Postscript to the Union of Two Worlds: An Expository Note

This note is a follow-up, update, and correction of ‘The Union of Two Worlds: Reconstructing Elements of Proto-Athabaskan Folklore and Religion’, published in Folklore in 2016. First, the note addresses evidence presented by a new publication. Next, it adds an omitted illustration of the comparison of a Navajo ‘Big Fly’ with a Tibetan ‘enemy god’. Finally, it corrects a small-but-meaningful error and clarifies a resulting interpretation about the Huns in Buddhist literature.     

The Union of Two Worlds: Reconstructing Elements of Proto-Athabaskan Folklore and Religion

This study reconstructs elements of proto-Athabaskan folklore and religion, challenging received wisdom about the character of Southern Athabaskan culture. Detailed parallelism between Athabaskan and Old World folklore traditions, especially Inner Asian ones, means we must now consider that Southern Athabaskan cultures may retain significant elements of proto-Athabaskan belief systems originating in Asia.     

Constructing Identities in Early Iron Age Thessaly: The Case of the Halos Tumuli

This paper examines the Early Iron Age tumulus–cemetery of Halos in south–eastern Thessaly, with its unique cremation pyre–cairn combination. As there are no parallels for such combination of burial practices either in Thessaly or in any other area of the Greek world, it has usually been suggested that the tumuli were erected by people foreign to Thessaly, most probably of a northern origin. This paper presents evidence suggesting a local custom closely related to the desire to create a new identity.     

Second Laws,Two Cultures,and the Emergence of an Ecosystem Aesthetics

Abstract

The appropriation of scientific concepts by the humanities and the visual arts exemplifies what many feel are both the pitfalls and possibilities of interdisciplinary engagement. The principle of entropy, which C. P. Snow claimed could serve as a litmus test of the ‘two cultures’ divide, provides an excellent starting point for exploring how artists have employed scientific concepts far beyond their original contexts. As a case study in interdisciplinarity, the use of entropy in the visual arts is also a lens to consider the evolution of an artistic proposal from the 1960s known as ‘system aesthetics’. As an early challenge to the clean demarcation of art and science, system aesthetics was a precedent for what might be described as the emergence of an ecosystem aesthetics within contemporary art and design today.     

Introduction: Some Significances of the Two Cultures Debate

The notion of the existence of two opposed cultures, one literary and one scientific, has a long pedigree going back to nineteenth century. However, it was C.P. Snow's formulation of the idea in 1959 and F.R. Leavis's 1962 critique, which brought it to the fore in cultural discourse, where it has more or less remained ever since. The papers in this special double issue of Interdisciplinary Science Reviews examine the debate and its legacies from a variety of perspectives, while this introduction seeks to contextualise the issues raised and draw some contemporary lessons.     

Mauna Kea: Two Cultures and the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center

When Snow wrote delivered his lecture on ‘The Two Cultures’ in 1959, he considered this to be a phenomenon that had British, Western and global significance. This article looks at how Snow's ideas play out in the setting of Hawai'i from the early contact with Western navigators through to current disputes over the building of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) atop Mauna Kea. ‘Mutual incomprehension’, identified by Snow as the chief characteristics of his two cultures are clearly seen to be at play in Western-Hawai'ian encounters.

This article places the TMT disputes in the setting of the Hawai'ian Renaissance, a movement that has gathered pace since the 1960s. It looks Gieryn's notions of ‘boundary work’ and that of Star and Griesemer on ‘boundary objects’ as ways of framing the discussion. The final focus of the article is the 'Imiloa Astronomy Center in Hilo as a ‘place of safe disagreement’.     

观念与社会:女子小脚的美丑与近代中国的两个世界

近代中国缠足与反缠足两种观念曾长期竞争,至少到２０世纪３０年代,小脚美的观念在民间仍广泛存在,而天足女性及其家庭则往往受到社会的歧视。这样的观念有力地影响到女性在婚姻方面的选择能力和选择范围,由于近代社会变动导致从价值取向到生存竞争方式都有较大的差异的“两个世界”的存在,多数有能受教育的女性很难享受与“新世界”相伴随的社会待遇,缠足实际成为保障她们婚姻成功的一个基本条件;这样的社会因素又以过来强化     

Two Cultures: French and American Social Science in the Twentieth Century

The development of anthropology in France and North America during the early to mid 20th century showed both similarities and pronounced differences. In both cases anthropology matured alongside sociology, a relationship that would prove increasingly problematic as the century wore on. In France, in particular, another important influence was art and literature, especially the Surrealism of the 1920s and 1930s. This was less the case in North America, but in both countries, anthropology occupied a medial position between science and the humanities.     

Antichrist's Revolution: Some Anglican Apocalypticists in the Age of the French Wars

The article deals with the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century development of early modern English apocalyptic thought which permitted the identification of the Enlightenment and its political manifestations in Revolutionary France with the prophesied Antichrist. The importance of this phenomenon is discussed and a framework for further discussion of it, taken from general theories of apocalyptic, is provided. However, the article is chiefly concerned to go beyond existing, inadequate explanations of the phenomenon, which advert merely to the French wars and certain contemporary conspiracy theories, and seeks its origins and relationships in wider currents of British thought in the period and before. Notably, reference is made to the concern of the insular Counter-Enlightenment with rationalist christological heresy, the continuing vigour of the English tradition of apocalyptic exegesis and to contemporary renewed theological and pastoral emphasis on supernatural and dogmatic religion. However, popular thought is also adverted to and the phenomenon is situated within the history of the ideology of the British ancien régime. Throughout, the normality and acceptability of this apocalyptic thought in its contemporary setting is emphasized, implicitly suggesting a need to restrain historiographical emphasis on modernizing patterns of thought in treatments of the period.