Download or read book Empirical Wonder written by Riccardo Capoferro and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Empirical Wonder" focuses on the emergence of the fantastic in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British culture. To do so, it preliminarily formulates an inclusive theory of the fantastic centering on nineteenth- and twentieth-century genres. The origins of such genres, this study argues, reside in the epistemological shift that attended the rise of empiricism, and their formal and historical identity becomes fully visible against the backdrop of pre-modern culture. While in pre-modern world-views no clear-cut distinction between the natural and the super- or the non-natural existed, the new epistemology entailed the emergence of boundaries between the empirical and the non-empirical, which determined, on the level of literary production, the opposition between the realistic and the non-realistic. Along with these boundaries, however, emerged the need to overcome them. In the seventeenth century, the religious supernatural and the existence of monsters were increasingly being questioned by modern science, and a variety of attempts were made to enact a mediation between what was perceived as unmistakably real and the problematic phenomena that were threatened by the empirical outlook: apparition narratives were used, for instance, to persuade skeptics of the presence of otherworldly beings, and travelogues often presented monsters as if they were empirical entities. Most of these attempts became soon incompatible with scientific culture, more and more normative, so the task of mediation was assumed by literature. Apparition narratives, originally conceived as factual texts, were progressively aestheticized; analogously, imaginary voyages grew different from fictionalized travelogues -- the success of Gulliver's Travels resetting the genre's main conventions and establishing a distinctly fictional model. Both apparition narratives and imaginary voyages emerged as self-consciously literary, that is, aesthetic, genres, bridging the gap between the empirical and the non-empirical. The origins of the fantastic ended when its mediatory task gave way to other concerns. Although on a residual level the mediation between the empirical and the non-empirical persisted, the fantastic's main preoccupations changed: in imaginary voyages its distinctive devices were used to dramatize or validate colonial practices, and Gothic fiction disconnected itself from the moral framework typical of apparition narratives.
Download or read book Wonder Education and Human Flourishing Theoretical Empirical and Practical Perspectives written by and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The premƯise that underlies this volume is that there are strong interconnections between wonder, education and human flourishing. And more specifically, that wonƯder can make a significant difference to how well one?s education progresses and how well one?s life goes. The contributors to this volume ? both senior, well-known and beginning researchers and students of wonder ? variously explore aspects of these connections from philosophical, empirical, theoretical and practical perspectives. The three chapters that comprise Part I of the book are devoted to the importance of wonder for education and for human flourishing. Part II contains four chapters offering conceptual analyses of wonder and perspectives from developmental psychology and philosophy (Spinoza, Wittgenstein, philosophy of religion). The seven chapters that form Part III contain a wealth of ideas and educational strategies to promote wonder in education and teacher education. This volume not only underlines and articulates the importance of wonder in education and in life but also offers fresh perspectives, allowing us to look with renewed wonder at wonder itself.
Download or read book Eighteenth Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder written by Sarah Tindal Kareem and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-10-23 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A footprint materializes mysteriously on a deserted shore; a giant helmet falls from the sky; a traveler awakens to find his horse dangling from a church steeple. Eighteenth-century fiction brims with moments such as these, in which the prosaic rubs up against the marvelous. While it is a truism that the period's literature is distinguished by its realism and air of probability, Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder argues that wonder is integral to—rather than antithetical to—the developing techniques of novelistic fiction. Positioning its reader on the cusp between recognition and estrangement, between faith and doubt, modern fiction hinges upon wonder. Eighteenth-Century Fiction and the Reinvention of Wonder unfolds its new account of fiction's rise through surprising readings of classic early novels—from Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe to Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey—and brings to attention lesser-known works, most notably Rudolf Raspe's Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels. In this bold new account, the eighteenth century bears witness not to the world's disenchantment but rather to wonder's relocation from the supernatural realm to the empirical world, providing a reevaluation not only of how we look back at the Enlightenment, but also of how we read today.
Download or read book Flight from Wonder written by Albert Rothenberg and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientific breakthroughs have had far-reaching social and physical effects on modern civilization, yet until recently, there have been relatively few investigations into the nature of scientific creativity itself. Flight from Wonder reports the findings from an empirical study of 42 Nobel laureates in science from the United States and Europe concerning the creative processes that yield scientific innovation. To this end, Albert Rothenberg designed an interview scheme to delineate the content and sequences of processes that lead scientists to specific creative achievements. He conducted interviews with Nobel laureates in the fields of medicine, physiology, physics, and chemistry while carrying out matching interviews with a control group consisting of twelve accomplished engineers on the faculty of a leading engineering university. Rothenberg's results demonstrate that the Nobel laureates perform three distinct cognitive creative processes to achieve key formulations and discoveries; the detailed nature and structure of these findings were reviewed and corroborated by each of the Nobel laureates. To supplement his findings, Rothenberg engages with autobiographical accounts and work-in-progress manuscripts pertaining to the creative discoveries of outstanding scientists of the past including Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin, Max Planck, Neils Bohr, Hideki Yukawa, and James Watson. The book will interest students and general science readers fascinated by the development of scientific inquiry and innovation.
Download or read book The Wonder of Consciousness written by Harold L. Langsam and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that what makes consciousness wonderful is its intelligibility.
Download or read book Peripheral Wonders written by Margaret R. Ewalt and published by Associated University Presse. This book was released on 2008 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work expands traditional conceptions of the Enlightenment by examining the roles of wonder and Jesuit missionary conceptions of the Enlightenment by examining the century in a production of knowledge that serves both intellectual and religious functions.
Download or read book Curiosity written by Barbara M. Benedict and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this striking social history, Barbara M. Benedict draws on the texts of the early modern period to discover the era's attitudes toward curiosity, a trait we learn was often depicted as an unsavory form of transgression or cultural ambition.
Download or read book Balanced Wonder written by Jan B. W. Pedersen and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Balanced Wonder, Jan B. W. Pedersen digs deep into the alluring topic of wonder, in dialogue with Neo-Aristotelian philosophers, arguing that the experience of wonder, when balanced, serves as a strong contributor to human flourishing.
Download or read book Consciousness written by Henry Rutgers Marshall and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 714 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Fierce Little Tragedy written by Herman Stark and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2003 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book explores, in novel form, what can happen to us, whether professor or student, as a result of the philosophical classroom. The approach is to consider the classroom as a unique happening of philosophy, different than reporting theories or doing research, through which a distinctive mode of philosophical formation can occur.
Download or read book Wonder written by Vlad P. Glaveanu and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-06-25 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is dedicated to wonder and wondering, mundane phenomena that, despite their great value for education and other spheres of human experience, often go unnoticed both inside and outside the classroom. Praised as the origin of philosophy in ancient times, the concern for understanding and educating wonder has been present throughout history. It is not only the case that this basic psychological process opens our everyday experience to what is possible, what lies beyond the here-and-now, but does so with extraordinary consequences. Wonder transforms our experience of the world from early childhood onwards. It is ever-present in children's play and games, it offers constant opportunities for learning and it fuels our creativity. And yet, we know little about this phenomenon, its biological, psychological, social and cultural underpinning, and even less about how to foster it and harness its benefits in education. This book fills this gap and gives a scientific yet accessible account of wondering. It proposes a new way of understanding wonder, while at the same time offering practical tools for cultivating wonder within ourselves, our interpersonal relations, and within educational practice.
Download or read book Wonder written by Frank C. Keil and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-03-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we can all be lifelong wonderers: restoring the sense of joy in discovery we felt as children. From an early age, children pepper adults with questions that ask why and how: Why do balloons float? How do plants grow from seeds? Why do birds have feathers? Young children have a powerful drive to learn about their world, wanting to know not just what something is but also how it got to be that way and how it works. Most adults, on the other hand, have little curiosity about whys and hows; we might unlock a door, for example, or boil an egg, with no idea of what happens to make such a thing possible. How can grown-ups recapture a child’s sense of wonder at the world? In this book, Frank Keil describes the cognitive dispositions that set children on their paths of discovery and explains how we can all become lifelong wonderers. Keil describes recent research on children’s minds that reveals an extraordinary set of emerging abilities that underpin their joy of discovery—their need to learn not just the facts but the underlying causal patterns at the very heart of science. This glorious sense of wonder, however, is stifled, beginning in elementary school. Later, with little interest in causal mechanisms, and motivated by intellectual blind spots, as adults we become vulnerable to misinformation and manipulation—ready to believe things that aren’t true. Of course, the polymaths among us have retained their sense of wonder, and Keil explains the habits of mind and ways of wondering that allow them—and can enable us—to experience the joy of asking why and how.
Download or read book Reconstructing Sociology written by Douglas V. Porpora and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-03 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A general critique of sociology, particularly sociology in the United States, from a critical realist perspective.
Download or read book Shakespeare s Miracle Plays written by Harald William Fawkner and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fawkner gives readings of the miracle plays that are so different from the established interpretations that the plays appear to emerge anew from their slumbers and misconceptions--to suddenly speak to us differently of things we have so far not permitted ourselves to even theorize, fantasize, or perceive. Rejecting symbolic readings, the author insists that the translation of the experience of the miraculous into psychoanalysis or "myth" is as pointless as any other form of symbolic appropriation of the plays. Symbolic understandings of the miracle plays fail to dig into the roots of what is typical of miraculous experience. To understand Shakespeare's last plays, one must first grasp what a miracle is--not only in religion, culture, drama, and aesthetics, but in Shakespeare.
Download or read book Kant and the Laws of Nature written by Michela Massimi and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume of new essays explores Kant's views on the laws of nature.
Download or read book Spirituality in the Flesh written by Robert C. Fuller and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008-09-08 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is now generally accepted that the structure and function of the human body deeply influence the nature of human thought. As a consequence, our religious experiences are at least partially determined by our sensory organs, emotional programs, sexual sensibilities, and the neural framework of our brains. In Spirituality in the Flesh, Robert C. Fuller investigates how studying the body can help us to answer the profoundest spiritual questions. Why is it that some religious traditions assign spiritual currency to pain? How do neurochemically driven emotions, such as fear, shape our religious actions? What is the relationship between chemically altered states of consciousness and religious innovation? Using recent biological research to illuminate religious beliefs and practices, Fuller delves into topics as diverse as apocalypticism, nature religion, Native American peyotism, and the sexual experimentalism of nineteenth-century communal societies, in every case seeking middle ground between the arguments currently emanating from scientists and humanists. He takes most scientific interpreters to task for failing to understand the inherently cultural aspects of embodied experience even as he chides most religion scholars for ignoring new knowledge about the biological substrates of human thought and behavior. Comfortable with the language of scientific analysis and sympathetic to the inherently subjective aspects of religious events, Fuller introduces the biological study of religion by joining together this era's unprecedented understanding of bodily states with an expert's knowledge of religious phenomena. Culling together insights from scientific observations, historical allusions, and literary references, Spirituality in the Flesh offers a bold look at the biological underpinnings of religion and opens up new and exciting agendas for understanding the nature and value of human religiosity.
Download or read book WONDERS OF THE WORLD written by Rudolf Steiner and published by Rudolf Steiner Press. This book was released on 2020-11-16 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'From the contents of original Greek drama and the soul drama of the present day that leads to self-knowledge, Rudolf Steiner develops his thought processes – pulsating with lively contemplation – about wonders of the world, trials of the soul and revelations of the spirit!' – Marie SteinerIn this remarkable interpretation of Greek mythology, Rudolf Steiner goes beyond Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell in reading mythological figures such as Demeter, Persephone, Eros and Dionysos as primordial archetypes of macrocosmic thinking, feeling and will. Moreover, he explains in detail how this archetypal consciousness was gradually lost, giving way to new-found, subjective experience of these faculties, which in turn opens up possibilities for human freedom. His overarching theme of 'the evolution of consciousness' is grand in its sweep, but Steiner also shows himself to be the master of telling details.Lectures include: 'The origin of dramatic art in European cultural life and the Mystery of Eleusis'; 'The living reality of the spiritual world in Greek mythology and the threefold Hecate'; 'Nature and spirit'; 'The entry of the Christ Impulse into human evolution and the activity of the planetary gods'; 'The merging of the ancient Hebrew and the Greek currents in the Christ-stream'; 'The ego-nature and the human form'; 'The Dionysian Mysteries'; 'Eagle, Bull and Lion currents, Sphinx and Dove'; 'The two poles of all soul-ordeals'; and 'On Goethe's birthday'.The freshly revised text features an introduction, notes and appendices by Professor Frederick Amrine, colour images and an index.
