Pivotal Figure Research Articles

Spotlight on El-Zahrawi, Father of Modern Surgery: Reflections on His Impact on Contemporary Medicine and the Need for Greater Medical Education on Pivotal Figures in Medicine

Issue : For students in the preclinical years of medical school, it is easy to overlook the narrative component of medicine and become occupied with learning the vast sea of information about the human body. There are limited, if any, options to learn about historical figures in medicine and how they can inform our future in clinical medicine. Evidence : There is an apparent lack of education offered on pivotal figures in medicine across many institutions. The few instances that medical history has been incorporated into the curriculum are further discussed. Implications : In order to incorporate cultural competency in our delivery of care, it is important to consider the diversity of the population we will be serving and how we can prepare to help patients feel heard in their unique issues. In this paper, we propose learning about the true history of certain medical practices, rather than the “colonial” version often utilized in textbooks and lectures, as a means of diversifying students’ perspectives of the origins of these practices as well as giving credit where it is due. The time period during which many of these medical practices were cultivated is referred to as the Islamic Golden Age, but scholars who made contributions belonged to many different faiths and cultural backgrounds. El-Zahrawi was a Muslim physician whose principal work, Kitab-at-Tasrif, contains topics on medicine, surgery, midwifery, pharmacology, therapeutics, diet, psychotherapy, and medical chemistry. He pioneered numerous techniques in surgery and invented surgical devices that are still used to this day.

From the Editor

From the Editor Ricardo D. Trimillos Aloha kākou! The lead article for issue 54(1) is the print version of Daniel M. Neuman’s keynote address presented at the 2022 meeting of the Society for Asian Music. His homage, “Remembering My Teachers—Bruno Nettl and Sabri Khan,” celebrates the importance of individuals, their agency, and their personae in shaping a music culture; the individual actor is the leitmotif of this issue. Although ethnomusicology has generally been a project of understanding music in broad, culturally defined strokes, studies of individuals have become more frequent, a development that narrows the putative methodological divide between ethnomusicology and historical musicology (the latter is often characterized as giving greater attention to individual composers, performers, and works). The set of essays found here displays an array of modalities for locating artists within the respective genre each inhabits and examines such ancillary themes as copyright, ownership, organology, spirituality, and gender. Neuman’s keynote is a narrative documenting the intersections and inter-penetrations of the personal and the professional in the life of one individual. Neuman is recognized as a leader and pivotal figure in our field, and the experiences he recounts will no doubt resonate with many readers. His engaging, personal account spans six decades; it comprises idiosyncratic histories of ethno musicology and of global Indian classical music populated by prominent personalities from both worlds. Informal in delivery, it nevertheless references important concerns in the field, including processes of continuity, dynamics of globalization, and valorization of those we work with.1 The next contribution provides dramatic contrast: a single performer is the central figure in a contentious legal and public debate concerning ownership and control. The article by Dave Fossum, “Neşet Ertaş and the Ontologies of Turkey’s Folk Music,” examines the rerelease of a recorded song that pits the rights of the composer against those of the performer. In this conflict, modern institutions of copyright, commercialization, and mediatization decenter indigenous notions of ownership, control, and entitlement. Fossum documents ways that the performer Ertaş negotiates and strategizes a pathway through disparate, competing perceptions of folk song and considers how these actions construct a “reality” of the single composition in question. Although the author directs our attention to the performer Ertaş as protagonist, [End Page 1] the figure of the composer Özkan as antagonist occupies a continuous, albeit backgrounded, presence. Elements including the rural-urban divide, regional identity, commercialization, and sonic features inform the multiple ontologies of the title. The lute gambus is part of instrumental-vocal music popular in Malaysia and provides a historical link for Southeast Asia to West and Central Asia. “The Exceptional Fauziah Gambus: Negotiating Novelty, Piety, and Self-Promotion in an Androcentric Malaysian Musical Scene” by Joe Kinzer problematizes notions of gender, religious piety, and consumerism in a contemporary island nation. Like Fossum, Kinzer portrays the performer—a female—as an individual successfully negotiating and rationalizing multiple ontologies that revolve around cultural practices rather than legal institutions. Gender is only one feature of her exceptionalism; her acknowledged mastery of genres within Malay traditional music and “Arab” music further reinforces this status. Her agency employs various strategies to create and maintain an image that is simultaneously diva, pious woman, and national citizen. Kinzer addresses other themes shared in this issue—the rural-urban divide (here, province and metropole), mediatization, and globalization. In the preceding articles the focus is on the performer as the individual of interest. “Staging Noh Performance in Contemporary Opera: The Dance of the Shite in Toshio Hosokawa’s The Maiden from the Sea (2017)” by Paulo Brito foregrounds the composer. In contrast to Kinzer’s study, Brito’s treatment of gender is implicit rather than explicit—the noh creative collaborator for the project is a female practitioner. His attention to intercultural opera reinforces an ongoing construction of a Japanese identity that is self-conscious and global. The historical and the traditional are consciously juxtaposed with the contemporary and the creative. Performance scholarship often emphasizes the inseparability of music and dance—sound and movement—among Asian traditions. Brito meets this truism head-on by using a dance sequence to compare sonic and movement features between the original noh play and...

Zongmi’s Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity: Rhetorical Characteristics and Their Implications

Zongmi 宗密 (780–841) is a pivotal figure in understanding the characteristics of East Asian Buddhist philosophy, especially that of Huayan and Chan. And it is in the Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity (Yuanren lun 原⼈論) that Zongmi developed his integrated and universal system of philosophy that incudes Confucianism and Taoism in addition to the five schools of Teaching and Chan. This paper probes the rhetorical characteristics of the Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity focusing on the six categories of panjiao 判敎, the chiastic structure from shallow to deep, and the unique terminology Zongmi coined in the matrix of inclusive reconciliation.BR Zongmi devises a two-layered chiastic structure in the Inquiry into the Origin of Humanity. On one layer, he writes the panjiao in a forward order and then in reverse. At the same time, he makes a chiastic contrast “from shallow to deep.” At the center of the chiastic structure, he deliberately places his own terms such as the One True Numinosity (yizhen lingxing 一眞靈性), which he adopted from Buddhist elemental concepts and transformed them into more universal notions in East Asian philosophy, a recurring occurrence in the history of East Asian Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism This experimental application of rhetorical criticism of East Asian Buddhist texts proves that the method can contribute enormously to our understanding of the broader picture and the depth of the text.

Sentimental beings: subjects, nature, and society in romantic philosophy

ABSTRACT This article examines the role played by ‘feeling’ (Gefühl) and ‘love’ within the philosophy of German Romanticism. After an introduction (I) to the actual debate on German Romanticism, paragraph II sketches an analysis of the concept of Gefühl at the end of the eighteenth century and highlights the differences with its actual meaning. The successive three sections are dedicated to three pivotal figures of German Romanticism: F. Schlegel (III), Novalis (IV), and Baader (V). Similarities and differences between these authors will be emphasized. It will be demonstrated that they deny the reason˗feeling opposition, and that ‘feeling’ and ‘love’ are at the heart of their ontology, epistemology, and conception of subjectivity, conditioning the Romantic human-nature relationship and Romantic political philosophy. In the concluding remarks (VI), this paper explains how German Romanticism can still help to better understand the role of feelings in politics.

The Key Book about Blazhe Koneski and his Opus as a Will – New Capital Work in the Contemporary Macedonian Philology

The paper refers to one of the most significant achievements of Macedonian philology, dedicated to the pivotal figure of contemporary Macedonian science and culture and to overall Macedonian 20th century, Blazhe Koneski, not only among the publications during the last year (2021), when the 100th anniversary of his birth was marked, but in general in the period from completion of his creative opus onwards (1993) – the book “Koneski as a Will” by Vesna Mojsova Chepishevska (Skopje: Matica Makedonska, 2021). Unlike other authors’ book dedicated to Koneski in the past two / three decades, in which dominate the synthesis between the memoir and the scientific, in this book there is an exclusively scientific approach in reading the text and valorizing the work. This book provides a new direction for rereading, analyzing and evaluating Koneski’s work, with a series of specific conclusions and insights that should represent a starting point for further research. Among those conclusions and observations, is the definition of Koneski’s work as a starting point of Macedonian culture. At the same time, with this book are opened questions and segments from Koneski’s work are analyzed, which weren’t previously perceived or more thoroughly analyzed and commented by the Macedonian literary science. In the analysis and evaluation of this book, in addition to these questions the text also comments the innovative, unique literary-theoretical, historiographical and cultural approach which Mojsova Chepishevska applied in both parts of the book. The book “Koneski as a Will” represents a new chapter in the evaluation of Koneski’s work in the Macedonian science and culture – a book which in the time ahead will be a key reference for any literary-scientific or cultural study of Koneski’s work.

Pyrrolidine Dithiocarbamate-loaded Electrospun Membranes for Peritendinous Anti-adhesion through Inhibition of the Nuclear Factor-κB Pathway

Peritendinous adhesion is a major cause of limb dysfunction and disability in clinical practice. Numerous studies suggest that activation of nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathway in macrophages could be the pivotal figure in excessive collagen synthesis and thus peritendinous adhesion formation. In this study, we assumed this pathological process could be suppressed by inhibiting NF-κB phosphorylation and nuclear translocation using pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (PDTC), a specific NF-κB inhibitor with the ability to penetrate cell membranes, in macrophages. Then, we conducted electrospinning process to incorporate PDTC into poly(L-lactic) acid (PLA) electrospinning membranes, that is, the PDTC-PLA membranes. Further, with integral film quality and stable drug release property, the PDTC-PLA membranes were subsequently analyzed in the capability and mechanism of preventing adhesion formation both in vitro and in vivo. Our results showed inhibition of macrophage proliferation as well as NF-κB pathway activation from in vitro assays and outstanding promotion in inhibiting NF-κB p65 phosphorylation and reducing adhesion formation from in vivo assays of PDTC-PLA compared to PLA membranes. In conclusion, our findings suggested that PDTC-PLA as an alternative therapeutic approach alleviated inflammation and peritendinous adhesion formation through NF-κB signaling pathway. Statement of significancePyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (PDTC) can be blended into poly-L-lactic acid (PLA) fibrous membranes by electrospinning process. This incorporation of PDTC into PLA is an effective way to inhibit proinflammatory activation of macrophages and to achieve advanced anti-adhesion outcome after tendon repair.

Fin-de-siècle vibratie-manie

Fin-de-siècle vibration-mania. Synesthetic light projection in the wake of Jean Delville’s art Jean Delville (1867-1953), a Belgian symbolist artist and a pivotal figure in fin-de-siècle occultism in Brussels, was inspired by numerous synaesthetic performances: shadow plays, serpentine dance, and colour organs. These performances were perceived as musical paintings or experiments with colour-hearing, audition-colorée, or farbenhören and often made use of projection techniques. This contribution sheds light on the artistic, spiritual, and even therapeutic context of synaesthetic projection closely intertwined with Jean Delville’s interests and activities. It demonstrates how the lantern projector turned into a ‘magic lantern’ in synaesthetic performances. By materialising (in)visible vibrations, it paradoxically propagated an antimaterialist vision of life.

Met de kindertrein naar België

By children’s train to Belgium. Socially engaged lantern lectures by Floris Prims on the Belgian-Hungarian Children’s Campaign (1924-1927) From 1923 onwards, children’s trains travelled from Hungary to Belgium (and back). Upon arrival, the children were placed in Catholic foster homes. There, they could recuperate from the hardships they had endured during the First World War and the subsequent revolutions in their home country. The attitude of Belgian Catholics toward foreign countries can be broadly framed within an ‘internationalist turn’ of contemporary Catholicism. As a result, there was extensive propaganda in Belgium for this Children’s Action. One of the pivotal figures was priest and historian Floris Prims. In August 1924, he travelled on a children’s train to Budapest, after which he gave dozens of lantern lectures throughout Flanders about the situation in Hungary and the importance of this Belgian-Hungarian Children’s Work. In this article, we frame Prims’ lectures within the Catholic struggle against the rising of socialism and communism. Thus, the central question of this article is on how the lantern was used for the social mobilisation of the Catholic population.

Regulation and bioinformatic analysis of circ_0015891/miR-129-1-3p axis in methamphetamine-induced dopaminergic apoptosis.

Methamphetamine (METH) abuse can result in severe neurotoxicity, for which the mechanism is not yet clear. In the present study, we investigated the role of noncoding RNAs in METH-induced dopaminergic neurotoxicity, and analyzed the underlying mechanism using bioinformatic methods. We confirmed by flow cytometry that miR-129-1-3p is involved in promoting dopaminergic apoptosis under METH treatment and its role could be inhibited by a high concentration of circ_0015891. Also, we combined transcriptomic data with bioinformatics to explore the downstream mechanism of miR-129-1-3p regulation of METH-induced apoptosis, highlighted the potentially pivotal figure of response to nutrition. Further bioinformatic analysis of circ_0015891 was conducted as well and showed that circ_0015891 was the sponge of various microRNAs that effect apoptosis by different mechanisms. Collectively, we found a novel circ_0015891/miR-129-1-3p axis that may be a promising therapeutic target for METH-induced dopaminergic neurotoxicity.

The dual path of historian Artur Eisenbach

ABSTRACT This article seeks to reconstruct the biography of Artur Eisenbach, who was both a prominent historian of the nineteenth century and one of the first historians to study the Holocaust. Born in Poland, Eisenbach survived the war in the Soviet Union. Upon his return to Poland, he joined the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH) in Warsaw, where he wrote many works on the Holocaust. During the course of the antisemitic campaign of 1968, he resigned as director of the institute. His subsequent research, carried out with colleagues at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), focused on Polish Jewry in the nineteenth century. He is a pivotal figure precisely because he remained on the borderline between Jewish and Polish identities.

General Materials

Guide to the Year's WorkGeneral Materials Albert D. Pionke (bio) This year's survey of general materials features chapters from four books. These three edited collections and one monograph position Victorian poets and poetry with respect to the particular writerly legacies of Byron and Keats and the broader scientific and artistic developments in medicine and ballet, respectively. Individual Victorian-era poets discussed, whether concisely or extensively, in these diverse contexts include Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Letitia Elizabeth Landen, Edward Lear, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Alfred Tennyson, Walt Whitman, and Oscar Wilde. Initiated from the weekend symposium "Byron among the Poets," held at All Soul's College, Oxford, in January, 2018, Clare Bucknell and Matthew Ward's edited collection Byron among the English Poets: Literary Tradition and Poetic Legacy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2021) is "preoccupied both with Byronic allusion and the question of poetic influence more broadly, as it relates to Byron's reworking of his predecessors and to the way Byronic wording, forms and ideas surface and resurface in the work of later writers" (p. 8). Readers of Victorian Poetry may be especially interested in chapters 14 through 17 from the book's third chronologically arranged section, "Afterlives," which "looks ahead to the presence of Byronic forms, motifs, manners and characters in post-Romantic poetry" (p. 12). Thus, in "In-Between Byrons: Byronic Legacies in Women's Poetry of the Late Romantic to Mid-Victorian Era," Sarah Wootton positions Letitia Elizabeth Landon as "a pivotal figure in the dissemination of Byron and Byronic influence from the mid-1820s to the 1840s" (p. 235). Focusing sequentially on "Lorenzo's History" (1824), "Lines Suggested on Visiting Newstead Abbey" (1839), "The Portrait of Lord Byron, at Newstead Abbey" (1840), and "Stanzas. Written Beneath the Portrait of Lord Byron, Painted by Mr West" (1827), Wootton tracks Landon's ambivalent response to Byron's and her own "iconic status . . . while also expressing concerns about the longevity of his verse and use, or misuse, of his poetic skill" (p. 236). Next, Jane Stabler's "Byron and Browning: Something and Nothing" examines "moments [End Page 345] when Robert Browning appears to fall into or in with Byron's cadences, particularly their shared use of the word 'something' and their attention to moments when characters say nothing" (p. 252). Less definite than more straightforwardly verifiable allusions, these "subtler echoings," also referred to as "analogues," are scattered widely across Browning's poetic corpus (pp. 252, 262). Ward's essay, "Arnold's Ambivalence and Byron's Force and Fire," follows. For Ward, "Arnold's writing to and through Byron suggests that he retained a wish for Romantic influence more than he felt an anxiety of influence," especially when faced with the loss of "collective feeling" and "decline of poetry" in his own age (pp. 272, 272, 275). Finally, Richard Cronin rounds out the Victorian portion of "Afterlives" by reexamining Swinburne's ambivalent relationship to Byron. In "A. C. Swinburne and Byron's Bad Ear," Cronin traces Swinburne's shift from "principal restorer" of his predecessor's reputation to "hardened" critic of Byron's "metrical deficiencies" (pp. 287, 289). The irony, Cronin observes, is that even in the 1880s, "when attacking Byron most savagely, Swinburne's tendency is to echo him" (p. 293). Echoes of Victorian poetry also resound in individual chapters from two additional edited collections. Daniel Brown's "Physics and Metaphysics: Poetry and the Unsteady Ascent of Professional Medicine" serves as the fifth chapter of Clark Lawlor and Andrew Mangham's Literature and Medicine: The Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2021). Within the period framed by Edward Jenner's smallpox vaccine and Ronald Ross's demonstration of the life cycle of the malarial parasite in mosquitos (1796–1897), Brown reconstructs the increasingly strained relationship between medicine and poetry in the nineteenth century. Through succinct close readings of poems by George Crabb, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, William Wordsworth, George Gordon, Lord Byron, John Keats, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Alfred Tennyson, Oscar Wilde, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Walt Whitman, Edward Lear, and a host of lesser-known poets and poet-physicians, Brown shows how, "[b]uilding upon the legacies of...

The Spectacular Success Story of Sir Ernest Wallis Budge

A pivotal figure in the field of Egyptology, Assyriology, and biblical studies, Sir Ernest Wallis Budge was an illegitimate child of the Victorian age who succeeded against the odds. Today he is castigated by archeologists anxious to distance their field from its imperialist birth.

Maurice Blanchot: ‘Theorist’ of the Diary?

Maurice Blanchot’s writing on the diary has been presented as ignorant and contemptuous of its object, and as misrepresenting the diary by focusing on its literary qualities. This article rehabilitates Blanchot as a critic and theorist of the diary, and moreover, as a pivotal figure in realising the diary’s literary potential. Blanchot’s discussion of particular diarists (including Benjamin Constant, Joseph Joubert, Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka, and André Gide), together with his critical reflections, were instrumental in his creation of conceptions of literature that exerted a strong influence on the avant-garde movements of the following decades, even though these avant-gardes rejected the introspective aspect of intimate writings. Furthermore, Blanchot produced a programme for how the diary might become a literary work, which was picked up again by Roland Barthes in 1979, and casts light on experimental uses of the diary in recent decades.

Shaw’s Criticism and Philosophy Dramatized

Shaw’s Criticism and Philosophy Dramatized

The Kindai shūka and the Eiga taigai by Fujiwara no Teika A Contrastive Analysis

Fujiwara no Teika was a pivotal figure in classical Japanese poetry not only because of the many high-level poems he wrote or of the imperial anthologies he edited, but also because of his poetic treatises. In this paper, I will examine two of them: Kindai shūka (Superior Poems of Recent Times, 1209) and Eiga taigai (Fundamentals of Poetic Composition, after 1221). They both present a theoretical introduction followed by a selection of outstanding poems to be taken as examples by those who want to learn how to compose waka. The key feature of the anthology parts is to be found in the organisation of the poems, since they follow an order that respects the principles of association and of progression typical of the anthologies and of the sequences of the time. In this paper, I will compare these two treatises, with a focus on their similarities and differences. I will also try to understand, in the absence of explanatory notes by the author himself, what motivations might have induced the poet to modify what was stated in the introductory part and to reorganise the selection of the poems.

Editorial Introduction.

As British historians have got on with research into the years since 1945, the history of social science has become increasingly salient. Social scientists now loom large in histories of politics and policy (they have long been important to histories of empire, of course).1 And historians have followed the lead of qualitative social scientists in re-analysing research materials archived by sociologists of the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. The pivotal figure here has been Mike Savage, whose 2010 book Identities and Social Change in Britain since 1940 furnished a powerful narrative of sociology’s place in post-war culture, and whose revisiting of the field notes and surveys of classic sociological studies has served as both a model and a foil for historians such as Jon Lawrence, Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, Natalie Thomlinson, Selina Todd, Charlotte Greenhalgh, and David Cowan.2 This is a body of scholarship that speaks to an enduring historical...

Paul and His Letters: Thinking with Josephus. By F. B. A. Asiedu

F. B. A. Asiedu’s stimulating monograph pursues a little-explored but important comparison of two pivotal figures in Second Temple Judaism: the Apostle Paul and the Jewish prophet–historian and apologist, Flavius Josephus. Asiedu claims that Josephus represents ‘an expression of self-consciously post-Pauline Judaism’ from first-century Rome (p. 179; cf. p. xv). The contrast between both thinkers is not structured around common theological themes (i.e. their views of God, Mosaic Law, etc.). Rather, uniquely, it is biographically focused, drawing out similarities between each writer’s life, mostly overlooked by historians and critics (pp. xiii–xiv). The Jewish parameters for the investigation are made clear. Josephus provides important primary evidence for ‘the attested practices . . . for what a first-century Jewish writer affiliated with the Pharisees . . . was likely to do’ (p. xiv). In this regard, Paul and Josephus ‘represented themselves as Pharisees and as former Pharisees and in the company of Pharisees’ (p. xxiii). Asiedu posits that the Judaism of Josephus stands somewhere between Paul and Philo and the rabbis and the Rabbinic tradition (p. xxiii), helpfully setting the similarities and differences between Paul and Josephus in first-century Jewish life (pp. xxiii–xxxv). Nevertheless, Asiedu more gravitates towards the evidence of Paul’s letters than a continuous biographical comparison with Josephus throughout the monograph.

Counterterrorism, Civil Society Organisations and Peacebuilding: The Role of Non-State Actors in Deradicalisation in Bima, Indonesia

Indonesia’s ongoing battle against terrorism has made deradicalisation programmes a major focus of the government. The National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT) has primary responsibility for persuading terrorists to desist from, if not reject, violence as part of their Islamic struggle, but its ability to deal directly with terrorists and other radicalised communities is hampered by the depth of distrust and animosity that these communities feel towards the state and its security services. As a result, BNPT has partnered with Muslim civil society organisations (CSOs) in running anti-terrorism programmes for jihadists. Indonesia’s dominant Islamic organisations, Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah, have been in the vanguard of state-CSO counter-terrorism cooperation. Eastern Indonesia has experienced persistent terrorist activity over the past two decades, including many fatal attacks on police. This article takes as a case study CSO initiatives in the West Nusa Tenggara city of Bima, with particular attention given to Ustadz Gunawan, a pivotal figure in local jihadist circles who, in 2019, renounced violence and became a proponent of peaceful jihad. This article examines the history of extremist jihadism in Bima and the counter-radicalisation efforts of CSOs and state institutions. We argue that three key factors—personal relations between jihadists and CSO leaders, family pressure and generous material incentives from state agencies—have created space for peace promotion in communities that previously condoned, if not supported, jihadist bellicosity.

The French Referenda of 1992 and 2005: Towards Mainstream Euroscepticism?

This article contributes to the historical debate about the two French referenda of 1992 and 2005, the former on the Maastricht Treaty (a feeble “yes”) and the latter on the Constitutional Treaty (a resounding “no”), by adding three further elements that the passing of time has revealed. First, new sources on the history of European economic policies reveal the role of the rise of neoliberal policies, and hence of their major importance in the second referendum. Second, the perspective given by subsequent events, such as the Brexit vote, sheds light on two factors hardly men‐ tioned in studies about the 2005 referendum: the importance of the internet as a source of alternative information during the campaign, and the role played by a key pivotal figure - namely, a globalist associated with international liberalisation who eventually supported a Euroscepticist stance. Third, thanks to the 2005 referendum, Euroscepticism (to be differentiated from Europhobia) morphed into a mainstream ideology in France, including among part of the elite.

Finding the Origin of a modern, secular, and materialistic World

SUMMARY: 1. The relevant Past - 2. Protest and Print - 3. The ramist Answer - 4. Modern Minds - Two Foundations.
 ABSTRACT: In the global age the modern Western, secular, and material way of understanding human existence is generally accepted to provide the norm by which every alternative view is evaluated. It is the standard against which all other ways of thinking are judged. It is the accepted basis on which entire systems of law, forms of government, methods of education, and a modern way of life is extended across every region and people of the earth. Viewed historically, however, the fact that such a way of understanding should become the norm is quite ironic. Despite the predominance of this mode of thought in the present age, as far as can be determined, nearly all people who have ever lived on the earth, until very recent times, have lived according to principles and values that not only included the rational and material ways of understanding but combined them with a religious, sacred, or miraculous aspect as well. In fact, the peoples of the West were once uniformly of this mentality - and many remain so. Moreover, it was not until a great transformation began to take place, beginning around 1600 that the modern secular and materialistic way of understanding came to provide the basic premise for a Western way of life in which religious belief and spirituality survived, but mostly in an instrumental or subordinated role. The story of how this new Method of understanding - premised on Thought rather than Being, Fact rather than Truth, Empirical and Rational, rather than a fully human way of apprehending - involves three pivotal figures: Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, and especially, Peter Ramus (Pierre de La Ramee). Following on these men an architecture of the modern mind - what Foucault called an episteme - is coming to predominate among a global population. It is a way of thinking based on some combination of their teachings. To understand how and why this occurred is to understand how and why the sacred or miraculous dimension of human existence lay outside a paradigm that shapes the global age.