Ontological excess and metonymy in early-modern descriptions of Brazil: an amodern para-scientific approach to nature

This essay relies on and furthers a hypothesis advanced in previous research: that the well-known eccentricities to be found in the early-modern corpus of the Portuguese colonizers of Brazil—its references to entities like monsters and demons, its bizarre descriptions, and odd classification systems...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:  
Bibliographische Detailangaben
1. VerfasserIn: Zir, Alessandro (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
Verfügbarkeit prüfen: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Lade...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Veröffentlicht: Fachgebiet für Religionswissenschaft im Fachbereich 11, Philipps Universität Marburg [2020]
In: Marburg journal of religion
Jahr: 2020, Band: 22, Heft: 2, Seiten: 1-19
normierte Schlagwort(-folgen):B Portugal / Kolonialismus / Brasilien / Beschreibung / Metonymie / Wissenschaftlichkeit
IxTheo Notationen:AB Religionsphilosophie; Religionskritik; Atheismus
KBR Lateinamerika
VA Philosophie
weitere Schlagwörter:B Portuguese colonization
B para-scientific
B Brazil
B words and things
B Analogy
B ontolgy
B figurative language
Online Zugang: Volltext (doi)
Volltext (kostenfrei)
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:This essay relies on and furthers a hypothesis advanced in previous research: that the well-known eccentricities to be found in the early-modern corpus of the Portuguese colonizers of Brazil—its references to entities like monsters and demons, its bizarre descriptions, and odd classification systems—can be explained in view of a certain style of thinking, addressing a specific ontological concern. Ontology emerges here as a structural differentiating factor between radically distinct kinds of approach to reality, and the notions of excess and metonymy help us to characterize the specificity of a cognitive enterprise which, in its several manifestations, is literary-religious rather than scientific-empirical. Our perspective tends to challenge communicative models trying to address the difference between religious and scientific discourses merely on the level of the content and truth-values of their belief systems. Moreover it covers significantly visual culture, which helps us to present Brazilian colonial literature on a broad canvas. This paper is one of a collection that originated in the IAHR Special Conference “Religions, Science and Technology in Cultural Contexts: Dynamics of Change”, held at The Norwegian University of Science and Technology on March 1-2, 2012. For an overall introduction see the article by Ulrika Mårtensson, also published here.
ISSN:1612-2941
Enthält:Enthalten in: Marburg journal of religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.17192/mjr.2020.22.8297