Mystery Of Life Research Articles

Shirley Geok-lin Lim: An Interview

Writer, critic, activist, educator, Shirley Geok-lin Lim was born in Malacca, Malaysia, one often children of a Hokkien Peranakan (1) family. After receiving her bachelor's degree from Kuala Lumpur's University of Malaya in 1967, she went to the US where she earned a PhD in English and American literature from Brandeis University. Widely considered as Malaysia's most internationally acclaimed writer in the English language, Shirley Lim is the author of five volumes of poetry, three collections of short stories, a memoir, and a novel. Her first book of poems, Crossing the Peninsula, won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for 1980, the first Asian woman poet to receive this prestigious award. Her other volumes of poetry include: No Man's Grove (1985), Modern Secrets (1989), Monsoon History (1994), and What the Fortune Teller Didn't Say (1998). Her memoir, Among the White Moon Faces: An Asian-American Memoir of Homelands (Feminist Press, 1996), published simultaneously in Singapore as Among the White Moon Faces: Memoirs of a Nonya Feminist (Times Books, 1997), won the American Book Award for 1997. Her first novel Joss and Gold, was published by the Feminist Press, New York, and Times Books International, Singapore in 2001. Her short story titles include: Another Country (1982), Life's Mysteries (1995), and Two Dreams (1997). Shirley Lim s reputation as a writer is rivaled by her reputation as a critic of Asian and Asian American literature. She has edited or co-edited The Forbidden Stitch (recipient of the 1990 American Book Award), Approaches to Teaching Kingston's The Woman Warrior, Reading the Literatures of Asian America, and One World of Literature. She is also the author of Nationalism and Literature: English-language Writing from the Philippines and Singapore (1993) and Writing South East/ Asia in English: Against the Grain (1994). Winner of numerous awards for her outstanding contributions to teaching, she is currently Professor of English and Women's Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her forthcoming books include a novel, a volume of poetry, and a book of cultural and gender criticism. This interview was carried out via electronic mail in March 2002. MAQ: Why do you write? Is it for the of writing--the of telling a story, for example--or because you have some ideas to convey, some instructions perhaps? Is writing an obsessive, compulsive activity for you or is it a way of solving problems, private or societal? SL: When I was much younger I might have replied that I wrote for the sheer of writing, but this has not been the case for a long time. That I feel driven to write is clear. That writing provides me with a deeply satisfying sense of coming to who I am, becoming who I believe myself to be, is also clear. But I am less certain now that joy has anything to do with it. More often than not, writing means long hours and days of loneliness, isolation, doubt. And more and more I feel the absence of time for the kind of writing I want to do. Working on this interview with you, for example, means losing time for writing. Entire months and even years go by with very little time for the kind of writing you are asking me about. Writing is surely no way to go about solving problems. I would like to think that my poems and prose works offer symbolic action and so participate in a significant way in the social world in a political public sphere, but that is a faint hope and as easily winked out even during my lucid moments. Is writing obsessive for me? Not in the psycho-neurotic sense, the way an obsessive-compulsive has no rational control over her actions. My sense of duty, my work ethic, is very strong, and I spend most of my life devoted to my salaried profession as a university teacher and citizen. Social responsibilities take up an enormous amount of my energy, whether they were/are childcare, housekeeping chores or community services. …

Our humility in the face of life's mystery

We are familiar with great photographs that make powerful statements, that show us important truths about ourselves and the world we live in. But these photographs do not make a statement; they embody a question, an overwhelmingly poignant question about the physical life that we have all been given and which we pass on to our children. The essential question embodied in Camille Solyagua's photographs cannot easily be put into words. But if we are willing to let the images in, we will feel the question, and like all great questions, it will make us quiet and invite us to search for understanding.

On Darwin's 'metaphysical notebooks'. II: "Metaphysics" and final cause.

The first part of this paper was published in Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum 94 (2001). In the second part below an examination is made of the meaning of the term Metaphysics in some passages of the Darwinian Notebooks for the years 1836-1844. Metaphysics no longer defines a field of philosophical enquiries mainly concerning the being and the essence after the manner of Aristotle; it now refers to a kind of philosophy of mind after the manner of J. Locke's criticism of the Hypokeimenon. However Aristotle's Metaphysics also encompasses a treatment of the idea of causes, and of final cause particularly, in the explanation of events, and in the explanation of natural phenomena especially. The criticism of the idea of final cause in the interpretation of the world of life is one of Darwin's foundational acts in his early years. When conceiving his Système du monde, in the last years of the XVIII Century, Laplace could think that God is a hypothesis not really needed by science, as we are told. For the knowledge of organic nature to attain the status of science, it remained to be shown that since--certain of the exemplariness of Newton's Principles as much as cautious before the mystery of life--did not need the hypothesis of final ends in order to understand and explain the productions of the living nature: not only in the form of that final cause (the First Cause, the Vera Causa) in which Natural Theology still rested, but also in the form of nature's inner finality which still moulded Whewell's Kantian philosophy. Such demonstration is a very important subject in Darwin's early enquiries, where he criticises finalism as a projection of self-conceiving Man, likely inherited from a knowing of causality in nuce to be found also in animals.

Popular Culture and the Rituals of American Football

In his article, "Popular Culture and the Rituals of American Football," Mark Axelrod reflects on meanings of cultural practice in American popular culture. Before globalization -- driven by economics -- became a fact of life with profound implications, there were myths and rituals that provided a kind of insulation from the mysteries of life. These practices were ritualized by "primitive" men and women who, seemingly, did not understand the universe as well as we moderns do. But in fact one only needs to witness throngs of Baltimoreans rushing after a caravan of cars attempting to kiss the Vince Lombardi Trophy as if it were a passing Torah and genuflecting to their NFL Ravens to realize that very little has changed since the days of pine and mosses. In American scholarship, one of the most fascinating areas of myth and ritual, and one of the least explored, is that dealing with American football. Drawing on the thought of Arnold van Gennep, C.G. Jung, and Mircea Eliade among others, Axelrod raises the ritual of the sport from the baseness of physical contact and violence to the level of cultural practice, replete with all the sacred mysteries of any other ritual, past or present.

Das Verständnis des Todes bei Ben Sira

On the background and within the framework of the traditional Israelite-Jewish anthropology Ben Sira advises his pupils and readers to accept death as a fate and to draw the consequences of the fact that human beings have no other life than the present one. For the Lord the shortness of human life gives reason for his mercy, if they return to his commands. On the other hand the way a man dies is a parameter for God's judgement. Apart from the fact that everybody is responsible for his fate the transitory character of life gives reason to enjoy oneself using his property for gifts to his friend and the embellishment of the own transitory days. But he should as well take care of his name, for a good name is just what may survive. In regard to the death of other people one should not withdraw from a dying, but after his death not lengthen the mourning for this would weaken himself whithout helping the dead one. This in the whole conservative outlook of Ben Sira protected him against philosophical and apocalpytic speculations, which he judged as devorced from reality. All what a humans may need for their life became revealed to them by the Lord. To act according to his commandments is better than to look out for fresh revelations. So we may understand Ben Sira as a representative of Judaism as a religion of reason in a transitional age, even if we would credit to his unnamed opponents that they had some idea about the transcendent mystery of life.

Encounters with Nature; Essays by Paul Shepard

Review: Encounters with Nature; Essays by Paul Shepard by Paul Shepard Reviewed by Cate Gable Berkeley, California, USA and Paris, France Shepard, Paul. Encounters with Nature, Essays by Paul Shepard. Florence R. Shepard (Ed.). Washington, DC: Island Press, 1999. 223 pp. ISBN 1-55963- 529-0 (cloth). US$24.95 Paul Shepard (1925-1996) is one of the pioneers of modern ecology. Avery Professor Emeritus of Human Ecology and Natural Philosophy at Pitzer College, he brought diverse disciplines to bear on how humans interact with and perceive the natural world. This book, edited by his wife Florence, compiles published and unpublished essays written during the course of Shepard’s life. As David Petersen says in the Introduction, Shepard's ‘subversive science’ of human ecology … [brings together] the revolutionary study of the overarching significance of humanity’s coevolution with wild animals in shared wild environs. The themes present here are the legacy of our hunter-gatherer forebears; animals and their pervasive influence on our human being-ness, cognition, and imagination; ontogeny and the shift from bonding-to-mother to bonding-to-Mother-Nature as critical in the maturation of an individual; and place as a grounding of our being. The lead essay, The Origin of Metaphor: The Animal Connection, outlines one of Shepard’s central themes. In this treatise on the stirrings of consciousness inside the human animal, Shepard proposes that the bear became an archetype for our developing sense of self’ and other. He posits that our observing and testing wits with this magnificent creature sparked the beginnings of our first and greatest technology— language, and, specifically, our ability to use metaphor and symbology. The female bear, after disappearing mysteriously with the sun all during the dark winter months, reappears with cubs in the spring. To early humans, the she-bear may have represented the mysteries of life and renewal. Shepard notes that we named the most prominent constellations in the sky Ursa Major and Ursa Minor, Big Bear and Little Bear. Our language captures bear in many forms: to bear fruit, to bear a child, to bear witness to, etc. Much of the imagery in Native arts and culture—mask making, dance and song—features the bear.

The therapist's voice

Healing remains one of the genuine mysteries of life. Throughout history, artists, poets, writers, and healers have grappled with the question of what heals. Psychotherapy is a relative newcomer to this quest because, as therapists, ours is the work of healing. Ancient healers spoke of creating moments of “spiritual transmission,” where a personal connection to the sacred is a crucial factor in healing. I have, at times, felt privileged to be a participant and witness to extraordinary moments of spiritual connection. Cultivating an appreciation of the healing power of the spiritual is explored in this article. As therapists, it is our own lives that are our greatest teachers. My relationship with my sister-in-law, Shira Ruskay, has drawn me into a deeper appreciation of the spiritual. As a young woman, a life-threatening battle with Hodgkin's disease left an indelible impression on Shira's mind, body, and soul. Surviving cancer, Shira was first and foremost a fighter. From an early age she had a rare appreciation of the fragility of life. Never totally free from the worry that haunts most survivors, Shira nonetheless developed a unique zest and passion for growth, a deep relatedness and ability to explore her soul. Just past 50, cancer has struck once again. Her fight for her life permeates many aspects of my heart, my mind, my self, including my psychotherapist self. What enters our lives, enters our work; this article explores how spirituality has entered and deepened my work.

FTM: female-to-male transsexuals in society

Very little is known about female-to-male transsexuals. Who are they? How do they come to know themselves as transsexual? What do they do about it? How do their families cope? Who loves them? What does it mean for the rest of us? FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society answers these questions and more. It provides a detailed, compassionate, intimate and incisive portrait of the life experiences of 45 female-to-male transsexuals. Based on a series of in-depth interviews and years of field work and friendships with transsexual and transgendered people, Devor traces the everyday events and significant moments which coalesce in transsexual identities and culminate in gender and sex transformations. After an introduction which grounds the discussion in historical and theoretical contexts, the author takes a life course approach to understanding female-to-male transsexualism. Liberally using their own words as illustrations, Devor looks at how childhood, adolescent, and adult experiences with family members, peers, and lovers work to shape and clarify female-to-male transsexuals' images of themselves as people who should be men and males. With passion and pathos transsexual men tell their stories about how they decided to, and proceed to, alter their lives and their bodies so that they could live fully as men. With humour and determination they disclose how they, and the people around them, adjusted to their radical transformations and the many lessons which they learned along the way about the mysteries of life on both sides of the great gender divide. Throughout and in conclusion, Devor's perceptive, erudite, and insightful analysis shows that, in the end, the biggest differences between female-to-male transsexuals and other members of society probably lie not so much in the nature of the identity-supporting processes through which they must pass, but in the anguish and consciousness with which they must negotiate them. FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society is highly readable, emotionally engaging, intellectually rigorous, comprehensive, sharply analytic, and theoretically wide-ranging. It will be an invaluable resource for transsexual people and their loved ones. It will be a key reference work for professionals and for students. Anyone who has ever wondered about gender, sex, and sexuality or who simply enjoys reading absorbing real-life drama will find FTM: Female-to-Male Transsexuals in Society to be both fascinating and challenging.

Understanding of energy in biology and vitalistic conceptions

The concept of energy is considered difficult to teach and some of its possible misconceptions have been addressed in the literature. There are grounds for assuming that this concept is particularly problematic in the study of biology owing to the difficulty in grasping that principles which govern the non‐living world are capable of explaining the mystery of life. The present study addressed the possible connection between misconceptions regarding energy in biological systems and a vitalistic notion of biology. Specifically, 76 high school seniors and 28 biology teachers were assessed with regard to: their conception of biological phenomena (scientific vs. vitalistic); their understanding of the concept of energy in a biological context; and the correlation between the two conceptions. The results point to a strong correspondence between the ability to understand energy in biological phenomena and adherence to scientifically oriented conceptions of biology. They suggest that the conception of energy influences the conception of biology, although an effect in the opposite direction cannot be ruled out. Recommendations are made to base biology curriculum on the second law of thermodynamics, so as to promote a scientific understanding of the concept of energy and hence of biology in general.

The Four Points of Margaret’s Compass: An Appreciation of Novelist Margaret Laurence

Margaret Laurence was above all else an explorer of the human condition, and I would like to use the compass as a metaphor to explain the directions in which her art takes us. But first I should sketch the nature of my relationship with Margaret and her contribution to Canadian life and letters. The Manawaka novels and short stories are Margaret's greatest literary achievement. The series of four novels published between 1964 and 1974 (The Stone Angel, A Jest of God, The Fire - Dwellers, and The Diviners) and the collection of eight short stories entitled A Bird in the House (1970), together explore the lives of several generations who came to build and settle the town of Manawaka, Manitoba, and the surrounding countryside. It is well known that the fictional town of Manawaka is very closely patterned after Margaret's hometown of Neepawa, Manitoba, a small agricultural centre situated approximately halfway between the metropolitan centre of Winnipeg to the east and the city of Brandon to the west. In Manawaka, we meet the Gunns and the Logans, Scottish settlers who came to settle the region during the opening decades of the nineteenth century; the Tonnerres, Metis descendants of the French fur traders and their Native trading partners who by then had also peopled the region; and the later immigrants from eastern Canada, the British Isles, and continental Europe, among them the Shipleys, the Camerons, and the MacLeods. Few artists have expressed the rhythms and mysteries of life in Canada as magnificently as Margaret did in her Manawaka books. Margaret was well into her creation of the Manawaka series when, in 1969, she became a friend of my family. That year she returned to Canada from Britain to become writer - in - residence at the University of Toronto for the academic year 1969 - 70. My mother, Clara Thomas, a Canadian literature specialist at York University, had first read Margaret's work in the mid 1960s, and the two had struck up an acquaintanceship that became a friendship with Margaret's arrival in Toronto. During the years to follow, until her death in 1987, she was a frequent house guest of my parents when she visited Toronto. Both of her children lived in Toronto for much of this period, she had many friends in the city, and her Canadian publisher, McClelland and Stewart, was located there, so she visited often. Frequently she and I would end up in Toronto together - particularly in the 1970s - me home from university for Christmas or the summer holidays, and she in the city to share the holiday seasons with friends and family. They were exciting times. The phone was always ringing, Margaret and my parents always seemed to be returning from some splendid event - a reading here, an honorary degree ceremony there - and always the conversation was stimulating, sometimes tension - filled when Margaret warmed emotionally to an issue, but more often laced with humour. Pathos was important to Margaret, but so also was comedy. The atmosphere was rarely salon - like, although I do remember the night that one of us wondered aloud how the panel choosing the Governor General's Award for 1969 had been so misguided as to ignore Margaret's Fire - Dwellers, only to have novelist Dave Godfrey, a dinner guest that evening, remind us that his novel, The New Ancestors, had been chosen that year. More often, when the topics of discussion were the craft of writing or the politics of publishing, the atmosphere was akin to a publisher's neighbourhood pub, or when the subjects were the life experiences of friends and family, an evening at the cottage. Margaret was an intellectual: she was obsessed with the question of the role of the writer in society, and she was passionately engaged in the life of the mind, but she was most decidedly not an academic, and she was uninterested in, even hostile to, many conventions of the academy. Thus the kinds of literary discussions that Woody Allen delights in capturing in his many movies were as alien to Margaret as men on the moon. …

The power of networking-pooling resources to keep our electricity on requires control

One of life's mysteries is how electric power companies provide our homes and industries with electric service so reliably and, despite oft-heard complaints, so economically. This article will attempt to shed light on the basic principles on which electric power systems operate. The author discusses the electric power grid, power system organisation, frequency control, clock time, power interchange control, area control error, economic load dispatch, spinning reserve, load flow, system security, and voltage stability.

Genesis and modern theories of evolution

We have seen that the theory of the evolution of the universe is very remote from being matter of absolute knowledge as its popular presentation today would have us believe. Moreover, it is based on a certain aspect of reality, namely, that of science, which cannot pretend to be the only one possible and thus to exclude the religious aspect of the world as a creation by God. The same is true regarding the evolutionary theories of life by Eigen or Vollmert, both being based on polymeric chemistry. If, therefore, Vollmert confesses, as already quoted, that he is not afraid to accept a creating God as an alternative to Darwinism, so in this respect he speaks despite everything as a believer and not as a scientist. By no means do I deny that the scientific results of Vollmert which seem to reveal the mystery of life to us can strengthen our faith — but never can faith be based on it. Faith springs from another source. Despite that, we can say today that the situation has changed principally, because both the philosophy of science and the discussions of the theories of evolution have shaken that kind of naive belief in science which in contrast to former times has turned theology into the ancilla, the maid of science. On the other hand, it would be a great misunderstanding to assume that now we can simply turn the tables. The criticism which I have partly put forward against the modern theories of evolution cannot obscure the numerous discoveries of the highest importance which are connected with them. These discoveries have provided us with an immensely deepened knowledge both of the physical conditions of the universe and of the chemical foundations of life. To conclude, I want to quote an American scientist who said: “I am as confused as before — but on a much higher level.” And this, I think, is the best summary of the present situation.

Person-centered death education

Abstract A person-centered, humanities-based approach to teaching death and dying is described. It emphasizes ideas that students can make their own in developing self-understanding, understanding of others, and means of coping and of helping others in facing the mysteries of life, death, and suffering. Storytelling is central, rather than peripheral, to its effectiveness. Reflection on humanness (what it is to be a person) and humaneness (what it is to respect a person) is central. The article treats the evolution of the approach, the rationale for it, general pedagogical implications, and concrete illustrations of its use.

Standardized Tests and the Numinous Mystery of Life

We are so busy measuring measurables, we are missing out on those things immeasurably more important.

Book Review: Mystery of Life: A Theology of Church

Book Review: Mystery of Life: A Theology of Church

Ah, Sweet Mysteries of Life

Ah, Sweet Mysteries of Life

"Unlocked by Love": William Steig's Tales of Transformation and Magic

"Unlocked by Love":William Steig's Tales of Transformation and Magic Arlene Wilner (bio) Although William Steig insists that he lets his stories take him where they will, that he doesn't start out by intending them "to be about anything" (Higgins 12), critics have noticed that his award-winning books reverberate with human concerns that have always informed stories that endure, from The Odyssey to The Hobbit. Anita Moss, for example, has persuasively located two of Steig's novels for children, Dominic and Abel's Island, in the tradition of both the heroic and the pastoral, showing how, in creating a tension between these two conventions, Steig achieves a vision that integrates urbane sophistication with innocence and art with nature in order to redefine a civilization truly informed with humane values. Barbara Bottner points out that Steig's works embody classic themes, such as an outer journey symbolic of an inner one, the beauty and mystery of life, or the fear of death, in ways that touch the knowledge and perceptions of both children and adults. Certainly his tales draw beauty and power from the fact that they "ponder the universal order" (Bottner 5) and may therefore be enjoyed by people of all ages. Furthermore, I propose, some of Steig's books have a special appeal for young children because they speak movingly to the inner experiences of childhood. Like the literary artifices of the pastoral and the heroic, these stories transform the chaos of experience into a vision of hope while acknowledging what Moss has called the "darker layers of existence" (138). Within these layers resides, most fundamentally for the child, the fear of being abandoned or unloved and of being punished for having the power to make one's deepest wishes come true. Abel and Dominic are, after all, adults—albeit in the guise of animals—who, as Moss observes, achieve in their maturity the ideal blend of work, play, thought, and action, as well as an appreciation of the meaning of human bonds, that characterizes our best vision [End Page 31] of ourselves as grown-ups. Another Steig character who achieves, as an adult, an integration of this kind is the mouse-dentist Doctor De Soto in the book by the same name; in this story the protagonist cleverly invents a way to reconcile the practical implications of a predator's appetite with the ethical imperatives of civilized behavior by which he feels obliged to govern his life. Many of Steig's protagonists are not adults, however, but children, for whom nature and art, innocence and creativity do not conflict. To the child's eye, magic inheres in the nature of things, and the transforming power of one's imagination is a fact of life. Although as children we have less power than adults, we paradoxically perceive ourselves as more powerful because we believe so deeply in the efficacy of our thoughts and wishes. Steig's picture books reflect his knowledge that belief in such power informs our experience as children and frightens as well as gratifies us. I would argue, then, that an important source of the eloquence of Steig's stories is their appeal to the unconscious conflicts and anxieties of childhood. Structurally and functionally, Steig's books, like traditional folk fairy tales, are illuminated by what psychologists tell us about how children view the world. Child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim notes that the conflicts and resolutions of traditional folk fairy tales mirror the anxieties and wishes of childhood (see his introduction to The Uses of Enchantment). Given the egocentrism of young children, who view the world as extensions of themselves, it is not difficult to accept Bettelheim's assertion that the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood is "an externalization, a projection of the child's badness" or that The Three Little Pigs represent different stages in the maturation of the child. Adults may be horrified by the disfiguring punishment of the three ugly sisters in the Grimm brothers' Cinderella, but children have a more unfettered sense of justice and know that evil deeds must be punished and not rewarded, as they are in the Disney version, based on Perrault's decorous revision. Steig...

Le fabliau et les sources inconscientes du rire médiéval

Inspired by the psychoanalysis (C. G. Jung, M.-L. von Franz, P. Solié), this research aims at pointing out the elements that the fabliaux give rise to, that is to say the causes and the fînality of laughter, a laughter that reveals, deep down in the psyche of the medieval man, a pagan substratum. Laughter, based on the linguistic subversion, often connected to sexuality, on the scatological humor, on sex, on the body and its dismemberment, on a way of dealing with time that underlines the process of Chaos, is an attempt to exorcise archaic fears, haunting anguishes deriving from the mystery of life, from smirch and the Impure, from death, time and Fall... and so, its function turns out to be similar to the one of the rites of ancient religions with mysterious practices.

Review: The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, by C. B. Thaxton, W. L. Bradley, and R. L. Olsen

Review: <i>The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories</i>, by C. B. Thaxton, W. L. Bradley, and R. L. Olsen

Review: The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories, by Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, and Roger L. Olsen

Review: <i>The Mystery of Life's Origin: Reassessing Current Theories</i>, by Charles B. Thaxton, Walter L. Bradley, and Roger L. Olsen