Metaphysical Meaning Research Articles

LINKING SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS WITH STUDENTS’ PERSONAL DAILY LIVES: USING THE METAPHYSICAL MEANING OF SCIENTIFIC CONCEPTS

The declining interest in science learning, along with students' perception that science is irrelevant to their daily lives, has been identified as a significant issue. This research aimed to help students connect abstract scientific concepts with their personal and everyday experiences. To achieve this, the research utilized the metaphysical principles implied by scientific concepts, a component of Kuhn’s paradigm. To replace the abstract term ‘metaphysical meanings’, the term ‘Meaning of Life implied by Scientific Concepts’ (MLS) was introduced to make these metaphysical principles more accessible and comprehensible for students. Using MLS, activity sheets were developed and implemented with 57 lower-secondary students. The results showed that students could effectively identify real-life examples of the presented MLS, the number of students who successfully generated MLS increased with additional class sessions, and the content of the MLS expressed by the students was thoughtful and meaningful. Post-activity interviews indicated that students found this approach interesting and helpful for understanding concepts, and teachers were impressed by the quality of the students' work, expressing a desire to implement this approach in their classes. It is concluded that using MLS to connect abstract scientific concepts with students' everyday lives is both feasible and applicable in school science. Keywords: Metaphysical Principle, Scientific Concepts, Everyday Context, Kuhn’s Paradigm

예이츠의 슬라이고와 엘리엇의 이스트 코우커

Starting with a general assumption that poets and regions are closely connected, this study discusses the significance of specific locales in the works of Yeats and Eliot, who are at the center of “international” modernism beyond regional boundaries. This paper focuses on Yeats’s Sligo and Eliot’s East Coker, the places that they chose as their burial grounds, with the locales’ close proximity to their origins in mind. While examining their biographical details and letters related to Sligo and East Coker, and exploring how these regions are reproduced in Yeats’s poems and Eliot’s “East Coker,” we will find interesting points of comparison between the two poets. Yeats’s experience in Sligo County provides explicit settings and materials such as Sligo place names and mythic figures, and in his poems about Sligo, the literal and the mythical are mingled. In “East Coker,” however, Eliot explores more symbolic and metaphysical meanings evoked by the small village of East Coker, even with its casual or distinct associations with him and his ancestors. In addition, this study concludes with how the present ambience of Sligo and East Coker may function for the 21st century readers of Yeats and Eliot.

Self-Identity: Mid-Twentieth Century Philosophical and Literary Interaction on the Experience of “I” and “Non-I”

This article substantiates the autonomy of a philosophical text in relation to a literary text. Max Frisch's novel Stiller 1 is used to illustrate the idea of the dialectical nature of the process of concealing/revealing metaphysical meaning in a work of fiction regarding the problem of self-identification and the construction of one's own “I,” which is pivotal in this novel. The philosophical idea of self-identity as the goal of the process of self-knowledge exists only as a projection; it is not feasible in life. On the contrary, the novel Stiller, considered through the prism of basic ideas of philosophy of the twentieth century, allows the reader not only to better understand the inconsistency of the process of self-knowledge, but that it involves a reconfiguration of meanings in a conversation about being, and therefore requires a philosophical revision of the essence of the problem.

Точка как символ Абсолюта и проекция божественных атрибутов в концепции Николая Кузанского

The article deals with the interpretation of the concept of “point” in the philosophical and reli-gious system of Nicholas of Cusa, for whom this category was a mode of divine reality. The point is represented as a mathematical symbol filled with metaphysical meaning and associated with the idea of God. The author shows the primacy of mathematics in the concept of the philosopher, its fundamental role in the knowledge of the Absolute, which is proved by a huge number of examples in his writings that reveal certain theological postulates through the explication of metamorphoses of geometric figures. In the teaching of Cusa, the straight line, circle, triangle and other objects coincide in infinity, compressed into a point, and this demonstrates that any antinomies are overcome in God. The point denotes the beginning and the end, unity and plurality at the same time, and this shows their equivalence to each other, revealing the paradox and ambivalence of their nature, which turns out to be relevant to divine attributes. The creator, qualified as a maximum, is the same as the minimum, associated with infinity folded into a point. The point is positioned as an internal principle of the universe, and this makes it a derivative of the original divine unity of opposites, which are united in the transcendent and incomprehensible God as the source of existence.

THEYYAM: A PERFORMER’S JOURNEY OF TRANSFORMATION FROM MAN TO GOD

Theyyam or Theyyattam is a performer’s artistic journey of transformation from mortal man to immortal Gods and Goddesses. It is a resplendent melange of religious and artistic facets which elevates the aesthesia of both performers and spectators to greater depths. Though Theyyam is fashioned on the essence of a tribal culture, it embraced many elements of ancient Hindu mythology. The entire Theyyam ritual is a metaphysical means, which is thought to have the power to summon the Theyyam deities, causing them to emerge with all exuberance. ’Thottam’ songs, the ritual songs of the Theyyam, render the story of the deity propitiated in this ceremonial performance. The performer himself sing the Thottam songs, so that he can get in the exact frame of mind and the necessary spirit of the persona he is presumed to embody. The aficionados observe the rites very closely as the performer performs before and along the shrine. The musical instruments are played in time to the performer’s movements making the performance pious. Gradually, the performer becomes completely absorbed, evolved and transcended into the realm of intangible powers of nature, impersonating the Gods and Goddesses through artistic acts and manifesting his supreme power by strange demeanor. The article examines the practices, traditions, impersonation, myths, and legends of Theyyam and some of its most popular forms and how this ritualistic art form has established a legacy across tribal and non-tribal cultures creating an identity for itself.

｢이스트 코우커｣ 읽기

It has been commonly accepted that although Eliot’s Four Quartets is very abstractive and incomprehensible, “East Coker” is relatively more easily accessible than “Burnt Norton.” This is in part due to the fact that instead of meditating on the metaphysical meaning of time, Eliot realistically depicts the finiteness of all things in “East Coker.” By embracing inevitatably the universality of finiteness and the existential limitedness of time, human beings come to seek for a genuine way of life as a limited being. More specifically, in “East Coker” Eliot underlines that keenly aware of the limitedness of their existence, wo/men should keep in their mind the significance of humility, conscious waiting, endless spiritual search for redemption, prioritizing love over knowledge.

Economic Rationality and Socio-Technological Fantasy Soviet Oil and its Geochronological Formation (A. Konchalovsky’s The Siberiade, 1978)

The contradictions in the development of the late Soviet oil industrial complex can be described as a gap between the energy concentrated in this natural resource and the entropy it generated in the context of the planned socialist economy of the 1970s and 1980s. The tension that arose from this gap between the modernization potential of oil and the conservative economic and socio-political trends that arose in connection with the growing dependence on resources produced unexpected effects in the space of Soviet culture. These effects were associated with intense mythologizing and fetishization of oil, numerous examples of which can be found in Soviet literature and cinema of that era. In consequence of the enormous pressure that drove ideas and conceptions regarding oil out of official political and economic discourse and into the social imaginary, the products of their cultural refining broke the artistic and ideological norms of official Soviet culture, concentrating in themselves various forms of utopian and mystical, historiosophical and metaphysical meanings. As one of the most powerful symptoms of these phenomena, we analyze the film by Andron Konchalovsky The Siberiade (1978).

ON THE METAPHYSICS OF QUANTUM ENTANGLEMENT

Concept of quantum entanglement, its role in physics, philosophy, and in updating general worldview are studied in this article. It is pointed out that Schrodinger introduced this concept and some derivatives from it into description of physical reality in the 1935 article in the context of discussion around the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen thought experiment, but in the related 1936 publication he did not use them. Taking into account the concepts of a mixture and statistical operator, which were introduced by von Neumann and borrowed by Schrödinger, it is shown that the concept of entanglement is not necessary in quantum mechanics unconditionally. At a certain moment of development of the complex quantum systems theory, this concept and its derivatives served as not very successful substitutes for the concepts of a mixture, situation of a mixture. Comparative analysis of some Schrödinger’s, von Neumann’s, and Landau’s theoretical works concludes that imagination of a complex quantum system as a quasi-mechanical aggregate was gradually being overcome; its objective wholeness was being substantiated instead. Therefore, wholeness is inherent not only to quantum phenomena, but also to quantum systems by itself, objectively. By the essence, just the attempt to think this circumstance had brought into life the concept of quantum entanglement. The concept of a mixture and its substitutes – the concepts of entangled state, entanglement, etc. – have not only the scientific but some metaphysical meaning as well: they prove the possibility of rational thinking of wholeness, the reasonableness and effectiveness of rational holism. Therefore, the metaphysics of quantum entanglement in its correct understanding is a manifestation of the rational holism metaphysics. Complete explanation of the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen thought experiment requires consideration of both these appearances of the quantum wholeness. One can say the essential result of long-term discussion of the EPR experiment is the exhaustive recognition of the quantum reality wholeness. A row of generalizations achieved by A. Alexandrov, I. Tsekhmistro, and D.Bohm are considered. Together with the completed study of the concept of quantum entanglement or Bohr's substantiation of the concept of undivided quantum phenomenon, they support irreducibility of physical reality, the Universe in general to any set of Democritian atoms and their countless combinations, aggregates. All this enriches and improves the understanding of the Universe as a real wholeness. Perhaps, this understanding will be newest substitution for the hitherto popular worldview in the spirit of Democritus.

Arnold Toynbee as a philosopher and the theologist: (post)metaphysical meanings of history

The article is devoted to the explication of post-metaphysical tendencies in the philosophy of history based on the concept of A. Toynbee. A comparative analysis of the historiosophical ideas of Toynbee with the teachings of O. Spengler, N.O. Lossky, A. Augustine and F. Nietzsche. The thesis is substantiated that the key points in determining the meaning of the historical process in Toynbees theory are the ideas of deification and the superman. It is concluded that Toynbees historiosophical concept is an attempt to respond to the situation of total devaluation of meaning-forming paradigms during the crisis of Western civilization.

Understanding paradoxical lucidity: Family caregiver interpretations of lucid episodes among people with late‐stage Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias

AbstractBackgroundParadoxical lucidity is characterized by spontaneous mental clarity with verbal or non‐verbal communication or behavior among people with AD who had previously been thought to lack the cognitive capacity to do so. With a paucity of data available, family caregivers (FCGs) provide critical perspectives on characteristics of these episodes of lucidity (EL).MethodTwenty‐four FCGs who witnessed at least one EL were interviewed about the experience. Qualitative data were transcribed, double coded, and analyzed to help characterize ELs.ResultFCGs described ELs as indelible moments, possibly triggered by music, food, holidays, or impending death. The spontaneity of the EL, its duration, the connectedness with FCGs, and coherence of communication varied. Instead of seeing them as cognitive fluctuations, FCGs often assigned metaphysical meaning to ELs.ConclusionFCG descriptions of ELs had few common patterns, suggestions they are heterogenous. Their impact on FCGs, however, was enduring.

Metaphysical Meanings and Archetypal Romanian Symbols in Today’s Romanian Music

Late 20th-century Romanian composition stood out, above all, by its ability to open itself to novelty and experiment, and virtually align itself with everything that Western Europe considered to be an avant-garde artistic movement at that time. However, as time has shown, this “synchrony” – which is sometimes translated by the terms of the binomial “national universal” or, more precisely, “local-global” – happened somewhat selectively, avoiding the excesses and the extremes specific to the radical-nihilistic attitude present in other contemporary music cultures. One of the “keys” of this reconciliation strategy brings to the fore the Romanian composers’ preference for the great philosophical themes of our traditional culture, imbued with the metaphysical meanings and archetypal symbols delivered by myths and legends that have turned into veritable universals. Liviu Glodeanu and Sigismund Toduţă are (only) two of the creators who leaned with undisguised passion on various Romanian myths that they masterfully integrated into two extremely valuable opera. The former dedicated himself to the pre-Christian age and elevated the pagan rituals revolving around Zamolxis – the feared god of our ancestors, the Dacians – to the rank of an emblematic vision. The latter resized the dimensions of the myth of the ultimate sacrifice, masoning oneself in stone in order to build the temple of God – the church, as Master Manole represents – along with the ballad of Mioriţa – one of the founding legends of the Romanian people’s spiritual identity. In our approach, we will show some of the conceptual and language foundations of the aforementioned works.

Мотив заключения в рассказах Дж. Рис «From a French Prison» («Из французской тюрьмы»), «The Sidi» («Араб»), «Outside the Machine» («За пределами»)

The article examines the motive of imprisonment (supervision and punishment) in the concept of Jean Rhys’s short stories written in the first half of the XX century. The placement of female (Inez, Madame Tavernier, Mrs. Murphy) and male (the old man and the boy, Sidi) characters in the closed loci of the hospital and prison is seen as an emblem of alienation and identity crisis. The possibilities of philosophical and psychological interpretation of the imprisonment, the key leitmotif of the British writer’s stories, and the accompanying motives of loneliness, accidental encounter, non-involvement, guilt, inner human freedom and existential insight are analyzed in detail. The hospital/prison space turns out to be symbolic, irrational. It acquires metaphysical meaning, correlates with the key ideas of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Special attention is paid to the representation of the motive of imprisonment in the poetics of the stories «From a French Prison», «The Sidi», «Outside the Machine» (internal psychologism, the unreliability of the narrator, the accentuation of detail).

The Original Meanings of the New Terminology of the CCP

The conceptual and terminological innovations of Xi Jinping’s report at the 20th Congress of the CPC in 2022 and the documents and speeches of the PRC leaders that preceded it, presented as a combination of Marxism with the traditional culture of China, caused a heated debate in Russian sinology. S.N. Goncharov considers them an expression of a sophisticated intellectual strategy, and A.V. Lukin — an opportunistic device of political casuistry. The article provides arguments in favor of the first position. 10 quotations from ancient canons expressing the “wisdom of Chinese civilization” were re-translated, more accurately attributed and analyzed in the report of the Chairman of the People's Republic of China and it was established that together they represent a rhymed poem reminiscent of the common anthem of the Kuomintang and the Republic of China. The general meaning of this centone is built on the main categories of Chinese thought: “heaven” 天, “man” 人 and “grace” 德. The most important concepts from these “10 commandments” and neologisms based on traditional vocabulary are considered, such as: “culture” 文化, “civilization” 文明, “order and turmoil, flourishing and decrepitude” 治乱兴衰, “change of predestination / revolution” 革命, “transformation by the central state / sinicization” 中国化, “epochalization” 時代化, “great unity” 大同, “small prosperity” 小康, “one-man management community / justice” 公, “advanced method” 提法, “community with a shared future for mankind / community of common destiny for mankind” 人类命运共同体, etc. The metaphysical meaning of the slogan proclaimed in the PRC about “jumping out of historical cyclicality” is revealed and the controversy surrounding the application of the Western concept of “civilization-state” to China and Russia, interested in different components of this ambivalent structure, is analyzed. A general conclusion is made about a qualitative shift in the development of the political vocabulary of the CCP from Marxism to traditional ideology in Confucian design.

The death of the artist: From the sublime to silence

In an articulation of silence, the art of Colombian artist Doris Salcedo calls for the artist’s death. Fuelled by the ideas of Jean François Lyotard and Jürgen Habermas, postmodernism challenges the relationship between the artist and the sublime. How does Lyotard’s pessimistic view of the postmodern condition impact the metaphysical meaning of silence? This examination will venture to explore a unique perspective that, through silence, threatens the artist. It does so, however, in concert with art. Salcedo introduces an ontological re-imagining of the artist’s displacement, which fulfils any void left by silence.

A Translation and Literary Analysis of Adebayo Faleti’s Poem: Ojo Ilayefun”

The concept of friendship in the Yorùbá cultural milieu is very germane to their communal life. Suffice to say that there seems to be no human being without, at least, a friend, the major issue usually is how well-grounded such friendship is, especially in times of need. Friendship development among the Yorùbá usually begins during the formative years via social interaction. However, sustaining such friendship through inter-personal relationship, which requires great sacrifices, is the most difficult aspect of it. This essay examines the Yorùbá concept of a mutual acquaintance, as depicted in one of Faleti’s poems titled “Ọjọ Ìláyẹfún.” The essay employs the hermeneutics model to undertake a literary analysis of the poem, which serves as the primary data for the study. By analyzing the representational meanings that are attributed to the concept of friend (òré in Yorùbá, the study shows that the term friendship has many metaphorical meanings in the traditional Yoruba worldview. The study also foregrounds the cultural, metaphorical, and metaphysical meanings of the Yoruba concept of mental imbalance (wèrè) beyond the conventional meaning or common knowledge about it in the Yorùbá socio-cultural milieu. The essay concludes that the Yoruba indigenous system, through several notions and metaphorical expressions about mental malady socially stigmatizes people suffering from such ailment. Mental pictures/images of incurability being rammed the native sub-consciousness, orthodox medicine has proved that it could be managed, suggesting that a lunatic could eventually be reformed, rehabilitated, and re-absorbed into the functionality of society.

Walking off the Map, or the arrière-pays

The essay explores what some recent writers have seen as the actual and metaphysical meanings of walking and how it impacts how we walk and design in both undesigned and designed spaces.

Визуальная репрезентация морской тематики в художественной культуре России ХVIII–XIX вв.

Тhe meaning of visual representation includes perception of information through the visual image. This form of information delivery to the general public was known in pagan cultures and asserted itself in Christianity. Since the late 20th century the concept of visualization united in itself not only religious and artistic images, but also the vision of mass culture. The performed research places emphasis on the establishment and the development of visual representation in Russia’s art culture of the ХVIII-XIX centuries. During the reign of Peter the Great, in a succession of state reforms and due to the influence of samples of European art, a transformation of national art culture occured. In this context, maritime art is viewed as one of the visual representation forms. The seascape, as a separate genre of painting, originates in the Dutch landscape. The first marinas were brought by Peter the 1st to decorate palaces and country residences. The victory in the Battle of Chesme (1770) and the joining of Crimea to the Russian Empire prompted Catherine the 2nd to invite J. P. Hackert to perpetuate the glory of Russian weapons. The artist became the first marine painter on Russian soil and performed a series of twelve paintings. The flourishing of the national seascape in Russia took place in the 19th century. The first who took the post of artist at the Ministry of the Sea was I.K. Aivazovsky. Since then the seascape acquired special significance and perpetuates the sea victories of Russia. A subtle metaphysical meaning is present in some romantic landscapes by I.K. Aivazovsky. Sea battle paintings acquired clear realistic features in the painting of A.P. Bogolyubov. The artists are concerned not only with the image of the sea, but also with the architecture of the ship, which forms a separate painting genre: the ship portrait genre. The image of the ship in the paintings of the XIX-XX centuries combines the lines of scripture and poetry, focusing the attention of the viewer on a deep semantic reading of the landscape.

The City Gate in Ancient Israel and Her Neighbors: The Form, Function, and Symbolism of the Civic Forum in the Southern Levant

The City Gate in Ancient Israel and Her Neighbors: The Form, Function, and Symbolism of the Civic Forum in the Southern Levant

Afterword: urbanity and the afterlife of death

ABSTRACT This article addresses the theoretical issues regarding rituals of death and the “afterlife of death” in urban life. Through an analysis of the five articles in this special issue on “Death and the City” that examine how death is controlled as a necessary component of urban social order, I suggest these case studies shed light not only on the essential technologies of social rules and polices regarding death, but they also reveal important truths about how humans join the material reality of death to death’s metaphysical meaning, or the “afterlife of death.”

The conceptual and denotative aspect and its artistic realisation in Leonid Andreev’s short story <i>Lazarus [Eleazar]</i>

L. Andreev’s short story Lazarus [Eleazar] deals with death. Having returned with the knowledge of Death, the resurrected Lazarus becomes a Shadow of himself, or the Shadow he experienced There. The publication of Andreev’s Lazarus in 1906 unleashed a heated polemic in the press. Critics tended to see Lazarus in a negative light. The article outlines the opinions of the authors who participated in the discussion of the concept and contents of Lazarus: Z. Gippius, M. Gorky, M. Voloshin, and A. Lunacharsky, among others. The existential dichotomy of life and death offers a key to unlock the secret of the story. The protagonist, familiar with death, refuses to divulge the mystery of the divine revelation: to the world of the living, death shall remain a mystery. Andreev’s oeuvre was always dominated by matters of life and death. Lazarus’ borderline and existential mood is exaggerated to the absurd. The writer perceives death as the sole purpose of life and its metaphysical meaning.