Before the Presocratics. Cyclicity, transformation, and element cosmology: The case of transcontinental pre- or protohistric cosmological substrates linking Africa, Eurasia and N. America.

sehr guter Zustand / very good condition - This exceptional and innovative work, the culmination of the author's research over a quarter of a century, seeks to contribute to the study of the global history of human thought and philosophy. Written from an Attenuated Afrocentrist perspective, it revolves on state-of-the-art comparative methods and insights from linguistics, archaeology, ethnography, and mythology. It has a sound empirical basis ( disclosed by full indexes ) in its impressive bibliography and in its case studies of board games, geomantic divination, a South Central African clan system. East Asian correlative cosmologies ( e.g. I Ching ) . cosmologies from Ancient Egypt. Africa, Native America and the Upper Palaeolithic. Greek philosophic texts ( especially Empedocles ) , and linguistic continuities across Asia. It typologises modes of thought and traces their evolution since the Palaeolithic, claiming: we can reconstruct modes of thought of the remote past, in detail and reliably; such reconstruction is predicated on ( and, in turn, confirms ) two assumptions: ( a ) the fundamental unity of ( Anatomically Modern ) humankind, and ( b ) the porous nature, therefore, of geographical / political / idenlitary / cultural boundaries - this in particular means that sub-Saharan Africa has been part and parcel of global cultural history to a much greater extent than commonly admitted. -- Applying this perspective to the Ancient Greek Presocratic philosophers who allegedly founded Western philosophy, we test Working Hypothesis ( I ) 'a transformative cycle of elements ( as attested in East Asia and Central Africa ) has constituted a global substrate since the Upper Palaeolithic ( over 12.000 years ago ) , informing - from a West Asian. �Pelasgian", proposedly proto-African source - Eurasian, African and N. American cosmologies�. An Alternative Working Hypothesis posits ( 2 ) : �the transformative cycle of elements only dates from the West Asian Bronze Age� ( 5.000-3,000 years ago). We also examine ( 3 ) �the possibility of this system's transcontinental transmission in historical times'. Painstakingly, ( 2 ) and ( 3 ) are empirically vindicated, while much evidence of Upper Palaeolithic element cosmologies is found ( but without cyclicity, transformation, and catalysis ) . This casts new light on Empedocles� originality. Presocratic thought became a path to modern science because it constituted a backwater mutation away ( especially in its reception ) from the cyclic transformation dominating W. Asian / N.E. -- African Bronze Age cosmologies. This book's anti-hegemonic, anti-Eurocentric approach from an African perspective is an apt expression of the spirit of Quest: An African Journal of Philosophy. ISBN 9789078382157