Cluster (Quiz 2) Flashcards
How do Foucault’s “History of Sexuality” and the creating story in Genesis help us imagine how to think about history and how historical change occurs?
They construct a narrative filled with drama that demonstrates change.
Is there an analogy between biological adaptation and historical change in culture and society?
Yes, but analogy isn’t the only way to think about the relation between biological and social/cultural processes.
Analogous does NOT mean identical. It means ________.
resembling in some respects
What 2 things does “history” mean?
H1) events (“facts”)
H2) the application of meanings of events (“facts”)
What are “grand narratives”?
myths or rationalizations to explain how things came to be or to legitimize a belief…
- Cyclical/linear accounts of history
- Creation stories (i.e. Genesis 1-3)
- Secularization narrative (shift from religious to non-religious beliefs)
_______’s idealism is ________ while _________ idealism is ___________.
- PLATO’S idealism is VERTICAL. (“meta”: beyond, transcending) & immaterial forms/ideas)
- HEGEL’s idealism is HORIZONTAL with a built-in spiral.
What is dialectical idealism and who is it associated with?
- The idea of freedom is a project that discloses its parameters in history, but not all at once. Because of its dialectical character, the idea advances through conflicts or contradictions in (unpredictable) changes toward a transformed understanding or realization of the founding idea or question.
- Hegel
What’s the pivotal gap in Genesis 2?
- After creating the first human (Adam), God recognized that it was not good for him to be alone so he made Eve to sustain him.
- God’s recognition of the human potential for loneliness prompted Eve’s creation and further developed the idea of gendered identities
What is Marx’s code of analysis known as?
Dialectical materialism
What is materialism?
The dynamism of material forces and interactions that produce mind and ideas about the nature of the world, historical process, etc.
Who developed the idea of discursive formations?
Michel Foucault
History proceeds step by step iterating itself_____, not ______
relationally, not randomly
The interplay of three different and interactive dimensions of culture are _______, _______, and ________.
- Residual
- Dominant
- Emergent
What is the dominant dimension of culture?
- “world-view” or “prevailing ideology”
- can’t include/exhaust all human practice so…
- excludes the full range of human practice
What is the residual dimension of culture?
- attitudes, habits of thought formed in the past that remain in play in the present
- taken up as alternative or oppositional to dominant culture
- often incorporated into dominant culture to assimilate dominant views of common sense
What is the emergent dimension of culture?
- alternative perceptions of others
- typically have a phase of pre-emergence, meaning something that you cannot yet name but that is there as a feeling or attitude.
Aristophane’s narrative does NOT present a strict hierarchy of gendered/sexualized types, though a cultural value is placed on the _______ type
male/male
A value presented in Arisophane’s narrative is the idea of sexual/erotic desire as found in _____.
- lack (“longing to find… [the] other half”)
- comes from myth of us being cut apart from our other half
What is the key question for Diotima’s vision that has survived to the present time?
WHAT do you desire in what you desire?
What are the four causes?
- formal
- material
- efficient
- final
Explain the formal cause.
- the informing idea
- It isn’t actually there and you imagine it in essence.
- Ex: imagined statue of a woman
Explain the material cause.
- the actual object.
- can be anything that is material or anything that is made
- ex: a marble statue of a woman
Explain the efficient cause.
- what brings about the object
- ex: the art of sculpting the statue + the artisan’s trade
Explain the final (teleological) cause.
- the purpose of the object or what it is actually made to do or be.
- Ex: ritual, aesthetic, devotional object
The elements are _______ and they acquire ____________.
interactive, gendered associations
Considering genital difference, Galen favors ____________.
resemblance theory (genital homology)
What are Darwin’s 3 postulates?
- Struggle for existence
- Variation in fitness
- Inheritance of variation
Explain Darwin’s postulate: struggle for existence.
- The ability of a population to expand is infinite.
- However, the ability of the environment to support a population is always finite.
- This creates a struggle for existence.
Explain Darwin’s postulate: variation in fitness.
- Individuals are not all alike.
- Individuals differ from one another in their fitness.
- Those individuals with traits better fitted to their environment leave more descendants than do less fit individuals.
Explain Darwin’s postulate: inheritance of variation.
Some traits are heritable, meaning that they can be passed down from parents to offspring.
Whenever Darwin’s three postulates hold, ___________.
evolution by natural selection must occur
What does evolutionary psychology do?
uses evolutionary thinking to answer questions in all areas of psychology
Does the mind begin as a blank slate?
No, it is prepared to respond to environment in certain ways
What are the key premises of evolutionary psychology?
- Mind does not begin as a blank slate; rather, it is
prepared to respond to environment in certain ways
(e.g., language learning) - Evolution shaped the brain (and, hence, mind and
behavior) just as it shaped the rest of the body - Mind is “modular,” contains specialized modules
(psychological mechanisms) shaped in response to
recurrent challenges faced throughout evolution
What is an adaptation?
- a variation favored by natural selection because
it increases fitness relative to other variations in that
population - ex: umbilical cord
What is a byproduct?
- a variation that is not itself favored by natural selection but instead arises as an incidental effect of selection for some other adaptation
- ex: belly button
What is noise?
- random variations that are selectively neutral—neither
favored nor disfavored by natural selection or that have resulted from mutations - ex: “innie” vs. “outie” belly button
Not all traits have been _______
selected
