Polarity in Goethe's Faust

PMLA ◽  
1949 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-461
Author(s):  
Clive H. Cardinal
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
Constant State ◽  
Poetic Expression ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Nature Of Matter

Already at an early stage in his life, when the Urfaust was being conceived, did Goethe sense the dynamic essence of the universe. He was deeply aware of the fact that the whole of existence, both in its physical and spiritual manifestations, is in a constant state of flux, with conflicting forces acting upon each other, eventually weaving themselves into a harmonious whole. This vast dynamic urge extends far beyond the biological into the very essence of the entire physical universe to the point where even matter itself is energy. His conviction became strengthened when he later took up the study of the natural sciences, and it played a most basic rôle in his view of life as an old man. Out of this idea of existence as ceaseless activity, which found varied poetic expression in his works, emerged a second concept equally important to an understanding of his philosophy: the concept of the polarity of conflicting antagonistic forces in nature, the name for which he took from the polarity of magnetism. Having accepted the fact that the nature of matter is force, he advanced to the idea that this force never expresses itself in a single phenomenon, but in two diagrammatically opposed entities or forces. Proceeding from the same point of departure they divide, repulse each other, finally to attract and unite again.

Being a Christian in the Catholic Way

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 352-374 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Peperkamp
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Electronic Technology ◽  
Acoustic Environment ◽  
Common Practices ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Universe

This article addresses the distinctive spiritual qualities of aerial movement. Taking as a point of departure the feature lm Maria, Mãe do Filho de Deus (2003) played by famous Brazilian Padre Marcelo Rossi, it argues for an engagement with cinematic images in terms of aerial dynamic imagination. It will be shown that the “inspired breath” of Padre Marcelo organizes the universe and affects the constitution of subjects and space in the lm according to the Scriptures. The same aerial dynamic applies to his other contexts of performance such as Byzantine praying techniques and their relation to space. Subsequently, the article explores underlying analogies between electronic technology, acoustic environment, and pneumatic spirituality within common practices of embodied experience.

Imagining Sound as the Absolute

2019 ◽  
pp. 15-30
Author(s):  
Saam Trivedi
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Scientific Ideas ◽  
The Universe

Saam Trivedi ponders the Sangita Ratnakara by the Ayurveda physician Sarangadeva. In this thirteenth-century manuscript, Sarangadeva asserts that Sound, identical to the Absolute, is the only fundamental thing in the universe and that all other things are illusory or, at best, some derivative or other manifestation of Sound. While the twenty-first century, non-monist Trivedi is critical of this claim, he finds much to be fascinated by, and, in his dissection of the main points of the Sangita Ratnakara, he offers the reader an imagining of sonic monism that, while far-removed from the orthodoxy of today’s acoustics and natural sciences, might one day come to be seen as inspiration for the latest scientific ideas concerning sound.

scholarly journals Openbaring as principium theologiae

1993 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. A. Kruger
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Contextual Theology ◽  
World Religions ◽  
General Revelation ◽  
Reformed Churches ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Universe

Theological renewal regarding different theological disciplines as well as the complete theological encyclopedia has lately been debated worldwide. Likewise, the Reformed Churches in South Africa are in a process of reconsidering the traditional reformed theological encyclopedia. This task can, however, not be fulfilled unless the basic issues are not also reconsidered. This article focuses on revelation as the principium theologiae. The line of argumentation centres round the fundamental confession in article 2 of the Belgian Confession. The truth implicit in this article, and accepted by the Reformed Churches, stresses that God can be known through his creation, sustenance and government of the universe, but He can be known more convincingly by studying holy Scripture. To prove this point of departure, Romans 1-4 and Romans 10 are discussed. The distinction between special and general revelation, contextual theology and the relationship to world religions and H. Bavinck's concept of the principium theologiae are also considered.

Changes in the Prognosis of Functional Psychoses Since the Days of Kraepelin

1967 ◽  
Vol 113 (501) ◽  
pp. 813-822 ◽  
Author(s):  
Örnulv Ödegård
Keyword(s):  
Special Problem ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
General Point ◽  
Course Of Illness ◽  
Dynamic Reasoning ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Functional Psychoses ◽  
External Conditions ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
The Universe

My choice of Kraepelin as a point of departure for this lecture has definite reasons. If one wants to stay within the field of clinical psychiatry (as opposed to psychiatric history), that is as far back as one can reasonably go. By this no slight is intended upon the pre-Kraepelinian psychiatrists. For our topic Henry Maudsley would indeed have been a most appropriate starting point, and by no means for reasons of courtesy. His general point of view is admirably sound as a basis for the scientific study of prognosis in psychiatry. I quote: “There is no accident in madness. Causality, not casualty, governs its appearance in the universe, and it is very far from being a good and sufficient practice simply to mark its phenomena and straightway to pass on as if they belonged not to an order but to a disorder of events that called for no explanation.” On the special problem of prognosis he shows his clinical acumen by stating that the outlook is poor when the course of illness is insidious, but this only means that these cases develop their psychoses on the basis of mental deviations which go very far back in the patient's life, so that in fact they are generally in a chronic stage at the time of their first admission to hospital. Here he actually corrects a mistake which is still quite often made. He shows his dynamic attitude when he says that prognosis is to a large extent modified by external conditions, in particular by the attitude of friends and relatives. Maudsley's dynamic reasoning was limited by the narrow framework of the degeneration hypothesis of those days. He had a sceptical attitude towards classification, which he regarded as artificial and dangerously pseudo-exact. His own classification was deliberately provisional, with very wide groups. He held that a description of various sub-forms of chronic insanity was useless, as it would mean nothing but a tiresome enumeration of unconnected details.

scholarly journals The Meta-Dynamic Nature of Consciousness

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Barnden
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Formulation ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
Time Flow ◽  
Non Local ◽  
Physical Interactions ◽  
Key Aspects ◽  
Physical Laws ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Non Locality ◽  
Do So

How, if at all, consciousness can be part of the physical universe remains a baffling problem. This article outlines a new, developing philosophical theory of how it could do so, and offers a preliminary mathematical formulation of a physical grounding for key aspects of the theory. Because the philosophical side has radical elements, so does the physical-theory side. The philosophical side is radical, first, in proposing that the productivity or dynamism in the universe that many believe to be responsible for its systematic regularities is actually itself a physical constituent of the universe, along with more familiar entities. Indeed, it proposes that instances of dynamism can themselves take part in physical interactions with other entities, this interaction then being “meta-dynamism” (a type of meta-causation). Secondly, the theory is radical, and unique, in arguing that consciousness is necessarily partly constituted of meta-dynamic auto-sensitivity, in other words it must react via meta-dynamism to its own dynamism, and also in conjecturing that some specific form of this sensitivity is sufficient for and indeed constitutive of consciousness. The article proposes a way for physical laws to be modified to accommodate meta-dynamism, via the radical step of including elements that explicitly refer to dynamism itself. Additionally, laws become, explicitly, temporally non-local in referring directly to quantity values holding at times prior to a given instant of application of the law. The approach therefore implicitly brings in considerations about what information determines states. Because of the temporal non-locality, and also because of the deep connections between dynamism and time-flow, the approach also implicitly connects to the topic of entropy insofar as this is related to time.

A Naturalistic Intrinsic Value Theodicy

2019 ◽  
pp. 236-258
Author(s):  
Scott A. Davison
Keyword(s):  
Intrinsic Value ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Human Survival ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Intrinsic Values ◽  
The World ◽  
The Universe

The theodicy explored in Chapter 13 is naturalistic in the sense that it does not appeal to the existence of good things or events or processes that cannot be studied using the natural sciences. More specifically, unlike most of the theodicies that are typically discussed in the literature, this one does not involve any claims about human survival of death, the existence of a soul, libertarian human freedom, or divine intervention, miraculous or otherwise. The theodicy explored here involves the following claims: Everything that exists is intrinsically valuable to some degree; the universe as a whole is a thing of immense intrinsic value; the immense intrinsic value of the universe as a whole provides God with a justifying reason for creating it; the evil in the world is offset by the intrinsic values of the creatures affected together with the intrinsic value of the world that comes from its regularity.

scholarly journals The Utterly Prosaic Connection between Physics and Mathematics

Philosophies ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Matt Visser
Keyword(s):  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Mathematical Entity ◽  
Eugene Wigner ◽  
Unreasonable Effectiveness ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
The Universe

Eugene Wigner famously argued for the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” as applied to describing physics and other natural sciences in his 1960 essay. That essay has now led to some 58 years of (sometimes anguished) philosophical soul searching—responses range from “So what? Why do you think we developed mathematics in the first place?”, through to extremely speculative ruminations on the existence of the universe (multiverse) as a purely mathematical entity—the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis. In the current essay I will steer an utterly prosaic middle course: Much of the mathematics we develop is informed by physics questions we are trying to solve; and those physics questions for which the most utilitarian mathematics has successfully been developed are typically those where the best physics progress has been made.

scholarly journals Astronomy Teaching in the Astronautics Club

1998 ◽  
Vol 162 ◽  
pp. 317-319
Author(s):  
E.Yu. Aleshkina
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Close Interaction ◽  
Space Sciences ◽  
The Universe

There is no necessity to argue about a vital need of an extension of astronomy and space knowledge equivalent to a modern state of the natural sciences. Astronomy teaching both professionally and for amateurs in the form of general courses is particularly needed nowadays because of the spread of various forms of mysticism in Russia.The main goal of astronomy teaching is to help students to become aware of the place of humanity in the Universe. In this connection it is necessary to study not only astronomy but also other relevant courses simultaneously. Such complex astronomy study plays a significant role. It is necessary to show a close interaction of astronomy with other sciences such as traditionally mathematics, physics, chemistry and also biology and psychology, which just begin to be integrated in the field of space sciences.

The rise of demonstrative-based first/second-person markers in the history of Japanese

2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toshiko Yamaguchi
Keyword(s):  
Early Stage ◽  
First Person ◽  
Semantic Approach ◽  
Second Person ◽  
History Of ◽  
Point Of Departure

This paper explores the rise of demonstrative-based person markers in the history of Japanese and takes Ishiyama’s spatial semantic approach as its point of departure. Despite the claim that demonstrative-based person markers remained functionally demonstrative, I argue that they began to manifest the category of person from an early stage of their development; that is to say, thanks to speaker innovation, demonstratives underwent semantic re-analysis to become markers representing the speaker’s ego in the reality of discourse. This paper also pinpoints that two notions, distancing and dissimilarity, are not spelled out in Ishiyama’s framework. In conclusion, the substitution of the first-person marker for the second-person marker is analysed tentatively using Keller’s theory of linguistic signs.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document