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Mythopoeic Thought
Mythopoeic thought is a hypothetical stage of human thought preceding modern thought, proposed by Henri Frankfort and his wife Henriette Antonia Frankfort in the 1940s, based on their interpretation of evidence from archaeology and cultural anthropology. According to this proposal, there was a "mythopoeic" stage, in which humanity did not think in terms of generalizations and impersonal laws: instead, humans saw each event as an act of will on the part of some personal being. This way of thinking supposedly explains the ancients' tendency to create myths, which portray events as acts of gods and spirits. A physiological motivation for this was suggested by Julian Jaynes in 1976 in the form of bicameral mentality. The term The term '' mythopoeic'' means "myth-making" (from Greek ''muthos,'' "myth", and ''poiein,'' "to make"). A group of Near Eastern specialists used the term in their 1946 book ''The Intellectual Adventure of Ancient Man: An Essay on Speculative Thought in the Ancie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri Frankfort
Henri "Hans" Frankfort (24 February 1897 – 16 July 1954) was a Dutch Egyptologist, archaeologist and orientalist. Early life and education Born in Amsterdam, into a "liberal Jewish" family, Frankfort studied history at the University of Amsterdam and then moved to London, where in 1924, he took an MA under Sir Flinders Petrie at the University College. In 1927 he gained a Ph.D. from the University of Leiden. Career Between 1925 and 1929 Frankfort was the director of the excavations of the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) of London at El-Amarna, Abydos and Armant. In 1929 he was invited by Henry Breasted to become field director of the Oriental Institute (OI) of Chicago expedition to Iraq. In 1931 he became correspondent of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, he resigned in late 1944. He became foreign member in 1950. In 1937 Frankfort and Emil Kraeling identified a woman on the Burney Relief (c 1700BCE) as Lilith of later Jewish mythology, though this identi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bicameral Mentality
Bicameral mentality is a hypothesis in psychology and neuroscience which argues that the human mind once operated in a state in which cognitive functions were divided between one part of the brain which appears to be "speaking", and a second part which listens and obeys—a ''bicameral mind'', and that the evolutionary breakdown of this division gave rise to consciousness in humans. The term was coined by Julian Jaynes, who presented the idea in his 1976 book ''The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind'', wherein he made the case that a bicameral mentality was the normal and ubiquitous state of the human mind as recently as 3,000 years ago, near the end of the Mediterranean bronze age. ''The Origin of Consciousness'' Jaynes uses "bicameral" (two chambers) to describe a mental state in which the experiences and memories of the right hemisphere of the brain are transmitted to the left hemisphere via auditory hallucinations. The metaphor is based on the id ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Consciousness Studies
Consciousness, at its simplest, is sentience and awareness of internal and external existence. However, the lack of definitions has led to millennia of analyses, explanations and debates by philosophers, theologians, linguisticians, and scientists. Opinions differ about what exactly needs to be studied or even considered consciousness. In some explanations, it is synonymous with the mind, and at other times, an aspect of mind. In the past, it was one's "inner life", the world of introspection, of private thought, imagination and volition. Today, it often includes any kind of cognition, experience, feeling or perception. It may be awareness, awareness of awareness, or self-awareness either continuously changing or not. The disparate range of research, notions and speculations raises a curiosity about whether the right questions are being asked. Examples of the range of descriptions, definitions or explanations are: simple wakefulness, one's sense of selfhood or soul explored ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mythopoeia
Mythopoeia ( grc, , , myth-making), or mythopoesis, is a narrative genre in modern literature and film where an artificial or fictionalized mythology is created by the writer of prose, poetry, or other literary forms. This meaning of the word follows its use by J. R. R. Tolkien in the 1930s. The authors in this genre integrate traditional mythological themes and archetypes into fiction. Mythopoeia is also the act of creating a mythology. Genre The term ''mythopoeia'' comes from Hellenistic Greek (), meaning 'myth-making'; an alternative is ''mythopoesis'' () of similar meaning. The definition of ''mythopoeia'' as "a creating of myth" is first recorded from 1846. In early use, it meant the making of myths in ancient times. It was adopted by J. R. R. Tolkien as the title of one of his poems, written in 1931 and published in ''Tree and Leaf''. While many literary works carry mythic themes, only a few approach the dense self-referentiality and purpose of mythopoesis. Mytho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychology Of Religion
Psychology of religion consists of the application of List of psychological research methods, psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to the diverse contents of Religion, religious traditions as well as to both religious and Irreligion, irreligious individuals. The various methods and frameworks can be summarized regarding the classic distinction between the Natural science, natural-scientific and human-scientific approaches. The first cluster amounts to objective, quantitative, and preferably experimental procedures for testing hypotheses for causal connections among the objects of one's study. In contrast, the human-scientific approach accesses the human world of experience using qualitative, Phenomenology (philosophy), phenomenological, and interpretive methods. The goal of this approach is to discern meaningful, rather than causal, connections among the phenomena one seeks to understand. Psychologists of religion pursue three major projects: #systematic description, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psychohistory
Psychohistory is an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities. Its proponents claim to examine the "why" of history, especially the difference between stated intention and actual behavior. Psychobiography, childhood, group dynamics, mechanisms of psychic defense, dreams, and creativity are primary areas of research. It works to combine the insights of psychology, especially psychoanalysis, with the research methodology of the social sciences and humanities to understand the emotional origin of the behavior of individuals, groups and nations, past and present. Work in the field has been done in the areas of childhood, creativity, dreams, family dynamics, overcoming adversity, personality, political and presidential psychobiography. There are major psychohistorical studies of anthropology, art, ethnology, history, politics and political science, and much else. Description Psychohistorians claim to derive many of its concepts from areas that are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Panpsychism
In the philosophy of mind, panpsychism () is the view that the mind or a mindlike aspect is a fundamental and ubiquitous feature of reality. It is also described as a theory that "the mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe." It is one of the oldest philosophical theories, and has been ascribed to philosophers including Thales, Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, and Galen Strawson. In the 19th century, panpsychism was the default philosophy of mind in Western thought, but it saw a decline in the mid-20th century with the rise of logical positivism. Recent interest in the hard problem of consciousness and developments in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and quantum physics have revived interest in panpsychism in the 21st century. Overview Etymology The term ''panpsychism'' comes from the Greek ''pan'' ( πᾶν: "all, everything, whole") and ''psyche'' ( ψυχή: "soul, mind").Clarke, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magical Thinking
Magical thinking, or superstitious thinking, is the belief that unrelated events are causally connected despite the absence of any plausible causal link between them, particularly as a result of supernatural effects. Examples include the idea that personal thoughts can influence the external world without acting on them, or that objects must be causally connected if they resemble each other or have come into contact with each other in the past. Magical thinking is a type of fallacious thinking and is a common source of invalid causal inferences. Unlike the confusion of correlation with causation, magical thinking does not require the events to be correlated. The precise definition of magical thinking may vary subtly when used by different theorists or among different fields of study. In anthropology (the earliest research), the posited causality is between religious ritual, prayer, sacrifice, or the observance of a taboo, and an expected benefit or recompense. Later research indi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cognitive Dissonance
In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is the perception of contradictory information, and the mental toll of it. Relevant items of information include a person's actions, feelings, ideas, beliefs, values, and things in the environment. Cognitive dissonance is typically experienced as psychological stress when persons participate in an action that goes against one or more of those things. According to this theory, when two actions or ideas are not psychologically consistent with each other, people do all in their power to change them until they become consistent. The discomfort is triggered by the person's belief clashing with new information perceived, wherein the individual tries to find a way to resolve the contradiction to reduce their discomfort.Festinger, L. (1957). ''A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance''. California: Stanford University Press. In '' When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World'' ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Behavioral Modernity
Behavioral modernity is a suite of behavioral and cognitive traits that distinguishes current ''Homo sapiens'' from other anatomically modern humans, hominins, and primates. Most scholars agree that modern human behavior can be characterized by abstract thinking, planning depth, symbolic behavior (e.g., art, ornamentation), music and dance, exploitation of large game, and blade technology, among others. Underlying these behaviors and technological innovations are cognitive and cultural foundations that have been documented experimentally and ethnographically by evolutionary and cultural anthropologists. These human universal patterns include cumulative cultural adaptation, social norms, language, and extensive help and cooperation beyond close kin. Within the tradition of evolutionary anthropology and related disciplines, it has been argued that the development of these modern behavioral traits, in combination with the climatic conditions of the Last Glacial Period and Last Gla ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archaeology
Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscapes. Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. It is usually considered an independent academic discipline, but may also be classified as part of anthropology (in North America – the four-field approach), history or geography. Archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology is distinct from palaeontology, which is the study of fossil remains. Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for which, by definition, there are no written records. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the adven ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Immanent
The doctrine or theory of immanence holds that the divine encompasses or is manifested in the material world. It is held by some philosophical and metaphysical theories of divine presence. Immanence is usually applied in monotheistic, pantheistic, pandeistic, or panentheistic faiths to suggest that the spiritual world permeates the mundane. It is often contrasted with theories of transcendence, in which the divine is seen to be outside the material world. Major faiths commonly devote significant philosophical efforts to explaining the relationship between immanence and transcendence but do so in different ways, such as: * casting immanence as a characteristic of a transcendent God (common in Abrahamic religions), * subsuming immanent personal gods in a greater transcendent being (such as with Brahman in Hinduism), or * approaching the question of transcendence as something which can only be answered through an appraisal of immanence. Western Esotericism Another meaning of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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