictionaries, but it became used as the translation for the English word “religion” when the English word was transmitted to Japan from the West after the opening of the country at the end of the nineteenth century. At that time, a new kind of Japanese language treating Shintō and Buddhism as ‘religions’ was born, with Christianity forming the axis, but while still intertwined with Buddhism and Shintō. Bearing in mind the Protestant influence on acculturation processes in Japan at the beginning of the Meiji period, this paper aims to offer an overview of how the term “religion” became embedded in Japan and how the Meiji government dealt with the competition of Shintō against Christianity and Buddhism. In that context it touches upon crucial historical and social developments such as the clash between science and religion of the late 1870s and the opposition between the state and religion in the early 1890s, together with well-known incidents such as the Uchimura Kanzō affair. The paper focuses in particular on the period from the end of the early modern Edo regime through the end of the Meiji period and analyzes how views of religious issues underwent transition within Japan.

Myth, metaphor and hypothesis: how anthropomorphism defeats science

1995 ◽  
Vol 349 (1328) ◽  
pp. 215-218 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Natural World ◽  
The State ◽  
Selfish Gene ◽  
Political Ideologies ◽  
Biological Phenomena ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scientific Rationalism

Dawkin’s theory of the selfish gene has achieved an hegemony quite out of proportion to its intellectual finesse. Its popularity among not just sociobiologists, but biologists proper, provides yet another illustration of the susceptibility of scientific rationalism to the social and political ideologies of the day, to which scientists, being only too human, are heir. A singular achievement of nineteenth century biology, through such writers as Darwin and Huxley, was the construction of an objectifying language for the description of biological phenomena. Transposed into evolutionary theory, this language carefully deanthropomorphizes the processes of mutation, competition and survival, which were defined as central to the state of being of the natural world. Implications of motivation and intention were excluded from the meaning of these terms, as improper for the species and operations involved.

scholarly journals A Comprehensive Evolutionary Theory Deduced from Thermodynamics

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ji-Ming Chen
Keyword(s):  
Amino Acids ◽  
Origin Of Life ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Sympatric Speciation ◽  
Human Society ◽  
Significant Progress ◽  
Animal Group ◽  
Evolutionary Theories ◽  
Group Evolution

Studies on evolution have made significant progress in multiple disciplines, but evolutionary theories remain incomplete, controversial, and inadequate in explaining origin of life and macroevolution. Here we create the concept of carbon-based entities (CBEs) which include methane, amino acids, proteins, bacteria, animals, plants, and other entities containing carbon atoms. We then deduce the driving force, the progressive mechanisms, and the major steps of CBE evolution from thermodynamics. We hence establish a comprehensive evolutionary theory termed the CBE evolutionary theory (CBEET), which suggests that evolution is driven hierarchy-wise by thermodynamics and favors fitness and diversity. The CBEET provides novel explanations for origin of life (abiogenesis), macroevolution, natural selection, sympatric speciation, and animal group evolution in a comprehensive and comprehensible way. It elucidates that collaboration, altruism, obeying rules with properly increased freedom are important throughout the CBE evolution. It refutes thoroughly the notion that negative entropy (negentropy) leads to biological order which is distinct from thermodynamic order. It integrates with research advances in multiple disciplines and links up laws of physics, evolution in biology, and harmonious development of human society.

The Irresistible Fairy Tale

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jack Zipes
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Cognitive Science ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Fairy Tales ◽  
Fairy Tale ◽  
Great Difficulty ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The World

If there is one genre that has captured the imagination of people in all walks of life throughout the world, it is the fairy tale. Yet we still have great difficulty understanding how it originated, evolved, and spread—or why so many people cannot resist its appeal, no matter how it changes or what form it takes. This book presents a provocative new theory about why fairy tales were created and retold—and why they became such an indelible and infinitely adaptable part of cultures around the world. Drawing on cognitive science, evolutionary theory, anthropology, psychology, literary theory, and other fields, the book presents a nuanced argument about how fairy tales originated in ancient oral cultures, how they evolved through the rise of literary culture and print, and how, in our own time, they continue to change through their adaptation in an ever-growing variety of media. In making its case, the book considers a wide range of fascinating examples, including fairy tales told, collected, and written by women in the nineteenth century; Catherine Breillat's film adaptation of Perrault's “Bluebeard”; and contemporary fairy-tale drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs that critique canonical print versions. While we may never be able to fully explain fairy tales, this book provides a powerful theory of how and why they evolved—and why we still use them to make meaning of our lives.

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