http://www.metafilter.com/tags/heraclitus Posts tagged with 'heraclitus' at MetaFilter. Thu, 11 Sep 2003 05:59:04 -0800 Thu, 11 Sep 2003 05:59:04 -0800 en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 http://www.metafilter.com/28220/Heraclitus%2Dthe%2DObscure%2DNow%2DWithout%2DFlash%2DAnimation <a href="http://members.aol.com/Heraklit1/heraklit.htm" title="Heraclitus the Fire Priest. It's not the most objective account, being the work of the Scientific Pantheists--I could care less about whoever they are--but it IS the simplest and jazziest and, hence, the introductory link here.">Heraclitus</a> of <a href="http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/phil/philo/phils/heraclitus.html" title="No Greek philosopher born before Socrates was more creative and influential than Heraclitus of Ephesus. Around the beginning of the fifth century BC, in a prose that made him proverbial for obscurity, he criticized conventional opinions about the way things are and attacked the authority of poets and others reputed to be wise. His surviving work consists of more than 100 epigrammatic sentences, complete in themselves and often comparable to the proverbs characteristic of 'wisdom' literature. Notwithstanding their sporadic presentation and transmission, Heraclitus' sentences comprise a philosophy that is clearly focused upon a determinate set of interlocking ideas.">Ephesus</a>, sometimes called <a href="http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/GREECE/HERAC.HTM" title="Heraclitus, along with Parmenides, is probably the most significant philosopher of ancient Greece until Socrates and Plato; in fact, Heraclitus's philosophy is perhaps even more fundamental in the formation of the European mind than any other thinker in European history, including Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.">Heraclitus</a> <a href="http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/phil/philo/phils/heraclitus.html" title="The Window: Heraclitus - A brief consideration of Heraclitean doctrine in relation to other classical thinkers.">the Obscure</a>: We only know him through 100 gnomic quotes and aphorisms<em>--I loves me some gnomic aphorisms!--</em>all direct from or inferred in the comments of various authors of Classical literature, of which <em>no one steps into the same river twice</em> is the best known. <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/heracli.htm" title="Heraclitus had a very strong influence on Plato. Plato interpreted Heraclitus to have believed that the material world undergoes constant change. He also thought Heraclitus was approximately correct in so describing the material world. Plato believed that such a world would be unknowable, and was thus driven to the conclusion that the material world was, in some sense, unreal, and that the real, knowable, world was immaterial.">Mark Cohen</a>, <a href="http://faculty.washington.edu/smcohen/320/Lesher.html" title="''Presocratic Contributions to the Theory of Knowledge''--discussed here in part: Heraclitus is most well known of the PreSocratics.">J. H. Lesher</a> and <a href="http://www.uh.edu/~cfreelan/courses/heraclnotes.html" title="Heraclitus is notorious for his ''obscure'' and distinctive style. Many readers seem to love it or hate it. Heraclitus' stylistic devices include metaphor, simile, aphorism, pun, word play, allusion, riddles, rhythm, and sound. ">Cynthia Freeman</a> provide excellent introductions. <a href="http://plato.evansville.edu/public/burnet/ch3.htm" title="We do not know the title of the work of Heraclitus -- if, indeed, it had one -- and it is not easy to form a clear idea of its contents. We are told that it was divided into three discourses: one dealing with the universe, one political, and one theological. It is not to be supposed that this division is due to Heraclitus himself; all we can infer is that the work fell naturally into these three parts when the Stoic commentators took their editions of it in hand. ">John Burnett's 1920 translation</a> is another academic standard. Jonathan Barnes. whose Penguin Classic <em><a href="http://us.penguinclassics.com/Book/BookFrame/0,1007,,00.html?id=0140448152" title="He quotes brief passages wherein Heraclituswas quoted by Classical authors to give the context of each quote. It really makes a difference.">The Early Greek Philosophers</a></em> has the best contemporary translation, wrote <em>Heraclitus attracts exegetes as an empty jampot wasps; and each new wasp discerns traces of his own favourite flavour.</em> Here are the jampots of <a href="http://philos.wright.edu/Dept/PHL/Class/PS/FN%2FH.html">Friedrich Nietzsche</a>, <a href="http://www.thebigview.com/greeks/heraclitus.html">Bertrand Russell</a> and <a href="http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/9994/heidher.html">Martin Heidegger</a>. And here, in passing, is a taste of the jampot of <a href="http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/heraclit.htm">Jorge Luis Borges</a>. Heraclitus coined the word <a href="http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2001-04-04/paradigms.html" title="''It happened like this. I was at a conference last week in Asheville to read a rather radical paper. My thesis was that desire is fundamentally impersonal. Because desire is also autonomous, anonymous sex -- particularly public sex -- is inevitable, I argued. Trying to regulate it is like trying to regulate the wind. The more you contain it, the more likelihood of a storm you create. But a funny thing happened. As I started to read my paper, I lost my voice.'' - from 'Losing My Voice In Asheville' by Cliff Bostock">enantiodromia</a>. John William Corrington's <em><a href="http://www.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/lsf/corr26-2logos.htm">Logos, Lex, And Law</a></em> is also of interest. Heraclitus figures strongly in the <a href="http://www.press.jhu.edu/books/groden/free/archetypal_theory_and_criticism.html" title="'Archetypal Theory And Criticism' from 'The John Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory & Criticism'--now there is a find...">Archetypal Psychology</a> of Carl Jung and <a href="http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/17214">James Hillman</a>, the latter especially in his discussion of the <a href="http://www.geocities.com/nulliusinverba/moonmirror.htm" title="The Moon In The Mirror: Prologue to a Brief History of the Soul by Leonard George discusses Jung and Hillman's thoughts on the subject.">Soul</a>. tag:metafilter.com,2003:site.28220 Thu, 11 Sep 2003 05:59:04 -0800 Greek Heraclitus Obscure Pantheism Philosophy Pre-Socratic y2karl http://www.metafilter.com/26928/Lev%2DSemyonovich%2DVygotsky%2Dand%2Dthe%2Dneuronauts%2Dguide%2Dto%2Dthe%2Dscience%2Dof%2Dconsciousness We are because of others. We are born into this world with minds as naked as our bodies and we have to rely on others to feed, clothe us, and to teach us to think of ourselves as selves. The key is language -- grammatical speech and human culture build upon the brain's biological capacities to create a mind that is something different again than that with which we are born. We are conscious because we can speak to others and ourselves, because we can speak of ourselves to others and ourselves. Language gives us as individuals, memory, and as groups, culture, the social memory. Or so <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/19990423160218/werple.net.au/~andy/txt/lev1.htm" title="Thinking and Speaking by Lev Vygotsky">thought</a> <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20010802101038/http://www.bestpraceduc.org/people/LevVygotsky.html" title="It has been said of the Russian psychologist Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky that he possessed a Mozartian genius, yet he lived in a time and place that was not receptive to Mozarts. ">Lev </a><a href="http://www.massey.ac.nz/~alock//virtual/trishvyg.htm" title="Vygotsky: 'the central fact about our psychology is the fact of mediation' - Introduction, Higher and lower mental functions, Intramental vs intermental abilities, The zone of proximal development, Psychological tools, Semiotic potential and the decontextualisation of mediational means,References">Semyonovich</a> <a href="http://tip.psychology.org/vygotsky.html" title="Social Development Theory - The major theme of Vygotsky's theoretical framework is that social interaction plays a fundamental role in the development of cognition. Vygotsky: ''Every function in the child's cultural development appears twice: first, the social level, and later, the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). this applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. all the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals.'' ">Vygotsky</a>, among others. Welcome to the <a href="http://www.btinternet.com/~neuronaut/index.html" title="This site is a guide to the study of consciousness and complexity. It's serious - no wacky stuff (although psi, dreams, quantum-C and such-like come in for critical discussion). But it's also easy reading, much of it being based on the four books and many articles I've written on these subjects. You will find this site focuses on three basic arguments about the nature of consciousness. The first is that the human mind is bifold - as much a product of memes or cultural evolution as of the biology of brains. The second is that brain processing takes time - about half a second to develop a settled ''frame'' of consciousness. The third is that the brain is a specific example of something more mathematically general - a complex adaptive system (CAS). To understand consciousness demands getting deep into holism, hierarchy theory, biosemiosis, general systems theory, heterarchical causality and other obscure stuff that is guaranteed to blow the gaskets of any reductionist who dares to venture within.">the neuronaut's guide to the science of consciousness</a>. tag:metafilter.com,2003:site.26928 Fri, 11 Jul 2003 07:57:32 -0800 ape biology brain consciousness culture deaf ephesus feral grammar groups heraclitus historical imagination johnmccrone language levsemyonovichvygotsky memory mentalimagery neuronaut philosophical scientific templegrandin y2karl