Mind Of Man Research Articles

John Locke: Natural Law and Innate Ideas

In the seventeenth century, the concept of natural law was linked with that of “innate ideas”. Natural laws were said to be ideas imprinted by nature or by God on men's minds and were the very foundation of religion and morality. Locke's attack on innate ideas in the first book of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding is therefore considered to be an assault on natural law. Modern critics like Peter Laslett, W. von Leyden and Philip Abrams are of the opinion that Locke's critique of innate ideas in the Essay cannot be reconciled with the concept of natural law in the Two Treatises of Government.

Other men's minds

The Making of Mind: A Personal Account of Soviet Psychology. By A.R. Luria. Edited by Michael Cole and Sheila Cole. Pp.234. Published by (Harvard University Press: Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, 1979.) $15; £9.

Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith

Fire in the Minds of Men: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith

On Germans and Jews: Reply to Dennis Klein

One does not read books or essays entitled Blacks and Americans, Mormons and Americans or and Americans; yet Dennis Klein uses the formula and in his review of Peter Gay's Freud, Jews and Other Germans (NGC 19, Winter, 1980). I don't think that in choosing his title Peter Gay intended to be funny; he correctly speaks of and Other Germans. One may argue, as Mr. Klein does, that assimilation did not prevent the recurrence of anti-Semitism; but that is decidedly not the same thing as saying that assimilation did not work. There was no more assimilated Jew than Theodor Herzl, the founder of Zionism. Those Germans and Austrian Jews who had not immigrated from the East recently had no other culture than German. Of course, no one will deny regional distinctions and religious differences; just as Faulkner was a Southern writer, so one might call Kafka a Bohemian-Jewish writer in the German language; but Jews were spread over the whole spectrum, from monarchist to anarchist, from North to South. It should be difficult to tell how Hugo von Hofmannsthal or Stefan Zweig were writers or how Johann Strauss's Jewish grandfather made the Vienna Valse Jewish. These are Nazi arguments which assign to 'blood the prime role in the making of a man's mind and disregard the preponderant influence of language, education, daily environment and experience. Regional and sectarian cleavages and class differences have always been very prominent in German culture. In my gymnasium class in Berlin, which was Protestant and upper middle class, the Jews were more integrated than a Catholic, or the son of a worker, a barber or a nobleman. In his much-acclaimed Prophets Without Honor Frederic Grunfeld cites many Jews for whom before the Nazis, cooperation and understanding were the rule rather than the exception .... in business, banking, publishing, the arts (and) on a personal level. ... one third of the Jewish marriages was mixed. Jews and other Germans went to school together, worked together, played together (there were not, as at that time in the U.S., segregated or retricted beaches and resort places), served in the same army and were killed together. My father was a member of a Patriotic League of Jewish War Veterans and of the Central

God and natural selection: the Darwinian idea of design.

If we arrange in chronological order the various statements Darwin made about God, creation, design, plan, law, and so forth, that I have discussed, there emerges a picture of a consistent development in Darwin's religious views from the orthodoxy of his youth to the agnosticism of his later years. Numerous sources attest that at the beginning of the Beagle voyage Darwin was more or less orthodox in religion and science alike.78 After he became a transmutationist early in 1837, he concluded that the doctrine of secondary causes must be extented even to the history of life and that after the first forms of life were created, there was no further need for divine intervention, except where man was concerned. Man's body, he thought, was produced by the process of transmutation, but he believed for a time that man's soul was “superadded.” By mid-1838 he had become convinced that nothing, after the creation of life, was due to miracles. God works only through laws, which are capable of producing “every effect of evey kind which surrounds us.” The existence of man, the idea of God in man's mind, and the harmony of the whole system were in his eyes prearranged goals of deterministic laws imposed by God. Such a conception excludes the miracles on which Christianity depends; but it is not possible to say whether Darwin's loss of Christian faith, which occurred at about this same time, preceded and made possible his “materialism” or was rather caused or hastened by it.79 In the weeks after his reading of Malthus, Darwin's belief in a plan of creation gave way to the belief that God created matter and life and designed their laws, leaving the details, however, to the workings of chance. This remained his view until the 1860s. There is no exact parallel between this development of Darwin's religious views and the development of his ideas on evolution, but there is a general correspondence. When he believed in a plan of creation, Darwin's theory of transmutation did not depend on struggle or the selection of chance variations. Adaptation was, for him, an automatic response to environmental chance. From late 1838 to 1859 he believed in designed laws and chance, and this belief, too, has its parallel in his theory. The element of chance in natural selection meant that there could be no detailed plan,in which even man's idea of God would be a necessary outcome of nature's laws (man himself is not a necessary outcome of the working of natural selection).80 But Darwin still believed nature was programmed to achieve certain general ends. We might say that he believed in a general, though not a special, teleology. Natural selection was for him a law to maximize utility, creating useful organs, retaining vestiges for future use. For many years it was a law designed to produce organisms perfectly adapted to their environments. Only later did Darwin come to doubt even this sort of design in nature.81 One way of describing the development of Darwin's evolutionary thought is to say that it shows a gradual abandoning of his “theistic” assumptions, so that by the late 1860s his theory was informed to a slighter extent by notions of purpose and design than it was in 1838 or 1844 or 1859.

Poetry and Pattern: Structural Analysis of an Ijo Creation Myth

tenet-is Levi-Strauss' claim that myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact.' It will be difficult to go along with LeviStrauss in giving so little credit to the storyteller's intentions, but any criticism of Levi-Strauss' method must begin by acknowledging the degree of disjunction discernible in many an oral narrative. For instance, a careful look at some of the didactic codas with which many of them end will reveal how gratuitous they are in the light of the overall montage of episodes and effects that constitute the tale. Often, as I have demonstrated elsewhere,2 the didactic statement at the end strains to reflect the society's code of morality, whereas the portrait of the hero in the body of the tale seems geared to enhance the affective appeal of the storyteller in an oral performance. Levi-Strauss prefers to sidestep this affective element and instead argues that there is a mythologique underlying and transcending the surface meaning which both the narrator and the casual audience are inclined to recognize in the tale. By a careful, though controversial, dissection of tales in the Theban cycle, he has proposed an interpretation of the Oedipus myth that seeks to supersede the classic theories of the scholastic and psychoanalytic traditions.3

The United Kingdom: Leviathan and the quangos

Leviathan, you will recall, was the name given by the seventeenth century political philosopher Thomas Hobbes to the new centralized state that was exercising men's minds so keenly in that century. The English Leviathan, in the sense of an all-powerful state, dominating the individual citizen, was largely the creation of three Tudor sovereigns. The first, Henry VII, was a shrewd, or thodox investor, a treasury man. The last, Elizabeth I, was a clever investor in the business ventures of her great sea captains. The second Tudor monarch, Henry VIII, perhaps did the most to create a governmental machine that Thomas Hobbes could later nickname Leviathan. In many ways its evolution has analogies with the power struggles and the organizational patterns of modern business. Before the Tudors, the English monarchy had been largely ineffective because the feudal system was a form of decentralization of authori ty that has some similarity with the structure of a weak business conglomerate today. The mediaeval king's relationship with his barons was not unlike that of a holding company, struggling to control operating

"The Face of a Protestant, and the Heart of a Papist": A Reexamination of Sir George Calvert's Conversion to Roman Catholicism

With the Elizabethan religious settlement of 1559 all English men were by definition members of the Ecclesia Anglicana. Because the medieval concept of religious uniformity continued its powerful hold on men's minds, and for the more practical consideration of the threat to English security posed by foreign Catholic powers, a series of penal laws attempted to force at least outward conformity to the established church. In time the English Catholic community was thoroughly disrupted. Per haps nothing demonstrated more clearly the confused impact of the Elizabethan religious settlement and its alterations on the individual than the religious life of Sir George Calvert. After March 1625 no one doubted that Calvert, who had recently resigned as secretary of state, was a Roman Catholic.2 The mystery is when Calvert had become a Roman Catholic. Most historians of early Maryland have accepted that Calvert was a Protestant and that his conversion to Roman Catholicism

Classical Approaches to Population and Family Planning

It occurred to me that there were certain topics much canvassed today whose anticipations in ancient Greece and Rome were too little known, even perhaps in classical circles, partly because only recent relaxations in social conventions have made public ventilation of such things fully possible. I hope that I was right in my supposition; and I trust and believe that if I speak freely no one will take offence. When I speak of population I shall not be concerned with the vexed question of figures, and the extent to which they can be deduced for antiquity, but only with Greek and Roman attitudes to the subject, which did sometimes affect political theory, practical policy, and private family planning. The spectre of global overpopulation does not seem to have been in the forefront of men's minds until quite recently. Of course anxiety about population in general terms was sparked off by Malthus' essay of 1798; and it haunts such books as J. S. Mill's Principles of Political Economy (1848). But people were mainly concerned about the particular society to which they belonged. I was therefore surprised to find John Addington Symonds writing in 1891 of our age, when the habitable portions of the

To Reach Men's Minds: Almanacs and the American Revolution, 1760-1777

To Reach Men's Minds: Almanacs and the American Revolution, 1760-1777

Patterns of Repeating Decimals: A Subject Worth Repeating

Mathematics is the Queen of the Sciences. It has numbers that will dazzle your mind and tickle your fancy. It is the soul of men's minds—a power that can he tamed and put to creative work. Yes, my friend, I can show you some secrets of this power: if you only remember the key word to unleashing this power—PATTERNS. Say it loud and say it often, for it is the building block to developing mathematics.

The equality debate: What does justice require?

Less than 20 years ago John Kenneth Galbraith stated that "few things are more evident in modern social history than the decline of interest in inequality as an economic issue... inequality has ceased to preoccupy men's minds."1 Perhaps Galbraith's judgment was mistaken even then; it is certainly incorrect today, for we are living at a time when there are increasing demands for a whole host of equalities: political, social, and economic.

Tragic absurdity: Hopelessness and stories of life

As examined by the theatre of the absurd, there are two levels of absurdity. The first and most obvious is the semiconscious, superficial level on which most human life is conducted. It is marked by an unreasoned existence led mechani cally and divorced from any real passion or meaning. If a man's life does manage to encompass some semblance of a raison d'?tre, it is not apparent, and the con tinued disjunction between his deeds and his reason is so enormous that the rela tionship becomes ludicrous. It is an automatistic existence, a na?ve slavery in which the individual is completely unaware of the currents moving him. The other level of the absurd is that on which a man tries to reconcile his aspirations to a world that gives them no reality. On this level a man is painfully at home with his passions, his desires for knowledge, power, permanence, and happiness. But these very desires, which seem to harbor ultimately his sense of reality and definition, are echoed in the uncaring and unordered universe only to mock him. The universe remains immense in its silence to his questions, and his mind can only vainly probe and prod it for an answer. Trying to render authentic his immediate life becomes a task so consuming in its pain and overwhelming in its futility that the desire to return numbly to the nothingness before life looms as a haunting spectre. He faces the contradiction that Unamuno describes as that "of my heart, which says Yes, and my head, which says No."1 The senselessness of his life becomes oppressive, and he finds no escape from it. Conscious of the absurd, he becomes forever bound to it. Throughout history, belief in a transcendent order has been man's primary source of solace in an otherwise cold and heartless world. Our lives are so important to us that we have trouble accepting the possibility that they may not be equally significant to some higher Being. But in its restless searchings, man's mind has demolished many temples previously endowed with spiritual residence. And today the phrase "God is dead" is emblematic of the remoteness of the God-man's cries from the cross. To be sure, all religions have tried to assimilate the mysteries of suffering and death into themselves, but many are premised on a

The Inadequacies of Technical Reporting

The advancements of science and engineering which are reported by oral and written modes have become overcomplicated. The message of reporting clearly defines the problem at hand; however, reporting inadequacies have prevented that message from reaching the public. Reporting in the past has suffered due to strong censorship and ignorance from learning about technical contributions in society. Progress has been made through art and increased faith in scientific discoveries which were monumental enough to have wakened man's mind. Through the institutional changes in our education programs, technical reporting will become adequate and allow mankind to live with a mutual understanding.

Reflection and the Origin of Man's Mind.

Reflection and the Origin of Man's Mind.

An Introduction to Montesquieu's “An Essay on the Causes That May Affect Men's Minds and Characters”

An Introduction to Montesquieu's “An Essay on the Causes That May Affect Men's Minds and Characters”

An Essay on the Causes That May Affect Men's Minds and Characters

An Essay on the Causes That May Affect Men's Minds and Characters

The Tools of the Entomologist

Research Article| April 01 1976 The Tools of the Entomologist John G. Stoffolano,, Jr. John G. Stoffolano,, Jr. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The American Biology Teacher (1976) 38 (4): 222–230. https://doi.org/10.2307/4445552 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation John G. Stoffolano,; The Tools of the Entomologist. The American Biology Teacher 1 April 1976; 38 (4): 222–230. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/4445552 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe American Biology Teacher Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1976 National Association of Biology Teachers Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Dilemmas and Solutions

To the Editor.— The points Dr. Harrison raises in his article Dilemmas and Solutions (230:401, 1974) are very interesting. It is obvious, though, that the dilemmas proposed as examples of different situations that might arise are not medical. Physicians have been trained and used through centuries to make decisions based on medical grounds. The examples put forward, especially the transplant, show clearly that physicians are sometimes called to solve nonmedical dilemmas. If the two patients of the example were stripped of their social, scientific, and other attributes, then the surgeon would be faced with the medical problem of transplanting a kidney to a 65-year-old man or a 25-year-old youth. As more and more attributes are bestowed on these patients, more and more people will be called in to help reach a decision that simply is not a physician's decision. Man's mind, although it might sound strange, dislikes symmetry, eg, dilemmas.

The Rhetor as Creator in “Paradise Lost”

ABSTRACT In Paradise Lost Milton simulates the role of the creator by certain rhetorical aims and techniques: Milton's creation is to aid the replenishment of heaven with true, faithful, and loving spirits by asserting God's great love seen in his eternal providence and by countering the antiheroic element that sees God as unjust and tyrannic. The complexity of Milton's simulated creation of a world is seen in the poem's intricate structures; its philosophical technique is sustained by the literary device of opposites, each of which moves from one extreme to the other and which together create the vagueness of distinction between them which is characteristic of man's thought. His world, like God's, is ever changing: the techniques to emphasize this are the compounding of time, the “harassing” of the reader, the manipulation of language, the structure of the poem, alterations in style. But over all is a persistent threat of truth. The contrast between the first (in man's mind) and the second (in God's mind) is seen in Satan, who is a Steppenwolf wishing to become an Everyman. The world's problems owe much to Everyman's (Adam and Eve's) becoming Steppenwolf. Milton's thesis is: experience is fulfilled in living, not after death, if we accept life as it is.