Body and Machine in Classical Antiquity

Body and Machine in Classical Antiquity PDF Author: Maria Gerolemou
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316514668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
The first systematic exploration of the multifaceted relationship between human bodies and machines in classical antiquity.

Body and Machine in Classical Antiquity

Body and Machine in Classical Antiquity PDF Author: Maria Gerolemou
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316514668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 347

Get Book Here

Book Description
The first systematic exploration of the multifaceted relationship between human bodies and machines in classical antiquity.

Body and Machine in Classical Antiquity

Body and Machine in Classical Antiquity PDF Author: Maria Gerolemou
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781009088060
Category : Human body and technology
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Explores the ways in which the human body and the world of machines and technological artefacts intersected in the ancient world. Traces the origins of the body-machine interface from Homer's automata down to the figural assimilation between body parts and products of human craft in Greek and Roman medicine"--

Body Dialectics in the Age of Goethe

Body Dialectics in the Age of Goethe PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004334351
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 437

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Book Description
In opposition to an essentialist conceptualization, the social construct of the human body in literature can be analyzed and described by means of effective methodologies that are based on Discourse Theory, Theory of Cultural Transmission and Ecology, System Theory, and Media Theory. In this perspective, the body is perceived as a complex arrangement of substantiation, substitution, and omission depending on demands, expectations, and prohibitions of the dominant discourse network. The term Body-Dialectics stands for the attempt to decipher – and for a moment freeze – the web of such discursive arrangements that constitute the fictitious notion of the body in the framework of a specific historic environment, here in the Age of Goethe.

Body Technologies in the Greco-Roman World

Body Technologies in the Greco-Roman World PDF Author: Maria Gerolemou
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
ISBN: 1835536433
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
A collection of papers that introduces the notion of the technosoma (techno body) into discussions on the representations of the body in classical antiquity. By applying the category of the technosoma to the ‘natural’ body, this volume explicitly narrows down the discussion of the technical and the natural to the physiological body. In doing so, the present collection focuses on body technologies in the specific form of beautification and body enhancement techniques, as well as medical and surgical treatments. The volume elucidates two main points. Firstly, ancient techno bodies show that the categories of gender and sexuality are at the core of the intersection of the natural and the technical, and intersect with notions of race, age, speciesism, class and education, and dis/ability. Secondly, the collection argues that new body technologies have in fact a very ancient history that can help to address the challenges of contemporary technological innovation. To this end, the volume showcases the intersection of ‘natural’ bodies with technology, gender, sexuality and reproduction. On the one hand, techno bodies tend to align with normative ideas about gender, and sexuality. On the other hand, body modification and/or enhancement techniques work hand in hand with economic and political power and knowledge, thus they often produce techno bodies that are shaped according to individual needs, i.e. according to a certain lifestyle. Consequently, techno bodies threaten to alter traditional ideas of masculinity, femininity, male and female sexuality and beauty.

Tools and the Organism

Tools and the Organism PDF Author: Colin Webster
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226828778
Category : Human body (Philosophy)
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
"Medicine is itself a type of technology, involving therapeutic tools and substances, and so one way to write the history of medicine is as the application of different technologies to the human body. In Tools and the Organism, Colin Webster argues that, over the course of antiquity, notions shifted about what type of object a body is, what substances constitute its essential nature, and how its parts interact. By following these changes and taking the question of technology into the heart of Greek and Roman medicine, Webster reveals how the body was first conceptualized as an "organism"-a functional object whose inner parts were tools [organa] that each completed certain vital tasks. Webster's approach provides both an overarching survey of the ways that technologies impacted notions of corporeality and corporeal behaviors and, at the same time, stays attentive to the specific material details of ancient tools and how they informed assumptions about somatic structures, substances, and inner processes. For example, by turning to developments in water-delivery technologies and pneumatic tools, we see how these changing material realities altered theories of the vascular system and respiration across Classical antiquity. Tools and the Organism makes the compelling case for why telling the history of ancient Greco-Roman medical theories, from the Hippocratics to Galen, should pay close attention to the question of technology. Selling points: Tour de force survey of ancient medicine First book to demonstrate how the body got its "organs" and what this has to do with ancient technologies For anyone interested in ancient culture, science, medicine, and technology"--

The Power of Human Imagination

The Power of Human Imagination PDF Author: Jerome L. Singer
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461339413
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
For at least half of the twentieth century, psychology and the other mental health professions all but ignored the significant adaptive pos sibilities of the human gift of imagery. Our capacity seemingly to duplicate sights, sounds, and other sensory experiences through some form of central brain process continues to remain a mysterious, alma st miraculous skill. Because imagery is so much a private experience, experimental psychologists found it hard to measure and turned their attentian to observable behaviors that could easily be studied in ani maIs as well as in humans. Psychoanalysts and others working with the emotionally disturbed continued to take imagery informatian se riously in the form of dream reports, transferenee fantasies, and as indications of hallucinations or delusions. On the whole, however, they emphasized the maladaptive aspects of the phenomena, the dis tortions and defensiveness or the "regressive" qualities of daydreams and sequences of images. The present volume grows out of a long series of investigations by the senior author that have suggested that daydreaming and the stream of consciousness are not simply manifestations in adult life of persist ing phenomena of childhood. Rather, the data suggest that imagery sequences represent a major system of encoding and transforming information, a basic human capacity that is inevitably part of the brain's storage process and one that has enormous potential for adap tive utility. A companian volume, The Stream of Consciousness, edited by Kenneth S. Pope and Jerome L.

The Body of the Combatant in the Ancient Mediterranean

The Body of the Combatant in the Ancient Mediterranean PDF Author: Hannah-Marie Chidwick
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350240885
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
This volume explores a broad range of perceptions, receptions and constructions of the soldierly body in the ancient world, putting the notion of embodiment at the forefront of its engagement with ancient warfare. The 10 chapters presented here respond directly to the question of how war was embodied in antiquity by drawing on detailed case studies to examine the sensory and bodily experience of combat across wide-ranging time periods and geographies, from classical Greece and Rome to Roman Britain and Persia. Together they illustrate how the body in war is a vital universal element that unites these vastly different contexts. Although the centrality of the human body in war-making was recognized in antiquity, a body-centric approach to combat has yet to be widely adopted in modern Classical Studies. This collection brings together new research in ancient history, classical literature, material culture, bioarchaeology and art history within a theoretical framework drawn from recent developments in War Studies that places the body front and centre. The new perspectives it offers on brutality in battle, the physical expression of warrior identity, and post-combat remembrance and recovery challenge readers to re-assess and expand their existing ideas as part of a broader ongoing 'call to arms' to revolutionize the study of ancient warfare in the 21st century.

Aristophanic Humour

Aristophanic Humour PDF Author: Peter Swallow
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350101540
Category : Drama
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
This volume sets out to discuss a crucial question for ancient comedy – what makes Aristophanes funny? Too often Aristophanes' humour is taken for granted as merely a tool for the delivery of political and social commentary. But Greek Old Comedy was above all else designed to amuse people, to win the dramatic competition by making the audience laugh the hardest. Any discussion of Aristophanes therefore needs to take into account the ways in which his humour actually works. This question is addressed in two ways. The first half of the volume offers an in-depth discussion of humour theory – a field heretofore largely overlooked by classicists and Aristophanists – examining various theoretical models within the specific context of Aristophanes' eleven extant plays. In the second half, contributors explore Aristophanic humour more practically, examining how specific linguistic techniques and performative choices affect the reception of humour, and exploring the range of subjects Aristophanes tackles as vectors for his comedy. A focus on performance shapes the narrative, since humour lives or dies on the stage – it is never wholly comprehensible on the page alone.

Group Identity in the Renaissance World

Group Identity in the Renaissance World PDF Author: Hannah Chapelle Wojciehowski
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107003601
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
This book argues that new groups and radically new concepts of group identity emerged throughout the world during the Renaissance.

Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World

Medicine and Paradoxography in the Ancient World PDF Author: George Kazantzidis
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110661772
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
The present volume offers a systematic discussion of the complex relationship between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world. For a long time, the relationship between the two has been assumed to be virtually non-existent. Paradoxography is concerned with disclosing a world full of marvels and wondrous occurrences without providing an answer as to how these phenomena can be explained. Its main aim is to astonish and leave its readers bewildered and confused. By contrast, medicine is committed to the rational explanation of human phusis, which makes it, in a number of significant ways, incompatible with thauma. This volume moves beyond the binary opposition between ‘rational’ and ‘non-rational’ modes of thinking, by focusing on instances in which the paradox is construed with direct reference to established medical sources and beliefs or, inversely, on cases in which medical discourse allows space for wonder and admiration. Its aim is to show that thauma, rather than present a barrier, functions as a concept which effectively allows for the dialogue between medicine and paradoxography in the ancient world.