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This chapter discusses the development of cosmological thought from the oldest times — as in Mesopotamian and Egyptian cultures — to the early 17th century. A high point in this development was the geocentric Aristotelian-Ptolemaic world picture, which in a christianized version was adopted by the philosophers and theologians of the Middle Ages. The stable medieval view of the world was challenged by the Copernican heliocentric system of 1543, which marked the beginning of the scientific revolution and also of increased tensions between science and faith. Not only was the new universe much larger than the old one, with Kepler's innovations of the early 17th century the privileged circular motions of the celestial bodies had to be abandoned.

This chapter examines reporting about music’s role in British film exhibition in the North American trade paper Moving Picture World between 1907 and 1914. It not only provides perspective on the way British exhibition was seen from abroad, it also draws attention to the role of the trade papers in formulating and disseminating industry ideology. The chapter shows how Moving Picture World contrasted deficient North American exhibition practices with the development of upscale exhibition standards in Britain, specifically London, from the late 1900s into the 1910s. While commentators tended to denigrate British film production as inferior to the North American product, they tended to promote London’s exhibition practices as superior. From the end of 1909, the other purpose this comparison served was to promote to North America the feasibility of more expensive cinemas that excluded vaudeville, but where music played a significant role.

Drawing on the theoretical insights of Martin Heidegger’s text “The Age of the World Picture,” this chapter argues that the League of Nations operated as a veritable multinational advertising firm. In that frame, it focuses on the League’s use of information technology in its efforts to influence “world public opinion.” As the chapter shows, the League made tremendous efforts to gather, process, and disseminate its message of peace and international cooperation on a global scale. While the chapter looks at a number of publicity efforts, it pivots on the League’s creation of a series of lanternslides created to depict a particular “world picture,” that in fact corresponded to a precise global distribution of power and resources. As the chapter shows, pushback against the League’s “world picture” tended to take the form of nationalist sentiment and, in particular, passionate cries for the more tangibles “truths” of blood, of race, and of homeland. Yet, states and private interest groups did not want to rip up the cables, stop the presses, and retreat to caves and the use of smoke signals. Rather, they fought for the right to shape and control the messages reaching the public and the means of delivering them.

In the only picture we have of a Shakespearean play from Shakespeare’s lifetime, periodization is moot. In the Longleat drawing (ca. 1598) of Titus Andronicus, only Titus’s costume belongs to the play’s ancient setting; the attire and weaponry of the other characters are variously modern. Not until around 1800 was a Shakespearean play performed “in period”: John Philip Kemble famously staged Coriolanus with costumes, props, and scenery in sync with the play’s early Roman setting, notionally based on historical and archaeological research. While period drama marked a radical break with past productions, indifferent to historical accuracy and coherence, it was perfectly in keeping with other emergent forms of representation: the historical novel and historical painting, as well as the Kantian world picture that for Heidegger is itself the defining and exclusive feature of the modern epoch.

This chapter explains the non-subjective character of thought, describing in new terms what it means for thought to let beings be. It means to yield to Being in its negativity. In the essay “The Time of World-as-Picture”, there are passages where the author contrasts the Cartesian version of presentative thought with what he understands to be Greek νοε̃ιν. Heidegger argues that when beings emerge into presence in any given instance, the domain of non-concealment is limited, for the emergence is finite. Thus the domain of disclosure has measure. It is what separates what comes to presence from what does not. For Protagoras, the fundamental attitude is one of acceptance, of opening himself unto the self-revelation of beings in their Being.

The Black Notebooks make clear once again that Being and Time and the question of Being it raised remained the foundation of Heidegger’s thought; they make clear also that by then he was convinced that with that book philosophy as traditionally understood, and that means also as he had still understood it when he embarked on Being and Time, had come to some sort of end: on this path there could be no further progress. But what does that question have to do with Heidegger’s embrace of National Socialism? That there is indeed such a relationship musty be admitted and calls for thoughtful discussion, for which the Black Notebooks provide rich material. But while they justify a charge of anti-Semitism, they also show that Heidegger’s anti-Semitism is but one, and by no means the most important expression of a profound anti-modernism based on his understanding of the history of Being.

This chapter examines cognitive and cultural approaches in linguistics, focusing on the work of British linguists Vivian Cook and James Underhill, and the Russian linguistics Jurij Apresjan and Aleksey Shmelev. Cook discusses conceptual Anglocentrism in human sciences from the point of view of cognitive linguistics, and Underhill from the perspective of ethnolinguistics; and they both recognize NSM’s importance in the necessary battle against such Anglocentrism. Apresjan, the leader of the Moscow semantic schools, is regarded by many as the world’s foremost lexicographer. Shmelev represents the Moscow School of Cultural Semantics. Both Apresjan and Shmelev see the NSM work as closely related to their own, which focuses on the “naïve picture of the world” reflected in every natural language. As this chapter illustrates, their thinking is clearly convergent with that underlying Imprisoned in English.

This chapter looks at how World Wide Pictures and Gateway reached beyond the evangelical ghettos. The two organizations set out to bring evangelistic and historical films to churches; each was successful in encouraging individuals to recognize God's presence. Despite staying committed to their theological purposes, their films were not embarrassing church-basement productions, but rather carefully conceptualized and professionally developed. Their hagiographic films, from The Hiding Place to Candle in the Dark, evoked thought as well as emotion. Their films also crossed denominational boundaries and promoted religious unity through shared narratives about grace, hope, and healing. In contrast, another introduced genre, the apocalyptic film, would bring terror, thrills, and urgency into churches.

This chapter examines Norman Malcolm’s account of “groundless believing,” and argues that it does not plausibly apply to religion. It then proceeds to subject related appeals to religion as a “world picture” or “system of reference” to critical scrutiny. Once again, the argument is made that these both illegitimately extend Wittgenstein’s very brief remarks, and fail to make a case for regarding religion as instances. Some parallels between Wittgenstein and the “common sense” philosophy of Thomas Reid are drawn and explored. This further connects Wittgenstein with the philosophers considered in Chapter 1.

This chapter provides a brief biographical sketch of James Cameron, as well as an introduction to his cinema. As a young man, Cameron had developed a keen interest in both science and engineering, and also in reading science fiction and fantasy. Cameron has acknowledged that George Lucas's Star Wars (1977) was the film that inspired him to be a filmmaker, especially one that specializes in fantasy and science fiction. His first short film was a science fiction piece entitled Xenogenesis (1978) that he wrote, directed, produced, and rendered the visual effects for. Through this short film, he secured work within Hollywood's low-budget feature industry, working for Roger Corman's New World Pictures as an effects artist and art director. His first major success was the science-fiction hit The Terminator (1984).

It is not just that we are entangled in matter—we subjects who read, write, and ruminate on what “we” are. We are materializations entangled in other materializations; we happen in our mattering. What matters in our ethics, our politics, our worlds entangles us in and as new materializations. And at this juncture, it entangles scholarship in retrievals and rethinkings of matter itself. Even disciplines that struggle with long histories of disembodied transcendence are registering the effects.

This chapter considers the relationship between ethics and our modern scientific world picture, both as regards metaphysics and as regards scientific determinism. The first issue arises because the ethical demand seems to involve a judging authority who holds us responsible for failing to meet it, where it is not clear that this authority can simply come from other people, as they are as flawed as us. But then it may appear that ethics is committed to a position which is metaphysically suspect, in introducing this authority into the picture. The second issue arises because determinism may seem to deprive us of any moral responsibility, insofar as our actions are determined. This chapter argues that responses to both these challenges can be met.