The Great Chain of Being
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
John Hill (1714?–1775) on 'Plant Sleep'
Annals of Science ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tasc20 John Hill (1714?–1775) on ‘Plant Sleep’: experimental physiology and the limits of comparative analysis Justin Begley To cite this article: Justin Begley (2020): John Hill (1714?–1775) on ‘Plant Sleep’: experimental physiology and the limits of comparative analysis, Annals of Science, DOI: 10.1080/00033790.2020.1813807 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2020.1813807 © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 12 Sep 2020. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tasc20 ANNALS OF SCIENCE https://doi.org/10.1080/00033790.2020.1813807 John Hill (1714?–1775) on ‘Plant Sleep’: experimental physiology and the limits of comparative analysis Justin Begley Department of Philosophy, History, and Art, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY The phenomenon of ‘plant sleep’–whereby vegetables Received 1 October 2019 rhythmically open and close their leaves or petals in Accepted 18 August 2020 daily cycles – has been a continual source of fascination KEYWORDS for those with botanical interests, from the Portuguese Royal Society; history of physician Cristóbal Acosta and the Italian naturalist botany; John Hill; Prospero Alpini in the sixteenth century to Percy Bysshe experimentation; natural Shelley and Charles Darwin in the nineteenth. But it was history in 1757 that the topic received its earliest systemic treatment on English shores with the prodigious author, botanist, actor, and Royal Society critic John Hill’s The Sleep of Plants, and Cause of Motion in the Sensitive Plant. -
Leibniz on Whether the World Increases in Perfection
LEIBNIZ ON WHETHER THE WORLD INCREASES IN PERFECTION Lloyd Strickland In a letter to Bourguet written on 5 August 1715, a little over a year before his death, Leibniz suggests that, on the question of the world’s perfection, ‘Two hypotheses can be formed – one that nature is equally perfect, the other that it always increases in perfection.’ (L664)1 He then proceeds to split the second option into two further 1 The abbreviations I use throughout when citing Leibniz are as follows: A = Sämtliche schriften und briefe, ed by Akademie der Wissenschaften, multiple volumes in 6 series, cited by series (reihe) and volume (band) (Berlin, 1923-). AG = Philosophical essays, trans & ed by Roger Ariew & Daniel Garber (Indianapolis, 1989). D = De summa rerum, trans by G. H. R. Parkinson (New Haven, 1992). DM = Discourse on metaphysics, cited by section number, various translations in AG, L, P, W etc. Dn = The philosophical works of Leibnitz, trans & ed George Martin Duncan (New Haven, 1908). E = Opera Philosophica, ed by J. E. Erdmann (Berlin, 1840). G = Die philosophiscen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, ed by C. I. Gerhardt, 7 vols (Berlin, 1875-1890). GM = G. W. Leibniz: Mathematische Schriften, ed by C. I. Gerhardt, 7 vols (Berlin, 1962). Gr = Textes inédits, ed by Gaston Grua, 2 vols with successive pagination (Paris, 1948). H = Theodicy, trans by E. M. Huggard (Chicago, 1990). L = Philosophical papers and letters, trans & ed Leroy E. Loemker (Dordrecht, 2ed 1969). Mon = Monadology, cited by section number, various translations in AG, L, P, W etc. NE = New essays concerning human understanding, trans & ed by Peter Remnant & Jonathan Bennett (Cambridge, 1996). -
Archons (Commanders) [NOTICE: They Are NOT Anlien Parasites], and Then, in a Mirror Image of the Great Emanations of the Pleroma, Hundreds of Lesser Angels
A R C H O N S HIDDEN RULERS THROUGH THE AGES A R C H O N S HIDDEN RULERS THROUGH THE AGES WATCH THIS IMPORTANT VIDEO UFOs, Aliens, and the Question of Contact MUST-SEE THE OCCULT REASON FOR PSYCHOPATHY Organic Portals: Aliens and Psychopaths KNOWLEDGE THROUGH GNOSIS Boris Mouravieff - GNOSIS IN THE BEGINNING ...1 The Gnostic core belief was a strong dualism: that the world of matter was deadening and inferior to a remote nonphysical home, to which an interior divine spark in most humans aspired to return after death. This led them to an absorption with the Jewish creation myths in Genesis, which they obsessively reinterpreted to formulate allegorical explanations of how humans ended up trapped in the world of matter. The basic Gnostic story, which varied in details from teacher to teacher, was this: In the beginning there was an unknowable, immaterial, and invisible God, sometimes called the Father of All and sometimes by other names. “He” was neither male nor female, and was composed of an implicitly finite amount of a living nonphysical substance. Surrounding this God was a great empty region called the Pleroma (the fullness). Beyond the Pleroma lay empty space. The God acted to fill the Pleroma through a series of emanations, a squeezing off of small portions of his/its nonphysical energetic divine material. In most accounts there are thirty emanations in fifteen complementary pairs, each getting slightly less of the divine material and therefore being slightly weaker. The emanations are called Aeons (eternities) and are mostly named personifications in Greek of abstract ideas. -
Staying Optimistic: the Trials and Tribulations of Leibnizian Optimism
Strickland, Lloyd 2019 Staying Optimistic: The Trials and Tribulations of Leibnizian Optimism. Journal of Modern Philosophy, 1(1): 3, pp. 1–21. DOI: https://doi.org/10.32881/jomp.3 RESEARCH Staying Optimistic: The Trials and Tribulations of Leibnizian Optimism Lloyd Strickland Manchester Metropolitan University, GB [email protected] The oft-told story of Leibniz’s doctrine of the best world, or optimism, is that it enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the eighteenth century until the massive earthquake that struck Lisbon on 1 November 1755 destroyed its support. Despite its long history, this story is nothing more than a commentators’ fiction that has become accepted wisdom not through sheer weight of evidence but through sheer frequency of repetition. In this paper we shall examine the reception of Leibniz’s doctrine of the best world in the eighteenth century in order to get a clearer understanding of what its fate really was. As we shall see, while Leibniz’s doctrine did win a good number of adherents in the 1720s and 1730s, especially in Germany, support for it had largely dried up by the mid-1740s; moreover, while opponents of Leibniz’s doctrine were few and far between in the 1710s and 1720s, they became increasing vocal in the 1730s and afterwards, between them producing an array of objections that served to make Leibnizian optimism both philosophically and theologically toxic years before the Lisbon earthquake struck. Keywords: Leibniz; Optimism; Best world; Lisbon earthquake; Evil; Wolff The oft-told story of Leibniz’s doctrine of the best world, or optimism, is that it enjoyed a great deal of popularity in the eighteenth century until the massive earthquake that struck Lisbon on 1 November 1755 destroyed its support. -
Article Leibniz on Whether the World Increases In
British Journal for the History of Philosophy 14(1) 2006: 51 – 68 ARTICLE LEIBNIZ ON WHETHER THE WORLD INCREASES IN PERFECTION Lloyd Strickland In a letter to Bourguet written on 5 August 1715, a little over a year before his death, Leibniz suggests that, on the question of the world’s perfection, ‘Two hypotheses can be formed – one that nature is always equally perfect, the other that it always increases in perfection’ (L664).1 He then proceeds to split the second option into two further hypotheses: first, that the world has been increasing in perfection since its inception at a first moment; and second, that it has been increasing in perfection from all eternity. He illustrates these alternatives by means of the following diagrams: 1The abbreviations I use throughout when citing Leibniz are as follows: A ¼ Sa¨mtliche Schriften und Briefe, edited by Akademie der Wissenschaften, multiple Vols in six series, cited by series (reihe) and volume (band) (Berlin, 1923–). AG ¼ Philosophical Essays, translated and edited by Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber (Indianapolis, 1989). D ¼ De Summa Rerum, translated by G. H. R. Parkinson (New Haven, 1992). DM ¼ Discourse on Metaphysics, cited by section number, various translations in AG, L, P, W, etc. Dn ¼ The Philosophical Works of Leibnitz, translated and edited by George Martin Duncan (New Haven, 1908). E ¼ Opera Philosophica, edited by J. E. Erdmann (Berlin, 1840). G ¼ Die philosophiscen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, edited by C. I. Gerhardt, 7 Vols (Berlin, 1875–90). GM ¼ G. W. Leibniz: Mathematische Schriften, edited by C. I. Gerhardt, 7 Vols (Berlin, 1962). -
LEGACY of CHRISTIANITY.Pdf
LEGACY OF CHRISTIANITY The Origins of Christianity Certain esoteric teachings suggest that the Christian religion existed before the birth of Jesus Christ. G.I. Gurdjieff, for instance, claimed that the origin of Christianity was in ancient Egypt. In talks with his students he offered a very different history of Christianity than the traditional view of scholars and clerics: “Many people think that the outward form of worship, the rites, the singing of canticles, and so on, were invented by the fathers of the church. Others think that the outward form has been taken partly from pagan religions and partly from the Hebrews. But all of this is untrue. The question of the origin of the Christian church is much more interes- ting than we think.” The Christian church, the Christian form of worship, was not invented by the fathers of the church. It was all taken in a ready-made form from Egypt, only not from the Egypt that we know but from one which we do not know. This Egypt was in the same place as the other but it existed much earlier. Only small bits of it survived in historical times, and these bits have been preserved in secret and so well that we do not even know where they have been preserved. It will seem strange to many people when I say that this prehistoric Egypt was Christian many thousands of years before the birth of Christ, that is to say, that its religion was composed of the same principles and ideas that constitute true Christianity. Special schools existed in this prehistoric Egypt which were called ‘schools of repetition.’ These schools were taken as a model for Christian churches – the form of worship in Christian churches almost entirely represents the course of repetition of the science dealing with the universe and man. -
The Great Chain of Being
26.5 essay 429 MH 23/5/05 9:59 AM Page 429 NATURE|Vol 435|26 May 2005 ESSAY The great chain of being Our persistence in placing ourselves at the top of the Great Chain of Being suggests we have some deep psychological need to see ourselves as the culmination of creation. Sean Nee medieval theologian, albeit with some nov- Changes in ocean ecosystems wrought elties and the startling omission of God. by Bacteria and Archaea contributed to For centuries the ‘great chain of being’ held By starting with us, Dawkins regenerates the deposition of the ocean sediments, an a central place in Western thought. This the chain because species that are more event of enormous significance: these sed- view saw the Universe as ordered in a lin- closely related to us are more similar as iments became the habitat for bacteria that ear sequence starting from the inanimate well, and such similarity was an important now constitute about one-third of the total world of rocks. Plants came next, then ani- criterion in determining the rankings in living biomass today. (A side-effect of the mals, men, angels and, finally, God. It was the classical chain. But there is nothing deposition is the oxygenation of the very detailed with, for example, a ranking about the world that compels us to think atmosphere by photosynthetic bacteria.) of human races; humans them- Evolution continued for bil- selves ranked above apes above lions of years, with many remark- reptiles above amphibians above Human able innovations stimulated by fish. This view even predicted a both cooperation and conflict. -
Great Chain of Being
Great Chain of Being The great chain of being is a strict, religious hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by God. The chain starts from God and progresses downward to angels, demons (fallen/renegade angels), stars, moon, kings, princes, nobles, commoners, wild animals, domesticated animals, trees, other plants, precious stones, precious metals, and other minerals. Each link in the chain might be divided further into its component parts. The chain of being is composed of a great number of hierarchical links, from the most basic and foundational elements up through the very highest perfection, in other words, God. God sits at the top of the chain, and beneath him sit the angels, both existing wholly in spirit form. Earthly flesh is fallible and ever-changing, mutable. Spirit, however, is unchanging and permanent. This sense of permanence is crucial to understanding this conception of reality. It is generally impossible to change the position of an object in the hierarchy. (One exception might be in the realm of alchemy, where alchemists attempted to transmute base elements, such as lead, into higher elements, either silver or, more often, gold the highest element.) In the natural order, earth (rock) is at the bottom of the chain; this element possesses only the attribute of existence. Each link succeeding upward contains the positive attributes of the previous link and adds at least one other. Rocks possess only existence; the next link up is plants which possess life and existence. Animals add motion and appetite as well. Man is both mortal flesh, as those below him, and also spirit, as those above. -
The Great Chain of Being Is Still Here Emanuele Rigato*† and Alessandro Minelli†
Rigato and Minelli Evolution: Education and Outreach 2013, 6:18 http://www.evolution-outreach.com/content/6/1/18 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access The great chain of being is still here Emanuele Rigato*† and Alessandro Minelli† Abstract Background: Professional papers in evolutionary biology continue to host expressions in agreement with the pre- evolutionary metaphor of the scala naturae (the great chain of being), when contrasting ‘lower’ to ‘higher’ representatives of a given branch of the tree of life. How pervasive is the persistence of progressionist, pre- evolutionary language in contemporary papers? Results: We document here the prevalence of this unexpected linguistic survival in papers published between 2005 and 2010 by 16 top scientific journals, including generalist magazines and specialist journals in evolutionary biology. Out of a total of 67,413 papers, the unexpectedly high figure of 1,287 (1.91%) returned positive hits from our search for scala naturae language. Conclusions: A quantitative appreciation of the survival of progressionist language in scientific papers is the first step towards its eradication. This will obtain by improving skills in tree thinking as well as by more careful editorial policy. Keywords: Scala naturae, Evolutionary trends, Tree thinking, Bibliometric analysis Background biology in particular, any survival of scala naturae The scala naturae, or great chain of being (Lovejoy 1936), thinking, or of the corresponding language. These ex- as presented by Charles Bonnet in his Insectologie (Bonnet pectations, -
The Anatomy of a Myth: a Biography
1 Gurdjieff The Secondary Literature: A Selective Bibliography J. Walter Driscoll On January 13, 1949, George Gurdjieff was in New York City and announced his decision to publish Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson. This was a complete departure from the practice he had followed for almost four decades, of expounding his ideas orally and circulating his writings privately. He died on October 29 of that year, barely a week after receiving the publisher’s proofs for Beelzebub’s Tales. Biographers date his birth between 1866 and 1877 in Alexandropol, which is now Gyumri (Gumry), in the Republic of Georgia. Few historical facts about Gurdjieff’s life are certain until he was probably in his forties and emerged in Moscow about 1912. His father was Greek, his mother Armenian. He grew up in this war-torn frontier area of the Caucasus, which for millennia has seen a parade of conquerors; Alexander the Great, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs, the Mongols, the Turks, and latest the Russians. The Caucasus has long been a melting pot of cultures, religions and races from the East and West. Gurdjieff: the 2ndary Literature—Copyright ã2004 J. Walter Driscoll—www.Gurdjieff-Bibliography.com 2 In his autobiographical Meetings with Remarkable Men, Gurdjieff describes how he was deeply influenced by his father’s fund of songs, poems and legends from ancient wisdom-traditions. Gurdjieff’s father preserved this oral tradition as an ashokh or storyteller and troubadour. Privately educated for both medicine and the Eastern Orthodox priesthood, but equally interested in science and technical specialisation, Gurdjieff found that neither conventional religion nor orthodox scientific knowledge answered his ‘irresistible urge’ to understand the meaning and purpose of life and satisfy his questions about the world, the human psyche, and death. -
The Theory of the Great Chain of Being (GCB) Revisited: the Case of GCB-Level-Conditioned Animal Terms Robert Kiełtyka, University of Rzeszów
313 The theory of the Great Chain of Being (GCB) revisited: The case of GCB-level-conditioned animal terms Robert Kiełtyka, University of Rzeszów Abstract The Great Chain of Being is known as a model of the organization and perception of the surrounding reality which is deeply rooted in the European tradition and which relies on the fact that all the material/physical and spiritual entities create a hierarchy ranked from the lowest entities/beings to those occupying the highest level of the hierarchy. The Great Chain of Being and the processes it involves play an important role in the analysis of semantic change. For example, such cognitive mechanisms as anthropomorphisation and zoomorphisation understood as ascribing human or animal features to entities from the levels below and above humans or animals, are held responsible for the mechanism of zoosemy. Zoosemy is defined in the literature of the subject as a type of animal metaphor which is universally linked to evaluative changes in meaning, especially meaning pejoration. In this paper an attempt will be made to shed some light on one of the sub-types of zoosemy interpreted as an interface between a metaphorical schema and a metonymic mapping. Keywords: zoosemy, Great Chain of Being, metaphor, metonymy 1 Introduction The theoretical bases of the concept of the Great Chain of Being were developed in Antiquity by such ancient philosophers as Plato and Aristotle (cf. Nisbet 1982: 35), and it is worth mentioning that the GCB has not merely survived into our times but – more importantly – elements of its mechanism are reflected in various evolutionary theories and, recently, also in semantic investigations of natural languages. -
Echoes of Leibniz in Pope's Essay On
Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee Volume 8 Issue 1 Article 3 January 2017 Echoes of Leibniz in Pope’s Essay on Man: Criticism and Cultural Shift in the Eighteenth Century Sierra Billingslea [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, History of Philosophy Commons, Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Other Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Billingslea, Sierra (2017) "Echoes of Leibniz in Pope’s Essay on Man: Criticism and Cultural Shift in the Eighteenth Century," Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee: Vol. 8 : Iss. 1 , Article 3. Available at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit/vol8/iss1/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by Volunteer, Open Access, Library Journals (VOL Journals), published in partnership with The University of Tennessee (UT) University Libraries. This article has been accepted for inclusion in Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee by an authorized editor. For more information, please visit https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit. Pursuit: The Journal of Undergraduate Research at the University of Tennessee Volume 8, Issue 1 (2017) PURSUIT Echoes of Leibniz in Pope’s Essay on Man: Criticism and Cultural Shift in the Eighteenth Century SIERRA BILLINGSLEA Towson University, Towson, MD [email protected] Advisor: Dr. George Hahn This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.