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William
William Butler Yeats (pronounced ˈje ts ; 13 June - 28 January ) was an Irish poet and dramatist, and one of the foremost figures of 20th-century literature. He was a driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, and together with Lady Gregory and Edward Martyn founded the Abbey Theatre, and served as its chief during its early years. A pillar of the Irish literary establishment, in his later years Yeats was an Irish Senator for two terms. In 1923, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in Literature for what the Nobel Committee described as "inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation". Yeats is generally considered one of the few writers whose greatest works were completed after being awarded the Nobel Prize such works include The Tower (1928) and The Winding Stair and Other Poems (1929).
Yeats was educated in
From 1900, Yeats' poetry grew more physical and realistic. He largely renounced the transcendental beliefs of his youth, though he remained preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life. Over the years Yeats adopted many different ideological positions, including, in the words of the critic Michael Valdez Moses, "those of radical nationalist, classical liberal, reactionary conservative and millenarian nihilist".
William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount, County Dublin. His father, John Butler Yeats, was a descendant of Jervis
Yeats, a Williamite
soldier and linen merchant who died in 1712. Jervis' grandson Benjamin married
Mary Butler, daughter of a landed County Kildare family. At the time of his
marriage, John Yeats was studying law, but abandoned his studies to study art
at Heatherley's
Yeats grew up in a Protestant Ascendancy
at the time undergoing a crisis of identity. While his family was broadly
supportive of the changes
In 1876, the family moved to
The family returned to
William Butler Yeats, 1900, portrait by John Butler Yeats.
Yeats had a life-long interest in mysticism, spiritualism, occultism, and astrology. He read extensively on the subjects
throughout his life and was especially influenced by the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. As early as 1892, he wrote: "If
I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word
of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen ever have come to
exist. The mystical life is the center of all that I do and all that I think
and all that I write." His mystical interests-also inspired
by a study of Hinduism, under the Theosophist Mohini Chatterjee, and the
occult-formed much of the basis of his late poetry. However, some critics have
dismissed these influences as lacking in intellectual credibility. In
particular, W. H. Auden criticized
this aspect of Yeats' work as the "deplorable spectacle of a grown man
occupied with the mumbo-jumbo of magic and the nonsense of
Yeats's first significant poem was "The Isle of Statues," a fantasy work that took Edmund Spenser for its poetic model. The piece appeared in Dublin University Review, but has not since been republished. His first solo publication was the pamphlet Mosada: A Dramatic Poem (1886), which comprised a print run of 100 copies paid for by his father. This was followed by the collection The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), which arranged a series of verse that dated as far back as the mid-1880s. The long titular poem contains, in the words of his biographer R.F. Foster, "obscure Gaelic names, striking repetitions [and] an unremitting rhythm subtly varied as the poem proceeded through its three sections".
We rode in sorrow, with strong hounds three,
Bran, Sgeolan, and Lomair,
On a morning misty and mild and fair.
The mist-drops hung on the fragrant trees
And in the blossoms hung the bees.
We rode in sadness above Lough Lean
For our best were dead on Gavra's green.
"The Wanderings of Oisin" is based on the lyrics of the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology and displays the influence of both Sir Samuel Ferguson and the Pre-Raphaelite poets. The poem took two years to complete and was one of the few works from this period that he did not disown in his maturity. Oisin introduces what was to become one of his most important themes: the appeal of the life of contemplation over the appeal of the life of action. Following the work, Yeats never again attempted another long poem. His other early poems, which are meditations on the themes of love or mystical and esoteric subjects, include Poems (1895), The Secret Rose (1897), and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899).
During 1885, Yeats was involved in the formation of the Dublin Hermetic
Order. The society held its first meeting on 16 June, with Yeats acting as its
chairman. The same year, the Dublin Theosophical lodge was opened in
conjunction with Brahmin Mohini Chatterjee, who traveled from the Theosophical Society in
Maud Gonne ca. 1900.
In 1889, Yeats met Maud Gonne, then a
twenty-three year old heiress and ardent Nationalist. Gonne was eighteen months younger
than Yeats and later claimed she met the poet as a "paint-stained art
student." Gonne had admired "The Isle of
Statues" and sought out his acquaintance. Yeats developed an obsessive
infatuation with her beauty and outspoken manner, and she was to have a
significant and lasting effect on his poetry and his life ever after. Looking back in later years, he
admitted "it seems to me that she [Gonne] brought into my life those
days-for as yet I saw only what lay upon the surface-the middle of the tint, a
sound as of a Burmese gong, an over-powering tumult that had yet many pleasant
secondary notes." Yeats' love remained unrequited, in
part due to his reluctance to participate in her nationalist activism. His only other love affair during
this period was with Olivia Shakespeare, whom he had first met in 1896, and
parted with one year later. In 1895, he visited Gonne in
A 1907 engraving of Yeats.
Yeats' friendship with Gonne persisted, and in
My arms are like the twisted thorn
And yet there beauty lay
The first of all the tribe lay there
And did such pleasure take;
She who had brought great Hector down
And put all
In 1896, Yeats was introduced to Lady Gregory by their mutual friend Edward Martyn. Gregory encouraged Yeats'
nationalism, and convinced him to continue focusing on writing drama. Although
he was influenced by French Symbolism, Yeats
concentrated on an identifiably Irish content and this inclination was
reinforced by his involvement with a new generation of younger and emerging
Irish authors. Together with Lady Gregory, Martyn, and other writers including J. M. Synge,
Sean O'Casey, and Padraic Colum, Yeats was one of those
responsible for the establishment of the "Irish Literary Revival"
movement Apart from these
creative writers, much of the impetus for the Revival came from the work of
scholarly translators who were aiding in the discovery of both the ancient
sagas and Ossianic poetry and the more recent folk song tradition in Irish. One
of the most significant of these was Douglas Hyde, later the first President of
In 1899, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Martyn, and George Moore established the Irish Literary Theatre for the purpose of performing Celtic and Irish plays. The ideals of the Abbey were derived from the avant-garde French theatre, which sought to express the "ascendancy of the playwright rather than the actor-manager à l'anglais." The group's manifesto, which Yeats himself wrote, declared "We hope to find in Ireland an uncorrupted & imaginative audience trained to listen by its passion for oratory... & that freedom to experiment which is not found in the theaters of England, & without which no new movement in art or literature can succeed."
The collective survived for about two years and was not successful.
However, working together with two Irish brothers with theatrical experience, William and Frank Fay,
Yeats' unpaid-yet-independently wealthy secretary Annie
Elizabeth Fredericka Horniman, and the leading West End actress Florence Farr, the group established the Irish
National Theatre Society. This group of founders was able, along with J.M.
Synge, to acquire property in
W.B. Yeats photographed in
In 1913, Yeats met the young American poet Ezra Pound. Pound had traveled to
In his early work, Yeats' aristocratic pose led to an idealisation of the
Irish peasant and a willingness to ignore poverty and suffering. However, the
emergence of a revolutionary movement from the ranks of the urban Catholic
lower-middle class made him reassess his attitudes. His new direct engagement
with politics can be seen in the poem September 1913, with its
well-known refrain "Romantic Ireland's dead and gone / It's
with O'Leary in the grave." The poem is an attack on the
By 1916, Yeats was 51 years old and determined to marry and produce an heir. His final proposal to Maud Gonne took place in the summer of 1916. In his view, Gonne's history of rabid revolutionary political activism, as well as a series of personal catastrophes in the previous few years of her life, including chloroform addiction and a troubled marriage to John MacBride-an Irish revolutionary who was later executed by British forces for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising-made her an unsuitable wife. Biographer R.F. Foster has observed that Yeats's last offer was motivated more by a sense of duty than by a genuine desire to marry Gonne. Yeats made his proposal in an indifferent manner, with conditions attached, and both expected and hoped to be turned down. According to Foster "when he duly asked Maud to marry him, and was duly refused, his thoughts shifted with surprising speed to her daughter". Iseult Gonne was Maud's second child with Lucien Millevoye, and at the time was twenty-one years old. She had lived a sad life to this point. Iseult had been conceived as an attempt to reincarnate her short lived brother, and for the first few years of her life was presented as her mother's adopted niece. She was molested by her stepfather when she was eleven and later worked as a gunrunner for the Irish Republican Army. At fifteen she proposed to Yeats. A few months after the poet's approach to Maude, he proposed to Iseult, but was rejected. Reflecting in later years, Yeats referred to the period as his "second puberty" and asked a friend "who am I, that I should not make a fool of myself".
Yeats photographed in 1923.
That September, he proposed to twenty-four-year-old George (Georgie) Hyde-Lees (1892-1968), whom he had met through occult circles. Despite warning from her friends-"George ... you can't. He must be dead"-Hyde-Lees accepted, and the two were married on October 20. Their marriage was a success, in spite of the age difference, and in spite of Yeats's feelings of remorse and regret during their honeymoon. Around this time George wrote to her husband "When you are dead, people will talk about your love affairs, but I shall say nothing, for I will remember how proud you were". The couple went on to have two children, Anne and Michael.
During the first years of his marriage, he and George engaged in a form of automatic writing, which involved George contacting a variety of spirits and guides, which they termed "Instructors". The spirits communicated a complex and esoteric system of characters and history which they developed during experiments with the circumstances of trance and the exposition of phases, cones, and gyres. Yeats devoted much time to preparing this material for publication as A Vision (1925). In 1924, he wrote to his publisher T. Werner Laurie admitting: "I dare say I delude myself in thinking this book my book of books".
In December 1923, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, and was
determined to make the most of the occasion. He was aware of the symbolic value
of an Irish winner so soon after
Memorial statue of William Butler
Yeats located in
By the spring of 1925, Yeats had published "A Vision", and his health had stabilised.
He had been appointed to the first Irish Senate in 1922, and was re-appointed for a
second term in 1925. Early in his tenure a debate on
divorce arose, and Yeats viewed the issue as primarily a confrontation between
the emerging Catholic ethos and the then Protestant establishment. When the Catholic church
weighed in with a blanket refusal to consider their anti position, the Irish Times countered that a measure to outlaw
divorce would alienate Protestants and "crystallize" the partition of
In 1924, he chaired a coinage committee charged with selecting a set of designs for the first currency of the Irish Free State. Aware of the symbolic power latent in the imagery a young state's currency, he sought a form that was "elegant, racy of the soil, and utterly unpolitical". When the house finally decided on the artwork of Percy Metcalfe, Yeats was pleased, though he regretted that compromise had lead to "lost muscular tension" in the finally depicted images. He retired from the Senate in 1928 due to ill health.
Towards the end of his life-and especially after the Wall Street Crash and Great Depression, which led some to question
whether democracy would be able to cope with deep economic difficulty-Yeats
seems to have returned to his aristocratic sympathies. During the aftermath of
the First World War, he became skeptical about the efficacy of democratic
government, and anticipated political reconstruction in
Yeats's gravestone in Drumcliff, Co
After undergoing the Steinach operation in 1934, when aged 69, he
found a new vigour evident from both his poetry and his intimate relations with
younger women. During this time Yeats was involved in a number of
romantic affairs with, among others, the poet and actress Margot Ruddock, and the novelist, journalist and
sexual radicalist Ethel Mannin. As in his earlier life, Yeats found
erotic adventure conducive to his creative energy, and despite age and
ill-health he remained a prolific writer. In 1936, he undertook editorship of
the Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892-1935. Having suffered from a
variety of illnesses for a number of years, he died at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour,
in Menton,
Cast a cold Eye
On Life, on Death.
Horseman, pass by!
W.B. Yeats is generally considered to be one of the twentieth century's key English-language poets. He can be considered a Symbolist poet in that he used allusive imagery and symbolic structures throughout his career. Yeats chooses words and puts them together so that in addition to a particular meaning they suggest other meanings that seem more significant. His use of symbols is usually something physical which is used both to be itself and to suggest other, perhaps immaterial, timeless qualities. Yet, unlike most modernists who experimented with free verse, Yeats was also a master of the traditional verse forms. The impact of modernism on his work can be seen in the increasing abandonment of the more conventionally poetic diction of his early work in favor of the more austere language and more direct approach to his themes that increasingly characterises the poetry and plays of his middle period, comprising the volumes In the Seven Woods, Responsibilities and The Green Helmet. His later poetry and plays are written in a more personal vein, and the works written in the last twenty years of his life include mention of his son and daughter, as well as meditations on the experience of growing old. In his poem, "The Circus Animals' Desertion", he describes the inspiration for these late works:
Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart
During 1929, he stayed at Thoor Ballylee, near Gort
in County Galway (where Yeats had his summer home
since 1919) for the last time. Much of the remainder of his life was lived
outside of
While Yeats's early poetry drew heavily on Irish myth and folklore, his later work was engaged with more contemporary issues, and his style underwent a dramatic transformation. His work can be divided into three general periods. The early poems are lushly pre-Raphaelite in tone, self-consciously ornate, and at times, according to unsympathetic critics, stilted. Yeats began by writing epic poems such as The Isle of Statues and The Wanderings of Oisin. After Oisin, he never attempted another long poem. His other early poems are lyrics on the themes of love or mystical and esoteric subjects. Yeats' middle period saw him abandon the pre-Raphaelite character of his early work and attempt to turn himself into a Landor-style social ironist. Critics who admire his middle work might characterize it as supple and muscular in its rhythms and sometimes harshly modernist, while others find these poems barren and weak in imaginative power. Yeats' later work found new imaginative inspiration in the mystical system he began to work out for himself under the influence of spiritualism. In many ways, this poetry is a return to the vision of his earlier work. The opposition between the worldly-minded man of the sword and the spiritually-minded man of God, the theme of The Wanderings of Oisin, is reproduced in A Dialogue Between Self and Soul.
Some critics claim that Yeats spanned the transition from the nineteenth century into twentieth-century modernism in poetry much as Pablo Picasso did in painting. Others question whether late Yeats really has much in common with modernists of the Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot variety. Modernists read the well-known poem "The Second Coming" as a dirge for the decline of European civilization in the mode of Eliot, but later critics have pointed out that this poem is an expression of Yeats' apocalyptic mystical theories, and thus the expression of a mind shaped by the 1890s. His most important collections of poetry started with The Green Helmet (1910) and Responsibilities (1914). In imagery, Yeats's poetry became sparer, more powerful as he grew older. The Tower (1928), The Winding Stairs (1929), and New Poems (1938) contained some of the most potent images in twentieth-century poetry; his Last Poems are conceded by most to be amongst his best.
Yeats's mystical inclinations, informed by Hindu
Theosophical beliefs and the occult, formed much of the basis of his late poetry, which
some critics have judged as lacking in intellectual credibility. W. H. Auden
criticizes his late stage as the "deplorable spectacle of a grown man
occupied with the mumbo-jumbo of magic and the nonsense of
His 1920 poem, "The Second Coming" is one of the most potent sources of imagery about the twentieth century.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
For the anti-democratic Yeats, 'the best' referred to the traditional
ruling classes of Europe, who were unable to protect the traditional culture of
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards
"The Second Coming" is a poem by William Butler Yeats
first printed in The Dial (November
1920) and afterwards included in his verse collection Michael
Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses religious symbolism to illustrate
Yeats' anguish over the apparent decline of
The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War.[1] The various manuscript
revisions of the poem also have references to the French and Irish Revolutions
as well as to
Early drafts also included such lines as: "And there's no Burke to cry aloud no Pitt," and "The good are wavering, while the worst prevail."[citation needed]
The sphinx or sphinx-like beast described in the poem had long captivated Yeats' imagination. He wrote the Introduction to his play The Resurrection, "I began to imagine [around 1904], as always at my left side just out of the range of sight, a brazen winged beast which I associated with laughing, ecstatic destruction", noting that the beast was "Afterwards described in my poem 'The Second Coming'".
Critic Yvor Winters has observed, ".we must face the fact that Yeats' attitude toward the beast is different from ours: we may find the beast terrifying, but Yeats finds him satisfying - he is Yeats' judgment upon all that we regard as civilized. Yeats approves of this kind of brutality."
Manuscript variations can be found in Yeats, William Butler. Michael Robartes and the Dancer Manuscript Materials.
Thomas Parkinson and Anne Brannen, eds.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards
The word gyre used in the poem's first line is drawn from Yeats's book A Vision, which sets out a theory of history and metaphysics which Yeats claimed to have received from spirits. The theory of history articulated in A Vision centers on a diagram composed of two conical spirals, one situated inside the other, so that the widest part of one cone occupies the same plane as the tip of the other cone, and vice versa. Around these cones he imagined a set of spirals. Yeats claimed that this image (he called the spirals "gyres") captured contrary motions inherent within the process of history, and he divided each gyre into different regions that represented particular kinds of historical periods (and could also represent the psychological phases of an individual's development). Yeats believed that in 1921 the world was on the threshold of an apocalyptic moment, as history reached the end of the outer gyre (to speak roughly) and began moving along the inner gyre.
In his own notes, Yeats explained: "The end of an age, which always receives the revelation of the character of the next age, is represented by the coming of one gyre to its place of greatest expansion and of the other to that of its greatest contraction. At the present moment the life gyre is sweeping outward, unlike that before the birth of Christ which was narrowing, and has almost reached its greatest expansion. The revelation which approaches will however take its character from the contrary movement of the interior gyre. All our scientific, democratic, fact-accumulating, heterogeneous civilization belongs to the outward gyre and prepares not the continuance of itself but the revelation as in a lightning flash, though in a flash that will not strike only in one place, and will for a time be constantly repeated, of the civilization that must slowly take its place...when the revelation comes it will not come to the poor but to the great and learned and establish again for two thousand years prince and vizier."
The lines "The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity" are a paraphrase of one of the most famous passages from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, a book which Yeats, by his own admission, regarded from his childhood with religious awe:
In each human heart terror survives
The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear
All that they would disdain to think were true:
Hypocrisy and custom make their minds
The fanes of many a worship, now outworn.
They dare not devise good for man's estate,
And yet they know not that they do not dare.
The phrase "stony sleep" is drawn from The Book of Urizen by William Blake (one of the poets Yeats studied most intensely). In Blake's poem, Urizen falls, unable to bear the battle in heaven he has provoked. To ward off the fiery wrath of his vengeful brother Eternals, he frames a rocky womb for himself: "But Urizen laid in a stony sleep / Unorganiz'd, rent from Eternity." During this stony sleep, Urizen goes through seven ages of creation-birth as fallen man, until he emerges. This is the man who becomes the Sphinx of Egypt.
In the early drafts of the poem, Yeats used the phrase "the Second Birth", but substituted the phrase "Second Coming" while revising. His intent in doing so is not clear. The Second Coming described in the Biblical Book of Revelation is here anticipated as gathering dark forces that would fill the population's need for meaning with a ghastly and dangerous sense of purpose. Though Yeats's description has nothing in common with the typically envisioned Christian concept of the Second Coming of Christ, it fits with his view that something strange and heretofore unthinkable would come to succeed Christianity, just as Christ transformed the world upon his appearance.
The "spiritus mundi" (literally "spirit of the world") is a reference to Yeats' belief that each human mind is linked to a single vast intelligence, and that this intelligence causes certain universal symbols to appear in individual minds.
The poem includes several phrases that have become a part of popular culture; such as the line "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."
Chinua Achebe titled his most famous novel Things Fall Apart (1958), prefacing the book with the poem's first four lines. Achebe's novel adheres to Yeats' theme by evincing the sudden collapse of African societies in the age of European colonialism.
The hip hop group The Roots titled their 1999 album Things Fall Apart taking the name from the above novel.
Joni Mitchell set this poem to lyrics in her song "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" originally on her "Night Ride Home" CD.
All but a few lines of the poem have been lines of dialogue on the television show The Sopranos, including one episode in which Dr. Melfi tells Tony "The center cannot hold. The falcon cannot hear the falconer". Another episode, titled after the poem, has A. J. Soprano attempting suicide after hearing the poem in his college English class.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Arthur Schlesinger,
Jr. used "The Second Coming" as the epigraph to his book The Vital Center. More than a half-century
later, he explained that the poem had been "less of a cliché in 1948"
than it had become currently. In 1986 Schlesinger, in
The Cycles of American History, again referenced this poem with
prophetic paraphrase: "Still, let us not be complacent. Should private
interest fail today and public purpose thereafter, what rough beast, its hour
come round at last, may be slouching toward
The opening lines were used by The Technical Boy as Mr. Wednesday's eulogy in Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods. The poem is also referred to several times directly and indirectly in Stephen King's epic novel The Stand.
This final phrase, "what rough beast, its hour come round at last, /
Slouches towards
Joan Didion's collection of essays, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, references the poem, as does Nina Coltart's 1993 book "Slouching Toward Bethlehem... and Further Psychoanalytic Explorations", as well as numerous popular songs, movies and novels. Conservative judge Robert H. Bork used the poem as an inspiration for the title of his 1996 book Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. In response, syndicated sex columnist Dan Savage chose Skipping Towards Gomorrah as the title for his 2003 book (ISBN 0-45-228416-3).
The tenth of Robert B. Parker's novels featuring the detective Spenser is titled The Widening Gyre.
Librettist Myfanwy Piper included the line "The ceremony of innocence is drowned" into the dialogue of the ghosts of Peter Quint and the former governess, Miss Jessel, in Benjamin Britten's opera, The Turn of the Screw.
Singaporean poet Ho Joe Han has frequently cited this poem as the defining influence of his career in English literature, maintaining the line "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world" as his slogan for the better part of 20 years.
Adam Cohen, of the New York Times on 12 February 2007[3] commented how the poem
has been used more and more as a metaphor for the war in
The band Electric Six makes a
reference to the poem in their song "Jimmy Carter" (from the album Señor Smoke), which features these lines:
"And there's a plague of locusts upon us and there's a nightmare in the
swarm. And there's a lion out in the desert slouching to
In the finale to the animated series Mighty Max, Max's mentor, Virgil, quotes the poem in reference to the apocalyptic scenario the main villain has brought about. "And now, things fall apart. The centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world."
Conor Oberst, lead singer and songwriter for the band 'Bright Eyes',
alludes to the poem in his song 'Four Winds', released March 2007. The second
chorus reads "Four winds, cry until it comes/And
it's the sum of man/Slouching towards
In the series Angel, there was an episode entitled "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" which involved a foretelling of the end times.
In the sci-fi television series Andromeda, two episodes are titled "The Widening Gyre" and "Its hour come round at last"
Portions of the poem are quoted in one episode of the sci-fi television series Babylon 5.
Part of the poem is quoted in a cut scene from the sci-fi computer game Wing Commander IV: The Price of Freedom between Admiral Tolwyn and Senator "Paladin" Taggart.
The poem is featured in Oliver Stone's film Nixon, delivered by Richard Helms, Director of the CIA played by Sam Waterson to Richard Nixon played by Anthony Hopkins. It is also alluded to in Stone's 1987 film Wall Street, when Gordon Gekko says to Bud Fox, "So sport, the falcon has heard the falconer."
In John Barnes' Kaleidoscope Century, the last two lines of the poem are featured as chapter titles.
Maria Helena Dolan, a lesbian writer/activist from
San Francisco Bay-area pop group The Loud Family, led by Scott Miller, titled a 1993 EP Slouching Towards Liverpool, employing a reference to the poem to also allude to the hometown of the group's forebears The Beatles.
Cabaret duo Kiki and Herb regularly incorporate lines from the poem into live renditions of Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the Heart", playing upon that song's repeated line, "turn around, bright eyes".
The title of the interactive fiction game Slouching Towards Bedlam, which is set partly in Bethlem Hospital (aka Bedlam), is a reference to the poem.
Author Nick Bantock makes reference to lines from The Second Coming at the beginning and end in each book of the Griffin and Sabine series. This is remarked upon in his biographical book, The Artful Dodger.
Author Matthew Reilly quotes "Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer" as an opening statement which later relates to the anarchy that will be unleashed on the world in his novel Seven Ancient Wonders
In "A Peanut Christmas", a collection of Peanuts Christmas
comics, the poem is referenced at the bottom of page 108. Peppermint Patty
dresses as a sheep for the Christmas pageant and trips on a curb. Marcie turns
to her and says," Slouching toward
In Sam Shepard's play, "Cowboy Mouth" the character Slim quotes
"Now what rough beast slouches toward
The term ruling class refers to the social class of a given society that decides upon and sets that society's political policy.
The ruling class is a particular sector of the upper class that adheres to quite specific circumstances: it has both the most material wealth and the most widespread influence over all the other classes, and it chooses to actively exercise that power to shape the direction of a locality, a country, and/or the world. Most of the upper class does not fit the fundamentals of this description, but some do.
Most stable groups of social animals (including humans) have a visible and invisible "ruling class". The decision makers in the group may change according to the decision-type and/ or the time of observation. For example, it used to be assumed that modern societies were patriarchal and the elders dominated the real decisions, even though many market economies focus on the decisionmakers of each particular (assuredly minor) market sector, who may in fact be children or women.
The sociologist C. Wright Mills argued that the ruling class differs from the power elite. The latter simply refers to the small group of people with the most political power. Many of them are politicians, hired political managers, and military leaders.
In Marxist political economics, the ruling class refers to that segment or class of society that has the most economic and -- only in second line -- political power. Under capitalism, the ruling class -- the capitalists or bourgeoisie -- consists of those who own and control the means of production and thus are able to dominate and exploit the working class, getting them to labor enough to produce surplus-value, the basis for profits, interest, and rent (property income). This property income can be used to accumulate more power, to extend class domination further. The economic power of a class gives it extraordinary political power so that state or government policies almost always reflect the perceived interests of that class.
Ruling classes tend to be looked at in a negative light because they are often viewed as having little respect or care about the rights of the inferior classes.
In other modes of production,
there are other ruling classes: under feudalism, it was the feudal lords, while under slavery it was the
slave-owners. Under the feudal society, feudal lords had power over the vassals
because of their control of the fiefs. This gave them political and military
power over the people. In slavery, because complete rights of the person's life
belonged to the slave owner, they could and did every implementation that would
help the production in the farm. The Ruling Class does not necessarily
have to belong to the majority. In some cases of prejudice, they can belong to
the minority. In
Mattei Dogan's recent studies on elites in contemporary pluralist societies have shown that in these kinds of societies, precisely because of their complexity and their heterogeneity and particularly because of the social division of work and the multiple levels of stratification, there are not, or can not be, a coherent ruling class, even if in the past there were solid examples of ruling classes, like in the Tsarist Regime, the Ottoman Regime, and the more recent totalitarian regimes of the 20th century (communist and Nazi).
There are several examples of ruling
class systems in movies, novels, and T.V. shows. In the novel Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, everyone is
genetically made and classified into class. The Alpha class is the ruling class
because they have the highest positions possible and control most of the world
in the novel. This situation can also be found in the George Orwell novel Nineteen Eighty-Four
where Big Brother and the government literally control what the nation hears,
sees, and learns. L. Ron Hubbard's story, Battlefield Earth,
has an alien race, the Psychlos, having full power over the humans in the
future. Examples in movies include Gattaca where the genetically-born were superior
and the ruling class and V for Vendetta
which had a severe totalitarian government in
The word occult comes from the Latin word occultus (clandestine, hidden, secret), referring to "knowledge of the hidden". In the medical sense it is used commonly to refer to a structure or process that is hidden, e.g. an "occult bleed".
The word has many uses in the English language, popularly meaning "knowledge of the paranormal", as opposed to "knowledge of the measurable", usually referred to as science. The term is sometimes popularly taken to mean "knowledge meant only for certain people" or "knowledge that must be kept hidden", but for most practicing occultists it is simply the study of a deeper spiritual reality that extends beyond pure reason and the physical sciences. The terms esoteric and arcane can have a very similar meaning, and the three terms are often interchangeable.
The term occult is also used as a label given to a number of magical organizations or orders, and the teachings and practices as taught by them. The name also extends to a large body of literature and spiritual philosophy.
In medicine, the term occult refers to symptoms of disease that are hidden; one of the more common is occult bleeding, which may be detected indirectly by the presence of unexplained anemia.
Occultism is the study of occult or hidden wisdom. To the occultist it is the study of "Truth", a deeper truth that exists beneath the surface: 'The truth is always hidden in plain sight'. It can involve such subjects as magic (alternatively spelled and defined as magick), extra-sensory perception, astrology, spiritualism, numerology and lucid dreaming. There is often a strong religious element to these studies and beliefs, and many occultists profess adherence to religions such as Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Luciferianism, Thelema, and Neopaganism. While Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Judaism are generally not considered as occult, some of their modern interpretations can be, as the interpretation of Hinduism within Theosophy or the various occult interpretations of the Jewish Kabbalah. Orthodox members of such religions are likely to consider such interpretations as false; For example, the Kabbalah Centre has been criticised by Jewish scholars.
The word "occult" is somewhat generic, in that most everything that isn't claimed by any of the major religions is considered to be occult. Even religious scientists have difficulties in defining occultism. A broad definition is offered by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke:
"OCCULTISM has its basis in a religious way of thinking, the roots of which stretch back into antiquity and which may be described as the Western esoteric tradition. Its principal ingredients have been identified as Gnosticism, the Hermetic treatises on alchemy and magic, Neo-Platonism, and the Kabbalah, all originating in the eastern Mediterranean area during the first few centuries AD."
From the 15th to 17th century, these kinds of ideas had a brief revival, that was halted by the triumph of empirical
sciences in the seventeenth-century. "By the eighteenth century these
unorthodox religious and philosophical concerns were well defined as 'occult',
inasmuch as they lay on the outermost fringe of accepted forms of knowledge and
discurse," and were only
preserved by a few antiquarians and mystics. However, from about 1770 onwards,
a renewed desire for mystery, an interest in the Middle Ages and a romantic
temper encouraged a revival of occultism in
Based on his research into the the modern German occult revival 1890-1910, Goodrick-Clarke puts forward a thesis on the driving force behind occultism. Behind its many varied forms apparently lies a uniform function, "a strong desire to reconcile the findings of modern natural science with a religious view that could restore man to a positition of centrality and dignity in the universe.
That the Kabbalah has been considered an occult study is also perhaps because of its popularity among magi (the biblical wise men who visited the Infant Jesus are said to have been magi of Zoroastrianism) and Thelemites. Kabbalah was later adopted by the Golden Dawn and brought out into the open by Aleister Crowley and his protégé Israel Regardie. Since that time many authors have emphasized a syncretic approach by drawing parallels between different disciplines.
Direct insight into or perception of the occult does not consist of access to physically measurable facts, but is arrived at through the mind or the spirit. The term can refer to mental, psychological or spiritual training. It is important to note, however, that many occultists will also study science (perceiving science as a branch of Alchemy) to add validity to occult knowledge in a day and age where the mystical can easily be undermined as flights-of-fancy. An oft-cited means of gaining insight into the occult is the use of a focus. A focus may be a physical object, a ritualistic action (for example, meditation or chanting), or a medium in which one becomes wholly immersed; these are just a few examples of the vast and numerous avenues that can be explored.
Occultism is conceived of as the study of the inner nature of things, as opposed to the outer characteristics that are studied by science. The German Kantian philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer designates this 'inner nature' with the term 'Will', and suggests that science and mathematics are unable to penetrate beyond the relationship between one thing and another in order to explain the 'inner nature' of the thing itself, independent of any external causal relationships with other 'things'. Schopenhauer also points towards this inherently relativistic nature of mathematics and conventional science in his formulation of the 'World as Will'. By defining a thing solely in terms of its external relationships or effects we only find its external, or explicit nature. Occultism, on the other hand, is concerned with the nature of the 'thing-in-itself'. This is often accomplished through direct perceptual awareness, known as mysticism.
Alchemy is considered an occult practice. Alchemy used to be common among scientists, such as Isaac Newton. During the Age of Enlightenment alchemy and science went their separate ways.
Some religious denominations view the occult as being anything supernatural or paranormal which is not achieved by or through God, and is therefore the work of an opposing and malevolent entity. The word has negative connotations for many people, and while certain practices considered by some to be "occult" are also found within mainstream religions, in this context the term "occult" is rarely used and is sometimes substituted with "esoteric".
In Judaism, special spiritual studies such as Kabbalah have been allowed for certain individuals (such as rabbis and their chosen students). These studies do not conform to mainstream Jewish ritual. Also, some forms of Islam allow spirits to be commanded in the name of Allah to do righteous works and assist steadfast Muslims. Furthermore, there are branches of Esoteric Christianity that practice divination, blessings, or appealing to angels for certain intervention, which they view as perfectly righteous, often supportable by gospel (for instance, claiming that the old commandment against divination was superseded by Christ's birth, and noting that the Magi used astrology to locate Bethlehem). Rosicrucianism, one of the most celebrated of Christianity's mystical offshoots, has lent aspects of its philosophy to most Christian-based occultism since the 17th century.
Tantra, originating in
Occultism is the study of occult or hidden wisdom. The word occult comes from the Latin occultus (clandestine, hidden, secret), referring to "knowledge of the hidden".
The term Western world, the West or the Occident (Latin: occidens -sunset, -west, as distinct from the Orient) can have multiple meanings dependent on its context (e.g., the time period, or the regional social situation). Accordingly, the basic definition of what constitutes "the West" varies, expanding and contracting over time, in relation to various historical circumstances. Historically, the West originated in the northern and eastern Mediterranean with ancient Greece and ancient Rome. Over time, their associated empires grew first to the east and south conquering many older civilizations, and later to the north and west to include Central and Western Europe. Between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the Renaissance, the West experienced a period of relative decline, known as the Middle ages, which included the Dark ages and the Crusades. The knowledge of the ancient Western world was preserved and survived during this period due to the concurrent ascendency of the Islamic Golden Age to the east and south.
Since the Renaissance, the West evolved beyond the influence of the ancient
Greeks and Romans due to the growth of Western European empires, and
particularly the globe-spanning British Empire of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Since the Age of discovery
and Columbus, the
notion of the West expanded to include the Americas, though much of the Americas have
considerable pre-Western
cultural influence. Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa are considered part of Western
culture due to their former status as colonies of Western nations. In addition,
Israel and Lebanon may be considered part of the West due
to their geographic location and late European colonial origins in the early
twentieth century. Generally speaking, the current consensus would locate the
West, at the very least, in the cultures and peoples of Europe, North America,
In a linguistic context, the languages of most nations of the West are members of the Indo-European language family. It should be noted, however, that the Indo-European languages are not exclusively, or even mainly Western; Persian, Pashto, Urdu and Sanskrit are Indo-European languages as well. There are several linguistic exceptions within the West, including Semitic languages, predominantly Arabic and Hebrew, which are members of the Afro-Asiatic language family, as well as Basque, whose linguistic family is completely unknown.
In a religious context, some would define the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam as 'Western'. This context would include some Islamic nations, which are not generally considered to be part of the West in a political or cultural sense, but which are also included in the linguistic sense, noted above.
In the current political or economic context the term the "West"
often includes developed nations in the East, such as Japan,
Taiwan and South Korea. However, these nations have
different and distinctive cultures, religions (although Christianity is a major religion
in
There is debate among some as to whether Eastern Europe is in a category of its own.
Culturally Eastern Europe,
although having mainly eastern orthodox and Islamic influences, is usually more
or less accepted into the 'West', mainly because of its geographic location in
what is mostly
The origins of the word "West" in terms of geopolitical
boundaries started in the 1900s. Prior to this most humans would have thought
about different nations, languages, individuals, and geographical regions, but
with no idea of Western nations as we know it today. Many world maps were so
crude and inaccurate before the 1800s that geographical and political
differences would be harder to measure. Few would have access to good maps and
even fewer had access to accurate descriptions of who lived in far away lands. Western thought as we think of it today, is
shaped by ideas of the 1900s and 1800s, originating mainly in
Less acknowledged but equally as important was the influence of the Germanic cultures whose people overran Western
Europe beginning in the fifth century AD and effectively became the rulers of
The Ancient Greek world, circa 550 BC
The Hellenic division
between the barbarians and the Greeks contrasted in many societies the Greek-speaking culture of the Greek settlements
around the
Western society is sometimes claimed to trace its cultural origins to both Greek thought and Christian religion, thus following an evolution that began in ancient Greece, continued through the Roman Empire and, with the coming of Christianity (which has its origins in the Middle East), spread throughout Europe.
However, the conquest of the western parts of the Roman Empire by Germanic peoples and the subsequent advent of despotism in the form of dominance by the
Western Christian Papacy (which held combined political and
spiritual authority, a state of affairs
absent from Greek civilization in all its stages), resulted into a rupture of
the previously existing ties between the Latin West and Greek thought, including Christian Greek thought. The
Great Schism and the Fourth Crusade confirmed this deviation. Hence, the
Medieval West is limited to Western Christendom only, as the Greeks and other
European peoples not under the authority of the Papacy are not included in it. The clearly Greek-influenced
form of Christianity, Orthodoxy, is more linked
to Eastern than
Thus the idea of Western society being influenced from (but not being the single evolution of) ancient Greek thought makes sense only for the post-Renaissance period of Western history.
Ancient Rome (510 BC-AD 476) was a civilization that grew from a city-state founded on the Italian Peninsula circa the 9th century BC to a massive empire straddling the Mediterranean Sea. In its twelve-century existence, Roman civilization shifted from a monarchy, to a republic, to an autocratic empire. It came to dominate Western Europe, the Balkans and the entire area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea through conquest using the Roman legions and then through cultural assimilation by giving Roman privileges and eventually citizenship to the whole empire. Nonetheless, despite its great legacy, a number of factors led to the eventual decline of the Roman Empire.
The Western Roman Empire
eventually broke into several kingdoms in the 5th century due to civil wars,
corruption, and devastating Germanic Invasions from such tribes as the Goths,
the Franks and the Vandals; the Eastern Roman Empire, governed from
Constantinople, is usually referred to as the Byzantine Empire after 476, the traditional date
for the "fall of the Western Roman Empire" and for the subsequent
onset of the Early Middle Ages.
The
The Roman Empire succeeded the about 500 year-old Roman Republic (510 BC - 1st century BC), which had been weakened by the conflict between Gaius Marius and Sulla and the civil war of Julius Caesar against Pompey and Marcus Brutus. During these struggles hundreds of senators were killed, and the Roman Senate had been refilled with loyalists of the First Triumvirate and later those of the Second Triumvirate.
Several dates are commonly proposed to mark the transition from Republic to
Empire, including the date of Julius Caesar's appointment as perpetual roman dictator (44 BC), the victory of Caesar's
heir Octavian at the Battle of Actium (September 2, 31 BC), and the Roman Senate's
granting to Octavian the honorific Augustus.
(January 16, 27 BC). Octavian/Augustus officially
proclaimed that he had saved the
Roman expansion began long before the state was changed into an Empire and
reached its zenith under emperor Trajan with the conquest of Dacia
in AD 106. During this territorial peak the
The
Religious split in Europe Roman Catholicism Orthodox Christianity Protestantism Sunni Islam Shia Islam Judaism
Christianity and other religions in the world.
In the early 4th century, the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great
established the city of Constantinople as the
capital of the Eastern Roman Empire.
The Eastern Empire included lands east of the Adriatic Sea and bordering on the Eastern Mediterranean and parts of the Black Sea. These two divisions of the Eastern
and Western Empires were reflected in the administration of the Christian Church, with Rome
and Constantinople debating and arguing over whether
either city was the capital of Christianity. As the eastern and western
churches spread their influence, the line between "East" and
"West" can be described as moving, but generally followed a cultural divide that was defined by the
existence of the Byzantine empire and the fluctuating
power and influence of the church in
Under Charlemagne, the Franks established an empire that was recognized as the Holy Roman Empire by the Christian Patriarch
of Rome, offending the Roman Emperor in Constantinople. The crowning of the Emperor by
the Pope led to
the assumption that the highest power was the papal hierarchy, establishing,
until the Protestant Reformation,
the civilization of Western Christendom. The
Latin Rite Christian Church of western and central Europe headed by the Patriarch
of Rome split with the eastern, Greek-speaking Patriarchates during
the Great Schism.
Meanwhile, the extent of each expanded, as
In this context, the Protestant reformation may be viewed as a schism
within the Latin Church. Martin Luther, in the wake of precursors, broke with
the Pope and with the Emperor, backed by many of the German princes. These
changes were adopted by the Scandinavian kings. Later, the commoner Jean Cauvin
(John Calvin) assumed the religio-political leadership in
The Reformation and consequent dissolution of Western Christendom as even a theoretical unitary political body, resulted in the Thirty Years War, ending in the Peace of Westphalia, which enshrined the concept of the nation-state and the principle of absolute national sovereignty in international law. These concepts of a world of nation-states, coupled with the ideologies of the Enlightenment, the coming of modernity, and the Industrial Revolution, produced powerful political and economic institutions that have come to influence (or been imposed upon) most nations of the world today.
This process of influence (and imposition) began with the voyages of discovery, colonization, conquest, and exploitation of Spain and Portugal; it continued with the rise of the Dutch East India Company, and the creation and expansion of the British and French colonial empires. Due to the reach of these empires, Western institutions expanded throughout the world. Even after demands for self-determination from subject peoples within Western empires were met with decolonization, these institutions persisted; one specific example was the requirement that post-colonial societies were made to form nation-states (in the Western tradition), which often created arbitrary boundaries and borders that did not necessarily represent a whole nation, people, or culture, and are often the cause of international conflicts and friction even to this day. Though the overt colonial era has certainly passed, Western nations, as comparatively rich, well-armed, and culturally powerful states, still wield a large degree of influence throughout the world, and often take actions that are either intended or are perceived as being intended to interfere in the internal affairs of nations in the non-Western world; this is often resented by non-Western peoples, especially those in non-Western democracies.
During the Cold War, a new definition emerged. The Earth was divided into three "worlds". The First World, analogous in this context to what was called the West, was composed of NATO members and other countries aligned with the United States. The Second World was the Eastern bloc in the Soviet sphere of influence, including the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries. The Third World consisted of countries unaligned with either, and important members included India and Yugoslavia; some include the People's Republic of China, though this is disputed, as the People's Republic of China was communist, had friendly relations--at certain times--with the Soviet bloc, and had a significant degree of importance in global geopolitics.
East and West in 1980, as defined by the Cold War.
European trade blocs as of the late 1980s. EEC member states are marked in blue, EFTA - green, and Comecon - red.
There were a number of countries which did not fit comfortably into this
neat definition of partition, including Switzerland, Sweden, and the Republic of Ireland,
which chose to be neutral. Finland was under the
The exact scope of the Western world is somewhat subjective in nature,
depending on whether cultural, economic or political criteria are used. In general
however these definitions always include the following countries: the countries
of Western Europe(
Many anthropologists, sociologists and historians still make the mistake of opposing "the West and the Rest" in a categorical manner. The same has been done by Malthusian demographers with a sharp distinction between European and non-European family systems. Among anthropologists, this includes Durkheim, Dumont and Lévi-Strauss.
As the term "Western world" does not have a strict international definition, governments do not use the term in legislation of international treaties and instead rely on other definitions.
See: Western Culture.
From a cultural and sociological approach the Western world is defined as including all cultures that are (directly derived from) European cultures, i.e. Europe, the Americas (North and South America), Australia and New Zealand. Together these countries constitute Western society These are generally countries that share similar history, religions, languages, values and traditions. Culturally, many Latin Americans, particularly Argentines, Uruguayans, Colombians, Cubans, Chileans, and Brazilians, firmly consider themselves Westerners, especially the ruling classes.
Some countries like Israel, Lebanon, and Turkey may be considered Western because of the blend of Western and non-Western culture citation needed]
In the 20th century, Christianity declined in influence in many western
countries, in Western Europe and
elsewhere. Secularism (separating religion from politics
and science) increased. However, while church attendance is in decline, most
Westerners nominally identify themselves as Christians (e.g. 70% in the UK)
and occasionally attend church on major occasions. In the
Countries of the Western world are generally considered to share certain fundamental political ideologies, including those of liberal democracy, the rule of law, human rights and a high degree of gender equality. Additionally countries with strong political and military ties to Western Europe, NATO or the United States, such as Japan, Israel and South Korea can be said to be Western in a political sense at least.
As such, this definition of the term "Western" is not necessarily tied to the geographic sense of the word. A geographically Western nation such as Cuba is sometimes not considered politically Western due to its general rejection of liberal democracy, freedom of the press, and personal liberty. Conversely, some Eastern nations, for example, Japan, India, Israel, Taiwan, South Africa, and South Korea, could be considered politically Western, due to their adoption of indigenous liberal democratic political institutions similar in structure to those of the traditionally Western nations.
World map indicating Human Development Index (2007)
(Colour-blind compliant map) For red-green color vision problems.
Though the Cold War has ended, and some members of the former Eastern Bloc are making a general movement towards liberal democracy and other values held in common by the traditionally Western states, some former Soviet republics are not considered Western because of the small presence of social and political reform, as well as their obvious cultural, economic and political differences to what is known today as described by the term "the West" (Western Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand). These include the three Transcaucasian republics (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia), as well as Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.
Although it is inaccurate to do so, the term "Western world" is often interchangeable with the term First World stressing the difference between First World and the Third World or developing countries. The term "The North" has in some contexts replaced earlier usage of the term "the West", particularly in the critical sense, as a more robust demarcation than the terms "West" and "East". The North provides some absolute geographical indicators for the location of wealthy countries, most of which are physically situated in the Northern Hemisphere, although, as most countries are located in the northern hemisphere in general, some have considered this distinction to be equally unhelpful. The thirty countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which include: the EU (except Romania and Bulgaria), Norway, Iceland, Switzerland, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan, generally include what used to be called the "first world" or the "developed world", although the OECD includes a few countries, namely Mexico and Turkey, that are not yet fully industrial countries, but newly industrialized countries. The existence of "The North" implies the existence of "The South", and the socio-economic divide between North and South. Although Israel, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong are not members of the OECD, they might also be regarded as "western" or "northern" countries or regions, because their high living standards and their social, economical and political structure are quite similar to those of the OECD member countries.
A series of scholars of civilization, including Arnold J. Toynbee, Alfred Kroeber and Carroll Quigley have identified and analyzed "Western civilization" as one of the civilizations that have historically existed and still exist today. Toynbee entered into quite an expansive mode, including as candidates those countries or cultures who became so heavily influenced by the West as to adopt these borrowings into their very self-identity; carried to its limit, this would in practice include almost everyone within the West, in one way or another. In particular, Toynbee refers to the intelligentsia formed among the educated elite of countries impacted by the European expansion of centuries past. While often pointedly nationalist, these cultural and political leaders interacted within the West to such an extent as to change both themselves and the West.
Yet more recently, Samuel P. Huntington
has taken a far more restricted approach, forging a political science hypothesis he labeled the
"The Clash of
Civilizations?" in a Foreign Affairs article and a book. According to
In Huntington's narrow thesis, the historically Eastern Orthodox nations of southeastern and Eastern Europe constitute a distinct "Euro-Asiatic civilization"; although European and mainly Christian (as well as notable Muslim influence and populations, particularly in the Balkans and southern/central Russia), these nations were not, in Huntington's view, shaped by the cultural influences of the Renaissance. The Renaissance did not affect Orthodox Eastern Europe due in part to the proximity of Ottoman domination; though the decisive influence on the Renaissance of Greek emigré scholars should be acknowledged.
Other views might be made regarding
Huntington also considered the possibility that South America is a separate civilization from the West, but also mused that it might become a third part (the first two being North America and Europe) of the West in the future.
The theologian and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin conceived of the West as the set of civilizations decended from the Nile Valley Civilization of Egypt.
The term the "West" may also be used pejoratively by certain tendencies especially
critical of the influence of the traditional West, due to the history of some
of the members of the traditional West being previously involved, at one time
or another, in outright imperialism and colonialism. Some of these critics also claim
that the traditional West has continued to engage in what might be viewed as
modern implementations of imperialism and colonialism, such as neoliberalism and globalization. (It should be noted that many
Westerners who subscribe to a positive view of the traditional West are also
very critical of neoliberalism and globalization, for their allegedly negative
effects on both the developed and developing world.) Allegedly, definitions of
the term "Western world" that some may consider "ethnocentric" are considered by some to be
"constructed"
around one or another Western culture.
The British writer Rudyard Kipling
wrote about this contrast: East is East and West is
West and never the twain shall meet, expressing that somebody from the West
can never understand the Asian cultures as the latter differ too much from the
Western cultures. Some may view this alleged incompatibility as a precursor to
Paradoxically, today Asia and
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Russian Revolution (1917) was a series of economic and social upheavals in Russia, involving first the overthrow of the tsarist autocracy, and then the overthrow of the liberal and moderate-socialist Provisional Government, resulting in the establishment of Soviet power under the control of the Bolshevik party. This eventually led to the establishment of the Soviet Union in 1922, which lasted until its dissolution in 1991.
Main article: Russian history, 1892-1917
At the start of 1917, a turning point in Russian history, the country was ripe for revolution-and, indeed, this year saw two very distinct ones: the first, known as the February Revolution, growing rapidly, creating expanded social opportunities but also great uncertainty. Peasant villagers more and more often migrated between agrarian and industrial work environments, and many relocated entirely, creating a growing urban labor force. A middle class of white-collar employees, businessmen, and professionals (the latter group comprising doctors, lawyers, teachers, journalists, engineers, etc.) was on the rise. Even nobles had to find new ways to subsist in this changing economy, and contemporaries spoke of new classes forming (proletarians and capitalists, for example), although these classes were also divided along crisscrossing lines of status, gender, age, ethnicity, and belief.
Bolshevik forces marching on Red Square.
If anything, it was becoming harder to speak of clearly-defined social groups or boundaries. Not only were groups fractured in various ways, their defining boundaries were also increasingly blurred by migrating peasants, worker intellectuals, gentry professionals, and the like. Almost everyone felt that the texture of their lives was transformed by a spreading commercial culture which remade the surfaces of material life (buildings, store fronts, advertisements, fashion, clocks and machines) and nurtured new objects of desire.[1]
By 1917, the growth of political consciousness, the impact of revolutionary
ideas, and the weak and inefficient system of government (which had been
debilitated further by its participation in World War I), should have convinced the emperor,
Nicholas II, to take the necessary steps towards reform. In January 1917, in
fact, Sir George Buchanan,
the British Ambassador in
The people of
Many workers acquired a sense of self-respect and confidence, heightening expectations and desires. Living in cities, workers encountered material goods such as they had never seen while in the village. Most important, living in cities, they were exposed to new ideas about the social and political order.
The social causes of the Russian Revolution mainly came from centuries of
oppression of the lower classes by the Tsarist regime, and Nicholas's failures
in World War I. While rural agrarian peasants had been emancipated
from serfdom in 1861, they still resented paying
redemption payments to the state, and demanded communal tender of the land they
worked. The problem was further compounded by the failure of Sergei Witte's land reforms of the early 1900s.
Increasing peasant disturbances and sometimes full revolts occurred, with the
goal of securing ownership of the land they worked.
The rapid industrialization of
World War I only added to the chaos. Conscription swept up the unwilling in
all parts of
Politically, many Russians, as well as non-Russian subjects of the crown, had reason to be dissatisfied with the existing autocratic system. Nicholas II was a deeply conservative ruler. He viewed his criteria of virtue-orderliness, family, and duty-as both personal ideals for a moral individual and rules for society and politics. Individuals and society alike were expected to show self-restraint, devotion to community and hierarchy, and a spirit of duty to country and tradition. Religious faith helped bind all this together: as a source of comfort and reassurance in the face of contradictory conditions, as a source of insight into the divine will, as a source of state power and authority. Indeed, perhaps more than any other modern monarch, Nicholas II attached himself and the future of his dynasty to the myth of the ruler as saintly and blessed father to his people. This inspiring faith, many historians have argued, blinded him to the actual state of his country: unable to believe that his power was not from God, and that the Russian people were not as devoted to him as he felt he was to them, he was unwilling to allow the democratic reforms that might have prevented revolution, and when, after the 1905 revolution, he allowed limited civil rights and democratic representation, he tried to limit these in every possible way, in order to preserve his autocratic authority.[3]
At the same time, the desire for democratic participation was strong.
Notwithstanding stereotypes about Russian political culture,
One of Nicholas' reasons for going to war in 1914 was his desire to restore
the prestige that
The outbreak of war in August 1914 initially served to quiet the prevalent social and political protests, focusing hostilities against a common external enemy, but this patriotic unity did not last long. As the war dragged on inconclusively, war-weariness gradually took its toll. More important, though, was this deeper fragility: although many ordinary Russians joined anti-German demonstrations in the first few weeks of the war, the most widespread reaction appears to have been skepticism and fatalism. Hostility toward the Kaiser and the desire to defend their land and their lives did not necessarily translate into enthusiasm for the Tsar or the government.
Casualty rates were the most vivid sign of this disaster. Already, by the end of 1914, only five months into the war, nearly 400,000 Russian men had lost their lives and nearly 1,000,000 were injured. Far sooner than expected, scarcely-trained recruits had to be called up for active duty, a process repeated throughout the war as staggering losses continued to mount. The officer class also saw remarkable turnover, especially within the lower echelons, which were quickly filled with soldiers rising up through the ranks. These men, usually of peasant or worker backgrounds, were to play a large role in the politicization of the troops in 1917.
The huge losses on the battlefields were not limited to men, however. The army quickly ran short of rifles and ammunition (as well as uniforms and food), and, by mid-1915, men were being sent to the front bearing no arms; it was hoped that they could equip themselves with the arms that they recovered from fallen soldiers, of both sides, on the battlefields. With patently good reason, the soldiers did not feel that they were being treated as human beings, or even as valuable soldiers, but, rather, as raw materials to be squandered for the purposes of the rich and powerful. By the spring of 1915, the army was in steady retreat-and it was not always orderly: desertion, plunder and chaotic flight were not uncommon. By 1916, however, the situation had improved in many respects. Russian troops stopped retreating, and there were even some modest successes in the offensives that were staged that year, albeit at great loss of life. Also, the problem of shortages was largely solved by a major effort to increase domestic production. Nevertheless, by the end of 1916, morale among soldiers was even worse than it had been during the great retreat of 1915. The fortunes of war may have improved, but the fact of the war, still draining away strength and lives from the country and its many individuals and families, remained an oppressive unavoidability. The crisis in morale (as was argued by Allan Wildman, a leading historian of the Russian army in war and revolution) "was rooted fundamentally in the feeling of utter despair that the slaughter would ever end and that anything resembling victory could be achieved."
The war was devastating, of course, and not only to soldiers. By the end of
1915, there were manifold signs that the economy was breaking down under the
heightened strain of wartime demand. The main problems were food shortages and
rising prices. Inflation shoved real incomes down at an alarmingly rapid rate,
and shortages made it difficult to buy even what one could afford. These
shortages were especially a problem in the capital, Petrograd (formerly the City of
Nicholas was blamed for all of these crises, and what little support he had
left began to crumble. As discontent grew, the State Duma issued a warning to Nicholas in
November 1916. It stated that, inevitably, a terrible disaster would grip the
country unless a constitutional form of government was put in place. In typical
fashion, however, Nicholas ignored them, and
Main article: February Revolution
Nicholas II, March 1917, shortly after the revolution brought about his abdication.
This revolution broke out without definite leadership and formal plans,
which may be seen as indicative of the fact that the Russian people had quite
enough of the existing system.
On the evening of Saturday the 25th, with police having lost control of the situation, Nicholas II, who refused to believe the warnings about the seriousness of these events, sent a fateful telegram to the chief of the Petrograd military district, General Sergei Khabalov: "I command you tomorrow to stop the disorders in the capital, which are unacceptable in the difficult time of war with Germany and Austria."[7] Most of the soldiers obeyed these orders on the 26th, but mutinies, often led by lower-ranked officers, spread overnight. On the morning of the 27th, workers in the streets, many of them now armed, were joined by soldiers, sent in by the government to quell the riots. Many of these soldiers were insurgents, however, and they joined the crowd and fired on the police, in many cases little red ribbons tied to their bayonets. The outnumbered police then proceeded to join the army and civilians in their rampage. Thus, with this near-total disintegration of military power in the capital, effective civil authority collapsed.
By nighttime on the 27th, the cabinet submitted its resignation to the tsar
and proposed a temporary military dictatorship, but
The effective power of the Provisional Government was challenged by the authority of an institution that claimed to represent the will of workers and soldiers and could, in fact, mobilize and control these groups during the early months of the revolution-the Petrograd Soviet [Council] of Workers' Deputies. The model for the soviet were workers' councils that had been established in scores of Russian cities during the 1905 revolution. In February 1917, striking workers elected deputies to represent them and socialist activists began organizing a citywide council to unite these deputies with representatives of the socialist parties. On 27 February, socialist Duma deputies, mainly Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries, took the lead in organizing a citywide council. The Petrograd Soviet met in the Tauride Palace, the same building where the new government was taking shape.
The leaders of the Petrograd Soviet believed that they represented
particular classes of the population, not the whole nation. They also believed
The relationship between these two major powers was complex from the beginning and would shape the politics of 1917. The representatives of the Provisional Government agreed to "take into account the opinions of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies," though they were also determined to prevent "interference in the actions of the government," which would create "an unacceptable situation of dual power." In fact, this was precisely what was being created, though this "dual power" (dvoevlastie) was the result less of the actions or attitudes of the leaders of these two institutions than of actions outside their control, especially the ongoing social movement taking place on the streets of Russia's cities, in factories and shops, in barracks and in the trenches, and in the villages.
A series of political crises-see the chronology below-in the relationship between population and government and between the Provisional government and the soviets (which developed into a nationwide movement with a national leadership, The All-Russian Central Executive Committee of Soviets (VTsIK)) undermined the authority of the Provisional Government but also of the moderate socialist leaders of the Soviet. Although the Soviet leadership initially refused to participate in the "bourgeois" Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, a young and popular lawyer and a member of the Social Revolutionary Party (SRP), agreed to join the new cabinet, and he became an increasingly central figure in the government, eventually taking leadership of the Provisional Government. As minister of war and later Prime Minister, Kerensky promoted freedom of speech, released thousands of political prisoners, did his very best to continue the war effort and even organised a new offensive (which, however, was no more successful than its predecessors). Nevertheless, Kerensky still faced several great challenges, highlighted by the soldiers, urban workers and peasants, who claimed that they had gained nothing by the revolution:
The political group which proved most troublesome for Kerensky, and would
eventually overthrow him, was the Bolshevik Party, led by Vladimir Lenin. Lenin had been living in exile
in neutral
With Lenin's arrival, the popularity of the Bolsheviks increased steadily. Over the course of the spring, public dissatisfaction with the Provisional Government and the war, in particular among workers, soldiers and peasants, pushed these groups to radical parties. Despite growing support for the Bolsheviks, buoyed by maxims that called most famously for "all power to the Soviets," the party held very little real power in the moderate dominated Petrograd Soviet. In fact, historians such as Sheila Fitzpatrick have asserted that Lenin's exhortations for the Soviet Council to take power were intended to arouse indignation both with the Provisional Government, whose policies were viewed as conservative, and the Soviet itself, which was viewed as subservient to the conservative government. By most historians' accounts, Lenin and his followers were unprepared for how their groundswell of support, especially among influential worker and soldier groups, would translate into real power in summer, 1917.
On June 18, the Provisional Government launched an attack against
The Bolshevik failure in the July Days proved temporary, though. In August,
poor, or misleading, communication led General Lavr Kornilov, the recently appointed Supreme
Commander of Russian military forces, to believe that the
In early September, the Soviet Council freed the jailed Bolsheviks and Trotsky became chairman of the Petrograd Soviet. Growing numbers of socialists and lower-class Russians viewed the government less and less as a force in support of their needs and interests. The Bolsheviks benefited as the only major organized opposition party which had refused to compromise with the Provisional Government, and they benefited from growing frustration and even disgust with other parties, such as the Mensheviks and SRs, who stubbornly refused to break with the idea of national unity across all classes.
In
Main article: October Revolution
Vladimir Lenin, leader of the Bolsheviks
The October Revolution was led by Vladimir Lenin and was based upon Lenin's writing on the ideas of Karl Marx, a political ideology often known as Marxism-Leninism. It marked the beginning of the spread of communism in the twentieth century. It was far less sporadic than the revolution of February and came about as the result of deliberate planning and coordinated activity to that end. Though Lenin was the leader of the Bolshevik Party, it has been argued that since Lenin wasn't present during the actual takeover of the Winter Palace, it was really Trotsky's organization and direction that led the revolution, spurred by the motivation Lenin instigated within his party.[citation needed] Critics on the Right have long argued that the financial and logistical assistance of German intelligence via their key agent, Alexander Parvus was a key component as well, though historians are divided, for the evidence is sparse.
On November 7, ,
Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin led his leftist
revolutionaries in a revolt against the ineffective Provisional Government
(Russia was still using the Julian Calendar at the time, so period
references show an October 25 date). The
October Revolution ended the phase of the revolution instigated in February,
replacing
Soviet membership was initially freely elected, but many members of the Socialist-Revolutionary
Party, anarchists, and other leftists opposed the Bolsheviks through
the soviets. When it became clear that the Bolsheviks had little support
outside of the industrialized areas of
In early March, the Provisional Government placed Nicholas and his family under
house arrest in the Alexander Palace
at Tsarskoe Selo, 15 miles (24 km) south
of
Main article: Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War, which broke out in 1918 shortly after the
revolution, brought death and suffering to millions of people regardless of
their political orientation. The war was fought mainly between the Red Army ("Reds"), consisting of
radical communists and revolutionaries, and the "Whites"-the monarchists,
conservatives, liberals and moderate socialists who opposed the drastic
restructuring championed by the Bolsheviks. The Whites had backing from nations
such as
Also during the Civil War, Nestor Makhno led a Ukrainian anarchist movement allied with the Bolsheviks
thrice, one of the powers ending the alliance each time. However, a Bolshevik
force under Mikhail Frunze
destroyed the Makhnovist movement, when
the Makhnovists refused to merge into the Red Army. In addition, the so-called "Green Army" (nationalists and anarchists)
played a secondary role in the war, mainly in
Trotsky said that the goal of socialism in
This issue is subject to conflicting views on the communist history by various Marxist groups and parties. Stalin later rejected this idea, stating that socialism was possible in one country.
The confusion regarding Stalin's position on the issue stems from the fact that he, after Lenin's death in 1924, successfully used Lenin's argument-the argument that socialism's success needs the workers of other countries in order to happen-to defeat his competitors within the party by accusing them of betraying Lenin and, therefore, the ideals of the October Revolution.
Dates are correct for the Julian calendar, which was used in
|
Date(s) |
Event(s) |
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Start of reign of Tsar Alexander II. |
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Emancipation of the serfs. |
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Growing anti-government terrorist movement and government reaction. |
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Alexander II assassinated by revolutionaries; succeeded by Alexander III. |
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First Russian Marxist group formed. |
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Start of reign of Nicholas II. |
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First Congress of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). |
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Foundation of Socialist Revolutionary Party (SR). |
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Second Congress of Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Beginning of split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. |
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Russo-Japanese War;
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Russian Revolution of 1905.
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Stolypin assassinated. |
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Germany declares war on |
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Serious defeats, Nicholas II declares himself Commander in Chief. |
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Food and fuel shortages and high prices. Progressive Bloc formed. |
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Strikes, mutinies, street demonstrations lead to the fall of autocracy. |
|
Gregorian Date |
Julian Date |
Event |
|
January |
Strikes and unrest in Petrograd |
|
|
February |
February Revolution |
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March 8th |
February 23rd |
International Women's Day:
strikes and demonstrations in |
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March 11th |
February 26th |
50 demonstrators killed in Znamenskaya Square Tsar Nicholas II prorogues the State Duma and orders commander of Petrograd military district to suppress disorders with force. |
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March 12th |
February 27th |
* Troops refuse to fire on demonstrators, deserters. Prisons, courts, and police bumbs attacked and looted by angry crowds.
|
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March 14th |
March 1st |
Order No.1 of the |
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March 15th |
March 2nd |
Nicholas II abdicates. Provisional Government formed under Prime Minister Prince Lvov. |
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April 16th |
April 3rd |
Return of Lenin to |
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May 3rd-4th |
April 20th-21st |
"April Days": mass
demonstrations by workers, soldiers, and others in the streets of Petrograd
and |
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May 18th |
May 5th |
First Coalition Government forms when socialists, representatives of the Soviet leadership, agree to enter the cabinet of the Provisional Government. Kerensky, the only socialist already in the government, made minister of war and navy. |
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June 16th |
June 3rd |
First All-Russian Congress of
Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies opens in |
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June 23rd |
June 10th |
Planned Bolshevik demonstration
in |
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June 29th |
June 16th |
Kerensky orders offensive against Austro-Hungarian forces. Initial success only. |
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July 1st |
June 18th |
Official Soviet demonstration in
|
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July 15th |
July 2nd |
Russian offensive ends. Trotsky joins Bolsheviks. |
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July 16th-17th |
July 3rd-4th |
The "July Days"; mass armed demonstrations in |
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July 19th |
July 6th |
German and Austro-Hungarian counter-attack. Russians retreat in panic, sacking the town of Tarnopol. Arrest of Bolshevik leaders ordered. |
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July 20th |
July 7th |
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August 4th |
July 22nd |
Trotsky and Lunacharskii arrested. |
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September 8th |
August 26th |
Second coalition government ends. |
|
September 8th-12th |
August 26th-30th |
"Kornilov mutiny".
Begins when the commander-in-chief of the Russian army, General Lavr
Kornilov, demands (or is believed by Kerensky to demand) that the government
give him all civil and military authority and moves troops against |
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September 13th |
August 31st |
Majority of deputies of the Petrograd Soviet approve a Bolshevik resolution for an all-socialist government excluding the bourgeoisie. |
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September 14th |
September 1st |
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September 17th |
September 4th |
Trotsky and others freed. |
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September 18th |
September 5th |
Bolshevik resolution on the government wins majority vote in Moscow Soviet. |
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October 2nd |
September 19th |
Moscow Soviet elects executive committee and new presidium, with Bolshevik majorities, and the Bolshevik Viktor Nogin as chairman. |
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October 8th |
September 25th |
Third coalition government formed. Bolshevik majority in Petrograd Soviet elects Bolshevik Presidium and Trotsky as chairman. |
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October 23rd |
October 10th |
Bolshevik Central Committee meeting approves armed uprising. |
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October 24th |
October 11th |
Congress of Soviets of the Northern Region, until October 13th. |
|
November 2nd |
October 20th |
First meeting of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet. |
|
November 7th |
October 25th |
October Revolution
is launched as MRC directs armed workers and soldiers to capture key
buildings in |
|
November 8th |
October 26th |
Second Congress of Soviets: Mensheviks and right SR delegates walk out in protest against the previous day's events. Congress approves transfer of state authority into its own hands and local power into the hands of local soviets of workers', soldiers', and peasants' deputies, abolishes capital punishment, issues Decree on Peace and Decree on Land, and approves the formation of an all-Bolshevik government, the Council of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom), with Lenin as chairman. |
There are two plays named Prometheus Unbound. Both are concerned with the torments of the Greek mythological figure Prometheus and his suffering at the hands of Zeus.
This first Prometheus Unbound is thought to have followed Prometheus Bound in the Prometheia trilogy attributed to the 5th-century BC Greek tragedian Aeschylus; The text of the Unbound is lost to us except for eleven fragments preserved by later authors. Nevertheless, these fragments, combined with prophetic statements made in the first play, allow us to reconstruct a broad outline of the play. Based upon a lengthy fragment translated into Latin by the Roman statesman Cicero, it has been argued that the play opens with Prometheus visited by a chorus of Titans. Though Zeus had imprisoned them in Tartarus at the conclusion of the Titanomachy, he has at long last granted them clemency. This perhaps foreshadows Zeus' eventual reconciliation with Prometheus in the trilogy's third installment. Prometheus complains about his torment just as he had to the chorus of Oceanids in Prometheus Bound. As the dramatis personae of Prometheus Bound erroneously lists Gaea, it has been suggested that she is next to visit Prometheus in this play, in a sympathetic role that echoes Oceanus' turn in the first play. Finally, the faulty dramatis personae mentioned above and several fragments indicate that Heracles visits the Titan just as Io had in Prometheus Bound. Heracles frees Prometheus from his chains and kills the eagle that had been torturing Prometheus by eating his regenerating liver every day. Again mirroring events in the previous play, Prometheus forecasts Heracles' travels as he concludes his Twelve Labours. The play thus concludes with Prometheus free from the torments of Zeus, but the Titan and Olympian have yet to reconcile. This play was presumably followed by Prometheus the Fire-Bringer.
The second Prometheus Unbound is a four-act play by Percy Bysshe Shelley
first published in . It is inspired by
Aeschylus's 'Prometheus Bound' and concerns Prometheus' release from captivity.
However, unlike Aeschylus' version, there is no reconciliation between
Prometheus and Zeus in Shelley's narrative. Instead, Jupiter (Zeus) is overthrown, which allows
Prometheus to be released. Shelley's play is closet drama, meaning it was not intended to be
produced on the stage. In the tradition of William Wordsworth and the other
poets creating what we now call Romantic Poetry, Shelley wrote for the imagination,
intending his play's stage to reside in the imaginations of his readers.
Shelley wrote another play called The Cenci at almost the same time - perhaps
moving from one text to the other. This other play was meant to be produced and
has been done in
Shelley's own introduction to the play explains his intentions behind the work. He defends his choice to adapt Aeschylus' myth - his choice to have Jupiter overthrown rather than Prometheus reconciled - with:
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In truth, I was averse from a catastrophe so feeble as that of reconciling the Champion with the Oppressor of mankind. The moral interest of the fable, which is so powerfully sustained by the sufferings and endurance of Prometheus, would be annihilated if we could conceive of him as unsaying his high language and quailing before his successful and perfidious adversary. |
Shelley compares his Romantic hero Prometheus to
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The only imaginary being, resembling in any degree Prometheus, is Satan; and Prometheus is, in my judgement, a more poetical character than Satan, because, in addition to courage, and majesty, and firm and patient opposition to omnipotent force, he is susceptible of being described as exempt from the taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandizement, which, in the hero of Paradise Lost, interfere with the interest. |
In other words, while
Shelley finishes his "Preface" to the play with an evocation of his intentions as a poet:
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My purpose has hitherto been simply to familiarize the highly refined imagination of the more select classes of poetical readers with beautiful idealisms of moral excellence; aware that, until the mind can love, and admire, and trust, and hope, and endure, reasoned principles of moral conduct are seeds cast upon the highway of life which the unconscious passenger tramples into dust, although they would bear the harvest of his happiness. |
Essentially, Prometheus Unbound, as re-wrought in Shelley's hands, is a fiercely revolutionary text championing free will, goodness, hope and idealism in the face of oppression. The Epilogue, spoken by Demogorgon, expresses Shelley's tenets as a poet and as a revolutionary:
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To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite; To forgive wrongs darker than death or night; To defy Power, which seems omnipotent; To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates; Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free; This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory. |
It should also be noted here that Mary Shelley, who was the wife of Percy Bysshe Shelley, was the author of another novel named after Prometheus. The novel Frankenstein is actually more accurately titled Frankenstein: Or, The Modern Prometheus. This extended title refers to the fact that the character of Victor Frankenstein is a type of 'modern Prometheus', since Prometheus is credited with the creation of man in a god-like image. In such a way, Victor, too, was the creator of a man (or rather, what he calls a wretch or a monster), and can thus be paralleled with Prometheus (Shelley, 1992). However, the reader might choose to identify Frankenstein's monster as exhibiting the true Promethean spirit in the tradition of Percy Shelley. Although Victor rebels against nature to create his monster and refuses to make him a mate to save mankind (suffering punishment as a result), his monster also rebels against Frankenstein, a creator far more tyrannical whose scientific control of natural forces makes him a more fitting representation of Zeus.
Plato (left) and Aristotle (right), by Raphael (Stanza della Segnatura, Rome)
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that investigates principles of reality transcending those of any particular science, traditionally, cosmology and ontology. It is also concerned with explaining the ultimate nature of being and the world.
The word derives from the Greek words μετά (metá) (meaning "after") and φυσικά (physiká) (meaning "physics"), "physics" referring to those works on matter by Aristotle in antiquity. The prefix meta- ("after") was attached to the chapters in Aristotle's work that physically followed after the chapters on "physics", in posthumously edited collections. Aristotle called some of the subjects treated there "first philosophy", which later came to be synonymous with "metaphysics". Over time, the meaning of "meta" has shifted to mean "beyond; above; transcending" in English citation needed] Therefore, metaphysics is also the study of that which transcends physics. Many philosophers such as Immanuel Kant would later argue that certain questions concerning metaphysics (notably those surrounding the existence of God, soul, and freedom) are inherent to human reason and have always intrigued mankind. Some examples are:
A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into what types of things there are in the world and what relations these things bear to one another. The metaphysician also attempts to clarify the notions by which people understand the world, including existence, objecthood, property, space, time, causality, and possibility.
More recently, the term "metaphysics" has also been employed by non-philosophers to refer to "subjects that are beyond the physical world". A "metaphysical bookstore", for instance, is not one that sells books on ontology, but rather one that sells esoteric books on spirits, faith healing, crystal power, occultism, and other such topics which the philosophic pursuit of metaphysics generally does not include.
Before the development of modern science, scientific questions were addressed as a part of metaphysics known as "natural philosophy"; the term "science" itself meant "knowledge". The Scientific Revolution, however, made natural philosophy an empirical and experimental activity unlike the rest of philosophy, and by the end of the eighteenth century it had begun to be called "science" in order to distinguish it from philosophy. Thereafter, metaphysics became the philosophical enquiry of a non-empirical character into the nature of existence.
One of the first metaphysicians is Parmenides of
Referred to as the subject of "first philosophy", the term "metaphysics" is utilized in the works of Aristotle. The editor of his works, Andronicus of Rhodes, placed the books on first philosophy right after another work, Physics, and called these books τ βιβλία (ta meta ta physika biblia) or, "the books that come after the [books on] physics." This was misread by Latin scholiasts, who thought it meant "the science of what is beyond the physical." In the English language, the word comes by way of the Medieval Latin metaphysica, the neuter plural of Medieval Greek metaphysika. While its Greek and Latin origins are clear, various dictionaries trace its first appearance in English to the mid-sixteenth century, although in some cases as early as 1387.
Aristotle's Metaphysics was divided into three parts, in addition to some smaller sections related to a philosophical lexicon and some reprinted extracts from the Physics, which are now regarded as the proper branches of traditional Western metaphysics:
Ontology
The study of Being and existence; includes the definition and classification of entities, physical or mental, the nature of their properties, and the nature of change.
Natural Theology
The study of God; involves many topics, including among others the nature of religion and the world, existence of the divine, questions about Creation, and the numerous religious or spiritual issues that concern humankind in general.
Universal science
The study of first principles, which Aristotle believed to be the foundation of all other inquiries. An example of such a principle is the law of noncontradiction and the status it holds in non-paraconsistent logics.
Universal science or first philosophy treats of "being qua being" - that is, what is basic to all science before one adds the particular details of any one science. Essentially "being qua being" may be translated as "being insofar as being goes", or as, "being in terms of being". This includes topics such as causality, substance, species and elements, as well as the notions of relation, interaction, and finitude.
Metaphysics as a discipline was a central part of academic inquiry and scholarly education even before the age of Aristotle. Long considered "the Queen of Sciences",[cite this quote] its issues were considered no less important than the other main formal subjects of physical science, medicine, mathematics, poetics and music. Since the beginning of modern philosophy during the seventeenth century, problems that were not originally considered within the bounds of metaphysical have been added to its purview, while other problems considered metaphysical for centuries are now typically relegated to their own separate regions in philosophy, such as philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind, philosophy of perception, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science.
In some cases, subjects of metaphysical scholarship have been found to be entirely physical and natural, thus making them part of physics proper (cf. Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity).
Most positions that can be taken with regards to any of the following questions are endorsed by one or another notable philosopher. It is often difficult to frame the questions in a non-controversial manner.
See also: Matter, Materialism, and Philosophy of mind
The nature of matter was a problem in its own right in early philosophy. Aristotle himself introduced the idea of matter in general to the Western world, adapting the term hyle which originally meant "lumber". Early debates centered on identifying a single underlying principle. Water was claimed by Thales, Air by Anaximenes, Apeiron (the Boundless) by Anaximander, Fire by Heraclitus. Democritus conceived an atomic theory many centuries before it was accepted by modern science.
Philosophers now look to empirical science for insights into the nature of matter.
The nature of the mind and its relation to the body has been seen as more of a problem as science has progressed in its mechanistic understanding of the brain and body. Proposed solutions often have ramifications about the nature of mind as a whole. René Descartes proposed substance dualism, a theory in which mind and body are essentially quite different, with the mind having some of the attributes traditionally assigned to the soul, in the seventeenth century. This creates a conceptual puzzle about how the two interact (which has received some strange answers, such as occasionalism). Evidence of a close relationship between brain and mind, such as the Phineas Gage case, have made this form of dualism increasingly unpopular.
Another proposal discussing the mind-body problem is idealism, in which the material is sweepingly eliminated in favor of the mental. Idealists, such as George Berkeley, claim that material objects do not exist unless perceived and only as perceptions. The "German idealists" such as Fichte, Hegel and Schopenhauer took Kant as their starting-point, although it is debatable how much of an idealist Kant himself was. Idealism is also a common theme in Eastern philosophy. Related ideas are panpsychism and panexperientialism which say everything has a mind rather than everything exists in a mind. Alfred North Whitehead was a twentieth-century exponent of this approach.
Idealism is a monistic theory, in which there is a single universal substance or principles. Neutral monism, associated in different forms with Baruch Spinoza and Bertrand Russell is a theory which seeks to be less extreme than idealism, and to avoid the problems of substance dualism. It claims that existence consists of a single substance, which in itself is neither mental nor physical, but is capable of mental and physical aspects or attributes - thus it implies a dual-aspect theory.
For the last one hundred years, the dominant metaphysics has without a doubt been materialistic monism. Type identity theory, token identity theory, functionalism, reductive physicalism, nonreductive physicalism, eliminative materialism, anomalous monism, property dualism, epiphenomenalism and emergence are just some of the candidates for a scientifically-informed account of the mind. (It should be noted that while many of these positions are dualisms, none of them are substance dualism.)
Prominent recent philosophers of mind include David Armstrong, Ned Block, David Chalmers, Patricia and Paul Churchland, Donald Davidson, Daniel Dennett, Jerry Fodor, David Lewis, Thomas Nagel, Hilary Putnam, John Searle, John Smart and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Further information: Problem of universals
The world seems to contain many individual things, both physical, like apples, and abstract such as love and the number 3. Such objects are called particulars. Now, consider two apples. There seem to be many ways in which those two apples are similar, they may be approximately the same size, or shape, or color. They are both fruit, etc. One might also say that the two apples seem to have some thing or things in common. Universals or Properties are said to be those things.
Metaphysicians working on questions about universals or particulars are interested in the nature of objects and their properties, and the relationship between the two. For instance, one might hold that properties are abstract objects, existing outside of space and time, to which particular objects bear special relations. Others maintain that what particulars are is a bundle or collection of properties (specifically, a bundle of properties they have).
Main article: Identity and change
See also: Identity (philosophy) and Philosophy of space and time
The Greeks took some extreme positions on the nature of change: Parmenides denied that change occurs at all, while Heraclitus thought change was ubiquitous: "[Y]ou cannot step into the same river twice".
Identity, sometimes called Numerical Identity, is the relation that a "thing" bears to itself, and which no "thing" bears to anything other than itself (cf. sameness). According to Leibniz, if some object x is identical to some object y, then any property that x has, y will have as well. However, it seems, too, that objects can change over time. If one were to look at a tree one day, and the tree later lost a leaf, it would seem that one could still be looking at that same tree. Two rival theories to account for the relationship between change and identity are Perdurantism, which treats the tree as a series of tree-stages, and Endurantism which maintains that the tree -- the same tree -- is present at every stage in its history.
Further information: Philosophy of space and time
In the Middle Ages, Saint Augustine of Hippo asked the fundamental question about the nature of time. A traditional realist position in ontology is that time and space have existence apart from the human mind. Idealists, including Kant claim that space and time are mental constructs used to organise perceptions, or are otherwise unreal.
Suppose that one is sitting at a table, with an apple in front of him or her; the apple exists in space and in time, but what does this statement indicate? Could it be said, for example, that space is like an invisible three-dimensional grid in which the apple is positioned? Suppose the apple, and all physical objects in the universe, were removed from existence entirely. Would space as an "invisible grid" still exist? René Descartes and Leibniz believed it would not, arguing that without physical objects, "space" would be meaningless because space is the framework upon which we understand how physical objects are related to each other. Newton, on the other hand, argued for an absolute "container" space. The pendulum swung back to relational space with Einstein and Ernst Mach.
While the absolute/relative debate, and the realism debate are equally applicable to time and space, time presents some special problems of its own. The flow of time has been denied in ancient times by Parmenides and more recently by J. M. E. McTaggart in his paper The Unreality of Time.
The direction of time, also known as "time's arrow", is also a puzzle, although physics is now driving the debate rather than philosophy. It appears that fundamental laws are time-reversible and the arrow of time must be an "emergent" phenomenon, perhaps explained by a statistical understanding of thermodynamic entropy.
Common-sense tells us that objects persist across time, that there is some sense in which you are the same person you were yesterday, in which the oak is the same as the acorn, in which you perhaps even can step into the same river twice. Philosophers have developed two rival theories for how this happens, called "endurantism" and "perdurantism". Broadly speaking, endurantists hold that a whole object exists at each moment of its history, and the same object exists at each moment. Perdurantists believe that objects are four-dimensional entities made up of a series of temporal parts like the frames of a movie.
Theology is the study of God and the Nature of the Divine. Is there a God (monotheism), many gods (polytheism) or no gods (atheism)? Does the Divine intervene directly in the world (theism), or is its sole function to be the first cause of the universe (deism)? Are God and the World different (panentheism, dualism) or are they identical (pantheism)? These are the primary metaphysical questions concerning theologians citation needed]
Within the standard Western philosophical tradition, theology reached its peak under the medieval school of thought known as scholasticism, which focused primarily on the metaphysical aspects of Christianity. While the work of the scholastics has been largely eclipsed in the wake of modern philosophy, key figures such as Thomas Aquinas still play an important role in the philosophy of religion citation needed]
See also: Modal logic and Modal realism
Metaphysicians investigate questions about the ways the world could have been. David Lewis, in "On the Plurality of Worlds," endorsed a view called Concrete Modal realism, according to which facts about how things could have been are made true by other concrete worlds, just like ours, in which things are different. Other philosophers, such as Gottfried Leibniz, have dealt with the idea of possible worlds as well. The idea of necessity is that any necessary fact is true across all possible worlds; that is, we could not imagine it to be otherwise. A possible fact is one that is true in some possible world, even if not in the actual world. For example, it is possible that cats could have had two tails, or that any particular apple could have not existed. By contrast, certain propositions seem necessarily true, such as analytic propositions, e.g. "All bachelors are unmarried." The particular example of analytic truth being necessary is not universally held among philosophers. A less controversial view might be that self-identity is necessary, as it seems fundamentally incoherent to claim that for any x, it is not identical to itself; this is known as the law of identity, a putative "first principle". Aristotle describes the principle of contradiction, "It is impossible that the same quality should both belong and not belong to the same thing . . . This is the most certain of all principles . . . Wherefore they who demonstrate refer to this as an ultimate opinion. For it is by nature the source of all the other axioms."
See also: Nominalism, Platonism, and Philosophy of mathematics
Some philosophers endorse views according to which there are abstract objects such as numbers, or Universals. (Universals are properties that can be instantiated by multiple objects, such as redness or squareness.) Abstract objects are generally regarded as being outside of space and time, and/or as being causally inert. Mathematical objects and fictional entities and worlds are often given as examples of abstract objects. The view that there really are no abstract objects is called nominalism. Realism about such objects is exemplified by Platonism. Other positions include moderate realism, as espoused by Aristotle, and conceptualism.
The philosophy of mathematics overlaps with metaphysics because some positions are realistic in the sense that they hold that mathematical objects really exist, whether transcendentally, physically, or mentally. Platonic realism holds that mathematical entities are a transcendent realm of non-physical objects. The simplest form of mathematical empiricism claims that mathematical objects are just ordinary physical objects, i.e. that squares and the like physically exist. Plato rejected this view, among other reasons, because geometrical figures in mathematics have a perfection that no physical instantiation can capture. Modern mathematicians have developed many strange and complex mathematical structures with no counterparts in observable reality, further undermining this view. The third main form of realism holds that mathematical entities exist in the mind. However, given a materialistic conception of the mind, it does not have the capacity to literally contain the many infinities of objects in mathematics. Intuitionism, inspired by Kant, sticks with the idea that "there are no non-experienced mathematical truths". This involves rejecting as intuitionistically unacceptable anything that cannot be held in the mind or explicitly constructed. Intuitionists reject the law of the excluded middle and are suspicious of infinity, particularly of transfinite numbers.
Other positions such as formalism and fictionalism that do not attribute any existence to mathematical entities are anti-realist.
See also: Determinism and Free will
Determinism is the philosophical proposition that every event, including human cognition, decision and action, is causally determined by an unbroken chain of prior occurrences. It holds that no random, spontaneous, mysterious, or miraculous events occur. The principal consequence of the deterministic claim is that it poses a challenge to the existence of free will.
The problem of free will is the problem of whether rational agents exercise control over their own actions and decisions. Addressing this problem requires understanding the relation between freedom and causation, and determining whether the laws of nature are causally deterministic. Some philosophers, known as Incompatibilists, view determinism and free will as mutually exclusive. If they believe in determinism, they will therefore believe free will to be an illusion, a position known as Hard Determinism. Proponents range from Baruch Spinoza to Ted Honderich.
Others, labeled Compatibilists (or "Soft Determinists"), believe that the two ideas can be coherently reconciled. Adherents of this view include Thomas Hobbes and many modern philosophers.
Incompatibilists who accept free will but reject determinism are called Libertarians, a term not to be confused with the political sense. Robert Kane is one of the few modern defenders of this theory.
It is a popular misconception that determinism necessarily entails that humanity or individual humans have no influence on the future and its events ( a position known as Fatalism). Determinists, however, believe that the level to which human beings have influence over their future is itself dependent on present and past.
See also: Cosmology (metaphysics)
Cosmology is the branch of metaphysics that deals with the world as the totality of all phenomena in space and time. Historically, it has had quite a broad scope, and in many cases was founded in religion. The ancient Greeks did not draw a distinction between this use and their model for the cosmos. However, in modern use it addresses questions about the Universe which are beyond the scope of physical science. It is distinguished from religious cosmology in that it approaches these questions using philosophical methods (e.g. dialectics). Cosmogony deals specifically with the origin of the universe.
Modern metaphysical cosmology and cosmogony try to address questions such as:
Metaphysics has been attacked, at different times in history, as being futile and overly vague, or of no use entirely.
David Hume went so far as to write:
If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Immanuel Kant prescribed a limited role to the subject and argued against knowledge progressing beyond the world of our representations, except to knowledge that the noumena exist:
...though we cannot know these objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position at least to think them as things in themselves; otherwise we should be landed in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears.
- Critique of Pure Reason pp. Bxxvi-xxvii
A.J. Ayer is famous for leading a "revolt against metaphysics," where he claimed that its propositions were meaningless in his book "Language, Truth and Logic". Ayer was a defender of verifiability theory of meaning. British universities became less concerned with the area for much of the mid 20th century. However, metaphysics has seen a reemergence in recent times among some philosophy departments due to the perceived failure of verificationism[citation needed].
Writers in so-called Continental_philosophy have often elaborated views against metaphysics. Martin Heidegger sees the history of western philosophy as being constituted by "forgetfulness of Being" and calls this thought "metaphysical". Such thought looks beyond beings towards their ground (zum Grund), aiming at a fundamentam absolutum, such as the Platonic Idea or the Kantian thing-in-itself, "Ding an sich". For example, Descartes finds such a "fundamentam absolutum" through the "ego cogito", the self-certain subject. This thinking construes the world as object for this self-certain subject, but does not question or evaluate its own presuppositions about the nature of Being. For Heidegger, such thinking "forgets" the question of Being, and sees this "forgetfulness" as symptomatic of metaphysical thought, or of Western philosophy since Plato (but not including Pre-Socratic_philosophy). Jaques Derrida could be said to continue, if tenuously, Heidegger's project of "overcoming metaphysics". Crucially, metaphysics is seen by both thinkers as something one cannot simply step outside of or escape, since a rejection of this form is already in itself a metaphysical maneuver. Heidegger conceives of a process of "overcoming metaphysics" through, for example, what he calls Poetry ("Dichtung"), or "Thinking", or non-metaphysical "awareness of Being". Derrida problematizes Heidegger's own conception of "overcoming", but could be said to be working towards a similar goal of escaping, overcoming, destroying or deconstructing metaphysics In fact, the term Deconstruction Derrida borrows slightly from Heidegger, who writes of the "Destruktion" of metaphysics ("Destruktion der Metaphysik");
Another view is that metaphysical statements are not meaningless statements, but rather that they are generally not fallible, testable or provable statements (see Karl Popper). That is to say, there is no valid set of empirical observations nor a valid set of logical arguments, which could definitively prove metaphysical statements to be true or false. Hence, a metaphysical statement usually implies an idea about the world or about the universe, which may seem reasonable but is ultimately not empirically verifiable. That idea could be changed in a non-arbitrary way, based on experience or argument, yet there exists no evidence or argument so compelling that it could rationally force a change in that idea, in the sense of definitely proving it false.
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https://www.mysticalwonders.org/group/ Popular Metaphysical Forum with scientists, authors, researchers and new agers.
Geisler, Norman L. "Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics" page 446. Baker Books, 1999.
Encyclopedia Britannica Online
However, once the name was given, the
commentators sought to find intrinsic reasons for its appropriateness. For
instance, it was understood to mean "the science of the world beyond
nature", that is, the science of the immaterial. Again, it was understood
to refer to the chronological or pedagogical order among our philosophical
studies, so that the "metaphysical sciences would mean, those which we
study after having mastered the sciences which deal with the physical
world" (
"Metaphysics". Catholic Encyclopedia.
(1913).
^ a b Douglas Harper. Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved on August 29, .
Unabridged Dictionary. Retrieved on August 29, .
A right circular cone and an oblique circular cone
A cone is a three-dimensional geometric shape that tapers smoothly from a flat base to a point called the apex or vertex. More precisely, it is the solid figure bounded by a plane base and the surface (called the lateral surface) formed by the locus of all straight line segments joining the apex to the perimeter of the base. The term "cone" sometimes refers just to the surface of this solid figure, or just to the lateral surface.
The axis of a cone is the straight line (if any), passing through the apex, about which the lateral surface has a rotational symmetry.
In general, the base may be any shape, and the apex may lie anywhere (though it is often assumed that the base is bounded and has nonzero area, and that the apex lies outside the plane of the base). For example, a pyramid is technically a cone with a polygonal base. In common usage in elementary geometry, however, cones are assumed to be right circular, where right means that the axis passes through the centre of the base (suitably defined) at right angles to its plane, and circular means that the base is a circle. Contrasted with right cones are oblique cones, in which the axis does not pass perpendicularly through the centre of the base.
In mathematical usage, the word "cone" is used also for an infinite cone, the union of any set of half-lines that start at a common apex point. This kind of cone does not have a bounding base, and extends to infinity. A doubly infinite cone, or double cone, is the union of any set of straight lines that pass through a common apex point, and therefore extends symmetrically on both sides of the apex.
The boundary of an infinite or doubly infinite cone is a conical surface, and the intersection of a plane with this surface is a conic section. For infinite cones, the word axis again usually refers to the axis of rotational symmetry (if any). One half of a double cone is called a nappe.
Depending on the context, "cone" may also mean specifically a convex cone or a projective cone.
The perimeter of the base of a cone is called the directrix, and each of the line segments between the directrix and apex is a generatrix of the lateral surface. (For the connection between this sense of the term "directrix" and the directrix of a conic section, see dandelin spheres.)
The base radius of a circular cone is the radius of its base; often this is simply called the radius of the cone. The aperture of a right circular cone is the maximum angle between two generatrix lines; if the generatrix makes an angle θ to the axis, the aperture is 2θ.
A cone with its apex cut off by a plane parallel to its base is called a truncated cone or frustum. An elliptical cone is a cone with an elliptical base.
See also: Cone (geometry) proofs.
The volume V of any conic solid is one third the area of the base b times the height h (the perpendicular distance from the base to the apex).
The center of mass of a conic solid of uniform density lies one-quarter of the way from the center of mass of the base to the vertex, on the straight line joining the two.
For a circular cone with radius r and height h, the formula for volume becomes
For a right circular cone, the surface area A is
where 
is the slant height.
The first term in the area formula, πr2, is the area of the base, while the second term, πrs, is the area of the lateral surface.
A right circular cone with height h and aperture , whose axis is the z coordinate axis and whose apex is the origin, is described parametrically as
where s,t,u range over , , and [0,h], respectively.
In implicit form, the same solid is defined by the inequalities
,
where
.
More generally, a right circular cone with vertex at the origin, axis parallel to the vector d, and aperture , is given by the implicit vector equation S(u) = 0 where
or 
where u = (x,y,z),
and 
denotes
the dot product.
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cone_%28geometry%29"
Cutaway of a nautilus shell showing the chambers arranged in an approximately logarithmic spiral.
In mathematics, a spiral is a curve which emanates from a central point, getting progressively farther away as it revolves around the point. The concise mathematical definition is "The locus of a point moving at constant speed whose distance from a fixed point increases at a specific rate."[citation needed]
An Archimedean spiral, a helix, and a conic spiral.
A "spiral" and a "helix" are two terms that are easily confused, but represent different objects.
A spiral is typically a planar curve (that is, flat), like the groove on a record or the arms of a spiral galaxy. A helix, on the other hand, is a three-dimensional coil that runs along the surface of a cylinder, like a screw. There are many instances where in colloquial usage spiral is used as a synonym for helix, notably spiral staircase and spiral binding of books. Mathematically this is incorrect but the terms are increasing in common usage.
In the side picture, the black curve at the bottom is an Archimedean spiral, while the green curve is a helix. A cross between a spiral and a helix, such as the curve shown in red, is known as a conic helix. An example of a conic helix is the spring used to hold and make contact with the negative terminals of AA or AAA batteries in remote controls.
A two-dimensional spiral may be described easiest using polar coordinates, where the radius r is a continuous monotonic function of angle θ. The circle would be regarded as a degenerate case (the function not being strictly monotonic, but rather constant).
Some of the more important sorts of two-dimensional spirals include:
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Archimedean spiral |
logarithmic spiral |
Fermat's spiral |
hyperbolic spiral |
For simple 3-d spirals, a third variable, h (height), is also a continuous, monotonic function of θ. For example, a conic helix may be defined as a spiral on a conic surface, with the distance to the apex an exponential function of θ.
The helix and vortex can be viewed as a kind of three-dimensional spiral.
For a helix with thickness, see spring (math).
Another kind of spiral is a conic spiral along a circle. This spiral is formed along the surface of a cone whose axis is bent and restricted to a circle:
This image is reminiscent of a Ouroboros symbol and could be mistaken for a torus with a continuously-increasing diameter:
Rhumb line
Archimedean Spherical Spiral
A spherical spiral (rhumb line or loxodrome, left picture) is the curve on a sphere traced by a ship traveling from one pole to the other while keeping a fixed angle (unequal to 0° and to 90°) with respect to the meridians of longitude, i.e. keeping the same bearing. The curve has an infinite number of revolutions, with the distance between them decreasing as the curve approaches either of the poles.
The gap between the curves of an Archimedean spiral (right picture) remains constant as the curve progresses across the surface of the sphere. Therefore, this line has finite length. Notice that this is not the same thing as the rhumb line described earlier.
The Newgrange entrance slab
The spiral plays a certain role in symbolism, and appears in megalithic art, notably in the Newgrange tomb or in many Galician petroglyphs such as the one in Mogor. See also triple spiral.
While scholars are still debating the subject, there is a growing acceptance that the simple spiral, when found in Chinese art, is an early symbol for the sun. Roof tiles dating back to the Tang Dynasty with this symbol have been found west of the ancient city of Chang'an (modern-day Xian).
The spiral is the most ancient symbol found on every civilized continent. Due to its appearance at burial sites across the globe, the spiral most likely represented the "life-death-rebirth" cycle. Similarly, the spiral symbolized the sun, as ancient people thought the sun was born each morning, died each night, and was reborn the next morning..
Spirals are also a symbol of hypnosis, stemming from the cliché of people and cartoon characters being hypnotized by staring into a spinning spiral (One example being Kaa in Disney's The Jungle Book). They are also used as a symbol of dizziness, where the eyes of a cartoon character, especially in anime and manga, will turn into spirals to show they are dizzy or dazed.
The study of spirals in nature have a long history, Christopher Wren observed that many shells form a logarithmic spiral. Jan Swammerdam observed the common mathematical characteristics of a wide range of shells from Helix to Spirula and Henry Nottidge Moseley described the mathematics of univalve shells. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson's On Growth and Form gives extensive treatment to these spirals. He describes how shells are formed by rotating a closed curve around a fixed axis, the shape of the curve remains fixed but its size grows in a geometric progression. In some shell such as Nautilus and ammonites the generating curve revolves in a plane pirpendicular to the axis and the shell will form a planer discoid shape. In others it follows a skew path forming a helico-spiral pattern.
Thompson also studied spirals occurring in horns, teeth, claws and plants.
Spirals in plants and animals are frequently described as whorls.
A model for the pattern of florets in the head of a sunflower was proposed by H Vogel. This has the form
, 
where n is the index number of the floret and c is a constant scaling factor, and is a form of Fermat's spiral. The angle 137.5° is related to the golden ratio and gives a close packing of florets.
A gyre is any manner of swirling vortex. It is often used to describe wind or ocean currents, for example the North Pacific Gyre. In bodies of water, organisms use gyres for movement from areas of depleted nutrients to areas of higher nutrients.[citation needed] Gyres are caused by the Coriolis effect.
Lewis Carroll uses the verb gyre in the opening stanza of the poem "Jabberwocky" that appears in the first chapter of Through the Looking Glass; in chapter 6 Humpty Dumpty defines gyre as "to go round and round like a gyroscope" (which is a valid definition, not a nonsensical one).
The word was also used by William Butler Yeats for an occult historical concept presented in his book A Vision (a book whose ideas Yeats claimed to receive from spirits of the dead). The theory of history articulated in A Vision centers on a diagram composed of two conical spirals, one situated inside the other, so that the widest part of one cone occupies the same plane as the tip of the other cone, and vice versa. Around these cones he imagined a set of spirals. Yeats claimed that this image (he called the spirals "gyres") captured contrary motions inherent within the process of history, and he divided each gyre into different regions that represented particular kinds of historical periods (and could also represent the phases of an individual's psychological development). Yeats uses the word in many of his poems, including "The Second Coming".
From Latin gyrus, Ancient Greek gyros circle, ring, turning
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Singular |
Plural |
gyre (plural gyres)
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Infinitive |
Third person singular |
Simple past |
Past participle |
Present participle |
to gyre (third-person singular simple present gyres, present participle gyring, simple past and past participle gyred)
Retrieved from "https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gyre"
A Vision, originally published in 1925, is a book-length study of various philosophical, historical, astrological, and poetic topics by the Irish poet William Butler Yeats. Yeats wrote these works while experimenting with automatic writing with his wife George, and they were an exploration of his interest in occult astrology. The works serves as a meditation on the relationships between imagination, history, and the occult. A Vision has been compared to Eureka: A Prose Poem, the final major work of Edgar Allan Poe.
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Easter, 1916 |
The Second Coming |
A Prayer for my Daughter |
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Written in 1919; first published in 1920 in The Dial and in 1921 included in the Michael Robartes and the Dancer collection. |
Turning and turning
in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards
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