In his early work, when Sigmund Freud still favored the “seduction theory” of neuroses, which was based in suppressed and/or repressed childhood experiences of sexual trauma, Freud often credited Pierre Janet for creating ideas such as dissociation and the subconscious. Freud soon dropped his seduction theory model in favor of an unconscious drives theory (wish … Read more
This open access article from the Annals of General Psychiatry offers an interesting glimpse into the role of the psychological healer in ancient Greece, and to surprise, the role that shamanism played in their healing model. Cool stuff. Full Citation:Tzeferakos, G, and Athanasios, D. (2014, Apr 12). ‘Sacred psychiatry in ancient Greece. Annals of General … Read more
William G Dever is the author of Did God Have a Wife?: Archaeology and Folk Religion in Ancient Israel (2005), as well as, more recently, The Lives of Ordinary People in Ancient Israel: When Archaeology and the Bible Intersect (2012). In the Old Testament, the goddesses Asherah is quite possibly linked to the “Queen of … Read more
If you’re a bibliophile and a lover of the beauty and sensuousness of the spoken and written word (like Stephen Fry in this fantastic animated essay), then you probably already know about the sophistication, the richness, and the history (animated, no less) of the English language. But if don’t have a strong background on grammar … Read more
Every now and then a cartoon comes along that, through the use of a hilarious reductio ad absurdum, so clearly and succinctly demolishes creationism as a viable alternative hypothesis to explain the complexity and diversity of life, exposes its inherent irrationality, and makes clear its ulterior motivation and the double standards on which it is … Read more
If you like to have fun, to learn and to laugh, next time you have a dinner party, may I suggest you get the smartest or most educated person in the room wasted and then ask him/her to explain something related to their field of expertise? If you’re kind of skeptical, the following video shows … Read more
The first time I read Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, I could not get over the chapter on Pythagoras. As Russell claims, “Pythagoras… was intellectually one of the most important men that ever lived, both when he was wise and when he was unwise. Mathematics, in the sense of demonstrative deductive argument, begins with … Read more
If your knowledge of history comes from movies and popular culture, chances are that your historical understanding is probably more of a misunderstanding. Admit it: you think of Vikings wearing horned helmets, you can’t not picture Lady Godiva riding naked through Coventry, you pity Napoleon’s shrimp-like height and assume his quest for conquest was just … Read more
The art and science of formal classification owes its origin to the great philosopher Aristotle, who conceived of a conceptual tree whose trunk and branches denote different divisions of ontology, hierarchies of being, logical and natural relations, etc. This tree metaphor became ubiquitous until very recently. It’s been used to map historical and genealogical changes … Read more
This famous phrase, made famous by Sir Isaac Newton, and celebrated ever since, may have been a public attempt at modesty and historical gratitude that was sure to endear him to, and inspire, subsequent generations of natural philosophers, but it may also have been a little bit of an underhanded insult to Robert Hooke, just … Read more