God, Indian conceptions of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sibajiban Bhattacharyya
Keyword(s):  
Indian Philosophy ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
Arts And Crafts ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Advaita Vedanta ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Summum Bonum ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

In the Ṛg Veda, the oldest text in India, many gods and goddesses are mentioned by name; most of them appear to be deifications of natural powers, such as fire, water, rivers, wind, the sun, dusk and dawn. The Mīmāṃsā school started by Jaimini (c.ad 50) adopts a nominalistic interpretation of the Vedas. There are words like ‘Indra’, ‘Varuṇa’, and so on, which are names of gods, but there is no god over and above the names. God is the sacred word (mantra) which has the potency to produce magical results. The Yoga system of Patañjali (c.ad 300) postulates God as a soul different from individual souls in that God does not have any blemishes and is eternally free. The ultimate aim of life is not to realize God, but to realize the nature of one’s own soul. God-realization may help some individuals to attain self-realization, but it is not compulsory to believe in God to attain the summum bonum of human life. Śaṅkara (c.ad 780), who propounded the Advaita Vedānta school of Indian philosophy, agrees that God-realization is not the ultimate aim of human life. Plurality, and therefore this world, are mere appearances, and God, as the creator of the world, is himself relative to the concept of the world. Rāmānuja (traditionally 1016–1137), the propounder of the Viśiṣṭādvaita school, holds God to be ultimate reality, and God-realization to be the ultimate goal of human life. The way to realize God is through total self-surrender to God. Nyāya theory also postulates one God who is an infinite soul, a Person with omniscience and omnipresence as his attributes. God is the creator of language, the author of the sacred Vedas, and the first teacher of all the arts and crafts.

Time, Money, and the Weather: Ming China and the “Great Depression” of the Mid-Fifteenth Century

2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
William S. Atwell
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Arts And Crafts ◽  
Absolute Level ◽  
The Great Depression ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World ◽  
Handicraft Production ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Deep Recession

During the fifteenth century, especially during its middle decades, “almost all parts of the then-known world [i.e., Europe, the Middle East, and the economically advanced regions of Asia] experienced a deep recession. By then, the ‘state of the world’ was at a much lower level than it had reached in the early fourteenth century. During the depression of the fifteenth century, the absolute level of inter-societal trade dropped, currencies were universally debased (a sure sign of decreased wealth and overall productivity), and the arts and crafts were degraded” (Abu-Lughod 1993, 85; see also Lopez and Miskimin 1962; Lopez, Miskimin, and Udovitch 1970; Postan 1973, 41–48; Wallerstein 1974, 21–38; Munro 1998, 38–39). In much of Eurasia, the worst years of this “depression” probably ended sometime during the 1460s or 1470s. Over the next six or seven decades, economic conditions in many parts of the world improved significantly, reflected in dramatic increases in agricultural and handicraft production; in the volume of interregional and international trade; and, except for the western hemisphere where Afro-Eurasian diseases decimated native populations during the early sixteenth century, in demographic growth.

The Sphere of the Human

2019 ◽  
pp. 267-322
Author(s):  
Helmuth Plessner ◽  
J. M. Bernstein
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Psychological Experience ◽  
The World ◽  
Forms Of Life ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Way

“Centric positionality” is a form of organism-environment relation exhibited by animal forms of life. Human life is characterized not only by centric but also by excentric positionality—that is, the ability to take a position beyond the boundary of one’s own body. Excentric positionality is manifest in: the inner, psychological experience of human beings; the outer, physical being of their bodies and behavior; and the shared, intersubjective world that includes other human beings and is the basis of culture. In each of these three worlds, there is a duality symptomatic of excentric positionality. Three laws characterize excentric positionality: natural artificiality, or the natural need of humans for artificial supplements; mediated immediacy, or the way that contact with the world in human activity, experience, and expression is both transcendent and immanent, both putting humans directly in touch with things and keeping them at a distance; and the utopian standpoint, according to which humans can always take a critical or “negative” position regarding the contents of their experience or their life.

The Societal Impact of World Wide Web - Key Challenges for the 21st Century

2011 ◽  
pp. 88-106
Author(s):  
Janice M. Burn ◽  
Karen D. Loch
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Revolution ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Economic Implications ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Definite Effect ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
And Shifts ◽  
The Way

Many lessons from history offer strong evidence that technology can have a definite effect on the social and political aspects of human life. At times it is difficult to grasp how supposedly neutral technology might lead to social upheavals, mass migrations of people, and shifts in wealth and power. Yet a quick retrospective look at the last few centuries finds that various technologies have done just that, challenging the notion of the neutrality of technology. Some examples include the printing press, railways, and the telephone. The effects of these technologies usually begin in our minds by changing the way we view time and space. Railways made the world seem smaller by enabling us to send goods, people, and information to many parts of the world in a fraction of the time it took before. Telephones changed the way we think about both time and distance, enabling us to stay connected without needing to be physically displaced. While new technologies create new opportunities for certain individuals or groups to gain wealth, there are other economic implications with a wider ranging impact, political and social. Eventually, as the technology matures, social upheavals, mass migrations and shifts in economic and political power can be observed. We find concrete examples of this dynamic phenomenon during the Reformation, the industrial revolution, and more recently, as we witness the ongoing information technology revolution.

Redesigning the World: William Morris, the 1880s, and the Arts and Crafts

1985 ◽  
Vol 90 (5) ◽  
pp. 1200
Author(s):  
Janet Oppenheim ◽  
Peter Stansky
Keyword(s):  
Arts And Crafts ◽  
William Morris ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The World

The Female Pole of the Godhead in Tantrism and the Prakrti of Sāmkhya

Numen ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 56-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Knut Jacobsen
Keyword(s):  
Female Identity ◽  
Ultimate Reality ◽  
Religious Thought ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
The World ◽  
Religious Systems ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe dualism of the consciousness principle (puruṣa) and the material principle (Prakrti) in the Sāmkhya and Pātañjala-Sāmkhya (Yoga) traditions of religious thought has often been thought of as a dualism of a male and a female principle. Contrary to what is often assumed however the material principle of Sāmkhya and Pātañjala-Sāmkhya does not possess a female identity. This paper argues that the identification of the Sāmkhya and Pātañjala-Sāmkhya Prakrti with a female principle among scholars is due to a very selective use of evidence and too much dependence on later sources, especially the Tantric religious systems in which the female-male polarity was utilized for the interpretation of the ultimate reality, the structure of the world and the means to attain liberation. The way the Tantric religions utilized the Sāmkhya dualism of Prakrti and puruṣa to illustrate the female-male polarity of ultimate reality illustrates the manner in which the Tantric religions reinterpreted elements of earlier systems of religious thought and transformed them according to their own purpose and the process of borrowing and synthesizing of what had come before them typical of the Hindu religious traditions.

scholarly journals Christian-orthodox view of the world and environmental problem

Sabornost ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 13-22
Author(s):  
Ignatije Midić
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Problem ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Orthodox Church ◽  
Way Of Life ◽  
The World ◽  
Orthodox View ◽  
Entire Planet ◽  
Ecological Catastrophe ◽  
The Way

Pollution of environment and the irreversible destruction of nature has become the way of life of the modern world. The consequences of that are obviously tragic for human life and for the survival of the entire planet Earth. This article has an aim to answer the question: what can the Orthodox Church do to stop this problem, if it cannot regain what has already been lost? To answer this question, the author first analyzes the causes of the ecological catastrophe, and then offers a theological answer to the posed problem.

scholarly journals A Review on Internet of Things

2022 ◽  
pp. 135-144
Author(s):  
Aditi Rajesh Nimodiya ◽  
Shruti Sunil Ajankar
Keyword(s):  
Internet Of Things ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Human Life ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Component Architecture ◽  
The World ◽  
The Way

Today, Internet has become the most important and a revolutionary invention which has touched almost every corner of the world and has affect human life in tremendous ways. IOT, Internet of things is simply an interaction between the physical and digital world. It is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers (UIDs). The communication taking place in today's world is basically in the form of human-human or human-machine but IOT has the ability for a great future where communication will take place in the form of machine-machine also. IOT has changed the way of living of people into a high-profile way and has impact in almost various sector which has given a positive impact on world. Also, along with various advantages it has some challenges and disadvantages too. This paper mainly focused on all the importance point related to IOT, how it works, its component, architecture, characteristics, applications, advantages-disadvantages and many more. IOT is overall a vast topic to discuss and talk about.

scholarly journals The Language of Fashion as a Carrier of Personal Information

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-179
Author(s):  
Marta Kosowska-Ślusarczyk
Keyword(s):  
Personal Information ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Media Type ◽  
Individual Character ◽  
First Impression ◽  
The World ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Way

It’s fair to say that all human life is based on communication; passive and active, verbal and nonverbal. No matter which media type you consider, the importance of the so-called first impression cannot be overstated. Currently, as the world becomes more open and accessible, the individual character of the way we create our look takes a different form, but still remains an important messenger. In my thesis, I would like to present the outfit as a carrier of vital information about people. In parallel, I will analyze the clothing itself, researching both historic and contemporary sources. Finally, I attempt to decipher the language of fashion.

scholarly journals Horizontality, Negotiation, and Emergence: Toward a Philosophy of Environmental History

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 255-258
Author(s):  
Diogo De Carvalho Cabral
Keyword(s):  
Environmental History ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Environmental Humanities ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
The World ◽  
Environmental Histories ◽  
The Way

In this article, I intend to creatively synthesize both the empirical findings and the theoretical formulations put forward by self-proclaimed environmental historians, as well as those by the scholars who preceded and influenced them. Establishing a dialogue with the broader field of Environmental Humanities, especially posthumanism, I propose three principles for writing environmental histories: horizontality, negotiation, and emergency. Horizontality refers to the inexistence of a given and absolute 'ground' for human life. We walk, build our houses, earn a living, and develop ideas and cultures, not on top of an ontological floor, but attending to and being attended by the bodies surrounding us, some of them animated and some not, some solid and some liquid and gaseous. To inhabit is to make oneself available to be inhabited. Mutual habitation weaves assemblages that are both the continent and the content of life. Negotiation alludes to the human conversation with a larger world, both animated and inanimate, about coexistence. Humans never get everything they want, just the way they want it, from their relationships with nonhumans. Though people rarely recognize this, the only way history can be made is through compromise with the rest of the biosphere. This means that humans are continuously becoming, as they and their activities couple themselves with other natural entities and their activities. Emergence, therefore, is the radical geo-historicity of all earthly things, whose character is never given beforehand but constituted as they make their way through the world.

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