Wolfram Hogrebe examines the anthropological relevance of logomantic [divinational] precursors of philosophy and poetry along with the idea of the implicit citizen and the nature of implicit musical structures.".

A traditional view maintains that thought, while expressed in language, is non-linguistic in nature and occurs in non-linguistic beings as well. I assess this view against current theories of the evolutionary design of human grammar. I argue that even if some forms of human thought are shared with non-human animals, a residue remains that characterizes a unique way in which human thought is organized as a system. I explore the hypothesis that the cause of this difference is a grammatical way (...) of structuring semantic information, and I present evidence that the organization of grammar precisely reflects the organization of a specific mode of thought apparently distinctive of humans. Since there appears to be no known non-grammatical structuring principle for the relevant mode of thought, I suggest that grammar is that principle, with no independent ?Language of Thought? needed. (shrink)

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Life's Solution builds a persuasive case for the predictability of evolutionary outcomes. The case rests on a remarkable compilation of examples of convergent evolution, in which two or more lineages have independently evolved similar structures and functions. The examples range from the aerodynamics of hovering moths and hummingbirds to the use of silk by spiders and some insects to capture prey. Going against the grain of Darwinian orthodoxy, this book is a must read for anyone grappling with the meaning of (...) evolution and our place in the Universe. Simon Conway Morris is the Ad Hominen Professor in the Earth Science Department at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St. John's College and the Royal Society. His research focuses on the study of constraints on evolution, and the historical processes that lead to the emergence of complexity, especially with respect to the construction of the major animal body parts in the Cambrian explosion. Previous books include The Crucible of Creation (Getty Center for Education in the Arts, 1999) and co-author of Solnhofen (Cambridge, 1990). Hb ISBN (2003) 0-521-82704-3. (shrink)

Über das wesen der künstlerischen phantasie.--Über drei hymnen des Rig-Veda.--Über die bildwerke am Zeustempel von Olympia.--Mythenbildung um Alexander den Grossen.--Die anthroposophischen grundlagen des christentums.--Goethe und die goldene legende.--Die madonna der expressionisten.--Der mensch August Strindberg im spiegel seiner werke und das problem seines lebens als zeitproblem.--Das mysterium der Tristansage.

A soaring intellectual narrative starring the radical, brilliant, and provocative philosophers Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt, Simone Weil, and Ayn Rand by the critically acclaimed author of Time of the Magicians, Wolfram Eilenberger The period from 1933 to 1943 was one of the darkest and most chaotic in human history, as the Second World War unfolded with unthinkable cruelty. It was also a crucial decade in the dramatic, intersecting lives of some of history's greatest philosophers. In particular, four women (...) whose parallel ideas would come to dominate the twentieth century-at once in necessary dialogue and striking contrast with one another. Simone de Beauvoir, already in a deep emotional and intellectual partnership with Jean-Paul Sartre, was laying the foundations for nothing less than the future of feminism. Born Alissa Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg before emigrating to the US in 1926, Ayn Rand was honing one of the most politically influential voices of the 20th century. Her novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged would reach the hearts and minds millions of Americans in the decades to come, becoming canonical libertarian texts, which continue to echo today among Silicon Valley's tech elite. Hannah Arendt was developing some of today's most important leftwing ideas, culminating with the publication of The Origins of Totalitarianism and her arrival as a peerless intellectual celebrity. Perhaps the greatest thinker of all was a classmate of de Beauvoir: Simone Weil, who turned away from fame to devote herself entirely to refugee aid and the resistance movement during the war. Ultimately, in 1943, she would starve to death in England, a martyr and true saint in the eyes of many. Few authors can synthesize gripping storytelling with sophisticated philosophy like Wolfram Eilenberger. The Visionaries tells the story of four singular philosophers-indomitable women who were refugees and resistance fighters-each putting forward a vision of a truly free and open society at a time of authoritarianism and war. (shrink)

In this, his latest book, Wolfram Hogrebe continues to unfold his project of an informal epistemology with an analysis of ties ("ligatures") to be found below the level of theoretically discussed norms, laws, and institutional regulations and nevertheless indispensable for a humane coexistence. Risks associated with such often hidden constellations of knowledge are also discussed. Master thinkers such as Schelling, Hegel, Heidegger, but also more marginal figures such as Felix Hausdorff alias Paul Mongré or artists such as Beuys are (...) discussed. In his inimitable style of concise yet succinct sketches, Hogrebe thus causes thinking to confront the often subtle nuances of being in a state of wonderment"--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Es gehort zu den Aufgaben unserer Gegenwart, das Format einer neuen Metaphysik zu entwickeln. In diesem Buch wird der Versuch unternommen, aus exemplarischen philosophischen Fragestellungen Klarungsstrategien zu entfalten, die allesamt anigmatische Grenzzonen erkunden, aus denen niemand herauszufinden vermag. Abwesenheiten in kreativen Prozessen, die Geburt der Intentionalitat, der switch vom ungeheuren Objekt zum ungeheuren Subjekt, die Entbindung von Kreativitat aus unscharfen semantischen Verhaltnissen, die Bedeutung von Bildung in Prozessen eines konzilianten Geltenlassens, Formen als Augen der Dinge und schliealich Kosmologie als Poetik: (...) Die Rettung einer unvermeidlichen Ratselhaftigkeit ist das Sujet einer neuen Metaphysik. (shrink)

Über die Methoden der Lehre und die Lehrstätten der Philosophen der spätklassischen Zeit kursieren abenteuerliche Vorstellungen. Trotz einseitiger Quellenlage lassen sich die Wege von Sokrates in Athen, Platons Reisen nach Syrakus und Aristoteles Aufenthalte in Makedonien aber erstaunlich genau nachvollziehen. Philosophen nutzten für ihre Lehre bestimmte schattige Rundwege, um sich bei gleichmässiger Bewegung mit einem oder zwei Schülern auf einen dialogos zu konzentrieren. Schon für die Historiker der sp̈aten Antike wie Diogenes Laertius war dieses Verhalten zum Rätsel geworden. Das Phänomen (...) lässt sich dennoch erklären und sogar topographisch festlegen. Das Hauptaugenmerk gilt den Schulen der Philosophen. In vielen Fällen war damit der Peripatos gemeint, ein Bau-Typus, den Platon in der Akademie kreiert hatte. Wie er aussah, welche Räumlichkeiten vertreten waren und wie lange solche Lehrstätten Bestand hatten, ist Thema dieses Buches"--Publisher's website. (shrink)

Short description: Wie kann der Boden für eine kulturmenschliche Potenzialentfaltung politisch und gesellschaftlich fruchtbar gemacht werden?; Promotional text: Immanuel Hermann Fichtes ›System der Ethik‹ ist vor dem Hintergrund einer innenpolitischen Erstarrung als Folge der Revolution von 1848 und des in Deutschland sich nahezu gleichzeitig ereignenden wirtschaftlichen ›Take-off‹ des beginnenden Industriezeitalters verfasst. In direktem Bezug auf diese Umbruchssituation bietet Fichtes Konzeption, die Wolfram Schmitz in seiner Studie erstmals umfassend untersucht, Leitlinien für eine weitgreifende Reform von Staat und Gesellschaft.; Biographical note: (...) Dr. Wolfram Schmitz hat Philosophie, Geschichte und Soziologie studiert. (shrink)

Wolfram Hogrebe beschäftigt sich in diesem Buch mit dem sogenannten Zwischenreich - einem alten philosophischen Gedanken, wonach das Philosophieren es mit einer Art von Zwischenraum zu tun hat, der die Ordnungen der Begriffe und der Vorstellungen in eine bemerkenswerte Schwebe bringt. Das Zwischen ist da gleichsam ein Medium, das die Gedanken und Sprachen trägt und so in zuweilen unbekannte Gebiete führt, in denen sich das Denken verändert. Hogrebe zeigt, wie sehr dieses Zwischen, das sich auch in Naturerfahrungen aufzuschliessen vermag, (...) Thema bei so unterschiedlichen Philosophen und Dichtern wie Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Martin Heidegger, Henry David Thoreau und Peter Handke ist. (shrink)

The question of 20th century philosophy was: how are we humans situated in our world? In forms of consciousness, as Husserl insistently analyzed, in language games, as Wittgenstein thought, or in a prior understanding of being, as Heidegger recommended? Wolfram Hogrebe summarizes these answers in what he calls scenic existence. This is grounded in certainties in which we experience ourselves sensitively 'tinted'. In this respect, forms of consciousness, language games and understanding of being are only built up from an (...) anonymous sonority. Wolfram Hogrebe has been following these circumstances for several years. In this new book, he delineates the project in historically informed, multi-faceted differentiations, terminating in a plea for a new enlightenment that may be understood as a program for our time. (shrink)

"What is mathematics?" is a question that has been debated since antiquity. This book presents a groundbreaking and surprising answer to the question-showing through the concept of the physicalization of metamathematics how both mathematics and physics as experienced by humans can be seen to emerge from the unique underlying computational structure of the recently formulated ruliad. Written with Stephen Wolfram's characteristic expositional flair and richly illustrated with remarkable algorithmic diagrams, the book takes the reader on a unprecedented intellectual journey (...) to the center of some of the deepest questions about mathematics and its nature-and points the way to a new understanding of the foundations and future of mathematics, taking a major step beyond ideas from Plato, Kant, Hilbert, Gödel and others. (shrink)

This chapter explores some fundamental consequences of the correspondence between physical process and computations. Most physical questions may be answerable only through irreducible amounts of computation. Those that concern idealized limits of infinite time, volume, or numerical precision can require arbitrarily long computations, and so be considered formally undecidable. The behavior of a physical system may always be calculated by simulating explicitly each step in its evolution. Much of theoretical physics has, however, been concerned with devising shorter methods of calculation (...) that reproduce the outcome without tracing each step. Computational irreducibility is common among the systems investigated in mathematics and computation theory, but it may well be the exception rather than the rule, since most physical questions may be answerable only through irreducible amounts of computation. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 58 Heft: 3 Seiten: 325-336.

Name der Zeitschrift: Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie Jahrgang: 57 Heft: 4 Seiten: 501-520.

In this paper, the concept of liquidation from the chapter on Self-consciousness in Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit is reconstructed and then used to deconstruct the systematic transition from sculpture to painting in the passage on the “System of the individual arts” in G.W.F. Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. The aim is to show that such a deconstructed version of Hegel’s art philosophy provides a valid conceptual framework for the analysis of modern, particularly postmodern and contemporary art, which results as (...) liquid or liquidated art. Damien Hirst’s For the Love of God is discussed as major evidence for the concomitant neo-Hegelian claim that modern art has discursive reflection as its necessary supplement. (shrink)

This essay focuses on the genetic text of Nietzsche’s unpublished poem An Hafis. Frage eines Wassertrinkers in order to establish the development of this poem from preliminary versions to an authoritative version. Through such a detailed philological analysis of the text in Nietzsche’s notebooks, it becomes increasingly clear that the final version of An Hafis constitutes an intertextual answer to Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan (1819/1827), which itself was inspired by the late-medieval Persian poet Hafez. Developing from different, and open-ended, semantic configurations (...) to a final version, Nietzsche’s An Hafis also allows us to reassess the editorial practices necessary to shed light on Nietzsche’s unpublished lyrical drafts. (shrink)

Recent literature describing the process and pathways of the agrarian transition in Southeast Asia suggests that the rise of agricultural intensification and the growth of commodity markets will lead to the demise of swidden agriculture. This paper offers a longitudinal overview of the conditions that drive the agrarian transition amongst indigenous swidden cultivators and migrant paddy farmers in central Palawan Island, the Philippines. In line with regional agrarian change, we describe how a history of conservation policies has criminalized and pressured (...) swidden farmers to adopt more intensive “modern” agricultural practices. We examine how indigenous swidden cultivators adjust their practice in response to recent changes in policies, security of harvests, and socio-cultural values vis-à-vis intensification. Rather than suggest that this transition will lead to the demise of swidden, results reveal that farmers instead negotiate a shifting ground in which they lean on and value swidden as a means of negotiating agrarian change. (shrink)

Proposing a theory of the origins of human language ability and presenting an account of the early evolution of language, this text explains why humans are the only language-using animals and challenges the assumption that language is due to intelligence-- jacket cover.

Apologies. The purpose of the following talk is to give an overview of the present state of aims, methods and results in Pure Proof Theory. Shortage of time forces me to concentrate on my very personal views. This entails that I will emphasize the work which I know best, i.e., work that has been done in the triangle Stanford, Munich and Münster. I am of course well aware that there are as important results coming from outside this triangle and I (...) apologize for not displaying these results as well.Moreover the audience should be aware that in some points I have to oversimplify matters. Those who complain about that are invited to consult the original papers.1.1. General. Proof theory startedwithHilbert's Programme which aimed at a finitistic consistency proof for mathematics.By Gödel's Theorems, however, we know that we can neither formalize all mathematics nor even prove the consistency of formalized fragments by finitistic means. Inspite of this fact I want to give some reasons why I consider proof theory in the style of Gentzen's work still as an important and exciting field of Mathematical Logic. I will not go into applications of Gentzen's cut-elimination technique to computer science problems—this may be considered as applied proof theory—but want to concentrate on metamathematical problems and results. In this sense I am talking about Pure Proof Theory.Mathematicians are interested in structures. There is only one way to find the theorems of a structure. Start with an axiom system for the structure and deduce the theorems logically. These axiom systems are the objects of proof-theoretical research. Studying axiom systems there is a series of more or less obvious questions. (shrink)

Verkehrsmittel lassen sich als Medien betrachten, die auf die Wahrnehmung des Raums einwirken, aber auch als Milieus, die bestimmte Formen sozialer Interaktion erzeugen. Um beide Perspektiven aufeinander zu beziehen, umreißt der Beitrag eine Topologie der Fahrzeuge anhand von Stadttexten aus der französischen Literatur der Gegenwart. Aus deren eingehender Darstellung bestimmter Verkehrsmittel geht hervor, dass literarische Texte nicht allein fahrzeugspezifische Weisen der Raumerfahrung entziffern, sondern darüber hinaus auch in Auseinandersetzung mit einer überkommenen Transportkultur originelle Praktiken des Fahrzeuggebrauchs ersinnen. On the one (...) hand, means of transport can be considered as media which shape the perception of space; on the other, they can be considered as milieus which produce certain forms of social interaction. In order to relate both perspectives to each other, the present contribution outlines a topology of vehicles, drawing upon contemporary French literature set in cities. Their detailed representation of certain means of transport shows that literary texts not only decipher modes of spatial perception that are specific to certain vehicles, but also devise new ways of using vehicles through their involvement with an outdated culture of transport. (shrink)

On the one hand, means of transport can be considered as media which shape the perception of space; on the other, they can be considered as milieus which produce certain forms of social interaction. In order to relate both perspectives to each other, the present contribution outlines a topology of vehicles, drawing upon contemporary French literature set in cities. Their detailed representation of certain means of transport shows that literary texts not only decipher modes of spatial perception that are specific (...) to certain vehicles, but also devise new ways of using vehicles through their involvement with an outdated culture of transport. German Verkehrsmittel lassen sich als Medien betrachten, die auf die Wahrnehmung des Raums einwirken, aber auch als Milieus, die bestimmte Formen sozialer Interaktion erzeugen. Um beide Perspektiven aufeinander zu beziehen, umreißt der Beitrag eine Topologie der Fahrzeuge anhand von Stadttexten aus der französischen Literatur der Gegenwart. Aus deren eingehender Darstellung bestimmter Verkehrsmittel geht hervor, dass literarische Texte nicht allein fahrzeugspezifische Weisen der Raumerfahrung entziffern, sondern darüber hinaus auch in Auseinandersetzung mit einer überkommenen Transportkultur originelle Praktiken des Fahrzeuggebrauchs ersinnen. (shrink)