TY - BOOK
T1 - Inventing Origins?
T2 - Aetiological Thinking in Greek and Roman Antiquity
A2 - Wessels, Antje
A2 - Klooster, Jacqueline
PY - 2021/12
Y1 - 2021/12
N2 - Aetiologies seem to gratify the human desire to understand the origin of a phenomenon. However, as this book demonstrates, aetiologies do not exclusively explore origins. Rather, in inventing origin stories they authorise the present and try to shape the future. This book explores aetiology as a tool for thinking, and draws attention to the paradoxical structure of origin stories. Aetiologies reduce complex ambivalence and plurality to plainly causal and temporal relations, but at the same time, by casting an anchor into the past, they open doors to progress and innovation.
AB - Aetiologies seem to gratify the human desire to understand the origin of a phenomenon. However, as this book demonstrates, aetiologies do not exclusively explore origins. Rather, in inventing origin stories they authorise the present and try to shape the future. This book explores aetiology as a tool for thinking, and draws attention to the paradoxical structure of origin stories. Aetiologies reduce complex ambivalence and plurality to plainly causal and temporal relations, but at the same time, by casting an anchor into the past, they open doors to progress and innovation.
U2 - 10.1163/9789004500433
DO - 10.1163/9789004500433
M3 - Book
SN - 978-90-04-50014-3
T3 - Euhormos: Greco-Roman Studies in Anchoring Innovation
BT - Inventing Origins?
PB - Brill
ER -