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And so presuming that perhaps not everyone is familiar with the myth of Oedipus the King, I'll direct you here for a brief summary of the plot.
Now there are a variety of interpretations as to Oedipus's tragic flaw - his pride, his ignorance of his own background, his disregard for the prophesy of the oracle.
But I'd like to propose a slightly different interpretation - not mine own, and I can't recall who precisely shared it with me, but it begins with the riddle posed by the Sphinx: "Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?", to which Oedipus answered: "Man—who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two feet as an adult, and then uses a walking stick in old age.".
Now Oedipus's answer is, strictly speaking, correct, but he errs in his answer by saying "Man" - the answer should be "Myself". And in answering it in the general - as opposed to the specific, he is distancing himself from his own humanity, in a way placing himself above it. The Sphinx, riddle answered, has no choice but to destroy herself, and Oedipus is free to proceed, but in his refusal to acknowledge his own humanity, mortality and place in the world he fulfills the prophesy in the most heinous way possible - Pride, therefore, is the undoing of Oedipus.
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An interesting idea I stumbled upon first while listening to Radiolab, Gladstone's Color Theory, which suggests that language is directly correlated to our ability to experience certain stimuli...
For example, we've all heard the lie that the first nations who watched Columbus's ships break the horizon before arriving at the New World did not perceive them because they had no concept or understanding of ship. And Centaurs seem clearly to be a misreading of early accounts of people witnessing others on horseback, a concept they didn't have and so communicated through this hybridization of truth.
Gladstone analyzes the colors used in Homer's "The Odyssey" to argue that as the ancients didn't have a word for the color blue, to them it didn't exist. And there is surprising anthropological evidence to support his theory...
Read more here: (Daily Mail, Popular easy to read content): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2976405/Could-ancestors-blue-Ancient-civilisations-didn-t-perceive-colour-didn-t-word-say-scientists.html
And listen to the original Radiolab Podcast here: http://www.radiolab.org/story/211213-sky-isnt-blue/
And, for the more literate and involved in this, try the Wikipedia article (*Warning: Lots of Jargon): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity_and_the_color_naming_debate
In essence, how language both describes and limits our experience of the world, curious...
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4000 Years of picturing Space, Cosmigraphics is a collection of images that reflect not only our understanding of space and the universe but society as well. Imagine how our silly our illustrations and understandings will appear to those who follow us in 4000 years...
This, for it's abstract qualities...
And this, because, well, just look at it...the caption beneath: (Latin inscription from Ecclesiastes): 'The number of fools is infinite.'.
Brilliant. More images below, buy Michael Bensons book on Amazon here: http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/1419713876/
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
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An curious article on the "Fairy Coffins" found in Edinburgh in 1836 at the Smithsonian: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/edinburghs-mysterious-miniature-coffins-22371426/?no-ist.
And, on a similar note, a "Fairy Census", inventory of fairy sightings throughout the UK. Searches for other locations will reveal as many throughout the US, Canada, and the rest of Europe...