AESTHETIC REALISM AND ANTHROPOLOGY
Taught by Arnold Perey
6:00 PM alternate Wednesdays
3rd Floor Library, Aesthetic Realism Foundation
Spring 2005
SCIENTIFIC METHOD and the OPPOSITES
January 25 Anthropological Facts & Scientific Method
"Facts are necessary materials; but their working up by experimental reasoning, i.e., by theory, is what establishes and really builds up science." — Claude Bernard, An Introductuion to the Study of Experimental Medicine, p. 26
February 8 Mesopotamia and the Simplest and Most Urgent Things in the World
Ancient texts, pressed into clay four thousand years ago, contain highs and lows, fors and againsts, excesses and insufficiencies that are in the lives of Americans now.
February 23 Old Man Coyote and the Elemental Opposites
On Native American tricksters, Barry Holstun Lopez writes: "Stith Thompson [called] Coyote...'a beneficent being, bringing culture and light to his people, and a creature of greed, lust and stupidity.'"
March 8 "Mrs. Plum" -- Seeing Evil with Form in Apartheid South Africa
In his story "Mrs. Plum," Es'kia Mphahlele describes white and black people together. Do elemental opposites underlie what he saw? For example: There was something im Mr. Plums' face as she was speaking which made me fear her and pity her at the same time" (p. 119, Under African Skies, E. Larson, ed.).
March 22 Ethics: Does It Really Cross Every Cultural Divide?
The Roman philosopher Seneca wrote: "Of all the benefits that we have from Nature this is the greatest, the fact that Virtue causes her light to penetrate into the minds of all; even those who do not follow her see her" (Of Benefits, IV. xvii. 4).
Saturday, April 8 Art and Anthropology Speak Volumes of Each Other
The class does not meet Wednesday, April 5th, but on Saturday morning at 11 AM. We join the Visual Arts and the Opposites class, taught by Marcia Rackow, at a location to be announced.
April 19 The Simplest Elements of Life in New York
Students look at an instance of New York life from an anthropological perspective, with the Siegel Theory of Opposites as their scientific basis.
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