jon: I've a feeling that the definition of animism you gave has a lot in common with Anaxagorus' "Nous" - a sort of 'life-force' that is to be found in everything, but more in us than in plants, more in plants than in rocks, and so on. It was supposed to be a sort of organising principle, which allowed simple forms to group into complex ones. It seems to surface in Hegel's 'universe trying to understand itself'. In fact, I wish I understood more of Hegel - not just his dialectic, but his overall thinking. As for the phase we're going through, - we've been through worse, though admittedly we're still paying for it - competitiveness, aggression, territoriality, etc., but by having an eye on the notion of evolution of ideas, we can keep things in perspective and not believe that it's the end of the world if nobody actually seems to know the truth and that all our notions of truth are entirely muddle-headed. As you say, as long as we get through it! cheers Peter Lennox Hardwick House tel: (0114) 2661509 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] or:- [EMAIL PROTECTED] MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
