1 Local Hyperlinks

[[ ... ]] This is used when AG makes a longer comment or footnote, because within an .htm text footnotes are cumbersome and result in excessive clicking.

2.1 Embodied Knowledge

The term "Embodied Knowledge" is used for a type of knowledge that is known in several different ways: extra-verbal / incarnated / somatic / tacit knowledge. The wikipedia gives a good definition of this kind of knowledge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge [Accessed: 2019-11-19]

Tacit knowledge (as opposed to formal, codified or explicit knowledge) is the kind of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. For example, that London is in the United Kingdom is a piece of explicit knowledge that can be written down, transmitted, and understood by a recipient. However, the ability to speak a language, ride a bicycle, knead dough, play a musical instrument, or design and use complex equipment requires all sorts of knowledge which is not always known explicitly, even by expert practitioners, and which is difficult or impossible to explicitly transfer to other people. ...

In the field of knowledge management, the concept of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge which can not be fully codified. Therefore, an individual can acquire tacit knowledge without language. Apprentices, for example, work with their mentors and learn craftsmanship not through language but by observation, imitation, and practice.

The key to acquiring tacit knowledge is experience. Without some form of shared experience, it is extremely difficult for people to share each other's thinking processes.^[6]

3 Abstract

The present discussion makes a distinction between the predominantly western scientific attitude of (mostly verbal-written) epistemic / cognitive knowledge and a more prominently extra-verbal tacit knowledge that is commonly associated with "indigenous" traditions of people who do not rely on the tradition of written words but on traditions of performance acts such as music, dance, and mythical stories which are songs and not discourses. This also serves as an introduction to the research project of the present author:

"The Extra-Verbal World of the Performative and Dance Traditions"

http://www.noologie.de/_extra-verb.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

The proponents of the first (western) tradition entertain an attitude of the human "subject" in polar opposition to the "object" (of the world, in latin: "res"), and "Reality" is the collection of all the "objects" in the world. This attitude may lead to a tendency to control and subjugate the world of objects and living beings (also as objects) in accord to the human desires and needs. This is formulated paradigmatically in Genesis 1:28.

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+1%3A1-28&version=KJV

[Accessed: 2019-10-24]

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Something similar is also expressed by Francis Bacon in his formulation of the scientific method:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baconian_method [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

In contrast to the western scientific approach, the extra-verbal tacit knowledge is more of the type "being embedded in the world". Taken to the extreme, this view may lead to a somewhat romantic "Rousseau"-type of interpretation of the "noble sauvage". So this should not be read "as-if" there were (or had been) a perfectly nature-harmonious indigenous society anywhere in the history of humanity. Rather it serves to illustrate the point that there exists an own value system of incarnate or somatic knowledge and this is difficult to conceptualize with the western epistemic methods of verbal written descriptions. There are many cases where written words are not adequate to convey to a reader how such and such embodied experiences may convey such and such specific feelings. For all the types of somatic knowledge it doesn't even need to have a verbal description. This disproves the wide-spread assumption that spoken words of a language are necessary to entertain a working knowledge of these factors of human life. Marcel Mauss has given many examples for that in "Techniques of the Body". It can be said that a dance, a song, and a piece of music are literally a "thing-in-itself" in the Kantian sense. ->mmauss1

4 The Hypertext and Multimedia Techniques used

The present work makes full use of present-day Hypertext and Multimedia techniques. It is the intention of the author to give adequate presentations of dynamic and performative events like videos of dances and music in an appropriate format. It is therefore not very useful to solely use the printed-page .pdf format. For this the .htm format should be used. It is advisable to set the display width of the browser to an approximate display of around 80 chars per line to facilitate reading. Internal .hml links are written in the format ->xyz like in ->petersen1 .

The Hypertext format also allows to link to longer texts and thus the creation of large associative data bases. The work of Aby Warburg and his institute gives us some in-depth background information on the subject:

http://www.noologie.de/aby.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

http://www.noologie.de/aby.pdf [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

The computational methods used are the Hypertext facilities of the Microsoft Word 2000 program. This program runs under Windows 7 and XP but doesn't run on Windows 8 and 10. Since the later versions of Microsoft Word may have other functionalities or other macro languages, it cannot be guaranteed that these functions will work in these later versions. Here are some links to the www-site of the author which give more information in German on these Hypertext and Multimedia techniques:

Die Hypertext-Navigation / WWW- Hypertext- Computer- Technik

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#hyper_nav1

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#hyper_technik

http://www.noologie.de/_extra.htm#hypertext

The Hypertext technique was first developed and presented in the PhD dissertation of the present author:

"Design und Zeit: Kultur im Spannungsfeld von Entropie, Transmission, und Gestaltung".

http://elpub.bib.uni-wuppertal.de/edocs/dokumente/fb05/diss1999/goppold/

[Accessed: 2019-10-26]

The printable version cannot, of course provide the embedded Hypertext structure:

http://www.noologie.de/ag-dis.pdf [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

The Hypertext technique is described here:

http://www.noologie.de/desn14.htm - Heading55 [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

The htm-versions have many embedded hypertext links:

http://www.noologie.de/desn.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

It also contains an automatically generated index:

http://www.noologie.de/desn_i.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

There is an access path via the outline structure

http://www.noologie.de/desn_c.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

5 Embodied vs. Objective Knowledge

One may distinguish two great classes of knowledge:

1) Discursive knowledge that can be put into verbal descriptions, diagrams, symbols (like mathematics), and that can be put into books or films.

2) The other class could be called embodied or tacit knowledge. It consists mainly of "learning by doing" and largely resists verbal description. This is explained in the following section:

->embodied_knowledge

Whereas western science relies heavily on discursive knowledge, the embodied knowledge can be found to a great extent in non-writing or so-called indigenous societies.

5.1 Knowledge of the World as Objects

Western science is characterized by the episteme (Erkenntnis), or cognitive knowledge of the world as-objects, also called objectivism. It is knowledge of the world as a collection of Kantian things-"in-itself". [This usage of the term objectivism is only superficially related to the philosophical school of Objectivism that is based on the work of Ayn Rand].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivism_(Ayn_Rand)

The philosophy of Objectivity has been the guiding principle of western science and philosophy. All the major schools have dealt with this subjects, as the wikipedia article shows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Objectivity_(philosophy)

Objectivity of knowledge

Plato considered geometry a condition of idealism concerned with universal truth. His contrasting between objectivity and opinion became the basis for philosophies intent on resolving the questions of reality, truth, and existence. He saw opinions as belonging to the shifting sphere of sensibilities, as opposed to a fixed, eternal and knowable incorporeality. Where Plato distinguished between how we know things and their ontological status, subjectivism such as George Berkeley's depends on perception.[2] In Platonic terms, a criticism of subjectivism is that it is difficult to distinguish between knowledge, opinions, and subjective knowledge.[3]

Platonic idealism is a form of metaphysical objectivism, holding that the ideas exist independently from the individual. Berkeley's empirical idealism, on the other hand, holds that things only exist as they are perceived. Both approaches boast an attempt at objectivity. Plato's definition of objectivity can be found in his epistemology, which is based on mathematics, and his metaphysics, where knowledge of the ontological status of objects and ideas is resistant to change.[2]

In opposition to philosopher René Descartes' method of personal deduction, natural philosopher Isaac Newton applied the relatively objective scientific method to look for evidence before forming a hypothesis.[4] Partially in response to Kant's rationalism, logician Gottlob Frege applied objectivity to his epistemological and metaphysical philosophies. If reality exists independently of consciousness, then it would logically include a plurality of indescribable forms. Objectivity requires a definition of truth formed by propositions with truth value. An attempt of forming an objective construct incorporates ontological commitments to the reality of objects.[5]

The philosophy of Objectivity may be useful when one wants to compile a really huge dictionary of everything-there-is, together with all the properties of these things, and how they can be put to some use, which is essentially the task of all the western sciences. There exist millions upon millions of verbal and symbolic descriptions of the objects of various sciences: Like physics, chemistry, geology, biology, and so on. Typically, it needs many years of study by the respective practicioners of these sciences to master their field, and this leads to an immense specialization in modern sciences. Categorization is the most important task for putting these immense stores of knowledge into some order. This is especially important for library science, to form useful classifications.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorization

The classical view on categorization

Main article: Categories (Aristotle)

Classical categorization first appears in the context of Western Philosophy in the work of Plato, who, in his Statesman dialogue, introduces the approach of grouping objects based on their similar properties. This approach was further explored and systematized by Aristotle in his Categories treatise, where he analyzes the differences between classes and objects. Aristotle also applied intensively the classical categorization scheme in his approach to the classification of living beings (which uses the technique of applying successive narrowing questions such as "Is it an animal or vegetable?", "How many feet does it have?", "Does it have fur or feathers?", "Can it fly?"...), establishing this way the basis for natural taxonomy.

According to the classical Aristotelian view, categories are discrete entities characterized by a set of features that are shared by their members. In analytic philosophy, these features are assumed to establish the conditions which are both necessary and sufficient conditions to capture meaning.

In the classical view, categories need to be clearly defined, mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. This way, any entity in the given classification universe belongs unequivocally to one, and only one, of the proposed categories.

Modern versions of classical categorization theory study how the brain learns and represents categories by detecting the features that distinguish members from nonmembers.[2][3]

More on this is in the following articles:

https://study.com/academy/lesson/theories-of-cognitive-categorization-classification.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_classification [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

5.2 Pragmatic Knowledge

When we take the everyday experience of humans to deal with their environment (social and natural) we find the need to respond and act on the spot, without being able to use a scientific dictionary for this. It is the task to get something usable for the survival value of an organism like a human. This is especially the case in "indigenous" settings where there is no hugely elaborated scientific knowledge available. This latter point of view is also called the pragmatic or "Darwinian" mode of knowledge. This aspect is being dealt with in more depth in the following sections: The article by Konrad Lehmann in Telepolis ->lehmann1, the work of James J. Gibson ->gibson1, and of Jordan Peterson. ->petersen1

5.2.1 Sloterdijk "Sphären" and "Anthropotechniken"

Also, there is the view of Peter Sloterdijk in his "Sphären" trilogy. Here we deal with another version of the pragmatic approach. There are spheres of influence, that which we can influence, and that which influences us. See: Some thoughts about Sloterdijk's "Sphären":

http://www.noologie.de/_extra-verb.htm#sloterdijk1

http://www.noologie.de/_extra-verb.htm#sphere_influence [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://www.geogr-helv.net/73/261/2018/gh-73-261-2018.pdf

https://www.geogr-helv.net/73/261/2018/

Tobias Boos, Simon Runkel: Einführung: Die ungeheuerliche Raumphilosophie von Peter Sloterdijk.

Sein Raumbegriff ist also kein geometrisch verfasster euklidischer Raum, sondern umfasst territoriale, symbolische, soziale, technische, historische und ästhetische Dimensionen (Sloterdijk, 1998:84–85; Busch, 2007:116; Günzel, 2006:117). Aufgrund seiner dimensionalen Vielfältigkeit eignet sich Sloterdijks Raumbegriff zur empirischen Gesellschafts- und Kulturanalyse in Zeiten der Globalisierung (Gielis und van Houtum, 2012; Boos, 2013; Brighenti und Pavoni, 2017; Runkel, 2014) genauso wie zur Ausarbeitung politischer Perspektiven, die auf die kommenden Herausforderungen der Menschheit, wie die Ressourcenknappheit, den Klimawandel und dem globalen Terrorismus, Bezug nehmen (Sloterdijk, 2015; Hemelsoet, 2009; Wastl-Walter und Korf, 2016; Žižek, 2009).

...

Neben dem biologischen Immunsystem identifiziert er zwei Immunsysteme, die er als kulturelle Leistungen der Menschen sieht: die sozio-immunologischen Praktiken im Bereich des sozialen Miteinanders und die psycho-immunologischen Praktiken im Bereich des Symbolischen. In beiden Fällen handelt es sich um menschliche Techniken, Anthropotechniken, durch deren Einübung sich Menschen Welt aneignen und gemeinsam in ihr einrichten (Sloterdijk, 2009a:19–23). Als Beispiele von Anthropotechniken nennt Sloterdijk sowohl das Benutzen von Steinwerkzeug (Sloterdijk, 2001:179–184) als auch das Schul- und Erziehungswesen (Sloterdijk, 2001b:202, 2009a:563, 679–685).

5.2.2 About German "Sprachblasen"

There is a quite interesting field of German "Sprachblasen" which is almost in-translatable into other languages. This may be an intellectual art form of over-reaching and over-boarding metaphors that seems to exist in the hydroponic beds of German Intellectualism. I refer to some of these "Sprachblasen" just for the sake of documentation.

http://www.noologie.de/_extra.htm#sprach_blasen

5.3 The Problem of Transcendental Meaning of the Signified

There is a problem of western epistemic philosophy that it initially was based on a transcendental theory of meaning. In the Platonic and Christian view, the meaning of words resides in some transcendental realm. It is either the "world of ideas", or the world of God's Logos of the creation. The problem becomes apparent with Saussure's theory of semiotics.[1] It manifests in the relation of the signifier and the signified. Initially, the signified rests on the metaphysical assumption of the meaning-of-a-word that there must exist something transcendental that ensures the validity of this relation. But no-one today knows where this transcendental meaning resides. And this is obviously not accepted by contemporary materialistic / physicalistic science. Derrida has criticized the above idea of God's Logos as logocentrism in his treatise On Grammatology which is discussed here in the following chapter: ->derrida_grammatology

The question is, how can a constancy of meaning be established among speakers of so many languages and cultural backgrounds. Or rather, there exists no constancy, and there is a great degree of relativism. This applies especially to the non-physically material aspects of the social world, namely the values and belief systems, the norms and regulations, and finally the religious aspects of so many different societies of humanity. This is also called the emic view and it is the most important subject of Cultural Anthropology or Ethnology as it is called in the German scientific tradition.

All the great semioticians have discussed the problem of this relation, and we may quote as the most prominent workers Umberto Eco and C.S. Peirce, and the Eastern European school of Lotman et al. See the chapter on semiotics:

->web_meaning ->lotman_semiosphere ->lotman_theory

->peirce_triad ->eco1 ->eco_kant

5.3.1 Neuronal Representations

Present-day discussions of science center mostly on neuronal representations.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780123741769000294

Michael Platt, Camillo Padoa-Schioppa, Neuroscience of Preference and Choice: Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms, Academic Press, 2012.

https://academic.oup.com/brain/article/138/11/3459/2095610

Edmund T. Rolls: The neuronal representation of information in the human brain.[2]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1692413/pdf/9854255.pdf

W Singer: Consciousness and the structure of neuronal representations.

Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 1998 Nov 29; 353(1377): 1829–1840.

doi: 10.1098/rstb.1998.0335

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10722-y

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/559104v1

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/559104v1.full.pdf

https://cbmm.mit.edu/research/projects-thrust/theoretical-frameworks-intelligence/neural-representations-space-time-and

5.3.2 Information on Saussure's theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure

According to him, linguistic entities are parts of a system and are defined by their relations to one another within said system.^[23] The thinker used the game of chess for his analogy, citing that the game is not defined by the physical attributes of the chess pieces but the relation of each piece to the other pieces.^[23]

Saussure's status in contemporary theoretical linguistics, however, is much diminished, with many key positions now dated or subject to challenge, but post-structuralist 21st-century reception remains more open to Saussure's influence.^[24] His main contribution to structuralism was his theory of a two-tiered reality about language. The first is the langue, the abstract and invisible layer, while the second, the parole, refers to the actual speech that we hear in real life.^[25] This framework was later adopted by Claude Levi-Strauss, who used the two-tiered model to determine the reality of myths. His idea was that all myths have an underlying pattern, which form the structure that makes them myths.^[25] These established the structuralist framework to literary criticism.

...

Its central notion is that language may be analyzed as a formal system of differential elements, apart from the messy dialectics of real-time production and comprehension. Examples of these elements include his notion of the linguistic sign, which is composed of the signifier and the signified. Though the sign may also have a referent, Saussure took that to lie beyond the linguist's purview.

Throughout the book, he stated that a linguist can develop a diachronic analysis of a text or theory of language but must learn just as much or more about the language/text as it exists at any moment in time (i.e. "synchronically"): "Language is a system of signs that expresses ideas". A science that studies the life of signs within society and is a part of social and general psychology. Saussure believed that semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign, he called it semiology.

Later critics

The closing sentence of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics has been challenged in many^[^{weasel words}^] academic disciplines and subdisciplines with its contention that "linguistics has as its unique and true object the language envisioned in itself and for itself".^[29] By the latter half of the 20th century, many of Saussure's ideas were under heavy criticism.

Saussure's linguistic ideas are still considered important for their time but have since suffered considerably under rhetorical developments aimed at showing how linguistics had changed or was changing with the times. As a consequence, Saussure's ideas are now often presented by professional linguists as outdated and as superseded by developments such as cognitive linguistics and generative grammar or have been so modified in their basic tenets as to make their use in their original formulations difficult without risking distortion, as in systemic linguistics. That development is occasionally overstated, however; Jan Koster states, "Saussure, considered the most important linguist of the century in Europe until the 1950s, hardly plays a role in current theoretical thinking about language,"^[30] Over-reactions can also be seen in comments of the cognitive linguist Mark Turner^[31] who reports that many of Saussure's concepts were "wrong on a grand scale". It is necessary to be rather more finely nuanced in the positions attributed to Saussure and in their longterm influence on the development of linguistic theorizing in all schools; for a more recent rereading of Saussure with respect to such issues, see Paul Thibault.^[32] Just as many principles of structural linguistics are still pursued, modified and adapted in current practice and according to what has been learnt since about the embodied functioning of brain and the role of language within this, basic tenets begun with Saussure still can be found operating behind the scenes today.^[^{citation
needed}^]

5.3.3 The Essay of Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges had criticized the arbitrariness of meaning in his essay about:

The Analytical Language Of John Wilkins

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/courses/155/assignment/ex1/Borges.pdf [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

This is the question if there can be a spoken language that is powerful enough to encode "what the universe really is". The quote is from p. 3 of the article:

I have registered the arbitrarities of Wilkins ... it is clear that there is no classification of the

Universe not being arbitrary and full of conjectures. The reason for this is very simple: we do not know what thing the universe is. ...

We are allowed to go further; we can suspect that there is no universe in the organic, unifying sense, that this ambitious term has. If there is a universe, it's [sic] aim is not

conjectured yet; we have not yet conjectured the words, the definitions, the etymologies, the synonyms, from the secret dictionary of God.

5.3.4 Dividing the Objects of the Universe into Classes and Subdivisions

In one part, the project of dividing the universe into classes and subdivisions, has more or less succesfully been achieved in many sciences, like the atomic table of Mendeleyev, the theory of chemical compounds, and the Linnaean taxonomy, even though this has been recognized to be in need of regular updates since science has progressed beyond that:[3]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitri_Mendeleev

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linnaean_taxonomy [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

The question of the Analytical Language of John Wilkins relates to this very ancient western philosophical theme: If and how the spoken word (or a mathematical formula) can correspond to the reality (of a thing or an object of the world). It is again the problem of signifier and signified.

5.3.5 The Search for the Perfect Language

An in-depth discussion of this theme is given by Umberto Eco:

"The Search for the Perfect Language".

https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/podzim2017/LJMedB25/um/seminar_4/Eco_The_Search_for_the_Perfect_Language.pdf [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

5.3.6 En Archae en ho Logos

The important ascpect of the original Christian philosophy tradition needs to be clarified: It is based not on the spoken word that a human may utter, but on the concept of the Logos of Joh. 1.1. "En archae en ho logos". In ancient Greek, the Logos has a much wider meaning than a word. This is the word or better the "summum intellectus" of God, and as such it is something transcendent that cannot be communicated in human words. Again, this is the subject of the discussion of Derrida in Of Grammatology.

->derrida_grammatology

There are also quite different philosophical ideas what the Logos actually is. See:

->logos_heraklit

This transcendental nature is also referred to in the many talks of Jordan Peterson. See:

->peterson1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_1:1 [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logos_(Christianity) [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

The underlying assumption is that God had created the universe to be intelligible by humans.

See also: Martin Lang:–– Kulturnetzspinne Nietzsche, p. 51:

Vorher war der wichtigste Gegenstand des Wissens Gott, und die Theologie die Königin der Wissenschaften, von der Welt ließ sich letztlich nur als-durch-Gott-geordnet etwas wissen, der die Welt ja geschaffen hatte, und seine Ordnung, die göttliche Ordnung in der Form dieser Welt ausgedrückt hatte, die nun der Mensch mühsam diskursiv nachvollziehen konnte und sollte.

->nietzsche_kulturnetz

This is aptly summarized by Thomas Aquinas:

5.3.7 Thomas Aquinas

http://www.kathpedia.com/index.php/Wahrheit [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

Innerhalb der mittelalterlichen Philosophie ist Thomas von Aquin derjenige gewesen, der die Korrespondenz- oder Adäquationstheorie der Wahrheit besonders klar vertreten hat. In den Quaestiones disputatae de veritate findet sich die klassischen Formulierung der so gen. (und wohl unübertroffenen) Korrespondenztheorie der Wahrheit als „adaequatio rei et intellectus (Übereinstimmung der Sache mit dem Verstand)“.

Vgl. Thomas von Aquin: Quaestiones disputatae de veritate q.1.a.1.

AG: The concept of intellectus is of course more encompassing than a word of spoken language. It is the episteme itself.

6 Current Approaches to Embodied Knowledge

6.1 Konrad Lehmann: Ich denkender Körper

Heise, Telepolis, 31. August 2019, Konrad Lehmann

https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Ich-denkender-Koerper-4501581.html

[Accessed: 2019-10-24]

The article by Konrad Lehmann describes very well the importance of embodiment of any knowledge, and gives a slightly different aspect of the pragmatic knowledge that Peterson spells out. ->peterson1

Offensichtlich nehmen wir unsere unmittelbare Umwelt nicht nur als Struktur physikalischer Reize wahr, sondern in Bezug auf unsere Möglichkeiten. Wir vermessen unseren Bewegungsraum in Einheiten unseres Körpers. Wahrnehmen und Handeln fallen zusammen.

[AG: "in Bezug auf unsere Möglichkeiten", this is expressed by Peterson as "affordances"

->peterson1 ].

Das ist eine der Erkenntnisse der Denkschule der Embodied Cognition, die in den letzten Jahrzehnten allmählich den schon klassischen Kognitivismus abgelöst hat.

Für den Kognitivismus spielt die Verkörperung des denkenden Wesens keine Rolle: Sinneswahrnehmungen sind Rohmaterial des Denkens, das von den Sinnesorganen frei Haus geliefert wird. Das Denkorgan analysiert sie, macht interne Repräsentationen daraus, verknüpft sie mit anderen, zieht Schlüsse - und bewirkt erst dann eine Handlung. Wahrnehmen - Denken - Handeln sind darin ein linearer Ablauf. Und Denken ist das Hantieren mit Begriffen, das Operieren mit Symbolen.

...

Aber so ist es nicht, und die körperbezogene Vermessung der Welt ist nur ein Beispiel dafür. Schon Wahrnehmung erfordert Handlung, Sprachverstehen ist innere Bewegung, Denken ist körperlich. Und es kommen noch die Gefühle dazu. Ganz zu schweigen von den Bakterien in unseren Gedärmen und dem Licht auf unserer Haut, die mit beeinflussen, wie wir uns fühlen und was wir tun.

6.1.1 Wahrnehmung erfordert Handlung

Was unsere Hauptsinne betrifft, so halten wir uns meist für passive Rezipienten. So untätig wir auch sitzen, es strahlt doch das Licht in unsere Augen, es schwingt doch der Schall in unsere Ohren. Doch das täuscht. Man muss nur die Aufmerksamkeit verlagern auf den im Tierreich wohl am weitest verbreiteten Sinn: das Tasten. Einfach die Handflächen vor sich zu halten, vermittelt so gut wie keine Information (außer vielleicht Temperatur und Luftzug). Um tastend etwas wahrzunehmen, müssen wir die Hände über eine Oberfläche bewegen.

Und wenn wir genauer hinsehen, ist das auch beim Sehen so: Wir sehen genauer hin. Wir erkunden die Umwelt neugierig und aktiv, wenn wir nicht gerade vor dem Fernseher sitzen, wir tasten die Welt mit den Augen ab. Nicht grundlos empfinden Frauen bisweilen Blicke als übergriffig. Und dabei beginnt es schon viel einfacher: In den Sakkaden flackern unsere Augen ständig. Wenn wir sie ruhigstellen - wozu es das Nervengift Curare braucht -, dann zerfällt nach einiger Zeit das Bild. Ohne Augenbewegung kein Sehen.

Ohne Atmen kein Riechen. Ohne Schnüffeln findet der Hund keine Spur. Und wir müssen den Kopf wenden, um eine Schallquelle zu orten. Fledermäuse - eines der Lieblingsbeispiele der Embodied Cognition-Forscher - senden sogar selbst Töne aus, um sich zu orientieren. Wale natürlich ebenso.

6.1.2 Die Welt: ein Möglichkeitsraum

Aber dabei bleibt es nicht. Wie im einleitenden Beispiel gezeigt, nehmen wir die Welt als Handlungsraum wahr. Das haben vor rund hundert Jahren schon der Physiologe und Philosoph der Biologie Jakob von Uexküll und der Philosoph Maurice Merleau-Ponty beobachtet: Für von Uexküll war jeder Gegenstand in der Umwelt eines Tieres wie mit einem "Ton" belegt, der ihm in der Wahrnehmung des Tieres Bedeutung verleiht: etwas zum Essen, etwas zum Verstecken, etwas zum Fürchten ... Merleau-Ponty untersuchte phänomenologisch die Wahrnehmung des Menschen und erkannte seine Welt als bestimmt durch das "Ich kann".

Auch im Gehirn werden diejenigen Teile der Welt, die wir manipulieren können, besonders behandelt. Bei Makaken kennt man einerseits miteinander verbundene Gehirngebiete in sensorischen und motorischen Bereichen, die den Körperraum repräsentieren, also die unmittelbare Umgebung des Tieres, und andererseits dazu benachbarte vernetzte Gebiete, die entferntere visuelle Wahrnehmungen abbilden. Trainiert man nun einen Affen, einen Stock zu verwenden, dann erweitert sich die neuronale Repräsentation des Körperraums.

...

Möglicherweise nehmen wir die Welt überhaupt nur wahr, wenn wir mit ihr interagieren können. In einem klassischen Versuch zogen vor über fünfzig Jahren Richard Held und Alan Hein Kätzchen im Dunkeln auf und ließen sie nur unter strengen Versuchsbedingungen ins Licht: Die eine Hälfte der Kätzchen saß während der Lichtausflüge in je einem engen Käfigwagen, der von jeweils einem Mitglied der anderen Hälfte gezogen wurde. Die Seherfahrung der beiden zusammengeschirrten Tiere war also identisch, nur erkundete das eine Tier die Welt aktiv, während das andere passiv an ihr vorbeigezogen wurde. Nachdem das Sehsystem ausgereift wurde, testeten Held und Hein die Sehfähigkeit der Katzen. Jene, die gezogen hatten, konnten normal sehen. Jene, die in den Käfigen gesessen hatten, waren blind.

6.1.3 Die innere Handlung

Da wir die Welt als Handlungsraum wahrnehmen, sind für uns Bewegungen darin stets Handlungen. Die Spiegelneuronen im Prämotorkortex der Makaken feuern nicht nur dann, wenn der Affe die identische Bewegung beobachtet, bei deren eigener Ausführung seine Neuronen aktiv sind. Sondern immer dann, wenn eine beobachtete Bewegung die damit verfolgte Absicht erreicht: Ein Neuron feuert, wenn ein Apfelstück ergriffen wird, egal ob mit der Faust oder mit den Fingern, von der Seite oder von oben. Der Affe spiegelt nicht Gelenkwinkel, sondern Handlungen.

Wir Menschen tun dies sogar dann, wenn wir Handlungen gar nicht sehen, sondern bloß sprachlich benennen. Selbst die Sprache als ureigenstes Reich des Symbolischen wird - wenigstens zum Teil - bei uns im Gehirn verkörpert, also durch inneres Ausleben verstanden.

6.2 Perspectivism and Embodied Cognition

See also Nietzsche's Perspectivism: ->perspectivism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embodied_cognition

Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects of the entire body of the organism. The features of cognition include high level mental constructs (such as concepts and categories) and performance on various cognitive tasks (such as reasoning or judgment). The aspects of the body include the motor system, the perceptual system, bodily interactions with the environment (situatedness), and the assumptions about the world that are built into the structure of the organism.

The embodied mind thesis challenges other theories, such as cognitivism, computationalism, and Cartesian dualism.^[1]^[2] It is closely related to the extended mind thesis, situated cognition, and enactivism. The modern version depends on insights drawn from recent research in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, dynamical systems, artificial intelligence, robotics, animal cognition, plant cognition and neurobiology.

6.3 James J. Gibson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._Gibson#Major_works [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://www.amazon.com/Ecological-Approach-Perception-Psychology-Routledge/dp/1848725787 [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

James J. Gibson (Author): The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (Psychology Press & Routledge Classic Editions) 1st Edition

This book, first published in 1979, is about how we see: the environment around us (its surfaces, their layout, and their colors and textures); where we are in the environment; whether or not we are moving and, if we are, where we are going; what things are good for; how to do things (to thread a needle or drive an automobile); or why things look as they do.

The basic assumption is that vision depends on the eye which is connected to the brain. The author suggests that natural vision depends on the eyes in the head on a body supported by the ground, the brain being only the central organ of a complete visual system. When no constraints are put on the visual system, people look around, walk up to something interesting and move around it so as to see it from all sides, and go from one vista to another. That is natural vision -- and what this book is about.

6.4 Jordan Peterson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordan_Peterson [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

The fact that Jordan Peterson is often accused of being "politically incorrect" should not detract from the value of his psychological ideas. He is one of the very few academics who combine present-day neuro-science research with mythology. Jordan Peterson is undoubtetly a very charismatic speaker, and his strong gestural articulation that underlines his talks is something of a rarity in the academic profession. One could imagine him quite well as an actor in a Shakespeare drama. This almost theatrical performance is accentuated by the fact that he has many professionally produced videos on youtube, which is a medium that offers so much more freedom of expression than a scientific paper, or even an academic lecture, where the lecturer is quite literally glued to the pulpit. His style of presentation could quite well illustrate the Peripatetic Style of Aristoteles. His many videos reiterate the central themes of his theories that are all derived from his book "Maps of Meaning". As example we choose this one, which also has many charts and illustrations from the book:

"Dragons, Divine Parents, Heroes and Adversaries: A complete cosmology of being."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqONu6wDYaE [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

7:00 People and animals aren't much interested in objective reality.

As humans, we are interested in pragmatic reality.

7:21 Pragmatic reality is that which you act on and not which you perceive.

7:30 How to act is of much more (Darwinian) importance than

"what is the world constituted of"? [AG: A dictionary is of no survival value.]

The world that interests us is the world of tools and values a priori.

22:11 Peterson quotes Gibson: Ecological Approaches to Visual Perception.

See: ->gibson1

22:12 Gibson introduces the notion of affordances vs. obstacles.

[AG: To what you want to achieve, your aims].

23:00 The nervous system parses up the world, into things that are useful to us.

[AG: And also ones that are possibly dangerous].

23:15 We are so tool-using that we are always scanning the world for tools.

23:57 As far as your brain is concerned, it is not about objects but affordances.

24:14 If you are a Darwinian, ... what has selected you is reality.

24:30 Reality is a set of tools and affordances and obstacles.

25:10 You are using the reptile circuitry of the brain to catch base-balls.

[AG: Or for that matter, any thrown objects that one tries to catch].

26:29 What people really don't like are unknown unknowns.

1:07:59 The eye of Horus. Representations of the Christ are derived from the Egyptian Horus.

1:08:27 As mythology progresses along the centuries, it transforms itself.

It tries to encapsulate again and again the structure of reality itself.

1:09:00 Horus is the eye. The eye is not the intellect. The eye is the thing that pays attention.

[AG: By this, Peterson means the specific neuronal circuits of vision acuity].

6.4.1 A Lesson for Artificial Intelligence

Peterson makes note that there is a grave problem of artificial intelligence, that it is still quite difficult (or impossible in many circumstances) for machines to discern objects. What is a trivial task for humans (and animals too) to separate out their living environment into things of vital interest and other things that are just background, is a deep functionality of the neuronal system that still largely eludes artificial intelligence. This is a hard lesson and invalidates so many claims that entirely autonomous vehicles will be available in the near future. See also this article:

http://news.mit.edu/2019/object-recognition-dataset-stumped-worlds-best-computer-vision-models-1210

6.4.2 A Connection to Jordanus Brunus

Peterson's first name "Jordan" reminds us of another famous iconoclast whose name was "Jordanus Brunus", aka Giordano Bruno. There is a deeper connection between these men: Giordano Bruno knew all the mythologies of ancient Mediterranea, like the Greek, the Egypt, and the Mesopotamian, inside out. Unfortunately, his vast knowledge didn't help Bruno to manage his own life. There is a rather long article by the present author (AG) on Giordano Bruno's life and work. The contribution of the work of Aby Warburg and his institute gives us some more in-depth background information on the subject:

http://www.noologie.de/gbruno.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

http://www.noologie.de/gbruno.pdf [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

About the Aby Warburg Library:

http://www.noologie.de/aby.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

http://www.noologie.de/aby.pdf [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

6.4.3 Jordan Peterson: Maps of Meaning

Literature source:

Peterson, Jordan: Maps Of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, Routledge, New York (1999)

In his monumental work "Maps of Meaning" (541 pages in very dense font), Peterson formulates all the important points of his psychological theory. There he explains the mythological foundations of the human psyche which he derives mostly from C.G. Jung, Mircea Eliade, and some more inspirations from Nietzsche and Piaget. His structural understanding of mythology is immense, as the present writer (AG) can attest to. To appreciate this, one must by needs know the mythology of humanity pretty well oneself. See the works which are referenced here:

The work of Hertha v. Dechend ->dechend1 ->dechend2

The work of Joseph Campbell ->campbell_work ->campbell_comparison

The work of Claude Levi-Strauss "Myth and Meaning". See: ->myth_meaning

http://historiaocharkeologi.com/kanada/myth_and_meaning.pdf

https://people.ucsc.edu/~ktellez/levi-strauss.pdf

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt1gxxr10

More material on "Maps of Meaning" is here:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQD_IZs7y60I3lUrrFTzkpat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maps_of_Meaning [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

This is the youtube search query for "Maps of Meaning":

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=maps+of+meaning+marionettes+and+individuals+

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL22J3VaeABQAT-0aSPq-OKOpQlHyR4k5h

These are some Google.books entries:

https://books.google.de/books?id=fLpQLDe77aAC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

6.4.4 The World of Value vs. Objectivism

This quote is from the www-site of Peterson: "Maps of Meaning": The World of Value:

I understood, finally, that the world that stories describe is not the objective world, but the world of value – and that it is in this world that we live, first and foremost.

https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/maps-of-meaning/ [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

I came to realize that ideologies had a narrative structure – that they were stories, in a word – and that the emotional stability of individuals depended upon the integrity of their stories. I came to realize that stories had a religious substructure (or, to put it another way, that well-constructed stories had a nature so compelling that they gathered religious behaviors and attitudes around them, as a matter of course).

I understood, finally, that the world that stories describe is not the objective world, but the world of value – and that it is in this world that we live, first and foremost.

This all may appear as something far removed from the original problem, but that is true only in appearance. ... I have come to understand what it is that our stories protect us from, and why we will do anything to maintain their stability. I now realize how it can be that our religious mythologies are true, and why that truth places a virtually intolerable burden of responsibility on the individual. I know now why rejection of such responsibility ensures that the unknown will manifest a demonic face, and why those who shrink from their potential seek revenge wherever they can find it. I learned what I wanted to know – at least enough so that my nightmares disappeared.

6.4.5 Quotes from "Maps of Meaning"

https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/books/maps-of-meaning-intro/

Maps of Meaning is about the fundamental levels of the human psyche. It’s about the Christianity upon which the West is, and must be, founded. It’s a call to a new way of being and, simultaneously, a reunion with the past. It is the responsibility of every man to rescue his dead father from the underworld. That’s the oldest story of mankind. Without that, there is only chaos. Maps of Meaning unites neuropsychology with ancient mythology, from the Mesopotamian, through the Egyptian and Judaic, to the Christian, with detours into Taoism and other profound faiths. It’s strongly influenced by the thinking of Carl Jung and his student, Erich Neumann, as well as Freud, Rogers and the other great 20th century clinical thinkers. ...

Writing Maps of Meaning compromised my health and, sometimes, my sanity. It deals with the horrors of Auschwitz and the Stalinist nightmare, and the evil that lurks forever in the human soul. It’s a very difficult, frightening book. But I have produced hundreds of hours of public lectures about Maps of Meaning, one series (1996) dating from my time at Harvard (http://bit.ly/2f8qBaS), another 13-part program televised on Canadian Public TV (TVO) (http://bit.ly/2fjgelc), and three others from the course I taught on the book in 2015 (http://bit.ly/2fje3hj), 2016 (http://bit.ly/2e8ukIy), These can all serve as a guide to understanding, for those who are interested.

This introduction is a sort of psychological testament of Peterson. It is important for a psychological understanding why Peterson had embarked on such a monumental work, and it is actually Peterson's own Journey of the Heros. It is confronting the existential problem, of "Time Out of Joint". We can compare this directly with the furori eroici of Giordano Bruno, for which he had to pay dearly with his own life.

https://meiner-elibrary.de/media/upload/leseprobe/9783787335107.pdf

https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/what-does-time-out-joint-mean-hamlet-627

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Out_of_Joint

6.4.6 A Condensation of "Maps of Meaning"

The following article gives a condensation of the message of "Maps of Meaning":

http://www.cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?10.077

1. We think we live in the "objective" world, but we do not. The objective world is something that has been conjured up for us recently - absurdly recently, from the perspective of evolutionary biology - by the processes of science operating over a span of five centuries (or, perhaps, to give the Greeks their due, over the last thirty centuries). This does not mean that the objective world is not real, even though theories about its nature are in constant flux. What it does mean is that the environment of human beings might well be regarded as "spiritual," as well as "material."

2. It is of course virtually impossible - even forbidden, at least implicitly - to use terms such as "spiritual" in a serious scientific discussion. How could it be that reality is "spiritual," rather than material, given the overwhelming practical success of the experimental sciences?

3. There are perhaps two answers to this question. The first concerns our capacity to categorize. It has become increasingly clear, at least since the time of Wittgenstein (1968), and perhaps also as a consequence of Piaget's work, that the categories we use to orient ourselves are at least as much action or significance-predicated as they are descriptive, which is to say contra Augustine that words are not labels for things as much as they are tools for the obtaining of goals. Since it is not precisely clear where the "object" ends and the "category" begins, perhaps it is the case that even those things we naturally perceive as "things" might be better regarded as tools for the obtaining of goals rather than as absolute entities in and of themselves. The second answer is somewhat more abstract, but is related conceptually to the first. It is clearly the case that our concept of situation or thing is context-dependent. What we parse out of the exceedingly complex "environment" that presents itself to us is always only a limited subset of that environment, and perhaps precisely that subset which serves our present purposes (as we attend to some few things, and ignore a multitude of others). We might say, then, that different purposes require different "objects", and that the highest and most general (and also therefore necessarily the most abstract and "long-term" and least immediately evident) purposes require us to parse out the highest and most general categories, tools, or conceptions. If what we extract from the environment are things more like tools than objects, it might be possible to take a radically fresh look at conceptual systems other than those of science, on the chance that what they are talking about are things which are more like tools than objects. As a consequence of adopting such a perspective, it may be possible to posit that we are no better at understanding our own past than we are at truly coming to grips with the conceptual systems of other cultures, and to remember or at least hypothesize that we really do not understand what our forebears meant when they used categories such as "spiritual" (any more than we understand what they meant when they said "virgin birth," for example, or "holy Trinity," or "resurrection of the Savior", or even "Tao"). If that is the case (which is the only alternative to presuming that everyone unfortunate enough to live prior to the dawn of the scientific age was pathetically ignorant, despite their incontrovertible success at surviving), then things may still be seriously other than we presently presume.

Here are some more quotes from the Book:

p. 1:

The world can be validly construed as forum for action, or as place of things. The former manner of interpretation – more primordial, and less clearly understood – finds its expression in the arts or humanities, in ritual, drama, literature, and mythology. The world as forum for action is a place of value, a place where all things have meaning. This meaning, which is shaped as a consequence of social interaction, is implication for action, or – at a higher level of analysis – implication for the configuration of the interpretive schema that produces or guides action. The latter manner of interpretation – the world as place of things – finds its formal expression in the methods and theories of science. Science allows for increasingly precise determination of the consensually- validatable properties of things, and for efficient utilization of precisely-determined things as tools (once the direction such use is to take has been determined, through application of more fundamental narrative processes). No complete world-picture can be generated, without use of both modes of construal. The fact that one mode is generally set at odds with the other means only that the nature of their respective domains remains insufficiently discriminated. Adherents of the mythological world-view tend to regard the statements of their creeds as indistinguishable from empirical “fact,” even though such statements were generally formulated long before the notion of objective reality emerged. Those who, by contrast, accept the scientific perspective – who assume that it is, or might become, complete – forget that an impassable gulf currently divides what is from what should be.

p. 21:

Whatever the specific historical precedents, it is most definitely the case that the Russians have regarded motor output and its abstract equivalents as the critically relevant aspect of human existence. This intellectual position distinguished them, historically, from their western counterparts, who tend(ed) to view the brain as an information-processing machine, akin to the computer. Psychologists in the west have concentrated their energies on determining how the brain determines what is out there, so to speak – out there, from the objective viewpoint. The Russians, by contrast, have devoted themselves to the role of the brain in governing behavior, and in generating the affects or emotions associated with that behavior. Modern animal experimentalists – most notably Jeffrey Gray (25) – have adopted the Russian line, with striking success.

p. 89:

2.3. Mythological Representation: The Constituent Elements of Experience

Myth represents the world as “forum for action.” The world as “forum for action” is comprised of three eternally extant constituent elements of experience, and a “fourth” that “precedes” them. The unknown, the knower, and the known make up the world as place of drama; the indeterminate “precosmogonic chaos” proceeding their emergence serves as the ultimate source of all things (including the three constituent elements of experience).

The precosmogonic chaos tends to take metaphorical form as the uroboros, the self-consuming serpent, who represents the union of matter and spirit, and the possibility of transformation. The uroboros serves as “primal source” of the mythological world parents (the Great Mother, nature, deity of the unknown, creative and destructive; the Great Father, culture, deity of the familiar, tyrannical and protective) and of their “Divine Son” (the Knower, the generative Word, the process of exploration).

6.4.7 A Discussion of Peterson's Work

Peterson's mythological-structure cum neuro-science approach can be positively compared to other (older) interpretations of the mythologies of humankind. His main achievement is the refutation of the western European objectivist natural science dogma. For example, the discoveries of quantum theory demonstrate that objects become fuzzy at the quantum level. There are a few weaknesses in his work. One can sum this up nicely with the proverb: "The map is not the territory". His understanding of mythology is dualistic and it has a somewhat Gnostic touch. He states this explicitly on p. 456: "The central ideas of Christianity are rooted in Gnostic philosophy". His work covers some specific parts of the Mesopotamian, Egyptian, and Biblical mythology, and his central theme of the Hero's Journey seems to be oriented mainly towards re-invigorating a Christian mythology. See his many quotations of Northrop Frye.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_Frye

The mythological approach tends to under-estimate the rate of failure of aspiring heroes. Nietzsche's own quest of the "Übermensch" may be a good example of such a failure. Gumilev's description of "Passionarnost" could provide some additional valuable material. Cultural Hero'es are a kind of experimental material for cultures. For those few who succeed, there are many who die in the pursuit of eternal glory against fancied dragons in the search of really virgin damsels.

->gumilev1

In comparison, Joseph Campbell (The Hero with a Thousand Faces) goes into much more detail when describing the many mythologies of humankind. Sometimes this becomes confusing how he jumps eclectically from one mythology to another. But there are important aspects that differentiate the mythologies. For example, the Buddha didn't really return to his society but founded a monastic order that was quite separate from the general population. The liberation or Moksha could be attained only by the monks. In the many societies of the East, especially India and China, there was no great emphasis on the Hero's journey. There, the societal optimum was the rule of tradition, and the preservation of its cultural traits and values.

The Shamanic tradition is most similar to Peterson's interpretation (p. 216 f).

There is also a problem with Peterson's construction of the polar opposites of "The Patriarchal World of Light" and "The Spirit of God" vs. "The Matriarchal World of Darkness" (p. 306). This is a version of the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda vs. Ahriman dualistic mythology of "Spirit vs. Matter/Materia", which already encompasses all later mythologies, especially the Abrahamitic ones. He even points this out on p. 318: "The Zoroastrians developed a number of ideas which were later incorporated into Christianity..." ->dualism_split

The term "spiritual" as opposed to "material" itself is also quite problematic because of its dualistic patriarchic origin. It is also deeply entrenched in the Christian (Gnostic) theology which makes a sharp distinction between the pure (godly) spirit vs. the dark and base matter (or materia), which is feminine in its nature. There are views that avoid this, so one may come to a wider understanding of Bergson's elan vital, or an anti-entropic life-force that is inherent in all phenomena of life. Human spirit(uality) can be viewed as a life-force that is not opposed to an ideology of dark-base-bad material nature. See also Gumilev's work for this ->gumilev1. The philosophy of Heraklitos is also useful for a different understanding of the Logos, which was proclaimed by Nietzsche, a fact that Peterson doesn't seem to take into account. In this view it is also not important that Nietzsche was decidedly anti-christian.

->nietzsche_heraklit

https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=9219&context=gradschool_disstheses

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/50718/heraclitus-and-nietzsche

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_in_the_Tragic_Age_of_the_Greeks

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft5x0nb3sz&chunk.id=d0e34&toc.depth=1&toc.id=&brand=ucpress

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89lan_vital

6.4.8 The Polarization of Sexes

The polarization of male and female qualities is more or less a re-hash of the old dualistic Zoroastrian / Manichaean / Gnostic view. See these quotes:

Great Father, culture, protective and tyrannical... (p. xxi).

Great Mother, nature, creative and destructive... (p. xxi).

There is no reason to assume that (law-and-) order is a male virtue. This view is mainly caused by a world-wide dominance of patriarchic societies, especially Abrahamitic, but also Indian and Chinese. Women function as well as guardians of cultural structure and order, when we observe those few surviving more matristic societies, like the Mosuo of China:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/apr/01/the-kingdom-of-women-the-tibetan-tribe-where-a-man-is-never-the-boss

Also, women were decidedly a prime driver of culture, especially in the role of domestication of plants and animals. Because women could take baby animals and suckle them, which is the first and foremost condition of imprinting, so that animals were adapted to living in human company. We can see this still in Amazonia, and it is quite a small wonder that youtube hasn't yet censored away some of the more explicit pictures.

https://youtu.be/Xeh-Jw7QiYU?list=TLPQMzAxMTIwMTn8YpqJ1VJpbg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ds2znMCUpuQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz4D4cIYdR0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-T6eDkrxck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC-r4xrESr0

6.4.8.1 Misogynic Dualism is inherent in all Abrahamitic Systems

Of course, misogynic dualism is inherent in all Abrahamitic Systems, where everything female is considered inferior or somewhat deficient. This is also present in the philosophy of Platon (see Timaios, the last paragraph). The present author has given some ironic comments on Platon's work which may not fit well with the common adulation (Beweihräucherung) of his philosophy.

http://www.noologie.de/plato07.htm#fn11

http://www.noologie.de/plato02.htm

http://www.noologie.de/plato04.htm

http://www.noologie.de/plato07.htm

http://www.noologie.de/plato08.htm

But almost all philosophy of humanity tends to be misogynistic. We have the same situation in Brahmanic India and in China. The following is a quote from Immanuel Kant who was particularly misogynistic:

http://www.noologie.de/noo02.htm

http://www.noologie.de/noo02.htm#fn33

This is a discussion by the present author on sexism in philosophy and the sciences:

http://www.noologie.de/cunni03.htm

http://www.noologie.de/cunni04.htm

Another discussion is here: ->double_sex

6.4.9 The Alchemist Ouroboros

In "Maps of Meaning", the symbol of the snake in all his illustrations is actually the Ouroboros of alchemist lore. Now the alchemist Ouroboros is not at all a negative devillish force, as the wikipedia quote shows. ->ouroboros. This is actually spelled out by Peterson on p. 141-143, but it is not followed through. One may note that in the Indian Kundalini and especially Chinese mythology, the dragon is a symbol of the vital forces of nature, the wind, water, waves, and of course, fertility. To be sure, Peterson also mentions the Kundalini in his book, on p. 300-301.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_dragon

Chinese dragon, also known as East Asian dragon or Long, are legendary creatures in Chinese mythology, Chinese folklore, and East Asian culture at large. Chinese dragons have many animal-like forms such as turtles and fish, but are most commonly depicted as snake-like with four legs. They traditionally symbolize potent and auspicious powers, particularly control over water, rainfall, typhoons, and floods. The dragon is also a symbol of power, strength, and good luck for people who are worthy of it in East Asian culture. During the days of Imperial China, the Emperor of China usually used the dragon as a symbol of his imperial strength and power.^[1]

In Chinese culture, excellent and outstanding people are compared to a dragon, while incapable people with no achievements are compared to other, disesteemed creatures, such as a worm. A number of Chinese proverbs and idioms feature references to a dragon, such as "Hoping one's son will become a dragon" (simplified Chinese: 望子成龙; traditional Chinese: 望子成龍; pinyin: wàng zǐ chéng lóng).

One specific aspect of this is the all-important "Ruler of Weather and Water" which is of vital importance in the Chinese Hydraulic Civilization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_dragon#Ruler_of_weather_and_water

Peterson writes at length about alchemy in the Jungian interpretation in chapter 5 "The Hostile Brothers". His quotes of mythology are mostly derived from the Biblical, the Babylonian Enuma Elish, Marduk, Apsu and Tiamat, and from the Egyptian Re and Apophis (p. 139), Osiris, Isis, Horus and Seth mythology (mostly quoting Mircea Eliade). There is only little discussion of Indian mythology (p. 139-148). On p. 111, he repeats the common mis-interpretaton of the Logos in Joh. 1.1 quote: "In the beginning was the word", whereas the Greek meaning of Logos has a much wider meaning than a spoken word. ->en_archae

On the other side, it should be noted that his structural interpretation of mythology goes much deeper than that of Campbell, which is more anecdotal, or as one may say, telling a good story. This is also pointed out in the wikipedia article under "Criticism". Also, Campbell does not give any advice for contemporary people what their "myths to live by" could be. And this is exactly Peterson's endeavour.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey#Criticism

Here is more material on the Ouroboros:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ouroboros

The ouroboros or uroborus (/ˌ(j)ʊərəˈbɒrəs/, also UK: /uːˈrɒbərɒs/,^[2]^[3] US: /-oʊs/) is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon^[4] eating its own tail. Originating in ancient Egyptian iconography, the ouroboros entered western tradition via Greek magical tradition and was adopted as a symbol in Gnosticism and Hermeticism and most notably in alchemy. The term derives from Ancient Greek: οὐροβόρος,^[5] from οὐρά (oura), "tail"^[6] + βορά (bora), "food",^[7] from βιβρώσκω (bibrōskō), "I eat".^[8] The ouroboros is often interpreted as a symbol for eternal cyclic renewal or a cycle of life, death and rebirth. The skin-sloughing process of snakes symbolizes the transmigration of souls, the snake biting its own tail is a fertility symbol. The tail of the snake is a phallic symbol, the mouth is a yonic or womb-like symbol. ^[9]

Alchemy and Gnosticism

The famous ouroboros drawing from the early alchemical text, The Chrysopoeia of Cleopatra(Κλεοπάτρης χρυσοποιία), probably originally dating to third century Alexandria but first known in a tenth century copy, encloses the words hen to pan (ἓν τὸ πᾶν), "the all is one". Its black and white halves may perhaps represent a Gnostic duality of existence, analogous to the Taoist yin and yang symbol.^[14] The chrysopoeia ouroboros of Cleopatra the Alchemist is one of the oldest images of the ouroboros to be linked with the legendary opus of the alchemists, the philosopher's stone.

An aim of alchemists and adepts, described as "individual self-perfection through physical transmutation and spiritual transcendence",^[15] was familiar to the alchemist and physician Sir Thomas Browne. It focused on the eternal unity of all things as well as the cycle of birth and death (from which the alchemist sought release and liberation).^[16] In his A Letter to a Friend, a medical treatise full of case-histories and witty speculations upon the human condition, he wrote:

... that the first day should make the last, that the Tail of the Snake should return into its Mouth precisely at that time, and they should wind up upon the day of their Nativity, is indeed a remarkable Coincidence ...

Connection to Indian thought

In the Aitareya Brahmana, a Vedic text of the early 1st millennium BCE, the nature of the Vedic rituals is compared to "a snake biting its own tail."[23]

Ouroboros symbolism has been used to describe the Kundalini. According to the medieval Yoga-kundalini Upanishad, "The divine power, Kundalini, shines like the stem of a young lotus; like a snake, coiled round upon herself she holds her tail in her mouth and lies resting half asleep as the base of the body" (1.82).

Storl (2004) also refers to the ouroboros image in reference to the "cycle of samsara".[24]

6.4.10 A Comparison of the Mythology of Campbell and Peterson

Peterson has derived some material from Joseph Campbell. He mentions him in "Maps of Meaning" in a few footnotes, as on p. 183 in footnote 329. The theme of the Hero's Journey from the known to the unknown and his (not always, but sometimes) success is also one of the core themes of Peterson. But one can estimate that most of the endeavours of Culture Heros had only a small chance of surviving their epic struggles. The mythologies just don't tell us about failed heroes.

There are some differences between the interpretations of mythology of Campbell and that of Peterson. Both lean heavily on the work of C.G. Jung. Obviously there is the difference of life-time and temperament and about 60 years between them. Campbell worked mainly in the science-happy optimistic era of the 1940-1950's. Peterson's outlook is more pessimistic and heavily influenced by his emotional impressions of the horrors of Nazism, Stalinism, Maoism, and the cold war. Campbell views the stories of the Bible as somewhat inferior or even childish in comparison to the Far Eastern ones, and he is quite critical of the Abrahamitic mindset. Typical is this expression: "as proper rather to a nursery school than to adulthood" (p. 73, Bantam edition). In Campbell's view, the role of the snake or dragon in the East vs. the Bible is reversed. In Biblical lore, the serpent represents evil whereas in Campbell's view of the East it represents "symbolic of the immortal inhabiting energy of all life". Bantam edition, p. 25-26:

Let us turn ... to the Indian, of the Buddha, which has enspelled the entire East; for there too is the mythic image of a tree of immortal life defended by two terrifying guards. That tree is the one beneath which Siddhartha was sitting, facing east, when he wakened to the light of his own immortality in truth and was known thereafter as the Buddha, the Wakened One. There is a serpent in that legend also, but instead of being known as evil, it is thought of as symbolic of the immortal inhabiting energy of all life on earth. For the serpent shedding its skin, to be, as it were, born again, is likened in the Orient to the reincarnating spirit that assumes and throws off bodies as a man puts on and puts off clothes. There is in Indian mythology a great cobra imagined as balancing the tablelike earth on its head: its head being, of course, at the pivotal point, exactly beneath the world tree. And according to the Buddha legend, when the Blessed One, having attained omniscience, continued to sit absorbed for a number of days in absolute meditation, he became endangered by a great storm that arose in the world around him, and this prodigious serpent, coming up from below, wrapped itself protectively around the Buddha, covering his head with its cobra hood.

Thus, whereas in one of these two legends of the tree the service of the serpent is rejected and the animal itself cursed, in the other it is accepted. In both, the serpent is in some way associated with the tree and has apparently enjoyed its fruits, since it can slough its skin and live again; but in the Bible legend our first parents are expelled from the garden of that tree, whereas in the Buddhist tradition we are all invited in. ...

p. 73, Bantam edition:

"Thou shalt!" against "I want!" and then, "Extinction!" In our modern Occidental view, the situation represented by the first two in tension would be thought of as proper rather to a nursery school than to adulthood, whereas in the Orient that is the situation enforced throughout even adult life. There is no provision or allowance whatsoever for what in the West would be thought of as ego-maturation. And as a result -- to put it plainly and simply -- the Orient has never distinguished ego from id. ...

p. 77, Bantam edition:

Whereas in the older view, as we have seen, the god is simply a sort of cosmic bureaucrat, and the great natural laws of the universe govern all that he is and does and must do, we have now a god who himself determines what laws are to operate; who says, "Let such-and-such come to pass!" and it comes to pass. There is, accordingly, a stress here rather on personality and on whim than on irrefragable law. The god can change his mind, as he frequently does; and this tends to bring the Levantine spirit into apparently close approach to the native individualism of Europe. However, there is even here a distinction to be made.

For in the Levant the accent is on obedience, the obedience of man to the will of God, whimsical though it might be; the leading idea being that the god has rendered a revelation, which is registered in a book that men are to read and to revere, never to presume to criticize, but to accept and to obey. Those who do not know, or who would reject, this holy book are in exile from their maker. Many nations great and small, even continents, are in actuality thus godless.

This aversion against the Abrahamitic mindset may be a reason why Peterson doesn't want to mention Campbell's work too often. Consequently, Peterson displays a distinct mythological characterization of the snake as symbol of the forces of chaos, darkness, and of the "dark terrible mother". There is a confusion which almost all students of mythology make: The original meaning of ancient Greek chaos is not disorder (like tohu wa bohu), but total emptiness.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/chaos-meaning-and-history

The English word chaos is borrowed from the Greek word that means "abyss." In ancient Greece, Chaos was originally thought of as the abyss or emptiness that existed before things came into being, and then the word chaos was used to refer to a specific abyss: the abyss of Tartarus, the underworld. Later, in the 1600s, there was renewed interest in the Classical authors, and that's when chaosgained its more familiar sense. Ovid, the great Roman thinker, thought of chaos as not a formless void from which all things were made, but as a formless, jumbled, disorganized mass. English speakers borrowed this meaning of chaos, then broadened it into the word we recognize today: one that denotes utter confusion or disorganization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_(cosmogony)

In Hesiod's Theogony, Chaos was the first thing to exist: "at first Chaos came to be" (or was)^[10] but next (possibly out of Chaos) came Gaia, Tartarus and Eros (elsewhere the son of Aphrodite). ^[11] Unambiguously "born" from Chaos were Erebus and Nyx.^[12] For Hesiod, Chaos, like Tartarus, though personified enough to have borne children, was also a place, far away, underground and "gloomy", beyond which lived the Titans.^[13] And, like the earth, the ocean, and the upper air, it was also capable of being affected by Zeus' thunderbolts.^[14]

Passages in Hesiod's Theogony suggest that Chaos was located below Earth but above Tartarus.^[15] Primal Chaos was sometimes said to be the true foundation of reality, particularly by philosophers such as Heraclitus.

And the emptiness is potentiality, as opposed against actuality. A better philosophical terminology would be Kenoma vs. Pleroma. Peterson actually mentions this in his description of the Ouroboros (p. 141-143). (See also the concept of apeiron of Anaximandros and the concept of archae):

http://www.noologie.de/plato03.htm#Heading13

http://www.noologie.de/neuro12.htm#Index128

The total emptiness of chaos is mirrored in the Buddhist concept of shunyata:

http://www.noologie.de/shunya01.htm

6.4.11 More Information about Joseph Campbell's Work

Campbell, Joseph: The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 1st edition, Bollingen Foundation, 1949. 2nd edition, Princeton University Press. 3rd edition, New World Library, 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces

The following www site gives an overview of many works that connect to Campbell's theme:

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Hero-with-a-Thousand-Faces-Luomala-Campbell/b6febe49b42f0c1716cc709aa9cf08f3bdd1d721

The following article reviews the structure of Campbell's monomyth. It should be noted that this theoretical approach to interpret so many mythologies of humankind is not shared by present-day anthropological academic consensus. There is too much romanticism of Rousseau type in this interpretation of the eternal struggles of hero-kind against so many obstacles of imagined dragons. The Pop Culture theme is the eternal struggle of Good versus Evil, Light versus Darkness, but this is mainly for Hollywood or Bollywood movie consumers.

http://publish.uwo.ca/~dmann/Hero%20and%20Star%20Wars.pdf

The Hero with a Thousand Faces and its Application to Star Wars

by Douglas Mann, from my book: Understanding Society, (Oxford UP, 2008)

The American theorist of myths Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) argues in his book

The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949/1968)

that there is a common underlying, unconscious structure behind all religion and myth. Myth is:… the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation. Religions, philosophies, arts, the social forms of primitive and historical man, prime discoveries in science and technology, the very dreams that blister sleep, boil up from the basic, magic ring of myth. (1968: 3) Just as dreams play out in fantastic landscapes the unconscious problems of the dreamer, myths play out on a much vaster field the collective problems of humanity (19). Campbell convincingly argues that all the great mythical sagas are basically one story, the monomyth.

This monomyth is the Hero’s Journey, which has a rough-and-ready common structure of stages in myths taken from a wide variety of cultures. It is the quest saga, the same story told in Greek myths like Jason and the Golden Fleece and Odysseus’s journey, in the legends of King Arthur and the Round Table, in the ancient Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh, the Irish legends of Finn McCool, even in the story of the Buddha (not to mention hundreds of tribal myths from all over the world). Campbell got this idea of an unconscious myth from Carl Jung’s notion of cultural archetypes and of the collective unconscious, which he felt provided the foundation of mythological thinking in a great diversity of cultures. He mixed in a hefty dose of both Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysis in his work, seeing the hero’s journey as a simultaneous journey of the ego to achieve oneness with the world, to overcome its fears of both id and superego, of the seductive Mother and the ogre-like Father. Campbell doesn’t talk much about being influenced by French structuralist theory, though the monomyth is a clearly attempt to find an underlying structure beneath the many surface manifestations of the story of the great quest found throughout the world.The journey has three major parts to it - Departure, Initiation, and Return, each with a number of subsections. In its shortest form, the hero ventures out from his common world into a supernatural one, encounters and defeats strange and magical forces arrayed against him, and returns to his ordinary world with a marvelous boon for his comrades at home (30). The hero cycle also contains a number of familiar repeated characters - the hero (obviously), a mentor, a villain (who Campbell sometimes calls the “dragon”), a goddess (sometimes also a mother figure), magic potions or forces, helpers, sometimes a rogue, and jesters or tricksters. They also feature the struggle of Good versus Evil, Light versus Darkness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero%27s_journey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Heroesjourney.svg

http://www.rosenfels.org/Joseph%20Campbell%20-%20The%20Hero%20With%20A%20Thousand%20Faces,%20Commemorative%20Edition%20%282004%29.pdf

http://staff.cs.utu.fi/staff/jouni.smed/is08/slides/is080909.pdf

Campbell, Joseph: "Myths To Live By", Bantam Books, New York, 1988,

ISBN 978-0-553-27088-4

http://www.noologie.de/wagner.htm#_Toc18314099 [Accessed: 2019-10-27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Myth

The wikipedia article shows that Campbell's treatment of mythology clearly has a psychological side:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myths_to_Live_By [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

The deep power of myth on the inner, spiritual lives of human beings throughout the ages (including our own age) is the common theme running throughout all of the essays in the collection. Campbell explains the differences between western and oriental myths and rites. He shows how fundamental universal thoughts are adapted to local requirements of legitimation. A typical form of adaptation of the hero is the American image of the lone rider who dispels evil.^[1]

The text of "Myths To Live By" is under:

https://epdf.pub/myths-to-live-bye5c7a1d2cbe6724fbec241c9351eacfa95294.html

[Accessed: 2019-10-28]

This is a short quote from the book, it has no page number since the file is in rtf format. It is in the chapter "II - The Emergence of Mankind".

What I would suggest is that by comparing a number from different parts of the world and differing traditions, one might arrive at an understanding of their force, their source and possible sense. For they are not historical. That much is clear. They speak, therefore, not of outside events but of themes of the imagination. And since they exhibit features that are actually universal, they must in some way represent features of our general racial imagination, permanent features of the human spirit -- or, as we say today, of the psyche. They are telling us, therefore, of matters fundamental to ourselves, enduring essential principles about which it would be good for us to know; about which, in fact, it will be necessary for us to know if our conscious minds are to be kept in touch with our own most secret, motivating depths. In short, these holy tales and their images are messages to the conscious mind from quarters of the spirit unknown to normal daylight consciousness, and if read as referring to events in the field of space and time -- whether of the future, present, or past -- they will have been misread and their force deflected, some secondary thing outside then taking to itself the reference of the symbol, some sanctified stick, stone, or animal, person, event, city, or social group.

6.5 Nietzsche: "Die unbefleckte Erkenntnis"

Jordan Peterson derives a lot of inspiration from Nietzsche's work. Nietzsche was one of the few european philosophers who opposed the western objectivistic epistemic approach. He had a special expression for this: "Die unbefleckte Erkenntnis" in his polemic against the academic philosophical style of work. His main contemporary philosophical opponents were the school of German Idealism, a lineage that rooted in the Platonic way of thinking. This school had its origins in the European Christian philosophy (ancilla theologiae, the hand-maiden of theology) and on the German side there were Leibniz, Kant, and Hegel as best-known proponents. Nietzsche's "spiritus rector" had been Schopenhauer, who had directed his sharp criticism against Hegel. So Nietzsche was also a leading proponent of the philosophy of embodied knowledge. Unfortunately, for the detriment of German philosophy of the aera, it was the school of German Idealism that held the upper hand, and some of the worst adaptations of Nietzsche's philosophy were in the Nazi ideology. Instrumental in this unfortunate bent of affairs, was the redaction of his works after his death by his sister, Elisabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, who was responsible for the formulation of "the will to power". The other most completely mis-understood concept of Nietzsche's philosophy was the "Übermensch". Unfortunately, there exists no good translation of this concept into English. The word "Super-Human" (in the guise of Superman in the American comic-book series) cannot convey the meaning of "Überwindung", which denotes the true character of the "Übermensch" who has transcended the lowly boundaries of "der letzte Mensch" (the last human). With this concept, Nietzsche described his contemporary humans who were responsible for the civilizational development of the industrialization and of European colonialism. Especially he considered the Germans and the Second German Empire of Wilhelm II as "die letzten Menschen". Nietzsche's mythography is especially important with respect to the snake, "das Schlangen-Geringel".

http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Nietzsche,+Friedrich/Also+sprach+Zarathustra/Zweiter+Teil.+Also+sprach+Zarathustra/Von+der+unbefleckten+Erkenntnis

[Accessed: 2019-10-27]

Dieses Gleichnis gebe ich euch empfindsamen Heuchlern, euch, den »Rein-Erkennenden«! Euch heiße ich – Lüsterne!

Auch ihr liebt die Erde und das Irdische: ich erriet euch wohl! – aber Scham ist in eurer Liebe und schlechtes Gewissen – dem Monde gleicht ihr!

Zur Verachtung des Irdischen hat man euren Geist überredet, aber nicht eure Eingeweide: die aber sind das Stärkste an euch!

Und nun schämt sich euer Geist, daß er euren Eingeweiden zu Willen ist, und geht vor seiner eignen Scham Schleich- und Lügenwege.

»Das wäre mir das Höchste« – also redet euer verlogner Geist zu sich – »auf das Leben ohne Begierde zu schaun und nicht, gleich dem Hunde, mit hängender Zunge:

Glücklich zu sein im Schauen, mit erstorbenem Willen, ohne Griff und Gier der Selbstsucht – kalt und aschgrau am ganzen Leibe, aber mit trunkenen Mondesaugen!

Das wäre mir das Liebste«, – also verführt sich selber der Verführte – »die Erde zu lieben, wie der Mond sie liebt, und nur mit dem Auge allein ihre Schönheit zu betasten.

Und das heiße mir aller Dinge unbefleckte Erkenntnis, daß ich von den Dingen nichts will: außer daß ich vor ihnen daliegen darf wie ein Spiegel mit hundert Augen.« –

Oh, ihr empfindsamen Heuchler, ihr Lüsternen! Euch fehlt die Unschuld in der Begierde: und nun verleumdet ihr drum das Begehren!

Wahrlich, nicht als Schaffende, Zeugende, Werdelustige liebt ihr die Erde!

Wo ist Unschuld? Wo der Wille zur Zeugung ist. Und wer über sich hinaus schaffen will, der hat mir den reinsten Willen. [378]

Wo ist Schönheit? Wo ich mit allem Willen wollen muß; wo ich lieben und untergehn will, daß ein Bild nicht nur Bild bleibe.

Lieben und Untergehn: das reimt sich seit Ewigkeiten. Wille zur Liebe: das ist, willig auch sein zum Tode. Also rede ich zu euch Feiglingen!

...

Wahrlich, ihr täuscht, ihr »Beschaulichen«! Auch Zarathustra war einst der Narr eurer göttlichen Häute; nicht erriet er das Schlangengeringel, mit dem sie gestopft waren.

Eines Gottes Seele wähnte ich einst spielen zu sehn in euren Spielen, ihr Rein-Erkennenden! Keine bessere Kunst wähnte ich einst als eure Künste!

Schlangen-Unflat und schlimmen Geruch verhehlte mir die Ferne: und daß einer Eidechse List lüstern hier herumschlich.

Aber ich kam euch nah: da kam mir der Tag – und nun kommt er euch, – zu Ende ging des Mondes Liebschaft!

Seht doch hin! Ertappt und bleich steht er da – vor der Morgenröte! [379] Denn schon kommt sie, die Glühende – ihre Liebe zur Erde kommt! Unschuld und Schöpfer-Begier ist alle Sonnen-Liebe!

Seht doch hin, wie sie ungeduldig über das Meer kommt! Fühlt ihr den Durst und den heißen Atem ihrer Liebe nicht?

Am Meere will sie saugen und seine Tiefe zu sich in die Höhe trinken: da hebt sich die Begierde des Meeres mit tausend Brüsten.

Geküßt und gesaugt will es sein vom Durste der Sonne; Luft will es werden und Höhe und Fußpfad des Lichts und selber Licht!

Wahrlich, der Sonne gleich liebe ich das Leben und alle tiefen Meere.

Und dies heißt mir Erkenntnis: alles Tiefe soll hinauf – zu meiner Höhe!

6.5.1 Nietzsche and Heraklitos

Some literature on Nietzsche and Heraklitos is here:

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft5x0nb3sz&brand=ucpress

Cox, Christoph. Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation. Berkeley: University of California Press (1999).

http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft5x0nb3sz/

https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/questions/50718/heraclitus-and-nietzsche

[T]he kinship between Nietzsche and Heraclitus is widely acknowledged (Heidegger, in his Nietzsche, is the exception here) and frequently confirmed by Nietzsche himself. Among the most famous declaration of that brotherhood comes from Ecce Homo, where he writes about Heraclitus "in whose proximity I feel altogether warmer and better than anywhere else. The affirmation of passing away and destroying, which is the decisive feature of a Dionysian philosophy; saying Yes to opposition and war; becoming, along with a radical repudiation of the very concept of being?all this is clearly more closely related to me than anything else thought to date" (EH GT 3). Further, he writes that the Zaratustrian doctrine of eternal recurrence could have also been taught by Heraclitus. The kinship between Heraclitus and Nietzsche consists in the problem they confront. Their kinship could be called thematic, but despite Nietzsche's declaration, this is not the kinship of the way of thinking. If two philosophers deal with the same problem, it is not obvious that they think similarly. In such a case the similarity could be only superficial, covering a deeper level of divergence. (Artur Przybyslawski, 'Nietzsche Contra Heraclitus', Journal of Nietzsche Studies, No. 23 (Spring 2002), p.88.)

Przybyslawski's claim is that at least part of the convergence between Nietzsche and Heraclitus is due to Nietzsche's interpretation rather than to deep philosophical agreement. Whatever the case, Nietzsche held views about Heraclitus and highly favourable ones.

6.5.1.1 The Logos of Heraklitos

Here is a short discussion of the Logos of Heraklitos by Spengler. This is of course entirely different from the Platonic and Christian interpretation:

http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Spengler,+Oswald/Reden+und+Aufs%C3%A4tze/Heraklit/B.+Das+formale+Prinzip/1.+Die+Idee+der+Form+%C3%BCberhaupt

Λόγος ist für Heraklit mit μέτρον identisch. Dieser Begriff bezeichnet nicht eine Kraft, noch viel weniger eine Intelligenz, sondern eine Beziehung. Diese in der spätem griechischen Philosophie verlorengegangene Vorstellung ist unter dem Einfluß stoischer,[36] christlich-hellenistischer und vor allem unsrer dualistischen Anschauungen meistens falsch verstanden worden. Der moderne Dualismus stammt aus der christlichen Weltanschauung, aus welcher und gegen die sich die neuere Philosophie entwickelt hat. Es ist natürlich, daß der Glaube an eine Weltordnung irgendwelcher Art von Einfluß auf die Bildung metaphysischer Ideen ist. Die christliche Antithese Welt-Gott, welche die mittelalterliche Naturphilosophie beherrschte, wirkte in einer Reihe weiterer Antithesen fort: Denken und Ausdehnung, Intelligenz und Substanz, Materie und Energie. Trotz wachsender Abstraktion ist die Grundeinteilung dieselbe geblieben.

6.5.2 Nietzsche and "Völkerpsychologie"

The expression "Völkerpsychologie" is more often associated with Wilhelm Wundt's works.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkerpsychologie [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

The current academic consensus about "Völkerpsychologie" is clarified in this passage of the wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%B6lkerpsychologie#Current_Day_V%C3%B6lkerpsychologie [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

Another important thing that leads to the decline of Völkerpsychologie was the Nazi’s. The general weaknesses of “folk psychology” helped its decline, but mainly it was the idea that Völkerpsychologie was a part of the Nazi thinking. By the 1960s, the term itself had become a taboo work [AG: he probably means "word"] in the social sciences.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

While Wundt was productive in both philosophy and psychological research, Nietzsche worked only theoretically and in an essayistic manner. But he could also be considered a co-founder of Theoretical Anthropology. And this line of thought contrasted sharply with Rousseau's romantic ideas by being more realistic about the "conditio humana". This was a line of ideas that Nietzsche had taken up from Schopenhauer, who liked the English empiricist philosophers, especially Hume and Darwin, much better than the German idealists. See the quote from the wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empiricism [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

British empiricism, though it was not a term used at the time, derives from the 17th century period of early modern philosophy and modern science. The term became useful in order to describe differences perceived between two of its founders Francis Bacon, described as an "empiricist", and René Descartes, who is described as a "rationalist". Bacon's philosophy of nature was heavily derived from the works of the Italian philosopher Bernardino Telesio and the Swiss physician Paracelsus.^[18] Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza, in the next generation, are often also described as an empiricist and a rationalist respectively. John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume were the primary exponents of empiricism in the 18th century Enlightenment, with Locke being normally known as the founder of empiricism as such.

In response to the early-to-mid-17th century "continental rationalism" John Locke (1632–1704) proposed in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1689) a very influential view wherein the only knowledge humans can have is a posteriori, i.e., based upon experience. Locke is famously attributed with holding the proposition that the human mind is a tabula rasa, a "blank tablet", in Locke's words "white paper", on which the experiences derived from sense impressions as a person's life proceeds are written. There are two sources of our ideas: sensation and reflection. In both cases, a distinction is made between simple and complex ideas. The former are unanalysable, and are broken down into primary and secondary qualities. Primary qualities are essential for the object in question to be what it is. Without specific primary qualities, an object would not be what it is.

The line of thought of British Empiricism re-appears today as Evolutionary Epistemology and Ethology, or as Sociobiology. See the following article on Evolutionary Epistemology:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-evolutionary/ [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

6.5.2.1 Nietzsche's Perspectivism

A very "modern" concept for anthropology is Nietzsche's Perspectivism, and the work of Jordan Peterson reflects this perspectivism:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspectivism#Nietzsche%E2%80%99s_perspectivism

[Accessed: 2019-10-29]

People always adopt perspectives by default – whether they are aware of it or not – and the concepts of one's existence are defined by the circumstances surrounding that individual. Truth is made by and for individuals and peoples.^[5] This view differs from many types of relativism which consider the truth of a particular proposition as something that altogether cannot be evaluated with respect to an "absolute truth", without taking into consideration culture and context.^[6]

This view is outlined in an aphorism from Nietzsche's posthumously-assembled collection The Will to Power:

In so far as the word "knowledge" has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable [emphasis in original] otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings.—"Perspectivism." It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against. [emphasis added] Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm.

— Friedrich Nietzsche; trans. Walter Kaufmann, The Will to Power, §481 (1883–1888)^[7]

6.5.3 Nietzsche: Etwas, das "sich versteht", ein Volk

Nietzsche's idea of "Volk" was discussed in depth in the work of the present author:

"Die Kultur-Mythen-Analyse und Die Ethno-Kybernetik".

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#ethnos_ethnie

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#ethos_ethik

Besides Nietzsche, this discussion centers on the concept of the Ethnos of Lev Gumilev.

->gumilev1

There is an earlier printed version of this work under "Der Diamantweg der Noologie".

https://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/title/BV040951960 [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

There the quote is found on p. 63.

The following passage is quoting Nietzsche.

Nietzsche: Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Neuntes Hauptstück: was ist vornehm? S. 268

https://gutenberg.spiegel.de/buch/jenseits-von-gut-und-bose-8646/11 [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#nietzsche_volk [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

AG: Nietzsche hat in dem Kapitel: "Etwas, das sich versteht, ein Volk" den Begriff von Empfindungs-Gruppen geprägt, von dem aus er die sprachliche Grundlage für "ein Volk" definiert. ... Dies wird eine Stufe der Abstraktion weitergetragen, zum Konzept der Verhaltens- und Wertegemeinschaften der Ethnien.

Was ist zuletzt die Gemeinheit? - Worte sind Tonzeichen für Begriffe; Begriffe aber sind mehr oder weniger bestimmte Bildzeichen für oft wiederkehrende und zusammen kommende Empfindungen, für Empfindungs-Gruppen. Es genügt noch nicht, um sich einander zu verstehen, dass man die selben Worte gebraucht: man muss die selben Worte auch für die selbe Gattung innerer Erlebnisse gebrauchen, man muss zuletzt seine Erfahrung mit einander gemein haben. Deshalb verstehen sich die Menschen Eines Volkes besser unter einander, als Zugehörige verschiedener Völker, selbst wenn sie sich der gleichen Sprache bedienen; oder vielmehr, wenn Menschen lange unter ähnlichen Bedingungen (des Klima's, des Bodens, der Gefahr, der Bedürfnisse, der Arbeit) zusammen gelebt haben, so entsteht daraus Etwas, das "sich versteht" , ein Volk. In allen Seelen hat eine gleiche Anzahl oft wiederkehrender Erlebnisse die Oberhand gewonnen über seltner kommende: auf sie hin versteht man sich, schnell und immer schneller - die Geschichte der Sprache ist die Geschichte eines Abkürzungs-Prozesses -; auf dies schnelle Verstehen hin verbindet man sich, enger und immer enger. Je grösser die Gefährlichkeit, um so grösser ist das Bedürfniss, schnell und leicht über Das, was noth thut, übereinzukommen; sich in der Gefahr nicht misszuverstehn, das ist es, was die Menschen zum Verkehre schlechterdings nicht entbehren können. Noch bei jeder Freundschaft oder Liebschaft macht man diese Probe: Nichts derart hat Dauer, sobald man dahinter kommt, dass Einer von Beiden bei gleichen Worten anders fühlt, meint, wittert, wünscht, fürchtet, als der Andere. (Die Furcht vor dem "ewigen Missverständniss" : das ist jener wohlwollende Genius, der Personen verschiedenen Geschlechts so oft von übereilten Verbindungen abhält, zu denen Sinne und Herz rathen - und nicht irgend ein Schopenhauerischer "Genius der Gattung" -!) Welche Gruppen von Empfindungen innerhalb einer Seele am schnellsten wach werden, das Wort ergreifen, den Befehl geben, das entscheidet über die gesammte Rangordnung ihrer Werthe, das bestimmt zuletzt ihre Gütertafel. Die Werthschätzungen eines Menschen verrathen etwas vom Aufbau seiner Seele, und worin sie ihre Lebensbedingungen, ihre eigentliche Noth sieht. Gesetzt nun, dass die Noth von jeher nur solche Menschen einander angenähert hat, welche mit ähnlichen Zeichen ähnliche Bedürfnisse, ähnliche Erlebnisse andeuten konnten, so ergiebt sich im Ganzen, dass die leichte Mittheilbarkeit der Noth, dass heisst im letzten Grunde das Erleben von nur durchschnittlichen und gemeinen Erlebnissen, unter allen Gewalten, welche über den Menschen bisher verfügt haben, die gewaltigste gewesen sein muss. Die ähnlicheren, die gewöhnlicheren Menschen waren und sind immer im Vortheile, die Ausgesuchteren, Feineren, Seltsameren, schwerer Verständlichen bleiben leicht allein, unterliegen, bei ihrer Vereinzelung, den Unfällen und pflanzen sich selten fort. Man muss ungeheure Gegenkräfte anrufen, um diesen natürlichen, allzunatürlichen progressus in simile, die Fortbildung des Menschen in's Ähnliche, Gewöhnliche, Durchschnittliche, Heerdenhafte - in's Gemeine! - zu kreuzen.

6.5.4 Kulturnetzspinne Nietzsche

There is some quite in-depth information about Nietzsche in this article:

Martin Lang: DER EINZELNE ALS EXPERIMENT –– Kulturnetzspinne Nietzsche

https://repositorium.ub.uni-osnabrueck.de/bitstream/urn:nbn:de:gbv:700-201902201177/1/NietzscheKK_Lang.pdf [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

This article in .pdf format has a hypertext property: The table of contents gives direct jumps to the actual sections of the text. A particular characteristic note about Nietzsche's opinion about the German Reich II is the passage on P. 12:

Einer seiner Wahnsinnszettel vom Januar 1889 lautet: condamno te ad vitam Diaboli vitae. Indem ich Dich vernichte Hohenzollern, vernichte ich die Lüge (13.647). Es sind nicht viele solche Bemerkungen übrig, weil – so eine weitere Ironie des Schicksals im (Nach)–Leben des Philologen Nietzsche – seine Schwester (als Vormund und Erbin) Kaiser Wilhelm II auf den noch vakanten Platz des Übermenschen aufmerksam machen wollte, ob Seine Majestät nicht allergnädigst geruhen möchte ihn einzunehmen, und man begreift leicht, dass Seine Majestät von Sprüchen der Art, wie ich eben einen zitierte, nicht allzu begeistert gewesen wäre. Schwester Nietzsche schnippelte, brannte, klebte und retuschierte ihren höchsteigenen Übermenschen ad usum majestatis zusammen. Dass Nietzsche nicht Pfarrer geworden ist, sondern "irgendwie" das Gegenteil, hat sich mittlerweile wohl herumgesprochen.

P. 19-20:

2. Geschichte und Metaphysik (insbesondere Heidegger). Hier wird das Problem des "einzelnen–Allgemeinen" durch einen "Wirbel ursprünglichen Fragens" exponiert (und damit vielleicht auch "gelöst", wie man als Ablehner dieser Richtung befürchten muss). Die Not der Nah–Perspektive, der epochal empfundene Zusammenbruch 1918 und die radikale Abwertung der Rolle der Intellektuellen (denen die Versprechungen ihrer Spezies seit den Hochzeiten deutschen Idealismus [sic] um 1810 endgültig zusammenbrachen) ...

P. 20:

Dazu war ein Vorherseher vor 1918 erforderlich, der den Urteilsspruch schon vollzogen hatte (wie Sartre dies in Flaubert richtig für 1848 beschreibt): Nietzsche (auch sozialhistorisch im Diskursrauschen von 1900 bis 1914 tatsächlich die bekannteste Figur, samt Legitimation durch persönliche Katastrophe) beschäftigte sich als entlaufener Altphilologe eingehend mit dem griechischen Altertum und den griechischen Philosophen, und Heidegger vermag daraus zu zaubern, dass die Metaphysik vollendet sei, weil der letzte (Nietzsche) die Gegenpositionen zum Anfang (gesammelt in Plato) vertrete, und zugleich noch "drin" (in der Metaphysik) stehe.

6.6 Nietzsche and the Art of High Tight-Rope Walking

We refer to Nietzsche's tight-rope walker in Zarathustra: There has never been a written-down science of high-tight-rope walking, and there never will be. If one would go out on a first try of high-tight-rope walking with a written manual in hand, this is a sure method to never come back alive from that first walk. Here are some videos on the practice of tight rope walking. It is easily understood that this can never become a science:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2phpEve15A

Wizards of the Wire: Living on a Tightrope (RT Documentary)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0IzDgNN0iI

Daghestan's Tightrope Walkers See Tradition Disappearing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYWQEVWLzd8

The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMNW63_VBkg

Tight Rope Walkers in Armenia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2CFUchWcqpg

Tight-Wire walker on the roadside in Armenia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iynsc9YekeM

The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pKD1DqMZENY

armenian ropewalker-pahlevan (փահլևան)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGPG5NvlOq4

Meet the Last Tightrope Dancer | Yerevan, Armenia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcbuRZh_MZc

Walking The Wire (1930)

6.6.1 Nietzsche's Ideas about the "Übermensch"

http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Nietzsche,+Friedrich/Also+sprach+Zarathustra/Zarathustras+Vorrede

Nietzsche had presented some essential ideas about the "Übermensch":

Der Mensch ist ein Seil, geknüpft zwischen Tier und Übermensch – ein Seil über einem Abgrunde.

Ein gefährliches Hinüber, ein gefährliches Auf-dem-Wege, ein gefährliches Zurückblicken, ein gefährliches Schaudern und Stehenbleiben.

3. Als Zarathustra in die nächste Stadt kam, die an den Wäldern liegt, fand er daselbst viel Volk versammelt auf dem Markte: denn es war verheißen worden, daß man einen Seiltänzer sehen solle. Und Zarathustra sprach also zum Volke:

Ich lehre euch den Übermenschen. Der Mensch ist etwas, das überwunden werden soll. Was habt ihr getan, ihn zu überwinden? ...

Wer aber der Weiseste von euch ist, der ist auch nur ein Zwiespalt[279] und Zwitter von Pflanze und von Gespenst. Aber heiße ich euch zu Gespenstern oder Pflanzen werden?

Seht, ich lehre euch den Übermenschen!

Der Übermensch ist der Sinn der Erde. Euer Wille sage: der Übermensch sei der Sinn der Erde!

Ich beschwöre euch, meine Brüder, bleibt der Erde treu und glaubt denen nicht, welche euch von überirdischen Hoffnungen reden! Giftmischer sind es, ob sie es wissen oder nicht.

Verächter des Lebens sind es, Absterbende und selber Vergiftete, deren die Erde müde ist: so mögen sie dahinfahren! ...

Wahrlich, ein schmutziger Strom ist der Mensch. Man muß schon ein Meer sein, um einen schmutzigen Strom aufnehmen zu können, ohne unrein zu werden.

Seht, ich lehre euch den Übermenschen: der ist dies Meer, in ihm kann eure große Verachtung untergehn.

Was ist das Größte, das ihr erleben könnt? Das ist Stunde der großen Verachtung. Die Stunde, in der euch auch euer Glück zum Ekel wird und ebenso eure Vernunft und eure Tugend.

...

Seht, ich lehre euch den Übermenschen: der ist dieser Blitz, der ist dieser Wahnsinn! –

Als Zarathustra so gesprochen hatte, schrie einer aus dem Volke: »Wir hörten nun genug von dem Seiltänzer; nun laßt uns ihn auch sehen!« Und alles Volk lachte über Zarathustra. Der Seiltänzer aber, welcher glaubte, daß das Wort ihm gälte, machte sich an sein Werk.

4. Zarathustra aber sahe das Volk an und wunderte sich. Dann sprach er also:

Der Mensch ist ein Seil, geknüpft zwischen Tier und Übermensch – ein Seil über einem Abgrunde.

Ein gefährliches Hinüber, ein gefährliches Auf-dem-Wege, ein gefährliches Zurückblicken, ein gefährliches Schaudern und Stehenbleiben.

Was groß ist am Menschen, das ist, daß er eine Brücke und kein Zweck ist: was geliebt werden kann am Menschen, das ist, daß er ein Übergang und ein Untergang ist.[281] ...

Ich liebe den, welcher goldne Worte seinen Taten vorauswirft und immer noch mehr hält, als er verspricht: denn er will seinen Untergang.

Ich liebe den, welcher die Zukünftigen rechtfertigt und die Vergangenen erlöst: denn er will an den Gegenwärtigen zugrunde gehen. ...

Ich liebe den, dessen Seele übervoll ist, so daß er sich selber vergißt, und alle Dinge in ihm sind: so werden alle Dinge sein Untergang.

Ich liebe den, der freien Geistes und freien Herzens ist: so ist sein Kopf nur das Eingeweide seines Herzens, sein Herz aber treibt ihn zum Untergang. ...

Seht, ich bin ein Verkündiger des Blitzes, und ein schwerer Tropfen aus der Wolke: dieser Blitz aber heißt Übermensch –

5. Als Zarathustra diese Worte gesprochen hatte, sahe er wieder das Volk an und schwieg. »Da stehen sie«, sprach er zu seinem Herzen, »da lachen sie: sie verstehen mich nicht, ich bin nicht der Mund für diese Ohren.

Muß man ihnen erst die Ohren zerschlagen, daß sie lernen, mit den Augen hören? Muß man rasseln gleich Pauken und Bußpredigern? Oder glauben sie nur dem Stammelnden?

Sie haben etwas, worauf sie stolz sind. Wie nennen sie es doch, was sie stolz macht? Bildung nennen sie's, es zeichnet sie aus vor den Ziegenhirten.

Drum hören sie ungern von sich das Wort ›Verachtung‹. So will ich denn zu ihrem Stolze reden.

So will ich ihnen vom Verächtlichsten sprechen: das aber ist der letzte Mensch.«

Und also sprach Zarathustra zum Volke:

Es ist an der Zeit, daß der Mensch sich sein Ziel stecke. Es ist an der Zeit, daß der Mensch den Keim seiner höchsten Hoffnung pflanze. ...

6. Da aber geschah etwas, das jeden Mund stumm und jedes Auge starr machte. Inzwischen nämlich hatte der Seiltänzer sein Werk begonnen: er war aus einer kleinen Tür hinausgetreten und ging über das Seil, welches zwischen zwei Türmen gespannt war, also, daß es über dem Markte und dem Volke hing. Als er eben in der Mitte seines Weges war, öffnete sich die kleine Tür noch einmal, und ein bunter Gesell, einem Possenreißer gleich, sprang heraus und ging mit schnellen Schritten dem ersten nach. »Vorwärts, Lahmfuß«, rief seine fürchterliche Stimme, »vorwärts Faultier, Schleichhändler, Bleichgesicht! Daß ich dich nicht mit meiner Ferse kitzle! Was treibst du hier zwischen Türmen? In den Turm gehörst du, einsperren sollte man dich, einem Bessern, als du bist, sperrst du die freie Bahn!« – Und mit jedem Worte kam er ihm näher und näher: als er aber nur noch einen Schritt hinter ihm war, da geschah das Erschreckliche, das jeden Mund stumm und jedes Auge starr machte – er stieß ein Geschrei aus wie ein[285] Teufel und sprang über den hinweg, der ihm im Wege war. Dieser aber, als er so seinen Nebenbuhler siegen sah, verlor dabei den Kopf und das Seil; er warf seine Stange weg und schoß schneller als diese, wie ein Wirbel von Armen und Beinen, in die Tiefe. Der Markt und das Volk glich dem Meere, wenn der Sturm hineinfährt: alles floh auseinander und übereinander, und am meisten dort, wo der Körper niederschlagen mußte.

Zarathustra aber blieb stehen, und gerade neben ihn fiel der Körper hin, übel zugerichtet und zerbrochen, aber noch nicht tot. Nach einer Weile kam dem Zerschmetterten das Bewußtsein zurück, und er sah Zarathustra neben sich knien. »Was machst du da?« sagte er endlich, »ich wußte es lange, daß mir der Teufel ein Bein stellen werde. Nun schleppt er mich zur Hölle: willst du's ihm wehren?«

»Bei meiner Ehre, Freund«, antwortete Zarathustra, »das gibt es alles nicht, wovon du sprichst: es gibt keinen Teufel und keine Hölle. Deine Seele wird noch schneller tot sein als dein Leib: fürchte nun nichts mehr!«

7 Language: A Subtle Ethnocentrism?

This may be the subject of a study to enlarge on the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. The Indo-European language structure allows to form sentences that can be described in the most general form:

Some agent (Subject) does something (verb) with something (a tool, an instrument, a weapon) to a thing (object) to achieve some aim (the will).

Aristoteles knew only the Greek language structure to formulate his philosophy and language logics, and there we have the causa finalis (the aim), the causa instrumentalis (the tool) and the causa materialis, which is the object. The aim is in other words, the will (to survive and reproduce and have a nice life in Darwinian terms). The causa formalis is the language structure itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_causes [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

Then this language structure allows us inflections or particles to denote present tense, past tense, future tense, negative tense, and imaginative tense. And then some more tenses. This is all in all called Grammatics. The most elaborate of these is the Greek Koinae, or Common Language, which was formulated in Hellenic Alexandria. The next elaborate one is the German Grammar, then comes the French, and at the end of the list, there is the English Grammar, which is practically a Pidgin with very little grammar at all. The present-day common English is comparable in simplicity only to Mandarin Chinese. So, the simplicity of a grammar makes it very well suited to be(come) a common language of most of humanity.

As the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis states, there are (supposedly) many languages that have different deep structures. It is outside the scope of the present enquiry to determine whether the Indo-European grammatical form is typical only for these languages or if it holds universally. This is the subject of the discussion in the next paragraph on Chomsky's paradigm of universal grammar.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

7.1.1 Noam Chomsky: Linguistic Philosophy

This outlines the deeper philosophical backgrounds of Chomsky's theory:

https://www.banglajol.info/index.php/PP/article/view/17681/13490 [Accessed: 2019-10-27]

Quote from p. 106-107:

2. Chomsky’s Rationalism: As a linguist, Noam Chomsky adheres to rationalism, in opposition to empiricism. His philosophy of language shows a clear influence of rationalistic ideology, which claims that reason or rationality as a property of mind is the primary source of knowledge or way to knowledge. His work is inspired by such philosophers as Plato, Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz and Immanuel Kant. His theory is related to rationalist ideas of a priori knowledge, manifested in innatism and nativism. In the introduction to Modern Philosophy of Language, Maria Baghramian traces the history of influence:

P. 107:

[quote in quote]

"The history of philosophical concern with language is as old as philosophy itself. Plato in Cratylus explored the relationship between names and things and engaged in what today would be recognised as philosophy of language. Most philosophers since Plato have shown some interest in language. Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the founder father of modern philosophy, for instance, believed in the existence of universal language underpinning the diverse languages which human communities use and is seen by twentieth- century linguist Noam Chomsky as a precursor of the theory of innateness of linguistic abilities."

As a self-declared Cartesian, Chomsky via Cartesian Linguistics (1966) clearly embraces the interpretation of Descartes’ famous dictum ‘I think therefore I am’ (cogito ergo sum) as the solid foundation for knowledge. With this Cartesian spirit, Chomsky has provided a subjective view of language, claiming that language refers to certain mental states, which a linguistic theory will explicate. He says:

[quote in quote]

"We should, so it appears, think of knowledge of language as a certain state of mind/brain, a relatively stable element in transitory mental states once it is attained; furthermore as a state of some distinguishable faculty of the mind – the language faculty – with its specific properties, structure and organisation, one module of the mind. (Chomsky, 1986: 12- 13)"

Chomsky was also influenced by Kantian epistemology...

Some more information on Chomsky:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdUbIlwHRkY [Accessed: 2019-10-30]

The Concept of Language (Noam Chomsky), 1989

7.1.2 Claude Lévi-Strauss

7.1.2.1 Claude Lévi-Strauss zur Einführung

Reinhardt, Thomas 2008: Claude Lévi-Strauss zur Einführung. Hamburg. S. 41-59.

https://moodle.lmu.de/pluginfile.php/393016/mod_book/chapter/23172/Reinhardt_2008.pdf

This article by Thomas Reinhardt accentuates the approach of Structuralism, by Claude Lévi-Strauss, who based his work on the linguistic work of Saussure. There exist some similarities with Chomsky's work. Both are based on Cartesian Linguistics. Saussure's term langue is equivalent to the innate language ability of Chomsky. Some more information is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_linguistics [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_postmodernism

http://criticallegalthinking.com/2014/01/03/post-modern-absurdities-chomsky-post-structuralism-science/

[Accessed: 2019-10-30]

7.1.2.2 Myth and Meaning

Claude Lévi-Strauss's "Myth and Meaning" is important in the present context. See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralist_theory_of_mythology

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Myth and Meaning. New York: Schocken Books, 1978.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Trans. Claire Jacobson. New York: Basic Books, 1963.

http://www.generation-online.org/p/fplevistrauss.htm

http://historiaocharkeologi.com/kanada/myth_and_meaning.pdf

https://people.ucsc.edu/~ktellez/levi-strauss.pdf

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt1gxxr10

7.1.3 The Story of Daniel Everett

One interesting case is the study by Daniel Everett, which was recently one of the most controversial issues of studies of the simplest type of human language. Because his theory contradicted the academically entrenched idea of Chomsky's paradigm of universal grammar and the recursivity of language. On the other hand, the Piraha language is quite a scientific language. It deals only with "matter-of-fact" issues and has no place for human intentions and aims and desires and wishes. At present, the current author has only minimal documentation of the Piraha language grammar and vocabulary, and so this must remain anecdotal. It doesn't help that Daniel Everett began his career as a missionary of some obscure christian sect to convert this Amazon "tribe", and he had as his only linguistic qualification nothing more than the Holy Bible. (See his talks below). This is about as much as St. Augustine had, when he did his studies of the Adamic language. (See Umberto Eco, p. 14-15 ->eco1). So it could very well have been that the Piraha people "helped" Everett out of friedliness to build his dictionary by ad hoc devising a sort of pidgin, knowing that he would never be able to understand the finer points of their language. Everett himself gives some personal information about his work in several videos, and there remains the impression that his views are somewhat simplistic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=get272FyNto [Accessed: 2019-10-26]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFxg5vkaPgk [Accessed: 2019-10-26]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjSG_PfmuK8 [Accessed: 2019-10-27]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/mar/25/daniel-everett-human-language-piraha

[Accessed: 2019-10-24]

Can you give me a very quick summary of the essential claim of this book?

There are two claims, the first is that universal grammar doesn't seem to work, there doesn't seem to be much evidence for that. And what can we put in its place? A complex interplay of factors, of which culture, the values human beings share, plays a major role in structuring the way that we talk and the things that we talk about.

From your experience in the Amazon, and generally, what is it that makes language possible?

Language is possible due to a number of cognitive and physical characteristics that are unique to humans but none of which that are unique to language. Coming together they make language possible. But the fundamental building block of language is community. Humans are a social species more than any other, and in order to build a community, which for some reason humans have to do in order to live, we have to solve the communication problem. Language is the tool that was invented to solve that problem.

https://www.amazon.de/Das-gl%C3%BCcklichste-Volk-Pirah%C3%A3-Indianern-Amazonas/dp/3421043078 [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

Als Daniel Everett 1977 mit Frau und Kindern in den brasilianischen Urwald reiste, wollte er als Missionar den Stamm der Pirahã, der ohne Errungenschaften der modernen Zivilisation an einem Nebenfluss des Amazonas lebt, zum christlichen Glauben bekehren. Er begann die Sprache zu lernen und stellte schnell fest, dass sie allen Erwartungen zuwiderläuft. Die Pirahã kennen weder Farbbezeichnungen wie rot und gelb noch Zahlen, und folglich können sie auch nicht rechnen. Sie sprechen nicht über Dinge, die sie nicht selbst erlebt haben – die ferne Vergangenheit also, Fantasieereignisse oder die Zukunft. Persönlicher Besitz bedeutet ihnen nichts. Everett verbrachte insgesamt sieben Jahre bei den Pirahã, fasziniert von ihrer Sprache, ihrer Sicht auf die Welt und ihrer Lebensweise. Sein Buch ist eine gelungene Mischung aus Abenteuererzählung und der Schilderung spannender anthropologischer und linguistischer Erkenntnisse. Und das Zeugnis einer Erfahrung, die das Leben Everetts gründlich veränderte.

About words for color: It should be noted that in the Amazon environment, almost everything there is green. And that just means that it is not edible. With a few flowers and fruits here and there, it probably is of no great survival value to distinguish their colors. The factor of ripeness of a fruit is of course important, but it is probably good enough to distinguish between "interesting/edible" and "not interesting/inedible". See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%C3%A3_language [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/brazil-s-piraha-tribe-living-without-numbers-or-time-a-414291.html [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

7.1.3.1 The Docu on Arte TV

The docu on Arte TV about Everett's work gives some more in-depth information on the language theory. But it needs to be noted that most of Arte documentary has a distinct Rousseau-esque style, and so these productions have the same somewhat romantic touch. One should notice that in all those "pristine" settings of "pure nature", there are about 1 million parasites that would like to eat a huge chunk of you. The matter of survival in such settings depends more on avoiding those parasites, than anything else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4wOzSrwW6E [Accessed: 2019-11-04]

7.2 Onoma Homoion to Pragmati?

In ancient Greek language, the epistemic question translates to something like:

"Onoma homoion to pragmati". Meaning that the spoken word may have or not any resemblance to the thing being dealt with. This was elaborated by Platon in his Kratylos (274c-275). This should count as one of the earliest linguistic etymological works about a correspondence of the spoken word with the nature of the object being named. This is in essence the Adamic question, see the work of Umberto Eco (below). The present author has mentioned this in his dissertation under Dynamic Cultural Transmission:

http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm#Heading123 [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

http://www.noologie.de/desn19.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

This is also discussed in depth as "The Kratylos Question":

http://www.noologie.de/symbol17.htm#Heading147 [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

Umberto Eco mentions this in his work: "The Search for the Perfect Language", on p. 11:

https://is.muni.cz/el/1421/podzim2017/LJMedB25/um/seminar_4/Eco_The_Search_for_the_Perfect_Language.pdf [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

A civilization with an international language does not need to worry about the multiplicity of tongues. Nevertheless such a civilization can worry about the 'rightness' of its own. In the Cratylus, Plato asks the same question that a reader of the Genesis story might: did the nomothete chose the sounds with which to name objects according to the objects' nature (physis)? This is the thesis of Cratylus, while Ermogene [AG: Hermogenes] maintains that they were assigned by law or human convention (nomos). Socrates moves among these theses with apparent ambiguity. Finally, having subjected both to ironical comment, inventing etymologies that neither he (nor Plato) is eager to accept, Socrates brings

(p. 12)

forward his own hypothesis: knowledge is founded not on our relation to the names of things, but on our relation to the things themselves - or, better, to the ideas of those things. Later, even by these cultures that ignored Cratylus, every discussion on the nature of a perfect language has revolved around the three possibilities first set out in this dialogue. None the less, the Cratylus was not itself a project for a perfect language: Plato discusses the preconditions for semantic adequacy within a given language without posing the problem of a perfect one.

8 Materials on Anthropological Theory

Here are some youtube lists about the subject:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=anthropology+playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVEqkVDn6Y4&list=PLc8e2NNCopVvBRyt58wqG-2jEXQZCd4HB

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk&list=PLveQv6d7Eew9sFx3G2_HgD4fEk8BPRwPo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzdqyXtPbbE&list=PLNOKRLmJyNbJJcwZuRkvUbl4pmUFmkWD0

8.1.1 Theoretical Anthropology

The task of Theoretical Anthropology is to bring the widely divergent views of natural science, especially contemporary neuro-science, and evolutionary science, to some convergence with cultural anthropological theories. There is a difficulty that most of western philosophy is deeply eurocentric, and much still relies on the now quite outdated model of Platonic and Christian Metaphysics. This is based on some transcendental model of what could be the meaning of the universe or the kosmos, and of course, what is the meaning of human life.

The task is: how we can come to construct a philosophical theory of human existence, human experience, human aspiring, human loving, human suffering, and human achieving, into a framework that covers all the many variations of human existence. ?

8.1.2 The New Adventures of the Human Spirit

This task is never-ending, because with every human being who lives today, we can find new avenues, or possibly new adventures of the human spirit. This is discussed in the sections about the Hero's Journey, in the many mythologies of humanity. In the present work, the author undertakes to show some of the possible paths of that Hero's Journey, and of course, the Heroine's Journey:

->campbell_work ->campbell_comparison ->campbell_monomyth

->myth_meaning ->maps_meaning

->peterson1 ->peterson_discuss

->struct_mythology

->web_meaning

What the author should also remind of, is that there is not only the Hero's Journey, but also the Tarot's Fool's Journey, the Dunce's Journey, the Trickster's Journey, the Witch's Journey, the Pervert's Journey, and the journey of so many odd-ball creatures of humanity, who may not be as Hollywood-Pop-Culture-fitting glamorous, but these still are also journeys of humanity, which are all variations of: "To err is to be human".

8.1.3 Why so many USA Professors have a Large Beard

This should not be taken too seriously: Why do so many USA university professor's have a large beard, like the proverbial Captain Ahab of Moby Dick's fame? This is probably a signature that they have obtained tenure, and the beards may be there to show this off.

For example Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sapolsky

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sapolsky&pbjreload=10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA&list=PLqeYp3nxIYpF7dW7qK8OvLsVomHrnYNjD

Here is Jared Diamond who presents some interesting pictures of indigenous society:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jared+diamond+playlist

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgnmT-Y_rGQ&list=PL7B3DB15E50F63F65&index=1

->diamond_jared

8.2 What is Human Nature?

Human Nature is a hotly controversial topic crossing the borders between the academic humanities (Geisteswissenschaften) and the natural (physics-dependent) sciences (Naturwissenschaften). The fault lines follow exactly the trench described by C.P. Snow as "the two cultures". So there are two quite distinct Anthropological theoretical lines dealing with human nature. The natural science school and the social science or humanities school.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two_Cultures [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUHYlyacMmA&list=PL3F6BC200B2930084

[Accessed: 2019-11-12]

This is for some people who understand Spanish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5w1oIsFZfw&list=PLDmBZpvjapyt07qmxokkYlxeZlnkJ6Cdt&index=3 [Accessed: 2019-11-12]

The following article provides some in-depth information about the cultural/technological dimension of evolution:

Peter A. Corning, Ph.D., Cosmos and History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, vol. 4, nos. 1-2, 2008, What Is Life? Among Other Things, It’s A Synergistic Effect!

https://www.cosmosandhistory.org/index.php/journal/article/viewFile/91/181

p. 240:

In short, animal-tool symbiosis is widespread in nature, and the difference between humans and other toolusing species, as Darwin noted, is a matter of degree; there is no difference in kind. Nevertheless, it can also be argued that humankind has achieved the highest level of behavioral synergy in evolution by virtue of the fact that we have added an entirely new cultural/technological dimension to the process. To be sure, we benefit from all of the other levels of synergy that exist in living systems, but we also do something more. We combine new and more powerful methods of obtaining, storing and transmitting information with an ongoing, cumulative process of tool and technology invention.

These superlative human skills, the roots of which probably trace back several million years in our ancestry, very likely were “pacemakers” that shaped the trajectory of our biological evolution. In biologist Jonathan Kingdon’s (1993) characterization, we are the “self-made man.” (A detailed discussion of this hypothesis can be found in Corning 2003.) From our earliest stone tools to the control of fire (and other exogenous energy sources) to language, writing and the latest in interplanetary space technologies, humankind has invented new and increasingly complex technological synergies that have also expanded the scope and reach of the evolutionary process itself. We represent a synergy of synergies.

8.2.1 Human Culture has formed Human Nature

Even though the proposition seems tricky, it is actually quite easy to solve: Humanity has produced its own cultural environment for the evolution of the biological species "homo xyz". This has been going on since at least 100,000 years but possibly up to 1,000,000 years (the paleontological data get more sparse and blurred the older they are). This has been pointed out by Jonathan Kingdon in "Self-Made Man". It is primarily the use of fire and cooking which had a decisive influence on the development of the brain (Richard Wrangham), and then comes tool use which shaped the human living environment into some sort of incubator. Also of importance is sexual selection. Women were not only selecting men as sex-partners because of brute strength but also for story-telling, dancing and singing, or more general, art and enchantment. This is the human equivalent of the proverbial peacock's tail, which already Darwin was aware of. This example also breaks open the Spencerian "survival of the fittest" dogma since "fit" is now defined by the tastes of the females. See also these articles by the present author:

http://www.noologie.de/noo02.htm#Heading119

Ein Noologisches Märchen: Das Leben der Menschen im Paradiese

http://www.noologie.de/noo02.htm#Heading120

Das Leben vor der Erfindung des Leides:

Wenn die Bonobos unsere Vorfahren gewesen wären.

http://www.noologie.de/noo02.htm#Heading121

Ansätze für alternative Ur-Menschheits-Historien

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trSRozVaco0

Humans: The Cooking Ape, a lecture by Richard Wrangham

Kingdon, Jonathan: Self-Made Man: Human Evolution from Eden to Extinction? John Wiley & Sons Incorporated, (1993)

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jonathan-kingdon/self-made-man/

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/bfm%3A978-3-0348-6066-6%2F1.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315753651_Guest_Editorial_Dedicated_to_Jonathan_Kingdon_on_the_Occasion_of_his_80_th_Birthday/link/58e232eb92851c36954d1235/download

https://books.google.de/books?id=PpEjAQAAIAAJ&dq=editions:ISBN0671712608

How did man evolve? Through simple adaptation to physical environments? Pure Darwinian selection? Neither, says internationally recognized evolution expert Jonathan Kingdon. When it comes to evolution, neither biology nor geography is destiny. It was technology -- furs and fires, boats and fishtraps -- that liberated man's ancestors from their primate pasts. In Self-Made Man, Kingdon offers a radical new interpretation of the role that man's lust for new tools and technologies played in driving human evolution. Modern humans are truly "self-made," argues Kingdon, because even the most strictly biological of adaptations was profoundly influenced by technological innovations, distinguishing our evolutionary path from that of all other animals. A perverse result of this technological genius has been an irreversible dependence of our species on technological innovation, which may, Kingdon argues passionately, ultimately destroy our environment and threaten our very existence. This brilliant tour through the history of evolution draws on the most up-to-date findings in genetics, paleoanthropology, archaeology, and ecology. ...

He recounts how the residents of the African "Eden" developed skills, tools, and technologies, and were able to venture out into less habitable territory. Thus, it was technology that drove their migration to the farthest reaches of the earth--and so it is technology that lies at the heart of human form and diversity. As it explores the processes that brought humanity to its present condition, Self-Made Man demolishes some widely held notions about early societies and the origins of races. From its re-examination of the role of women and children in the development of advanced societies to its assertion that skin, hair, and eye color may not be determined by physical surroundings and a subsequent redefinition of "race," Self-Made Man is full of provocative reinterpretations and revelations that are sure to surprise and challenge all readers.

Peter Sloterdijk also mentions the incubator theory in some places (in "Blasen"), even though some of his more audacious theories are widely accused of being politically incorrect, like his "Regeln für den Menschenpark".

https://homepage.univie.ac.at/henning.schluss/seminare/023bildung_und_genetik/texte/01sloterdijk.htm

Worum es hier im Ernst zu tun ist, das hat der Meister des gefährlichen Denkens, Nietzsche, im dritten Teil von 'Also sprach Zarathustra' unter der Überschrift: 'Von der verkleinernden Tugend' in beklemmenden Andeutungen umschrieben:

... (KSA 4, S.211-214)

Ohne Zweifel verbirgt sich in dieser rhapsodischen Spruchfolge ein theoretischer Diskurs über den Menschen als eine zähmende und züchtende Gewalt. Aus Zarathustras Perspektive sind die Menschen der Gegenwart vor allem eines: erfolgreiche Züchter, die es vermocht haben, aus dem wilden Menschen den letzten Menschen zu machen. Es versteht sich von selbst, daß dergleichen nicht nur mit humanistischen, zähmend-abrichtend-erzieherischen Mitteln geschehen konnte. Mit der These vom Menschen als Züchter des Menschen wird der humanistische Horizont gesprengt, sofern der Humanismus niemals weiter denken kann und darf als bis zur Zähmungs- und Erziehungsfrage: Der Humanist läßt sich den Menschen vorgeben und wendet dann auf ihn seine zähmenden, dressierenden, bildenden Mittel an - überzeugt, wie er ist, vom notwendigen Zusammenhang zwischen Lesen, Sitzen und Besänftigen.

https://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spezial:ElectronPdf&page=Regeln+f%C3%BCr+den+Menschenpark&action=show-download-screen

http://magazin.spiegel.de/EpubDelivery/spiegel/pdf/14799651

8.2.2 Human Infants Depend on a Society to Survive

The problem with finding a purely natural endowment of humans is that infants are always born into a society and this means a social structure. Apart from some fancy novels like that of Tarzan and Kipling's Mowgli (wolf children), there has never been an observation of a human infant that survived being separated from their mother directly after birth with no other mother-like substitute. Another very interesting story-tale is the founding myth of the Romans, that Romulus and Remus were succled and brought up by a she-wolf. This is at least interesting for its mythological theme. These are "as-if" stories about whether a human infant without cultural embedding could reach its human potential, especially language. The enculturation of a human begins already in the womb, like the motions and the sounds of the mother body, and the food that she eats. It is quite unlikely that an isolated human child, even when fed, could by itself develop language ability. There are stories of experiments, to raise children without language interaction, and they all failed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_deprivation_experiments

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/181892/summary

https://go.galegroup.com/ps/anonymous?id=GALE%7CA131004083&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=10651438&p=AONE&sw=w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBgeyRwlPOA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mowgli

Mowgli /ˈmaʊɡli/ is a fictional character and the protagonist of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book stories. He is a naked feral child from the Pench area in Seoni, India, who originally appeared in Kipling's short story "In the Rukh" (collected in Many Inventions, 1893) and then went on to become the most prominent and memorable character in his collections The Jungle Book and The Second Jungle Book (1894–1895), which also featured stories about other characters.^[1]

8.3 The Observable Universe is Socially Constructed

Taken to the extremes, the position of (a large part of) the humanities is their insistence that almost everything in the observable universe is socially constructed. This holds largely true as we are constrained to the "observable" side. In Kantian terms, we cannot observe the "thing-in-itself" objectively because our observations are always influenced by selection filters. The most common selection filters are our (culturally conditioned) sense facilities and our observation instruments.

[One example of cultural conditioning are the tone variations of (so many) chinese dialects which can only be mastered perfectly when learned in the first 3 years of primary imprinting.]

The sense extensions like a telescope or a microscope or a film camera, are all the result of a few millennia of technological development, and technology is of course a social endeavor. One other factor of cultural selection filters is the early enculturation of the fetus in the womb of the mother. Peter Sloterdijk uses a quite different terminology for the construction of the social world: Anthropotechniken. See: ->sloterdijk_sphaere

https://www.geogr-helv.net/73/261/2018/gh-73-261-2018.pdf

...menschliche Techniken, Anthropotechniken, durch deren Einübung sich Menschen Welt aneignen und gemeinsam in ihr einrichten

8.3.1 Strukturalismus und Wirklichkeit

The most extreme position of socially constructed environment is formulated in the theory of structuralism, as the following example shows. The quote is from:

Einführung in die Ethnologie (Kursinhalte) / 7. Zentrale Theorien nach 1945

https://moodle.lmu.de/mod/book/view.php?id=226747&chapterid=23172

Reinhardt, Thomas (2008): Claude Lévi-Strauss zur Einführung. Hamburg. S. 41-59

https://moodle.lmu.de/mod/book/view.php?id=226747&chapterid=23172#ch-7-1

"Wirklichkeit an sich existiert also nicht. Sie wird durch den strukturierenden menschlichen Geist geschaffen, durch das Ordnen der erfahrbaren Umwelt, die sonst in ihrer Vielseitigkeit nicht erfassbar wäre."
Amborn, Hermann 1992: Strukturalismus. Theorie und Methode. In: Fischer, Hans (Hg.): Ethnologie. Einführung und Überblick. Berlin und Hamburg. S. 347.

It would take a very seasoned structuralist anthropologist to interpret the following situation in terms of a social construct: Imagine the anthropologist sitting alone in the middle of winter in the Siberian tundra, at -50 degree celsius, and with a wind speed of 100 km/h, and then to exclaim that "this is just a social construct!".

8.3.2 The Explored Territory and the Unexplored Territory

There are many cases where the idea of socially constructed reality will run into problems. We may just consider a huge volcano eruption, an earthquake, a hurricane, a tsunami, or the impact of a huge asteroid of 10 km diameter. These are all cases where "reality" allows no social construction. Jordan Peterson elaborates the difference of the normal functioning of society vs. abnormal cases in his structural system of the Explored Territory and the Unexplored Territory.

Unexplored Territory: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology, p. 41.

Exploration: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology, p. 48.

Explored Territory: Phenomenology and Neuropsychology, p. 61.

This is explained in the following quotation:

http://www.cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/cgi/psyc/newpsy?10.077

8. It appears to be the case, first, that the human brain has developed two large-scale specialized systems of adaptation (see Goldberg, Podell and Lovell (1994) for a parallel notion). The first of these, which we strive with all our might to keep activated, operates when we are in home territory. In home territory, we are secure. Friends and kin are there. Our position in the primate dominance hierarchy there, while not necessarily optimal, perhaps, is at least familiar. Our battles for position have been fought, and decided, even if not won, and we are not threatened by every move we make (or every move made by another). We know what to do in home territory - and, therefore, we might say that culture is where we know how to be. But where are you when you know where to be?

9. The second specialized system of adaptation operates when we do not know where we are. We strive with all our might to keep this system shut down, inhibited. Most of us are in the fortunate position of never having experienced its full activation (at least not within memory). We have never been shaken out of our beds in the middle of the night by mortal enemies, bent on our destruction. We have never found ourselves up against the predatory terrors of the primordial forest, unshielded by our cultural milieu. At most - except, perhaps, when we experience the death of someone loved - we suffer anxiety and grief, rather than terror and despair. We are not at the mercy of nature - at least so we think, as we continue to conquer the world with the tools of our knowledge. But grief and misery occur where we least expect them (and maybe that is nature, too).

8.3.3 "Wirklichkeit" is NOT "Reality"

"Wirklichkeit" and "Reality" have a very different language substructure. The German word "Wirklichkeit" means something that the Roman/Latin concept of "Reality" is incapable to express. "Wirklich" means "Wirken" or "Be-Wirken", this is the "Wirkung". "Wirken" is that force which influences us and we influence something. The English equivalent is work. In Greek it is ergon or wergon. There is an even older etymological connection here, because "Wirken" has an old synonymous connection to "Weben". This is again connected to the ancient Latin term textus and the Greek term histion which is quite significant.

https://synonyme.woxikon.de/synonyme/wirken.php

Synonymgruppe

↗flechten · ↗knüpfen · ↗spinnen · ↗weben · wirken

https://www.dwds.de/wb/wirken

http://www.noologie.de/neuro05.htm

... den uralten Stoff der Homerischen Odyssee als ein "sich selbst webendes mythisches Gespinst" (histion) [57] zu interpretieren

http://www.noologie.de/neuro08.htm#fn154

[154] Histion := das Gespinst. Über die Zeiten vor Erfindung der Schrift kann man keine Geschichtsschreibung machen, da die stummen Zeugen der Urzeit, die in den Ausgrabungen der Archäologen und Paläontologen zum Vorschein kommen, nur durch die Filter des heutigen Denkens und Verstehens interpretiert werden können, und die unweigerlich mehr oder weniger starke Projektionen des "Jetzt" auf die Ur-Zeit enthalten.

http://www.noologie.de/noo202.htm#Index1351

http://www.noologie.de/noo202.htm#Index1366

http://www.noologie.de/noo202.htm#fn102

[102] Historia / Textus: Das Gewebe (Histion) der Geschichten der Kollektiv-Erinnerung.

So, the German "Wirklichkeit" is quite different from the Roman/Latin concept, where "Reality" is derived from "Res", in German a "Ding, Sache, Objekt". There can never be a clean separation of "Subject" from "Object". And by this, the Roman/Latin mode of thinking the "world" is structurally deficient.

8.4 Darwinian / Physicalist Theories

The natural science view is based on an extension of the Darwinian theory that links all the abilities of the human organism to the great web of evolution. The concept of "survival of the fittest" by Herbert Spencer is actually a tautology: What survives is fit. The rich history of extinctions shows that it is mostly those organisms that are most specialized for their environments, that are the first to go extinct when the climate or other environment factors change. And humans are just some specific branch of this evolutionary theater, and there is no such thing as a higher evolutionary position of humans. Their biological modes of expression and cognition are made of the same stuff as all organic matter. The human sensorium is oriented around the sense of vision and of space, next comes the hearing sense, and all the other senses follow at some distance. One can compare the human sensorium quite closely with that of a cat, and a bird of prey. The essence of this visual acuity is the binocular spatial vision. This is a characteristic of predatory animals and of monkeys living in the trees, where exact spatial orientation is essential for survival. Herbivores typically have their eyes set laterally in the skull and they have no visional ability of something to point at and focus on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binocular_vision [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

A quite interesting aspect of spatial vision is exemplified in the typical walking gait of birds, where the head sharply goes forward and backward. This allows a bird to "assemble" a kind of spatial vision between its head positions. The human sense of peripheral vision of motion of (possibly edible or dangerous) objects is most highly developed. Jordan Peterson and James Gibson have elaborated on this: ->petersen1 ->gibson1. It is a misconception to describe humans as "Mängelwesen" (a somewhat deficient creature) in the diction of Arnold Gehlen. Humans can out-run most of all steppe animals in terms of endurance, as it is evidenced in Khoi-San hunting techniques.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A4ngelwesen [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Gehlen [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

One other reason for the misconception of deficiency of the human organism is technological. The senses of smell and taste are also very highly developed, but since there is no good technological instrumentation to make a science of it, this has lagged behind. And it is left to the mainly French and Chinese experts of perfumes, sommeliers and cooking, who know this field better than the scientists. So the human organism has a quite good combination of a specific ensemble of modes of perception and expression.

8.4.1 Sociobiology

The present day name of evolutionary anthropology is Sociobiology. Aside from Darwin, we have as founders of this movement Thomas Hobbes, Herbert Spencer, and modern-day proponents like E.O. Wilson. The following wikipedia article sums it all up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociobiology [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

8.4.2 Die Natur der Kulturen

An example of a quite controversial sociobiological interpretation of "culture" is this:

Heiner Mühlmann: "Die Natur der Kulturen".

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heiner_M%C3%BChlmann

https://download.e-bookshelf.de/download/0000/7334/30/L-G-0000733430-0002339371.pdf

http://www2.uni-wuppertal.de/FB5-Hofaue/Brock/Schrifte/Habil/Rezens2.html

While most of the German intelligenzia are unanimous in denouncing this work, in the USA, there are also some positive receptions.

https://www.bookdepository.com/Nature-Cultures-Heiner-M%C3%BChlmann/9783211828007

Culture does not only mean art society, Rilke poems, string quartet and an evening of chess. Culture is also and even more so criminality, xenophobia, civil wars, fundamentalism; all measurable symptoms of adjustment difficulties. These are based on stress and on inability to cooperate experienced by the participants. Culture is, according to Muhlmann's socio-biological thesis, the result of the combination of stress and an ability to cooperate. Advanced Western civilizations are a result of a maximal stress cooperation (MCS), leading, of course, to a conception of culture, that can hardly be called intellectual any longer. Springer Verlag's new book series opens on a triumphant note. It presents a powerful thesis, a clear and transparent language, all within 150 pages, and a pressing topic (Sudwestfunk). The author has been awarded by the International Institute for Advanced Studies in System Research and Cybernetics and Systems Research Foundation for authoring an excellent book, which has been nominated...

8.4.3 Genetics

Sociobiology is based on genetics. In this field, the work of Richard Dawkins has become very popular, with his seminal expression: "The Selfish Gene". There is a problem with popular-science ideas of genetics: The DNA is a pattern that is used to produce proteins, meaning bio-molecules of extraordinary complexity. A chunk of DNA is called a gene. It is quite difficult to imagine that this DNA chunk has any self-reproductive impulse. It is always the (female) ovum cell body that does the reproducing. And there is still a huge gap of (mis-) understanding of all the many intermediary stages between a protein and the formation of the body of an organism. The latest fad in genetics is CRISPR, meaning a technique to tailor the DNA in some ways to achieve some outcome, and this is quite universally not very well understood. There are very many un-intended side-effects when applying this technique. Another current catchword is epigenetics. This means that there exists a transfer mechanism of the life-experience of the organism into its own genetics. This is a Lamarckian concept, and is therefore a great "bone of contention" in present-day genetics.

8.4.4 Ethology, Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Konrad Lorenz

Here are some docu's on Eibl-Eibesfeldt, Konrad Lorenz and then some more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRj21XvCl7k&list=PL9EbgUcldz4XY7rtze7TMaFhL0bzKQafs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qL2NTzPcIY&list=PLDmBZpvjapyt07qmxokkYlxeZlnkJ6Cdt&index=9

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRj21XvCl7k&list=PLDmBZpvjapyt07qmxokkYlxeZlnkJ6Cdt&index=10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjzeULRbSp0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WHXn7NOQXY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YU_1_Xj9Unc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko6cHXj31hg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fd3-JQAWiM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUFOuCzkeFg

8.4.5 Physicalism and Consciousness

This is a line of thought that has some relevance for embodied knowledge.

https://aeon.co/essays/how-and-why-exactly-did-consciousness-become-a-problem

Yet, as some philosophers of the early 20th century began to point out, physicalism contains a logical flaw. If consciousness is a secondary byproduct of physical laws, and if those laws are causally closed – meaning that everything in the world is explained by them (as physicalists claim) – then consciousness becomes truly irrelevant. Physicalism further allows us to imagine a world without consciousness, a ‘zombie world’ that looks exactly like our own, peopled with beings who act exactly like us but aren’t conscious. ...

These are fighting words. And some scientists are fighting back. In the frontline are the neuroscientists who, with increasing frequency, are proposing theories for how subjective experience might emerge from a matrix of neurons and brain chemistry. A slew of books over the past two decades have proffered solutions to the ‘problem’ of consciousness. Among the best known are Christof Koch’s The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach (2004); Giulio Tononi and Gerald Edelman’s A Universe of Consciousness: How Matter Becomes Imagination (2000); Antonio Damasio’s The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (1999); and the philosopher Daniel Dennett’s bluntly titled Consciousness Explained (1991). ...

Once we take our universe to be a mathematical arena, a question arises as to where in this scheme the realm of the soul might be found. Specifically, in an infinite despiritualised Euclidean universe there is no room for Heaven. Indeed it now becomes problematic to talk about any place beyond the physical realm. This hadn’t been an issue with the medieval cosmos, which was finite. As depicted in pre-Renaissance imagery, the medieval cosmos was a relatively small place, with the Earth at the centre surrounded, onion-like, by a set of concentric spheres carrying the Sun, Moon, planets and stars. Beyond the outermost sphere of the stars, there was metaphorically plenty of space left for the Empyrean Heaven of God. At the end of The Divine Comedy (1320), when Dante reaches the end of the physical world, he pierces the cosmic skin and emerges into the presence of ‘the Love which moves the sun and the other stars’. But with the arrival of the Newtonian universe, the problem of Heaven’s ‘location’ was compounded into a geographical absurdity.

...

Scientific materialists will argue that the scientific method enables us to get outside of experience and grasp the world as it is in itself. As will be clear by now, we disagree; indeed, we believe that this way of thinking misrepresents the very method and practice of science.

In general terms, here’s how the scientific method works. First, we set aside aspects of human experience on which we can’t always agree, such as how things look or taste or feel. Second, using mathematics and logic, we construct abstract, formal models that we treat as stable objects of public consensus. Third, we intervene in the course of events by isolating and controlling things that we can perceive and manipulate. Fourth, we use these abstract models and concrete interventions to calculate future events. Fifth, we check these predicted events against our perceptions. An essential ingredient of this whole process is technology: machines – our equipment – that standardise these procedures, amplify our powers of perception, and allow us to control phenomena to our own ends.

The Blind Spot arises when we start to believe that this method gives us access to unvarnished reality. But experience is present at every step. Scientific models must be pulled out from observations, often mediated by our complex scientific equipment. They are idealisations, not actual things in the world. Galileo’s model of a frictionless plane, for example; the Bohr model of the atom with a small, dense nucleus with electrons circling around it in quantised orbits like planets around a sun; evolutionary models of isolated populations – all of these exist in the scientist’s mind, not in nature. They are abstract mental representations, not mind-independent entities. Their power comes from the fact that they’re useful for helping to make testable predictions. But these, too, never take us outside experience, for they require specific kinds of perceptions performed by highly trained observers.

So the belief that scientific models correspond to how things truly are doesn’t follow from the scientific method. Instead, it comes from an ancient impulse – one often found in monotheistic religions – to know the world as it is in itself, as God does. The contention that science reveals a perfectly objective ‘reality’ is more theological than scientific.

For these reasons, scientific ‘objectivity’ can’t stand outside experience; in this context, ‘objective’ simply means something that’s true to the observations agreed upon by a community of investigators using certain tools. Science is essentially a highly refined form of human experience, based on our capacities to observe, act and communicate.

Recent philosophers of science who target such ‘naive realism’ argue that science doesn’t culminate in a single picture of a theory-independent world. Rather, various aspects of the world – from chemical interactions to the growth and development of organisms, brain dynamics and social interactions – can be more or less successfully described by partial models. These models are always bound to our observations and actions, and circumscribed in their application.

...

Let’s return to the problem we started with, the question of time and the existence of a First Cause. Many religions have addressed the notion of a First Cause in their mythic creation narratives. To explain where everything comes from and how it originates, they assume the existence of an absolute power or deity that transcends the confines of space and time. With few exceptions, God or gods create from without to give rise to what is within.

Unlike myth, however, science is constrained by its conceptual framework to function along a causal chain of events. The First Cause is a clear rupture of such causation – as Buddhist philosophers pointed out long ago in their arguments against the Hindu theistic position that there must be a first divine cause. How could there be a cause that was not itself an effect of some other cause? The idea of a First Cause, like the idea of a perfectly objective reality, is fundamentally theological.

8.4.6 The "Idea" of Space

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_(graphical) [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

https://useum.org/Renaissance/Perspective [Accessed: 2019-10-27]

The Renaissance brought the technique of perspective to simulate the impression of the depth of space on a flat surface like a painting. The quotes for the word "idea" accentuate that 3-d space is not a Platonic idea at all. It is an essential part of the embodied knowledge of the adaptation to the living environment of humanity. In the majority of European cultures, the height-depth of space has no great survival value, since most of that environment is dominated by plains. When people live in the mountains, they have a much greater awareness of heights and their physical properties. When we consider the life of people in deep jungle forests, where trees can reach heights of 50 meters and more, they must also have a greater awareness of height than flat-landers. It takes a very acute sense of height and ballistics to shoot at a monkey or a sloth with a blowpipe or bow-and-arrow to actually hit the target. It is of no interest for these people if there exists no elaborate vocabulary of 3-d space, since most of the transmission of this embodied knowledge occurs as "learning by doing".

See: ->embodied_konwledge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn8gk67s6YM&list=PL6gx8p07P7_EuA4hBGMXWVNeut2rVlvi0

Nomads of the Rainforest PBS NOVA 1984

8.5 Deductive vs. Inductive Methods

https://deborahgabriel.com/2013/03/17/inductive-and-deductive-approaches-to-research/

[Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://www.thoughtco.com/deductive-vs-inductive-reasoning-3026549

[Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning are two different approaches to conducting scientific research. Using deductive reasoning, a researcher tests a theory by collecting and examining empirical evidence to see if the theory is true. Using inductive reasoning, a researcher first gathers and analyzes data, then constructs a theory to explain her findings.

Within the field of sociology, researchers use both approaches. Often the two are used in conjunction when conducting research and when drawing conclusions from results.

Deductive Reasoning

Many scientists consider deductive reasoning the gold standard for scientific research. Using this method, one begins with a theory or hypothesis, then conducts research in order to test whether that theory or hypothesis is supported by specific evidence. This form of research begins at a general, abstract level and then works its way down to a more specific and concrete level. If something is found to be true for a category of things, then it is considered to be true for all things in that category in general.

An example of how deductive reasoning is applied within sociology can be found in a 2014 study of whether biases of race or gender shape access to graduate-level education. A team of researchers used deductive reasoning to hypothesize that, due to the prevalence of racism in society, race would play a role in shaping how university professors respond to prospective graduate students who express interest in their research. By tracking professor responses (and lack of responses) to imposter students, coded for race and gender by name, the researchers were able to prove their hypothesis true. They concluded, based on their research, that racial and gender biases are barriers that prevent equal access to graduate-level education across the U.S.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-explanation/ [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Issues concerning scientific explanation have been a focus of philosophical attention from Pre-Socratic times through the modern period. However, recent discussion really begins with the development of the Deductive-Nomological (DN) model. This model has had many advocates (including Popper 1935, 1959, Braithwaite 1953, Gardiner, 1959, Nagel 1961) but unquestionably the most detailed and influential statement is due to Carl Hempel (Hempel 1942, 1965, and Hempel & Oppenheim 1948). These papers and the reaction to them have structured subsequent discussion concerning scientific explanation to an extraordinary degree. After some general remarks by way of background and orientation (Section 1), this entry describes the DN model and its extensions, and then turns to some well-known objections (Section 2). It next describes a variety of subsequent attempts to develop alternative models of explanation, including Wesley Salmon's Statistical Relevance (Section 3) and Causal Mechanical (Section 4) models and the Unificationist models due to Michael Friedman and Philip Kitcher (Section 5). Section 6 provides a summary and discusses directions for future work.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/abduction/ [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

In the philosophical literature, the term “abduction” is used in two related but different senses. In both senses, the term refers to some form of explanatory reasoning. However, in the historically first sense, it refers to the place of explanatory reasoning in generating hypotheses, while in the sense in which it is used most frequently in the modern literature it refers to the place of explanatory reasoning in justifying hypotheses. In the latter sense, abduction is also often called “Inference to the Best Explanation.”

This entry is exclusively concerned with abduction in the modern sense, although there is a supplement on abduction in the historical sense, which had its origin in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce—see the

Supplement: Peirce on Abduction.

See also the entry on scientific discovery, in particular the section on discovery as abduction.

Most philosophers agree that abduction (in the sense of Inference to the Best Explanation) is a type of inference that is frequently employed, in some form or other, both in everyday and in scientific reasoning. However, the exact form as well as the normative status of abduction are still matters of controversy. This entry contrasts abduction with other types of inference; points at prominent uses of it, both in and outside philosophy; considers various more or less precise statements of it; discusses its normative status; and highlights possible connections between abduction and Bayesian confirmation theory.

8.6 Questions of Diffusionism

The Circumpolar Culture Theory:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8EZGKS06_Q

NOVA - Secrets Of The Lost Red Paint People

This video makes a reference to certain common cultural traits of archaic circum-polar peoples in Siberia, Northern Europe, and Labrador/Newfoundland (or better: North-Eastern America) that share common implements. This is connected to the theory of Norwegian professor Paul Simonsen (min. 35:00 of the video). The keyword is Circumpolar Studies and Acta Borealia. If a cultural transfer would have existed around 4000 years ago, that implies that these people were capable of boat-building and navigation near the polar region.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-prehistoric-society/article/ground-slates-in-the-scandinavian-younger-stone-age-with-reference-to-circumpolar-maritime-adaptations/4E4EED94404CCC84F9D6551AEA793541

Circumpolar culture theory has been a persistent unifying theme in northern anthropology, playing a formative role in the development of general anthropological theory and stimulating numerous archaeological and ethnological studies of high latitude regions. One of the most important contributions to this field was Gutorm Gjessing's Circumpolar Stone Age (1944). Today this work is known as a timely synthesis in which ethnological and archaeological data were marshalled in support of an hypothesis of northern diffusion through the Arctic and Taiga zones from Scandinavia to northeastern North America. The principal elements in this proposed diffusion chain included toggling harpoons, large skin boats, oil lamps, ulu-type knives, ground slate tools, the curved-back adze or gouge, and cord-marked pottery. Later additions to this circumpolar adaptive complex included parallels in social structure, religion, and mythology (Gjessing 1953; Nordland 1968).

https://scholar.google.com/scholar_lookup?title=When+and+why+did+occupational+specialization+begin+at+the+Scandinavian+north+coast?&publication+year=1973&author=Simonsen+P.&author=Fitzhugh

When and why did occupational specialization begin at the Scandinavian north coast

P Simonsen - … Maritime Adaptations of the Circumpolar Zone, 1975 - books.google.com

In Scandinavian prehistory it has been nearly a dogma that the preagrarian, food-gathering

society had no professional handicraftsmen or other specialists, except the shaman. In my

work with the sub-Neolithic culture of northernmost Scandinavia I have found many

confirmations of this view, but also a few remarkable exceptions. These will be published

here for the first time. The pattern of settlement among the hunters and fishers of the late

Stone Age in the county of Finnmark, farthest north in Norway, normally was the little fishing …

The work of Hertha v. Dechend is also an example for (theoretical) diffusionism of archaic humanity. ->dechend

8.7 The System of Descartes

8.7.1 French Rationalism and Descartes

In the line of thought most commonly associated with French Rationalism, the most influential thinker was Descartes. The Cartesian Doctrine, as it is also called, is a Binary Dualism. It presupposes a mind-body split, which is another version of the ancient Zoroastrian, Gnostic and Manichaean ideology.

8.7.2 The Problems of the Cartesian View

This has its own problems, as the following article in aeon shows:

https://aeon.co/ideas/how-the-dualism-of-descartes-ruined-our-mental-health

[Accessed: 2019-10-29]

Toward the end of the Renaissance period, a radical epistemological and metaphysical shift overcame the Western psyche. The advances of Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei and Francis Bacon posed a serious problem for Christian dogma and its dominion over the natural world. Following Bacon’s arguments, the natural world was now to be understood solely in terms of efficient causes (ie, external effects). Any inherent meaning or purpose to the natural world (ie, its ‘formal’ or ‘final’ causes) was deemed surplus to requirements. Insofar as it could be predicted and controlled in terms of efficient causes, not only was any notion of nature beyond this conception redundant, but God too could be effectively dispensed with.

In the 17th century, René Descartes’s dualism of matter and mind was an ingenious solution to the problem this created. ‘The ideas’ that had hitherto been understood as inhering in nature as ‘God’s thoughts’ were rescued from the advancing army of empirical science and withdrawn into the safety of a separate domain, ‘the mind’. On the one hand, this maintained a dimension proper to God, and on the other, served to ‘make the intellectual world safe for Copernicus and Galileo’, as the American philosopher Richard Rorty put it in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979). In one fell swoop, God’s substance-divinity was protected, while empirical science was given reign over nature-as-mechanism – something ungodly and therefore free game.

Nature was thereby drained of her inner life, rendered a deaf and blind apparatus of indifferent and value-free law, and humankind was faced with a world of inanimate, meaningless matter, upon which it projected its psyche – its aliveness, meaning and purpose – only in fantasy. It was this disenchanted vision of the world, at the dawn of the industrial revolution that followed, that the Romantics found so revolting, and feverishly revolted against.

...

Although Descartes’s dualism did not win the philosophical day, we in the West are still very much the children of the disenchanted bifurcation it ushered in. Our experience remains characterised by the separation of ‘mind’ and ‘nature’ instantiated by Descartes. Its present incarnation – what we might call the empiricist-materialist position – not only predominates in academia, but in our everyday assumptions about ourselves and the world. This is particularly clear in the case of mental disorder.

In the previous episteme, before the bifurcation of mind and nature, irrational experiences were not just ‘error’ – they were speaking a language as meaningful as rational experiences, perhaps even more so. Imbued with the meaning and rhyme of nature herself, they were themselves pregnant with the amelioration of the suffering they brought. Within the world experienced this way, we had a ground, guide and container for our ‘irrationality’, but these crucial psychic presences vanished along with the withdrawal of nature’s inner life and the move to ‘identity and difference’.

...

In the face of an indifferent and unresponsive world that neglects to render our experience meaningful outside of our own minds – for nature-as-mechanism is powerless to do this – our minds have been left fixated on empty representations of a world that was once its source and being. All we have, if we are lucky to have them, are therapists and parents who try to take on what is, in reality, and given the magnitude of the loss, an impossible task.

8.7.3 Rationalism and French Intellectuals

The influence of Descartes is such that most present-day French intellectuals still adhere to this view:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.00990.x

[Accessed: 2019-10-29]

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2012.00990.x

[Accessed: 2019-10-29]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalism [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

In philosophy, rationalism is the epistemological view that "regards reason as the chief source and test of knowledge"^[1] or "any view appealing to reason as a source of knowledge or justification".^[2] More formally, rationalism is defined as a methodology or a theory "in which the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive".^[3]

In an old controversy, rationalism was opposed to empiricism, where the rationalists believed that reality has an intrinsically logical structure. Because of this, the rationalists argued that certain truths exist and that the intellect can directly grasp these truths. That is to say, rationalists asserted that certain rational principles exist in logic, mathematics, ethics, and metaphysics that are so fundamentally true that denying them causes one to fall into contradiction. The rationalists had such a high confidence in reason that empirical proof and physical evidence were regarded as unnecessary to ascertain certain truths – in other words, "there are significant ways in which our concepts and knowledge are gained independently of sense experience".^[4]

Different degrees of emphasis on this method or theory lead to a range of rationalist standpoints, from the moderate position "that reason has precedence over other ways of acquiring knowledge" to the more extreme position that reason is "the unique path to knowledge".^[5] Given a pre-modern understanding of reason, rationalism is identical to philosophy, the Socratic life of inquiry, or the zetetic (skeptical) clear interpretation of authority (open to the underlying or essential cause of things as they appear to our sense of certainty). In recent decades, Leo Strauss sought to revive "Classical Political Rationalism" as a discipline that understands the task of reasoning, not as foundational, but as maieutic.

There are many modern influential French thinkers who follow this line of thought: Claude Levi-Strauss and Derrida, among many more.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss

Lévi-Strauss argued that the "savage" mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind and that human characteristics are the same everywhere.^[9]^[10] These observations culminated in his famous book Tristes Tropiques that established his position as one of the central figures in the structuralist school of thought. As well as sociology, his ideas reached into many fields in the humanities, including philosophy. Structuralism has been defined as "the search for the underlying patterns of thought in all forms of human activity."^[4]

8.7.4 Rousseau and Romanticism

Here is some background information on Rousseau. It should be noted that as a cultural theorist, he was influential as the "spiritus rector" of the French Revolution terror regime. (He was dead by then and couldn't object to this abuse of his theories). Otherwise his romantic idea of the noble sauvage remains a kind of oddity in anthropological literature. His view is a re-hash of the Adamic state of existence in harmony with all nature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adamic_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enochian

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_La_Peyr%C3%A8re

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_language

8.7.4.1 Rousseau's Romantic View of Adamic Humanity

We can interpret Joseph Campbell's view of mythology in the same romantic vein as Rousseau. ->campbell_work ->campbell_comparison

In Germany, the best known improvisator of this view is Karl May, in his romantic description of Winnetou. He didn't know anything about the situation there, but so much richer was his phantasy. This is Rousseau Originalton: The innate "goodness" of mankind.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winnetou

According to Karl May's story, first-person narrator Old Shatterhand encounters the Apache Winnetou, and after initial dramatic events, a true friendship arises between them; ... It portrays a belief in an innate "goodness" of mankind, albeit constantly threatened by ill-intentioned enemies. Nondogmatic Christian feelings and values play an important role, and May's heroes are often described as German Americans.

8.7.4.2 Rousseau's Romanticism vs. Thomas Hobbes

Rousseau's view that culture and civilization is a corrupting agent is now widely dismissed. We can contrast his view with that of Thomas Hobbes, who stated the exact opposite: Only culture, civilization, and government can in some ways ameliorate the brutish condition of pre-civilized humanity. When we view the social structure of Chimpanzee and Baboon societies, we come to some sobering conclusions.

https://www.chimpworlds.com/chimpanzee-social-structure/

https://www.mpg.de/11264242/chimpanzees-bonobos-conflicts-social-structures

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leviathan_(Hobbes_book)

The work concerns the structure of society and legitimate government, and is regarded as one of the earliest and most influential examples of social contract theory.^[6] Leviathan ranks as a classic Western work on statecraft comparable to Machiavelli's The Prince. Written during the English Civil War (1642–1651), Leviathan argues for a social contract and rule by an absolute sovereign. Hobbes wrote that civil war and the brute situation of a state of nature ("the war of all against all") could only be avoided by strong, undivided government.

...

Part I: Of Man

Hobbes begins his treatise on politics with an account of human nature. He presents an image of man as matter in motion, attempting to show through example how everything about humanity can be explained materialistically, that is, without recourse to an incorporeal, immaterial soul or a faculty for understanding ideas that are external to the human mind. Hobbes proceeds by defining terms clearly and unsentimentally. Good and evil are nothing more than terms used to denote an individual's appetites and desires, while these appetites and desires are nothing more than the tendency to move toward or away from an object. Hope is nothing more than an appetite for a thing combined with an opinion that it can be had. He suggests that the dominant political theology of the time, Scholasticism, thrives on confused definitions of everyday words, such as incorporeal substance, which for Hobbes is a contradiction in terms.

8.7.4.3 Rousseau's Contribution to Anthropology

Rousseau's eternal and un-surpassed contribution to anthropology will surely be his exegesis of masturbation:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/201710/brief-history-masturbation

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/0031-806X.00018

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_masturbation

The 18th-century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau saw masturbation as equal to 'mental rape', and discussed it in both Émile and Confessions. He argued that it was the corrupting influence of society that led to such unnatural acts as masturbation and that humans living a simple life amidst nature would never do such things.^[^{citation
needed}^]

This continued well into the Victorian Era, where such medical censure of masturbation was in line with the widespread social conservatism and opposition to open sexual behavior common at the time.^[30]^[31] In 1879, Mark Twain wrote a speech titled Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism which he ended with the words:

Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement it is too fleeting; as an occupation it is too wearing; as a public exhibition there is no money in it. It is unsuited to the drawing room, and in the most cultured society it has long since been banished from the social board…

So, in concluding, I say: If you must gamble away your life sexually, don’t play a Lone Hand too much.

When you feel a revolutionary uprising in your system, get your Vendome Column down some other way — don’t jerk it down.

Twain, Mark (1879). Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism (Speech). Stomach Club. Paris, France.

There were recommendations to have boys' trousers constructed so that the genitals could not be touched through the pockets, for schoolchildren to be seated at special desks to prevent their crossing their legs in class and for girls to be forbidden from riding horses and bicycles because the sensations these activities produce were considered too similar to masturbation. Boys and young men who nevertheless continued to indulge in the practice were branded as "weak-minded."^[32] Many "remedies" were devised, including eating a bland, meatless diet. This approach was promoted by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (inventor of corn flakes) and Rev. Sylvester Graham (inventor of Graham crackers).^[33]

http://www.johnbyronkuhner.com/2009/06/the-confessions-of-jean-jacques-rousseau/

The Confessions Of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Rousseau begins his Confessions with a most daring preface, which it is well to offer here to the reader:

I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will have no imitator. My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself.

Simply myself. I know my own heart and understand my fellow man. But I am made unlike any one I have ever met; I will even venture to say that I am like no one in the whole world. I may be no better, but at least I am different. Whether Nature did well or ill in breaking the mould in which she formed me, is a question which can only be resolved after the reading of my book. (1.1; the first number refers to book, second to page)

As with much of this work, because it is honest, there is an embarrassment of riches here to analyze. His concept of “nature;” his need to be “at least different;” and his proof that he is different, by attempting something unprecedented and inimitable. All of these are crucial aspects of his personality, and all revealed in the literary portrait he commissioned himself to write.

As for the question of imitators, while it cannot be said that he has had none, it should be said that he has had too few good ones. Besides Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit, I do not know of any autobiographies that can match Rousseau’s for interest, style, or profundity. Memoirs are usually written by people considered important by the world, and they take as their theme the doings and personages their importance gave them access to; but Rousseau truly attempted what he described, a portrait of himself, and on reading it you do not always feel admiration for the author, but you always feel that you are seeing him as he really was. Such is the power of Rousseau’s honesty and eloquence.

Let us deal immediately with the most unusual and notorious aspect of his autobiography, his frankness about sexuality. In his youth, almost every event in Rousseau’s life appears to be motivated by some woman’s bosom or hair. He is almost walking proof of Goethe’s dictum “The eternal-feminine draws us on.” We all know the power of sexual attraction, how often it determines where we live, what job we accept, or where we spend our free hours; and so it was for Rousseau.

...

The above story of a “little girl” serving as a personal prostitute and handling three young men one after the other is not unusually direct within this narrative, which includes: frequent reference to masturbation; a period where Rousseau himself routinely exposed himself to women on the streets; an encounter with a man who wants to masturbate with him; an arrangement to maintain a twelve-year-old girl in exchange for sex once her development had reasonably progressed; a man who attempts to molest him and finally ejaculates at him; defending himself against the advances of a homosexual priest; and others. Many of these are minor episodes, but are valuable for their picture of a basically unchanging human sexuality. But others, such as his description of losing his virginity to an older female friend, and the psychological analysis surrounding it, are liable to make the reader long for more such intelligent, honest accounts of what must be a significant concern of any person’s life.

These episodes are also made much more charming by Rousseau’s treatment, which is worth commenting on. While he is very frank and hardly flinches from telling the truth of his sexual life, he is simultaneously a great master of euphemism, so that a child might read his book and never know what was happening. So when he talks of periods of abstinence, he notes that he did avail himself of “the compensatory vice” (masturbation). He describes with glowing warmth his love-friendship for Madame de Warens, who had sex with all of her friends, and when she makes a new friend he says, “in order to attach him to herself she used every means she thought likely to be effective, not omitting the one in which she placed most reliance” (6.249). This is what periphrasis is about, charming and honest at the same time.

8.8 Derrida, Grammatology and Mental Imagery

https://monoskop.org/images/8/8e/Derrida_Jacques_Of_Grammatology_1998.pdf

This complements the results of the dissertation of the present author:

http://www.noologie.de/desn23.htm

http://www.noologie.de/desn23.htm#Heading117

Derrida's work Of Grammatology is one of the profoundest philosophical criticisms of logocentrism, the idea of a transcendental meaning, which is the Saussurean signified, and the insidious problems of alphabetic writing systems. One can dissolve the superficial paradox, that alphabetic writing seems to present a double encoding, from:

"meaning" -> "spoken word" -> "written phonetic letters". And vice versa.

[See the quote by Hendricks, below: "referentiality more subtle than in the linguistic, theological concept of the sign".]

8.8.1 Neuronal Excitation Structure

->neuronal_represent

The solution becomes quite simple when we look "under the hood" what "meaning" is made of: It is a neuronal excitation structure in the matrix of the brain. This makes the neuronal excitation structure equivalent to a written symbol. It is an inscription into the living matter of the neurons. Derrida calls this the trace (la trace). It can also be called the mental imagery, and people can employ this to do quite complex manipulations in their imagination, without using spoken words. See also: ->imagination_extra_lang

This is discussed more deeply in the following article:

http://www.noologie.de/_extra-verb.htm#extra_verb_phil

http://www.noologie.de/_extra-verb.htm#mental_image

Therefore, the translation of the neuronal excitation structure into verbal sounds is a more or less arbitrary side track, and it is just a matter of convenience and a product of the specific civilization group that invented alphabetic writing. See also:

http://www.noologie.de/desn21.htm

http://www.noologie.de/desn22.htm

8.8.2 The Ideographic Chinese Writing System

The ideographic Chinese writing system provides the example to the contrary: Here is no need to translate the neuronal structure into verbal sounds, and the mental imagery translates itself easily: "meaning" -> "written ideographic symbol". And vice versa.

Of course it is not all so simple, since we need different symbols for each "concept of meaning" which necessitates around different 4.000 symbols for easy texts, and 40.000-80.000 symbols for scholarly works. This is a heavy memory load. See also:

http://www.noologie.de/desn22.htm#Heading107

http://www.noologie.de/desn22.htm#CHINESE_ALTERN

But in the western alphabetic system, we also have to cope with the memory load of as many different words one needs to know to write, for example, a scholarly work. There we also need about 40.000-80.000 different words.

8.8.3 More Information on Grammatology

This is more information on Grammatology:

Mike Sutton:

https://www.academia.edu/36198273/Jacques_Derrida_Of_Grammatology_Part_1_Writing_Before_the_Letter_Summary_with_Explanations

Gavin P. Hendricks:

http://www.scielo.org.za/pdf/vee/v37n1/50.pdf

p. 6:

Derrida’s deconstruction of Western thinkers from Plato to Martin Heidegger attacks what he calls ‘logocentrism’, the human habit of assigning truth to the biblical Logos (Jn 1:1) or spoken language, the voice of Western reason, the Word of God in the Johannine narrative. Derrida finds that logocentrism generates and depends on a framework of two-term oppositions that are basic to Western thinking and tradition, such as being/non-being, presence/absence, white/black and oral/written. In the logocentric epistemological system, the first term of each pair is the stronger (e.g. oral/written). Derrida (1976:11) is critical about these hierarchical polarities and seeks to take language apart by reversing their order and displacing them, and thus transforming each of these privileged terms in the binary constructions by putting them in a slightly different position within a word group or by substituting words in other languages that look and sound alike but are different.

The subject of Derrida’s discussion in Of Grammatology and the principle source of his distress is the referential paradigm or centred linearity of language. Text-centrism found its philosophical self-justification in the work of Jacques Derrida. ... an uncompromising critique of logocentrism. He viewed it as the root cause of logocentrism’s interpretive interest of the West. Nowhere does he find referentiality more subtle than in the linguistic, theological concept of the sign. The linguistic sign is defined by the signifier and the signified. The signifier constitutes the visible marks (written text) committed to stone, papyrus or paper, whereas the signified refers to the so-called meaning we attach to them. The referential paradigm treats the written language as exterior and the referents, signified as having real meaning. This is for Derrida a principle of distress. The linguistic sign is defined by the signifier and the signified. The signifier constitutes the visible marks committed to paper and the signified is the so-called meaning we attached to it (Derrida 1976:13). For Derrida, the Western tradition – from Plato to Stoicism, Augustine’s to Ferdinand Saussure’s linguistic sign is defined by the signifier and signified and the transcendental to meaning attached to the text which privilege speech over writing. The ‘signifier’ constitutes written or visible words on paper, whereas the ‘signified’ refers to the meaning we attached to it (Kelber 1990:123).

Jacques Derrida’s grammatological critique of logocentrism is strongly influenced through his Jewish background by the oral Torah (dabhar), which results in a contention between the word as text (signifier) and the word in space (signified), the metaphysics of presence (time and space) in the construction of meaning and representation of text. Logocentrism, ‘[i]n the beginning was the Word’ (Jn 1:1), is the belief that knowledge is rooted in a primeval language given by God to humans. God (or the other transcendental signifier: the Idea, the great Spirit, the Self, etc.) acts as a foundation for all of our thought, language and actions. Logos is the truth whose manifestation is in the world.

https://www.academia.edu/36198273/Jacques_Derrida_Of_Grammatology_Part_1_Writing_Before_the_Letter_Summary_with_Explanations

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida

During his career Derrida published more than 40 books, together with hundreds of essays and public presentations. He had a significant influence upon the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, literature, law,^[9]^[10]^[11] anthropology,^[12]historiography,^[13] applied linguistics,^[14] sociolinguistics,^[15] psychoanalysis and political theory.

His work retains major academic influence throughout continental Europe, South America and all other countries where continental philosophy has been predominant, particularly in debates around ontology, epistemology (especially concerning social sciences), ethics, aesthetics, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of language. In the Anglosphere, where analytic philosophy is dominant, Derrida's influence is most presently felt in literary studies due to his longstanding interest in language and his association with prominent literary critics from his time at Yale. He also influenced architecture (in the form of deconstructivism), music,^[16] art,^[17] and art criticism.^[18]

Particularly in his later writings, Derrida addressed ethical and political themes in his work. Some critics consider Speech and Phenomena (1967) to be his most important work. Others cite: Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Margins of Philosophy (1972). These writings influenced various activists and political movements.^[19] He became a well-known and influential public figure, while his approach to philosophy and the notorious abstruseness of his work made him controversial.^[19]^[20]

8.9 Oppositions, Distinctions and Tension Fields

(This is work in progress, to be continued)

The Structuralistic Theory of Claude Levi-Strauss is based on a system of oppositional pairs, which is derived from Saussure. Behind this is a theory-model of French Rationalism, which is in turn based on the Philosophy of Descartes. Behind this model in turn is the age-old Dualism of Zoroastrian, Manichaean, and Abrahamitic thought. The discussion of Dualism was a main subject in the work of the present author. Dualism is a method of Categorization, which is in turn based on Aristotelian Logics. Something is either A or it is Not-A. So the whole world can be subdivided in an immense hierarchical system of binary distinctions.

8.9.1 Categorization by Tension Fields

The present author seeks to find an alternative model of meaning, which is not based on polar oppositions, but on dynamic semantic tension fields. A physical analogy would be a quantum wave state, which can assume any number of quantum positions, and becomes readable only when the quantum wave function collapses. There are many difficulties even to put this idea in a terminology that can be understood by present-day thinkers of the Aristotelian model. There needs to be some more development of this theory of mind and consciousness. Here are some of the prior attempts of the present author to present this:

http://www.noologie.de/noo01.htm

"Noologie und das Spannungsfeld von Liebe, Wissen und Macht"

http://www.noologie.de/noo02.htm#Heading13

Das "Design in Spannungsfeldern"

http://www.noologie.de/noo02.htm#Heading15

Das Bedeutungsfeld der Noologie, ein Struktur- / Transformations-System des Noos

http://www.noologie.de/noo02.htm#Heading18

Die Spannungsfelder der Noologie

http://www.noologie.de/noo02.htm#Heading34

Das Semantische Feld, Spirit, Geist, Mind, Vernunft, etc.

More approaches are formulated in this work:

Die Kultur-Mythen-Analyse und Ethno-Kybernetik

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#_Toc27324846

Die Denk-Technik der semantischen Spannungsfelder

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#_Toc27324871

Die Noo-Griechischen Semantik-Rhizome der Noologie

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#_Toc27324873

Die Phono-Semantische Logik der Noologie

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#_Toc27324899

Die SUB-OBJ-SEM Triade

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#_Toc27324834

Appendix VI: Of Phonosemantics and Fuzzy Categorization

8.10 Ecological Anthropology

Ecological Anthropology is the study of the interactions of societies with their ecological environment, either how they are influenced by it, how they influence it. In the extreme cases, when their actions are destructive, this can lead to serious degradation of it, which in turn threatens the survival of these societies. This has been treated by Jared Diamond in his books "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" and "Upheaval". His anthropological research is a side-track career and therefore somewhat controversial in the anthropology community. Nevertheless, his works are very popular. Therefore they are also mentioned here.

http://www.noologie.de/_extra.htm#diamondguns

The youtube search gives all the relevant entries.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Jared+Diamond+

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond

After graduation from Cambridge, Diamond returned to Harvard as a Junior Fellow until 1965, and, in 1968, became a professor of physiology at UCLA Medical School. While in his twenties he developed a second, parallel, career in ornithology and ecology, specialising in New Guinea and nearby islands. Later, in his fifties, Diamond developed a third career in environmental history and became a professor of geography at UCLA, his current position.^[7] He also teaches at LUISS Guido Carli in Rome.^[8] He won the National Medal of Science in 1999^[9] and Westfield State University granted him an honorary doctorate in 2009.

Diamond originally specialized in salt absorption in the gall bladder.^[6]^[10] He has also published scholarly works in the fields of ecology and ornithology,^[11] but is arguably best known for authoring a number of popular-science books combining topics from diverse fields other than those he has formally studied. Because of this academic diversity, Diamond has been described as a polymath.^[12]^[13]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_anthropology

Ecological anthropology is a sub-field of anthropology and is defined as the "study of cultural adaptations to environments".^[1] The sub-field is also defined as, "the study of relationships between a population of humans and their biophysical environment".^[2] The focus of its research concerns "how cultural beliefs and practices helped human populations adapt to their environments, and how people used elements of their cultureto maintain their ecosystems".^[1] Ecological anthropology developed from the approach of cultural ecology, and it provided a conceptual framework more suitable for scientific inquiry than the cultural ecology approach.^[3] Research pursued under this approach aims to study a wide range of human responses to environmental problems.^[3]

...

One of the leading practitioners within this sub-field of anthropology was Roy Rappaport. He delivered many outstanding works on the relationship between culture and the natural environment in which it grows, especially concerning the role of ritual in the processual relationship between the two. He conducted the majority, if not all, of his fieldwork amongst a group known as the Maring, who inhabit an area in the highlands of Papua New Guinea.^[2]

8.11 The World as Process

The deepest metaphysical foundation of all thought is whether we view the world as a collection of things or objects (also called objectivism), or whether we view it as a maelstroem of processes. The majority of Western philosophy and science tends to some variation of objectivism. [See also the comment in that section ->objectivism1 ]. Partly this is due to the influence of Platonism, which is an idealism, and this supposes that there are eternally invariable ideas of anything that exists, even though it is hard to imagine where such a repository of ideas may be located. Ideas are wholly transcendental, since they cannot exist anywhere in the material universe. The Christian theology is modeled after the Platonic idealism, postulating that all ideas reside with a transcendental, omniscient and omnipotent God. There is a psychological reason for this kind of idealism, since it gives the poor human soul a consolation of something stable in an otherwise quite chaotic universe. Jordan Peterson discusses this need for emotional stability in his book "Maps of Meaning". All human societies try to construct frameworks of stability for the individuals where they can find orientation and value. ->peterson1 ->maps_meaning

This is the background of the mythology that Peterson refers to. A criticism of his method is that he leans heavily on the patriarchal model, which is typical for Abrahamitic religion, but also many other important civilizations of humanity.

There is a diametrically opposed metaphysics, which interprets the world as a system of processes. This is associated with the philosophy of Heraklitos, even though there are so few fragments remaining of his work, that it is almost impossible to derive a consistent theory from it. So there are many workers who have derived many quite divergent systems from those bits and pieces. The best known of these is Nietzsche, and Goethe's treatment of Mephistopheles in his Faust also leans heavily on these ideas. A lesser known interpretation is that of Oswald Spengler, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Heraklitos.

Reden und Aufsätze: Heraklit, eine Studie über den energetischen Grundgedanken seiner Philosophie.

http://www.zeno.org/Philosophie/M/Spengler,+Oswald/Reden+und+Aufs%C3%A4tze/Heraklit

See also: ->logos_heraklit ->nietzsche_heraklit

Whitehead's work "Process and Reality" also enlarges on the Heraklitean idea of Process, but with a different emphasis on the world as a "system of societies". Lastly, the Buddhist philosophy is also based on a metaphysics of impermanence.

These aspects are being dealt with by the present author in his dissertation: "Design und Zeit".

http://www.noologie.de/desn07.htm

http://www.noologie.de/desn08.htm

http://www.noologie.de/desn09.htm

http://www.noologie.de/desn11.htm

http://www.noologie.de/desn16.htm

http://www.noologie.de/desn17.htm

The present discussion seeks to find new avenues to evaluate the metaphysics of process. The Abrahamitic mythology has presently a difficult stance in today's scientific world. As was said above, there is a deep psychological reason why humans like to have a nice, cosy, predictable and stable world around them. It is the foremost task of societies to construct such an environment. But there are many occasions when the fabric of culture that a society has constructed, is disturbed by outside forces, be it gradual or catastrophic natural occurrences, diseases, or human enemies. Again, Peterson discusses this at length. On the other hand, the human neuronal system is evolutionally geared towards a particular acuity for processes. So, everything that seems (more or less) static in the human environment, can be relegated as background, and judged not so important. But everything that causes sudden changes is of vital survival importance. Peterson demonstrates this with his example of something that moves in the leaves, which could be the sign of a danger approaching. Human peripheral vision is especially acute for such movements. The human nervous system is not only very good at differentiating static patterns but also dynamic ones. A decisive factor for this detection capacity is human memory, and the human cultural memory. This is called the CMS or Cultural Memory System in the dissertation of the present author. In most ancient societies, this was encoded in mythology, and only in more recent civilizations there arose a more-or-less science of history. It always needs to be noted that history is dependent on records that are mostly written down by some palace scribes or record-keepers with a quite specific agenda and that was mostly not to provide an objective and impartial account for posterity. This has been treated in the dissertation of the present author, in the above chapters. This is the development of Morphology. The english term pattern is equivalent to the Greek Morphae, in German: Gestalt. Gregory Bateson had coined the term Metapattern, or a pattern that connects patterns. There are also patterns of movement or change, and from this is derived the term Meta-Morphology. It is the systematics of changes of patterns. Quite everything in nature follows some pattern and metapattern. It is the rhythm of day and night, the rhythm of the moon which guides human fertility, and most marine life reproduction, then the rhythms of the seasons, and so on. The ancient civilizations of the Mesopotamians, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Indian and Chinese, all constructed their cosmologies around such patterns, and they also found the patterns of the movements of the polar stars in the sky, the precession of the equinoxes. ->dechend1 ->dechend2

This has been dealt with in the article on the mythology surrounding the "Ring" of Richard Wagner.

http://www.noologie.de/wagner.htm

http://www.noologie.de/wagner.pdf

8.12 Lev Gumilev and the Ethnology of Passionarnost

Lev Gumilev was a historian in the former USSR who had developed a quite unique theory of culture with his concepts of the "ethnos" and "passionarnost" (passionary drive). He was leaning heavily on Vernadsky's work of the biosphere. The english text of Gumilev's work is with a few additional hypertext links on the noologie server:

http://www.noologie.de/gumilev/ebe.htm [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

8.12.1 Videos about the Work of Gumilev

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9RlcLNaYBQ [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Reflection on history №24. Lev Gumilev. In spite of everything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfFwnupgQp8 [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

"Introduction" to Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere (1978, eng. trans. 1990) by L. Gumilyov

This corresponds to:

http://www.noologie.de/gumilev/ebe0.htm [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbDkaJLQpss [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Chapter 1 (Part 1) of Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere (1978, eng. trans. 1990) by L. Gumilyov

This corresponds to:

http://www.noologie.de/gumilev/ebe1.htm [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XMMH8TvhvQ [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Chapter 2 (Part 1) of Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere (1978, eng. trans. 1990) by L. Gumilyov

This corresponds to:

http://www.noologie.de/gumilev/ebe2a.htm [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oKYxAAkbGI [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Chapter 2 (Part 2) of Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere (1978, eng. trans. 1990) by L. Gumilyov

This corresponds to:

http://www.noologie.de/gumilev/ebe2b.htm [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

8.12.2 Quotes and Comments to Gumilev's Work on the Noologie Server

Gumilev's main theoretical foundation is spelled out in the introduction:

Gumilev: Mankind as the species 'Homo sapiens':

http://www.noologie.de/gumilev/ebe0.htm#_Toc351821464 [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Gumilev's definition of the concept 'ethnos':

http://www.noologie.de/gumilev/ebe0.htm#_Toc351821465 [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

There are a few comments on Gumilev in this article:

http://www.noologie.de/_extra.htm#gumilev1 [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

8.12.3 Die Theoretische Kultur-Anthropologie

The present author has enlarged on the concepts of Gumilev in the following work:

Habitus, Moral, Ethik und Ethos, Ethnos und Ethnie:

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#ethnos_ethnie [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Lev Gumilev: The Passionary Theory of Ethnogenesis:

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#gumilev_passionary [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Here is a significant quote:

Es sollen also die kleinen aber signifikanten Unterschiede behandelt werden, zwischen Moral, Ethos, und Ethik, sowie zwischen Ethnie und Ethnos und dem Super-Ethnos. Es geht um die grundlegenden Konzepte der Verhaltens- und Wertegemeinschaften von Ethnien. Nennen wir es so:

Die beobachtbaren Verhaltens-Strukturen von Ethnien sind ihr Habitus, und

ihre Werte-Vorstellungs-Strukturen sind ihre Moral, ihr Ethos, bzw. ihre Ethik.

gr.: ethos := Gewohnheit, Brauch, Sitte

Das Wort Ethos hat NICHTS mit dem Begriff zu tun, der in der soziobiologischen Ethologie vorkommt. Das sind zwei völlig verschiedene Welten. Die genauen Unterscheidungen werden im weiteren Text gemacht.

Der Habitus (engl. habits) einer Ethnie ist alles, was man beobachten kann, also ihr Verhalten, ihre Bräuche und Rituale, sowie ihre materiellen Kulturgüter. Das war das Haupt-Arbeitsgebiet der Kultur-Anthropologie bzw. derr Ethnologie. Soweit hat man in diesen Fachbereichen eine ungeheure Menge Material angesammelt. Dazu gibt es eine tiefgehende Untersuchung in "Design und Zeit".

http://www.noologie.de/desn.htm

...

Was aber viel schwieriger zu erkennen und erforschen ist, das sind ihre unsichtbaren Strukturen, die Vorstellungs-Systeme, Wertesysteme, Tabu-Systeme, Moral, Ethos und Ethik. Darüber geht die folgende Diskussion. Ich nenne diesen Forschungsbereich auch die theoretische Kultur-Anthropologie, um ihn von der o.g. akademischen Ethnologie abzusetzen. Peter Sloterdijk hat es auch so ähnlich formuliert: Die theoretische Kulturwissenschaft ...

8.12.4 The Cultural Mythology

It is developed further in this article that the Ethos corresponds to another term: The Cultural Mythology. The Ethos is often formulated in form of a mythology, and it doesn't even need to be explicitly verbalized, and need not even be known consciously to the people of an Ethnos who share this common "frame of mind" or "belief system". In contrast, an Ethik (or Ethics) is explicitly formulated, mostly by philosophers, like Aristoteles and Kant. The latter example shows that this is a nice philosophical construct, but practically useless since no-one lives by such an ethics. The Cultural Mythology is also a main theme of C.G. Jung, Joseph Campbell, and Jordan Peterson.

8.13 Philosophische Anthropologie

This is an article on the anthroposophical www which bases its work on Rudolf Steiner. The article is quite neutral and has no specific anthroposophical content.

https://anthrowiki.at/Philosophische_Anthropologie

8.14 Webs of Meaning: Semiotics

Since the work of Saussure, there have been many developments in the field of Semiotics. Of particular interest for the present author are the works of C.S. Peirce, and the Eastern European school, especially Lotman. He had coined the term Semiosphere, in extension of the work of Vernadsky, biosphere and noosphere. (See below). The dissertation of the present author also contains a discussion of the Semiosphere, together with Systems Theory and related buddhist concepts:

http://www.noologie.de/desn16.htm

Wilfried Noeth and Roland Posener have also given some up-to-date summaries of the field.

http://sjschmidt.net/konzepte/texte/noeth.htm

Noeth, W.: Handbuch der Semiotik, Metzler, Stuttgart (1985)

Roland Posener gives an introduction to culture from the Semiotic view:

https://www.semiotik.tu-berlin.de/fileadmin/fg150/Posner-Texte/Posner_Was_ist_Kultur.pdf

8.14.1 Peirce's Triadic Categories

The work of Peirce, especially his triadic categories has been discussed here:

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#peirce_triad

The following text gives a more in-depth description of Peirce's Semiotics, and especially the difference to Saussure's definition.

https://www.siefkes.de/dokumente/Siefkes_Die%20graphische_Logik_von_Charles_S_Peirce.pdf

P. 4:

Der Interpretant steht zwischen Repräsentamen und Objekt, er stellt die Beziehung zwischen ihnen her. Dabei geht Peirce von der Rolle des Interpreten aus: Er verweist darauf, dass erst eine bestimmte Information in einem Gehirn die Interpretation eines Zeichens möglich macht; diese nennt Peirce den Interpretant des Zeichens. Dabei kann es sich um eine spontane Assoziation handeln (Erstheit: eine Möglichkeit), um eine spezifische Erinnerung (Zweitheit: ein Einzelfaktum), oder um ein Wissen über allgemeine Gesetzmäßigkeiten (Drittheit: eine Regel).

P 5:

Der Interpretant stellt nun die Information, die ein einzelner Zeichenbenutzer über ein Symbol hat, dar; diese Information kann sich von der konventionellen Information, die für die große Mehrheit der Zeichenbenutzer charakteristisch ist, unterscheiden. Es leuchtet ein, dass sich dadurch für unterschiedliche Zeichenbenutzer unterschiedliche Objekte ergeben. Hier zeigt sich der große Vorteil der Zeichendefinition von Peirce gegenüber der von Saussure: Sie ist in der Lage, das Verständnis eines Symbols bei verschiedenen Zeichenbenutzern als unterschiedlich, aber in wesentlichen Punkten übereinstimmend zu erklären. Kurz angemerkt sei, dass sie daher dem Widerspruch vieler Poststrukturalisten gegen das zu statische Saussuresche Zeichenmodell nicht unterliegt, ohne diesen Vorteil durch den Verzicht auf eine präzise Beschreibung der Zeichenfunktion zu erkaufen.

8.14.2 Kant und das Schnabeltier

The book by Umberto Eco with the strange title "Kant und das Schnabeltier" is a good summary of his prior work, even though he deals with C.S. Peirce and the Eastern European school only cursorily. This work has been discussed at length in the article of the present author:

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#eco_sein

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#eco_struktur

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#eco_cognitive

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#eco_mythologik

->eco_language

Literature on Umberto Eco:

Eco, Umberto: Kant und das Schnabeltier, Carl Hanser Verlag, München (2000)

ISBN 9783446198692

https://www.perlentaucher.de/buch/umberto-eco/kant-und-das-schnabeltier.html

"Was hat Kant mit einem Schnabeltier zur tun? Nichts." So beginnt Umberto Eco sein neues Buch. Zwanzig Jahre nach seinen großen Studien zur Semiotik, zieht Eco darin die Summe seiner wissenschaftlichen Forschungen. Entstanden ist dabei sein theoretisches Hauptwerk, das die Antwort auf eine der ältesten philosophischen Fragen liefert: Wie unterscheidet der Mensch die Dinge, die er sieht? ...

Rezensionsnotiz zu Süddeutsche Zeitung, 22.03.2000

Albert von Schirnding scheint sich ein bisschen gequält zu haben mit diesem Buch, in dem der Autor des Romans "Der Name der Rose" auf sein akademisches Stammgebiet der Zeichenlehre, auch Semiotik genannt, zurückgekehrt ist. Der Rezensent weist dabei die Verlagswerbung zurück, dass es sich bei dem Buch um eine "Summe" im Sinne einer überwölbenden, zusammenfassenden Darstellung von Ecos Ideen zur Disziplin handele. "Kant und das Schnabeltier" setze zwar Ecos Klassiker "Trattato di semiotica generale" fort, aber indem es an Einzelaspekte und -probleme anknüpfe. Schirnding spricht von "Dickicht" und "Begriffsakrobatik", um den Gestus dieser Wissenschaft zu kennzeichnen - und je mehr Eco versuche, bestimmte Probleme im Verhältnis von Zeichen und Bezeichneten oder auch - nach Heidegger - von Sein und Seiendem zu klären, desto mehr verstricke er sich darin. Um so mehr gefallen Schirnding die kleinen Geschichten, die Eco als "mentale Experimente in narrativer Form" einstreut. Dazu scheint auch die von Kant und dem Schnabeltier zu gehören - der späte Kant habe sich darüber Gedanken gemacht, wie dieses "eierlegende Säugetier mit Schnabel" genau zu klassifizieren sei.

Eco, Umberto: Einführung in die Semiotik. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München (1972)

Eco, Umberto: Zeichen, Einführung in einen Begriff und seine Geschichte. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt (1977)

Eco, Umberto: Semiotik und Philosophie der Sprache. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München (1985)

Eco, Umberto: Semiotik, Entwurf einer Theorie der Zeichen. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, München (1987)

Eco, Umberto: Die Suche nach der vollkommenen Sprache, C.H. Beck, München (1993)

8.14.3 Literature on Yuri Lotman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Lotman

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiosphere

Semiosphere is the sphere of semiosis in which sign processes operate in the set of all interconnected Umwelten. The concept was coined by Yuri Lotman in 1984 and is now applied to many fields, including cultural semiotics generally, biosemiotics, zoosemiotics, geosemiotics, etc. The concept is treated more fully in the collection of Lotman's writings published in English under the title "Universe of the Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture"(1990)

Discussion

Juri Lotman, a semiotician at Tartu University, Estonia, was inspired by Vladimir Vernadsky's terms biosphere and noosphere to propose that a semiosphere comes into being when any two Umwelten are communicating.^[^{clarification needed}^] Later, Jesper Hoffmeyer suggested a variation to the effect that the community of organisms occupying the semiosphere will inhabit a "semiotic niche". This implies that the semiosphere may be partially independent of the Umwelten. Kalevi Kull argues that this suggestion is not consistent with the nature of semiosis which can only be a product of the behaviour of the organisms in the environment. It is the organisms that create the signs which become the constituent parts of the semiosphere. This is not an adaptation to the existing environment, but the continuous creation of a new environment. Kull believes that it is only possible to accept Hoffmeyer's view as an analogy to the concept of an ecological niche as it is traditionally used in biology, so that the community develops according to the semiotic understanding of the processes which are responsible for the building of Umwelt.

9 The Deep Structures of Mythology

An important focus of the present work is the Deep Structure of Mythology. This can also be called the "Structure of the Collective Unconscious" in Jungian Terminology. The best known collectors and interpreters of mythology were James George Frazer with the Golden Bough and Mircea Eliade:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_George_Frazer

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Bough

Frazer attempted to define the shared elements of religious belief and scientific thought, discussing fertility rites, human sacrifice, the dying god, the scapegoat, and many other symbols and practices whose influences had extended into 20th-century culture.[2] His thesis is that old religions were fertility cults that revolved around the worship and periodic sacrifice of a sacred king. Frazer proposed that mankind progresses from magic through religious belief to scientific thought.[2]

Frazer's thesis was developed in relation to J. M. W. Turner's painting of The Golden Bough, a sacred grove where a certain tree grew day and night. It was a transfigured landscape in a dream-like vision of the woodland lake of Nemi, "Diana's Mirror", where religious ceremonies and the "fulfillment of vows" of priests and kings were held.[3]

The king was the incarnation of a dying and reviving god, a solar deity who underwent a mystic marriage to a goddess of the Earth. He died at the harvest and was reincarnated in the spring. Frazer claims that this legend of rebirth is central to almost all of the world's mythologies.

...

Frazer wrote in a preface to the third edition of The Golden Bough that while he had never studied Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, his friend James Ward, and the philosopher J. M. E. McTaggart, had both suggested to him that Hegel had anticipated his view of "the nature and historical relations of magic and religion".

...

The Golden Bough scandalized the British public when first published, as it included the Christian story of the resurrection of Jesus in its comparative study. Critics thought this treatment invited an agnostic reading of the Lamb of God as a relic of a pagan religion. For the third edition, Frazer placed his analysis of the Crucifixion in a speculative appendix; the discussion of Christianity was excluded from the single-volume abridged edition.^[5]^[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mircea_Eliade#The_general_nature_of_religion

The general nature of religion

In his work on the history of religion, Eliade is most highly regarded for his writings on Alchemy,[81] Shamanism, Yoga and what he called the eternal return — the implicit belief, supposedly present in religious thought in general, that religious behavior is not only an imitation of, but also a participation in, sacred events, and thus restores the mythical time of origins. Eliade's thinking was in part influenced by Rudolf Otto, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Nae Ionescu and the writings of the Traditionalist School (René Guénon and Julius Evola).[37] For instance, Eliade's The Sacred and the Profane partially builds on Otto's The Idea of the Holy to show how religion emerges from the experience of the sacred, and myths of time and nature.

Eliade is known for his attempt to find broad, cross-cultural parallels and unities in religion, particularly in myths. Wendy Doniger, Eliade's colleague from 1978 until his death, has observed that "Eliade argued boldly for universals where he might more safely have argued for widely prevalent patterns".[82] His Treatise on the History of Religions was praised by French philologist Georges Dumézil for its coherence and ability to synthesize diverse and distinct mythologies.[83]

Robert Ellwood describes Eliade's approach to religion as follows. Eliade approaches religion by imagining an ideally "religious" person, whom he calls homo religiosus in his writings. Eliade's theories basically describe how this homo religiosus would view the world.[84] This does not mean that all religious practitioners actually think and act like homo religiosus. Instead, it means that religious behavior "says through its own language" that the world is as homo religiosus would see it, whether or not the real-life participants in religious behavior are aware of it.[85] However, Ellwood writes that Eliade "tends to slide over that last qualification", implying that traditional societies actually thought like homo religiosus.[85]

In the present article, some more workers and their interpretation will be considered: The work of Jordan Peterson about mythology as a system of value and meaning ->peterson1, the work of Joseph Campbell ->campbell1, which shares a C.G. Jung interpretation with that of Peterson, the work of Hertha v. Dechend (partly) as encoding of archaeo-astronomy

->dechend1 ->dechend2 , the work of Claude Levi-Strauss ->myth_meaning.

The present work concentrates on the world of dreams and mental imagery that eludes a discursive verbal expression. This is detailed in the following paragraph on Imagination:

->imagination

This is an area where verbal ethnographic description finds its limits. (Like the thick description of Clifford Geertz).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thick_description

9.1.1 Mythology and Metanoia

Many western anthropologists may have difficulty and cultural barriers to enter subconscious and trance modes of experience. This is especially relevant for the interpretation of mythology in connection with a re-formation of character of some cultural heros. The relevant terms here are Metanoia, Satori (in the Zen tradition), and Initiation, both can be interpreted as neuronal events, of a fundamental re-organization that affects brain functions on very deep levels, and beyond the purely verbal conceptual level of the frontal cortex. The brain areas affected would be more located in the Limbic System (Hippocampus / Amygdala).

https://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/limbicsystem.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbic_system

It supports a variety of functions including emotion, behavior, motivation, long-term memory, and olfaction.^[2] Emotional life is largely housed in the limbic system, and it critically aids the formation of memories.

These systems are responsible for guiding functions of value and survival. Metanoia is a process that an individual experiences as coming from within, whereas Initiation is mostly connected with a ritual setting that is guided by members of a group who accept a novice as new member. The best known incidence of Metanoia with possibly the greatest cultural consequences for humanity may be that of the transmutation of mind of Saulus into St. Paulus. Another well-known incidence would be the Satori of Gautama the Buddha. This has been dealt with in more depth in the dissertation of the present author.

http://www.noologie.de/desn16.htm#Heading60

The Christian rite of baptism may also count as an instance of initiation, even though it has no precondition of an arduous preparation phase, as with most other forms of initiation.

Jordan Peterson is one author who has provided an in-depth discussion of the neuronal processes that (hypothetically) are connected with these phenomena.

->peterson1 ->maps_meaning

9.1.2 Mythology as an a priori System

The present author views (some aspects of) Mythology as an a priori system that is an underlying belief structure of some coherent group (like an ethnos in the system of Gumilev ->gumilev1). This underlying structure provides a framework of how people find meaning and value in the world they live in and how they maintain their societies. In the European / US West, in the times before the French Revolution, the common Christian moral/ethic/societal framework would be the underlying mythology of these otherwise quite diverse peoples.

The next step will be to formulate a Theoretical Anthropology of Mythology, taking into account the contributions of the abovementioned workers. The theme of passionarnost of Gumilev ->gumilev1 is directly comparable to the Hero's Journey of Campbell and Peterson, it is that peculiar characteristic of the Culture Heros. Another central theme of mythology is that of imagination. In the following article it is discussed that imagination is precedent to language (and then more specifically rational thought), and so imagination is also the language of mythology.

There is a very good illustration of this kind of imagination in the following display:

Kunst der Vorzeit. Felsbilder aus der Sammlung Frobenius

https://www.frobenius-institut.de/aktuelles/42-das-institut?start=11

9.1.3 Imagination as Extra- Language Ability

This discussion focuses on the human ability to operate mental images. To operate means not only to have such images, but being able to manipulate them, like imagining the action of a piston in a car engine. The ability to do this varies between people and with training, as the example of music (below) demonstrates. This is described as Extra-Language Ability. Its specific quality is that it is not bound to a spoken language. This has been mentioned by Claude Levi-Strauss in "Myth and Meaning", in the chapter "Myth and Music".

See: ->myth_meaning

A particular domain of mental imagery is dreams. Here we have whole dramas occurring in our mental world as we sleep, and this is of great interest to schools of psychology like the Freudian and the Jungian. There can be many kinds of mental imagery, like visual images, moving images, musical images, and even mathematical images. The capability for many kinds of imaging may be a genetic facility and/or depends on training, for example: not every-one can imagine music so well to compose music in their head. It is even known that people can also have mental images of smell and taste. See this quote:

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm#geruch_geschmack

Weiterhin ist der Geruch ein entscheidender Faktor der Gedächtnisbildung. Ein bestimmter Geruch kann ganz plötzlich längst vergessene Erinnerungen, etwa aus der frühen Kindheit, hervorrufen, wie der Geruch eines Brotes, oder einer bestimmten Sorte von Keksen im Tee (Marcel Proust).[307]

Here is an anecdotal account: Stephen Hawking was able to do mathematical transformations in visual imagination because he was paralyzed and couldn't use the normal written formalisms any more.

http://www.noologie.de/_extra-verb.htm#extra_verb_phil

http://www.noologie.de/_extra-verb.htm#mental_image

The ability to mentally manipulate images means that the motoric parts of the brain are involved. The important ability to imagine motoric action is stated by Jordan Peterson in "Maps of Meaning", p. 61-78. ->maps_meaning ->peterson1 ->peterson_discuss

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_image

A mental image or mental picture is an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of perceiving some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses.^[1]^[2]^[3]^[4] There are sometimes episodes, particularly on falling asleep (hypnagogic imagery) and waking up (hypnopompic), when the mental imagery, being of a rapid, phantasmagoric and involuntary character, defies perception, presenting a kaleidoscopic field, in which no distinct object can be discerned.^[5] Mental imagery can sometimes produce the same effects as would be produced by the behavior or experience imagined.^[6]

The nature of these experiences, what makes them possible, and their function (if any) have long been subjects of research and controversy^[^{further
explanation needed}^] in philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and, more recently, neuroscience. As contemporary researchers^[^Like
whom?^] use the expression, mental images or imagery can comprise information from any source of sensory input; one may experience auditory images,^[7] olfactory images,^[8] and so forth. However, the majority of philosophical and scientific investigations of the topic focus upon visual mental imagery. It has sometimes been assumed^[^{by whom?}^] that, like humans, some types of animals are capable of experiencing mental images.^[9] Due to the fundamentally introspective nature of the phenomenon, there is little to no evidence either for or against this view.

Visual imagery is the ability to create mental representations of things, people, and places that are absent from an individual’s visual field. This ability is crucial to problem-solving tasks, memory, and spatial reasoning.^[47] Neuroscientists have found that imagery and perception share many of the same neural substrates, or areas of the brain that function similarly during both imagery and perception, such as the visual cortex and higher visual areas. Kosslyn and colleagues (1999)^[48] showed that the early visual cortex, Area 17 and Area 18/19, is activated during visual imagery. They found that inhibition of these areas through repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) resulted in impaired visual perception and imagery. Furthermore, research conducted with lesioned patients has revealed that visual imagery and visual perception have the same representational organization. This has been concluded from patients in which impaired perception also experience visual imagery deficits at the same level of the mental representation.^[49]^...

Visualization and the Himalayan traditions

In general, Vajrayana Buddhism, Bön, and Tantra utilize sophisticated visualization or imaginal (in the language of Jean Houston of Transpersonal Psychology) processes in the thoughtform construction of the yidam sadhana, kye-rim, and dzog-rim modes of meditation and in the yantra, thangka, and mandala traditions, where holding the fully realized form in the mind is a prerequisite prior to creating an 'authentic' new art work that will provide a sacred support or foundation for deity.[70][71]

The follwing article illuminates the situation of human mental imagery in art and philosophy.

https://aeon.co/essays/imagination-is-such-an-ancient-ability-it-might-precede-language

[Accessed: 2019-10-24]

Imagination is intrinsic to our inner lives. You could even say that it makes up a ‘second universe’ inside our heads. We invent animals and events that don’t exist, we rerun history with alternative outcomes, we envision social and moral utopias, we revel in fantasy art, and we meditate both on what we could have been and on what we might become. Animators such as Hayao Miyazaki, Walt Disney and the people at Pixar Studios are masterful at imagination, but they’re only creating a public version of our everyday private lives. If you could see the fantastic mash-up inside the mind of the average five-year-old, then Star Wars and Harry Potter would seem sober and dull. So, why is there so little analysis of imagination, by philosophers, psychologists and scientists?

Apart from some cryptic passages in Aristotle and Kant, philosophy has said almost nothing about imagination, and what it says seems thoroughly disconnected from the creativity that artists and laypeople call ‘imaginative’.

Aristotle described the imagination as a faculty in humans (and most other animals) that produces, stores and recalls the images we use in a variety of mental activities. Even our sleep is energised by the dreams of our involuntary imagination. Immanuel Kant saw the imagination as a synthesiser of senses and understanding. Although there are many differences between Aristotle’s and Kant’s philosophies, Kant agreed that the imagination is an unconscious synthesising faculty that pulls together sense perceptions and binds them into coherent representations with universal conceptual dimensions. The imagination is a mental faculty that mediates between the particulars of the senses – say, ‘luminous blue colours’ – and the universals of our conceptual understanding – say, the judgment that ‘Marc Chagall’s blue America Windows (1977) is beautiful.’ Imagination, according to these philosophers, is a kind of cognition, or more accurately a prerequisite ‘bundling process’ prior to cognition. Its work is unconscious and it paves the way for knowledge, but is not abstract or linguistic enough to stand as actual knowledge.

We’ve romanticised creativity so completely that we’ve ended up with an impenetrable mystery inside our heads. We might not literally believe in muse possession anymore, but we haven’t yet replaced this ‘mysterian’ view with a better one. ...

This mysterian view of imagination is vague and obscure, but at least it captures something about the de-centred psychological state of creativity. Psychologists such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi have celebrated this aspect of creativity by describing (and recommending) ‘flow’ states, but the idea of ‘flow’ has proven little more than a secular redescription of the mysterian view.

9.1.4 The Mythology of Western Scientific Culture

There is the task to get an understanding of the Mythology of Western Scientific Culture, which is the mythology of objectivism, and can also be called the metaphysics of objectivism. This was discussed under the western system of episteme: ->objectivism1 ->objectivism2

This can be enlarged, that the mythological foundation of objectivism is theological in nature and is a variation of the age-old theme of Dualism: The split between Matter vs. Spirit, Darkness vs. Light, Sound vs. Sight (the Greek phos vs. phonae), Chaos vs. (Law-and-)Order, the Female Materia vs. the "spiritual" male essence. This was re-formulated so many times, from the Zoroastrian Ahura Mazda / Ahriman duality, the Manichaean world view, as was exemplified by St. Augustinus, who had remained a Manichaean even though he overtly became a spiritus rector of Roman Catholic Christianity. And by his influence Christianity also became thoroughly dualistic. The Gnostics were equally dualistic, and the last remnants of those were the Kathars of France. Umberto Eco had hinted at this in "Name of the Rose" in the persons of the two Ketzer (Kathar) monks in his abbey.

http://www.noologie.de/_extra.htm#eco_rose

http://www.noologie.de/_extra.htm#ketzer_moench

Another variation of this philosophical theme is that of Platon who made a dualistic distinction between the (false superficial) world of appearances and the (true) world of the idea in the parable of the cave. The Christian theology is more or less a re-formulation of this idealistic system. There all the Real Truth lies with (or in) God. And this re-appears again in the famous passage of Joh. 1.1: En Archae en ho Logos. ->en_archae ->aquinas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegory_of_the_cave

The allegory is probably related to Plato's theory of Forms, according to which the "Forms" (or "Ideas"), and not the material world known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality.

The final culmination of dualism came with the philosophy of Descartes. The problematic side of this philosophy is discussed here:

->descartes_problem ->french_rationalism

More backgound information on physicalism and objectivism this is in the following article:

->physicalism_mind ->physicalism_scientific

9.1.5 The Diffusion of Myths

This is from an article by Michael Oppitz:

https://www.frobenius-institut.de/veranstaltungen/frobenius-vortrag

https://www.frobenius-institut.de/images/stories/News/P52-02Oppi-027-050.pdf

P. 45:

Anstatt entsprechende Spekulationen anzustellen, möchte ich zur Distribution mythischer Geschichten an dieser Stelle drei Merksätze formulieren, von deren Verbindlichkeit ich mich über die Jahre habe überzeugen können:

1. Mythen sind migrationsfreudig, sie wandern über unvorhersehbare Distanzen, fast immer, ohne daß die Völker, von denen sie stammen oder die sie passieren, selbst wanderten. Und sie wandern zu unbekannten Zielen.

2. Mythen übersteigen alle natürlichen Barrieren, schier unüberwindliche Bergketten, reissende Flüsse und undurchdringliche Dschungel sind für sie keine Hindernisse.

3. Mythen machen nicht Halt vor kulturellen Grenzen: selbst die oft angerufenen Barrieren von Sprachfamilien überspringen sie ohne Behinderung, weil die schriftlosen Völker, die an solchen grenzen leben, meist mehrsprachig sind, versiert in Sprachen nicht verwandter Zugehörigkeit.

Der migratorische Erfolg einer Geschichte hängt weitgehend von zwei Faktoren ab: ihrer Anpassungsfähigkeit und ihrer erzählerischen Anziehungskraft. Gute Geschichten mit guten Pointen haben gute Chancen, weitergetragen zu werden. Zur Anpassungsfähigkeit gehört die Wandelbarkeit der Form.

P. 46:

So sind die Geschichten sowohl bei den Völkern, von denen sie stammen wie auch unter der Feder der Völkerkundler, die sie in ihrer Welt weitervermitteln, einem dauernden Prozeß der Veränderung ausgesetzt, der Form und Inhalt gleichermaßen umgestaltet. Die unterschiedlichen Textsorten, die dabei entstehen, werfen ihrerseits gewisse methodologische Probleme auf, nicht zuletzt für den vergleichenden Mythenforscher, der, um Inhalte zu vergleichen, auch vergleichbare Formen aus ungleichen Textsorten schaffen muß.

9.2 Hertha von Dechend: Archaeo-Astronomie

Der vorliegende Text ist wesentlich eine Neufassung aus dem Wagner-Artikel des Autors:

http://www.noologie.de/wagner.htm#_Toc18314091

Dies ist die www-Seite, auf der der englische Text von Hamlet's Mill liegt.

http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/hamletmill.htm

Dies ist eine kurze Einführung in das Feld der vergleichenden Mythologie und der Archaeo-Astronomie nach Hertha von Dechend und Giorgio de Santillana. (Santillana wird nur formhalber als Co-Autor geführt). Hertha von Dechend beschreibt darin eine archaische Denkwelt, die in den Ur-Zeiten (also seit vielleicht 50.000 Jahren) in ähnlicher Form, und leicht variiert quer über die Kontinente, der Archaischen Menschheit, vorkam. Diese Archaische Denkwelt kennt man heute nur noch als Mythologie, also Fabeln und Märchen, aber nach ihrer Theorie ist es eine Codierung der Archaischen Oralen Tradition in einer Geheimsprache von wesentlichen lebens-wichtigen und spirituellen Informationen, u.a. von kosmischen Epochen oder der Vorstellungen von Seelen-Wanderungen in der Milchstrasse. Sie beschreibt das auch als eine "Maschine des Himmels". Insbesondere ist das die Präzession der Äquinoktien. Mit jeder Phase der Präzession gibt es auch eine neue (Umsturz-) Götterwelt. Diese Umstürze der Götterwelten sind auch ein Zentral-Thema des "Rings" von Wagner, aber in der Mythologie sind solche Umstürze überhaupt nichts Ungewöhnliches, denn die kommen periodisch immer wieder vor. Hier sind ein paar www-links mit weiterführenden Informationen zu dem Thema.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_precession#Alternative_discovery_theories

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hertha_von_Dechend

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamlet%27s_Mill

Im Frobenius-Institut in Frankfurt liegt das zusätzliche Material, das Hertha von Dechend nach der Veröffentlichung von "Hamlet's Mill" in vielen Vorlesungs-Skripten erstellt hat.

https://www.frobenius-institut.de/en/

https://www.per-aspera-ad-astra.net/index.html

Die Archiv-Datenbank listet die Einträge, wenn man "Dechend" in das Suchfeld eingibt.

http://archiv.frobenius-katalog.de/rech.FAU?sid=1B8CAED31&dm=1&auft=0

Diese sind teilweise als .doc abgelegt oder als .pdf-files.

Hier ist eine ausführliche Besprechung und Widmung, die ich (AG) zu dem Werk von Hertha von Dechend geschrieben habe:

http://www.noologie.de/neuro04.htm

http://www.noologie.de/neuro05.htm

Es ist bezeichnend, dass zwischen der US-Veröffentlichung im Jahre 1969, und der deutschen Übersetzung 1993, ein Zeitraum von 24 Jahren liegt, bis ihre Arbeit auch in Deutschland zur Kenntnis genommen wurde. Interessanterweise aber nicht von den Kultur-Theoretikern und Ethnologen, sondern in der Reihe "Computerkultur" im Verlag Julius Springer, Wien. Obwohl die Theorien der Hertha von Dechend immer noch eher heterodox sind, mehren sich die Hinweise, dass die archaischen Kulturen in der Lage waren, solche astronomischen Kenntnisse zu erlangen und zu tradieren. Dies legt auch nahe, eine Neu-Bewertung des mythologischen Materials zu unternehmen. Wie es Hertha von Dechend in ihrem Vorwort (x) sagt:

Zuerst werden die Leute eine Sache leugnen; dann werden sie sie verharmlosen; dann werden sie beschließen, sie sei seit langem bekannt. (Die Stufe III ist mancherorts schon erreicht.)

Siehe dazu im Appendix des Wagner-Artikels: Vorwort: Hertha v. Dechend:

http://www.noologie.de/wagner.htm#_Toc18314178

9.2.1 Fragestellungen zu mythologischen Überlieferungen

Es lassen sich folgende wesentliche Fragestellungen zu dem Thema aufstellen:

1) Was für einen Überlebens- bzw. Nach-Tod Sinn hatten solche mythologische Traditionen in den vielen verschiedenen Kulturen? Denn in fast allen diesen Traditionen spielt die Milchstrasse eine Rolle einer Aufstiegs-Leiter der Menschen-Seele zu einem völlig un-christlichen Himmel. Es ist daher verständlich, dass die wohlmeinenden christlichen Missionare alles taten, um diese Völker von solchem "Irrglauben" zu befreien.

2) Wie konnten hypothetischer-Weise diese Traditionen über viele Millennia aufrecht erhalten werden? und

3) Gab es in grauer Vorzeit so etwas wie einen trans-kontinentalen "Trade-of-Ideas? Wie erklären sich die Ähnlichkeiten dieser Mythologien? Dies ist insb. wichtig für die Frage von Diffusionismus.

9.2.2 Statistische Ansätze der Vergleichenden Mythologie

Die Mythologien der Menschheit lassen sich nach verschiedenen theoretischen Ansätzen interpretieren. Hier als Beispiele:

Hier ist ein Artikel aus "Spektrum" (die meistens etwas aus "Scientific American" zitieren), von Julien d’Huy, der die vergleichende Mythologie auf etwas "modernere" Weise darstellt. Dies wird in dem folgenden Artikel beschrieben. Es handelt sich um statistische Methoden, mit denen die Mythen in Analogie zu der statistischen Abstammungs-Genetik analysiert werden. Siehe:

https://www.spektrum.de/news/die-urahnen-der-grossen-mythen/1376932

"Die Urahnen der großen Mythen"

Anthropologen und Ethnologen analysieren Märchen, Mythen und Sagen, um Entwicklungslinien aufzudecken. Mit den Algorithmen von Genetikern verfolgen sie die Evolution der "Mythenfamilien" bis in vorgeschichtliche Zeit - und rekonstruieren deren Urformen.

...

Projektionsfläche Sternenhimmel

Dass Menschen am Sternenhimmel Gestalten wahrnehmen, ist eine Eigenheit unseres kognitiven Systems, die wohl einen Überlebensvorteil bot: Wer ein im Blattwerk des Urwalds verborgenes Raubtier ausmachte, konnte sich in Sicherheit bringen. [AG: Siehe dazu das Reptilien-System im Gehirn, das von Jordan Peterson beschrieben wird.] Dass manche Kulturen andere Konstellationen mit den jeweiligen Beutetieren identifizierten, verwundert nicht weiter. Interessant ist die bei allen Variationen auffallende grundlegende Struktur: Ein Jäger verfolgt oder erlegt ein Tier; beide werden zu Sternbildern. Viele Forscher betrachten daher die verschiedenen Erzählungen als Vertreter einer weltweiten Mythenfamilie: der "Kosmischen Jagd".

...

Bleibt die Frage: Warum haben solche Erzählungen überhaupt eine derart lange Tradition? Den griechischen Erzählern der drei Sagen war sicher nicht bewusst, dass sie eine jahrtausendealte Überlieferung fortsetzten. Vermutlich brachten Mythen einer Gesellschaft Vorteile, beispielsweise indem sie Lebenserfahrungen weitergaben. Sicher halfen sie, der Welt eine Ordnung zu geben und so existentielle Ängste zu lindern. Vielleicht dienten sie auch einem viel einfacheren Drang des Menschen: die Welt zu verstehen.

Leider scheint Julien d’Huy keine Kenntnis von Hertha von Dechend zu haben. Auf eine email-Nachfrage kam (wie meistens im Uni-Betrieb) keine Antwort. Bei einer eingehenden Untersuchung der zitierten Literatur von Julien d’Huy (siehe die Researchgate-Artikel) wurde keine Referenz zu H. v. Dechend gefunden. Hier sind noch einige weiterführende Info's zu dem Spektrum-Artikel:

Der Autor ist Anthropologe am Centre d’études des mondes africains (UMR 8171) in Paris.

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_d%27%C3%A9tudes_des_mondes_africains

https://www.scientificamerican.com/author/julien-d-huy/

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Julien_DHuy

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/sa-visual/the-evolution-of-a-scientific-american-graphic-cosmic-hunt/

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315082859_2017_Letter_D'HUY_REPLIES_-_Scientific_American_316_6

Einige weitere Artikel aus dem Themen-Umkreis sind hier zu finden:

https://www.spektrum.de/magazin/aeltestes-kunstgewerbe/1029648

https://www.spektrum.de/news/ritzmuster-aelter-als-der-mensch/1322034

https://www.spektrum.de/thema/hoehlen-tore-zur-unterwelt/1479271

https://www.spektrum.de/news/aelteste-hoehlenmalereien-in-ostasien/1311775

https://www.spektrum.de/magazin/die-geburt-der-kreativitaet/1192440

https://www.spektrum.de/magazin/hoehlenkino-in-der-eiszeit/1191986

Mythenforschung nach Levi-Strauss

Levi-Strauss: Myth and Meaning

http://historiaocharkeologi.com/kanada/myth_and_meaning.pdf

https://moodle.lmu.de/mod/book/view.php?id=226747&chapterid=23172

Dies wird in dem betreffenden Artikel ausführlich behandelt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structuralist_theory_of_mythology

In structural anthropology, Claude Lévi-Strauss, a French anthropologist, makes the claim that "myth is language". Through approaching mythology as language, Lévi-Strauss suggests that it can be approached the same way as language can be approached by the same structuralist methods used to address language. Thus, Lévi-Strauss offers a structuralist theory of mythology;^[1] he clarifies, "Myth is language, functioning on an especially high level where meaning succeeds practically at 'taking off' from the linguistic ground on which it keeps rolling."^[2]

Overview

Lévi-Strauss breaks down his argument into three main parts. Meaning is not isolated within the specific fundamental parts of the myth, but rather within the composition of these parts. Although myth and language are of similar categories, language functions differently in myth. Finally, language in myth exhibits more complex functions than in any other linguistic expression. From these suggestions, he draws the conclusion that myth can be broken down into constituent units, and these units are different from the constituents of language. Finally, unlike the constituents of language, the constituents of a myth, which he labels “mythemes,” function as "bundles of relations."[3]

This approach is a break from the “symbolists”, such as Carl Jung, who dedicate themselves to find meaning solely within the constituents rather than their relations.[4] For instance, Lévi-Strauss uses the example of the Oedipus myth and breaks it down to its component parts:

Reading it in sequence from left to right, top to bottom, the myth is categorized sequentially and by similarities. Through analyzing the commonalities between the “mythemes” of the Oedipus story, understandings can be wrought from its categories.

Thus, a structural approach towards myths is to address all of these constituents. Furthermore, a structural approach should account for all versions of a myth, as all versions are relevant to the function of the myth as a whole. This leads to what Lévi-Strauss calls a spiral growth of the myth which is continuous while the structure itself is not. The growth of the myth only ends when the “intellectual impulse which has produced it is exhausted.”[5]

9.2.3 Kultur-Mythen-Analyse und Ethno-Kybernetik

"Die Kultur-Mythen-Analyse und die Ethno-Kybernetik" von AG stellt ein theoretisches System vor, das die Mythologie als grundlegendes a priori System interpretiert, das auf empirisch nicht feststellbaren Kategorien beruht. Dies ist eine äusserst umfangreiche Arbeit (334 Seiten), die nicht als Abstract gefasst werden kann, da sie sich von bekannteren Ansätzen der Mythenforschung stark unterscheidet. Wesentliche theoretische Elemente der Arbeit basieren auf einer Weiterentwicklung der Ethnopsychoanalyse und Theorien von Peter Sloterdijk. Es sei hier nur bemerkt, dass die heutige positivistische Naturwissenschaft ebenso gut als Mythologie klassifiziert werden kann, denn sie beruht auf metaphysischen Annahmen, die sich in Zirkular-Argumenten selbst bestätigen, nämlich in der Form, dass nur das als "Realität" akzeptiert werden darf, was mit dem augenblicklichen Instrumentarium der physikalisch basierten Wissenschaften messbar ist. Alles andere, was nicht messbar ist, wird damit "per ordre de mufti" aus dem Wissens-System ausgeschlossen.

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.htm

http://www.noologie.de/diadenk.pdf

Ethnopsychoanalysis:

https://www.encyclopedia.com/psychology/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/ethnopsychoanalysis

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23182007?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Devereux

https://www.theviennapsychoanalyst.at/index.php?wbkat=8&wbid=1328&lakat=1

Aus dem Vorwort von "Die Mühle des Hamlet"

Dies bezieht sich auf die deutsche Ausgabe von Dechend (1993).

http://www.noologie.de/wagner.htm#_Toc18314178

Nicht, daß wir die Pyramidentexte verdächtigten, Lehrsätze und die Darstellung eines „Systems" zu enthalten - der Rigveda tut das auch nicht -, vielmehr setzen sie ein solches System voraus und spielen darauf an. Ob es schriftlich fixierte „Lehrbücher" gegeben hat oder ob man Wesentliches ausschließlich mündlich tradierte, läßt sich nicht entscheiden. Will man Clemens Alexandrinus (2) Glauben schenken, so mußte der bei feierlichen Umzügen auftretende Horoskopos „die astrologischen Schriften unter den Büchern des Hermes, vier an der Zahl, auswendig kennen, von denen das eine von der Ordnung der Fixsterne handelt, das zweite von den Planeten, das dritte von den Begegnungen und Erscheinungen von Sonne und Mond, das noch übrige von den Aufgängen" und der „heilige Schriftwart" (Hierogrammate(is) „die sogenannten Hieroglyphenschriften ... ; diese handeln von der Weltkunde und Geographie (peri tes kosmographias kai geographias), von dem Stand der Sonne und des Mondes und der fünf Planeten, der Bodenbeschaffenheit Ägyptens (chorographia) und der Beschreibung des Nils."

Unbehagen und Mißtrauen taugen nicht dazu, den Weg zu verständigen Einsichten zu weisen, sie nötigen nur zu wachsamer Aufmerksamkeit für das Auftauchen neuer denkbarer Alternativen. Mißtrauen regte sich bei mir schon nach wenigen Senmestern, vor dem Krieg, gegen die damals in der Ethnologie geltende Auffassung von der Aufeinanderfolge von „Kulturschichten" (eigentlich -stufen), die, vereinfacht ausgedrückt, auf das Wildbeutertum einerseits Hirtentum, andererseits ,.primitiven Hackbau" (Knollen), alsdann die Hochkultur (Getreideanbau mit Pflug sowie Viehzucht) folgen ließ.

9.2.4 A Commentary on Hamlet’s Mill

Dies ist eine neuere Einführung zu Hamlet’s Mill:

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/hamletmill_commentary.htm

Some books are ahead of their time. Some books convey a message which threatens prevailing notions, and are therefore brushed away. Some books are mixtures of profound insights and garbled speculations. Hamlet’s Mill, An Essay on Myth and the Frame of Time (1969) partakes to varying degrees in all of the above. Hamlet’s Mill began a revolution in understanding the profound sources of ancient mythology. Although it tottered on the edge of oblivion for years, it has reemerged as the fundamental inspiration for many progressive researchers who find the precession of the equinoxes lurking within ancient creation myths around the world.
...

There are problems with Hamlet’s Mill, but they are more in terms of the book’s organization rather than a faulty reasoning. However, some citations, especially those of Mesoamerican myth, are somewhat off the mark. In this case, the reason may have more to do with the embryonic state of Mesoamerican studies in the 1960s. As for other glitches, these hurried flaws can be explained when we consider the context in which the book was written. Giorgio de Santillana published a book of his own the previous year and was still lecturing at M.I.T., so his work load during the late 1960s must have been intense. In fact, he was ill at the time. As William Irwin Thompson writes:

"Professor de Santillana worked on editing von Dechend when he was sick and near death, and so this book is not the best expression of their theories. Encyclopedic, but rambling, it is often as chaotic as it is cranky. This weakness, however, should not mislead the reader. The work is very important in seeking to recover the astronomical and cosmological dimensions of mythic narratives"

(Thompson 1982:268-269).

This may explain the variations in the narrative, the ebb and flow of the sequence in which the book was ordered, and the generally chaotic character of the book’s organization. Nevertheless, the bulk of the text conveys ruthless interpretation and careful documentation of international scholarship in linguistics, archaeology, comparative mythology, and astronomy. In addition, an informal and usually engaging, if somewhat loquacious, prose style prevails throughout. Hertha von Dechend, long-time German historian and mythologist, seems to be the director behind the scenes:

"Von Dechend has argued that the astronomy of the most ancient civilizations is far more complicated than we have hitherto realized. She sees myth as the technical language of a scientific and priestly elite; when, therefore, a myth seems to be most concrete, even gross, it is often using figurative language to describe astronomical happenings . . . Von Dechend’s thesis that there is an astronomical dimension to myth that is not understood by the conventional archaeologists of myth is, I believe, quite correct"

(Thompson 1982:173).
"Archaeologists of myth" is a strange statement, but what discipline does this study belong to? It certainly isn’t astronomy, because astronomy’s technicians have nothing to do with ancient myth. Is it ethnology, mythology, or science? The burgeoning field of archaeoastronomy perhaps gets closest to the mark. Since the 1970s, two different academic journals have been devoted to elucidating and exploring the topic of archaeoastronomy. Norman Lockyear pioneered this field in the late 1800s with the publication of The Dawn of Astronomy in 1894. The next real advance in this field came with the Stonehenge studies of Gerald S. Hawkins in the 1960s. As a result of Hawkins’ new "astro-archaeology" picking up where Lockyear left off, and a growing academic interest in what the field had to offer, Giorgio Santillana saw fit to arrange the reprinting of Lockyear’s The Dawn of Astronomy in 1964, for the occasion of its 70^th anniversary.

Much of humanity’s oldest myths were derived from celestial observations. This is probably the most important contribution that Hamlet’s Mill offers, one that has been suppressed and scoffed at for much of this century. In addition to its ancillary use in archaeoastronomy, this concept is being reclaimed as a guiding principle for those who study Maya mythology. The Maya, the most mathematically and calendrically advanced culture of the ancient New World, also preserved complex myths which are now being interpreted as referential to astronomical features and processes. For example, Maya epigrapher Linda Schele has promoted the Mayan Sacred Tree, one of the oldest motifs in Mayan myth, as a description of the intersection of the ecliptic with the Milky Way.

...

Knowing that human beings have, basically, remained unchanged for at least 40,000 years, how can we say that our remote ancestors could not observe the subtle celestial shifting of precession? Our concept of how difficult this might be is tempered by the problems of our own age, when the skies are obscured by smog and light pollution, when basic math skills are the property of the few, and no one has the time or inclination to read and explore the obscure depths of human history. If we can admit that our remote ancestors were intelligent enough to conceive of this majestic and complex doctrine of World Ages, we might allow ourselves to be smart enough to let go of destructive tendencies and move into a healthier new era.
...
Other scholars have since concurred with the basic premise of Hamlet’s Mill, that mythology and astronomy go hand in hand. Joseph Campbell even goes so far as to point out that the numbers associated with the ending of world, as recorded in the Icelandic Eddas, are identical to the numbers used in Hindu World Age calculations, and both ultimately refer to precession. Campbell presents this finding in several different books and tapes (most notably, in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space), yet this important aspect of his work has been characteristically ignored. We also have the viewpoint of William Irwin Thompson in his book The Time Falling Bodies Take To Light, which provides a rich elucidation of this whole perspective. The growing trend among mythologists, historians, and other researchers into humanity’s past is to:

1) allow ancient people to be intelligent and perceptive

2) understand that myth and astronomy are interwoven

3) allow for the possibility that we are just learning to recognize the genius of ancient civilizations, and we can learn from them

9.2.5 Ein Paradebeispiel der Archaeo-Astronomie: Die Inka-Zivilisation

Die Inka waren vielleicht die letzte Zivilisation, von denen ein gewaltiges Kompendium der Archaeo-Astronomie bekannt ist. Es ist ein grosses Glück, dass zu den Zeiten der spanischen Eroberung, nachdem die Spanier möglichst alles Material der Inkas vernichtet hatten, ein paar Jesuiten-Patres ausführliche Notizen zu deren Kosmologie und Mythologie gemacht haben. Dieses Material kommt in "Hamlet's Mill" nur selten vor. Deshalb wurde es von AG in diesem Kapitel näher behandelt.

http://www.noologie.de/extra-verb.htm#incalegacy

http://www.noologie.de/extra-verb.htm#inca_video

http://www.noologie.de/extra-verb.htm#inca_sacsayhuaman

Die Google-Suche findet ein paar Einträge:

peruvian site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/hamletmill16.htm

In diesem Kapitel findet sich diese charakteristische Notiz:

Arriaga, in his "Extirpation of Idolatry in Peru"...

This appears also in Levi-Strauss: Myth and Meaning, ch. 3:

http://historiaocharkeologi.com/kanada/myth_and_meaning.pdf

HARELIPS AND TWINS: THE SPLITTING OF A MYTH

Our starting point here will be a puzzling observation recorded by a Spanish missionary in Peru, Father P.J. de Arriaga, at the end of the sixteenth century, and published in his Extirpacion de la Idolatria del Peru (Lima 1621).

9.2.6 Index und Stichwortsuche in Hamlet's Mill

Der gescannte Index ist für sich nicht besonders hilfreich, weil die Stichworte nicht in die .htm Texte verlinkt sind. Aber hier kann man Google einsetzen. Freundlicherweise hat Google den gesamten Inhalt von Hamlet's Mill indiziert. Es ist also einfach, die Einträge zu bestimmten Themen zu finden. Man braucht nur den Code der Stichworte in das Suchfeld des Browsers einzugeben. Es ergeben sich Clusters zu den verschiedenen Leit-Themen des Buches.

Hier ist z.B. das Hamlet-Thema:

yggdrasil site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

world tree site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

snorri site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

edda site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

amlodhi site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

Amlaghe site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

Amlaidhe site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

Amleth site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

Amlethus site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

grotti site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

whirlpool site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

corn mill site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

Dies ist ein Cluster zu Saturn:

saturn site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

kronos site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

Jupiter site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

Hubal site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

yamshid site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

jamshid site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

gilgamesh site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

galaxy site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

nile site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

osiris site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

isis site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

horus site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

Hier ist ein Cluster zu Homer und verwandte Mythologien:

homer site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

illiad site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

ships site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

Atreus site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

asura site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

lethe site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

soma site:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/

Zitierte Literatur:

Dechend, H. v., Santillana, G.: Hamlet's Mühle, (orig.: Hamlet's Mill), Kammerer & Unverzagt, Berlin (1993)

Dechend, H. v., Santillana, G.: Hamlet's Mill, Gambit, Boston (1969)

Weitere Literatur-Angaben sind hier:

http://www.noologie.de/bib.htm

http://www.noologie.de/denk-bib.htm

9.3 More Themes of Theoretical Anthropology

This is the field of Human Universalia, the view of theoretical anthropology. Theoretical anthropology is different from the study of various "cultures" / societies / ethnoi (in Gumilev's terminology). The example case is the German Ethnology. Here we study many different "cultures" and "belief systems". And then we make some inductions on the deep structures of human itellect, or intelligence, or cognition. Claude Levi-Strauss has done some important work in this field. In the present context, we will enlarge on this, with some inputs from present-day research in logics, mythology, field research, and theoretical computer science.

... more to come really soon...

How can we classify inner experiences?

Somatic memory, embodied knowledge, kinesthetic sense, the non-verbal tacit aspects of "culture".

9.3.1 Videos about Anthropology

Franz Boas - The Shackles of Tradition

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOvFDioPrMM [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Seeing Anthropology - An Ethnographic Film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1JBSKsoTP8 [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

9.3.2 The Double Sex

Many present-day discussions about Gender Theory are oblivious of the work of Hermann Baumann: "Das Doppelte Geschlecht". Hermann Baumann was at the LMU Ethnology from 1955 to 1972.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Baumann_(Ethnologe)

von 1955 bis 1972 als Professor am Institut für Völkerkunde und Afrikanistik der Universität München. Seit 1965 war er ordentliches Mitglied der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.^[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Baumann_(social_anthropologist)

Transsexualität revisited. Un/Ordnung der Geschlechterdichotomie:

http://othes.univie.ac.at/1864/1/2008-10-16_9602128.pdf

Sabrina Petra Ramet: Gender Reversals And Gender Cultures:

https://epdf.pub/gender-reversals-and-gender-cultures-anthropological-and-historical-perspectives.html

https://www.unil.ch/files/live/sites/philo/files/shared/DocsPerso/GronebergMichael/MG_Intersex.pdf

https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/pdf/10.14220/jrat.2017.3.2.235

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00918369.2016.1236601?scroll=top&needAccess=true&journalCode=wjhm20

http://www.susanne-schroeter.de/files/travestie_und_transsexualit__t__in_paideuma__kopie.pdf

https://www.academia.edu/29100913/ZAGONETKA_VIRD%C5%BDINE_Etnolo%C5%A1ka_i_kulturnoantropolo%C5%A1ka_studija.pdf

https://books.google.de/books?id=zlciAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=%22Hermann+Baumann%22+%22Third+Sex%22.&source=bl&ots=6nKrfJ7mOv&sig=ACfU3U2w5ifV2JtH-jbkx4-PxONNMTdmcw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjL9beYjobmAhWUwcQBHVLHAbcQ6AEwAHoECBYQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Hermann%20Baumann%22%20%22Third%20Sex%22.&f=false

9.3.3 Traditions of Trans-Gender

There are many societies where there exists a firm tradition of "The Third Sex". One of these is in Thailand, and this is very much in the open for any tourists to admire:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=thailand+ladyboys

Another very wide-spread "Third Sex" tradition is the Hijra's of India:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Hijra%27s+India

And they exist also in Samoa and Afghanistan and Java.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8D_nx1a24k

Samoa's Fa'afafine, Men With the Manner of a Woman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GV_g6X2PEvs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_-6RAinga4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mskecTHIaCk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9xvkCa63Js

Fa’afafine: the widely accepted third gender in Samoa

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Samoa+trans

In some Islamic countries with strict separation of unmarried women and men, boys are aften used sexually.

Java:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSQMMYxq8oc

Enslaved by the Cult: Exploitation of young boys in Java’s ancient tradition.

Bacha Bazi in Afghanistan

Afghanistan and Pakistan: The Sexual Exploitation of Boys:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Afghanistan%3A+Sexual+Exploitation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU6q6EaXBlM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMp2wm0VMUs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjSsWUIvS9g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpTJ8rhb8p0&list=PLmH3I5hKwHWbm9a54K7pl-lvdqVajjsaa

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UslAyNvHSyA&list=PLmH3I5hKwHWbm9a54K7pl-lvdqVajjsaa&index=3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ag5fl2S4juQ&list=PLmH3I5hKwHWbm9a54K7pl-lvdqVajjsaa&index=4

9.3.4 More Questions than Answers

Intentionality, Cognition, and Mental Representation in Medieval Philosophy

Gyula Klima, Fordham University Press, 2015.

10 Notes on Various Dynamic Traditions

10.1 The Australian Aranda Tradition

A Case Example of Embodied Knowledge

There is a short essay on the Australian Aranda Songline Tradition in the dissertation of the present author. This is one of the most elaborate "indigenous" traditions of song, dance and mythology with a practical minimum of technical implements, and it has been studied intensively by Theodor Strehlow. Since he had an Aranda wet-nurse, he grew up among the Aranda children and learned all those subtle things that cannot be learned in an epistemic way. This is presented under the heading:

18.3.8. Theodor Strehlow and the Australian Songline tradtition

http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm#ABORIGINES [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

And this is the more general chapter heading:

18.3. Examples of Kinemorphic Cultural Transmission

http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm#Heading129 [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

The work of Theodor Strehlow is referenced in the bibliography:

http://www.noologie.de/desn28.htm#Strehlow

Strehlow, T.: Aranda Traditions, Melbourne Univ. Press, Melbourne (1947)

Strehlow, T.: Personal monototemism in a polytotemic community, in: Haberland, E.,
Schuster, M., Straube, H.: Festschrift f. Ad. E. Jensen, Renner, München, p. 723-754 (1964)

Strehlow, T.: Songs of central Australia, Angus and Robertson, Syndey (1971)

It should be noted that the "Songs of central Australia" were not welcomed by the contemporary academic anthropological community. Today the material that Strehlow had collected resides at the Strehlow Research Centre in the Museum of Central Australia in Alice Springs, Australia. It is needless to say that most of that material is considered "secret-sacred" by the descendants of these Aranda elders (who have no idea of any details of it), and so it is practically off limits to western scholars to examine them: "special permission is required to access sensitive material from the archive." (See the quote below).

The present author had seen some videos of these performances that were once on German TV, but probably these were also taken out of access for the same reasons. Of course it doesn't help very much to view the videos when one hasn't read the relevant books by Theodor Strehlow.

https://www.magnt.net.au/strehlow-research-centre [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

From 1932 through to the mid 1970’s, TGH Strehlow produced over 40 field diaries, 150 plus genealogies, numerous cultural maps, thousands of photographs and slides, more than a 160 hours of sound recordings and kilometres of film, nearly all of which relates to the Arandic cultures of the Centre. This vast repository of knowledge along with the more that 1200 sacred objects housed in a special vault at the Strehlow Research Centre, makes up the majority of the Collection. Most of the Strehlow Collection remains highly relevant to current generations of Aranda custodians and special permission is required to access sensitive material from the archive.

This may be a conclusion of the study of the ancient (possibly 50.000 years) danced and sung Aborigine mythology: They managed to store all their knowledge about their ecosystem (which is very irregular, due to the sporadic nature of rainfall) in their somatic memory, by performing it again and again in their rituals.

10.2 The Dance Traditions of Ancient Mediterranea

There exists one exhaustive account of the dance traditions of ancient Mediterranea around the times of the Roman empire, that of Lucianus Samosata. It shows that there existed a very elaborate system of dances which were often associated with cosmological themes, and the gyrations of the planets and stars were displayed in the forms of specific (sacred) dances. It should be noted that the early Christian church fathers abhorred the dance as a particularly nasty form of Roman decadence, and therefore very little other material on this subject survived their well-intentioned purges.

http://www.noologie.de/_extra-verb.htm#samosata

But there still exist many (probably very old) dance traditions up to this day in Europe, for example on the Balkans and in Greece. These are called folk lore today, and have no spiritual content any more, but they are still quite important in the social setting.

http://www.noologie.de/_extra-verb.htm - balkantanz

This youtube query gives a list of Greek folk dances:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=greek+folk+dance [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG12C1oX5Eo [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

Zorba The Greek Dance - The Greek Orchestra Emmetron Music HD

"The Rite of Spring" by Strawinsky is one modern re-creation of what ancient spring rituals may have been like. Also the "Carmina Burana" by Orff are a modern re-creation of ancient peasant rituals. Several modern composers (of the 1900's era) went to the countryside and recorded the musical structures of the people's songs and dances and embedded them into their compositions.

11 Comments on Ethnological Theory and History

11.1 The Mythological Structure of "Hamlet"

This little essay is just noticed in passing. It is about the re-framing of the Hamlet mythology into the concepts and customs of the elders of Tiv society of West Africa.

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-past/12476/shakespeare-in-the-bush

[Accessed: 2019-10-24]

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/print/476 [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

Laura Bohanna: Shakespeare in the Bush: An American anthropologist set out to study the Tiv of West Africa and was taught the true meaning of Hamlet. Published on Natural History Magazine Aug./Sept. 1966.

These are just two short quotes from that article which should elucidate the performative nature of the Tiv "entertainment" culture and the deeper mythological foundations:

People began to drink at dawn. By midmorning the whole homestead was singing, dancing, and

drumming. When it rained, people had to sit inside their huts: there they drank and sang or they

drank and told stories.

We, who are elders, will instruct you in their true meaning, so that when you return to your own land your elders will see that you have not been sitting in the bush, but among those who know things and who have taught you wisdom.”

11.1.1 Hamlet's Mill

In short, there exists a deep structure of the Hamlet mythology, but it is unknown to most western anthropologists. There is no place here to enlarge on this, and this is the proper reference:

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/hamletmill.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/hamletmill01.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/hamlets_mill/hamletmill06.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

It should be noted that Hertha v. Dechend was the last surviving disciple of Leo Frobenius, and her work implies that there was a pre-historic (since about 50.000 years) trans-continental "trade of ideas" in the form of mythology. She had focused her attention mainly on matters of archaeo-astronomy, especially the precession of the equinoxes. Aside from her seminal work "Hamlet's Mill", there are many more megabytes of lecture scripts that are residing at the Frankfurt Frobenius Institute.

http://archiv.frobenius-katalog.de/rech.FAU?sid=2C0ED11C1&dm=1&auft=0

[Accessed: 2019-10-24]

Her theory may not fit well with some entrenched ideas in the academic sciences that the pre-historic and pre-writing cultures of humanity could not have been able to observe and record and transmit the knowledge of such celestial phenomena. Here is some more material on the work of Hertha v. Dechend:

http://www.noologie.de/wagner.htm#_Toc18314091 [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

http://www.noologie.de/wagner.htm#_Toc18314178 [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

11.2 Marcel Mauss: Techniques of the Body

I am using the english version of this article:

https://monoskop.org/images/c/c4/Mauss_Marcel_1935_1973_Techniques_of_the_Body.pdf

[Accessed: 2019-10-27]

For the present author (AG), the most interesting passages in this article are on p. 75-76 which are quoted here:

I had to go back to ancient notions, to the Platonic position on technique, for Plato spoke of a technique of music and in particular of a technique of the dance, and extend these notions.

I call technique an action which is effective and traditional (and you will see that in this it is no different from a magical, religious or symbolic action). It has to be effective and traditional. There is no technique and no transmission in the absence of tradition. This above all is what distinguishes man from the animals: the transmission of his techniques and very probably their oral transmission.

In this case all that need be said is quite simply that we are dealing with techniques of the body. The body is man's first and most natural instrument. Or more accurately, not to speak of instruments, man's first and most natural technical object, and at the same time technical means, is his body. Immediately this whole broad category of what I classified in descriptive sociology as 'miscellaneous' disappeared from that rubric and took shape and body: we now know where to range it.

It should be noted that in the times after this article, many researchers have discovered many quasi-cultural animal traditions, especially of the apes, like the Bonobo, and birds of the corvus family who are quite adept at tool usage. The most proverbial of these is that of some macaques that had developed the "cultural technique" of washing their sweet potatoes in salt water and that apparently made them taste better.

https://www.japanmonkeycentre.org/pdf/sweet-potato-washing/Hirata-2001-Sweet-potato-washing-revisited.pdf [Accessed: 2019-10-27]

The present article "Embodied Knowledge" deals mainly with a slightly different aspect of "Techniques of the Body". This facility is also called "tacit knowledge", "somatic knowledge" or "muscle memory". Therefore the literature presented here applies to this as well. We refer to the article by Konrad Lehmann in Telepolis: ->lehmann1 and James J. Gibson:

->gibson1.

11.2.1 Karl Bücher: Arbeit und Rhythmus

There exists a work by Karl Bücher: "Arbeit und Rhythmus". (Published "30. Mai 1899") This gives a comprehensive account of the rhythmic and melodic patterns that are connected with doing manual work everywhere before the industrialization. This complements the work of Marcel Mauss "Techniques of the Body". Almost all human activities have some sort of rhythm, and first are of course the rhythms of the body itself, like the heart-beat, the breath, and the biorhythms of waking and sleeping, and the female menstrual rhythm. The latter one still follows the moon phases. Practically all marine life reproduction also synchronizes with the moon phases in form of the tidal rhythm, especially the high or spring tides. Bücher also devotes a large chapter to the discussion of the ethnographic work of his time, noting a quasi-universal tendency of human actions to be accompanied by rhythm. Mostly these were work songs, and the best known are those of the sailors on the sailing ships, where every movement of those huge vessels had to be coordinated in a very precise manner, or otherwise the ship would founder. So these songs were of quite a survival importance for the whole crew. And even if their captains had to give them some overall directions, the sailors needed to know to translate this into manual actions on the ropes and the sails, or the ship would go nowhere, or would sink in the next best storm. At Bücher's time some of the work songs were still in existence. The industrial revolution brought them to silence, they were drowned out by the hammering cycles of the machines. It is probably safe to say that a great part of present-day mental disorders stem from the modern conditions of an a-rhythmic life-style.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_B%C3%BCcher [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://archive.org/stream/arbeitundrhythm00bcgoog/arbeitundrhythm00bcgoog_djvu.txt

[Accessed: 2019-10-24]

Unfortunately, the scan of this book has many errors, thus diminishing its usefulness.

There are more www occurrences of this book, some with better quality:

https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-663-16235-3 [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://ia802708.us.archive.org/19/items/arbeitundrhythm00bcgoog/arbeitundrhythm00bcgoog.pdf [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

Here is a slightly edited version of "Arbeit und Rhythmus".

http://www.noologie.de/Arbeit und Rhythmus.htm [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

More information on rhythmic traditions is in:

http://www.noologie.de/wagner.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

http://www.noologie.de/wagner.pdf [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

11.2.2 The Music Theory of Rhythm

Here is some music theory of rhythm:

http://www.noologie.de/wagner.htm#_Toc18314104 [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Utzyi4gfBDE [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0RdPSRY5HQ [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/rhythm [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTQ1A7YT1pQ [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

How Music Works: Rhythm - Accent & Syncopation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTQ1A7YT1pQ&list=RDzTQ1A7YT1pQ&start_radio=1&t=435

[Accessed: 2019-10-28]

Playlist: How Music Works: Rhythm - Accent & Syncopation

11.2.3 The Theory and Practice of Polyrhythmics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=553caGiTuSo&list=PL92bmiQvrtmDfhpPXbiNglb1e0H4r-IRc [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1pejTgLuhA [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

Polyrhythm- Learn And Master 3:4 And 4:3 [Music Theory - Rhythm- Counting]

And some practical applications:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsPdTNGnr44 [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

Balinese Gamelan: An Introduction [with Dr. Elizabeth Clendinning]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE93bF0dooU [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

Teaching you Indonesian Gamelan Music! (Lancaran Kotek)

This is the whole playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE93bF0dooU&list=RDjE93bF0dooU&start_radio=1&t=35 [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WELQBJRiH90 [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Various - Music For The Gods (Gamelan)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WELQBJRiH90&list=RDWELQBJRiH90&start_radio=1&t=65&pbjreload=10 [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

The Whole Playlist: Various - Music For The Gods (Gamelan)

11.2.4 The Dissertation of the Present Author

Then there are several chapters in the dissertation of the present author that relate directly to "Techniques of the Body":

13. The somatic factors: The human body as cultural transmission device

http://www.noologie.de/desn19.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-27]

18. Dynamic Cultural Transmission

http://www.noologie.de/desn24.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-27]

19. The age group modes of cultural transmission

http://www.noologie.de/desn25.htm [Accessed: 2019-10-27]

There is no need to copy these chapters into the present text, but they may serve as background information to "Techniques of the Body".

11.2.5 Peter Sloterdijk: "Du musst Dein Leben ändern"

Then there is the work of Peter Sloterdijk "Du musst dein Leben ändern" which also deals with "Techniques of the Body" but from a quite different perspective. The seminal point of his work is: "Religions are practice systems" (Religionen sind Übungs-Systeme). One may or may not agree with his proposition. The present author has commented on Sloterdijk's work here:

"The Movement Gestalt and the Kulturmorphologie, and the Meta-Morphologie":

http://www.noologie.de/_extra-verb.htm - sloterdijk1 [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

"The Essence of the Spiritual Movement Gestalt or Kata".

http://www.noologie.de/_extra-verb.htm#kataessence [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

There is one over-arching theme of the Spiritual Experience: Is there any connection to the Christian western European theme of religion? From the vantage point of the present author (AG), it seems unlikely. The Christian "spiritual" system has nothing to do with "spiritual" experiences that are accessible for humans in their living lives, like for example shamanistic experiences. The Christian system translates or better postpones all of spirituality to an "Afterlife". There is a little joke that exemplifies this:

Lily Tomlin: "Why is it when we talk to God, we're said to be praying, but when God talks to us, we're schizophrenic?"

Literature Reference:

Sloterdijk, Peter: "Du musst Dein Leben ändern. Über Anthropotechnik." (2009). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-518-41995-3.

abk. DMDL.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du_mu%C3%9Ft_dein_Leben_%C3%A4ndern

[Accessed: 2019-10-29]

11.3 Malinowski: Argonauts of the Western Pacific

https://wolnelektury.pl/media/book/pdf/argonauts-of-the-western-pacific.pdf

[Accessed: 2019-10-27]

This is the English version of Malinowski's book. His introduction is from p. 11 ff. in the English edition. In the German edition it is from p. 23 ff.

There are youtube videos about his work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjCMOpnx6r8&list=PLSFPCObtitGSXFHXWQBaPTAJpOLZUgdIf&index=2 [Accessed: 2019-11-12]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjCMOpnx6r8&list=PLSFPCObtitGSXFHXWQBaPTAJpOLZUgdIf [Accessed: 2019-11-12]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f22VsAlOwbc&list=PL9ECD44B8D1575A18

[Accessed: 2019-11-12]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzc4kUB9ya8&list=PLAF1DBEC98DDC7ABA

[Accessed: 2019-11-12]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBQi9STHI5U [Accessed: 2019-11-12]

Cuentos de la jungla: Malinowski y las Islas Trobriand (BBC, subtitulado en español)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F8DYYcZKb2o [Accessed: 2019-11-12]

Bronislaw Malinowski "Fora da varanda" - Série Estranhos no Exterior (Strangers Abroad)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucAsLa61mV8 [Accessed: 2019-11-12]

Young Indiana Jones and Bronislaw Malinowski

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argonauts_of_the_Western_Pacific [Accessed: 2019-10-27]

The wikipedia article gives the salient points about the pioneering contribution of Malinowski:

Argonauts of the Western Pacific developed from anthropological research which Bronislaw Malinowski described as "off the verandah".^[2] Unlike the armchair anthropology of previous researchers, this method was characterized by participant observation: informal interviews, direct observation, participation in the life of the group, collective discussions, analyses of personal documents produced within the group, self-analysis, results from activities undertaken off or online, and life-histories.^[3]

Impact

Considered the first modern ethnography,^[4] Argonauts of the Western Pacific redefined the ethnographic genre.^[5] Adam Kuper, in his seminal 1973 book on British social anthropology, begins his analysis with Malinowski's status as the founder of the discipline:

"Malinowski has a strong claim to being the founder of the profession of social anthropology in Britain, for he established its distinctive apprenticeship -- intensive fieldwork in an exotic community."^[6]

The present author (AG) makes a note of the quite personal account of Malinowski of his own experiences as a beginner in fieldwork. (p. 13, English edition, p. 26 German edition):

Imagine further that you are a beginner, without previous experience, with nothing to guide you and no one to help you. For the white man is temporarily absent, or else unable or unwilling to waste any of his time on you. This exactly describes my first initiation into field work on the south coast of New Guinea.

...

I had periods of despondency, when I buried myself in the reading of novels, as a man might take to drink in a fit of tropical depression and boredom.

... p. 14

I came back duly, and soon gathered an audience around me. A few compliments in pidgin-English on both sides, some tobacco changing hands, induced an atmosphere of mutual amiability. I tried then to proceed to business. First, to begin with subjects which might arouse no suspicion, I started to „do” technology. A few natives were engaged in manufacturing some object or other. It was easy to look at it and obtain the names of the tools, and even some technical expressions about the proceedings, but there the matter ended. It must be borne in mind that pidgin-English is a very imperfect instrument for expressing one’s ideas, and that before one gets a good training in framing questions and understanding answers one has the uncomfortable feeling that free communication in it with the natives will never be attained; and I was quite unable to enter into any more detailed or explicit conversation with them at first.

...

What is then this ethnographer’s magic, by which he is able to evoke the real spirit of the natives, the true picture of tribal life? As usual, success can only be obtained by a patient and systematic application of a number of rules of common sense and wellknown scientific principles, and not by the discovery of any marvellous short-cut leading to the desired results without effort or trouble.

... p. 15:

And it must be emphasised whenever anything dramatic or important occurs it is essential to investigate it at the very moment of happening, because the natives cannot but talk about it, are too excited to be reticent, and too interested to be mentally lazy in supplying details. Also, over and over again, I committed breaches of etiquette, which the natives, familiar enough with me, were not slow in pointing out. I had to learn how to behave, and to a certain extent, I acquired „the feeling” for native good and bad manners. With this, and with the capacity of enjoying their company and sharing some of their games and amusements, I began to feel that I was indeed in touch with the natives, and this is certainly the preliminary condition of being able to carry on successful field work.

... p. 16:

The word „savage”, whatever association it might have had originally, connotes ideas of boundless liberty, of irregularity, of something extremely and extraordinarily quaint. In popular thinking, we imagine that the natives live on the bosom of Nature, more or less as they can and like, the prey of irregular, phantasmagoric beliefs and apprehensions. Modern science, on the contrary, shows that their social institutions have a very definite organisation, that they are governed by authority, law and order in their public and personal relations, while the latter are, besides, under the control of extremely complex ties of kinship and clanship. Indeed, we see them entangled in a mesh of duties, functions and privileges which correspond to an elaborate tribal, communal and kinship organisation.

... p. 17:

... and he gives us a picture of the natives subjected to a strict code of behaviour and good manners, to which in comparison the life at the Court of Versailles or Escurial was free and easy.

11.3.1 The Situation in Present-day Western New Guinea

The Situation in present-day western New Guinea (Irian-Jaya) under Indonesian rule provides a picture of a sort of exploitation that may be worse than that of the Europeans. This video gives some insight into the social problems.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJPZpazebww [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

Freedom Fighter of the Forgotten World in West Papua

The following video of course doesn't mention any of the social problems there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrAVuOOlW5Y [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

The Gold Mine In The Clouds | Super Structures | Spark

This following video gives a somewhat romantic account of the life in Dutch New Guinea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g5z5s0dm_U [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

Dutch New Guinea in HD Color 1949-1962

Netherlands New Guinea (Dutch: Nederlands-Nieuw-Guinea) refers to the West Papua region while it was an overseas territory of the Kingdom of the Netherlands from 1949 to 1962. Until 1949 it was a part of the Netherlands Indies. It was commonly known as Dutch New Guinea. It is currently Indonesia's two easternmost provinces, Papua and West Papua (administered under a unified government prior to 2003 under the name Irian Jaya).

The following youtube query gives many more videos on Irian Jaya.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=new+guinea+irian+jaya+2018

11.4 Clifford Geertz on Bali Cockfight

More Info on Clifford Geertz:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41CWjE5LMoA&list=PLnGravZsYAxogmD1HSKlDvZ8CGRby6ih0 [Accessed: 2019-11-12]

Clifford Geertz describes some of the darker aspects of Balinese culture. To understand this, it is important to know their Vedic/Brahmanic background.

11.4.1 The Vedic/Brahmanic Background of Bali

The ferocious mythological fights of the powers of (white, aryan) light-powers against the black demonic-powers are the main subject in practically all Vedic mythologies like the Rgveda.

[[AG: It should be noted that almost all present-day mythological heroic Hollywood productions are just repeating this age-old theme.]]

It should also be noted that Indian Brahmanic culture is quite puritanic, especially when it concerns sexual matters. The term "purity" is not just a British Victorian invention, but applies equally to Brahmin culture. This is in stark contrast to the Indian Dravidian Tantric lore, and the sexual cult of the Devadasis in ancient India before the Britisher's cleaned it all up. The Brahmanic structure is the backbone of the Indian caste system, which is a power system of overlordship over the lowest caste, the Shudras, and the casteless people, the Dalits and Mlecchas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shudra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalit

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mleccha

The sanskritizing of names was a common feature among both indigenous and foreign mlecchas who slowly tried to move away from their status of mleccha. Very often, in the case of ruling families, it took one to two generations to make a transition. One of the most direct forms of the expression of the Brahmanical ritual purity was the form and type of food which a Brahmin could eat. He was forbidden to accept cooked food from any unclean person. ...

By the twelfth century AD, wheat was described in one lexicon as 'food of the mlecchas' and rice became the 'pure' cereal. Onions and garlic was also regarded as the food of the mlecchas and therefore prohibited to the priestly intellectual class of Brahmins. Mlecchas drank alcohol, ate cow flesh, which was strictly forbidden to a true believer of Sanatana Dharma, and believed in false gods.^[26]^[27]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dasa

Dasa is a Sanskrit language term found in ancient Hindu texts, such as the Rigveda and Arthashastra.^[1] It usually means either "enemy" or "servant".^[2]

A third usage, related to the second, is "servant of God", "devotee," "votary" or "one who has surrendered to God"; dasa may be a suffix of a given name to indicate a "servant" of a revered person or deity.^[3]

In some contexts, dasa is interchangeable with the Sanskrit words dasyu and asura. Both of these terms have been translated into other languages as words equivalent to "demon", "harmful supernatural force", "slave", "servant" or "barbarian", depending on the context in which the word is used.^[2]^[4]

11.4.2 Quotes from the Geertz Article

These quotes provide some ethnopsychoanalysis of the Balinese:

P. 5:

To anyone who has been in Bali any length of time, the deep psychological identification of Balinese men with their cocks is unmistakable. The double entendre here is deliberate. It works in exactly the same way in Balinese as it does in English, even to producing the same tired jokes, strained puns, and uninventive obscenities.

Bateson and Mead have even suggested that, in line with the Balinese conception of the body as a set of separately animated parts, cocks are viewed as detachable, self-operating penises, ambulant genitals with a life of their own.(4) And while I do not have the kind of unconscious material either to confirm or disconfirm this intriguing notion, the fact that they are masculine symbols par excellence is about as indubitable, and to the Balinese about as evident, as the fact that water runs downhill. The language of everyday moralism is shot through, on the male side of it, with roosterish imagery. Sabung, the word for cock (and one which appears in inscriptions as early as a.d. 922), is used metaphorically to mean "hero," "warrior," "champion," "man of parts," "political candidate," "bachelor," "dandy," "lady-killer," or "tough guy." A pompous man whose behavior presumes above his station is compared to a tailless cock who struts about as though he had a large, spectacular one. A desperate man who makes a last, irrational effort to extricate himself from an impossible situation is likened to a dying cock who makes one final lunge at his tor mentor to drag him along to a common destruction.

P. 7:

The Balinese revulsion against any behavior regarded as animal-like can hardly be overstressed. Babies are not allowed to crawl for that reason. Incest, though hardly approved, is a much less horrifying crime than bestiality. (The appropriate punishment for the second is death by drowning, for the first being forced to live like an animal.)(8) Most demons are represented -- in sculpture, dance, ritual, myth -- in some real or fantastic animal form. The main puberty rite consists in filing the child's teeth so they will not look like animal fangs. Not only defecation but eating is regarded as a disgusting, almost obscene activity, to be conducted hurriedly and privately, because of its association with animality. Even falling down or any form of clumsiness is considered to be bad for these reasons. Aside from cocks and a few domestic animals -- oxen, ducks -- of no emotional significance, the Balinese are aversive to animals and treat their large number of dogs not merely callously but with a phobic cruelty. In identifying with his cock, the Balinese man is identifying not just with his ideal self, or even his penis, but also, and at the same time, with what he most fears, hates, and ambivalence being what it is, is fascinated by -- The Powers of Darkness. The connection of cocks and cockfighting with such Powers, with the animalistic demons that threaten constantly to invade the small, cleared off space in which the Balinese have so carefully built their lives and devour its inhabitants, is quite explicit.

[[AG: It should be noted that the Balinese are the only people of the Indonesian archipelago who have not converted to Islam. The police in Bali are of course Muslim, coming from mostly Java. This should be a good reason for the Balinese to be very wary of any outsider and out-religion foreign intrusion.]]

P. 18:

As all Balinese villages, this one -- Tihingan, in the Klungkung region of southeast Bali -- is intricately organized, a labyrinth of alliances and oppositions. But, unlike many, two sorts of corporate groups, which are also status groups, particularly stand out, and we may concentrate on them, in a part-for-whole way, without undue distortion.

First, the village is dominated by four large, patrilineal, partly endogamous descent groups which are constantly vying with one another and form the major factions in the village. Sometimes they group two and two, or rather the two larger ones versus the two smaller ones plus all the unaffiliated people; sometimes they operate independently. There are also subfactions within them, subfactions within the subfactions, and so on to rather fine levels of distinction. And second, there is the village itself, almost entirely endogamous, which is opposed to all the other villages round about in its cockfight circuit (which, as explained, is the market region), but which also forms alliances with certain of these neighbors against certain others in various supra-village political and social contexts. The exact situation is thus, as everywhere in Bali, quite distinctive; but the general pattern of a tiered hierarchy of status rivalries between highly corporate but various based groupings (and, thus, between the members of them) is entirely general. Consider, then, as support of the general thesis that the cockfight, and especially the deep cockfight, is fundamentally a dramatization of status concerns, the following facts, which to avoid extended ethnographic description I will simply pronounce to be facts -- though the concrete evidence-examples, statements, and numbers that could be brought to bear in support of them is both extensive and unmistakable...

P. 27:

The interpretatio naturae tradition of the middle ages, which, culminating in Spinoza, attempted to read nature as Scripture, the Nietszchean [sic] effort to treat value systems as glosses on the will to power (or the Marxian one to treat them as glosses on property relations), and the Freudian replacement of the enigmatic text of the manifest dream with the plain one of the latent, all offer precedents, if not equally recommendable ones. (37) But the idea remains theoretically undeveloped; and the more profound corollary, so far as anthropology is concerned, that cultural forms can be treated as texts, as imaginative works built out of social materials, has yet to be systematically exploited. (38) In the case at hand, to treat the cockfight as a text is to bring out a feature of it (in my opinion, the central feature of it) that treating it as a rite or a pastime, the two most obvious alternatives, would tend to obscure: its use of emotion for cognitive ends. What the cockfight says it says in a vocabulary of sentiment -- the thrill of risk, the despair of loss, the pleasure of triumph. Yet what it says is not merely that risk is exciting, loss depressing, or triumph gratifying, banal tautologies of affect, but that it is of these emotions, thus exampled, that society is built and individuals put together. Attending cockfights and participating in them is, for the Balinese, a kind of sentimental education. What he learns there is what his culture's ethos and his private sensibility (or, anyway, certain aspects of them) look like when spelled out externally in a collective text; that the two are near enough alike to be articulated in the symbolics of a single such text; and -- the disquieting part -- that the text in which this revelation is accomplished consists of a chicken hacking another mindlessly to bits.

Every people, the proverb has it, loves its own form of violence. The cockfight is the Balinese reflection on theirs: on its look, its uses, its force, its fascination. Drawing on almost every level of Balinese experience, it brings together themes -- animal savagery, male narcissism, opponent gambling, status rivalry, mass excitement, blood sacrifice -- whose main connection is their involvement with rage and the fear of rage, and, binding them into a set of rules which at once contains them and allows them play, builds a symbolic structure in which, over and over again, the reality of their inner affiliation can be intelligibly felt.

11.4.3 Videos of Bali Cockfight

Here are some videos on the subject. Youtube states that these scenes may be offensive for some people because of animal cruelty. But they show very well the heated atmosphere:

This is a youtube search for Bali Cockfight:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bali+cockfight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjzxoUMx9Ok

Cock Fight in Bali

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt8rYW-Lt3I

Bali, Indonesia- A Cock Fight in the 1930s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avW6g31hy-c

Clifford Geertz: The Interpretation of Cultures (The Balinese Cockfight)

11.4.4 Some Nicer Folkloristic Aspects of Bali

Bali is today mostly known for its folkloristic aspects, and it is a relatively peaceful and relaxing place, with plenty of beaches, and plenty of alcohol and partying, for mostly Australian and New Zealand tourists. These youtube videos give some vivid impressions that will reveal some clues on the subtle sub-strata of this culture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balinese_dance [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

This youtube query will reveal many important data on things that are difficult to describe with written words:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=balinese+music+traditional

[Accessed: 2019-10-28]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGXcnWUqV-Y [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

Baraka Ketjak

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0HY0oD84OM [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

Kecak Dance / Uluwatu, Bali

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4C7T0-G7Ho&list=RDv4C7T0-G7Ho&start_radio=1&t=72 [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kris [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCUdEnGvYFk [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkxuPxdsZ58&list=PLC26FD39F9B2DD700

[Accessed: 2019-10-28]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSCx3MxRjUE&list=PLC26FD39F9B2DD700&index=5 [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

11.5 Flavien Ndonko: Deutsche Hunde

This is a somewhat superficial ethnographical sketch about the emotional role of dogs in German society. It lacks a deeper understanding of the role of co-existence of humans and dogs. This is expecially the factor of the high social intelligence of dogs which they had inherited from their wolf ancestors. It would have been more productive if Flavien Ndonko had done some more cross-cultural research on the many human societies that have very deep emotional relations between humans and dogs. A particularly good example would be Japan, where there is an even deeper emotional link, one reason for this is that the Japanese Shinto and Buddhist "spirituality" is thoroughly animistic, in the sense that not only all living beings have a "soul", but also all parts of nature, like trees, mountains, lakes, and rivers, and of course, the dogs also. Practically all northern European (and USA) peoples have the same deep emotional connection with dogs, much the same as the Germans. It seems that the more northern the people are, the deeper the emotional relation gets.

11.5.1 The Societal Scale of Values of Dogs

On the other hand, the more we come closer to the tropics, the dogs are considered more lowly on the societal scale of values. A prime example of this is the Arabic scale of insults which culminates in calling someone a dog:

https://theculturetrip.com/middle-east/united-arab-emirates/articles/13-hilarious-arabic-swear-words-and-phrases/ [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Chelb

One of the most well-known insults, this simply means “dog”. However, for Arabs this is one of the most insulting things to call a person, and you’ll most likely witness a fight if someone is indeed called a “chelb” to their face.

Ibn al Kalb

Meaning “son of a dog”, this is similar to calling someone a dog except that now you’ve also insulted the family as well. Let’s just say if there is anything worse than calling someone a dog, this is it.

11.5.2 About Dog Races

Quite a few of the many dog races that exist today are a product of British Race Breeding, and this breeding practice prompted Darwin to develop his ideas of (natural) selection. The British breeders were some of the most expert ones, for dogs and for horses, but also pigeons. So they were also the experts of artificial selection. A particularly interesting piece of ethnological research is the intimate relation of the nordic and Inuit humans where the dogs are (or were) of paramount survival value.

11.5.3 Aboriginal Australians and Dingo Dogs

Another more anecdotal ethnological facet would be the symbiosis of Aboriginal Australians with their half-wild dogs, the Dingoes. There is a proverbial theme: "The Three Dog Night". This is an expression for a particularly cold night. It can get very cold in the Australian semi-desert climate, even though it gets very hot during daytime. So in order to keep warm, the people had to have three dogs to cozy up with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Dog_Night#Band_name_origin [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

... The Three Dog Night Story... states that vocalist Danny Hutton's girlfriend, actress June Fairchild ... suggested the name after reading a magazine article about indigenous Australians, in which it was explained that on cold nights they would customarily sleep in a hole in the ground while embracing a dingo, a native species of wild dog. On colder nights they would sleep with two dogs and, if the night were freezing, it was a "three dog night".^[4]

11.5.4 Maori Kuri Dogs

Another quite nice anecdote is that of the relation of the Maoris with their dogs, called Kuri.

https://www.heise.de/tp/features/Captain-Cook-der-unterschlagene-Entdecker-Neuseelands-4566325.html?seite=all [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kur%C4%AB [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

11.5.5 Higher Intellectual Abilities of Dogs

The following article from aeon highlights some of the commonly unknown intellectual abilities of dogs:

https://aeon.co/essays/why-science-needs-to-catch-up-with-what-dog-trainers-know

[Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Fundamentally, if you have a brain, you will learn by repeating actions that previously got you something you want, and avoiding actions that got you something unpleasant. Wolves, apes and dolphins all learn this way – as do goldfish and animals with even simpler brains. This is how dogs learn to beg at the table and to avoid eating shoes (at least when their owners are watching). On their own, animals can chain together individual skills – such as chasing, pouncing and biting, learned by wolf cubs as part of play – into more complex skills such as hunting. This learning can be enhanced by social facilitation, in other words, by paying attention to the same thing that their parents and siblings are doing. Young wolves on their first hunt, for example, might figure out how exactly they are supposed to apply all those puppyhood play skills to a particular chase.

...

While most people think of primates and dolphins as intellectually exceptional, Ramirez says his early training experience at a guide-dog school taught him to consider dogs as incredibly smart animals. What impressed him was ‘intelligent disobedience’ – the rare times when a guide dog needed to refuse his handler’s command, for his handler’s safety. It was up to the dog to make that judgment. As a result, Ramirez began his career thinking of dogs as the intellectually exceptional species, not primates and dolphins.

11.5.6 Wolves, Dog Genealogy and DNA

https://www.livescience.com/50928-wolf-genome-dog-ancient-ancestor.html

[Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Humans and dogs were constant companions well before our ancestors settled in villages and started growing crops 10,000 years ago, a new study suggests.

Genetic evidence from an ancient wolf bone discovered lying on the tundra in Siberia's Taimyr Peninsula reveals that wolves and dogs split from their common ancestor at least 27,000 years ago. "Although separation isn't the same as domestication, this opens up the possibility that domestication occurred much earlier than we thought before," said lead study author Pontus Skoglund, who studies ancient DNA at Harvard Medical School and the Broad Institute in Massachusetts. Previously, scientists had pegged the wolf-dog split at no earlier than 16,000 years ago.

Although the prehistoric wolf went extinct, its genetic legacy lives on in Arctic sled dogs, the team discovered. "Siberian huskies have a portion of their genome that traces back exclusively to this ancient Siberian wolf," Skoglund told Live Science. "It's pretty amazing that there is a special genetic connection to a wolf that roamed the tundra 35,000 years ago."

Greenland dogs also carry some of this ancient wolf DNA, as do the Chinese Shar-Pei and the Finnish spitz, the study authors reported. The researchers plan to study what the genes do, as their role is not yet known, Skoglund said.

https://genome.cshlp.org/content/15/12/1706.full.html [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/researchers-create-the-first-family-tree-of-domestic-dogs/ [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://www.welt.de/kmpkt/article204003006/18-000-Jahre-alt-Ist-der-Steinzeit-Welpe-Dogor-ein-Hund-oder-ein-Wolf.html

There are many youtube videos about human-wolf relations:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=living+with+wolves [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

11.5.7 A Speculative Story of Paleo-History

Human mythology world-wide is full of stories concerning wolves, dogs, and coyotes. (See the work of Hertha v. Dechend ->dechend2 ). For example Rudyard Kipling's novel "Mowgli", and the Romulus and Remus legend who were suckled by a she-wolf. The present author has written a speculative essay about a possible human-wolf cooperation in the deep paleo-history. Wolves range very high on the social intelligence scale, and that article speculates that humans might even had learned some of their social skills from the wolves.

http://www.noologie.de/noo02.htm#Heading162 [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

"Eine Geschichte aus der Ur-Urzeit der Mensch - Tier Lebensgemeinschaften".

One more article by the present author is the connection to wolves in the Wagner mythology. This story is a more or less simplistic rehash of so many extremely ancient wolf mythologies. Wagner didn't understand wolf psychology very well, and so his account of the Wälsungen is not too favorable.

http://www.noologie.de/wagner.htm#_Toc18314100 [Accessed: 2019-10-29]

"Das Leit-Thema der Leit-Wölfe: Die Wälsen".

11.6 The Case of Margret Mead and Samoa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_of_Age_in_Samoa [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjGRCi7ewtY [Accessed: 2019-11-12]

Tales from the Jungle: Margaret Mead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2FhWyulpb8 [Accessed: 2019-11-12]

Coming of Age: Margaret Mead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcZjgfdM91s [Accessed: 2019-11-12]

Critiques of Margaret Mead in Samoa

Coming of Age in Samoa is a book by American anthropologist Margaret Mead based upon her research and study of youth – primarily adolescent girls – on the island of Ta'u in the Samoan Islands. The book details the sexual life of teenagers in Samoan society in the early 20th century, and theorizes that culture has a leading influence on psychosexual development.

...

In the 1980s, Derek Freeman contested many of Mead's claims, and argued that she was hoaxed into counterfactually believing that Samoan culture had more relaxed sexual norms than Western culture.^[2] However, the anthropology community on the whole has rejected Freeman's claims, concluding that Freeman cherry-picked his data, and misrepresented both Mead's research and the interviews that he conducted.^[3]^[4]^[5]

The controversy around the book by Margret Mead may count as a good example of a visiting anthropologist who doesn't know very much of the language and customs of the people there, and depends on a selected group of informers for her study. In that case it was the adolescent Samoan girls. These girls surely had their own ways of day-dreaming about erotic adventures, even if that didn't exactly correspond to their lived reality. This may be quite similar to the Troubadour literature of the middle ages. Or the love lore of the modern-day movie industry, and the Bollywood productions may serve as a paramount example of a totally artificial treatment of human love affairs. This is a quote from the above wikipedia article:

We girls would pinch each other and tell her we were out with the boys. We were only joking but she took it seriously. As you know, Samoan girls are terrific liars and love making fun of people but Margaret thought it was all true.^[21]

There is a quite universal human tendency to tell some interesting stories to some unsuspecting outsiders, and especially adolescent girls seem to be able to fabricate very ingenious yarns in their vivid phantasies. So there may be a wide-spread psychological factor involved. It is common knowledge that present-day people, when interviewed by social researchers on matters of their sexual life, they always tend to be a little on the creative side when they describe what is really going on in that part of their lives. We can read these kinds of stories in all the media that have a specific section devoted to the subject, like this one:

https://www.bento.de/suche/?q=sex

11.6.1 Samoa and Syphilis

Now we know that the people of Samoa and Tahiti had been quite liberal in sexual matters when the first european explorers arrived, like James Cook. Why did they change their mores to more strict rules? There is a quite reasonable argument, that the frequent occurrence of Syphilis and other venereal diseases after these european contacts resulted in immense suffering and population losses. This probably prompted them to be a bit more cautious in sexual matters. Due to the well-meaning influence of Christian missionaries, today they even tend to be more catholic than the pope.[4] See:

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/5103891.pdf

The Consequences of Cook's Hawaiian Contacts on the Local Population.

by Peter Pirie, Professor of Geography, University of Hawaii at Manoa

From an insecurely estimated population of c. 250,000 Hawaiians in 1778, the population, even of some Hawaiian ancestry, fell to c. 84,000 by 1850 and to its nadir of c. 37,000 in 1900.

https://www.amdigital.co.uk/about/blog/item/pox-in-the-pacific

Upon Captain Cook’s arrival in 1778 the population of the Hawaiian Islands was estimated at around 500,000. By 1848, however, this number had fallen to less than 90,000. Explanations for this exponential decline vary quite considerably, with many historians citing war, famine, and disease as potential factors. Yet contemporary narratives largely focus on one primary cause; the arrival of syphilis. In his study of the Islands in 1853, G W Bates described the impact that the disease had on the population, noting that:

The deadly virus had a wide and rapid circulation throughout the blood, the bones, and sinews of the whole nation, and left in its course a train of wretchedness and misery which the very pen blushes to record. In the lapse of a few years, a dreadful mortality, heightened, if not induced, by their unholy intercourse, swept away one half of the population, leaving the dead unburied for want of those able to perform the rites of sepulchre.

The devastation described by Bates was by no means unusual. The continuous movement of seamen from port to port ensured that there were few parts of the world that were left untouched by this deadly disease. This was also fuelled by the fact that it was not until 1905, with the drug Salvarsan, that an effective chemotherapy against syphilis was introduced. Before this point sufferers relied primarily on mercury, which could be applied as an ointment, pill, or through a steam bath. The side effects of these treatments were often equally as devastating as the disease it aimed to treat, and tooth loss, skin ulcerations, neurological damage, and even death, were potential consequences of exposure to mercury.

Yuval Noah Harari: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. p. 9:

... by 1853, only 70,000 survivors remained in Hawaii.

11.7 Wouter Goris: Wahrheitsspiele

Die Herausbildung der mittelalterlichen Korrespondenztheorie der Wahrheit vom Standpunkt einer antirealistischen Wahrheitstheorie aus betrachtet.

https://philpapers.org/rec/GORWDH [Accessed: 2019-10-28]

The present author has downloaded this from somewhere of the vhb-Kurs: Einführung in die Ethnologie (WS 2019)

https://moodle.lmu.de/course/view.php?id=5584

This article is an in-depth philosophy-historical discussion of the subject of western episteme that is also dealt with in the present article ->aquinas . See these passages:

P. 288:

Solchermaßen erstreben wir, zwei Ereignisse in der ,Geschichte der Wahrheit‘ aufeinander zu beziehen: das Aufkommen der Wahrheitsbestimmung als adaequatio rei et intellectus im 13. Jahrhundert - die klassische Formulierung der Korrespondenztheorie der Wahrheit - und ihre Zurückweisung im 20. Jahrhundert.

P. 289:

Sowohl die A-Redaktion als auch die C-Redaktion des Durandischen Wahrheitstraktats behandeln die Wahrheitsfrage im Kontext ihrer Lokalisation: „Ob die Wahrheit in den Dingen oder in der Seele sei.“ Der Beantwortung geht in

P. 290:

beiden Redaktionen eine Wesensbestimmung der Wahrheit voran, eine Antwort auf die Frage, was Wahrheit ist (11). Das Wo und das Was sind, trotz der mannigfachen Verschiebungen, Änderungen und Umstellungen, die sich zwischen den beiden Fassungen der Wahrheitsspekulation ausmachen lassen, regelmäßig miteinander verbunden. Durandus schließt sich in beiden Redaktionen der im 13. Jahrhundert klassisch gewordenen Wahrheitsbestimmung an, derzufolge die Wahrheit eine Angleichung des Verstandes an die Sache („adaequatio intellectus ad rem“) sei.

P. 291:

Durandus ist darauf bedacht, die Adaequatio-Formel von jeder Suggestion einer realen Inhärenz der Sache im Verstand fernzuhalten. Zunächst leugnet er, daß sich die von der Adaequatio-Formel bezeichnete Angleichung auf den Verstand als solchen und die Sache bezieht, denn in ihrem Sein sind der Verstand und der Baum in der Außenwelt völlig ungleichförmig: Der eine ist ein unstoffliches Vermögen, der andere ein stoffliches Ding. Es handelt sich also um eine Angleichung zwischen der Sache und etwas, das im Verstande ist (16). Gemäß der im Laufe des 13. Jahrhunderts klassisch gewordenen Erkenntnistheorie, zum Beispiel der des Thomas von Aquin, wird die similitudo der Sache dem Verstande präsent im Modus einer species intelligibilis, einer aktual erkennbaren Form (17).

11.8 Comments to: Einführung in die Ethnologie

7. Zentrale Theorien nach 1945

https://moodle.lmu.de/mod/book/view.php?id=226747&chapterid=23172

[Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://moodle.lmu.de/pluginfile.php/393016/mod_book/chapter/23172/Reinhardt_2008.pdf

[Accessed: 2019-11-20]

12 Conclusion: The Living Feeling Experience

The conclusion of this article is that it is necessary to find more avenues to represent and transmit the embodied or somatic or tacit knowledge of humanity. The western science approach is too much focused on a purely dis-embodied cognitive knowledge which is an "as-if" construct that pretends that the pure spirit of the intellectus somehow reigns supreme above the "conditio humana" of the feeling and experiencing human soul. Partly this condition is caused by the disembodied approach of a theologically dominated western philosophy that still runs in the tracks of the idealistic philosophy of Platon. Another reason is that the Christian heritage of western thought is burdened by the body-denial of the Christian church. Also, a further main factor is that there is an over-arching dominance of visual metaphors, and the dominance of the written word. Such possible sciences as that of smell, taste, haptics, and kinesthetics are difficult to integrate into scientific text books and university curricula. The legacy of music, song, and dance of the so-called "indigenous" people should be more in the focus of the sciences, especially for the academic discipline of Cultural Anthropology or Ethnology as it is called in German. The present approach in this work is to open some uncharted avenues of the Living Feeling Experience.

There are some suggestions to make: Every university curriculum of Cultural Anthropology should include a few dance lessons. Because it is impossible to know anything about dancing before one has done it. This is the embodied incarnated knowledge. And one has to sing, before one has any idea what it means to sing something, and this is long before one learns to speak something. A mother sings for her child long before she speaks to the child. The basic knowledge of "being in the world" is imparted by song. This is the essence of a mythology that was sung long before it was printed in a written word.

13 Literature

Eco, Umberto: The Search for the Perfect Language, transl. James Fentress, Blackwell Publishers Ltd, (1995)

Heiser, Sabine, ed. Gedächtnisparagone - intermediale Konstellationen, Göttingen, V&R Unipress, (2010), ISBN/ISSN/ISMN 9783899715545

https://www.amazon.de/Ged%C3%A4chtnisparagone-Intermediale-Konstellationen-Formen-Erinnerung/dp/3899715543 [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://www.vr-elibrary.de/isbn/9783899715545 [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://www.vr-elibrary.de/author/B%C3%B6hme%2C+Hartmut [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/pdf/10.7788/figurationen-2015-0105 [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

https://www.vr-elibrary.de/doi/pdf/10.14220/9783847098041.25 [Accessed: 2019-11-20]

Hartmut Boehme writes a passage about "adequatio verbum ad res". ->aquinas

This will be referenced later.

Bohanna, Laura: Shakespeare in the Bush: An American anthropologist set out to study the Tiv of West Africa and was taught the true meaning of Hamlet.

Published on Natural History Magazine Aug./Sept. (1966)

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/picks-from-the-past/12476/shakespeare-in-the-bush

[Accessed: 2019-10-24]

http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/print/476 [Accessed: 2019-10-24]

Most of the literature referenced can be found here:

http://www.noologie.de/denk-bib.htm [Accessed: 2019-11-20]