Chaos Imagined

Author : Martin Meisel
Publisher : Columbia University Press
Page : 604 pages
File Size : 53,9 Mb
Release : 2016-01-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780231540469

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Chaos Imagined by Martin Meisel Pdf

The stories we tell in our attempt to make sense of the world—our myths and religion, literature and philosophy, science and art—are the comforting vehicles we use to transmit ideas of order. But beneath the quest for order lies the uneasy dread of fundamental disorder. True chaos is hard to imagine and even harder to represent. In this book, Martin Meisel considers the long effort to conjure, depict, and rationalize extreme disorder, with all the passion, excitement, and compromises the act provokes. Meisel builds a rough history from major social, psychological, and cosmological turning points in the imagining of chaos. He uses examples from literature, philosophy, painting, graphic art, science, linguistics, music, and film, particularly exploring the remarkable shift in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from conceiving of chaos as disruptive to celebrating its liberating and energizing potential. Discussions of Sophocles, Plato, Lucretius, Calderon, Milton, Haydn, Blake, Faraday, Chekhov, Faulkner, Wells, and Beckett, among others, are matched with incisive readings of art by Brueghel, Rubens, Goya, Turner, Dix, Dada, and the futurists. Meisel addresses the revolution in mapping energy and entropy and the manifold effect of thermodynamics. He then uses this chaotic frame to elaborate on purpose, mortality, meaning, and mind.

Author : Stuart Walton
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2021-01-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781350144118

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An Excursion through Chaos by Stuart Walton Pdf

From its original meaning as a gaping void, or the emptiness that precedes the whole of creation, chaos has taken on the exclusive meaning of confusion, pandemonium and mayhem. This definition has become the overarching word to describe any challenge to the established order; be it railway strikes or political dissent, any unexpected event is routinely described in the media and popular parlance as 'chaos'. In his incisive new study, Stuart Walton argues that this is a pitifully one-dimensional view of the world, as he looks to many of the great social, political, artistic and philosophical advances that have emerged from periods of disorder and from the refusal to think within the standard paradigms. Exploring this worldview, Walton contends that we are superstitious about states of affairs in which anything could happen because we have been taught to prefer the imposition of rules in every aspect of our lives, from our diets to our romances. Indeed, in An Excursion through Chaos he demonstrates how it is these very restrictions that are responsible for the alienation that has characterised postwar society, a state of disengagement that could have been avoided if we had taken a less fearful attitude towards the unravelling of order.

Author : Heidi C. M. Scott
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2015-01-14
Category : Nature
ISBN : 9780271065366

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Chaos and Cosmos by Heidi C. M. Scott Pdf

In Chaos and Cosmos, Heidi Scott integrates literary readings with contemporary ecological methods to investigate two essential and contrasting paradigms of nature that scientific ecology continues to debate: chaos and balance. Ecological literature of the Romantic and Victorian eras uses environmental chaos and the figure of the balanced microcosm as tropes essential to understanding natural patterns, and these eras were the first to reflect upon the ecological degradations of the Industrial Revolution. Chaos and Cosmos contends that the seed of imagination that would enable a scientist to study a lake as a microcosmic world at the formal, empirical level was sown by Romantic and Victorian poets who consciously drew a sphere around their perceptions in order to make sense of spots of time and place amid the globalizing modern world. This study’s interest goes beyond likening literary tropes to scientific aesthetics; it aims to theorize the interdisciplinary history of the concepts that underlie our scientific understanding of modern nature. Paradigmatic ecological ideas such as ecosystems, succession dynamics, punctuated equilibrium, and climate change are shown to have a literary foundation that preceded their status as theories in science. This book represents an elevation of the prospects of ecocriticism toward fully developed interdisciplinary potentials of literary ecology.

Author : JoAnn Scurlock,Richard H. Beal
Publisher : Penn State Press
Page : 353 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 2013-10-14
Category : History
ISBN : 9781575068657

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Creation and Chaos by JoAnn Scurlock,Richard H. Beal Pdf

Hermann Gunkel was a scholar in the generation of the origins of Assyriology, the spectacular discovery by George Smith of fragments of the “Chaldean Genesis,” and the Babel-Bibel debate. Gunkel’s thesis, inspired by materials supplied to him by the Assyriologist Heinrich Zimmern, was to take the Chaoskampf motif of Revelation as an event that would not only occur at the end of the world but had already happened at the beginning, before Creation. In other words, in this theory, one imagines God in Genesis 1 as first having battled Rahab, Leviathan, and Yam (the forces of Chaos) in a grand battle, and only then beginning to create. The problem with Gunkel’s theory is that it did not simply identify common elements in the mythologies of the ancient Near East but imposed upon them a structure dictating the relationships between the elements, a structure that was based on inadequate knowledge and a forced interpretation of his sources. On the other hand, one is not entitled to insist that there was no cultural conversation among peoples who spent the better part of several millennia trading with, fighting, and conquering one another. Creation and Chaos attempts to address some of these issues. The contributions are organized into five sections that address various aspects of the issues raised by Gunekl’s theories.

Author : Joyce Blackburn
Publisher : Turner Publishing Company
Page : 108 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 2004-10-01
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9781618588616

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James Edward Oglethorpe by Joyce Blackburn Pdf

James Edward Oglethorpe turned his back on Oxford University, his family's Jacobite schemes, and a career as courtier to a prince to settle as an English country squire. But history was not to let him stay unnoticed. As a member of Parliament in the eighteenth century, Oglethorpe fought for debtors? rights and prison reform, and when he gained them, volunteered to found a new colony in America. Under his direction, settlements were established, strong bonds were formed with the Creek Indians, and the colony of Georgia flourished. He guided it during its formative years and protected it during war with Spain. That alone should have assured Oglethorpe of his place in history...but as he learned, politics and fortune are fickle. In this captivating biography, Joyce Blackburn details the career and life of this gallant gentleman, hero, visionary, and patriot.

Author : Catherine Murphy
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 709 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2018-12-24
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9789047400653

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Wealth in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Qumran Community by Catherine Murphy Pdf

This volume is concerned with exploring sectarian attitudes toward wealth and the economic practices that gave rise to and issued from those attitudes. An introductory chapter establishes the state of the question. Three subsequent chapters focus on major sectarian texts: the Damascus Document, the Rule of the Community, and 4QInstruction A. Other sectarian and non-sectarian texts that mention wealth are discussed in a fifth chapter, while archaeological evidence from the Qumran region and contemporary documentary texts are introduced in chapters seven and eight. Finally, ancient secondary testimony on Essene economic practices is discussed. The book breaks new ground in arguing for several biblical rationales for the practice of shared wealth. Its integration of archaeological and documentary evidence sheds surprising new light on the economic organization of the Qumran community.

Author : Shadworth Hollway Hodgson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 590 pages
File Size : 50,7 Mb
Release : 1870
Category : Ethics
ISBN : STANFORD:36105010273485

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The Theory of Practice: Analytic. Analysis of feeling, action, and character by Shadworth Hollway Hodgson Pdf

Author : Shadworth Hollway Hodgson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 588 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 1870
Category : Ethics
ISBN : CUB:P101120612005

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Analytic. Analysis of feeling, action, and character by Shadworth Hollway Hodgson Pdf

Author : Shadworth Hollway Hodgson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 588 pages
File Size : 49,7 Mb
Release : 1870
Category : Electronic
ISBN : RMS:RMS2LBIF000011643$$$I

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The Theory of Practice by Shadworth Hollway Hodgson Pdf

Author : Shadworth H. Hodgson
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 586 pages
File Size : 40,7 Mb
Release : 1870
Category : Electronic
ISBN : BSB:BSB11017809

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The Theory of Practice by Shadworth H. Hodgson Pdf

Author : Morris Golden
Publisher : University Press of America
Page : 284 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 1992
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0819187402

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Dickens Imagining Himself by Morris Golden Pdf

In Dickens Imagining Himself the author applies biographical materials to analysis of art by examining the way elements in Dicken's life led his imagination to shape his novels. This is a study of how Dickens' self-perceptions guided the patterns of six created worlds at significant points in his life. Contents: What Sort of Consanguinity; Barnaby Rudge: Two Cheers for Maturity; Martin Chuzzlewit: Ambiguously Whittington; David Copperfield: Memory and the Flow of Time; Bleak House: Passing the Bog; Great Expectations: Defining Estella; Our Mutual Friend: Reborn with Galatea; Eclectic Affinities; Notes; Index

Author : Clayton Newell
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 201 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 1991-07-04
Category : History
ISBN : 9781134942800

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The Framework of Operational Warfare by Clayton Newell Pdf

First published in 1991. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Author : Doc Lew Childre
Publisher : HeartMath
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 51,5 Mb
Release : 2000
Category : Organizational behavior
ISBN : 9781879052468

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From Chaos to Coherence by Doc Lew Childre Pdf

Author : Ben-Ami Scharfstein
Publisher : NYU Press
Page : 239 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1989-07-01
Category : Law
ISBN : 9780814788745

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The Dilemma of Context by Ben-Ami Scharfstein Pdf

In The Dilemma of Context, Scharfstein contends that the problems encountered with context are insoluble. He explains why this problem lays an intellectual burden on us that, while remaining inescapable,can become so heavy it destroys the understandingit was created to further.

Author : Ayesha Ramachandran
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 299 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2015-10-13
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9780226288826

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The Worldmakers by Ayesha Ramachandran Pdf

In this beautifully conceived book, Ayesha Ramachandran reconstructs the imaginative struggles of early modern artists, philosophers, and writers to make sense of something that we take for granted: the world, imagined as a whole. Once a new, exciting, and frightening concept, “the world” was transformed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But how could one envision something that no one had ever seen in its totality? The Worldmakers moves beyond histories of globalization to explore how “the world” itself—variously understood as an object of inquiry, a comprehensive category, and a system of order—was self-consciously shaped by human agents. Gathering an international cast of characters, from Dutch cartographers and French philosophers to Portuguese and English poets, Ramachandran describes a history of firsts: the first world atlas, the first global epic, the first modern attempt to develop a systematic natural philosophy—all part of an effort by early modern thinkers to capture “the world” on the page.