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 Occult Chemistry, Instrumentation, and the Theosophical Science of Direct Perception

Mark S. Morrisson

in Modern Alchemy: Occultism and the Emergence of Atomic Theory

This chapter discusses how the close relationship between Theosophical theories of matter and the new atomic science led Theosophists to launch a decades-long research program of “clairvoyant ... More

This chapter discusses how the close relationship between Theosophical theories of matter and the new atomic science led Theosophists to launch a decades-long research program of “clairvoyant chemistry” in 1895. This research continued in the 20th century and has even occupied contemporary scientists in chemistry and physics.Less

 Scientific Foundations of an Evolutionary Theology

Gloria L. Schaab

in Creative Suffering of the Triune God: An Evolutionary Theology

Chapter 2 explores the epic of an evolving universe in order to understand the entities, structures, and processes that disclose the nature, attributes, and purposes of its Creator. This exploration ... More

Chapter 2 explores the epic of an evolving universe in order to understand the entities, structures, and processes that disclose the nature, attributes, and purposes of its Creator. This exploration investigates insights regarding the origin of the cosmos and engages scientific theories that challenge classical conceptions of the God‐world relationship. It focuses on Darwinian and neo‐Darwinian theories that suggest an ongoing creativity immanent in the cosmos itself. It probes the interaction of law and chance that suggests freedom and autonomy inherent in the evolving cosmos and that raises questions concerning the operation of divine omnipotence and omniscience in relation to cosmic events. Arriving at the conclusion that such cosmic freedom and autonomy implies an intrinsic measure of risk, pain, suffering, and even death for its creatures and its Creator, this exploration finds itself in an inexorable movement toward the inference of the suffering of God in, with, and under the suffering of the cosmos.Less

Uses of Philosophy

Nicholas Halmi

in The Genealogy of the Romantic Symbol

This chapter argues that the Enlightenment in its multiplicity made the Romantic concept of a universal and inherently meaningful symbolism not only intellectually desirable, but philosophically ... More

This chapter argues that the Enlightenment in its multiplicity made the Romantic concept of a universal and inherently meaningful symbolism not only intellectually desirable, but philosophically possible. Four developments, each entailing in its way a rejection of dualism, were crucial: (1) the non-subjectivist recuperation of sensible intuition in the disciplines comprising ‘ natural history’; (2) the interpretation of humanity's cognitive relation to nature in terms of a microcosm-macrocosm analogy; (3) the increased acceptance of metaphysical monism after the reported affirmation of Spinoza's philosophy by the much-admired Lessing; and (4) the replacement of mechanistic with vitalist theories of matter in the later 18th century. These developments were not necessarily compatible with each other: vitalism, for example, rejected the mechanistic concepts that Spinoza applied more rigorously and comprehensively than anyone else. But by a process of syncretic assimilation the Romantics, especially Schelling (with active encouragement from Goethe), undertook to develop out of the various anti-dualist tendencies in Enlightenment thought ‘a markedly unified interpretation of matter and spirit, of nature and history, as elements of a single ascending process’ — in short, the Naturphilosophie on which the claims for the symbol would be based.Less

Ṣadrā's Synthesis: Knowledge as Experience, Knowledge as Being

Ibrahim Kalin

in Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Ṣadrā on Existence, Intellect, and Intuition

This chapter focuses on two issues. The first is the question of mystical knowledge and the extent to which such a term applies to Ṣadrā's epistemology. Ṣadrā argues that existence can be known only ... More

This chapter focuses on two issues. The first is the question of mystical knowledge and the extent to which such a term applies to Ṣadrā's epistemology. Ṣadrā argues that existence can be known only intuitively and that intuition is not only an epistemic but also a spiritual act of encounter and witnessing. The chapter also discusses Ṣadrā's relation to traditional Sufism within the context of Safavid Shiism and the Akhbāri opposition to Sufism and philosophy. The second issue is the definition of knowledge as finding existence. Ṣadrā establishes a close link between degrees of existence and levels of consciousness. A logical result of this is a doctrine of “ontological vitalism” according to which all things, animate and inanimate, have some degree of consciousness by virtue of the fact they exist. It is within this context that Ṣadrā develops his central thesis that when we interact with the world around us, we interact with the various modalities and degrees of existence.Less

Chronology of Science and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Mary Shelley

David H. Guston, Ed Finn, Jason Scott Robert, Joey Eschrich, and Mary Drago (eds)

in Frankenstein: Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds

The editors provide a brief chronology of important dates in the history of science in the context of Mary Shelley’s life and important aspects of the novel.

Conclusion: The Followers

Leonard Lawlor

in The Implications of Immanence: Toward a New Concept of Life

This chapter argues that Greek metaphysics is only one part of Western thinking. Contemporary naturalism (the knowledge willed in relation to bio-power) consists, as well, in ... More

This chapter argues that Greek metaphysics is only one part of Western thinking. Contemporary naturalism (the knowledge willed in relation to bio-power) consists, as well, in a negation of Christianity. Through its drive to be reductionistic, naturalism is not only anti-Platonic, but also anti-Christian. The other side of the deconstruction of Christianity would then be “life-ism.” Life-ism would not be a return to earlier versions of vitalism. Vitalism is an idea that does not belong to our present. We can assemble the characteristics that define the new concept of life. It would not be biological in a strictly material sense; it is not natural life. Instead, in this life the living is spiritual.Less

The Mechanical, the Historical, and the Statistical

John J. McDermott (ed.)

in The Basic Writings of Josiah Royce, Volume II: Logic, Loyalty, and Community

This chapter begins by describing vitalism and materialism. The name “vitalism” is often given to those doctrines which have used the hypothesis that the phenomena of living organisms are due to some ... More

This chapter begins by describing vitalism and materialism. The name “vitalism” is often given to those doctrines which have used the hypothesis that the phenomena of living organisms are due to some process which is essentially identical in its nature with the process exemplified by people's conscious voluntary activities. On the other hand, some things and events in the natural world—such as the recurrent movements of the heavenly bodies and the processes which attend the workings of machines—seem to be in many respects essentially different from the processes which result from people's plans, choices, and voluntary deeds. What is called a “mechanical theory of nature” or “materialism” undertakes to account for the vital processes, for the activities of organisms. The chapter then considers the three classifications of scientific methods: the historical, the mechanical, and the statistical.Less

‘Obstinate in Resurrection’

John Beer

in Coleridge's Play of Mind

Coleridge's ideas retain their potency into the nineteenth century and beyond, though their initial popularity in promoting a ‘third force’ fuelled by the concurrence of imagination and heart, is ... More

Coleridge's ideas retain their potency into the nineteenth century and beyond, though their initial popularity in promoting a ‘third force’ fuelled by the concurrence of imagination and heart, is undermined by the contemporary acceptance of Darwin's ideas. At a political level, on the other hand, the existential element in his ideas survives in the achievement of globally oriented ‘modern’ thinkers and writers such as Vaclav Havel. In the twentieth century, also, the implications of their vitalism are investigated by writers such as D. H. Lawrence and T. S. Eliot, followed by others, such as Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, who show particular concern at the loss of a shared mythology.Less

Alchemy, Paracelsus, and German Naturphilosophie

Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke

in The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction

This chapter examines the works of Paracelsus on alchemy and German Naturphilosophie and its relation to the history of Western esotericism. It suggests that alchemy played a large part in ... More

This chapter examines the works of Paracelsus on alchemy and German Naturphilosophie and its relation to the history of Western esotericism. It suggests that alchemy played a large part in Renaissance esotericism and its rapid diffusion during the period 1550–1650 is directly related to its combination with Neo-Platonic and Hermetic approaches to nature, and especially to the controversy surrounding Paracelsus. It discusses Paracelsus' esoteric ideas concerning the cosmic all-life, the spiritualization of matter and the divine nature of virtue and energy, which are now integral elements in the new philosophies of science of vitalism and holism and in the archetypes of Jungian psychoanalysis.Less

Vitalist Theories of Life

Feldman Fred

in Confrontations with the Reaper: A Philosophical Study of the Nature and Value of Death

In the previous chapter, the life-functional theories of life were discussed. This chapter discusses more approaches to the analysis of life, which are vitalism, the genetic information theory of ... More

In the previous chapter, the life-functional theories of life were discussed. This chapter discusses more approaches to the analysis of life, which are vitalism, the genetic information theory of life, and DNA-ism.Less

Igor’s Duality

Tamara Levitz

in Modernist Mysteries: Perséphone

This chapter examines the extreme split in Stravinsky’s music between his attempt to solidify Christian dogma on heterosexual marriage through archetypal musical dramaturgy and his hidden expressions ... More

This chapter examines the extreme split in Stravinsky’s music between his attempt to solidify Christian dogma on heterosexual marriage through archetypal musical dramaturgy and his hidden expressions of desire. This split can be explained within the context of the debate about Stravinsky’s Russianness after the revolution, in which Boris Asafyev articulated the pre-Stalinist humanist and later Soviet materialist, Boris de Schloezer a humanist, Western European, aestheticist, and Pyotr Suvchinsky a Eurasianist view. Stravinsky reacted to this dialogue by hiding behind neoclassical “poses” or “manners,” and by fashioning himself into Suvchinsky’s vision of a Russian creative genius with a dialectical character split between a private vitalist sphere of mystical revelation of the material world and a public sphere of Christian subjugation to universal laws. These attitudes determined how Stravinsky represented desire in Perséphone, which this chapter compares to Ravel’s melancholic expression in Le Tombeau du Couperin. Stravinsky’s approach results in a fractured musical form that resembles Walter Benjamin’s modernist allegory.Less

The Promise of Irreconcilable Difference

Tamara Levitz

in Modernist Mysteries: Perséphone

Chapter 8 examines Persephone’s rebirth and return to the underworld with the goal of understanding what its emancipatory promise and historicity—or relationship to the past, present, and ... More

Chapter 8 examines Persephone’s rebirth and return to the underworld with the goal of understanding what its emancipatory promise and historicity—or relationship to the past, present, and future—tells us about the politics of modernist neoclassicism. Gide introduces the cardboard figure of Triptolemus as a symbol of renewal he associates with the Soviet Union, and with Orpheus’s “backward glance” and the anxious politics of his pédérastie. Rubinstein, Copeau, and Stravinsky, in contrast, think of Persephone’s rebirth in terms of the resurrection of Christ. Stravinsky interprets resurrection from Suvchinsky’s Eurasianist perspective as related to the notion of cyclical history, and to the political idea of Russia resurrecting as a theocracy after the Bolshevik revolution. In his music he realizes the temporal idea of the simultaneity of past, present, and future by composing music that functions as a “vitalist” sculpture, and that can be compared to Aby Warburg’s notion of the Pathosformel. The chapter ends with reflections on how Perséphone failed on the night of its premiere, and the heterogeneity of interpretations it elicited.Less

A Vital Matter: Light and Life

Theresa Levitt

in The Shadow of Enlightenment: Optical and Political Transparency in France 1789-1848

This chapter looks at the question of light and living bodies. Arago once again fashioned himself as a debunker, questioning the claims of the rising spiritualist movement that there exist previously ... More

This chapter looks at the question of light and living bodies. Arago once again fashioned himself as a debunker, questioning the claims of the rising spiritualist movement that there exist previously unknown forms of radiation that act on living organisms. Biot, meanwhile, strove to make exactly that point: through optical activity, the world could be divided into active (living) and inactive (non-living) matter. One could only distinguish the two by the effect they had on the plane of polarization of light. Biot's work became the basis of Pasteur's anti-materialism crusade.Less

Hertz on the domain of applicability of his mechanics

JESPER LÜTZEN

in Mechanistic Images in Geometric Form: Heinrich Hertz's 'Principles of Mechanics'

This chapter analyses Heinrich Hertz's views concerning the range of applicability of his mechanics, in particular his views about living systems. Hertz discussed these matters in the introduction of ... More

This chapter analyses Heinrich Hertz's views concerning the range of applicability of his mechanics, in particular his views about living systems. Hertz discussed these matters in the introduction of his book Principles of Mechanics, after the introduction of conservative forces, and in four sections following the introduction of the fundamental law. These latter sections are entitled: Validity of the Fundamental Law, Limitations of the Fundamental Law, Method of Applying the Fundamental Law, and Approximate Application of the Fundamental Law. This chapter discusses practical applications of Hertz's mechanics, validity and applicability of the fundamental law, constructability of forces, vitalism, teleology, reductionism, and mechanism in 19th-century biology, and applicability and correctness.Less

Medicine in the 1790s: A Very Brief Introduction

NEIL VICKERS

in Coleridge and the Doctors: 1795-1806

This chapter offers a historical sketch of the state of practical and theoretical medicine in the 1790s. It starts by considering the range of practitioners offering medical treatments during the ... More

This chapter offers a historical sketch of the state of practical and theoretical medicine in the 1790s. It starts by considering the range of practitioners offering medical treatments during the eighteenth century and goes on to describe some important but often overlooked differences between our medicine and the medicine of Coleridge's time. It also discusses some of the ramifications of the main theoretical controversies in eighteenth-century medicine: the slow decline of the humoral pathology and rise of the view that disease – possibly all disease – is caused by disturbances in the nervous system; the materialist challenge to vitalism; and the attempt to refound medicine along essentialist philosophical lines.Less