Theodor Ziehen

Theodor Ziehen, the German psychologist and philosopher, was born in Frankfurt am Main and served as professor of psychiatry at the universities of Jena, Utrecht, Halle, and Berlin. He lived as a private scholar in Wiesbaden from 1912 to 1917, when he returned to teaching as professor of philosophy and psychology at the University of Halle. He retired in 1930.

Ziehen’s viewpoint in epistemology is in the broadest sense positivistic. Knowledge must start with that which is experientially given, which Ziehen termed “becomings” (gignomene). From this “gignomenal principle” follows the “principle of immanence”, according to which there is no such thing as metaphysical knowledge of the transcendental, and therefore it is nonsensical to want to know that which is not given.

The first task of philosophy thus consists in seeking the laws of all that is given (the “positivistic” or “nomistic” principle). According to Ziehen, such a “gignomenological” investigation leads to the conclusion that the traditional antithesis between the subjective, mental world of consciousness and the objective, material external world is inadmissible because the given is “psychophysically neutral”.

We must, however, distinguish two kinds of law-governed relations: The gignomene are to be called mental insofar as they are considered with regard to their “parallel components” (the mental, subjective ingredients of experiences, which parallel certain physiological processes); and the gignomene are to be understood as physical insofar as attention is fixed on their “reduction ingredients” (“reducts”), which are subject to causal laws.

customary manner

Thus, Ziehen did not distinguish in the customary manner between material and mental reality; rather, he sought to understand the structure of the given, which he claimed to be the sole reality, in terms of two kinds of regularities—causal laws and parallel laws. Viewed from this “binomistic” standpoint, which assumes a twofold conformance to law in the given, real things appear as possibilities of perception, as potential perceptions, as “virtual reducts” that are both “transgressive” and “intramental”.

They lie beyond the boundaries of the individual content of consciousness, but they are nevertheless not situated “behind” experience but are immanent in it. Thus, real things represent certain aspects of experience that are determined by the causal type of laws. The processes governed by causal law (“the laws of nature”) go along specific paths with a specific velocity; through the parallel laws that direct mental life, the gignomene are transformed into individual experiences.

Thus, for Ziehen psychology stood in contrast with the other natural sciences—the causal sciences—as the science of the “parallel component” of the given. Ziehen combated what he considered to be mythologizing faculty psychology, including Wilhelm Wundt’s theory of apperception. He advocated a physiologically oriented, analytic, serial, or associationist approach to the subject.

To association he added a second factor regulating the course of consciousness—the “constellation”. A constellation arises at a given time from the mutual inhibition and stimulation of ideas, and it selects from the many ideas that are associated and, hence, ready for reproduction. In addition to association and constellation, Ziehen assumed three other basic mental functions—synthesis, analysis, and comparison.

causal laws

Besides the causal laws and the parallel laws, Ziehen assumed a third, more general kind of regularity—conformity to logical laws—common to and set above the two other kinds of laws.

Ziehen also wrote on the philosophy of religion. He identified God with the regularity governing the world. God must be thought of as the essence or embodiment of “regularity in general”; as the totality of logical regularity, of natural laws, and of the laws of mental and spiritual life. It would be an inadmissible anthropomorphism to look beyond the regularities for a personal source of them.

Xavier Zubiri

Xavier Zubiri, the Spanish Christian ontologist, was born in San Sebastián. He was professor of the history of philosophy in Madrid from 1926 to 1936 and in Barcelona from 1940 to 1942, after an absence abroad during the Spanish Civil War. He then left university teaching to give well-attended “private courses” in Madrid. His influence in Spain has been out of all proportion to the scanty amount of his published work.

Zubiri has been called a Christian existentialist, and indeed that is one aspect of his effort to synthesize neoscholastic theology with certain contemporary philosophies (those of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and José Ortega y Gasset) and with modern science. To achieve this harmonizing of separate disciplines, Zubiri undertook studies in theology, philosophy, and natural science that could well have occupied three scholarly lives.

He took a doctorate of theology in Rome and of philosophy in Madrid (where he studied under Ortega) before attending Heidegger’s lectures in Freiburg and studying physics, biology, and Asian languages in various European centers. He translated into Spanish not only metaphysical works by Heidegger but also texts on quantum theory, atomic science, and mathematical physics generally.

From this extensive study Zubiri concluded that positive science and Catholic philosophy were separate points of view concerning the same reality. The philosopher-theologian cannot dispute, correct, or complete anything in science, but neither does he have to accept the philosophical opinions of scientists.

The connection

The connection between these two parallel approaches to reality is simply that the sciences always leave us metaphysically hungry and with the feeling that they have not exhausted all the possibilities of knowledge, so they impel us to turn to philosophy. It is only when we come to philosophy in this way that it is really valuable; any philosophy that is undertaken without being forced upon us by scientific study is insipid.

What the sciences must get from philosophy, Zubiri claims, is an idea of nature, a theory of being to delimit their ontological horizons. They cannot themselves build such an idea out of positive facts, although they can criticize and reject unsuitable concepts of nature offered by philosophers.

Aristotle provided an idea of nature adequate for the founding of physics, and Scholasticism did the same for modern science: Without John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, Galileo Galilei’s work would have been impossible. Physics is again in crisis, facing problems that cannot be solved by physicists, logicians, or epistemologists but only by ontologists, who can supply a fresh idea of nature within which quantum physics can progress.

In his philosophy of existence, Zubiri accepts the “radical ontological nullity” of man, who is nothing apart from the tasks he has to wrestle with. It is in dealing with his tasks that man comes to be. His nature consists in the mission of being sent out into existence to realize himself as a person. These views Zubiri read into Heidegger and Ortega, but he added a doctrine of “religation”. (Religation was coined by Zubiri from the Latin religare, “to tie”, which may also be the root of “religion”).

into existence

According to this doctrine, we are not simply thrown into existence, as atheistic existentialists say, but are impelled into it by something that we feel all the time as an obligation, a force imposing on us the task of choosing and realizing ourselves. That something is deity, to which we are bound, or tied. Religation, the relation to deity, is the “fundamental root of existence” and the “ontological structure of personality”.

Rites of passage

Rites of passage are rituals or ceremonies that individuals in many societies must endure in order to pass from one stratum of life to another. Some examples of rites of passage include naming ceremonies, initiation into adulthood, marriage, child-birth, and funerals.

Arnold Van Gennep described rites of passage, or rites des passages, in his 1906 book of the same name. Van Gennep discussed the significance to individuals and society of certain ceremonies or life events that act as a doorway from one stage of existence into another.

While passing through this doorway, the initiate found him or herself in a dangerous stage or interface (in some cases literally) of liminality, after the Greek for “threshold”. Van Gennep further subdivides rites of passage into rites of separation (preliminal rites), for example, funerals, transition rites (liminal rites) such as initiation, engagement, and pregnancy, and rites of incorporation (postliminal rites) like marriages.

These three stages of rites not only transform the individual but reinforce the validity of the social group as a corporate whole by its participation in the events, as well as by the transformé’s desire to become part of it.

Victor Turner

Victor Turner argues that if the basic model of society is a “structure of positions”, the liminal phase is an interstructural situation. During this stage the initiate is separated from the society as a whole by physical means, clothing, or behavior, as he or she is neither what was nor what will be. By analogy we might compare this to a pupa stage between larva and adult in entomology—neither what was nor what will be, but an inchoate form in between.

It is during this phase that the individual is intentionally remolded into something different from before by rituals that can cause the initiate to be made to look foolish (as in the Bemba chisunga) or ultrapious (as in Holy Orders), or in some manner is stripped of the previous identity and becomes structurally invisible.

As an example, when one joins the military, one’s old identity is stripped away—literally—as such personal statements as clothing and hair are removed, the name is replaced by “recruit” or “private”, and one is subjected to humiliating public medical examinations and torturous training exercises. Eventually the recruit is accepted into the society in the new identity as “soldier” (or “marine”, etc.).

By passing through these rituals together, the group members feel a sense of cohesion that may outweigh those of kinship bonds, as when age mates (those who have been initiated into an age set at approximately the same time) are compelled to protect each other even against their own kin, as described by Laura Bohannan.

initiation rites

Among the most often described rites of passage are initiation rites from childhood into adulthood, which Turner finds to be core periods in social instruction. In the modern Western world, this often takes the form of a driving license examination or the bar mitzvah and bat mitzvah found in Judaism.

In other cultures these can be painful and dangerous genital surgeries such as the subincision found among the Arunta of central Australia, in which a boy’s penis is split lengthwise along the urethra, spread flat, and bound to an object to keep it that way until it heals. One of the boy’s incisors also is knocked out.

Among the Nuer of the Sudan, boys between the ages of 14 and 16 who wish to become men must have a series of parallel incisions called gar carved into their foreheads so deeply that it is said that they can be detected on the skulls of dead men. Following the ceremony, the new man takes a new name from his favorite ox, and thereafter is known by his “ox name”.

These men then belong to a named age-set of men of similar age who form a fraternity for life. Bruno Bettelheim argues in Symbolic Wounds that, at least in the male case, bloody rites of passage give men the right to take credit for giving birth just as women can. Women give birth to children, but men give birth to men.

was done

In the early 21st century, more is made of female genital mutilation in the literature than is made of male genital mutilation, as was done in the mid-20th century. An example of female genital mutilation as part of a rite of passage can be found in clitoridectomy as practiced by the Ibibio of southeastern Nigeria, described by John C. Messenger, Jr. An older woman sponsors a girl who has had her first menses and oversees the excision of her clitoris.

She then recovers and is instructed in womanliness in a fattening house. After sufficient healing and weight gain, the girl is released from the fattening house and, following a ceremonial leap from a large boulder, is considered to be a woman when her feet touch the ground. She then is known as mbopa–fattening girl, or debutante. According to Messenger, the Ibibio claim that clitoridectomy makes women far more libidinous than men.

Somewhat less bloody rites of passage include the vision quest found among Native Americans of the Plains culture area. Although there are variations, the core idea is that for a boy to become a young man, he must have a sacred vision that will guide his path in life. In the vision the boy will meet his spirit companion and receive several symbols that will resonate like wave harmonics with small objects put in a spirit bag that will serve as his soul.

Some of the ordeals that boys go through in order to have their visions include fasting to induce hypoglycemia, praying in a sweat lodge to induce dehydration and loss of electrolytes, going naked into the wilderness alone for up to several weeks and risking exposure to the elements, and staring at the sun all day to induce sensory deprivation. One would be surprised if, after enduring all the ordeals, the boy did not have a vision.

potentially dangerous

Somewhat similar is the walkabout found among some Australian Aboriginal groups. The Zambian Bemba sing and dance the chisunga ceremony following a girl’s first menses. As described by Audrey Richards, it is designed to give a girl access to supernatural power through her knowledge of symbols that will bring her from “unproductive girlhood to a potentially dangerous but fertile womanhood” and prepare her for marriage.

Some rites of passage are required for initiation into religious groups as well, such as the tonsure ceremonies found in monastic communities. Zora Neale Hurston described her initiation into New Orleans Hoodoo, a syncretistic religion combining Christianity with West African spirit religion primarily found among the Yoruba and Dahomeans and closely related to Haitian Vodoun.

Hurston was required to lie naked under a cloth overnight on an altar in preparation for her initiation ceremony as a member of Hoodoo. This is reminiscent of the “mourning” ceremony found among the Spiritual Baptists of Saint Vincent described by Jeannette Henney, and it allows one to come naked into the world again from a dark place, that is, to be reborn.

Ancient Rome

Rome was a highly developed society that remained a distinct nation-state for more than 12 centuries. Throughout all that time, there was continual social and political evolution. In the beginning, Rome was ruled by kings. It developed into a republic with elected leaders and a senate and then became an autocratic empire ruled by a series of emperors.

In the earliest years, there was little interest in anything more than “local time”. Every city had its own calendar and its own way to reckon time. As Rome evolved into a more complex society and absorbed more neighboring cultures, elaborate calendars, astronomical knowledge, and historical record keeping developed.

At the same time, however, for centuries there was a lack of timekeeping to regulate the workday. Everything was measured relative to sunrise and sunset, and there was no division of time shorter than an hour.

Concept of Time

The era of kings and the early republic are the most poorly documented periods of Roman history. Historical writing by Romans did not occur until Rome had conquered all of Italy and Greece recognized Rome as a world power.

Olympic Games

Greeks began to synchronize time in the 3rd century BCE. By charting Olympic Games and their victors in relation to the reigns of kings, a chronology was established. Two Alexandrian scholars, Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, continued and expanded this work through the middle of the 1st century BCE.

As Rome grew and expanded into the Republic, Hellenic synchronization of time changed to accommodate the Romans. The first Roman writer of chronography was Cornelius Nepos. He systematically attempted to place Roman events into the framework of Greek chronology.

His Chronica was written in the mid-50s BCE. Nepos synchronized events and people from Greek and Roman history. The foundation of the city of Rome, which had had a mythological beginning to this point, was calculated to have happened in the 2nd year of the seventh Olympiad (751 BCE).

From this fixed point of reference, he assigned dates to past events. Later historians continued his work. Varro finished a work titled De Gente Populi Romani in 43 BCE; it quickly became the canon of chronology. Varro calculated the date for the founding of Rome as 754 BCE.

Establishing a Calendar

Calendar

Romans numbered their years by labeling the founding of Rome by Romulus, the first king, as year 1. By today’s reckoning, the date 753 BCE is used. Years were not numbered. Events were remembered by the names of the two consuls in charge of the state when the event occurred. This method was exceedingly cumbersome, because two consuls were elected each year, and some served more than once.

The list of consuls was called the fasti consulares. The word fasti refers to the Roman calendar and almanac. The word evolved to refer to lists or registers that had to do with keeping time. The fasti diurni was a yearbook of religious ceremonies, market days, and court dates. Fasti dies were the days in which legal business could be transacted.

The fasti would be posted in the Forum and other public areas. The word eventually came to be used generally to refer to annals or historical records. The poet Ovid wrote an epic work titled Fasti, using the months of the calendar as a frame to weave together Greek and Roman stories and events.

There was a book for each month, but only the first six have survived. In Ovid’s Fasti, festivals are described chronologically and traced to their legendary origins, in verse. While brilliantly written, the poem is also full of patriotism and flattery toward the imperial family.

earliest roman

The earliest Roman calendar began on March 1, and lasted for 10 months; Martius, Aprilis, Maius, Junius, Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November, and December, followed by two unnamed winter months. The months were calculated on the lunar cycle.

Numa Pompilius, a later ruler, is credited with naming the winter months Januarius and Februarius and adding them to the calendar. Having 12 months based on the lunar cycle resulted in a year of 355 days. Astronomers were aware of the solar year, and periodic adjustments were made to the calendar to stay in line with the seasons by adding a 13th month every other year.

This month was called Mercedonius (Latin for wages). For 600 years, politicians used Mercedonius to their advantage. The month would be shortened or lengthened, added or removed arbitrarily to further their personal political goals.

Julius Caesar

When Julius Caesar came to power, he decided to stabilize the calendar. By 46 BCE, the calendar was so out of sync with the seasons that he added Mercedonius and two additional months. This 455-day year became known as the Year of Confusion, but it did synchronize the calendar with the seasons once again. New calculations based on the earth circling the sun were used to determine the months.

The new moon, an object of reverence to the Romans, occurred on January 1 in 46 BCE. Caesar declared it to be New Year’s Day. His new 12-month calendar was so improved over the previous one that it remained in use, essentially unchanged, until 1752, when it was determined to be 11 days off.

The names of the months are still in use today except for Quintilis, the fifth month, which was renamed Julius in honor of Caesar after his calendar reform. Similarly, Sextilis, the sixth month, was changed to honor Augustus in 8 BCE. Other emperors tried to make similar changes, but they did not last.

Romans did not number each day in their months consecutively. Each month was divided into three parts, and days were counted in relation to these three fixed points (except for February, which had its own system). The Kalends fell on the 1st day of each month. The Nones fell on the 5th or 7th day of each month, and the Ides on the 13th or 15th day.

Each day

The Julian reform of 46 BCE gave our calendar the 12 months as well as their order, length, and names. Astrology introduced the division of the months into units of 7 days. Each day of the week was considered subordinate to one of the seven planets whose movements were believed to regulate the universe. One minor modification in the 3rd century CE renamed the day of the sun, dies solis, the day of the Lord—dies Dominica.

Finally, each day of the week was divided into 24 hours, which were reckoned from midnight, as we do today.

Measuring the Time of Day

Romans had no way to measure the passage of hours in a day. Time was calculated generally from sunrise and sunset—two fixed moments that were the same for everyone. Romans divided the daylight hours into 12 equal units, with midday occurring when the 6th hour became the 7th. Midnight was the moment at the beginning of the 7th hour after sunset.

Measuring

Romans calculated daylight hours from sunrise and nighttime hours from sunset. Days are longer in the summer than in winter, so the actual length of the hour fluctuated through the year. Hours were not subdivided into any smaller unit of time, so the variation in length was of no concern.

The Sundial

At the end of the 4th century BCE, Romans were still content to divide the day into two parts: before midday and after. By the time of the wars against Pyrrhus, the day was further divided into early morning, forenoon, afternoon, and evening. The concept of “hours” was finally introduced to the city in 264 BCE during the First Punic War.

The Greeks had been measuring the sun moving across the sky with sundials since the 5th century BCE. Valerius Messalla, one of the Roman consuls that year, brought the horologium (sundial) of Catana back from Sicily as war booty and set it up on the comitium (a public meeting place), where, for almost 100 years after, it provided artificial time.

The Romans did not understand that the vertical stylus in the center of the sundial that casts the shadow had to be calibrated for the latitude where it was located. However, most individuals probably looked on the sundial as a novelty and continued to go about their business as they always had.

In the year 163 BCE, Romans were finally given their first sundial accurately calculated for their latitude. As reliance on more precise time measurement grew, sundials were set up in public places. They were expensive, so only the wealthy could place such a status symbol in their homes. While sundials were useful tools, they were useless on cloudy or foggy days. This difficulty was remedied a few years later when water clocks were also imported from Greece.

The Water Clock

water clock

The water clock, or clepsydra, was fairly simple in concept. Water would be released from a container steadily to mark the passing of time. The container would have lines measuring the passage of each hour. A sundial was used initially to grade and calibrate the water clock.

After the hour marks were made, one simply refilled the reservoir at sunrise and sunset. From the time of Augustus, after 10 BCE, water clocks grew more elaborate and precise. The presence of a water clock in a private home was a status symbol.

Punctuality was still impossible, even in Imperial Rome. Both sundials and water clocks depended on the hours of the day being divided into 12 equal parts, but there is fluctuation in the length of the day throughout the year. Timekeeping for the Roman was a hit-or-miss activity.

Ancient Romans were profoundly interested in the concept of timekeeping. Methods to track, organize, record, and measure time are seen repeatedly in their history. However, Roman life was never scheduled with precision to the extent it is today.

The inaccurate methods for measuring hours remained empirical, and daily schedules remained fluid and elastic throughout the course of the empire. The study of ancient Rome provides a fascinating look at a complex urban society filled with cosmopolitan people who maintained the rural, agrarian pace of their roots in their daily lives.

Rosetta Stone

The Rosetta Stone is an artifact from the 2nd century BCE that was found in Egypt in 1799. It is a fragment of a carved stone decree. The message on the tablet is written in two Egyptian language scripts—Demotic and Hieroglyphic—as well as in Greek.

By studying the known Greek, 19th century scholars were eventually able to translate the mysterious hieroglyphs that had baffled their predecessors for centuries. With the translation of hieroglyphic script, the secrets of an ancient and powerful society could be read from firsthand historical accounts for the very first time.

The word stone is somewhat misleading; it evokes thoughts of a geological and not a cultural artifact. The object we see today is only a fragment of the original tablet that dates back to 196 BCE. Inscribed on the black granite stone is a decree of the Greek government, which ruled over Egypt at this time. Hieroglyphics were rare after the 4th century BCE but were still used for some religious and governmental purposes.

This is why the decree on the stone is written in three different languages: hieroglyphs, because it was a government document; Demotic, which was the common language of the Egyptian people at the time; and Greek, the language of the foreign government. It is believed that such stones would have been placed outside of temples for public viewing.

Cleopatra

After the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BCE, Egypt became part of the Roman Empire. As the Romans converted to Christianity, so did the Egyptians. As time went by, religious importance shifted away from the temples of the old cults, and they began to close. In 392 CE, the Byzantine emperor Theodosius issued an edict to close them all. The Rosetta Stone was most likely damaged during Justinian’s reign in approximately 535 CE.

During this time temples were being destroyed and their stones recycled for construction projects throughout Egypt. The piece of the stone we see today was eventually moved to Rashid and was used to build a fortress around 1480 CE. Time reduced this stone from a highly regarded object to just another building block.

The stone was discovered in Rashid (Rosetta), in July of 1799. There is some dispute among scholars as to who actually uncovered it. Pierre Francois Xavier Bouchard, a French soldier, is most often credited with the find. The French soldiers immediately realized the importance of the piece and brought it to the Egyptian Institute in Cairo.

This establishment had been founded to house the ancient artifacts gathered by the French scholars who accompanied Napoleon on his expedition to conquer northern Egypt. These scholars were recording the relics of Pharaonic Egypt and sending this information back to Europe.

were made

The discovery of the Rosetta Stone was announced to the world on Sept. 15th, 1799. Copies were made and sent to Paris in 1800. The stone was then moved to Alexandria for further study. After Napoleon’s defeat in 1801, the Rosetta Stone was surrendered to the British as part of the Treaty of Alexandria signed that same year.

The French were allowed to make a cast of it before they were forced to leave Egypt. When the stone first arrived in England, it was housed at the Society of Antiquaries in London. Casts were sent throughout the UK for study. In 1802, it was officially donated to the British Museum by King George III. It has been on display there for more than 2 centuries.

It would be nearly 20 years before someone would solve the mystery of the hieroglyphs written on this artifact. At the time of its discovery, the written language of the Egyptian people was Coptic, which uses Greek letters, along with a few additions, to spell out the Egyptian language.

By this time, Demotic was a long-forgotten dialect, and so this part of the text on the stone was also a mystery to modern scholars. It was not known if it was an alphabetic language like Coptic or a more symbolic language like hieroglyphics.

Two scholars are associated with the translation of hieroglyphs. Thomas Young was an English scientist and researcher. He mastered many subjects during his long and successful career. By 1814 he had completely translated the Demotic text of the Rosetta Stone.

basic understanding

In the next few years he had achieved a basic understanding of hieroglyphics, although it was later determined that many of his findings were incorrect. Some of Young’s conclusions appeared in the famous article “Egypt” he wrote for the 1818 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. However, he did not publish his complete findings until 1823.

Jean-Francois Champollion is the name usually associated with the Rosetta Stone. Today, he is also credited with being the father of egyptology. Champollion was born on December 23, 1790, at Figeac in France. At the age of 10 he began formal study at the lyceum in Grenoble. By 1806, he spoke a dozen different oriental languages, including Coptic.

At just 16 he published a paper that theorized that the Coptic language of the modern Egyptians was the same verbal language as that of the ancient Egyptians. This theory would be the basis of his later work trans lating the Rosetta Stone. It is thought that Champollion’s immense interest in this topic came from the Napoleonic campaigns in Egypt during his childhood. He dedicated his career to studying the Pharaonic times of Egypt linguistically and archaeologically.

studying Egyptian

He traveled around Europe studying Egyptian collections and taking extensive notes of all of his observations. He was appointed curator of the Louvre’s Egyptian exhibit when it opened in 1827. In 1828, Champollion traveled to Egypt for the first and only time. It was an extensive 2-year journey mapping and studying ancient artifacts throughout the Nile region.

By 1818, Champollion had succeeded in figuring out that some signs were strictly symbolic and that many others had phonetic value. Therefore, the ancient Egyptian script was at least partially alphabetic. This breakthrough allowed Champollion and other scholars to crack the code of the ancient Egyptians.

A language thought to be lost in time was now legible. The ability to read hieroglyphic carvings has allowed scholars to study and understand the documents of an ancient civilization that are nearly 5,000 years old.

Saltationism and Gradualism

In the explanation for the origin of new life forms throughout organic evolution, the temporal framework is very important. Two major positions have been offered to account for the process of speciation. Darwinism maintained that the emergence of a new species occurs slowly over a vast period of time in terms of slight variations and natural selection; as such, biological gradualism supplements geological gradualism in natural history.

This interpretation upheld the continuity of organic evolution. In the 20th century, neo-Darwinism also supported biological gradualism, claiming that the process of speciation results from the slow accumulation of favorable minor changes in the genetic makeup of an organism.

Over time, these positive slight alterations enhanced the adaptation, survival, and reproduction of a species in a changing environment. In sharp contrast, most sudden major mutations in genetic makeup are usually harmful to an organism and result in its sterility or death. If no members of a population can adapt to changes in the environment, then the population becomes extinct.

Because biological evolution has been occurring for about 4 billion years, it is generally held that there has been sufficient time for organic history to account for the staggering creativity of life forms in terms of biological gradualism. Nevertheless, the fossil record attests to the fact that most of the species that have ever existed on the earth slowly or suddenly became extinct.

There is no consensus among naturalists concerning the conceptual issue of time and speciation. Although Charles Darwin supported evolutionary gradualism, his contemporary Thomas Henry Huxley argued for a form of saltationism. Huxley maintained that the appearance of a new species represents a major leap, or saltation, in organic evolution. Therefore, in sharp contrast to Darwin himself, Huxley did not claim that biological history represents an organic continuum.

naturalists

To some naturalists, the incomplete fossil record suggested that species both appear and vanish suddenly throughout evolutionary time. In the middle of the 20th century, the saltationism position was revived by Richard B. Goldschmidt in his controversial book The Basis of Evolution (1940).

In this work, the geneticist claimed that the change from species to species cannot be explained in terms of the accumulation of atomistic changes in an organism (microevolution). Instead, Goldschmidt favored macroevolution with its quantum speciation. Consequently, he put forward his “hopeful monster” hypothesis, which argued that macroevolution (not microevolution) resulted in the instantaneous appearance of a new species and even higher taxonomic groups.

More recently, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould presented their “punctuated equilibrium” hypothesis, which claims that a new species appears in a small isolated population during a relatively short period of geological time (only several tens of thousands of years).

Unfortunately, this interpretation of “rapid” evolution, along with the incomplete fossil record and alleged lack of transitional fossils in the geological column, provided biblical fundamentalists and religious creationists with a basis they can use for discrediting the immense age of the earth in general and the process of organic evolution in particular.

For scientists, however, geological time and biological time are linked in organic evolution and the process of speciation. This remains the case regardless of whether or not rates of evolutionary change have varied greatly throughout those vast eras of time represented by earth history.

Salvation

Salvation comes from the Latin salus, which means “sound, safe”. The study of salvation is called soteriology. Salvation in a religious sense indicates an ultimate safety. Initially a person is in a state of spiritual danger, which indicates a future (or also present) punishment in some form; therefore the significance of salvation changes over time.

Through the intervention of a deity or spiritual awareness, the individual is removed from spiritual danger and receives a spiritual reward. This turn from danger and punishment to safety and reward is salvation. Note that the word salvation has European roots (Latin) and therefore is foremost a Christian concept.

Most religions teach that nonpractitioners face danger and punishment, whereas adherents receive safety and reward. That similarity is expressed in a variety of methods depending on the religion. The word salvation is found almost solely within Christianity, yet the idea of turning from spiritual punishment to spiritual safety runs constant in all religions.

For this reason, the concept of salvation has been used to describe other religious belief systems. Christianity makes the strongest use of the idea of salvation. Christianity focuses on Jesus Christ, whom Christians believe to be both a physical man and God incarnate. Christian salvation teaches that an individual needs to accept Jesus Christ as coming from God and follow Jesus’s teachings in order to receive salvation.

The reward for the adherent is eternity in heaven with God. The punishment for nonbelief is an eternity in hell apart from God. This is a broad characterization of Christianity, which itself has three main groups—Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant—each with a different understanding of salvation. All three believe that Jesus is the corner-stone of salvation.

properly practiced

Catholic Christians believe salvation is most properly practiced within the confines of church membership. Therefore Catholics receive salvation from within the Catholic Church. Orthodox Christians believe salvation is most properly practiced within the desire for a holy life. Orthodox Christians receive salvation from Jesus as they grow in holiness.

Protestant Christians believe that salvation is most properly practiced as the individual accepts Jesus in a one-to-one experience with God. Protestants receive salvation from Jesus when they accept Jesus as God of their life and follow this through in action. These three Christian aspects of salvation developed over time, with Catholic and Orthodox developing concurrently and the Protestant aspect developing later.

The idea that salvation can be represented in an experience (or experiences) is found only in Protestant Christianity. This experience is known as “being saved”. Christian Catholicism and Orthodoxy do not have the experience of “being saved”; instead, both teach that the experience of God should be manifested within the Church. Because Christians believe that nonbelief results in an eternity in hell, they proselytize.

Judaism does not focus on salvation as an act of believing or accepting. Instead, Jews escape spiritual danger and receive spiritual safety in trying to live a life focused on God (in Hebrew, Yahweh, often transliterated as Jehovah) coupled with a desire to combat sin, which is described in the Tanakh, or Jewish scriptures (which Christians refer to as the Old Testament).

Yahweh will reward those who follow him through spiritual and physical blessings. Conversely, Yahweh will punish non-adherents, although the manner of punishment differs among the different Jewish religious groups. Traditionally Judaism has not proselytized because the religion teaches that Yahweh has chosen the Jews as an example to humanity of how to live.

to heaven

Islam teaches the doctrine of salvation. Within Islam, Muslims will go to heaven (paradise) whereas non-Muslims will go to hell. In this sense, Islam and Christianity are similar. Yet the two religions differ in that the doctrines of God are different.

In Islam, salvation occurs when one accepts Allah as the only God and Muhammad as his greatest prophet, strives to follow Muslim precepts, and strives to defeat sin. Islam focuses dually on both the acceptance of Allah and the life lived in service to Allah. Islam promotes proselytizing.

Hinduism and Buddhism, being Eastern religions, share the ideas of karma (actions) and transmigration (reincarnation).  In these religions salvation is not achieved by believing in a god (Christianity and Islam) or living out a life in obedience to a god (Judaism), but by being personally responsible for one’s actions.

In Hinduism, one is aided in reaching spiritual knowledge, or even purity, by a plethora of gods. Negative actions can be erased through positive actions with the result that karma is negated, and the Hindu reaches moksha, or release from the stream of rebirths. This can be considered salvation in the sense that a person has escaped from the continued punishment of rebirths: The atman (soul) has joined with Brahman, an impersonal Spirit that is beyond the illusion of life.

Time, therefore, plays an important aspect because the adherent moves closer to release through the passage of accumulated lives. Hinduism teaches that all humans are part of the Hindu religious system, and Hindus therefore do not proselytize.

One who is not aware of Hinduism and therefore does not adhere to the Hindu faith is living an ignorant life as a result of negative actions in past lives; once the nonadherent develops good karma (actions), the person will be rewarded by being born in an environment that teaches Hindu practices.

worshipped

In Buddhism, one is guided by the teachings of the Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama). The Buddha is not worshipped as is the Christian God, Islamic Allah, Jewish Yahweh, and Hindu gods. Instead the Buddha participates in the act of salvation through instruction of how to reach total spiritual awareness, which leads to entering Nirvana (a place beyond suffering and the importance of individually lived lives).

Buddhists can be said to have salvation in that one can move from spiritual punishment (reincarnations upon the earth) to spiritual reward (move into Nirvana). Thus, just as in Hinduism, the salvation aspect is dependent on time as one progresses through numerous lives. This instruction is found in the Four Noble Truths taught by the Buddha. Buddhism is further divided into two major groups, which view the Buddha’s teachings in slightly different ways.

Theravada Buddhists hold that each Buddhist is responsible to him- or herself alone and can draw on only him- or herself for a realization of the Four Noble Truths. Mahayana Buddhists believe that individual Buddhists are aided by bodhisattvas, individuals who have been enlightened and have chosen to remain in earthly lives for the purpose of helping others to reach spiritual awareness achieved.

The Sandman

The Sandman is a mythological character, which, at least from the 17th century on, has associated with time, especially the time for children to go to bed. A parallel can be drawn from the Sandman to Hypnos, the god of sleep. Hypnos’s mother is Nyx, the goddess of night; his twin brother is Thanatos, the god of death. As the donor of sleep, Hypnos has power over gods and humans.

In Homer’s Iliad Hypnos usually appears in human shape, but to hide from Zeus, Hypnos disguises himself as the bird of the night. Hypnos can make people fall asleep with his pure appearance, but he sometimes uses the noise of his wings or juices out of a horn to put people to sleep.

The oldest known source of the Sandman is from Sweden. In 1691, a Sandman-like figure, called Jon Blund, was mentioned there. The Oxford English Dictionary contains an entry on the Sandman from 1772: “sandman noun (the sandman) [sing.] an imaginary man who is said to make children fall asleep.” A German dictionary entry from 1777 describes the Sandman in two versions: First, it is a man transporting and selling sand.

Second, in fun, parents say to their children that the Sandman is coming when they become tired and rub their eyes, as if one had put sand into them. This explanation refers to another root of the Sandman history, the Sandmen and Sandwomen, who lived in the German Vogtland. The sand they prospected was used as scouring powder for cleaning.

In the 19th century, the Sandman character found its way into various areas of literature and music. In 1815, E. T. A. Hoffmann wrote the narration The Sandman. One of its main characters is Coppelius, a cruel man who scatters sand into children’s eyes until they are bleeding and even tears them out of their sockets. Like the earlier version of the Sandman, Coppelius appears in the evening time. Hans Christian Andersen’s The Sandman was published in 1841.

the original

In the original text, the Sandman is called Ole Lukøje, meaning “Ole, shutter of eyes”. He sprinkles sweet milk into the eyes of children. While they are sleeping, he comes and opens his umbrella with pictures on it for the children who have behaved, so that they will have pleasant dreams. The others don’t dream anything.

In music, the character was used by the composer Robert Schumann, who set music to the poem “The Sandman,” by Hermann Kletke. In Engelbert Humperdinck’s opera Hänsel und Gretel (Act Two, Scene Two) from 1893, the Sandman appears to the two frightened children who stay in the forest during the night and he sings: “The little Sandman am I … ” He wants to bring some grains of sand for their tired eyes.

Between 1988 and 1996, the American author Neil Gaiman wrote a famous comic book series called The Sandman. The protagonist of the series, who was also called Morpheus, is the ruler of the world of dreams. Also, in the 20th century, the Sandman appeared on radio and television series and shows.

Every Tuesday since 1923, the radio station KHJ (Kindness, Happiness, Joy), situated in Los Angeles, has broadcasted bedtime stories with the title “Sandman”. On May 22, 1956, Radio DDR (Radio German Democratic Republic) began with the program “The Sandman Is Coming”.

On television, the Sandman had his first appearance on November 22, 1959, at the DFF (German Television Broadcasting). Since then, Unser Sandmaennchen (Our Little Sandman) is watched by millions of children and adults every evening at 6:50 p.m. in various countries. It is probably the most famous children’s program on German television.

The figure

The figure of the Sandman manifests an interesting time structure concerning his age of appear- ance and his moment of emergence. One cannot say how old the Sandman is, because he is often described and represented as a little man, sometimes with a beard but also with a young face. However, the age of his Ancient Greek ancestor differs between an old and a young person.

The Sandman combines old age and youth, often has a wise personality, and stays in contact with children. From today’s pedagogical point of view, the Sandman stands for continuity and steady recurrence, and he ends the day with a nice, calming evening greeting.

Sandpainting

Sandpainting (also referred to as “drypainting”) remains a significant and well-known feature of religious ceremonies in a number of cultures, especially among Native Americans in the U.S. Southwest, Tibetan Buddhists, and Australian Aborigines. These colorful, symbolic images serve different functions in different parts of the world but also share some common features.

As the name sandpainting implies, the artists and religious functionaries generally work with simple materials, but their work involves intricate patterns that follow age-old designs. Because sandpaintings depict meaning on a supernatural or cosmic level, they provide insight into ways by which various peoples view time and eternity, key intellectual and spiritual frames of reference in all cultures.

Although sandpaintings are more important for their original roles in ritualistic contexts, connoisseurs and collectors also recognize the aesthetic qualities of sandpaintings, which have acquired commercial value in some regions. As a result, the religious origins of these ancient artistic traditions have become better known, at least on a rudimentary level.

Although practiced among the Pueblos and other indigenous peoples of the American Southwest and Great Plains, sandpainting has assumed its highest profile in the Navajo traditional religious system. The Navajos use sandpaintings while performing ceremonies to invoke blessings from the supernatural world (e.g., rain, crops, health) and also in their famous curing ceremonies.

In the traditional manner, the Navajo discover the causes of problems or illnesses through divination and then determine the appropriate ritual procedures—or “ways”—to remedy the situation. These elaborate ceremonies, called “chants” or “sings,” include many ritual components, and drypainting procedures play a critical role.

limited numbers

Whereas the chants survive in limited numbers, scholars have documented many hundreds of sandpaintings to accompany curing ceremonies. The singers who lead these rituals are highly respected professionals, and they determine—in consultation with other people who are involved in the ceremony (including the patient)—the precise combination and order of features.

Such ceremonies can last up to 9 nights, and each day has a traditional set of procedures, all of which purify the place and patient/client for this special occasion and invoke the presence and aid of the gods, the “Holy People.” Singers and their assistants often require many hours to prepare a painting, which can be small or so large that it requires the construction of a special hogan.

They prepare a background of sand or buckskin and dispense the colorful materials (e.g., crushed minerals, charcoal, dried and crushed flowers, cornmeal, and pollen) with their hands to create the detailed pattern, which includes geometric images, lines, and figures—a diagram of reality, the visible and normally invisible realms.

Even colors have symbolic meaning, and each scene includes figures that relate to mythology; the singer’s attention to every detail makes the painting powerful. As the patient sits in the painting and comes into physical contact with its symbols, the image provides an actual place for human beings to encounter cosmic forces. Navajo refer to the sandpainting, in effect a cosmic map, as iikaah—a place where the gods come and go.

In fact, the paintings portray Holy People, sacred animals and plants, and astronomical bodies. Because these images contain sacred power, which is subject to abuse, singers destroy paintings when the ceremonies end. Sandpaintings help the Navajo restore and maintain balance and harmony between the natural and supernatural worlds, which are intertwined in their traditional worldview.

cosmic images

The portrayal of cosmic images also serves a vital role in a number of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, but the most famous sandpaintings in these traditions relate to Tibetan Buddhist (Vajrayana) beliefs and practices. Although much of the Tantric Buddhist teaching remains esoteric to outsiders, the Dalai Lama, head of the Tibetan Buddhist community, has promoted their views by distributing knowledge about the most famous aspect of Tibetan Buddhism, namely, the mandala.

The mandala (Sanskrit for a “circular” or “round” shape or container), often made of richly colored sands and other materials, conveys a wide range of symbolic significance. In its essence, the mandala is a picture or diagram of the universe, a representation of the deities that inhabit the cosmos, that serves as an aid to meditation for those on the path to Enlightenment (Nirvana).

The ceremony surrounding the creation of a mandala, which includes music and chanting, has a purifying effect and plays an important role in the initiation of Tibetan monks and the pursuit of spiritual blessings. As a place of spiritual encounter—an actual sacred space and something more than a mere picture—the mandala channels positive energy to both beginners and experts in Tantric practices.

The Tantric artists refer to the sand mandala as dul-tson-kyil-khor, a mandala/diagram composed of colored powders (e.g., sands, plant materials, gemstones). The practitioners follow traditional patterns and carefully control the distribution of the mandala’s tiny components with a small hand-held device. Depending on its size and complexity, monks can take up to several weeks to complete a sand mandala.

The deities that populate the finished painting point to various aspects of the Buddhist quest and aid the contemplative process. One of the most famous mandalas, the so-called Wheel of Time (Kalachakra), reminds adepts about the transient nature of time. Like all such cosmic diagrams, the wheel helps contemplatives focus on the relation between the finite and the infinite.

the mandala

Like the Navajo artist/singer, Tibetan artists/monks also destroy the mandala after the ceremony ends—in this case by pouring its transportable components into a body of water. This destructive act distributes blessings from the mandala and vividly symbolizes the impermanence of life, one of the pivotal principles of Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, Siddhartha Gautama—the Buddha himself—taught his followers the value of sandpaintings.

Certain groups of Australian Aborigines also practice a form of sandpainting, often called “dot painting.” With a patch of desert surface as a background, they use various materials (e.g., sand, stones, plant materials, and feathers) to depict various accounts (e.g., their creation account, clan history, sacred sites). Accompanied by ceremonies of song and dance, some dot paintings portray scenes from the most sacred history, what the indigenous Australians call “Dreamtime” or “Dreaming”—the time of Origins that remains immanent.

In other words, these simple ground paintings have functioned as a primary medium to depict the sacred beginning of time and history, to connect Dreamtime with the present. While the designs perpetuate motifs in use from remote times, some artists now use new media for these images and have begun to market portable versions of these paintings.

Shri Adi Sankara

Shri Adi Sankara was a philosopher-theologian of the Advaita Vedanta (nondual) school of Indian thought. His dates are disputed, although he probably lived and worked in the early 8th century. Besides his distinguished career as an influential thinker, he played several roles: Hindu reformer, founder of monastic centers, commentator on ancient texts, and author of original works of philosophy.

Medieval Indian culture recognized two types of time: linear historical time, often associated with dynastic rule, and cyclic cosmic time, which was depicted as four yugas (ages) of descending longevity. In the ancient Atharva Veda text (19.53–54), time is identified with the deity Prajapati.

According to the Maitri Upanishad (6.14–16), the sun, a source and support for all living things, is also identified with Brahman, and time is, by extension, identified with Brahman, or the highest reality. In the cosmic level, time is a power that brings about the evolution and involution of the entire universe.

Time is depicted in the Upanishads as cyclical, with an inconceivable beginning and end. Being described as all-inclusive and rolling on endlessly, time is conceived commonly as a destructive force. Time is, for instance, compared with the six seasons, which swallow up creatures, or cook all creatures, according to the Maitri Upanishad (6.15), making them ripe enough to be swallowed by death.

Other metaphors of time depicted it as a noose that binds one and tightens as one grows older; time is imagined to be a winged horse that carries away all creatures, or time is like a ceaselessly revolving wheel. Moreover, time is connected to the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, which is interpreted as an endless cycle of suffering that only ends with the attainment of liberating knowledge and status of one liberated while alive (jivanmukti).

The conception

The conception of time as four yugas is found in the worldview of the Puranic texts (c. 4th century CE). The term yuga is derived from the throws of dice and suggests that life is similar to a gigantic dice game. The primary or golden age is the krita yuga, which lasts 1,728,000 years, and it is represented by a four-legged mythical cow, which is a symbol of the social and cosmic order (dharma).

The second age, the treta yuga, lasts for 1,296,000 years and is a period of time when the mythical cow stands on three legs. This silver age is followed by the copper age of the dvapara yuga, a period when the mythical cow stands on two legs and which lasts for 864,000 years.

During the final age, or kali yuga, the mythical cow stands on one leg for a period that lasts for 432,000 years. During this last period, the mythical cow symbolizes the idea that humans can no longer perform good deeds during a final age characterized by strife, quarrel, dissension, war, and evil.

Each cycle of the four yugas is called a mahayuga (great age), which represents a kalpa (eon) at the conclusion of which there occurs a dissolution of the world and return to cosmic nondifferentiation. After an unspecified period, the cosmos is recreated, and the cyclic process begins again with the dawn of a golden age and a repeat of the entire cycle.

two notions

These two notions of time were inherited by Sankara, who, among his other accomplishments, is arguably most renowned for his commentary on the Vedanta Sutras. Originally composed around the 2nd century BCE by Badarayana, the Vedanta Sutras were revived by Gaudapada and his disciple Govinda, who initiated Sankara into the text. During their transmission, the texts were influenced by ideas from the Vijnanavada and Madhyamika Buddhist schools, whereas Sankara attempted to purge the text of their distinctive Buddhist traits.

Sankara’s intention was to construct a philosophical edifice based on a direct interpretation of the older Upanishad texts that he considered part of the divine revelation to ancient Indian seers. These ancient revelatory texts helped Sankara to grasp reality, world, and the self from a nondualistic perspective.

Sankara makes a distinction between reality, appearance, and unreal. Reality is that which cannot be sublated by any kind of experience, whereas appearance can be sublated by reality, which Sankara identifies with Brahman. The unreal can never become a content of experience; it is thus that which neither can be nor cannot be sublated by other experience.

For Sankara, sublation is a mental process in which an object or content of consciousness is cancelled because it is contradicted by a new experience. You perceive an object in your path, for instance, that you imagine to be a snake, but on closer inspection it turns out to be a piece of rope. Sublation represents a change of one’s judgment because a new experience rectifies one’s previous erroneous belief.

important implications

The notion of sublation in Sankara’s philosophy possesses important implications for time, which is a category of empirical experience or only of the phenomenal world. Sankara recognizes six types of empirical or lower forms of knowledge: perception, comparison, noncognition (judgments of absence), inference, postulation (assuming of a fact in order to make another fact intelligible), and testimony (accepting as true information that one receives from a reliable person).

The basic problem with these six instruments of knowledge is that they are all subject to ignorance because, in part, they presuppose a distinction between knower and object, which is a dualistic mode of knowing, and thus do not allow the individual to grasp the nondual nature of Brahman.

The six forms of knowledge are valid as long as the intuitive vision of Brahman is not achieved by means of higher knowledge, which is an intuitive type of knowledge that is unique, immediate, and self-validating. The six types of empirical knowledge are rendered invalid because one can see that they are tainted by ignorance and are sublated by the higher form of knowledge.

lower empirical

This distinction between lower empirical knowledge and intuitive higher knowledge means that time is something to which everything is subject, and it is thus fundamental to the objectification of human existence. Simultaneously, it is our temporality that gives us a chance to know the eternal Brahman, which is defined as both time and eternity. Because of the notion of sublation, time is ultimately illusory for Sankara because it can never sublate Brahman.

Even though time possesses a lower reality when compared with Brahman, time is in us as pure subjects, and we are in time as empirical egos. The self (atman), which is identical to Brahman, is timeless, does not arise in time, is not subject to a present, and does not have an end in time. The self (atman) exists in an eternal now without past or future.

Thus the phenomenal world, which can conceal and distort reality, is illusory and is produced by illusion, a metaphysical power (sakti) of Brahman. This illusion is beginningless, unthinkable, and indescribable, although time arises only within it. For Sankara, time is only real on the level of appearance, but it is ultimately unreal and illusory because it can be sublated by a higher reality.