[Final Draft] Worldly Religion in Deleuze and Whitehead: On the Possibility of a Secular Divinity

Below I’ve written a paper using the ideas of Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead to construct a secular divinity. For Deleuze, this is an especially serious act of buggery on my part. Deleuze of course approved of that method in his own projects, but I wonder if he would approve of the baby jesus child that I’m trying to make him have in this paper. I’m directing Deleuze’s demand that we philosophers think immanently by believing in the world toward an interpretation of the Christian religion and faith. This is exactly what Whitehead does in Adventures of Ideas where he looks to the martyr Jesus for the exemplification of something that the philosopher Plato first divined as an ideal. Plato made a world-historical intellectual discovery, as Whitehead puts it, or as Deleuze would say he created a concept that has continued to reverberate across the ages. Where traditional monotheistic theologists create a concept of divinity as a transcendent and omnipotent imposer of form and order and law upon an entirely separate derivative world, with Plato you have the idea of divine immanence in the world working through persuasion–through desire, eros, beauty, and love–to transform the world “slowly and in quietness,” as Whitehead puts it, rather than by hurling thunderbolts from heaven. Plato invented a new idea of God working within the world as love, which is a kind of power, but not the power of brute force. God is no longer a creator who shapes the whole thing from outside. Rather, God is involved in, caught up with the process of cosmogenesis and spatiotemporal becoming, such that the world is as necessary for the nature of God as God is for the nature of the World…

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cover of process paper

“Behold, I am making all things new.”

-Revelation 21:5

The purpose of this essay is to unpack Deleuze’s and Whitehead’s philosophical contributions to the task of re-thinking religion in an increasingly fenced in, post-everything world no longer certain of its own secularity.1 “The secularization of the concept of God’s functions in the world,” argued Whitehead in 1927, “is at least as urgent a requisite of thought as is the secularization of other elements in experience.”2 With a similar sense of urgency, Deleuze (and Guattari) argued in 1991 that, in an age when “we have so many reasons not to believe in the human world,” philosophy’s most pressing task is to “give birth to new modes of existence, closer to animals and rocks,” modes of existence which renew “[belief] in this world, in this life.”3 Deleuze’s emphasis on immanence as against transcendence, on this world as opposed to the next, should not be read as a blanket dismissal of spiritual practice. On the contrary, for Deleuze, the creative thinking demanded by philosophical inquiry invites infinite cosmic forces into the finite mind, making philosophy akin to an “initiatory…spiritual ordeal.”4 Philosophers are those who dare to welcome such dangerous forces, risking not only their academic reputations,5 but the habit-formed security of their egos. Philosophers do not simply reflect ideas, they allow ideas to enter into and transform them:

This is because one does not think without becoming something else, something that does not think–an animal, a molecule, a particle–and that comes back to thought and revives it.6

Deleuze calls for a radical break with all forms of commonsense–whether it be religious, artistic, philosophical, or scientific–through the intercession of concepts with personalities who are willing to continually confront the absolute horizon of the plane, and so who are able to fold the infinite movements of Nous and Physis back into one another “in such a way that the plane of immanence is ceaselessly being woven, like a gigantic shuttle.”7 Philosophy, unlikes dogmatic religions, does not paint the firmament on an umbrella, rather it “[tears] open the firmament and [plunges] into the chaos.”8 As we will see, however, philosophy’s role is to not only to descend into the underworld, but to return with the good news.

Whitehead, for his part, has Jamesian tendencies that would at first glance seem to ally his philosophical efforts to the pragmatic interests of commonsense. “The philosophy of organism,” he wrote, “is an attempt, with the minimum of critical adjustment, to return to the concepts of ‘the vulgar.’”9 Whitehead made this comment in the context of a skeptical attack on behalf of commonsense experience mounted against the mechanistic abstractions of Newton (who dismissed the mathematically-naïve sense-based opinions of “the vulgar”) and the transcendental abstractions of Kant (who opposed derivative sensory appearances to ultimate substantial reality). Whitehead was well aware of the danger of hyperbole.10 In this case, however, it seems he fell prey to the danger of understatement. The “critical adjustment” his cosmology requires of the opinions of modern people can hardly be described as “minimal.” By the time Whitehead has finished his adventure in cosmologizing, not only will God have become creaturely, but energy vectors will have been transformed into emotional currents and atoms will have been endowed with life. Further, the very substance of the soul, the continuity of personal identity, will have become but a precariously linked “route of presiding occasions…[wandering] from part to part of the brain,” always vulnerable to dislocations and interruptions which “in primitive times [were] interpreted as demoniac possession.”11 Rather than having been made in heaven by God and beginning life fully-formed and eternally the same, the soul comes to matter to us precisely because it is what is always at risk, “what might be captured, reduced to wandering, enslaved.”12 No longer given as one, already whole, the soul becomes a social value to be achieved, a swarming community of larval subjects needing to be repeatedly composed or concresced out of the chaosmic raw materials of life (i.e., intensive percepts and affects). “Being a soul” in Whitehead’s process ontology is deeply problematic, even dangerous, because one never simply is but must become-soul. “Losing one’s hold [going mad],” in the context of Whitehead’s psychology, “becomes…the paradigmatic disaster, or else…the precondition of any initiation or any spiritual transformation.”13 It would seem that neither the traditional theologian nor the classical physicist, much less the average modern business owner, government employee, or homemaker, could feel at home in such a strange Whiteheadian universe!
 Both Deleuze and Whitehead generated concepts rooted in non-ordinary problematics, which is to say that the solutions distilled by their concepts problematize naïve egoic subjectivity by acting as alchemical catalysts that alter not only the contents of conscious thoughts, but the unconscious imaginative background of thought itself, thereby repositioning thinking on some as yet undetected plane of immanence. They are hermetic thinkers whose philosophizing sought not rational explanation, but the instigation of worldly renewal and the intensification of the depth of aesthetic experience. It is important in this context to forge connections between their efforts to creatively transform commonsense experience and the wider projects of establishing coherent social values and just political institutions. Deleuze’s philosophy has been criticized for being “politically irrelevant” by Peter Hallward due to its perceived “otherworldliness.”14 Isabelle Stengers has also criticized Deleuze’s tendency to celebrate the adventures of solitary, heroic creators who fearlessly dive into chaos while at the same time downplaying the conditions provided by their habitat and their inevitable need for social recuperation upon returning to consensual reality:

…all creators have learned [what] makes them able to “dive” without being swallowed. A dive cannot be improvised, but demands equipment. Unlike those who may happen to “sink” into chaos, creators are those who know what they experience “matters,” and that they will be able to recount something of what has happened to them, that is to come back…even from the land of the dead.15

Stengers’ contrasts Deleuze’s celebration of unhinged creativity with Whitehead’s tremendous respect for history and continual emphasis upon the importance of acquiring new habits in a way that is sensitive to the habitat they depend upon. “Each task of creation,” writes Whitehead, “is a social effort, employing the whole universe.”16 While Hallward’s claim may or may not be justified, Stengers’ modest Whiteheadian corrective to Deleuze’s penchant for skinny dipping in the Acheron allows us to receive much insight and inspiration from the latter without forgetting the perhaps more pertinent imperative of the former regarding the worldly responsibility of the philosopher:

…[to] seek the evidence for that conception of the universe which is the justification for the ideals characterizing the civilized phases of human society.17

When it comes to the influence of the mainline religious traditions of the West upon philosophy, both Whitehead and Deleuze lob devastating rebukes. Whitehead’s ire is almost always directed at the “idolatrous” habit of conceiving of God along the lines of an all-powerful imperial ruler or distant unmoved mover.18 “Religion,” writes Whitehead, “has emerged into human experience mixed with the crudest fancies of barbaric imagination.”19 Deleuze also mocks the idea of a “great despot” or “imperial State in the sky or on earth” typical of monotheistic commonsense.20 While this particular habit of religious thought is deemed dispensable, Whitehead is unwilling to jettison religious values outright, despite calls by the modern-minded to found civilization instead upon the abstractions of mechanistic science:

Unfortunately for this smug endeavor to view the universe as the incarnation of the commonplace, the impact of aesthetic, religious, and moral notions is inescapable. They are the disrupting and the energizing forces of civilization.21

In particular, Whitehead points to the “Galilean origin of Christianity” as an example of a non-despotic religious persona: Christ. Christ “neither rules, nor is unmoved,” but “dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love.”22 Deleuze also singles out Christian philosophy, both for praise and for disparagement. Those pre-modern Christian philosophers (like Cusa, Eckhart, and Bruno) who were bold enough to challenge church authority and risk their lives by injecting at least a dose of immanence into Physis and Nous still refused in the end to “compromise the transcendence of a God to which immanence must be attributed only secondarily.”23 Later modern Christian philosophers (like Pascal and Kierkegaard), though they were still men of faith, created concepts that recharged, rather than diminished, immanence. They were

concerned no longer with the transcendent existence of God but only with the infinite immanent possibilities brought by the one who believes that God exists.24

Deleuze suggests that, in the modern period, belief replaced knowledge as the dominant image of thought.25 The “will to truth” that had guided philosophy for so long lost its viability, as with the new technical power of modernity came also a crippling epistemic skepticism, an inability to grasp truth outright. No longer could the productivity of thought be “guaranteed in advance by the inherent connection between the good and the true”; rather, Deleuze believed that philosophical thought in the modern period required “trespass and violence,” treating the thinker of thought not as a trustworthy friend, but as an enemy.26 Truth is now to be inferred at best, tracked with suspicion but without certainty. The new plane of belief is not simply destructive or crippling, however: it is also the condition for the possibility of new forms of mental and physical experience. As with the Christian thinkers of immanence, Deleuze emphasized the “unforeseeable directions of thought and practice” that belief makes possible, directions to be judged not based on the object of a belief, but on a belief’s effect.27 A related feature of modern philosophy for Deleuze results from thought’s encounter and struggle with the unrepresentable natural forces underlying perceptual and affective experience, forces which paradoxically “must but cannot be thought.”28 Given modern thought’s confrontation with the infinite forces of the universe, its concepts can no longer be understood to represent a stable reality or to mirror a harmonious nature; rather, “what matters…in an idea is…the range of experimental possibility it opens onto.”29

Whitehead shares with Deleuze a sense for the importance of experimental thinking. In the context of religious experimentation, asking whether or not God really exists becomes irrelevant. What becomes important is the sort of thoughts and practices that belief in God makes possible for the believer, and for the society to which the believer belongs. “The power of God,” writes Whitehead, “is the worship He inspires.”30 “The fact of the religious vision,” he continues,

The “religious vision,” as Whitehead understands it, “gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension,” providing life with “something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.”32 The vision, though aesthetically and emotionally ultimate, cannot be monopolized by the limited doctrines of any religion in particular. It can be said, however, that the rising or falling tide of each religious tradition through the ages depends upon the ability of its concepts, symbols, rituals, myths, architecture, and personae (etc.) to inspire worship in such a way that the intuition of God is called forth naturally from spiritual recesses deeper than can be rationally understood.33 The psychology of modern civilization, from Whitehead’s point of view, has little patience for the traditional image of God as an omnipotent dictator. In this respect, such images are “fatal,” since “religion collapses unless its main positions command immediacy of assent.”34

More often than any religious image per say, Deleuze’s target is the illusion of transcendence as such, which results whenever we “[interpret immanence] as immanent to Something.”35 The illusion of transcendence resonates with 3 other illusions, or “thought mirages”: 1) universality, which results when the immanent planomenon is conceived as immanent “to” a concept, 2) eternity, which results when we forget that concepts must be created and are not waiting in the sky for thinkers to discover, and 3) discursiveness, which results when concepts are reduced to logical propositions.36 These illusions become a thick fog obscuring the plane of immanence, condemning the philosophical and religious thinker alike to continually grasp after immanence as though it might be made immanent “to” something, whether it be “the great Object of contemplation [the neo-Platonic One], the Subject of reflection [the Kantian transcendental subject], or the Other subject of communication [the Husserlian intersubjective transcendental].”37 The plane of immanence cannot itself be thought, since it provides the very condition for thought.38 Whenever a thinker believes he has thought the plane, we can be sure he has only contemplated, reflected, or communicated an idol.

The pure immanence of the philosophical planomenon can be likened to the friend, i.e., Wisdom, She who provides the condition for the possibility of philosophy.39 The friend is the paradigmatic “conceptual persona” of philosophy. Conceptual personae, according to Deleuze, have a “somewhat mysterious…hazy existence halfway between concept and preconceptual plane, passing from one to the other.”40 In the case of the friend, it must be asked what it could mean to become friendly if the friend had not once been, and could not become again, a stranger. On the philosophical planomenon, the friend and the stranger, the thought and its thinker, never engage in discussion with one another. Discussion is useless to philosophy, since all a discussion implies is that concepts have been mistaken for propositions, as if they could be deliberately expressed in sentence form (the illusion of discursiveness).41 Once the discursive mirage has captured a thinker, thought can only circle about itself in dialectical pursuit of a shallow truth extracted from the agonism of opinion.42 The more interesting dialectics end in aporia (Plato’s aporietic dialogues and Kant’s table of antinomies); or even more interestingly, they swallow up opposed opinions into the absolute as necessary moments in the historical unfolding of the eternal concept (Hegel). But there can be no dialectic that resolves itself in absolute identity–this would mean the end of philosophy (which is why Hegel claimed no longer to be a philosopher, but to have become wise). Both the friend and the stranger are necessary illusions for philosophy: philosophy, in other words, “requires this division of thought between [friend and stranger].” The philosophical creator of concepts must remain divided against himself at the same time that he befriends the image of thought projected in the division. The progress of philosophy depends upon a philosopher’s willingness to dwell within (without becoming immanent “to”) continual crises of agonism and reconciliation, meeting therein a proliferation of strange friends and friendly strangers. Deleuze writes:

It is as if the struggle against chaos does not take place without an affinity with the enemy, because another struggle develops and takes on more importance–the struggle against opinion, which claims to protect us from chaos itself.43

To dwell in crisis is no easy task. But this is the task required of a modern thinker, especially a Christian philosopher who has accepted the risks of thinking God’s immanence. To secularize the concept of God, as Whitehead and Deleuze demand, is to uncover “thought’s relationship with the earth,”44 to dig up what has been buried beneath the foggy illusions of transcendence estranging humanity from its home. To think with the earth is still a creative act; but it is also a matter of recovery, or resurrection, and of uncovering, or apocalypse.45

Christian philosophy’s paradigmatic conceptual persona is Christ, “the Word” who “became flesh and dwelt among us.”46 At first blush, He may seem, like other personae, to possess a less than incarnate, hazy existence somewhere between the immanence of the plane (matter/earth) and the transcendence of the concept (spirit/heaven). As John said, “The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it”47:––Traditional theology has all too often emphasized Christ’s transcendence, making Him more spirit than human (and making humanity more sinful than blessed).

Despite His initially ghostly outline, Christ’s ideality cannot be understood to be in any way abstract: He is rather an (the?) intercessor, the seed of a peculiarly Christian mode of thinking. “A particular conceptual persona,” writes Deleuze, “who perhaps did not exist before us, thinks in us.”48 Of Christ it is said that He both was in the beginning before us and will be in the end after us. His omnipresence lays out a uniquely immanent image of thought based on incarnation. The Christian plane of immanence demands a creation of concepts whose central problematic, or spiritual ordeal, is death, and whose solution, should it be realized, is an earthly form of resurrection. The Christian planomenon is unique because it is founded upon the birth, death, and resurrection of God on earth, which is to say it depends upon the possibility of the becoming-immanent of transcendence itself. Only then can the Christian thinker become inhabited by living thinking. “My old self,” writes Paul,

Like the philosophical friend, Christ’s teachings can appear strange. “I tell you,” He said, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”50 How can an earthly human being–normatively tied to family, friend, race, and nation–possibly live up to such an impossible, indeed infinite, demand? It is a demand that does violence to opinion and breaks with all commonsense. Nonetheless, this demand provides the peculiarly Christian problematic, an ordeal whose resolution requires becoming-incarnate, and thereby participating in bringing about an as yet unrealized providential plan(e), “on earth, as it is in heaven.”51 This is the strangeness of the “Galilean origin” of Christianity mentioned by Whitehead, where the transcendent power of divine coercion is replaced by the immanent love of divine persuasion. While Whitehead did not believe it possible, or even desirable, to construct a doctrinal unity out of the world’s diversity of religions, he did believe

that it is possible, amid these differences, to reach a general agreement as to those elements, in intimate human experience and general history, which we select to exemplify that ultimate theme of the divine immanence, as a completion required by our cosmological outlook.52

In other words, while humanity will certainly continue to disagree as to the particular qualitative aspects of religious facts and their proper moral interpretations, some coordination of these facts along a single plane of immanence may at least be attempted. Whitehead’s cosmological candidate for the ultimate religious theme is Divine Eros. His philosophical intervention into traditional theology aimed to transform the transcendent God of “coercive forces wielding the thunder” into the creaturely God of persuasion, “which slowly and in quietness [operates] by love.” 53 Given humanity’s recently seized god-like powers of technology, sustaining our planetary civilization would seem to depend upon the realization of such a secular “earth ethos.” Our civilization is in dire need of a world-renewing metaphysical consensus regarding the divine nature. If we are unable to believe in the divinity of the world, our collective behavior runs the risk destroying that world. The spirit of religion, though it is from time to time “explained away, distorted, and buried,” has never once entirely left us, according to Whitehead, “since the travel of mankind towards civilization.”54 Whenever religion takes flight from worldly concerns, it is the sure sign of a world nearing its end.

Whitehead traces the gradual realization of the concept of divine immanence through a “threefold revelation” stretching approximately twelve hundred years: 1) it begins in Athens with a intellectual innovation by Plato, 2) then passes into Jerusalem where the person of Jesus Christ exemplified the apocalyptic (ἀποκάλυψις- to “un-cover”) power of Plato’s concept, 3) and finally it culminates in a metaphysical interpretation of these events generated during the formative period of Christian theology.55

Whitehead regularly praises Plato’s depth of intuition. Just as often, he admits Plato’s failure to achieve a coherent overall statement of his conceptual scheme: “the greatest metaphysician, the poorest systematic thinker.”56 It is for one concept in particular, though, that Whitehead was lead to crown Plato “the wisest of men”: the idea that

the divine persuasion [Eros] is the foundation of the order of the world, but that it could only produce such a measure of harmony as amid brute forces [Chaos] it was possible to accomplish.57

It was this idea, conceived in principle by Plato, that the person of Jesus Christ was to reveal in actual deed. Though the historical records of His life are scattered and inconsistent, “there can be no doubt,” writes Whitehead, “as to what elements…have evoked a response from all that is best in human nature”:

The Mother, the Child, and the bare manger: the lowly man, homeless and self-forgetful, with his message of peace, love, and sympathy: the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the final despair: and the whole with the authority of supreme victory.58

Finally, it was the early Church fathers who made the first sustained effort to grope towards a coherent account of God’s persuasive agency in the world.59 The major fruit of their labor was the doctrine of the trinity (the mutual immanence of the theos-anthropos-cosmos multiplicity); more specifically, their most important contribution was the direct statement of the divine immanence in the world in the third person of the trinity. Unfortunately, despite this theological statement, the Church fathers failed to attain adequate metaphysical generality because they still exempted an infinite God from the categories applicable to the finite actual occasions involved in the becoming of the spatiotemporal world.60 Like Plato in many of his written dialogues, they were unable to disavow the notion of a derivative physical world poorly imitating the Ideas eternally realized in the mind of a disincarnate God.

Deleuze’s work has been read as an attempt to “overturn” Plato.61 In any attempt to “overturn” Plato it should be remembered that little more is required than continuing to “turn over” Plato–as in continuing to turn over the pages of his dialogues to be reminded that, like Whitman, he is large and contains multitudes.62 As Emerson put it:

the acutest searcher, the lovingest disciple could never tell what Platonism was; indeed admirable texts can be quoted on both sides of every great question, from him.63

Plato was equal parts poet and philosopher. He wrote dialogues, always leaving the doctrines for his characters. His meaning is never on the surface, even when it comes from the face of Socrates. Reading him, like reading the metaphysical experiments of Whitehead or Deleuze, is an infinite interpretive activity. For Whitehead, the entire history of European philosophy can be safely characterized as “a series of footnotes to Plato.”64 This despite the fact that Plato himself tells us in a letter to Dion that “no man of intelligence will venture to express his philosophical views in language.” “[Setting] down [one’s views] in written characters” is especially denounced.65 Written words lay in their parchment graves, still, silent, and dead. The reader’s questions and disputations receive no reply.
 On the testimony of Aristotle, Plotinus, and Proclus, we know that Plato’s unwritten secret teaching had something to do with the way that

If this is indeed the secret teaching, then how strangely inverted is the traditional European reading of Plato!
 Deleuze’s reading destroys the Platonic two-world theory of perfect ideas poorly copied by sensory images, but he is allured by Plato’s alternative conception of the idea of pure Difference. Where Aristotle reduces difference to that derived from the commonsense comparison of similars, understanding Plato requires risking the sanity of one’s mind in pursuit of the dark, difficult, and dangerous idea of Difference in itself. For Plato, individuals are not constituted by their substantial forms, or by their special determinations of a genus, as they are for Aristotle; nor is knowledge of individuals constituted by generalizations from a series. Rather, Plato’s is an ontology of singularity, where knowing an individual (be it ideal or actual) requires directly intuiting its uniquely authentic line of descent, rather than representing, identifying, or abstracting its general form. As Ramey puts it, “Knowledge is not a matter of generalization but of participation.” He continues:

The claim to participation is not simply the claim to be identified as a member of a class or token of a type. It is a claim to have passed a test or to have a basis for one’s claim. The difference between the just and the unjust, pretenders to justice and authentic stewards of justice, is not a difference between any two, but an internal and constitutive difference. It is the difference an ‘immediate fact’ of participation makes…It is the selection of an icon from within a prodigious field of idols, false images.67

The difference is initiatory, “acquired by each person on their own account.”68 That is, it has to do with undertaking the descent into the chaos of the underworld and returning to tell the tale. Philosophy without initiation would quickly turn stale and become abstract. Without stories to perform on infinite plane(s) stretching beyond the relative horizons of commonsense experience, a philosopher’s concepts cannot catch fire, nor acquire the persuasive life of personality. Once the journey into the darkness of pure Difference has been undertaken, in the difficult idea one has partaken are discovered signs of its ingression into the light of physical appearance: like a flower blooming, the idea incarnates out of earthly soil. “What man of sense,” writes Plato of his pedagogy of the concept,

would plant seeds in an artificial garden, to bring forth fruit or flowers in eight days, and not in deeper and more fitting soil?69

After the Christian-Platonic initiation, the world is transfigured into a problematic network of occult icons whose meaning can only be uncovered intuitively by the mental magic of talismanic thinking. Ideas are traced into appearances as signs, moments of discontinuity in extensive physical time-space out of which the intensive oddity of self-reference emerges.70 These recursive oddities unfold themselves into the physical plane, erupting as problematic forces requiring of the flesh-hewn mind not new representations of a supposedly extra-bodily world, but self-immolation through constant death and resurrection. Thinking is an ecstatic, violent act, always killing the neurons which support it, “making the brain a set of little deaths that puts constant death within us.”71

Deleuze’s Plato creates concepts not only iconically, but ironically, in that he never claims to represent an idea as true, but only to participate in an idea as “a way of problematizing, a manner of posing questions.”72 Deleuze pushes his Platonism as far away from any two-world caricature as possible by positing, according to Ramey,

the genesis of mind in direct encounters with imperceptible forces of perception, moments when the subtle and elusive patterns of difference and repetition animating life force the mind to interpret and even to create.73

Whitehead’s and Deleuze’s immanental reading of Christianity, along with their reading of Plato’s participatory doctrines of Persuasion and Difference, provides a world-renewing medicinal brew sorely needed in the contemporary world. Deleuze writes of the “medicinal thought” of a people to come who, according Ramey,

would, at an eschatological limit, have passed beyond the segmentation of knowledge in art, science, and philosophy in some as-yet-unrealized integral life of knowledge, such as that long dreamt of in the esoteric tradition of mathesis universalis.74

For Deleuze, mathesis is “a thinking of incarnation and individuality,”75 a form of symbolic knowing that allows for the discovery (and creation) of life’s (and death’s) deepest secrets. Knowledge of life’s individuating tendency, its power to repeatedly differ from itself, reveals how “the whole [can symbolize] itself in each individual.”76 Initiation into such knowledge would not only empower individual decision and action, but could rejuvenate the social and political life of civilization. We await the people to come who will be capable of completing creation through the incarnation of this Christogenic “body without organs.”77 “If you want to make a new start in religion,” writes Whitehead, “you must be content to wait a thousand years.”78

1 Perhaps even post-apocalyptic. See Sam Mickey’s attempt to “compost” the territorialized “postal discourses” of disintegral thought in his dissertation, Philosophy for a Planetary Civilization: On the Verge of Integral Ecology, (2012), 321cf [http://search.proquest.com/docview/1017705422?accountid=25260 (accessed 12/17/2012)].

2 Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (New York: The Free Press, 1929/1978), 207.

3 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 74.

4 Joshua Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal (London: Duke University Press, 2012), 2.

5 See Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze, 6: There exists a “general academic-philosophical prejudice against the threatening proximity of intuitive, mystical, or even simply more emotional modes of mind to the cold calculations of pure reason…”

6 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 42.

7 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 38, 89, 177.

8 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 202.

9 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 72.

10 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 7: “The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.”

11 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 107-109.

12 Isabelle Stengers, Thinking With Whitehead (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 443.

13 Stengers, Thinking With Whitehead, 443.

14 Peter Hallward, Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation (London: Verso Books, 2006); quoted in Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze, 226n9.

15 Stengers, Thinking With Whitehead, 272.

16 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 275.

17 Whitehead, Modes of Thought (New York: The Free Press, 1938/1968), 105.

18 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 343.

19 Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925/1960), 192. The contemplative conception of God as unmoved mover is obviously not as crude; what it lacks is the emotional and moral intensity required to engender religious vision.

20 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 43.

21 Whitehead, Modes of Thought, 19.

22 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 343.

23 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 45.

24 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 74.

25 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 53.

26 Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, transl. Paul Patton(London: Continuum, 1994/2004), 139.

27 Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze, 13.

28 Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze, 16.

29 Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze, 16-17.

30 Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 192.

31 Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 193.

32 Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 191-192.

33 Stengers, Thinking With Whitehead, 133.

34 Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, 191.

35 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 45.

36 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 49-50.

37 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 51.

38 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 37.

39 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 3.

40 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 61.

41 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 22, 28.

42 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 79.

43 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 203.

44 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 69.

45 These Christological concepts can be read in parallel to Deleuze and Guattari’s geophilosophical concepts of “reterritorialization” and “deterritorialization” (What Is Philosophy?, 69-70).

46 John 1:14.

47 John 1:5.

48 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 69.

49 Galations 2:20.

50 Matthew 5:44.

51 Matthew 6:10.

52 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Free Press, 1933/1961), 161.

53 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 166; Process and Reality, 343.

54 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 172.

55 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 166.

56 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 166.

57 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 160.

58 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 167.

59 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 167-169.

60 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 169.

61 Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze, Ch. 4: “The Overturning of Platonism,” 112cf.

62 See Whitman’s “Song of Myself,” section 51.

63 Journal entry, Oct. 1845.

64 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 39.

65 Ironically, of course, as Plato was himself a prolific author.

66 Iain Hamilton Grant, Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (London: Continuum, 2006), 56n8.

67 Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze, 118.

68 Deleuze, “Mathesis, Science, and Philosophy,” foreword to Johann Malfatti de Montereggio, Mathesis, Or Studies on the Anarchy and Hierarchy of Knowledge (Paris: Editions Du Griffon D’Or, 1946), 147.

69 Phaedrus, 276c-277a.

70 Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy?, 21-22.

71 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 216; Curiously, Christian esotericist Rudolf Steiner says almost the same thing: “The chief characteristic of ordinary thinking is that each single act of thinking injures the nervous system, and above all, the brain; it destroys something in the brain. Every thought means that a minute process of destruction takes place in the cells of the brain. For this reason sleep is necessary for us, in order that this process of destruction may be made good; during sleep we restore what during the day was destroyed in our nervous system by thinking. What we are consciously aware of in an ordinary thought is in reality the process of destruction that is taking place in our nervous system” (Lecture: 1st May, 1913; http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/OccSciOccDev/19130501p01.html [accessed 12/16/2012]).

72 Deleuze and Guattari, What Is Philosophy?, 121.

73 Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze, 125.

74 Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze, 89.

75 Deleuze, “Mathesis, Science, and Philosophy,” 143.

76 Ramey, The Hermetic Deleuze, 98.

77 Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (London: Continuum, 1990/2004), 102; see also Ramey’s discussion of Cusa’s anthropocosmic Christology (The Hermetic Deleuze, 236n29).

78 Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, 172.

Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. What is Philosophy? (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994).

Deleuze, Gilles Difference and Repetition, transl. Paul Patton (London: Continuum, 1994/2004).

Deleuze, Gilles. The Logic of Sense (London: Continuum, 1990/2004).

Grant, Iain Hamilton. Philosophies of Nature After Schelling (London: Continuum, 2006).

Hallward, Peter. Out of this World: Deleuze and the Philosophy of Creation (London: Verso Books, 2006).

Ramey, Joshua. The Hermetic Deleuze: Philosophy and Spiritual Ordeal (London: Duke University Press, 2012).

Stengers, Isabelle. Thinking With Whitehead (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011). Whitehead, A. N. Science and the Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1925/1960).

Whitehead, A. N. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (New York: The Free Press, 1929/1978).

Whitehead, A. N. Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Free Press, 1933/1961).

Whitehead, A. N. Modes of Thought (New York: The Free Press, 1938/1968).

Disambiguating Spirit and Matter (reflections on scientific materialism)

—— “Can these things be,
And overcome us like a summer’s cloud,
Without our special wonder?”

More reflections on PZ Myers, science, and philosophy…

Emerson on being a scholar

“A mechanic is driven by his work all day, but it ends at night; it has an end. But the scholar’s work has none. That which he has learned is that there is much more to be learned. He feels only his incompetence. A thousand years, tenfold, a hundredfold his faculties, would not suffice: the demands of the task are such, that it becomes omnipresent; he studies in his sleep, in his walking, in his meals, in his pleasures. He is but a fly or a worm to this mountain. He becomes anxious: if one knock at his door, he scowls: if one intimate the purpose of visiting him, he looks grave.”

-Ralph Waldo Emerson, October 1845

Philosophy Blogging, OOO/SR, Nihilism, and God

It is difficult to describe the effects of the blogosphere on consciousness, especially when the information communicated via blogs pretends to be philosophical. The blog, as a medium, has not yet been swallowed as radio by TV, or the printed word by the digital hyperlink, and so gaining perspective on its effects remains difficult. We’re still in it, like a child in her mother’s womb. I think by the graces of, and so cannot yet understand, this electronic medium. I think the obscurity of the blogosphere’s effects are magnified for academic philosophers, since there are no disciplinary boundaries carving it up in order to assure that interlocutors play the same language games (which is what always happens at university conferences). Academic philosophy, as practiced at conferences and published in journals, is usually myopically specialized. Arguments take place within some narrow field of relevance, while the truly important questions of life on earth remain backgrounded. This is, of course, a caricature. But so long as we are caricaturing, let us hear from Alan Watts:

“This is the current movement in philosophy: logical analysis says you mustn’t think about existence. It’s a meaningless concept. Therefore philosophy has become the discussion of trivia. No good philosopher lays awake nights worrying about the destiny of man and the nature of God and all that sort of thing. A philosopher today is a practical fellow who comes to the university with a briefcase at 9 and leaves at 5. He does philosophy during the day—which is discussing whether certain sentences have meaning and if so what. He would come to work in a white coat if he thought he could get away with it.”

Even where philosophy begins not with pretense, but with the love of wonder and the desire to know the nature of things, it remains subject to the effects on consciousness of the variety of species of media used to communicate it. Modern consciousness, despite its claim to have dropped sophistry for science,  learns to think only given the cognitive augmentation provided by the alphabet.* Postmodern consciousness, similarly, thinks by the graces of the blogosphere, the apogee of the electronic medium. The democratization of information has now become at least technologically feasible, if not politically actual. I don’t think the rise of the blog signals the end of the university (or at least I should hope not), but it does mean that the individual is now shouldering a good deal more of the weight of human knowledge than before.

I am in graduate school myself, though I attend CIIS, an academically marginalized school started by an Indian yogi in the middle of the New Age capital of the world (Watts was once on the faculty). It is impossible for me to escape this context, even though I aim to think individually much in the spirit of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Thought does not take place in a vacuum, however. Philosophy is not best done alone in the woods. Institutions, with all due respect to the likes of Emerson and Thoreau, are an indispensable part of the evolution of consciousness. The blogosphere is alluring to me because it is both individualizing and institutionalizing. It is a distributed institution of localized individuals, each capable of participating in the co-production of a planetary ecology of ideas, images, and symbols unhindered by the disciplinary boundaries of traditional universities.

This is the ideal, at least. All of this meta-reflection on philosophy blogging is by way of introduction to some final thoughts in response to what is by now old news, namely the discussion surrounding nihilism and theology that took place earlier this month amongst OOOers. Graham Harman, Levi Bryant, Tim Morton, Adam RobbertJason Hills, Tom SparrowLeon Niemoczynski, and others all took part.

More recently, Kris Coffield over at Fractured Politics has posted a summary and some suggestions. I wanted to clarify some assumptions he makes regarding my position.

I have argued that, without some divine function (whether of the theist, pantheist, or panentheist variety), ideas and meanings can have no reality in the universe. I make this claim in order to remain metaphysically consistent, not because I think atheism is immoral. Obviously, atheists can still be ethical people, operating in the world with meaning, purpose, and even humanitarian idealism. I would never dispute this. What I have argued is that atheists who are also scientific materialists/naturalists risk falling into blatant contradiction unless they are able to articulate how thinking, feeling, and willing (faculties normally associated with consciousness) remain possible despite their metaphysical commitment to a thoroughly non-teleological, disenchanted cosmology. If it is the case that the universe operates according to efficient causality alone (as most materialists traditionally assert), then how is it that human beings are capable of entertaining ideas and engaging in meaningful projects? The validity of scientific knowledge rests upon the assumption that the thoughts and purposes of scientists are real. The atheistic materialist is left with two options in order to remain consistent with this assumption: either ideas and meanings are uniquely human capacities not present in the rest of the universe, or human consciousness itself is an epiphenomenal illusion that neuroscience will eventually explain in mechanistic terms. I think both of these options are inadequate: emergentist dualism is too anthropocentric, and eliminativist monism is too mechanomorpic. I maintain that the human soul is not ontologically distinct from the rest of the universe because the universe is ensouled. Whitehead’s panentheist conception of God functions in a way similar to the World-Soul as described in Timaeus; only, instead of actively shaping passive matter as Plato’s demiurge, Whitehead’s dipolar God bends the infinitely diversifying flow of Creativity into the finite occasions of a unifying Cosmos (and is bent, in turn, by these same occasions).

Coffield argues that, despite my apparent support of the anthrodecentric tendencies of OOO, I am “ultimately unable to escape” a human-centric ontology. He continues:

“Even if the noosphere is more putatively sophisticated than the nonhuman objectsphere (a debatable point), it does not follow, from an object-orientation, that the relations of the former should be given precedence over the latter. Instead, as Levi Bryant has previously indicated, existence entails perpetual differentiation, such that to be is to differ. Thus, the very concept of a singular noosphere or inanimate objectsphere is conceptually shaky, and any entity inserted to bridge the sides of this infinitely regressive binary—God, game, golden goose, or Gandalf—is rendered, to borrow Morton’s word, irrelevant.”

Much of the philosophizing I do on this blog reflects my struggle to steer clear of all binaries by weaving Wisdom’s wandering story into a differentiated whole. There are many objects, many perspectives, both human-related and not. In calling them all objects, I aim to think the Absolute, or the identity of identity and difference. My philosophizing is a cosmologizing, and in that sense, all my thinking is in the service of anthropogenesis. I aim to cosmologize the human by anthropomorphizing the Cosmos. Perhaps this sounds tautological, but if we think in terms of process or genesis instead of being or ontos, the Anthropic Principle becomes among the most profound of metaphysical insights. Anthropos is already implicit in Cosmos, not because our particular species represents the supreme achievement of the universe, but because thinking has always been a more than human activity rooted in the nature of reality itself.

“The forces which are at work inside my body”, suggests Rudolf Steiner,

“…are the same as those which exist outside. Therefore I am really identical with the objects; not, however, “I” in so far as I am a perception of myself as subject, but “I” in so far as I am a part of the universal world process […] The universal, primordial Being permeating all humanity thus takes hold of us through our thinking. Life within reality, filled with thought content, is at the same time life in God.” –Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path, p. 98 and 236

I do not think that the noösphere should take precedence over the non-human universe, because I do not conceive of the universe as lacking in νοῦς or ψυχή. The noösphere is a cosmic event, something the whole of Gaia is doing in conjunction with the solar system and galaxy within which it is nested. God, or the World-Soul (ψυχή κόσμου), is not irrelevant to philosophy if the philosopher hopes to think the Cosmos. If, as Bryant suggests, “to be is to differ,” then it is nihilism, indeed, that we are left with. Not that I want to homogenize the individualities of reality; I would just rephrase Bryant’s important insight: “to become is to differ.” Process philosophy is then an attempt to identify and re-enact the divine aim of creative differentiation, to participate in its latent holotropic tendencies by uncovering the divine presence in all temporal things. Only then does the Universe become a reality.

Coffield continues:

“If nihilism fears really are concerns over the implications of anthrodecentrism (a clever term coined by Segall) for value judgement, then demonstrating the capacity for deriving value under realist conditions may allay anxiety about affirmations of meaninglessness, making the more radical articulations of object-oriented ontology mare palatable. Crafting a coherent variant of anthrodecentric normativity can be accomplished, in one sense, through an appeal to naturalistic realism…[or] a radically flattened version of natural selection [productive of] moral norms consonant with an instrumental social rationality, wherein moral arrangements that impede group interests animate the potential for unrest, creating feedback that promotes the development of norms aligned with social rationality.”

In order to avoid being misunderstood as advocating subject-centrism over object-centrism, or unity over variety, or hierarchy over ecology, I should further unpack my cosmotheandrism. Attempts to naturalize our moral needs/wants in this way seems to me to be a form of greedy reductionism neglectful of the extent to which the ultimate values of the Universe pre-exist the species level, since it is these values (like Beauty, Goodness, and Truth) that provide the metaphysical condition for the possibility of local accomplishments of normativity. Reducing morality to an accident of social and/or natural selection does not lead to moral realism, but to relativism. If we seek an object-orientation in ethics, then value must be rooted in the world process itself. Our human characteristics are microcosmic inflections of the divine character of the macrocosm.

This microcosm-macrocosm relation is not deterministic or coercive, such that God becomes responsible for every decision made by human beings or any other organism. The World-Soul is not a universal tyrant, but a poet, who, “with tender patience [leads] it by his vision of truth, beauty, and goodness” (Process and Reality, p. 346).

Whitehead goes on:

“God and the World are the contrasted opposites in terms of which Creativity achieves its supreme task of transforming disjoined multiplicity, with its diversities in opposition, into concrescent unity, with its diversities in contrast […] God and the World stand over against each other, expressing the final metaphysical truth that appetitive vision and physical enjoyment have equal claim to priority in creation. But no two actualities can be torn apart: each is all in all. Thus each temporal occasion embodies God, and is embodied in God. In God’s nature, permanence is primordial and flux is derivative from the World: in the World’s nature, flux is primordial and permanence is derivative from God. Also the World’s nature is a primordial datum for God; and God’s nature is a primordial datum for the World. Creation achieves the reconciliation of permanence and flux when it has reached its final term which is everlastingness—the Apotheosis of the World. Opposed elements stand to each other in mutual requirement. In their unity, they inhibit or contrast. God and the World stand to each other in this op-posed requirement. God is the infinite ground of all mentality, the unity of vision seeking physical multiplicity. The World is the multiplicity of finites, actualities seeking a perfected unity. Neither God, nor the World, reaches static completion. Both are in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty” (ibid., p. 348-349).

*The alphabet begins with A. A is for aleph, א, which to a mystic’s ear symbolizes to the polar unity (or Trinitarity) of God:

“The letter can been seen as being composed of [1] an upper yud, [2] a lower yud, and [3] a vav leaning on a diagonal. [1]The upper yud represents the hidden and ineffible aspects of God while [2]the lower yud represents God’s revelation and presence in the world. [3]The vav (“hook”) connects the two realms.” –Wikipedia

Emerson on Philosophical Inebriation

From lecture 7- “Inspiration,” given on March 7, 1871:

“Happy beyond the common lot if he learn the secret, that besides the energy of his conscious intellect, his intellect is capable of new energy by abandonment to a higher influence; or, besides his privacy of power as an individual man, there is a great Public Power on which he can draw–by only letting himself go–by a certain abandonment to it–shall I say, by unlocking at all risks his human doors, and suffering the inundation of the ethereal tides to roll and circulate through him. This ecstasy the old philosophers called an inebriation, and said, that Intellect by its relation to what is prior to Intellect is a god.

Our philosophy is to wait. We have retreated in patience, transferring our oft-shattered hope how often to a larger and remoter good. We meant well, but were continually forced to postpone our best action, and that which was life to do, could only be smuggled into odd moments of the months and year. But we learn to say at last, Dear God, the life of man is not by man,–it is consentaneous and far-related: it came with the sun and nature; it is crescive and vegetative, and it is with us as it is with the sun and the grass. We obey the beautiful necessity. The powers that man wants will be supplied, as man is supplied, and the philosophy of waiting is sustained by all the oracles of the universe.”


Channels/Doc Routing When Creating Doc in Shadowed Bucket

I have tried to search the docs, the mailing list, and the forum for what I think is a basic question, but can’t really find much of an answer, I am sure it has been asked, so my apologies for the dupe, I really just need some help finding a succinct answer, and even a reference to an existing thread is helpful.

How does sync gateway route docs that are created in the shadowed bucket? Further, given there is no authenticated user, I understand that it just sees all docs, but how can I assign a doc created in a bucket via Couchbase APIs that is shadowed via the Sync GW to specific channels in Sync GW/Mobile?

My set up works great when docs are created by the mobile devices and the sync function routes them/assigns them to channels and the processes accessing the shadowed bucket via Couchbase APIs can edit and update existing docs, but when the docs are created by the server process in the shadowed bucket, they don’t belong to any channels - how do I get around this? Thanks!

Hi @basitmustafa let me see if I can get some clarification first.

When referring to the “shadowed bucket” typically I am thinking of it as the “couchbase bucket” versus the sacred bucket dedicated to Sync Gateway and configured in the .json config file, “sync_gateway bucket”.

These two buckets communicate with each other using a Couchbase protocol that performs duplication between these two buckets. Buckets that are created in the “couchbase bucket” are then cloned over the “sync_gateway bucket” with revision information, and the Sync Gateway is made aware of these newly created documents and will appropriately sync them. As you mentioned, you read the documentation but to be sure, this behavior is described here:

The second point, channel development and data routing, I would need some more information. Would you be able to pass along what your configuration looks like today to give us an understanding of why the documents originating from the “couchbase bucket” do not appear to be utilizing the channels?

Thank you!


recent news about gadget

Designed in the UK our cabin bags and suitcases are designed to make travel cheaper and easier. A NATIONAL BESTSELLER A programmer, musician, and father of virtual reality technology, Jaron Lanier was a pioneer in digital media, and among the first to predict the revolutionary changes it would bring to our commerce Trinity (nuclear test) Wikipedia Trinity was the code name of the first detonation of a nuclear weapon. It was conducted by the United States Army at 5:29 a.m. on July 16, 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project. Clever Cutter is the revolutionary 2-in-1 Knife and Cutting Board. It quickly and safely chops and slices your favorite foods in seconds. Tags: clever, cutter, Уточняйте Наличие по телефону: 0700 916121, 0551 916122. Карманный микроскоп - PocketSkop x100. Если вы ювелир

Page 1 of 3123


How to Tell When Neuroscience-Based Programmes are Well-Developed

| tagged , , ,

by Martha Burns, Ph.D
I am sure you have noticed that there are many technology programmes out there that claim to “build,” or improve your brain function. Every week I receive emails from companies advertising brain games that promise to train attention and memory skills.
You may have wondered, do “brain games” really work? A recent article in The New York Times entitled “Do Brain Workouts Work? Science Isn’t Sure,” actually asked that very question as well. How would a memory brain game that I purchase from a website be different from a card or board game like “Concentration”? How is an attention game different or better than the concentration required to read a good book or play a card game that requires focused and sustained attention, to cards played or discarded each round? Do good old fashioned paper pencil activities like crossword puzzles help with brain function? How about Bridge or Chess? Wouldn’t any challenging video game help us with attention if we had to stay focused for long periods of time to get to a new level?

The question, then, is what are the critical active ingredients neuroscientists have found that need to be “built-in” so brain exercises effectively build targeted skills compared to the benefits we get from just using our “noggin” in everyday activities? And, more important, how is a parent or consumer to get through all the hype and determine which brain exercises have the important design features shown to be effective?

Fortunately, neuroscientists who have thoroughly researched this have published excellent summaries in respected scientific journals. Below are the key elements to look for in brain exercises:

  1. High & low – Exercises are most effective when they include challenging high-level tasks (like exercises that require a high degree of speed and accuracy) while also including low-level exercises that improve our ability to perceive similar sounds or images more distinctly (Ahissar et el, 2009). We might call this the Sherlock Holmes effect – you must see the details clearly to solve difficult problems.
  2. Adaptability – Exercises should increase or decrease in difficulty based on how you perform so they continuously adapt to your skill level (Roelfsema, 2010).
  3. Highly intensive training schedules – The relevant ‘skills’ must be identified, isolated, then practiced through hundreds if not thousands of trials on an intensive (ie, quasi-daily) schedule (Roelfsema, 2010).
  4. Attention grabbing – In order to maximise enduring plastic changes in the cortex, the learner must attend to each trial or learning event on a trial-by-trial basis.

So for parents, or anyone wanting to understand which brain exercises are worth the investment of valuable time and money, a rule of thumb would be to avoid products that advertise themselves as “brain games” – because that is what they probably are. Rather, seek out programmes or products that contain “exercises” that focus on specific high and low level skills like language, reading, memory and attention, and those who have research evidence to support their value when used by children like yours.

Ahissar, M., Nahum, M., Nelken, I., & Hochstein, S. (2009). Reverse hierarchies and sensory learning, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 364, 285–299.doi: 10.1098/rstb.2008.0253


When an old man ventured on to the zebra crossing on a rather wide street in a southwest Chinese city, he hadn’t accounted for the time it would take him to get to the other side. He was barely halfway through when the lights changed.

It could have been a disastrous situation, had not someone intervened (video above), in the process providing another of those all-too-rare examples when humans come to one another’s help.

Note: it would have been difficult enough even for a young person to have made it across the road in time.


A Delicious 30 Minute Freezer Meal

What are you’re favorite freezer meals?

How I Stock My Kitchen

When I go grocery shopping each week, I normally have a list of items to buy, but what I’ve come to realize is that I can add value to my shopping trip and stock my kitchen if I buy at least one extra item from the list below. This is helpful in case there were ever a time when I couldn’t run to the grocery store like getting sick or having a busy week.

Below are lists of items I stock up on:
Freezer-Organic chicken and beef and turkey burgers, pizza, vegetables (you can get bags of these for under a dollar at certain stores), fruits-strawberries and mixed berries, vegetable rice/quinoa and Greek yogurt pops.
Fridge-Water, Almond milk, yogurt, eggs
Pantry-Cereal, peanut butter, soup, pasta, tuna, cereal bars, rolled oats.
Other-Apples, oranges, avocado, tomatoes, cucumbers

Stocking up on these items means I will always have a full kitchen. It also means I’ll never run out of ideas on what to cook. While I might buy something one week, it means I can eat it when I’m in the mood for it later on. None of these items listed costs more than $10 total, so it won’t break my budget. For more information on budgeting read: How to Stick to a Weekly Food Budget When you give and take on your budget it all comes out the same-stock up on one expensive item one week-like organic chicken-then next week stock up on frozen vegetables.

How do you stock your kitchen? Let me know in the comments below or on social media @stylestomakeyousmile

The Meals I Eat Weekly

Cereal-Topped with berries

Snacks: Fruit bars
Veggies and hummus

Leftover Italian soup from Christmas dinner


Bread toasting

Bread is the most consuming foods and has critical position in the consumer foods in world because of its nutritional aspects energy providing and food habits.

The primary electric toaster was undoubtedly imagined in 1905, which is the year Albert Marsh built up the Nichrome wire, making the electric toaster conceivable. Throughout the year's toaster sizes, shapes and components changed yet the outcome is the cooking of bread items.

Since the 2000s, pop-up toasters with more extensive openings have been produced, empowering these toasters to toast bagels and English biscuits cut down the middle.

A pleasant flavour and colour are produced when slices of wheat bread are toasted, corresponding to the organoleptic characteristics of bread crust. The chemical reactions involved in this process are essentially the Maillard reaction and caramelization.

During heating, a complex reaction occurs between the proteins and sugar contained in the bread. This is known as the Maillard reaction, and it produces the typical flavour known from toasted bread as well as the colour formed as the bread toasts.

Maillard reactions are favored in systems with an intermediate moisture content, temperatures above 50 °C and pH 4.7 (i.e. in the pH range of food), producing changes in colour (melanoidins), flavour (aldehydes and ketones), functional properties and nutritional value (blocking or destruction of lysine).
Bread toasting

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Carbon for Water| Kenya

Focus area: Mitigation
Location: Kenya's Western Province
Activity established: April 2011

Version en espanol

Access to clean drinking water is a problem in many parts of Africa, and its purification is a problem for the environment. Dirty water often must be boiled to purify it, requiring fuel from unsustainable and costly sources, like wood or kerosene. In 2011, Vestergaard Frandsen launched a breakthrough initiative called LifeStraw® Carbon For Water™.

LifeStraw® Carbon For Water™ is an easy to set up and maintain water purification system that uses no fuel. Each filter can produce at least 18,000 liters of -quality drinking water over a 10-year life span. The Kenyans who received the family filter no longer need to treat water by boiling it using wood fuel - a traditional necessity that releases greenhouse gasses.
It uses carbon financing to sustainably provide 4.5 million people in Kenya with the ability to treat water in their homes for the next ten years.

It doesn't cost the government or aid donors anything, and is designed to be replicated in other appropriate settings. Close to 880,000 LifeStraw® Family water filters  were delivered to 91 percent of all households without access to safe municipal water in Kenya's Western Province.

The innovative Carbon For Water financing model can make a significant contribution to global health by demonstrating that novel approaches can overcome traditional financial limitations.

Additionally, the activity links profit intrinsically to performanceâ€”a relatively new concept in the aid and public health sectors.

LifeStraw® Carbon For Water is also unique as the first activity to directly link carbon credits with safe drinking water.

It moves beyond a pure focus on CO2 reductions to include measured sustainable development. It also emphasizes emission reductions that go beyond single point sources.

LifeStraw® Carbon For Water makes an important correction to the imbalance that exists in the global carbon market. While Africa is considered among the most at-risk areas for climate change, it has historically been on the margins of the climate markets, with less than five per cent of carbon projects having been implemented there.

Mitigation / Adaptation

As a self-financing activity, LifeStraw® Carbon For Water is measured based on its ability to reduce or avoid greenhouse gas emissions. Emission reductions result in carbon credits, each created when the equivalent of one metric ton of carbon dioxide is prevented from entering the atmosphere. Credits have a monetary value depending on the type and origin of the emission reductions produced and current prices in the carbon market.

After the first six months, almost 1.4 million tons of carbon emission reductions were realized.  Annually, the activity is expected to reduce an estimated 2.7 million tons of carbon emissions.

The LifeStraw® Carbon For Water activity provides a number of interesting opportunities for operational research, sustainability research, economics or cost efficiency research, and health impact research. Health impact research is already underway and Vestergaard Frandsen is meeting with world class researchers to design and develop further studies to measure various impacts.

Social and environmental benefits

LifeStraw® Carbon For Water is reducing the incidence of waterborne diseases. Preliminary results show a statistically significant reduction in the odds of diarrhea, dysentery and severe dehydration among under-fives whose households are exclusively using LifeStraw® Family water filters.

LifeStraw® Carbon For Water can also reduce the incidence of respiratory illnesses. Pollution from heating with biomass fuels such as wood increases susceptibility to pneumonia, especially among children.

LifeStraw® Carbon For Water helps to empower local residents by giving them an easy way to produce safe drinking water. It also employs thousands of Kenyans in its semi-annual campaigns to distribute the water filters and train recipients on usage. And Vestergaard Frandsen employs scores to work at 32 repair and replacement centers throughout the province and as district coordinators and supervisors (on an ongoing basis). Forty-five coordinators and more than 150 community volunteers are engaged full-time.

The major socio-economic contribution of the LifeStraw® Carbon For Water activity is its ability to offer a sustainable, self-financed solution to problems that arise when individuals and communities don't have access to safe drinking water - namely interruptions in education and income-bearing activities due to illness and the collection of fuel for boiling water. This is a breakthrough, especially with regard to point-of-use water treatments.

Community members have been involved in the planning and their feedback is constantly solicited. Also, to mitigate against the potential risk of under-use, Vestergaard Frandsen conducts ongoing community education to remind residents about the importance of continually using the water filters for optimal water consumption.

On a global level, LifeStraw® Carbon For Water can make a significant contribution to global health by demonstrating that novel approaches to overcoming traditional financial limitations can be sustained. Sustainable programs must be instituted to ensure that people have ongoing access to vital public health interventions that can improve and often save lives.

Potential for scaling-up and replication

The current iteration of LifeStraw® Carbon For Water will sustain itself, eventually recouping the US$30 million investment, and then generating profit, much of which will be reinvested back into the activity over the next decade.

LifeStraw® Carbon For Water is a scalable model that can be extended or replicated in different settings.

Larger iterations of the concept, currently in the planning phases, will require co-investment from partners. Vestergaard Frandsen is discussing expansion of the concept with governments and private investors in different regions throughout the world.

LifeStraw® Carbon For Water serves as a blueprint for future initiatives to derive income from both market-based emission reductions and results-based health outcomes - thus providing dual income streams and greater activity stability.

This innovative financing model overcomes the challenge of sustaining public health programs with traditional sources of finance, such as aid or grants from public sector or non-governmental groups with limited resources. The financing mechanism also holds public and private sector organizations to greater account, to ensure maximum impact. The activity links profit intrinsically to performance, a relatively new concept in the aid and public health sectors.

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Images owned by the activity partners, all rights reserved.


How to distinguish good tieguanyin?

Last Updated On September 06, 2018

Anxi Tieguanyin tea

Tieguanyin  identification method is to “look dry appearance” and “wet evaluation of the endoplasmic reticulum (brewing with flush water )” these two procedures.

Look at the shape: the main thing is to observe the shape, color, evenness of Tieguanyin and the aroma of dry tea. Where the contour shape, shigemi, fat green color of sand, dry tea aroma of pure tea, such as tea Guanyin characteristics

Wet assessment quality: after brewed tea by boiling water,  to identify its aroma, soup color, taste and the bottom.

  1.  Smell: firstly smell if aroma is outstanding, and then distinguish the aroma and height, length, strength, pure turbid. The olfactory smell is combined with hot olfactory, warm olfactory and cold olfactory. If the aroma prominent, pure aroma, fragrance long, it is great.
  2.  Taste: Use a teaspoon to scoop the right amount of tea entrance (must not too much), sucking and rolling it through the tongue in the mouth , so that all parts of the oral taste of cells to make a comprehensive sense of taste. It it has all mellow taste, alcohol and cool, thick and not astringent, rich variety “flavor” characteristics, are top grade.
  3. To see soup color: see the color depth of tea, light and shade, voicing and so on. If the soup color is orange bright (referred to as green bean soup) , it is the top grade; dark turbidity is defective.
  4. View leaf bottom: brewed by boiling water over the tea (known as the “leaf bottom”, commonly known as “tea residue”), filled the dish with water to observe the leaf bottom. If the bottom is soft, “Green Di green belly” is obvious, are top grade.


BioConnect Regtech

BioConnect is on a Quest - for Rightful Identity.

BioConnect is a technology company with a fundamentally different approach to “identity.” In their Quest for Rightful Identity, BioConnectors developed BioConnect ID, an intelligent platform that translates data from different biometric products into a single language, such as hardware or software leveraging a person’s face, voice, eyes, and behaviours.

Financial Institutions
biometric onboarding identification Nov. 29, 2017, 3:07 p.m. Fintastico Team
  Ask a question. Or leave your opinion about the service.


"Facebook wanted users’ medical data for a research project"- Engadget

" 'The medical industry has long understood that there are general health benefits to having a close-knit circle of family and friends. But deeper research into this link is needed to help medical professionals develop specific treatment and intervention plans that take social connection into account,' Facebook said in a statement. " - Mallory Locklear


Data strongly suggest that lower BMI is better for heart disease. A new study analyzing genetic mutations predisposing to increased body mass index (BMI) provides strong evidence that higher BMI plays a causal role in type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and coronary heart disease (CHD). For the study, researchers analyzed genetic, medical, and sociodemographic information from 120,000 individuals included in the UK Biobank. A polygenic risk score comprising 93 single-nucleotide polymorphisms associated with BMI from previous genome-wide association studies was constructed.


Prelude - skydiving from a dream

Tramway, Glasgow

Mary Brennan

five stars

It’s almost exactly three years since the Scottish Ensemble interacted with Swedish company Andersson Dance in a Tramway One staging of Bach’s Goldberg Variations. This proved a vividly radical exploration of Bach’s music: dancers and musicians alike moved through a cunningly choreographed journey in which sound took on another, visually striking physicality and we, the audience, heard Bach with our eyes, as well as our ears. So - could they? would they? join forces again? Prelude - skydiving from a dream is your answer: a mosaic of music that dips back and forth from disruptive, near-chaotic energies (the Lutosławski Preludes for 13 Solo Strings) to the sense of cosmic order that inhabits the mathematical architecture of Bach’s Art of Fuge - using extracts from both works, while playing in its entirety, that glorious surge of paradoxes, Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge.

Even if the musicians had been rooted to a designated spot, leaving the three dancers to channel the quirks of mood and tempi through their movements, this would still have been an exhilarating event. However, creating a sonic vortex where strident-screeching discords suddenly morph into measured harmony isn’t enough for the twelve members of the Scottish Ensemble: they come out from behind the usual barrier of music stands and join in the dance, often in complex phases of double work with each other or with one of the professional dancers. The choreography, by Orjann Andersson, enjoys a spirit of creative freefall, where certain motifs - arms outstretched, palms facing outwards, like wings yet somehow questioning, is one recurring theme - catch at the ‘thermals’ within the music without being enslaved by them. There are nervy jitterings (Lutoslawski), close-bonding duets (Bach) and an intense degree of unity between bodies and music for the final Beethoven where the Ensemble players offer musicianship of consummate understanding and challenging dance with real finesse. No wonder Andersson Dance is happy to share such adventurous projects with them!


September 15, 2009 09:46

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Ronit Hasin-Hochman, CEO, Jerusalem Post Group
Yaakov Katz, Editor-in-Chief

On my first visit to Eilat, in 1964, I was astounded by its beauty. There were mountains, there was a glistening blue sea, and, as far as I can remember, there was absolutely nothing at all on the shore. Sunset in those days was almost an unearthly experience.

Today, the sand is covered with beach chairs, hotels and restaurants and the lively atmosphere can be a bit overwhelming at times.

If you need a change of pace, leave the city proper and take two wonderful outings, both of them best in the late afternoon but great in the morning as well. The first is the ancient site of Evrona; the second is a very special haven for birds.

If there were ever an unlikely place for a farm it would be the wastelands of Evrona, located about 12 kilometers north of Eilat. Yet over a thousand years ago, local residents constructed an elaborate underground water system at Evrona and turned it into a veritable paradise.

Look for acacia trees as you drive (or walk), most of them nearly strangled by mistletoe. Fleshy, bright red mistletoe plants attach themselves to the acacia trunk and in this way can pick up minerals from the ground.

Park when you reach Evrona, where you will find a shelter with maps and explanations.

Tirza Cohen, director of Eilat’s SPNI Field School, accompanied us on our trip to Evrona and explained that the farmers were probably Muslims who came from the surrounding Arab countries. Full of initiative, they captured runoff water from the Eilat mountains about 15 km. away and transported it inside canals. Imagine this barren desert with date palms, peach, plum, almond, and pear trees!

The location was excellent, on the route called Darb el-Haj — Road of the Celebrants. Although it had been used by traders for millennia, after Islam was established, Darb el-Haj became the main pilgrimage trail to Mecca. Thousands of travelers from North Africa and Spain took the route every year, stopping to buy their provisions in Evrona.

Besides using water from the west, long-ago farmers dug to reach fresh underground water and transported it to the fields. Every 10 meters, a shaft was dug so that air could circulate. To reach one such tunnel, follow wooden arrows to the left where yellow railings mark its entrance.

You can descend a ladder down a six-meter shaft, crawl about 20 meters through the tunnel, and surface through another shaft. Flashlights help but are not essential. It’s cool down there — a great way to get out of the heat!

Return to the old Arava road and turn right. You may see gazelles running around here, especially early in the morning and in the late afternoon. Then turn right again at a Nature Reserve sign and drive until you reach towering doum palm trees. Unlike date palms, whose proud trunks are tall and straight, those of the doum palm split into v- shapes that open to the sky. Even their tops are different, for the leaves spread out like wings.

You won’t see any doum palms in Tel Aviv or Ashkelon, as they don’t grow any further north than Evrona. Their presence here for thousands of years indicates that the weather in the past was far different than it is today.

You can end this particular jaunt here, or follow the stone-lined bumpy road to the Monty Overlook. If you do, park next to salt ponds, and get a wonderful close-up view of the birds who come here to drink. Enjoy the sight of flaming pink flamingos, which are very sociable and travel in flocks. You may not spot their heads, as they stick them underwater to gobble up algae for their dinners. You can probably identify the redshanks, which seem to walk on the water’s surface before they fly off.

For a second tranquil excursion, visit the International Birding and Research Center. Here you can walk around both salt and fresh water pools, while tracking small animals and viewing fauna endemic to the region.

Like the automobile, migrating birds need to ’refuel.’ Nature made it easy for birds flying back and forth in this part of the world, for they ran out of ’gas’ just over Eilat. This was perfect, for not only was Eilat the only land bridge between Asia and Africa, but it offered salt marshes, large fresh water puddles, and fowl-friendly fauna.

Sadly, however, Eilat developers went wild after the Six Day War. During the 1970s and ’80s, they built shopping malls, hotels, housing, and restaurants that used the salt marshes of northern Eilat as a landfill for all their garbage. Residents strolling the city streets would find hundreds of dead birds at their feet: the poor creatures had searched in vain for their natural habitat, trying to find the indigenous plants and the salty marshes that had fed them so wonderfully in the past.

Something had to be done — and fast — to save our feathered friends. Fortunately, in 1993, the Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel, the Eilat Municipality, the Jewish National Fund, the Ministry of Tourism, and the Nature Reserves Authority got together, cleaned up the marsh, and established the International Birding and Research Center.

Since then, the staff have been diligently replanting foliage indigenous to the region, so that birds can again rest in their leaves or feed upon their insects and fruit. Sea-blight, for example, flourishes in saline ground. It also simultaneously flowers and bears fruit during migratory periods and offers birds a goodly repast.

There are three parts to this lovely, restful haven: a ringing station, the salt marshes, and a new fresh water lake. Early in the morning, center director Dr. Reuven Yosef is often to be found measuring and weighing a visiting bird. He and other personnel ring their tiny legs so that the center can keep tabs on their movements as they fly thousands of kilometers across the continents.

Watch as they work with waders, placing the ring above the joint so it won’t get wet when they tread through the water. You may watch them place a wader like the ringed plover on the ground, because he will be too disoriented to be released directly into the air.

Then walk around the fresh water lake, on your right when your back is to the parking lot. Built in 1990 with money donated by a Californian couple, it is thickly lined with foliage that includes alfa-alfa to attract bugs, delicious spongy saltbush, and masses of reeds. Keep still, and don’t disturb the egrets, herons, terns, and other waterfowl you see.

When you cross the sand to reach the salt pools to the south, look down to see evidence of rich animal life. Little burrows are really traps set by ant lions, who create a sort of web to catch unsuspecting ants. There are lots of tracks, but to see the foxes, shrews, hyenas, and snakes that they belong to, you have to come here really late at night or way before dawn.

Dedicated birdwatchers are a common sight in Eilat, notwithstanding security warnings sent by their native governments. On one of our trips an excited birdwatcher drew a picture to show me the citrine wagtail he had spotted, with a yellow breast and two white bands on its wings. Unlike other wagtails, explained our enthusiastic new friend, he hardly moves his tail when he walks.

The salt pools may be playing host to several species of plovers, the black wing stilt, the little stint, gulls, and more. In fact, from September through the end of spring, nearly a billion birds representing 430 different species will pass through Eilat. Luckily, they will have food to eat and places to rest — and live to see another year.

How to get there

Evrona is north of Eilat on Highway 90. Near kilometer marker No. 20, a sign on your right points to Evrona. Turn in, and after a few dozen meters, the road intersects with an old, narrow byway that, until 1990, was the only road from the Arava to Eilat. Turn left (north) on that road and follow signs to the Evrona Farm.

If you want to reach the bird sanctuary do not, under any circumstances, follow the signs in Eilat — they lead nowhere! Instead, drive north from Eilat to Kibbutz Eilat. Just north of the kibbutz, a sign on your right points to the Bird Sanctuary and the Arava Crossing. Turn, and follow the signs.

To book a guided tour with Dr. Reuven Yosef at the International Birding Center, call (08) 633-5339 or fax (08) 633-5319.

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Choose a film made between 1980 and 1991. Evaluate the ethics of the film based on its relationship to some relevant issue of the period.

Possible issues include materialism, militarism, racism, feminism, conservatism, law and order issues, LGBT issues, the fate of the counter culture, and liberalism. There are many other values you could choose from. Make certain you have arrived at a single central argument and that you have adequate supporting evidence. A brief account of the films plot at the outset is useful (but avoid long plot summary). You may use visual aids, but limit them to no more than two minutes, and make sure you use them to further your overall planGrading Criteria
1)The presentation represents a thoughtful response to the topic. It expresses a clearly defined central argument/thesis which is both worthy of development and appropriately specific. The individual parts of the piece are fully developed. Their relationship to the students central point is clear.
2)The evidence is concrete and clearly supports the central argument and the works other related claims. The work uses outside sources effectively and ethically. The logic of evidence choices is clear. Any necessary concessions regarding the evidence or claims are made. Put another way the evidence is defended against reasonable objection.
3)The organization of the presentation is logical and appropriate to the audience, the subject, and the thesis. Necessary transitions are present. Sentence and paragraph organization is clear. Evidence is presented in a coherent order.
4)Presentation style fits the piece and the audience. Words choices are precise. The tone is appropriate to the audience and the subject.
5)Research conventions are observed throughout.


Fare Starts From INR 700

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Sharma Travels Malakoli to Ichalkaranji Bus Details

Q-1). How many buses are operated between Malakoli and Ichalkaranji by Sharma Travels?
A: There are 3 buses that are operated from Malakoli to Ichalkaranji by Sharma Travels.
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A: The journey between Malakoli to Ichalkaranji is covered by Sharma Travels in approximately 9 hours 50 mins.
Q-3). How many luxury buses are operated by Sharma Travels between Malakoli and Ichalkaranji?
A: There are 3 luxury buses operated by Sharma Travels between Malakoli to Ichalkaranji.
A: The first bus of Sharma Travels leaves at 11:30 from Malakoli.
A: The last bus of Sharma Travels departs at 23:45 from Malakoli.
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Sharma Travels Bus from Malakoli to Ichalkaranji

Keeping your accessibility and satisfaction of road journey in mind, Sharma Travels offers a number of buses throughout day and night. It also grants great convenience for any kind of commuters like business or leisure travellers . Malakoli to Ichalkaranji is one of the major functioning routes of Sharma Travels. The skilled drivers and staff ensures complete comfort of its passengers.

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Construct a Binary Tree from Ancestor Matrix

Given an ancestor matrix, whose cell (i, j) has value true if i is ancestor of j in a binary tree, construct a binary tree from it where binary tree nodes are labelled from 0 to n-1 where n is the size of the ancestor matrix.

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Given a binary tree, write an efficient algorithm to check if tree is height balanced or not. In a height balanced tree, the absolute difference between height of left subtree and right subtree for every node is 0 or 1.

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 Definition of Egypt. Meaning of Egypt. Synonyms of Egypt

Definition of Egypt. Meaning of Egypt. Synonyms of Egypt

Here you will find one or more explanations in English for the word Egypt. Also in the bottom left of the page several parts of wikipedia pages related to the word Egypt and, of course, Egypt synonyms and on the right images related to the word Egypt.

Definition of Egypt

No result for Egypt. Showing similar results...

Alopochen AEgyptiaca
Spur-winged Spur"-winged`, a. (Zo["o]l.) Having one or more spurs on the bend of the wings. Spur-winged goose (Zo["o]l.), any one of several species of long-legged African geese of the genus Plectropterus and allied genera, having a strong spur on the bend of the wing, as the Gambo goose (P. Gambensis) and the Egyptian, or Nile, goose (Alopochen [AE]gyptiaca). Spur-winged plover (Zo["o]l.), an Old World plover (Hoplopterus spinosus) having a sharp spur on the bend of the wing. It inhabits Northern Africa and the adjacent parts of Asia and Europe.
Balanites AEgyptiaca
Zachun a*chun", n. (Bot.) An oil pressed by the Arabs from the fruit of a small thorny tree (Balanites [AE]gyptiaca), and sold to piligrims for a healing ointment. --J. Smith (Dict. Econ. Plants).
Balanites AEgyptiaca
Bito Bi"to, n., Bito tree Bi"to tree` . [Etym. uncertain.] (Bot.) A small scrubby tree (Balanites [AE]gyptiaca) growing in dry regions of tropical Africa and Asia. Note: The hard yellowish white wood is made into plows in Abyssinia; the bark is used in Farther India to stupefy fish; the ripe fruit is edible, when green it is an anthelmintic; the fermented juice is used as a beverage; the seeds yield a medicinal oil called zachun. The African name of the tree is hajilij.
Egypt herring
Saury Sau"ry, n.; pl. Sauries. [Etymol. uncertain.] (Zo["o]l.) A slender marine fish (Scomberesox saurus) of Europe and America. It has long, thin, beaklike jaws. Called also billfish, gowdnook, gawnook, skipper, skipjack, skopster, lizard fish, and Egypt herring.
Egyptian E*gyp"tian, n. 1. A native, or one of the people, of Egypt; also, the Egyptian language. 2. A gypsy. [Obs.] --Shak.
Egyptian clover
Berseem Ber*seem", n. [Ar. bersh[=i]m clover.] An Egyptian clover (Trifolium alexandrinum) extensively cultivated as a forage plant and soil-renewing crop in the alkaline soils of the Nile valley, and now introduced into the southwestern United States. It is more succulent than other clovers or than alfalfa. Called also Egyptian clover.
Egyptian or East Indian
Note: Arabian millet is Sorghum Halepense. Egyptian or East Indian, millet is Penicillaria spicata. Indian millet is Sorghum vulgare. (See under Indian.) Italian millet is Setaria Italica, a coarse, rank-growing annual grass, valuable for fodder when cut young, and bearing nutritive seeds; -- called also Hungarian grass. Texas millet is Panicum Texanum. Wild millet, or Millet grass, is Milium effusum, a tail grass growing in woods.
Egyptian privet
Lawsonia Law*so"ni*a, n. (Bot.) An Asiatic and North African shrub (Lawsonia inermis), with smooth oval leaves, and fragrant white flowers. Henna is prepared from the leaves and twigs. In England the shrub is called Egyptian privet, and in the West Indies, Jamaica mignonette.
Egyptian privet
Privet Priv"et, n. [Cf. Scot. privie, Prov. E. prim-print, primwort. Prob. for primet, and perh. named from being cut and trimmed. See, Prim, a., and cf. Prime to prune, Prim, n., Prie, n.] (Bot.) An ornamental European shrub (Ligustrum vulgare), much used in hedges; -- called also prim. Egyptian privet. See Lawsonia. Evergreen privet, a plant of the genus Rhamnus. See Alatern. Mock privet, any one of several evergreen shrubs of the genus Phillyrea. They are from the Mediterranean region, and have been much cultivated for hedges and for fancifully clipped shrubberies.
Egyptize E"gypt*ize, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Egyptized; p. pr. & vb. n. Egyptizing.] To give an Egyptian character or appearance to. --Fairbairn.
Egyptologer E`gyp*tol"o*ger, Egyptologist E`gyp*tol"o*gist, n. One skilled in the antiquities of Egypt; a student of Egyptology.
Egyptological E*gyp`to*log"ic*al, a. Of, pertaining to, or devoted to, Egyptology.
Egyptology E`gyp*tol"o*gy, n. [Egypt + -logy.] The science or study of Egyptian antiquities, esp. the hieroglyphics.
Luffa AEgyptiaca
Loof Loof, n. (Bot.) The spongelike fibers of the fruit of a cucurbitaceous plant (Luffa [AE]gyptiaca); called also vegetable sponge.
Sesbania AEgyptiaca
Sesban Ses"ban, n. [F., fr. Ar. saisab[=a]n, seiseb[=a]n, a kind of tree, fr. Per. s[=i]sab[=a]n seed of cinquefoil.] (Bot.) A leguminous shrub (Sesbania aculeata) which furnishes a fiber used for making ropes. Note: The name is applied also to the similar plant, Sesbania [AE]gyptiaca, and other species of the same genus.

Meaning of Egypt from wikipedia

- 30 Egypt (/ˈiːdʒɪpt/ (listen) EE-jipt; Arabic: مِصر Miṣr, Egyptian Arabic: مَصر Maṣr, Coptic: Ⲭⲏⲙⲓ Khēmi), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is...
- Egyptians (Egyptian Arabic: مَصريين  IPA: [mɑsˤɾɪjˈjiːn]; Maṣreyyīn; Arabic: مِصريّون; Coptic: ⲛⲓⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ Ni/rem/en/kīmi) are an ethnic group native...
- country Egypt. Ancient Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3100 BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology) with the...
- The Plagues of Egypt (Hebrew: מכות מצרים, Makot Mitzrayim), also called the ten plagues, were ten calamities that, according to the biblical Book of Exodus...
- common title of the monarchs of ancient Egypt from the First Dynasty (c. 3150 BCE) until the annexation of Egypt by the Roman Empire in 30 BCE, although...
- The Prince of Egypt is a 1998 American epic animated musical drama film and the first traditional animated film produced and released by DreamWorks. The...
- Egyptian hieroglyphs (/ˈhaɪrəˌɡlɪf, -roʊ-/) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt. It combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements...
- Gods of Egypt is a 2016 fantasy action film directed by Alex Proyas based on the ancient Egyptian deities. It stars Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Gerard Butler...
- The economy of Egypt was a highly centralised economy focused on import substitution under President Gamal Abdel N****er. In the 1990s, a series of International...
- Egypt has thousands of years of recorded history. Ancient Egypt was among the earliest civilizations in Middle East and Africa. For millennia, Egypt maintained...