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The article titled "Teponazcuauhtla, or 'Forest of Resonances' Mesoamerican Plot of Harmony" explores the symbolic cosmology of Mesoamerican peoples and its connection to the teponaztli, a type of wooden slit drum. The teponaztli is considered a sacred "living" being rather than a musical instrument and its shape, which resembles a stepped fret, represents the sacred-imperfect duality and the geometrical principle of "squaring the circle". The article discusses the variety of sizes, shapes, and sounds produced by the teponaztli due to the traditional manufacturing process. The article also mentions a mathematical-physical description of the teponaztli for further reference. [Extracted from the article]

The significance of museums in shaping homemade sustainable development is undeniable, since they hold captive heritage cultures around which source communities define their identities and worldviews. Because worldviews define community relations to their environment, spirituality and beliefs are inseparable from other aspects of community life. Showcasing how profanation operates in the museum demonstrates the disconnection from source communities. It is crucial to encourage partnerships that yield authentic African spaces within Western cultural institutions. Museums -- often viewed as universal and secular spaces, or as places that harbour civilisation -- need to be rethought, since cultures defy homogenisation and universalism. Plundered heritage cultures need to be reconstructed and recollected through pan-museum efforts guided by the source community's knowledge of their heritage cultures in order to mitigate the risk of restituted material cultures hindering inclusive and endogeneous forms of economic growth. Reframing heritage cultures that were looted and displaced by colonialist regimes as 'regalia' would, firstly, impact conventional and traditional museum approaches to non-western materiality. Secondly, approaching African heritage cultures as regalia encourages the development of pan-museum collaborations that seek to reconnect material cultures originally scattered during and following the colonial era, and even into the present day. Such collaborations could also aid in reconnecting and recollecting African regalia in ways that engage and benefit source communities. It is through these processes of reconnection, recollection and restitution -- each phase engaging source communities as agents and active partners --that homemade sustainable development should be conceived and carried out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much is known about Swedes in America, but little is known about the portrayals of Native Americans in Swedish-American newspapers. Considering their centrality in Swedish American settler communities, this article explores newspaper portrayals as processes of boundary construction. By utilizing the Eliadean concept of cosmisation it is shown how and argued that newspapers served as canvases for Swedes to articulate, contest, and negotiate the boundaries of valorized social orders. Therein, religion, civilization, and race were predominant themes. Processes of cosmisation also highlight mythological motifs manifested in the newspapers. Specifically, settlers and missionaries were mediated as culture heroes and initiators of cosmisation and cosmogony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The art of Selby Mvusi (1929–1967) signposts alternative innovations on how to construct a 'modern black African', a debate that preoccupied black literary studies between the late nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century. This article traces this alterity to his engagement with the material surface from which he produced his paintings. The discussion reads the symbol of mist into these artworks by locating them within Zulu cosmogony – as outlined in Mazisi Kunene's eulogy of Nomkhubulwane. It then goes on to map how the significance of this symbol resonates in his poetry, drawings and sculptures. Throughout, the investigation highlights how he nuances the key image of mist in his fashioning of contrasts with Europe's avant-garde, and how this deployment anticipated inter-disciplinary approaches to the arts and humanities. But, first, the article presents synopses of the key image of mist in his paintings and of the echoes of its importance in the rest of his genres. In the second and final division, the discussion schematises how these resonances enrich the history of South African black aesthetics. This concluding and extended section also considers how his usage of artistic media gives effect to his experimentation with mist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Excerpts from Pope Pius XII's encyclical letter dated August 12, 1950, and speech on November 8, 1951 regarding the theory of evolution and cosmogony are presented.

This article explores perceived changes in patterns of consciousness in relation to possession phenomena among a sector of urban practitioners of the Brazilian religion of Umbanda, and argues that these perceptions have been accompanied by the emergence of a more individualist approach to religious selfhood which aims to lay claim to a particular vision of Umbanda. These Umbandists understand their spirit universe in ontologically plastic terms, relativizing spirit identities much like Umbanda’s founders. The increasing emphasis given to conscious forms of possession tallies with a relatively new attention to the self and its awareness of tradition, thought to be lacking in previous generations. This article also defends that we can produce an anthropological understanding of possession as having cosmogonic rather than just expressive effects. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Though better known as a painter and draftsman, Paul Klee’s copious writings unfold some of the twentieth century’s most penetrating meditations on the topic of form. In a close reading of selected texts, I disclose an elementary genetic structure iterated throughout Klee’s lifetime across three different semantic registers, as an instance of cosmogony, of biological inception and the artistic process. Those iterations outline a coherent logic to the genesis of form, which, in turn, reveals conceptual commitments underlying Klee’s thought systematically overlooked in the relevant scholarship. In particular, Klee imagines form as an unfolding unity of energy and matter. At the same time, and more surprisingly, he also reflects on a more idealistic fantasy of a pure idea that precedes any incarnation in matter. He identifies the source of this idea as the artist who has cultivated his masculinity in a strict economy of libidinal energy. Furthermore, I show a Romantic concept of form as endogenous process informs Klee’s thinking about form with which he was most likely familiar from his reading of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The article thereby shows how form conceived as endogenous process remains salient for modernism and the conceptualization of abstract art. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on international elite sport emphasises the convergence of national systems. Such trends are reflected also in the Nordic countries. However, the national elite sport systems in these countries have developed quite differently over the last 30 years, despite strong historical similarities. This article directs the attention to a topic that has been largely ignored in the research on international elite sport systems – the role of institutional entrepreneurs. It builds on earlier research on Nordic elite sport. In addition, we have conducted comprehensive interviews with central leaders in the national Olympic Committees, national confederations of sport and national elite sport organisations in all four countries – a total of 16 informants. They were selected strategically, based on their roles and experiences. The point of departure for the theoretical coding was a model of institutional entrepreneurship with four key elements: field characteristics, the creation of a divergent vision, the mobilisation of allies and the mobilisation of resources. Our findings are consistent with the theoretical model, but introduce nuances and additions to the model. Entrepreneurial efforts take place within institutional fields that may enhance or limit the scope for successful change. The findings point to the significance of entrepreneurs’ active interpretation of challenges and opportunities. Furthermore, change processes take place in a context partly beyond the control of entrepreneurs, and as windows of opportunities come and go, the timing of initiatives may be decisive. The general argument put forward in this article may serve as a framework for identifying and explaining variations in policy changes and implementation across different countries within a broader trend of policy convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

As coastlines face increased development pressure, it is important to have the best available spatial information on coastal activities, including commercial fishing. This article describes the creation of a fine-scale spatial representation of lobster fishing activity along the Maine coast of the United States using a combination of participatory geographic information systems (GIS) and dasymetric mapping methods. These methods are employed here to support data collection from a large number of active lobster harvesters while maintaining individual privacy. The resulting representation of the fishery is designed as a planning tool for identifying potential interactions between marine resources and human activities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Contrary to the existential positions of much modern European writing, Goethe and Kant in their very different styles declare themselves contentedly at home in the universe. Their secular 'Diesseitigkeit' is traced through Goethe's poetry and through key passages of Kant's thought. Contrasts and comparisons are set up with Donne, Pascal, and Montaigne. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the Cistercian female monastery of Las Huelgas (Burgos), the exceptionally well-preserved monastic complex is a fine example of the religious topography customary in the Cistercian Order, directly inherited from the Benedictines. In contrast to this, the legend of the Castilian monarchy's association with the monastery has produced studies which highlight the close relationship between architecture and royalty. Thus, traces have been sought of the palace upon which Alfonso VIII allegedly founded the monastery in the late twelfth century; the royal palace at the entrance, documented from the thirteenth century; and the chapels that may have been the scene of the king's investiture. This article reviews these oft-repeated theories, relating the topography of the entire site to the logical and habitual areas of a Cistercian monastery, such as the infirmary, the abbatial palace, a chapel in the cemetery, and the guests' chapel. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers the author's insights regarding the liturgy and history of good worship to God. Topics discussed include hymn and liturgy to God, the God's creation of the world and the things that lives within the world such as humans and animals, and the practical and mystical theologian writing of Evelyn Underhill which regards on good worship. Also mentioned are authors who write articles related to God's creation such as Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Debra Dean Murphy.

Synthetic biology has been presented as the application of engineering principles to (genomic) biology. But in industrial synthetic biology, alongside the much discussed engineering principles of abstraction, modularity, de-coupling and standardisation, we see many other practices of contextualisation through which engineering projects accrue credibility and realisability. This paper discusses how synthetic biologists working on next-generation biofuels construct aneconomic calculusfor biological forms. As they modify microbes to make fuel from plants, waste gases and sunlight, or introduce new metabolic pathways into organisms, they also create novel stories that link economic and metabolic processes, and they attach new contexts to synthetic biology in various forms ranging from global climate change, peak oil, food security, US foreign policy, through to fashion and diet. Examples drawn from well-known next-generation biofuels companies such as Joule Unlimited, Amyris Technologies, Synthetic Genomics, Solazyme and Aurora Algae illustrate how principles of cosmogonic dreaming, metabolic equivalence and supply chain disruption strain to connect the origins of life on earth, the flux of solar radiation, the optimal metabolic flux in a microbe and the prices of petroleum, palm oil or sugar. This economic calculus both connects engineering practice to a plurality of life forms, and creates a space in which synthetic biology can appear as unprecedented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Descartes' two treatises of corpuscular-mechanical natural philosophy—Le Monde(1633) and thePrincipia philosophiae(1644/1647)—differ in many respects. Some historians of science have studied their significantly different theories of matter and elements. Others have routinely noted that thePrincipiacites much evidence regarding magnetism, sunspots, novae and variable stars which is absent fromLe Monde. We argue that far from being unrelated or even opposed intellectual practices inside thePrinciples, Descartes' moves in matter and element theory and his adoption of wide swathes of novel matters of fact, were two sides of the same coin—that coin being his strategies for improving the systematic power, scope and consistency of the natural philosophy presented in thePrincipia. We find that Descartes' systematising strategy centred upon weaving ranges of novel matters of fact into explanatory and descriptive narratives with cosmic sweep and radical realist Copernican intent. Gambits of this type have recently been labelled as ‘cosmographical’(the natural philosophical relating of heavens and earth in contemporary usage). Realist Copernican natural philosophers, from Copernicus himself, through Bruno, Gilbert and Galileo did this to varying degrees; but, we suggest, Descartes presented in Books III and IV of thePrincipiathe most elaborate and strategically planned version of it, underneath the ostensible textbook style of the work. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The object of this article is to analyze aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century African culture in the Lusophone Atlantic through new methodological approaches to Portuguese inquisitorial sources. The records of the Inquisition are beginning to serve the needs of historians beyond their original functions as religious documentation. The text examines the confessions of Africans prosecuted or denounced for practices of sorceries provide new insights about the evolution of Afro-Atlantic culture. In this paper, I demonstrate that Africans incorporated elements of the popular Catholicism to reinforce specific aspects of their native or non-Catholic cosmogonies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recognizable throughout the world, the stone statues (moai) of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) represent the largest monolithic architecture produced in Polynesia. The exquisitely carved and finished head and torso of each statue testifies to a skill in stone carving and dressing unmatched throughout the Pacific. Yet, approximately one thousand 'classic' statues were produced at the quarries within a few hundred years. What was the ritual status of the quarry and the labour necessary to produce the numbers of statues that allowed Heyerdahl to declare that the 'whole mountain massif has been reshaped, the volcano has been greedily cut up' (1958: 83)? What was it like to go to work at Rano Raraku? By drawing on a range of evidence we argue that walking to and labouring at Rano Raraku represented a spatial and temporal journey to a place of highly dangerous forces, a cosmogonic centre where prehistoric Rapa Nui people came face to face with their ancestors and the Polynesian gods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the present article is to analyse the assimilation of a series of ancient Semitic cosmogonic ideas by Islam via Judaism and Christianity, especially through the Aramaic-Arabic influence of the Syriac and Christian Arabic authors. The study focuses on a defective Hadith transmitted by the Andalusī traditionalist ʻAbd al-Malik ibn Ḥabīb (d. 852), which presents an old cosmogonic vision of the cosmos. The matn of this Hadith exhibits conceptions related to old Mesopotamian cosmogonies, and also to ancient Hebrew conceptions as they are narrated in the Bible, which were developed and explained by Syriac and Christian Arabic writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thomas Burnet's Telluris Theoria Sacra (1681-91) sparked off over two decades of intense debate concerning the mechanics of Creation, Flood, and Final Conflagration. Burnet deployed a broadly Cartesian model of Creation, but one that (unlike Descartes' own model) had been reconnected to the text of the Bible. Hence his title: 'Sacred Theory'. Burnet's book, however, was considered a failure by almost all his readers. Men including Edmund Halley, Robert Hooke, John Locke, Isaac Newton, John Ray, William Whiston, and John Woodward all prepared answers to Burnet ranging from the anecdotal to the systematic. This essay presents an early and unedited example of this oppositional literature, Sir Robert Southwell's 'C & S Discourse of Mr Burnetts Theory of the Earth' (1684). This is one of the earliest such reactions, and, cast in dialogue form, captures well that mixture of enthusiasm and unease with which Burnet's work was initially greeted in learned circles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commentators generally expound Bacon's position on the art–nature relationship in terms of how much it retained or departed from traditional conceptions. This paper argues that an appreciation of the Baconian meaning of the terms "art" and "nature" requires a close examination of his wider cosmogonical speculations. Bacon's cosmogonical account moves from a state of unbridled chaos to the relatively stable system for which the term "nature" is normally used. The fundamental principle lying at the heart of Baconian cosmogony is an enriched and appetitive matter: eternal, unchanging, and the plenipotentiary source of all things. Successive limitations of matter's absolute power produced a lazy and habitual nature, which Bacon labelled "nature free." To shift nature from this otiose condition, the Baconian operator recapitulates the original binding of matter. Bacon designated the systematic procedures of binding nature the science of magic. Magic is Bacon's human counterpart to the original cosmogonical process that gave rise to the current system of nature. In Bacon's cosmogony, all possible worlds unfold out of matter: the function of art is to shake out nature's hidden folds. Hence, the distinction between naturalia and artificialia maps on to the distinction between actual and potential. Nature free is without purpose, but art — nature bound — knowingly brings into being an alternative nature designed for human utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

He described the role of myth in Athens, in order to contrast it with an argumentative philosophical discourse aimed at the truth. Even so, he had recourse to this unverifiable story not only in a practical role, in order to persuade the citizen to obey moral norms and political laws, but also in a theoretical context, evoking premises from which philosophical discourse could develop, and picturing realities such as the soul, that could not be grasped by either the senses or the intellect. With the disappearance of the city-state and the constitution of Kingdoms and Empires, the social and political aspects of myth tended to disappear in the Mediterranean world, allowing the soul to take "centre-stage." While theogony, cosmogony, and anthropogony persisted, they did so only to provide a framework for a vast drama - that of the salvation of the human soul - as described in the and the treatises of the Sethian Gnostics.} [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The famous Jesuit father Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) tried to interpret the Creation of the world and to explain the origin of life in the last book of his geocosmic encyclopedia, Mundus subterraneus (Amsterdam, 1664-1665). His interpretation largely depended on the 'concept of seeds' which was derived from the tradition of Renaissance 'chymical' (chemical and alchemical) philosophy. The impact of Paracelsianism on his vision of the world is also undeniable. Through this undertaking, Kircher namely developed a corpuscular theory for the spontaneous generation of living beings. The present study examines this theory and its relationship with Kircher's chymical interpretation of the Creation in order to place it in its own intellectual and historical context and will uncover one of its most important sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photometric reduction of the Ca II K-line interferogram obtained during the total solar eclipse on February 26, 1998, has been carried out. The interferogram covering the circumsolar region of the sky includes K-line emission features due to the solid material sublimation close to the Sun. The number of emitting Ca II ions and the total mass of sublimated material are estimated. Results of such investigations should be significant for cosmogonical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the persistence of Javanese cosmogonies in Indonesia. Difference between Javanese cosmogonies and muslim cosmographies; Designation of descriptive recensions with quotations; Incorporation of muslim cosmographies in 'Manikmaya' poems; History of existing scholarship.

Discusses the erotic creation myth of emanation exerting paradigmatic impacts on Western phallic-erective style of sexuality, creativity and assertive-aggressive communication patterns. Introduction of cabalic erotic cosmogony of contraction; Alternative paradigm of sexuality; Promotion of sexual equality.

At Verona in 1320 Dante Alighieri delivered an address, later published as ‘A Question of the Water and of the Land,’ which dealt with the position and origins of the continental land mass and its mountains. In this cogently argued discourse the ideas expressed in Aristotle's Meteorologica and De caelo are blended with Dante's own cosmography and cosmogony, as expressed in his Divine Comedy. There is, however, a shift in emphasis from the poetical-theological explanations of the Inferno to an approach based on assumed physical principles. In essence, the land mass and its mountains were uplifted by the stars of Dante's eighth heaven, which attracted them by diffusing an ‘elevating virtue’ (akin to magnetism) and by causing vapors to rise within the land, thus swelling it. In this paper Dante's ideas on the origin and form of the land are presented and analyzed. I relate Dante's ideas to the theories of other natural philosophers of the Middle Ages, including Avicenna, Jean Buridan, and Ristoro d'Arezzo and show that thinking on earth science matters had in many ways reached a critical state by the fourteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a theory containing scalar fields, a generic consequence is a formation of scalar condensates during cosmic inflation. The displacement of scalar fields out from their vacuum values sets specific initial conditions for post-inflationary dynamics and may lead to significant observational ramifications. In this work, we investigate how these initial conditions affect the generation of dark matter in the class of portal scenarios where the standard model fields feel new physics only through Higgs-mediated couplings. As a representative example, we will consider asymmetric scalar singletcoupled to Higgs via. This simple extension has interesting consequences as the singlet constitutes a dark matter candidate originating from non-thermal production of singlet particles out from a singlet condensate, leading to a novel interplay between inflationary dynamics and dark matter properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]