"The Brain—Is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—"
So goes the first stanza of poem #632 by Emily Dickinson (1). For the moment, let us infer, as Paul Grobstein does, that Dickinson is saying that each of us is in our brain (2). Our conscious self is situated inside that physical wet stuff of neurons, chemicals, electrical impulses, and the like. Some people feel uncomfortable "that 'self,' rather than being safely housed in some form resistant to physical disturbance, might actually, itself, be a material thing" (2). Reading Dickinson, I do not. Not until Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (3) did I begin to squirm. But Dickinson's "theory" is every bit as radical and not dissimilar to Dennett's. Does the human brain take a different (intentional, physical, design) stance when assessing scientific versus non-scientific information?
Neither Grobstein nor I complain about Dickinson's lack of rigorous logic or scientific underpinnings in this poem. Instead, we accept it as a welcome springboard for our own imaginings about her concept. By contrast, many have criticized and resisted the sometimes-slippery logic and swift-handed science that Dennett uses to explain his neo-Darwinian theory, or explain away whatever challenges it. In the end, both writers/thinkers rely on historical narrative to persuade their readers: "Many scientific patterns are also historical patterns, and hence are revealed and explained in narratives—of sorts. Cosmology, geology, and biology are all historical sciences. The great biologist D'Arcy Thompson once said: 'Everything is the way it is because it got that way.' If he is right--if everything is the way it...
... middle of paper ...
...rk. Simon & Schuster.
4. Dennett, Daniel C. (1999) "The Evolution of Culture." The Charles Simonyi Lecture, Oxford. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dennett/dennett_p2.html
5. Dennett, Daniel C. (1992) Consciousness Explained. Boston. Little, Brown, & Co.
6. Dickinson, Emily. Johnson, Thomas and Ward, Theodora, ed. (1958) The letters of Emily Dickinson Cambridge, MA. Belknap Press of Harvard.
7. Gould, Stephen Jay. (1997) "Darwinian Fundamentalism." The New York Review of Books. Volume 44, Number 10. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1151
8. Dalke, Anne. Grobstein, Paul. (2003) "Story-Telling in (At Least) Three Dimensions: An Exploration of Teaching, Reading, Writing, and Beyond." (draft submitted for publication) http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/bridges/3dstory.html
9. Howe, Susan. (1989) My Emily Dickinson. Berkeley, CA. North Atlantic Books.
Zhao, Buyun. "Charles Darwin & Evolution." Charles Darwin & Evolution. Christ's College, 2009. Web. 04 May 2014.
Bowler, Peter J. Evolution: The History of an Idea. London: University of California Press, 1989.
Michael Ruse, The Darwinian Revolution, pub. 1979 by The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
By 1921 the Harmsworth brothers, Lords Northcliff and Rothermere controlled newspapers with collective circulation of over 6 million. Between the wars press ownership entered a new period with the mergence of regional chains, and the percentage of evening titles owned by the five big chains grew from 8% to 40% between 1921 and 1939 with morning titles also increasing 32%, further elimination of local competition prolonged the barons power (Curran, 2003:39)
Phillips, Elizabeth. " The Histrionic Imagination." Emily Dickinson: Personae and Performance. University Park and London: Penn State, 1919.
...e crucial change needed in health services delivery, with the aim of transforming the current deteriorated system into a true “health care” system. (ANA, 2010)
The main purpose of health care policies, like geographic maps, is to provide routes and directions to best achieve specific goals. Their design involves many variables and go through many steps that often begins with a problem that needs to be solved or addressed. To demonstrate such concept, this paper discusses the steps taken to adopt a new health policy in North Carolina; the main goal of the new policy is to implement Evidence-Based Practice (EVP) in mental health care and to redirect the service to its target population. The paper highlights the role of management, implementers, stakeholders, and professionals in the initiation and implementation steps of health policies.
...felt that using a considerably larger amount in the WPC matrix would consequence in the formation of excellent mechanical properties, especially if the exfoliated microstructure could be reached [17]. In fact, even in the HDPE/nano-silicate matrix, significant developments in qualities and performance were noticed for 0.05 to 1-wt% of clay. In order to avoid the formation of a microstructure that is not positive to the even diffusion of the nano-silicates in the WPC matrix (also known as intercalated structure), a compabilitizer such as maleated polyethylene (PE-g-MAn) is used to raise the cohesiveness between the nano-clay, woodfiber and plastic borders [18]. Rather than using a different bonding agent for the woodfiber/polymer and nano-silicate/polymer interfaces, using PE-g-MAn alone can save on cost as well as simplifies the formulation
...r works, and certainly, the more the traditional the establishment, book or website, the more invisible this possibility becomes. Since Dickinson's works were unintended for publication, the public is entitled via her family to make their own assumptions about her and her work. I contend that the writing style of Dickinson's letters and poetry was conceived with genius, edited and re-edited with that same genius. To take pen to her works, which are by their nature, concise and spare in language, but rich in symbolism, ingenuity, punctuation and grammatical engineering is an insult to her work, and frankly few would succeed in retaining that genius unless merely replacing gender indicative words and imagery.
The air is cool and crisp. Roosters can be heard welcoming the sun to a new day and a woman is seen, wearing a clean colorful wrap about her body and head, her shadow casting a lone silhouette on the stone wall. The woman leans over to slide a piece of paper into one of the cracks, hoping her prayer will be heard in this city of Jerusalem. Millions are inserting their prayers into the walls of Japanese temples, while an inmate in one of a hundred prisons across the United States looks past his wall toward the prayers he did not keep. Billions fall asleep each night surrounded by four walls and thousands travel to China to witness the grandest one of all. Who builds walls and who tears them down?
Dunlap, Anna. "The Complete Poems Of Emily Dickinson." Masterplots II: Women’S Literature Series (1995): 1-3. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 17 Nov. 2013.
Many of her poems were a reaction to the rejection of many publishers and other literary critics. This particular poem’s character comes from Dickinson’s reaction to Ralph Waldo Emerson’s statement that “poets are thus liberating gods.” Here she is challenging the established literati by questioning popular Emersonian views. In particular, this poem is a reaction to Emerson’s belief that “the poet is the sayer, the namer, and represents beauty.” Basically, it is a reaction to the idea that the poet is the creator of beautiful words, liberating the common people by giving them words they would not have access to.
Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death” truly attracted me. Death is inevitable for all human beings. When we were given birth, we started to face death. How to face death is the most difficult class we need to study in our life and most of people are not able to get good grade in that class. In Dickinson’s poem, she gives me a total new view about death: humans are doomed to die, however humanity is able to exist forever. I want to understand her opinions about death and immortality; this can help me have more comprehension about death and lives. In this paper, I want to explain Dickinson’s ideas about death, such as how to face it and how to accept it. I will also compare her idea with other philosophers. It is necessary to
Dickinson, Emily Elizabeth (1830-1886), America’s best-known female poet and one of the foremost authors in American literature. Born in Amherst, Massachusetts, Dickinson was the middle child of a lawyer and one-term United States congressional representative, Edward Dickinson, and his wife, Emily Norcross Dickinson. From 1840 to 1847 she attended the Amherst Academy, and from 1847 to 1848 she studied at the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in South Hadley, a few miles from Amherst. Dickinson remained in Amherst, living in the same house on Main Street from 1855 until her death. During her lifetime, she published only about 10 of her nearly 2,000 poems, in newspapers, Civil War journals, and a poetry anthology. The notion that Dickinson was extremely reclusive is a popular one, but it is at best a partial truth. Although she never married and certainly became more selective over the years about the company she kept, Dickinson was far more sociable than most descriptions would have us believe. Biographers are increasingly recognizing the vital role of Dickinson’s sister-in-law, Susan Dickinson, in her writing. For more than 35 years the two women lived next door to each other, sharing mutual passions for literature, music, cooking, and gardening. Emily sent Susan more than 400 poems and letter-poems, twice as many as she sent to any other correspondent. In 1998 Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson was published, documenting the two women’s friendship.