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
Survival of organisms requires response to sense inputs and feedback. An intuitive picture or mental image of reality from sense experience is apparently structured from orthogonal and independent sense inputs in asso...Survival of organisms requires response to sense inputs and feedback. An intuitive picture or mental image of reality from sense experience is apparently structured from orthogonal and independent sense inputs in association with past memories. Such images are not necessarily visual but may have such qualities. Play of mind with information in mental images processed by molecular actors is guided with rules of reality to assure non-contradictory outcome of actions for successful behaviors (Rogers and Jain 1993). Such functions have evolved to find food before becoming food, and fight or flight when in doubt. Shadows of ignorance that obscure mental images and associated states also have epistemic utility. Their success depends on learning from trials and errors to compensate for incomplete information and uncertainties with consideration of what could go wrong. Outcomes are also influenced by games played on mind by illusions, mistakes, surprises, ignorance. Loss of time, energy, and opportunity associated with ignored or misinterpreted information threaten survival. Equivocation, cynicism, wild goose chase, and vicious circle of sterile ideas encourage contradictory or inconsistent interpretations that compromise outcomes. Throughout the human history, ignorance of horsemen of apocalypse has unleashed havocs, perpetuated wars, epidemics, wrongful medical treatments, and economic disasters. What used to be crisis of ignorance has now become crisis of unintended consequences of inventions and other forms of knowledge. Ignorance of experts and head of states as horsemen of darkness brings misery to countless innocents. In Nay formalism, knowledge (gyan) is what knows with certainty (either as true or false). Identifying uncertainties introduces doubt (syad) in what one knows. For finding ones way around lack of relevant evidence (agyan), wisdom lies in recognition of ignorance and identifies problem to seek solution. Note that these states for propositions are not necessarily related by binary negations.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Survival of organisms requires response to sense inputs and feedback. An intuitive picture or mental image of reality from sense experience is apparently structured from orthogonal and independent sense inputs in association with past memories. Such images are not necessarily visual but may have such qualities. Play of mind with information in mental images processed by molecular actors is guided with rules of reality to assure non-contradictory outcome of actions for successful behaviors (Rogers and Jain 1993). Such functions have evolved to find food before becoming food, and fight or flight when in doubt. Shadows of ignorance that obscure mental images and associated states also have epistemic utility. Their success depends on learning from trials and errors to compensate for incomplete information and uncertainties with consideration of what could go wrong. Outcomes are also influenced by games played on mind by illusions, mistakes, surprises, ignorance. Loss of time, energy, and opportunity associated with ignored or misinterpreted information threaten survival. Equivocation, cynicism, wild goose chase, and vicious circle of sterile ideas encourage contradictory or inconsistent interpretations that compromise outcomes. Throughout the human history, ignorance of horsemen of apocalypse has unleashed havocs, perpetuated wars, epidemics, wrongful medical treatments, and economic disasters. What used to be crisis of ignorance has now become crisis of unintended consequences of inventions and other forms of knowledge. Ignorance of experts and head of states as horsemen of darkness brings misery to countless innocents. In Nay formalism, knowledge (gyan) is what knows with certainty (either as true or false). Identifying uncertainties introduces doubt (syad) in what one knows. For finding ones way around lack of relevant evidence (agyan), wisdom lies in recognition of ignorance and identifies problem to seek solution. Note that these states for propositions are not necessarily related by binary negations.