mirrored file at http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== C/A General Information Concept <#concept> Structure <#structure> History <#history> *CONCEPT* It would be hard to find a culture that has no cosmic catastrophes in its sacred narratives: deluges, combats in the sky, universal conflagrations. Usually the sacred traditions speak of these catastrophes as in the past, whether at the beginning of the world or in human memory. Sometimes they are also foretold for the future, and are then viewed apocalyptically, as ultimate revelations of a divine plan. Why do so many cultures set these stories and prophecies at the center of their traditional thought? "Catastrophe/Apocalypse" examines a range of explanations and see how each affects our evaluation of the works read. It places in the foreground the "catastrophist" reading, which assumes that massive catastrophes have in fact repeatedly recurred on the earth since human memory, and are the experience out of which the myths were made. But it also studies how these myths are reinterpreted by each generation which retells them in the light of its own experience, in different and usually calmer environments. The myths accrete new meanings as they are retold, and the task of interpretation is to see the full range of meanings they are asked to bear from generation to generation. *STRUCTURE* "Catastrophe/Apocalypse begins with a three-week introduction to catastrophism as a scientific paradigm-- its 19th century battle with uniformitarianism, and its return to respectability in the last decades of the 20th century, when mainstream science incorporated the Alvarez hypothesis that the extinction of the dinosaurs and many other species at the end of the Cretaceous was caused by the impact of a giant asteroid. It reviews the long history of proto-scientific catastrophist thinkers (as opposed to traditional tellers of "myths"), moving from such pre-Socratic philosophers as Xenophanes, Heraclitus and Democritus down to independent thinkers of the Renaisance and Enlightenment such as Bruno, Whiston and Boulanger. And it surveys the various terms by which recent writers have tried to bring out this or that essential role they see catastrophes as playing in larger paradigms of thought: "punctuated equilibrium", "quantavolution", "coherent catastrophism", "cenocatastrophism". Major types of catastrophic myth are also studied in these opening weeks: deluges, conflagrations, combats in the sky. Stress is placed on reading a large number of myths, excerpted from their cultural contexts for the sake of establishing their independent emergence all around the globe and of making a preliminary survey of recurrent themes and motifs. In the main body of the course six cultures are then studied in depth: Mesopotamian, Greek, Egyptian, Judaeo-Christian, Mayan and Norse. In each cultural block the principal traditional texts are read with a variety of interpretive strategies, grouped loosely under four rubrics: * *U* (Uniformitarian): No real massive catastrophes ever actually occurred and the descriptions of them have to be accounted for by some other way than assuming that they did. * *C* (Catastrophist): Massive catastrophes occurred and the assumption that that is the case is crucial to understanding the kinds of meanings the stories about them had accreted by the time the texts were put in writing. * *B* (Both): The texts will reflect both the catastrophic events that originated them and later periods of environmental stability and calm during which those texts were rethought and transformed. * *N* (Neither): There are a whole set of things that may be said about how the texts work irrespective of whether massive catastrophes actually occurred to originate them (e.g. the narrative logic of a text, or the way it came to function in its society). In both of the two papers students write on texts from these six cultures they are asked to keep all four approaches-- U, C, B and N-- in mind. The last week of class is given over to the effort to see how a catastrophist approach to ancient myths might make us rethink the psychology of homo sapiens as a whole. Detailed consideration is given to Alfred deGrazia's theory that what is distinctively human was mutated in a sudden gestalt, under catastrophic circumstances, out of earlier hominid behavior, and to Gunnar Heinsohn's meditations on the relationship of humanity's experience of past catastrophes to the apocalyptic mindset with which so many human beings-- secular as well as religious, environmentalist as well as fundamentalist-- approach the problems of the future. *HISTORY* Catastrophism, defined as the postulation of massive catastrophes of global extent to explain the geological and biological record of the earth's past, has oncoe more become respectable, even mainstream, ever since the early 1980's when scientists started taking seriously the Alvarez hypothesis that the demise of the dinosaurs was caused by an asteroid impact (the so-called Cretaceous/Tertiary Extinction Event). The possibility that such impacts could occur during the flourishing of homo sapiens is also assumed by current efforts to develop a technology to monitor and deflect NEO's (near earth objects) in the future. The question then arises: if such events occurred in the pre-human past, and are foreseeable in the human future, what is the evidence that they have already occurred within human memory? One of the goals of "Catastrophe/Apocalypse" is to show how many earlier generations of rational thinkers have attempted to answer that question. Another goal is to keep abreast of the most recent and sophisticated answers, so as to show that "cenocatastrophism" (the postulation of global catastrophes within human memory) can be seen in the context of other mainstream scientific endeavors. To this end the course materials include * active e-mail lists such as the Cambridge Conference Network at b.j.peiser at livjm.ac.uk; * websites connected to catastrophist societies and journals such as http://www.knowledge.co.uk/sis/; * essays online such as Trevor Palmer's "The Fall and Rise of Catastrophism" (http://science.ntu.ac.uk/life/staff/tp/fallc.htm); * recent CD-roms with back issues of catastrophist journals such as Catastrophism! Man, Myth, and Mayhem (Version 1.0, Sept. 1999). Prof. Mullen first gave the course in Fall 1999. By professional training he is a classicist who has written on ancient Greek poetry and on the American Founding Fathers' use of Roman precedents. He has studied at Harvard (B.A. 1968) and Univ. of Texas (Ph. D. 1972), and taught at Berkeley, Boston University, St. John's College, and, since 1985, Bard College. His work in catastrophism dates from the early 1970's, when he was a contributing editor of Pensée Magazine. Among his most recent publications is "The Agenda of the Milesian School: The Post-Catastrophic Paradigm Shift in Ancient Greece", in Natural Catastrophes during Bronze Age Civilisations, ed. Benny Peiser, Trevor Palmer, and Mark E. Bailey (Archaeopress, Oxford, 1998), which forms part of a larger project entitled Catastrophism and the Axial Age. He gives "Catastrophe/Apocalypse" every fall at Bard College in the Classical Studies Program. Click here for the current course information . Email Prof. Mullen with questions and comments. Back Copyright info Bard