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Diderot And The Metamorphosis Of Species
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Book Synopsis Diderot and the Metamorphosis of Species by : Mary Efrosini Gregory
Download or read book Diderot and the Metamorphosis of Species written by Mary Efrosini Gregory and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2007 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 2006. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Book Synopsis Evolutionism in Eighteenth-century French Thought by : Mary Efrosini Gregory
Download or read book Evolutionism in Eighteenth-century French Thought written by Mary Efrosini Gregory and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2008 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines how eight eighteenth-century French theorists - Maillet, Montesquieu, La Mettrie, Buffon, Maupertuis, Diderot, Rousseau, and Voltaire - addressed evolutionism. Each thinker laid down a building block that would eventually open the door to the mutability of species and a departure from the long-held belief that the chain of beings is fixed. This book describes how the philosophes established a triune relationship among contemporary scientific discoveries, random creationism propelled by the motive and conscious properties of matter, and the notion of the chain of being, along with its corollaries, plenitude and continuity. Also addressed is the contemporary debate over whether apes could ever be taught to speak as well as the issue of race and the family of man.
Download or read book Metamorphosis written by David Gallagher and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 2009 with total page 471 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The origins of selected instances of metamorphosis in Germanic literature are traced from their roots in Ovid's Metamorphoses, grouped roughly on an 'ascending evolutionary scale' (invertebrates, birds, animals, and mermaids). Whilst a broad range of mythological, legendary, fairytale and folktale traditions have played an appreciable part, Ovid's Metamorphoses is still an important comparative analysis and reference point for nineteenth- and twentieth-century German-language narratives of transformations. Metamorphosis is most often used as an index of crisis: an existential crisis of the subject or a crisis in a society's moral, social or cultural values. Specifically selected texts for analysis include Jeremias Gotthelf's Die schwarze Spinne (1842) with the terrifying metamorphoses of Christine into a black spider, the metamorphosis of Gregor Samsa in Kafka's Die Verwandlung (1915), ambiguous metamorphoses in E. T. A. Hoffmann's Der goldne Topf (1814), Hermann Hesse's Piktors Verwandlungen (1925), Der Steppenwolf (1927) and Christoph Ransmayr's Die letzte Welt (1988). Other mythical metamorphoses are examined in texts by Bachmann, Fouqué, Fontane, Goethe, Nietzsche, Nelly Sachs, Thomas Mann and Wagner, and these and many others confirm that metamorphosis is used historically, scientifically, for religious purposes; to highlight identity, sexuality, a dream state, or for metaphoric, metonymic or allegorical reasons.
Download or read book Darwin's Ghosts written by Rebecca Stott and published by Random House. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK “[An] extraordinarily wide-ranging and engaging book [about] the men who shaped the work of Charles Darwin . . . a book that enriches our understanding of how the struggle to think new thoughts is shared across time and space and people.”—The Sunday Telegraph (London) Christmas, 1859. Just one month after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin received an unsettling letter. He had expected criticism; in fact, letters were arriving daily, most expressing outrage and accusations of heresy. But this letter was different. It accused him of failing to acknowledge his predecessors, of taking credit for a theory that had already been discovered by others. Darwin realized that he had made an error in omitting from Origin of Species any mention of his intellectual forebears. Yet when he tried to trace all of the natural philosophers who had laid the groundwork for his theory, he found that history had already forgotten many of them. Darwin’s Ghosts tells the story of the collective discovery of evolution, from Aristotle, walking the shores of Lesbos with his pupils, to Al-Jahiz, an Arab writer in the first century, from Leonardo da Vinci, searching for fossils in the mine shafts of the Tuscan hills, to Denis Diderot in Paris, exploring the origins of species while under the surveillance of the secret police, and the brilliant naturalists of the Jardin de Plantes, finding evidence for evolutionary change in the natural history collections stolen during the Napoleonic wars. Evolution was not discovered single-handedly, Rebecca Stott argues, contrary to what has become standard lore, but is an idea that emerged over many centuries, advanced by daring individuals across the globe who had the imagination to speculate on nature’s extraordinary ways, and who had the courage to articulate such speculations at a time when to do so was often considered heresy. With each chapter focusing on an early evolutionary thinker, Darwin’s Ghosts is a fascinating account of a diverse group of individuals who, despite the very real dangers of challenging a system in which everything was presumed to have been created perfectly by God, felt compelled to understand where we came from. Ultimately, Stott demonstrates, ideas—including evolution itself—evolve just as animals and plants do, by intermingling, toppling weaker notions, and developing over stretches of time. Darwin’s Ghosts presents a groundbreaking new theory of an idea that has changed our very understanding of who we are. Praise for Darwin’s Ghosts “Absorbing . . . Stott captures the breathless excitement of an investigation on the cusp of the unknown. . . . A lively, original book.”—The New York Times Book Review “Stott’s research is broad and unerring; her book is wonderful. . . . An exhilarating romp through 2,000 years of fascinating scientific history.”—Nature “Stott brings Darwin himself to life. . . . [She] writes with a novelist’s flair. . . . Darwin and the ‘ghosts’ so richly described in Ms. Stott’s enjoyable book are the descendants of Aristotle and Bacon and the ancestors of today’s scientists.”—The Wall Street Journal “Riveting . . . Stott has done a wonderful job in showing just how many extraordinary people had speculated on where we came from before the great theorist dispelled all doubts.”—The Guardian (U.K.)
Book Synopsis Humankind and Humanity in the Philosophy of the Enlightenment by : Stefanie Buchenau
Download or read book Humankind and Humanity in the Philosophy of the Enlightenment written by Stefanie Buchenau and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-08-24 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes us human beings? Is it merely some corporeal aspect, or rather some specific mental capacity, language, or some form of moral agency or social life? Is there a gendered bias within the concept of humanity? How do human beings become more human, and can we somehow cease to be human? This volume provides some answers to these fundamental questions and more by charting the increased preoccupation of the European Enlightenment with the concepts of humankind and humanity. Chapters investigate the philosophical concerns of major figures across Western Europe, including Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Locke, Hume, Ferguson, Kant, Herder, Johann Friedrich Blumenbach and the Comte de Buffon. As these philosophers develop important descriptive and comparative approaches to the human species and moral and social ideals of humanity, they present a view of the Enlightenment project as a particular kind of humanism that is different from its Ancient and Renaissance predecessors. With contributions from a team of internationally recognized scholars, including Stephen Gaukroger, Michael Forster, Céline Spector, Jacqueline Taylor, and Günter Zöller, this book offers a novel interpretation of the Enlightenment that is both clear in focus and impressive in scope.
Book Synopsis The Epochs of Nature by : Georges-Louis Leclerc
Download or read book The Epochs of Nature written by Georges-Louis Leclerc and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2018-04-05 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Georges-Louis Leclerc, le comte de Buffon's The Epochs of Nature, originally published as Les Époques de la Nature in 1778, is one of the first great popular science books, a work of style and insight that was devoured by Catherine the Great of Russia and influenced Humboldt, Darwin, Lyell, Vernadsky, and many other renowned scientists. It is the first geological history of the world, stretching from the Earth’s origins to its foreseen end, and though Buffon was limited by the scientific knowledge of his era—the substance of the Earth was not, as he asserts, dragged out of the sun by a giant comet, nor is the sun’s heat generated by tidal forces—many of his deductions appear today as startling insights. And yet, The Epochs of Nature has never before been available in its entirety in English—until now. In seven epochs, Buffon reveals the main features of an evolving Earth, from its hard rock substrate to the sedimentary layers on top, from the minerals and fossils found within these layers to volcanoes, earthquakes, and rises and falls in sea level—and he even touches on age-old mysteries like why the sun shines. In one of many moments of striking scientific prescience, Buffon details evidence for species extinction a generation before Cuvier’s more famous assertion of the phenomenon. His seventh and final epoch does nothing less than offer the first geological glimpse of the idea that humans are altering the very foundations of the Earth—an idea of remarkable resonance as we debate the designation of another epoch: the Anthropocene. Also featuring Buffon’s extensive “Notes Justificatives,” in which he offers further evidence to support his assertions (and discusses vanished monstrous North American beasts—what we know as mastodons—as well as the potential existence of human giants), plus an enlightening introduction by editor and translator Jan Zalasiewicz and historians of science Sverker Sörlin, Libby Robin, and Jacques Grinevald, this extraordinary new translation revives Buffon’s quite literally groundbreaking work for a new age.
Book Synopsis Artifacts for Diderot's Elements of Physiology by : Gregory Bringman
Download or read book Artifacts for Diderot's Elements of Physiology written by Gregory Bringman and published by Les OntOeuvres. This book was released on 2022-05-15 with total page 477 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Artifacts for Diderot's Elements of Physiology is a translation of Denis Diderot's rare 18th Century work, Éléments de physiologie, situating it in light of New Materialism and other current debates in continental philosophy. It takes one of many possible theoretical tours through this oeuvre of Diderot, as well as incorporates other supplementary artifacts, including translations of sections of the Latin of Albrecht von Haller on which Diderot's text is partially based.With its critical footnotes and supplementary material, Artifacts addresses old and new materialism in Diderot as a work of theory. Its introductory discussion of animal organs, technical evolution and Diderot's relation to Ernst Kapp, Georges Canguilhem, and Gilbert Simondon is a new, contemporary critical framing for Éléments. While the focus of the critical French editions has been on an inescapable determinism of Diderot (Mayer), a lay anthropology rooted in Diderot's atheist conclusion to Éléments (Quintili), and an extensive presentation of Diderot's sources (Terada), Artifacts emphasizes the importance of Part I of the work. In Beings, Diderot most convincingly stakes out a radical transformist philosophical position appropriate to many issues currently at the forefront of philosophical discourse, demonstrating once more the inexhaustible ways Diderot's work can be fruitfully applied after the age of Lumières.
Book Synopsis Race and Aesthetics in the Anthropology of Petrus Camper (1722-1789) by : Miriam Claude Meijer
Download or read book Race and Aesthetics in the Anthropology of Petrus Camper (1722-1789) written by Miriam Claude Meijer and published by Rodopi. This book was released on 1999 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After the discovery of the anthropoid ape in Asia and in Africa, eighteenth-century Holland became the crossroads of Enlightenment debates about the human species. Material evidence about human diversity reached Petrus Camper, comparative anatomist in the Netherlands, who engaged, among many other interests, in "menschkunde." Could only religious doctrine support the belief of human demarcation from animals? Camper resolved the challenges raised by overseas discoveries with his thesis of the "facial angle," a theory which succeeding generations distorted and misused in order to justify slavery, racism, antisemitism, and genocide. Thanks to his abundant papers in Dutch archives, Camper's ideas are restored to their original state. Eighteenth-century issues differed from those of other centuries: Did orang-utans talk like humans, walk like humans; even rape humans? What was the skin pigmentation of Adam and Eve? Did the spectrum of human physiognomies around the globe reflect the Fall of Man, the Creator's bounty, or merely bizarre beauty practices? Why did the ideal beauty of the Greeks appear to be the reverse of the Hottentots? The book contains some 50 illustrations, including apes with hiking sticks or tea cups, metamorphoses of living forms, and Apollo or Venus icons which titillated the "science of man."
Book Synopsis Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-Century Liberal Political Writing by : Andrew Billing
Download or read book Animal Rhetoric and Natural Science in Eighteenth-Century Liberal Political Writing written by Andrew Billing and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-07 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our tendency to read French Enlightenment political writing from a narrow disciplinary perspective has obscured the hybrid character of political philosophy, rhetoric, and natural science in the period. As Michèle Duchet and others have shown, French Enlightenment thinkers developed a philosophical anthropology to support new political norms and models. This book explores how five important eighteenth-century French political authors—Rousseau, Diderot, La Mettrie, Quesnay, and Rétif de La Bretonne—also constructed a "political zoology" in their philosophical and literary writings informed by animal references drawn from Enlightenment natural history, science, and physiology. Drawing on theoretical work by Derrida, Latour, de Fontenay, and others, it shows how these five authors signed on to the old rhetorical tradition of animal comparisons in political philosophy, which they renewed via the findings and speculations of contemporary science. Engaging with recent scholarship on Enlightenment political thought, it also explores the links between their political zoologies and their family resemblance as "liberal" political thinkers.
Book Synopsis The German "Mittelweg" by : Michael G. Lee
Download or read book The German "Mittelweg" written by Michael G. Lee and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1790s, a close-knit group of German philosophers published several garden theory texts. These works are unique in that a close-knit group of philosophers had never before--and has not since--produced so many works on the topic of garden design. In essence, this cohort sought to imbue the most visionary concepts that had been inherited from the German garden tradition with the intellectual resources that were newly available through Kant’s critical philosophy. The most important of these concepts was the prescription for a new Mittelweg, or "middle path," garden that would mediate between the perceived excesses of French formalism and the English picturesque. In close analysis, the author demonstrates that Kant used similar "middle path" techniques in the design of his own "critical path" between dogmatism and skepticism. This similarity is most apparent when he uses topographical metaphors to describe the organizational principles of his system. By interpreting Kant’s topographical metaphors in relation to contemporary garden theories, this book offers new insights into the structural similarities between his "critical path" and the German garden’s "middle path" between French formalism and the English picturesque.
Book Synopsis Freedom in French Enlightenment Thought by : Mary Efrosini Gregory
Download or read book Freedom in French Enlightenment Thought written by Mary Efrosini Gregory and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Freedom in French Enlightenment Thought examines how five eighteenth-century French theorists - Montesquieu, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Condorcet - kindled the flame of freedom in America and France. Each thinker laid down a building block that would eventually inspire the language in constitutions around the world. They held that citizens have certain inalienable rights that are dictated by natural law and endowed to all by our Creator; that these rights include equality before the law, justice, safety and security of persons and property, and freedom of speech, press, assembly, and religion. Montesquieu recommended three separate branches of government that function independently of each other. Diderot held that there is no true sovereign, except the nation; that there is no true legislator, except the people. Rousseau advised that the individual will must be subordinate to the general will and private interest to that of the community: he warned against legislators who act from their own financial interests and enact laws to aggrandize themselves. Voltaire believed that selfishness, greed, and the desire for luxury are not only part of human nature, but that they compel people to achieve, trade with others, search, explore, and invent: the passions are the engine that makes capitalism run and that stimulate all human endeavor. Condorcet, a champion of civil rights, boldly proclaimed equality for women, blacks, and the poor. The philosophes held that free and universal public education will permit more citizens to participate in the progress of the arts and sciences and will improve the standard of living among all strata of society. An unrestrained press permits citizens to make informed decisions. Their polemics have indeed changed the face of the world.
Book Synopsis Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century by : Theodore Besterman
Download or read book Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century written by Theodore Besterman and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis The Age of Minerva, Volume 1 by : Paul Ilie
Download or read book The Age of Minerva, Volume 1 written by Paul Ilie and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2016-11-11 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
Author :Mary Efrosini Gregory Publisher :Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures ISBN 13 :9781433120671 Total Pages :0 pages Book Rating :4.1/5 (26 download)
Book Synopsis Free Will in Montaigne, Pascal, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Sartre by : Mary Efrosini Gregory
Download or read book Free Will in Montaigne, Pascal, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, and Sartre written by Mary Efrosini Gregory and published by Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Free Will in Montaigne, Pascal, Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire and Sartre takes the reader on a journey through the corridors of time to explore the evolution of thought regarding free will. The arguments and works presented in this volume raise critical and timeless issues for ethicists, the criminal justice system and the responsible citizen. Montaigne held that humans can break out of the determinist confines of their given cultures and acquired habits by employing reason, welcoming change and promoting education. In The Nun, Diderot chronicles portraits of pathology, records symptoms and leaves it up to the reader to decide whether the unfortunate victims are products of nature, nurture or both. Rousseau thought that civilized man, having joined society, surrenders his free will to the general will to enjoy protection of his person, family and property. Sartre, an indeterminist, averred that since humans have the capacity to be self-reflective, they can exercise creativity with regard to who and how they choose to be from moment to moment. Freud observed that we are marionettes whose strings are commandeered by various realms competing for dominance - the conscious and subconscious; id, ego and superego. Bernays, Freud's nephew, employed psychoanalytic theory as a tool to advise corporations how to entice the public to purchase their products when confronted with a range of choices. This book opens the door to lively classroom discussion on moral issues. French literature, philosophy, psychology and political science classes will find it an invaluable source presenting a wealth of views on free will.
Book Synopsis Bibliothèque de la Revue de littérature comparée by :
Download or read book Bibliothèque de la Revue de littérature comparée written by and published by . This book was released on 1978 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Author :Mary Efrosini Gregory Publisher :Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures ISBN 13 :9781433115950 Total Pages :0 pages Book Rating :4.1/5 (159 download)
Book Synopsis Search for Self in Other in Cicero, Ovid, Rousseau, Diderot and Sartre by : Mary Efrosini Gregory
Download or read book Search for Self in Other in Cicero, Ovid, Rousseau, Diderot and Sartre written by Mary Efrosini Gregory and published by Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Search for Self in Other in Cicero, Ovid, Rousseau, Diderot and Sartre examines how these five theorists recognized that searching for self in an idealized other can lead to a variety of perversions. Cicero warned against seeking friends whom we regard as being everything that we are not: he advised to first be a good person and then to seek other. Ovid showed that Narcissus, who had no close friends to reinforce his identity, was oblivious to his own assets and tried to live vicariously through other. Rousseau explained why modern man, while seated in a theater, feels compassion and is transported by pity, anxiety and fear for the welfare of fictional characters as if it were his own. Diderot showed how the absence of self can be exploited by the powerful to reshape the minds of the weak. He proves that given the right environment and length of time, any one of us, like the victims in The Nun, could just as easily have his life ruined. Sartre reminds us that it is impossible to be-in-exterior. We see ourselves according to the way that others perceive us based on conditioning and prejudices. Sartre untangles the snarled web of misperception of self that arises from «the look» of the other. This book addresses man's growing understanding of the death of self in the mirror of other across the corridors of time - from Narcissus' ancient pool, to Cicero's Roman forum, to Rousseau's Parisian theater, to Diderot's convent in The Nun, to Sartre's twentieth-century hell.
Book Synopsis Prévost. Mme. de Lambert. Mme. Necker. Diderot. Rousseau. Grimm. Mme. d'Épinay. Buffon. Saint-Pierre. Frederick the Great. Margravine of Baireuth. Beaumarchais. Necker. Marie-Antoinette by : Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
Download or read book Prévost. Mme. de Lambert. Mme. Necker. Diderot. Rousseau. Grimm. Mme. d'Épinay. Buffon. Saint-Pierre. Frederick the Great. Margravine of Baireuth. Beaumarchais. Necker. Marie-Antoinette written by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve and published by . This book was released on 1906 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
