MetaFilter posts tagged with enlightenment

On a path to liberation....

zarq — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 12:01:16 -0800

Over a thousand monks and laymen are revered in Tibetan Buddhism as the incarnations of past teachers who convey enlightenment to their followers from one lifetime to the next. Some of the most respected are known by the honorific "rinpoche." For eight centuries, rinpoches were traditionally identified by other monks and then locked inside monasteries ringed by mountains, far from worldly distractions. Their reincarnation lineages were easily tracked across successive lives. Then the Chinese Red Army invaded Tibet in 1950 and drove the religion's adherents into exile. Now, the younger rinpoches of the Tibetan diaspora are being exposed to all of the twenty-first century’s dazzling temptations. So, even as Tibetan Buddhism is gaining more followers around the world, an increasing number of rinpoches are abandoning their monastic vows. Reincarnation in Exile. Mentioned in the article: Osel Hita Torres, also known as Tenzin Ösel Rinpoche. He was profiled by the BBC with a 30-minute radio documentary this past September. Related article.

Peace and Enlightenment Vs Close Harmony Girl Groups

Artw — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 10:38:18 -0800

Why Young Avengers #1, the "Perfect Pop" comic from Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie, is the future of Suphero comics. Commentary Track: Gillen & McKelvie Discuss "Young Avengers" #1 - complete with the first few pages of script. Young Adult Library Association Names 2013's Great Graphic Novels for Teens.

Including: Clandestine Best-Sellers of the Pre-Revolutionary Era

Marauding Ennui — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 09:59:18 -0800

"The French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe project uses database technology to map the trade of the Société Typographique de Neuchâtel (STN), a celebrated Swiss publishing house that operated between 1769 and 1794. As the STN sold the works of other publishers alongside its own editions, their archives can be considered a representative source for studying the history of the book trade and dissemination of ideas in the late Enlightenment." What made it to the bestselling lists in the late 18th century? A scandalous judicial memoir involving incest - "Planta gagnant sa vie en honnête homme"; an entertaining description of an urban community, hailed as the first description of "everyday life" in France - "Tableau de Paris"; the text of an anti-clerical play about the St. Bartholomew's day massacre - "La Destruction de la Ligue". These last two by Louis-Sébastien Mercier (also known as Jean-Jacques' Ape), a follower of Rousseau. Also, The Illegal Book Trade that Started the French Revolution, a review of a (pre-browsable STN database) study by Robert Darnton, "The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France", which "traces the merging of philosophical, sexual, and anti-monarchical interests into the pulp fiction of the 1780s, banned books".

Where Do We Go From Here?

The Whelk — Wed, 23 May 2012 10:01:12 -0800

SF author and Mefi's Own Charles Stross talks about the future of "big idea" Science Fiction: If SF's core message (to the extent that it ever had one) is obsolete, what do we do next?

Certainly not Hugh Hefner

Kirth Gerson — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:44:11 -0800

Who Was Casanova? "Today, Casanova is so surrounded by myth that many people almost believe he was a fictional character. (Perhaps it’s hard to take seriously a man who has been portrayed by Tony Curtis, Donald Sutherland, Heath Ledger and even Vincent Price, in a Bob Hope comedy, Casanova’s Big Night [and many more].)"

In fact, Giacomo Girolamo Casanova lived from 1725 to 1798, and was a far more intellectual figure than the gadabout playboy portrayed on film. He was a true Enlightenment polymath, whose many achievements would put the likes of Hugh Hefner to shame. He hobnobbed with Voltaire, Catherine the Great, Benjamin Franklin and probably Mozart; survived as a gambler, an astrologer and spy; translated The Iliad into his Venetian dialect; and wrote a science fiction novel, a proto-feminist pamphlet and a range of mathematical treatises. He was also one of history’s great travelers, crisscrossing Europe from Madrid to Moscow. And yet he wrote his legendary memoir, the innocuously named Story of My Life, in his penniless old age, while working as a librarian (of all things!) at the obscure Castle Dux, in the mountains of Bohemia in the modern-day Czech Republic.

Here is a more detailed biographic article.

Rethinking the Idea of 'Christian Europe'

homunculus — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 22:20:18 -0800

Rethinking the Idea of 'Christian Europe'. Kenan Malik's essay is awarded 3 Quarks Daily's Top Quark for politics & social science by judge Stephen M. Walt: "Soldiers in today’s culture wars believe 'European civilization' rests on a set of unchanging principles that are perennially under siege—from godless communism, secular humanism, and most recently, radical Islam. For many of these zealots, what makes the 'West' unique are its Judeo-Christian roots. In this calm and elegantly-written reflection on the past two millenia, Malik shows that Christianity is only one of the many sources of 'Western' culture, and that many of the ideas we now think of as 'bedrock' values were in fact borrowed from other cultures. This essay is a potent antidote to those who believe a 'clash of civilizations' is inevitable—if not already underway—and the moral in Malik’s account could not be clearer. Openness to outside influences has been the true source of European prominence; erecting ramparts against others will impoverish and endanger us all."

Bibliographia

Bora Horza Gobuchul — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:05:05 -0800

Today Cambridge University offered a complete free digital archive of the personal papers of Sir Isaac Newton, including the Principa Mathematica and his first published research paper. The archives join a number of efforts to open original works of scientific greatness to the world:

Charles Darwin's entire personal library, complete with annotations and handwritten marginalia, digitized, indexed, and searchable, part of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (previously)
Mapping The Republic of Letters and Electronic Enlightenment, wonderful sites showing the communication and social connections of Enlightenment writers.

Newton's original works are handily supplemented by The Newton Project, showing the man's insertions and deletions to his own work.

The Translations and Rareties of Elfinspell

Iridic — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:57:05 -0800

Elfinspell is a garishly painted trunk stuffed with rare old books. You can browse the collection by timeline or by Muse.

Selections from the Philosophes

Iridic — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 15:48:44 -0800

"Maxims and axioms are, just like summaries, the work that spirited people do, it seems, for the use of mediocre or lazy spirits." Presenting maxims, axioms and more from the Philosophes: Vauvenargues! Chamfort! Fontenelle! La Bruyère! Galiani! La Rochefoucauld! Saint-Évremond! More on: Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues Nicolas Chamfort Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle Jean de La Bruyère L' abate Ferdinando Galiani François de La Rochefoucauld (previously) Charles de Saint-Évremond

Mapping the Republic of Letters

Kattullus — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 17:22:17 -0800

Mapping the Republic of Letters is a cartographic tool designed by students and professors at Stanford that seeks to represent the Enlightenment era Republic of Letters, the network of correspondence between the finest thinkers of the day, such as Voltaire, Leibniz, Rousseau, Newton, Diderot, Linnaeus, Franklin and countless others. Patricia Cohen wrote an article about Mapping the Republic of Letters as well as other datamining digital humanities projects in The New York Times. The mapping tool is fun to play with but I recommend you read the blogpost where Cohen explains how to use Mapping the Republic of Letters.

RSA Animate

kliuless — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 12:00:17 -0800

21st century enlightenment - "Matthew Taylor explores the meaning of 21st century enlightenment, how the idea might help us meet the challenges we face today, and the role that can be played by organisations such as the RSA." (via br; previously) BONUS -How to Say "No" to an Economic Frankenfuture [1,2] -Vancouver Film School: Biodiversity -When Value Judgments Masquerade as Science -A letter to my students [1,2] -Cross Dressing in Political Economy -The conservative counter-revolution -How one driver can break up a traffic jam -Radical Opacity -How Much Is Left? The Limits of Earth's Resources, Made Interactive -IBM Global Commuter Pain Study Reveals Traffic Crisis in Key International Cities -How Mobile Devices Could Lead to More City Living -The consensus in favour of Swedish thinking -Building organizational agility at Embraer: The re-birth of a state-owned Brazilian enterprise -Bill Gates Enrolls His Kids In Khan Academy [1,2,3,4] -The Social Network (reconciliation) & Inside Job :P cheers!

"The Categorical Dictionary of the Sciences, Arts and Industries"

Iridic — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:13:48 -0800

The University of Michigan's collaborative translation of Diderot and d'Alembert's Encylopédie has completed some 650 selections from the Enlightenment keystone, including articles on California, vanilla, werewolves, the English language, beauty, and the complete structure of human knowledge. The project has an open call for translators to help with the 74,000 remaining articles.

how do you write "loaded" in Sanskrit?

oneirodynia — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:22:10 -0800

Drunk Yoga. An age-old practice of healing and mindful positions for the absolutely smashed. (bus stop optional)

Waste Pictures

kenko — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:25:36 -0800

Sites matching images to pregiven text have been done before, but the texts are seldom as good as those used at zweiterblick's sudelbild: the pictures are matched to (randomly selected?) aphorisms of scientist and all-around Enlightened fellow GC Lichtenberg (about whom more). The relation is sometimes fairly literal, sometimes fairly opaque, but it's worth it for the idiosyncratic selection of aphorisms in any case.

We are the footnotes of footnotes

hadjiboy — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 07:36:39 -0800

How women have fought, and succeeded, and celebrated their victories. [previously here, and here]

Cabinet of Wonders

Kattullus — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 22:43:00 -0800

"What we have here is a Cabinet of Wonders, a place where things of interest are set out, in possibly bizarre, possibly fetishistic presentation, for perusal by the discerning, who understand that presentation, and scientific interest, are all a form of magic." [via Neil Gaiman]

Give Me a Lass with a Lump of Land

mwhybark — Fri, 17 Feb 2006 18:11:07 -0800

Eighteenth Century E-Texts, a sub-branch of Eighteenth Century Resources, maintained by Jack Lynch, of Rutgers.

Philosophy

semmi — Thu, 07 Oct 2004 20:45:20 -0800

The eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment.

Meaning of Life

andrew cooke — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 17:29:27 -0800

The Meaning of Life according to various rather famous people (Dennett, Fukuyama, etc). I'm watching the Dennett video at the moment and it starts rather weakly, but, by midway through, is rolling along nicely. With topics like "being good without god" and "the anthropic principle" it struck me as relevant to a couple of recent askmefi threads.
Dennett: [pause] i guess i'll say it again, more slowly...
(oh, and the player interface is rather delicate - give it time to load and click play a few times...)

Paul Kurtz on the Enlightenment

skallas — Mon, 05 Apr 2004 23:19:36 -0800

Paul Kurtz on the Enlightenment. Unfortunately, there has been a massive retreat from Enlightenment ideals in recent years, a return to pre-modern mythologies. There has been a resurgence of fundamentalist religions worldwide—Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, Roman Catholicism, and Orthodox Judaism. Added to this are occult-paranormal claims, which allegedly transcend the existing scientific paradigm. In the United States—the preeminent scientific-technological-military superpower in the world—significant numbers of Americans have embraced primitive forms of biblical religion. These focus on salvation, the Rapture, and the Second Coming of Jesus. Evangelical Protestant Christians have made alliances with conservative Roman Catholics and neo-conservative Jews, and they have captured political power—power they have used to oppose secular humanism and naturalism. via the council for secular humanism

Enlighten me.

lysdexic — Mon, 23 Jun 2003 10:25:50 -0800

Enlighten me, please.

Vatican Discloses 'Third Secret' of Fatima.

lbergstr — Sun, 14 May 2000 12:48:30 -0800

Vatican Discloses 'Third Secret' of Fatima. Prophecies to shepherd children, conspiracy theories - this shit is old-school. It must be fun to be Catholic, living in a world that still has shadows and mist. I'm sick of this harsh, bright Enlightenment thinking.