This article discusses the contribution to evolutionary theory of Leonard Darwin, the eighth child of Charles Darwin. By analysing the correspondence Leonard Darwin maintained with Ronald Aylmer Fisher in conjunction with an assessment of his books and other written works between the 1910s and 1930s, this article argues for a more prominent role played by him than the previously recognised in the literature as an informal mentor of Fisher. The paper discusses Leonard’s efforts to amalgamate Mendelism with both Eugenics and (...) Darwinism in order for the first to base their policies on new scientific developments and to help the second in finding a target for natural selection. Without a formal qualification in biological sciences and as such mistrusted by some “formal” scientists, Leonard Darwin engaged with key themes of Darwinism such as mimicry, the role of mutations on speciation and the process of genetic variability, arriving at important conclusions concerning the usefulness of Mendelian genetics for his father’s theory. (shrink)

This chapter argues that in the Ethics Spinoza seeks to guide the reader to enlightenment. It explores how Spinoza decided to begin his quest for enlightenment before turning to two paths to enlightenment he presents in the Ethics. Spinoza contrasts the “things which regularly occur in ordinary life” with the “true good”. Spinoza is aware of modern skepticism that a path to mental tranquility and reliable joy can be found. Like Aristotle, Spinoza contrasts the “true good” with three main conventional (...) goods: wealth, honor, and sense pleasures. Spinoza observes that by focusing on uncertainty, fear highlights our lack of knowledge and power. Spinoza also describes how the Serpent effects a moral transformation. For Spinoza, God's infinite attributes are expressed through the finite modes. (shrink)

This paper argues that the political adage “Be ye prudent as serpents and guileless as doves” involves three different types of relation between prudence and morality, namely: unification (Vereinigung), subordination (Unterordnung), and association (Beigesellung). I maintain that these relations are set up according to the same principle that determines the relationship between mechanical and teleological causality in the third Critique. Thus, I argue that morality and prudence are much more systematically related within the system of critical philosophy than is normally (...) assumed in the literature and that this is made possible by way of an intimate relationship between prudence and teleological judgment. (shrink)

This paper presents Elmar Unnsteinsson’s novel theory of Edenic Intentionalism, on which a speaker cannot refer to an object when the speaker is relevantly confused about its identity. A challenge to the theory is presented and several possible responses considered. The challenge is this: According to Edenic Intentionalism, reference often fails even when speakers seem to refer successfully. Elmar therefore supplements Edenic Intentionalism with an explanation of how communication can succeed without reference. If such an explanation is available, it isn’t (...) clear what need there is for Edenic Intentionalism. (shrink)

The ritual handling of serpents remains an unnoticed cultural form for the explanatory aims and theoretical insights desired by cognitive scientists of religion. In the current article, we introduce the Hood and Williams archives at The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga that contains data culled from Hood’s 40-plus year career of studying serpent handlers. The archives contain hundreds of hours of interviews and recordings of speaking in tongues, handling fire, drinking poison, and taking up serpents by different congregants and (...) congregations. The archive remains a rich but untapped source of data for building, testing, and refining cognitive theories of ritual in general, and serpent handling in specific. We connect Hood’s work to current cognitive theories and engage critically with research on the social functions of ritual. Finally, we discuss several further reasons to pay more attention to SHS communities and practices in cognitive theories of ritual. (shrink)

Snake or serpent is one the most widespread and oldest symbols which is known among different cultures folklore and mythology. As the role of symbolic notions is at the center of understanding any mythology, we would like to determine imagery meanings of the snake which could help researchers for knowing the myths more accurate and descriptive. Sometimes this motif represents the cycle of time and sometimes it does refer to Evil and even could be the symbol of divinity and (...) eternity. So this should be noted that how we can grasp any meaning from the narrations in which applied snake notion. These properties had roots in what they could be aware of snake nature and its biological attributes. As the same time, these properties are meaningful under the conditions that culture and, in some cases, religious thought prepared. The mixture of these end to some image that could be found in the mythology of their region.The very article discusses mythological aspects of snake notion in Indian and Wikings folklore, similarly to those which research on the Indo-Europian and Vikings cultural relationship and connections; except that our research is not focused on ontological and historical debates but only on the descriptive analyzing of mythological semantics. Meanwhile, it can be counted as some base which useful for whom like to dig up relations between two far distance cultures of Indians and Wikings. (shrink)

Professor D'Arcy W. Thompson has recently revived a conjecture of Lauth on Geoponica, XIII, 8, 1, which runs as follows: εις οκ σονται ν χωρ ν νθιονἢ ρτεμσιον ἢ βρτονον περ τν πα$$υλιν υτεσς. τος δ ντας λσεις ν . The conjecture is that ντας is the Egyptian hontasu, ‘lizard.’ That this would make sense is obvious; but the usage of the Geop. itself, to say nothing of other authors, indicates that the word is simply what it appears to be, (...) namely the pres. part, of εμ. Thus we find in X, 46 τ ςκα σκληκας ¿ π¿ισειν μλλων φυτεειν μπξς σκλλ τν κλδ¿ν, τ¿ς δ ντας ναιρες ν κ.τ.λ. Here the explanation ‘lizards’ would hardly be reasonable; still more cogent, however, is XII, 8, 2–3, ¿κ σονται … τς δ οσας κμπας διαθερς, where no such conjecture is possible. Not dissimilar is XII, 19, 9, τς τε γρ οσας ψλλας θερεικα λλας οκ γενσθαι. All these extracts are taken from authors of the second and third centuries A.D., though we have no means of knowing how closely their actual wording is followed; it is therefore in point to cite a passage of Galen, the opening paragraph of the tractate περ αρσεων Medicine, he says, has for its aim health, and a physician must know how to bring about health if absent and preserve it if present . καλεται δ, he continues, τ μν ργαζμενα τν μ οσαν γειατν τε καβοηθματα, τ δ φυλττοντα τν οσαν γιειν διαιτματα. In other words, ὢν can be used in much the same sense as παρν. This is no novelty of Roman times, for we may compare, for instance, Soph. Ant. 1109, ο ' ντες ο τ'πντες, and El, 305 τς οσας … κα τς ποσας λπδας. (shrink)

With its Vedāntic metaphysics and devotionally rich narratives, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa can provide valuable models for ecological care and preservation. Throughout the Purāṇa, we find narratives that can be harnessed in service of the environment, whether it be Kṛṣṇa battling the serpent Kāliya or Varāha lifting the Earth from the depths of the cosmic ocean. This article, however, will focus on a little-known narrative found in Book Four, namely, the Pracetās’ destruction, and eventual protection, of the Earth’s trees. The (...) Pracetās’ narrative is significant for several reasons: instead of simply venerating nature, the story demonstrates the challenge of balancing human needs and the needs of other life forms; it accords agency to the Earth by giving the forest a voice within the narrative; and it bridges the boundary between human beings and the natural world by building kinship relationships between them. This article will explore the ways in which Vaiṣṇava commentators have interpreted this episode as they attempt to negotiate the question: who has priority—humans or nature? (shrink)

In his essay ‘The Simple Art of Murder’, Raymond Chandler describes the world of the American detective story as ‘a world in which gangsters can rule nations and almost rule cities, in which hotels and apartment houses and celebrated restaurants are owned by men who made their money out of brothels, in which a screen star can be the fingerman for a mob, and the nice man down the hall is a boss of the numbers racket; a world where a (...) judge with a cellar full of bootleg liquor can send a man to jail for having a pint in his pocket, where the mayor of your town may have condoned murder as an instrument of money making, where no man can walk down a dark street in safety’. Nevertheless, ‘down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honour, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world.’ What are the possibilities of being such a man in the world as we know it? The hero of the American detective story is not only a good man, and a man of honour, but also a man who must get things done. In Dashiel Hammett's Red Harvest he is the man who is sent in to clean up the pig-sty that is Poisonville, and in so doing he becomes poisoned himself. He has a choice between being effective and being good, but he cannot be both together. ‘Poisonville is right’, he says despairingly. ‘It's poisoned me.’. (shrink)

The Homeric influence on two prominent avian images in the parodos of the Agamemnon—the vulture simile and the omen of the eagles and the pregnant hare —has long been noted. In 1979 West suggested that the animal imagery also derived in part from Archilochus’ fable of the fox and the eagle , and his discussion was quickly welcomed and supplemented by Janko's reading of the eagle and snake imagery used by Orestes at Cho. 246–7. Capping this triennium mirabile of critical (...) interest in Aeschylus’ birds of prey, Davies argued that the convincing resemblances between the fable and the Aeschylean passages in West's thesis—the anthropomorphism implied in παίδων and δεγπνον and the concern of Zeus for aggrieved animals —derive more generally from the nature of fable rather than from any one particular tale. Thus we have, according to Davies, an example of Aeschylus ‘exploring the resources and familiar modes of expression of a popular and well-known genre’ and transforming it into ‘the purest and sublimest type of poetry’. (shrink)

Résumé Les références de Wilfrid Sellars à Hegel dans Empirisme et philosophie de l’esprit sont aussi célèbres qu’allusives. Les héritiers de Sellars, menant campagne contre le « mythe du donné », ont souvent tenté de préciser les contours de cette interprétation de Hegel comme « grand adversaire de ‘l’immédiateté’ ». Dans le présent article, je me propose de présenter deux tentatives majeures d’interprétation post-sellarsienne de Hegel : celles de Richard Rorty et Robert Brandom. Tandis que Rorty opère une « kuhnianisation (...) » de Hegel pour en faire, une fois son idéalisme mis de côté, l’incarnation du narrateur ironiste et historiciste des grands changements de vocabulaires du monde occidental, Brandom assume quant à lui jusqu’à un certain point l’idéalisme de Hegel en en reformulant les thèses principales conformément aux postulats de sa pragmatique inférentialiste. Dans cette perspective, la normativité rationnelle est considérée comme un ensemble de pratiques sociales d’engagements et d’autorisations inférentiels enchâssées dans des rapports de reconnaissance. Toutefois, aucun des deux penseurs ne parvient à articuler de manière satisfaisante les deux plans dont Hegel puis Sellars ont mis en évidence l’étroite solidarité : l’intersubjectivité de l’échange de raisons et l’objectivité des institutions sociales. (shrink)

This paper examines the legitimacy of pro-active law enforcement techniques, i.e. the use of deception to produce the performance of a criminal act in circumstances where it can be observed by law enforcement officials. It argues that law enforcement officials should only be allowed to create the intent to commit a crime in individuals who they have probable cause to suppose are already engaged or intending to engage in criminal activity of a similar nature.

L'interdit de l'idolâtrie est sans doute essentiel dans le premier Testament, puisqu'il figure en tête des Dix Paroles. Il résiste pourtant à l'actualisation. Ce bref essai tente de montrer l'intérêt d'une réflexion sur cette thématique à partir de quelques textes de l'Ancien Testament: la idolâtre du serpent en Gn 3 et les antidotes proposés par la Loi; le veau d'or d'Ex 32 et le processus solipsiste à l'œuvre dans l'idolâtrie; la métaphore de la prostitution en Os 2 et l'opposition (...) radicale entre idolâtrie et alliance. (shrink)

Synchronicity IIn the summer of 2006, I read several books by well-known existential psychiatrist and insightful novelist Irvin Yalom.2 They were all thought-provoking and mightily entertaining. Dr. Yalom sustains lively interests in philosophical aspects of psychiatry, as well as in psychiatric aspects of philosophy. Among other works, he has written two profoundly philosophical novels, namely The SchopenhauerCure and When Nietzsche Wept, in which he has delved deeply and creatively into the psyches of these two outstanding thinkers via the refracting media (...) of literary and historical fiction, and through lenses of eclectic existential psychiatry.Yalom’s fictive excursions are not confined to philosophical realms—far from it. In a delightfully ironic novel entitled Lying on the Couch Yalom takes to task some perennially unfinished business of psychoanalysis, namely analysts’ perpetual struggles with counter-transference issues. Even the most seasoned psychoanalysts, so Yalomartfully reveals, have not yet had their own egos sufficiently shrunk. In consequence, they are apt to experience all kinds of problems with patients, and not always of the patients’ making. To be sure, patients are wont to deceive their analysts at times, whether subconsciously, diffidently, or maliciously. And analysts themselves are prone to all the vanities catalogued by Ecclesiastes in antiquity,3 egoisms and egotisms alike that appear innately rooted in the human psyche, and which inevitably contribute to self-deception. If an analyst’s vanities, self-deceptions, and unresolved counter-transferences were skillfully exploited by a professional con-artist posing as a patient, personal and professional mayhemwould result. This is one of the conspicuous threads in the rich tapestry of untruths, vanities and self deceptions that Yalom weaves in Lying on The Couch.One particular episode in Yalom’s novel rather jarred me when I encountered it in August 2006, because it coincided with an uncannily similar episode that was unfolding in my own life at precisely the same time. (shrink)

Melusine the Serpent Goddess in Myth and Literature examines how women were once worshipped as the life force, but later suppressed with the introduction of monotheism and a changing attitude regarding the sexes. It connects the literary conception of the Melusine story to myths and legends of the snake or dragon goddess, from ancient to contemporary times.

From its dissonant musics to its surrealist spectacles (the urinal is a violin!), Modernist art often seems to give more frustration than pleasure to its audience. In Untwisting the Serpent, Daniel Albright shows that this perception arises partly because we usually consider each art form in isolation, even though many of the most important artistic experiments of the Modernists were collaborations involving several media--Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring is a ballet, Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts is (...) an opera, and Pablo Picasso turned his cubist paintings into costumes for Parade. Focusing on collaborations with a musical component, Albright views these works as either figures of dissonance that try to retain the distinctness of their various media (e.g. Guillaume Apollinaire's Les Mamelles de Tiresias ) or figures of consonance that try to lose themselves in some total effect (e.g. Arnold Schoenberg's Erwartung ). In so doing he offers a fresh picture of Modernism, and provides a compelling model for the analysis of all artistic collaborations. Untwisting the Serpent is the recipient of the 2001 Susanne M. Glasscock Humanities Book Prize for Interdisciplinary Scholarship of the Center for Humanities Research at Texas A&M University. (shrink)

In this text we try to develop some considerations starting from the readings that Jacques Garelli elaborates through a profound reflection on the theses expounded by Merleau-Ponty in his latest works. In particular we, after recalling some points of contact between the two thinkers, comment on two long essays by Jacques Garelli dedicated to Rimbaud and Artaud. Through these re-readings we aim to highlight the novel characteristics that the author of Rythmes et mondes has managed to outline through an ever-greater (...) study of the theses on language presented by Merleau-Ponty in his latest works. (shrink)

Written by a leading authority on Shaktic and Tantric thought, this book is considered the prime document for study and application of Kundalini yoga. It probes the philosophical and mythological nature of Kundalini; the esoteric anatomy associated with it; the study of mantras; the chakras, or psychic centers in the human body; the associated yoga and much, much more. Two important Tantric documents are included: The Description of the Six Chakras and Five-fold Footstool.

Written by a leading authority on Shaktic and Tantric thought, this book is considered the prime document for study and application of Kundalini yoga. It probes the philosophical and mythological nature of Kundalini; the esoteric anatomy associated with it; the study of mantras; the chakras, or psychic centers in the human body; the associated yoga and much, much more. Two important Tantric documents are included: The Description of the Six Chakras and Five-fold Footstool.

In his classic paper, The Serpent Beguiled Me And I Did Eat, Gerald Dworkin makes the case that, without probable cause, the useof Proactive Law Enforcement Techniques (PALETs) is morally impermissible. Call this prohibition Dworkin’s Rule (DR). Here we argue that there are two reasonable exceptions to DR—the use of PALETs, without probable cause, is justifi ed when employed against High Level Government Officials (HLGOs) and High Level Business Officials (HLBOs). Moreover, these exceptions are consistent with Dworkin’s notion of (...) Ideal Criminal Sanctioning. Finally, if society were to endorse the use of PALETs on HLBOs, we might be able to dispose of the current bane of American business, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and let business get back to the business of business. (shrink)

Le Paysage avec un homme tué par un serpent, peint par Nicolas Poussin en 1648, a donné lieu, depuis celles de Félibien, Fénelon ou Diderot, à de multiples lectures, suggérant telle source poétique ou telle gravure pour rendre compte de l’identité du personnage mort ou de celle du serpent, sans qu’aucune de ces hypothèses paraisse décisive. Celle que propose Hélène Bouchilloux désigne Narcisse pour le personnage mort et Python pour le serpent : Poussin aurait mis en scène (...) la « destitution » de l’amour stérile en même temps que celle de l’idée erronée de la peinture incarnée par le Caravage. Cette hypothèse séduisante présente toutefois des difficultés méthodologiques, tant dans l’interprétation du texte d’Ovide que dans l’approche comparative de plusieurs toiles de Poussin, n’évitant pas le risque d’une surinterprétation. (shrink)

One of the most celebrated Talmudic parables begins with a remarkably dry legal issue debated among a group of rabbis. A modern reader should think of the rabbis as a collegial court, very much like a secular appellate court, because the purpose of their debate is to generate edicts that will bind the community. The issue under debate concerns the ritual cleanliness of a baked earthenware stove, sliced horizontally into rings and cemented back together with unbaked mortar. Do the laws (...) of purity that apply to uncut stoves apply to this one as well? This stove is the so-called "oven of Akhnai". Presumably, its horizontal bands separated by mortar made it look like a coiled serpent; but according to the Talmud, it is the oven of Akhnai because the legal debate coiled the rabbis in serpentine arguments. Therein lies a remarkable tale. (shrink)

Pragmatism has played only a small role in the half century and more of the science‐and‐religion dialogue, in part because pragmatism was at a low ebb in the 1950s. Even though Jamesean pragmatism in particular is experiencing a resurgence, owing partly to the work of Rorty and Putnam, it remains inconspicuous in the dialogue. Excepting artificial intelligence and artificial life, computer science also has not played a large role in the dialogue. Recent research into the foundations of object‐oriented programming, however, (...) shows this increasingly pervasive practice possesses an implicit pragmatist epistemology. Although science will have to become more computational, it will have to come to terms with both object‐oriented computing and its implicit pragmatism, which in turn supports the conclusion that we have fresh warrant for recasting the science‐and‐religion dialogue in Jamesean pragmatist terms. Some preliminary consequences of such a recasting of the dialogue are explored. (shrink)