Ideas of life after death dominate African religious practices in the societies. The people of Buha and Unyamwezi in Western Tanzania maintained the relationship with the departed ancestors to address issues arising f...Ideas of life after death dominate African religious practices in the societies. The people of Buha and Unyamwezi in Western Tanzania maintained the relationship with the departed ancestors to address issues arising from the living members of the family, clan and the society at large. With exception of theologians and cultural anthropologists, ideas on life after death have not attracted attention of African historians. In this paper I envisage the ideas of life after death from a historical perspective using Buha and Unyamwezi as illustrative cases. I argue that issues of life after death are historically grounded and involve the interplay of natural and human-induced forces. This study relies on both archival and oral sources that I collected between 2011 and 2012. I employ a comparative approach to provide an account of how issues on life after death have had impacts on the lives of the people in Western Tanzania.展开更多
This essay is written in the form of a mosaic. It intersperses simple language, primary and secondary quotes within text, footnotes and epigraphs from classical thinkers and cutting-edge researchers. It invites reader...This essay is written in the form of a mosaic. It intersperses simple language, primary and secondary quotes within text, footnotes and epigraphs from classical thinkers and cutting-edge researchers. It invites readers, be they casual or experienced, to a certain play of irony and fantasy in their reflection on the main thrust of the argument. The essay is divided into two parts. The first seeks to introduce the readers to some of the main concerns of frontier science and the Philosophy of Science at the beginning of this millennium： the Universe Models proposed by scientists from fields related to Physics and Mathematics in their eagerness to explain more and more discoveries and to lay out a solid new scientific paradigm. We are convinced that the leap between sidelines and insides--when confronting straightforward style with systematic contrast--does not lessen the rigor of research, and serves to lighten the density of the topic by projecting nuances and resonance onto the logos and its concatenation. It may also serve to vivify field and figure, in order to recreate the fertile delight that generally comes from a good reading of deep intertext.In the second part, we attempt to subtly demonstrate a fortunate discovery： the validity and solidity of the laws of Nature, upheld on the basis of their abstract mathematical expression （the Number Phi （φ）, the goldennumber or golden section）, which despite having faded into oblivion, buried under centuries of disuse in the fields of Aesthetics and Art, has proven to be useful as a critical instrument and a template for concrete solutions that we wish to share. We believe that this Model may serve not only to answer some of the scientific issues that we have referred to, but to redirect the discussion itself, and break the logjam of many frontier forums that place conditions on the application of the Models pro- duced over the last century. Having glimpsed those realms where analysis and common sense come together for addressing one of the most salient issues of our time, we chose to close the essay by offering practical, concrete findings on the topic of Models, which not only specialists in the field may find useful, but also any reader, especially educators, who are charged with sharing these findings with the present and future generations.展开更多
文摘Ideas of life after death dominate African religious practices in the societies. The people of Buha and Unyamwezi in Western Tanzania maintained the relationship with the departed ancestors to address issues arising from the living members of the family, clan and the society at large. With exception of theologians and cultural anthropologists, ideas on life after death have not attracted attention of African historians. In this paper I envisage the ideas of life after death from a historical perspective using Buha and Unyamwezi as illustrative cases. I argue that issues of life after death are historically grounded and involve the interplay of natural and human-induced forces. This study relies on both archival and oral sources that I collected between 2011 and 2012. I employ a comparative approach to provide an account of how issues on life after death have had impacts on the lives of the people in Western Tanzania.
文摘This essay is written in the form of a mosaic. It intersperses simple language, primary and secondary quotes within text, footnotes and epigraphs from classical thinkers and cutting-edge researchers. It invites readers, be they casual or experienced, to a certain play of irony and fantasy in their reflection on the main thrust of the argument. The essay is divided into two parts. The first seeks to introduce the readers to some of the main concerns of frontier science and the Philosophy of Science at the beginning of this millennium： the Universe Models proposed by scientists from fields related to Physics and Mathematics in their eagerness to explain more and more discoveries and to lay out a solid new scientific paradigm. We are convinced that the leap between sidelines and insides--when confronting straightforward style with systematic contrast--does not lessen the rigor of research, and serves to lighten the density of the topic by projecting nuances and resonance onto the logos and its concatenation. It may also serve to vivify field and figure, in order to recreate the fertile delight that generally comes from a good reading of deep intertext.In the second part, we attempt to subtly demonstrate a fortunate discovery： the validity and solidity of the laws of Nature, upheld on the basis of their abstract mathematical expression （the Number Phi （φ）, the goldennumber or golden section）, which despite having faded into oblivion, buried under centuries of disuse in the fields of Aesthetics and Art, has proven to be useful as a critical instrument and a template for concrete solutions that we wish to share. We believe that this Model may serve not only to answer some of the scientific issues that we have referred to, but to redirect the discussion itself, and break the logjam of many frontier forums that place conditions on the application of the Models pro- duced over the last century. Having glimpsed those realms where analysis and common sense come together for addressing one of the most salient issues of our time, we chose to close the essay by offering practical, concrete findings on the topic of Models, which not only specialists in the field may find useful, but also any reader, especially educators, who are charged with sharing these findings with the present and future generations.
