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 A Light in the Darkness: Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan

in Oracles of Science: Celebrity Scientists versus God and Religion

Carl Sagan is a public intellectual and the best-selling author of Cosmos, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human ... More

Carl Sagan is a public intellectual and the best-selling author of Cosmos, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, and many other books. His science fiction novel, Contact, was made into a popular, major motion picture in 1997. Sagan is well known for his interests in extra-terrestrial life and is closely linked to the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence). As a scientist, Sagan educated the public about “Nuclear Winter”, the idea that a nuclear war could precipitate an unprecedented ice age that might render the Earth largely uninhabitable. Sagan became notorious in certain circles for his forays into religion, which he viewed with skepticism.Less

The Possibility of Scientific Knowledge

Gyula Klima

in John Buridan

This chapter provides a brief survey of Buridan’s reliabilist epistemology, contrasting it with skeptical challenges of his time, and comparing it with modern responses to similar skeptical ... More

This chapter provides a brief survey of Buridan’s reliabilist epistemology, contrasting it with skeptical challenges of his time, and comparing it with modern responses to similar skeptical challenges in modern philosophy, arguably stemming from the controversies of Buridan’s time. In particular, the chapter argues that the sort of “Demon-skepticism” modern readers are familiar with from Descartes was made conceptually possible precisely by the emergence of late-medieval nominalist semantics, and that the modern strategies responding to the skeptical challenge, exemplified by the works of Thomas Reid and most recently John Greco, originate in the epistemic principles of Buridan.Less

Buridan’s Antiskepticism

Gyula Klima

in John Buridan

This chapter compares the modern reliabilist strategies, including Buridan’s antiskepticism, considered in the previous chapter with a premodern form of antiskepticism, exemplified by Aquinas’s ... More

This chapter compares the modern reliabilist strategies, including Buridan’s antiskepticism, considered in the previous chapter with a premodern form of antiskepticism, exemplified by Aquinas’s doctrine of “the formal unity of the knower and the known”, which, as the chapter argues, simply does not allow the emergence of “Demon-skepticism.” In fact, the chapter further argues that the emergence of “Demon-skepticism“ in its most extreme form, allowing an impossibility to appear as a possibility, indicates a serious flaw in the nominalist conception of mental representation. Nevertheless, the chapter further argues that this flaw is easily masked by the apparent success of Buridan’s reliabilist strategy, not requiring the elimination of Demon-skepticism, but rather presenting reasonable ways for us to learn to live with it.Less

Neo‐cartesian skepticism

Penelope Maddy

in Second Philosophy: A Naturalistic Method

Unlike Descartes, contemporary philosophers tend to regard the possibility that I might be dreaming as a serious threat to the reasonableness of my ordinary beliefs about the world. Here the Second ... More

Unlike Descartes, contemporary philosophers tend to regard the possibility that I might be dreaming as a serious threat to the reasonableness of my ordinary beliefs about the world. Here the Second Philosopher's point of view is illustrated by her reaction to this challenge, especially as it is posed by Stroud. In the end, she sees the sceptic as asking her to defend her usual ways of finding out about the world without using any of those methods in the process. This strikes her as a coherent and even understandable request, and one she has no idea how to satisfy. What she denies is the contention that it arises simply from careful scrutiny of her ordinary methods and that it must be satisfied in order for her ordinary beliefs to be reasonable.Less

Words in the Dark: The Demon Lover and Other Stories (1945)

Neil Corcoran

in Elizabeth Bowen: The Enforced Return

This chapter offers a reading of Bowen's collection of Second World War short stories, The Demon Lover and Other Stories, proposing it as a book of unhappy returns. Studies of dislocation, the ... More

This chapter offers a reading of Bowen's collection of Second World War short stories, The Demon Lover and Other Stories, proposing it as a book of unhappy returns. Studies of dislocation, the stories have their Anglo-Irish element, even though they are set mainly in the London of the Blitz. The chapter also considers matters of literary allusion and reference, as well as issues of gender together with sexual and social disruption. The chapter concludes with a lengthy reading of the figure of the apparently supernatural ghost in one of Bowen's greatest short stories, The Demon Lover, suggesting an influence from T. S. Eliot, an affinity with William Golding, and an alliance with Freud's conception of the ‘uncanny’. Thus, in various ways the story is the representation of crisis.Less

Introduction: Japanese Religious Context In Traditional and Contemporary Perspectives

Heine Steven

in Sacred High City, Sacred Low City: A Tale of Religious Sites in Two Tokyo Neighborhoods

How important are the vast number of religious sites in Tokyo? Why and to what extent do they endure and even thrive in the context of modern society that responds to the push of ancient traditions ... More

How important are the vast number of religious sites in Tokyo? Why and to what extent do they endure and even thrive in the context of modern society that responds to the push of ancient traditions and the pulls of contemporary secularization? This chapter gives an overview of how a carefully selected number of holy sites will be used to consider the various ways that traditional notions of sacred space are appropriated and continue to function in Tokyo, as well as in urbanized Japanese society more generally. It provides a preview of case studies of temples and shrines drawn from two representative yet contrasting neighborhoods: Akasaka in the affluent and influential central district of Yamanote or the High City; and Inarichō in the downbeat yet perpetually creative peripheral district of Shitamachi or the Low City.Less

Cartesianism

Wallace Matson

in Grand Theories and Everyday Beliefs: Science, Philosophy, and their Histories

Cartesian skepticism, unlike Pyrrhonism, was total, calling into question low beliefs as well as high. Descartes himself was not a skeptic but set out the argument in its favor for the purpose of ... More

Cartesian skepticism, unlike Pyrrhonism, was total, calling into question low beliefs as well as high. Descartes himself was not a skeptic but set out the argument in its favor for the purpose of refuting it and thereby strengthening theology. His argument was only possible against a specifically medieval background, his Evil Demon being the Omnipotent Creator-Legislator (OCL) in disguise. But as the skepticism was more convincing than the refutation, this concept is still around in our day, responsible for ‘modern’ philosophy's obsession with finding ‘foundations’ for knowledge. The pattern of the Ontological Argument for the existence of God, which moves from subjective conceivability to objective existence, can still be discerned in David Chalmers's advocacy of mind-body dualism: the subjective ‘logical possibility’ of zombies purporting to show the objective reality of the schism.Less

Ethnography and Literature: Satō Haruds Colonial Journey to Taiwan

Jeff Mielke

in Tropics of Savagery: The Culture of Japanese Empire in Comparative Frame

This chapter examines the early development of Japanese anthropology and its influence on colonial literature. Western scholars introduced the science of anthropology to Japan in the 1870s and ... More

This chapter examines the early development of Japanese anthropology and its influence on colonial literature. Western scholars introduced the science of anthropology to Japan in the 1870s and conducted the first scientific investigations into the origins of Japanese people. Within a decade, Japanese scholars “nationalized” this foreign science and brought it to bear on the aboriginal population of Taiwan, which quickly became the first overseas field in which Japanese anthropologists could work. In the next few decades, colonial ethnographers expanded their fieldwork to embrace all of the new territories that fell under Japan's dominion. As a genre of writing about aboriginal societies, ethnography provided a model for the writer Satō Haruo, who traveled to Taiwan in 1920 and became acquainted with the ethnographer Mori Ushinosuke. A few years after he returned to Japan, Satō wrote Machō (Demon Bird), a short story based on a passage in Mori's ethnography. The ethnographer-narrator of “Demon Bird” writes about an episode of persecution in an unnamed barbarian village. At the same time, the story he tells is an allegory about Japanese persecution of Koreans during the Great Kanto Earthquake. “Demon Bird” is a story that uncovers unexpected links between colony and metropolis. The work appeared at a time when criticism of Japan's colonial policies by liberal and reformist intellectuals was at its peak.Less

Learning and the Study of Renga

in Murmured Conversations: A Treatise on Poetry and Buddhism by the Poet-Monk Shinkei

A quoted passage in Lord Teika's Kindai shūka (Superior Poems of Our Time) holds the clue to the question of whether he actually intended the “pre-Kampyō” period to cover both the age of “the six ... More

A quoted passage in Lord Teika's Kindai shūka (Superior Poems of Our Time) holds the clue to the question of whether he actually intended the “pre-Kampyō” period to cover both the age of “the six poet-immortals” (rokkasen) and the more ancient Man'yōshū poetry. In the context of Sasamegoto, Shinkei's interpretation was driven by a desire to promote the study of that ancient classic as against the commonly held view of its difficulty. He refers to the Man'yōshū, which he included in the renga poet's classical education, in Part II of Sasamegoto in the context of a central passage that defines poetic beauty as primarily a quality of mind (kokoro) rather than diction (kotoba) and configuration (sugata). With respect to the case of the study of poetic styles, Shinkei agrees with Teika's argument that the style of simplicity and grace should be mastered once an individual starts training, and that the Demon-Quelling Style can be achieved only at the end of the training.Less

The Attenuation of Romantic Evil: A Demon Undone

in A Fallen Idol Is Still a God: Lermontov and the Quandaries of Cultural Transition

This chapter examines how Mikhail Lermontov's long and often-revised narrative poem The Demon attenuates the Romantic vision of ethics while drawing on Romantic ideas and images of spiritual ... More

This chapter examines how Mikhail Lermontov's long and often-revised narrative poem The Demon attenuates the Romantic vision of ethics while drawing on Romantic ideas and images of spiritual transcendence and demonic rebellion. It analyzes four examples of Romantic poetry and prose centering on demonic figures that influenced Lermontov's imagination: Alfred de Vigny's Eloa, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Lord Byron's Cain, and Charles Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer. The chapter argues that The Demon is not a failed effort at a Romantic tale of evil but a successful artistic achievement expressing a view of life to which the exalted Romantic visions of good and evil no longer pertain.Less

Pop Music, Multimedia and Live Performance

Jem Kelly

in Music, Sound and Multimedia: From the Live to the Virtual

This chapter describes the ‘inter-medial’ pop concert, where live performance is combined with virtual representations of some kind, and it looks at how these can impact on what actually constitutes ... More

This chapter describes the ‘inter-medial’ pop concert, where live performance is combined with virtual representations of some kind, and it looks at how these can impact on what actually constitutes a live performance. It defines examples of past music/sound-driven performances by the Velvet Underground and Madonna, and analyses new techniques and intermedialities employed by the animated pop group Gorillaz. Co-presence of performer and spectator is an enduring generic convention in pop performance, proposing a shared experience, a sense of ‘being there’ in the moment. Gorillaz contribute to the demise of the modernist meta-narrative of authorial presence in pop performance. While the Warhol-influenced Velvet Underground used film projection experimentally, Madonna continues to exploit telematic and video playback technologies as a memory device, or memoria technica. In performance, the shadows, ghostings, repetitions and inter-medial interventions that develop a complex and engaging scopic experience make Gorillaz' Demon Days innovative.Less

Mick Jagger, Demon Brother

David E. James

in Rock 'N' Film: Cinema's Dance With Popular Music

Combining the cultural signs of black and white, male and female, United Kingdom and United States, Mick Jagger had a charismatic intensity that he exploited in various forms of traffic with ... More

Combining the cultural signs of black and white, male and female, United Kingdom and United States, Mick Jagger had a charismatic intensity that he exploited in various forms of traffic with Satanism. Two crucial films mobilized his demonic otherness: Kenneth Anger’s Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969) and Performance (Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, 1970). The latter dramatized Jagger’s delinquency in the context of the London criminal underworld, but conversely narrated his recovery of his musical prowess in the song, “Memo From Turner.” His role in these films embellished his previous self-presentations, furnishing him with the persona that he would henceforth manipulate.Less

Method

in Silencing the Demon's Advocate: The Strategy of Descartes' Meditations

This chapter, which focuses on Rene Descartes' method of analysis for belief and certainty in his Meditations, suggests that his primary rule of method is to accept a proposition into his system of ... More

This chapter, which focuses on Rene Descartes' method of analysis for belief and certainty in his Meditations, suggests that his primary rule of method is to accept a proposition into his system of belief if and only if he can convince the Demon's Advocate of its truth. It considers Descartes' analogy about dumping the apples out of a barrel and discusses Harry Frankfurt's interpretation that, to empty the barrel, one need not cease to hold one's beliefs.Less

In the End: Shchedrin, Sologub, and Terminal Provinciality

Anne Lounsbery

in Life Is Elsewhere: Symbolic Geography in the Russian Provinces, 1800-1917

This chapter shows how, in the nineteenth-century discourse of provintsiia, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Fyodor Sologub act as end points. They evoke what one might call a “terminal provinciality.” ... More

This chapter shows how, in the nineteenth-century discourse of provintsiia, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and Fyodor Sologub act as end points. They evoke what one might call a “terminal provinciality.” At the same time, their texts point forward to how the provinces trope will make itself felt in the twentieth century. Shchedrin's The Golovlyov Family and Sologub's Petty Demon are separated in time by approximately two decades (The Golovlyov Family was serialized between 1875 and 1880; Petty Demon came out between 1892 and 1902); Shchedrin's text is set on an estate, Sologub's in an unnamed provincial town. But both these settings seem to be the end of the line—places where narrative itself is so congealed in a mire of sticky provintsial 'nost' that forward movement has become virtually impossible.Less

Distinguishing the Indistinguishable: Figures of Imperceptibility and Impossibility in Lost Highway and Caché

Dominic Lash

in The Cinema of Disorientation: Inviting Confusions

This chapter develops the account of figuration constructed in the previous chapter by means of an exploration of a particular figurative operation which it dubs "figurality by indiscernibility". ... More

This chapter develops the account of figuration constructed in the previous chapter by means of an exploration of a particular figurative operation which it dubs "figurality by indiscernibility". Jacques Tourneur's Night of the Demon (1957), Michael Haneke's Caché (2005), and David Lynch's Lost Highway (1997) all contain images that are visually indistinguishable but which we come to understand to be in some sense distinct. The work of the art historian James Elkins on different kinds of "impossible" image is drawn upon in order to demonstrate the richly disorientating potential of this particular mode of figuration.Less