<i>The will to baroque</i> and the dynamics of fine pottery ornamentation of ISPC of carpathian-dniester region

Starting from some ideas of H. Wolflin, O. Spengler pointed out an interesting problem of correlation between the evolution of art and social evolution. Regardless of the realness of their observations and conclusions, the idea of searching and analyzing such correlations seems to be very fruitful, and especially in the context of preliterate culture surviving due to archeology. This paper, drawing on the empirical archaeological data related to so called Incised and Stamped Pottery Cultures (ISPC) of Early Hallstatt period (XII-IX centuries BC) of Carpathian-Dniester region, aims to consider and verify the ideas of H. Wolflin and O. Spengler. For this purpose, and basing on the previously established by the author fivephase evolution scheme of ISPC of Carpathian-Dniester region (including such a key component of ISPC as Sakharna-Soloncheni culture), the dynamic of fine pottery ornamentation of these societies is analyzed. The analysis demonstrates that the evolution of pottery ornamentation of ISPC started from a minimal number of ornamental patterns and moved towards increasing their number. The parallel tendency was the increasing of the ornamented square of pots. These processes, as well as the innovativeness and openness to external influences, peaked in the fourth phase of Sakharna-Soloncheni culture; this phase was also the time of its greatest prosperity.

Download Full-text

Free Agent or ‘Conscious Automaton’? Contrasting Interpretations of the Individual in Spencer's Writing on Social and Moral Life

The Sociological Review ◽

10.1111/1467-954x.00405 ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 51 (1) ◽

pp. 1-19 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

John Offer

Keyword(s):

Social Life ◽

Social Evolution ◽

Care Needs ◽

Philosophical Debate ◽

Herbert Spencer ◽

Freedom Of The Will ◽

Policy Sociology ◽

The Status ◽

The Will ◽

The Individual

Herbert Spencer remains an important and intriguing figure in thinking about political, social and moral matters. At present his writings in relation to idealist thought, social policy, sociology and ethics are undergoing reassessment. This article is concerned with some recent interpretations of Spencer on individuals in social life. It looks in some detail at Spencer's work on psychology and sociology as well as on ethics, seeking to establish how Spencer understood people as social individuals. In particular the neglect of Spencer's denial of freedom of the will is identified as a problem in some recent interpretations. One of his contemporary critics, J.E. Cairnes, charged that Spencer's own theory of social evolution left even Spencer himself the status of only a ‘conscious automaton’. This article, drawing on a range of past and present interpretative discussions of Spencer, seeks to show that Spencerian individuals are psychically and socially so constituted as to be only indirectly responsive to moral suasion, even to that of his own Principles of Ethics as he himself acknowledged. Whilst overtly reconstructionist projects to develop a liberal utilitarianism out of Spencer to enliven political and philosophical debate for today are worthwhile – dead theorists have uses – care needs to be taken that the original context and its concerns with the processes associated with innovation (and decay) in social life are not thereby eclipsed, the more so since in some important respects they have recently received little systematic attention even though the issues have contemporary relevance in sociology.

Download Full-text

We Recognize Ourselves as Being Similar to Others: Implications of the “Social Brain Hypothesis” for the Biological Evolution of the Intuition of Freedom

Evolutionary Psychology ◽

10.1177/147470490700500301 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 147470490700500 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Eckart Voland

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

Social Intelligence ◽

Social Evolution ◽

Selective Pressure ◽

Biological Evolution ◽

Social Brain ◽

Social Attribution ◽

The Social ◽

Behavioral Tendencies ◽

The Will

Consistent with and in extension of the “social brain hypothesis,” I discuss the idea that the intuition of free will emerged during the course of primate social evolution. If, as the “social brain hypothesis” alleges, the main selective pressure among primates is on generating social knowledge about one's cooperators and competitors, then it is the knowledge about others and not the knowledge about oneself that is the scarce cognitive resource. It is beneficial to make the others predictable and to form hypotheses about their probable behavioral tendencies. This is done by behavior reading and mind reading and by classifying the recurring stochastic patterns in everyday language as the “will.” Thus, the idea of free will emerged first as a social attribution and not as an introspectively gained insight. The fact that ego applies the idea of freedom also to itself and considers itself to be as free as it considers the social partners to be free, i.e. unpredictable, is in this view a non-selected by-product of social intelligence.

Download Full-text

ON APPEARANCE OF RUSINS IN PANNONIA (REVISITED)

Rusin ◽

10.17223/18572685/60/2 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 11-21

Author(s):

M.K. Yurasov ◽

Keyword(s):

Lake Balaton ◽

Archaeological Data ◽

Western Area ◽

The Will

The dominant opinion among Hungarian historians is that the ancestors of Subcarpathian Rusins could not appear in their modern homeland before Hungarians and the tribes that joined them acquired their homeland in the Middle Danube. Even the information provided by the medieval chroniclers, suggesting the opposite, is interpreted as the negligence of the latter. However, the archaeological data indicate the Eastern Slavs expansion in the 8th – 9th centuries not only in the basin of the Upper Tisza, but also in more southern areas up to the borders of medieval Transylvania. They could get there by the will of the Avar Khagans. The Western area of the settlement of “Ruthenians” extended to the Danube bight and, possibly, to Lake Balaton, where the toponym “Tihany”, presumably of East Slavic origin, is preserved.

Download Full-text