Category: The Living Cosmos
-
Nervous System, Archetype, and Meaning at Birth
Reframing Astrology Beyond Causation Contemporary discussions of temperament and personality increasingly emphasize neurobiological organization at birth, while astrology is typically dismissed as pre-scientific superstition. This essay argues that such dismissal rests on a category error. Drawing on Richard Tarnas’ theory of archetypal coherence and Liz Greene’s depth-psychological approach to astrology, the paper reframes astrology not…
-
The Placebo Effect and the Crisis of Meaning in Modernity
When situated within the broader horizon of modernity, the placebo effect ceases to appear as a marginal curiosity of clinical medicine and instead emerges as a symptom of a deeper anthropological tension: the persistence of meaning as a causal force within a civilization that officially denies its legitimacy. Modernity’s self-understanding depends upon the purification of…
-
The Placebo Effect
Meaning, Expectation, and the Biology of Healing Within medical science, the placebo effect refers to genuine physiological and psychological changes that arise not from the pharmacological properties of a treatment, but from the meanings, expectations, and contexts surrounding it. Long dismissed as a confounding variable or a methodological nuisance, the placebo effect is now recognized…