Blavatsky and the Lives Sciences
This article considers how the matriarch of the Theosophical Society, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) constructed the category “science,” situating this construal within a world in which the boundaries of “legitimate” science were more contested than they are today. Focusing on her teachings o...
| Published in: | Aries |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Brill
2018
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| In: |
Aries
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| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Theosophy
/ Rebirth
/ Natural sciences
/ Blavatsky, Helena P. 1831-1891
/ Contemporary
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| IxTheo Classification: | AB Philosophy of religion; criticism of religion; atheism AZ New religious movements |
| Further subjects: | B
Helena Blavatsky
Theosophy
reincarnation
nineteenth-century science
evolution
The Unseen Universe
Ernst Haeckel
Darwinism
orthogenesis
recapitulationism
German Romanticism
materialism
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| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Summary: | This article considers how the matriarch of the Theosophical Society, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831–1891) constructed the category “science,” situating this construal within a world in which the boundaries of “legitimate” science were more contested than they are today. Focusing on her teachings on rebirth, the article demonstrates that Blavatsky’s doctrines owe a considerable debt to the scientific theories under discussion at her time of writing. It explores her debt to the controversial physicists Balfour Stewart (1828–1887) and Peter Guthrie Tait (1831–1909), her hostility towards the popular materialist monism of Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), her hatred of Darwinism, and her preference for theories of evolution influenced by German Romanticism, such as the progressivist versions of orthogenesis proposed by Carl Wilhelm von Nägeli (1817–1891), Karl Ernst von Baer (1792–1876), and Darwin’s nemesis, Richard Owen (1804–1892). |
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| ISSN: | 1570-0593 |
| Contains: | In: Aries
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15700593-01802004 |