Chaos from the Ancient World to Early Modernity

2020-11-23 Religion

Author : Andreas Höfele
Release : 2020-11-23
Genre : Religion
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 004/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Chaos from the Ancient World to Early Modernity by : Andreas Höfele

Download or read book Chaos from the Ancient World to Early Modernity written by Andreas Höfele. This book was released on 2020-11-23. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chaos is a perennial source of fear and fascination. The original "formless void" (tohu-wa-bohu) mentioned in the book of Genesis, chaos precedes the created world: a state of anarchy before the establishment of cosmic order. But chaos has frequently also been conceived of as a force that persists in the cosmos and in society and threatens to undo them both. From the cultures of the ancient Near East and the Old Testament to early modernity, notions of the divine have included the power to check and contain as well as to unleash chaos as a sanction for the violation of social and ethical norms. Yet chaos has also been construed as a necessary supplement to order, a region of pure potentiality at the base of reality that provides the raw material of creation or even constitutes a kind of alternative order itself. As such, it generates its own peculiar 'formations of the formless'. Focusing on the connection between the cosmic and the political, this volume traces the continuities and re-conceptualizations of chaos from the ancient Near East to early modern Europe across a variety of cultures, discourses and texts. One of the questions it poses is how these pre-modern 'chaos theories' have survived into and reverberate in our own time.

Climate Chaos

2021-09-21 Science

Author : Brian Fagan
Release : 2021-09-21
Genre : Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 888/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Climate Chaos by : Brian Fagan

Download or read book Climate Chaos written by Brian Fagan. This book was released on 2021-09-21. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thirty-thousand-year history of the relationship between climate and civilization that teaches powerful lessons about how humankind can survive. Human-made climate change may have begun in the last two hundred years, but our species has witnessed many eras of climate instability. The results have not always been pretty. From Ancient Egypt to Rome to the Maya, some of history’s mightiest civilizations have been felled by pestilence and glacial melt and drought. The challenges are no less great today. We face hurricanes and megafires and food shortages and more. But we have one powerful advantage as we face our current crisis: the past. Our knowledge of ancient climates has advanced tremendously in the last decade, to the point where we can now reconstruct seasonal weather going back thousands of years and see just how people and nature interacted. The lesson is clear: the societies that survive are those that plan ahead. Climate Chaos is a book about saving ourselves. Brian Fagan and Nadia Durrani show in remarkable detail what it was like to battle our climate over centuries and offer us a path to a safer and healthier future.

Chaos, Cosmos and Creation in Early Greek Theogonies

2022-01-13 Philosophy

Author : Olaf Almqvist
Release : 2022-01-13
Genre : Philosophy
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 864/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Chaos, Cosmos and Creation in Early Greek Theogonies by : Olaf Almqvist

Download or read book Chaos, Cosmos and Creation in Early Greek Theogonies written by Olaf Almqvist. This book was released on 2022-01-13. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cosmological narratives like the creation story in the book of Genesis or the modern Big Bang are popularly understood to be descriptions of how the universe was created. However, cosmologies also say a great deal more. Indeed, the majority of cosmologies, ancient and modern, explore not simply how the world was made but how humans relate to their surrounding environment and the often thin line which separates humans from gods and animals. Combining approaches from classical studies, anthropology, and philosophy, this book studies three competing cosmologies of the early Greek world: Hesiod's Theogony; the Orphic Derveni theogony; and Protagoras' creation myth in Plato's eponymous dialogue. Although all three cosmologies are part of a single mythic tradition and feature a number of similar events and characters, Olaf Almqvist argues they offer very different answers to an ongoing debate on what it is to be human. Engaging closely with the ontological turn in anthropology and in particular with the work of Philippe Descola, this book outlines three key sets of ontological assumptions – analogism, pantheism, and naturalism – found in early Greek literature and explores how these competing ontological assumptions result in contrasting attitudes to rituals such as prayer and sacrifice.

Chaos Avant-garde, The: Memoirs Of The Early Days Of Chaos Theory

2001-01-04 Science

Author : Ralph Abraham
Release : 2001-01-04
Genre : Science
Kind : eBook
Book Rating : 469/5 ( reviews)

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Book Synopsis Chaos Avant-garde, The: Memoirs Of The Early Days Of Chaos Theory by : Ralph Abraham

Download or read book Chaos Avant-garde, The: Memoirs Of The Early Days Of Chaos Theory written by Ralph Abraham. This book was released on 2001-01-04. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an authoritative and unique reference for the history of chaos theory, told by the pioneers themselves. It also provides an excellent historical introduction to the concepts. There are eleven contributions, and six of them are published here for the first time — two by Steve Smale, three by Yoshisuke Ueda, and one each by Ralph Abraham, Edward Lorenz, Christian Mira, Floris Takens, T Y Li and James A Yorke, and Otto E Rossler.

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