My argument is that religious beliefs are primarily created and generated by four very basic and fundamental “Needs” or “Drives.” From a rather practical and pragmatic approach, in general, religions could be said to involve meaning or purpose, others and relationships, as well as structures and principles for both meaning, relationships, and gro…[Read more]

Karen Armstrong, In her book, The Case For God, opens with the discussion of the 300 plus caves in Southern France and Northern Spain which have amazingly artistic ‘prehistoric’ cave paintings of prehistoric animals many of whom are now extinct, some dating to 30,000 years ago. “In all there are about six hundred frescoes and fifteen hundred engra…[Read more]

Karen Armstrong, In her book, The Case For God, opens with the discussion of the 300 plus caves in Southern France and Northern Spain which have amazingly artistic ‘prehistoric’ cave paintings of prehistoric animals many of whom are now extinct, some dating to 30,000 years ago. “In all there are about six hundred frescoes and fifteen hundred engra…[Read more]

Korean War Battle of Chosin Reservoir: The British casualties in one day in the battle of the Somme during WWI were 50,000 dead and wounded. 50,000 casualties in one day – patriotism & esprit de corps – is a very solid proof that there is a “psychology of groups.”
Why is the Battle of Chosin Reservoir important?
Preface: Materialist dogma – “…[Read more]

This paper surveys potential counterparts of the ancient Egyptian concept of mAat (maat) from other cultures and summarises such cross-cultural studies as have already been completed. Its scope ranges from antiquity to the present day and across Europe, Africa, the Near East, India, China, Australia and the Americas. Paradigms that appear to…[Read more]

Lukács is widely recognized as being the first critical theorist to have explicitly developed the idea of a “standpoint theory”. According to such a theory, members of oppressed groups enjoy an epistemic privilege regarding the nature of their oppression. However, there is no agreement regarding what precise argument Lukács offers for his claim…[Read more]

Mapping fields using co-citation information is a common endeavour in many disciplines but has rarely been performed in the humanities. In this article, I use data from 417 back-of-book source indices to map the field of ancient Mediterranean religion on three levels: sub-discipline, ancient work, and references in ancient works. The method…[Read more]

The article is published in the official Journal of The Institute of Science and Technology (ISSN 2040-1868)

The act of classification has the widest implications for scholarship. Whatever the format, it involves the totality of our being. The use of our eyes indicates that decisions about whatever it is that we observe have already been made. Yet the interaction between the mechanical act of seeing and the mind or memory has rarely been registered. An…[Read more]

Some thoughts on Boris Eldagsen’s Image, well ‘photograph’, an AI generated image.

Review of the literature on pictograph sites in the Canadian Shield with specific reference to those found in the Lake of the Woods, in north-western Ontario, Canada.

This article argues that the analysis of a threedimensional image demanded a three-dimensional approach. The authors realise that discussions of images and image processing inveterately conceptualise representation as being flat, static, and finite. The authors recognise the need for a fresh acuteness to three-dimensionality as a meaningful – a…[Read more]

Essay on the NiCHE-Canada website: https://niche-canada.org/2023/10/30/what-is-a-heritage-river/

This article discusses four pictograph sites in the Lake of the Woods where the images were interpreted by several Indigenous peoples.

This text consists of the ‘lectio praecursoria’ given at the defense of my doctoral dissertation “The Good Noblemen Who Conquered the Kingdom: Islam, Historiography, and Aristocratic Legitimation in Late-Medieval Portugal”. This dissertation deals with aristocratic historiography and political legitimation in late-medieval Portugal (late…[Read more]

This article investigates several discussions of “chemistry,” understood as an analysts’ category referring to theories and practices dealing with the structure and transformation of matter. By reading these texts (a treatise defending kīmiyāʾ by al-Fārābī, the famous passage from Ibn Sīnā’s Shifāʾ on transmutation, Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwā…[Read more]

Details the usages of “gnomes” in L. Frank Baum and J.R.R. Tolkien

article + 6 photographs from the Manuscriptistan Project

article + 6 photographs from the Manuscriptistan Project