The Expression Of The Emotions In Man And Animals

Epistemic Anchors for the Twelve Ontological Realms

Self & Identity

• Kant framed the self as a transcendental subject grounding consciousness and moral agency.
• Mead developed symbolic interactionism, showing how identity emerges through social interaction.
• Erikson mapped stages of identity development across the human lifespan.

Culture & Symbol

• Durkheim argued that collective representations form the basis of social cohesion.
• Geertz emphasized 'thick description' to interpret culture as webs of meaning.
• Barthes analyzed myths and semiotics to show how symbols construct ideology.

History & Memory

• Hegel saw history as a dialectical unfolding of Spirit through time.
• Halbwachs introduced the concept of collective memory shaped by social groups.
• Nora theorized lieux de mémoire as sites where memory crystallizes and endures.

Nature & Cosmos

• Spinoza conceived of nature as an immanent, self-sustaining whole.
• Von Humboldt unified scientific and aesthetic accounts of the cosmos.
• Lovelock proposed the Gaia hypothesis, viewing Earth as a self-regulating system.

Body & Health

• Descartes articulated the mind–body dualism that shaped modern medicine.
• Merleau-Ponty emphasized lived embodiment as central to perception.
• Foucault examined biopower and the medical gaze in shaping bodies and populations.

Economy & Work

• Marx theorized labor, capital, and exploitation as drivers of historical change.
• Weber analyzed rationalization and the Protestant ethic as forces in modern work.
• Polanyi argued that economies are embedded within social and cultural relations.

Power & Control

• Machiavelli explored power and statecraft as pragmatic strategies of control.
• Weber defined legitimate domination and authority types within political order.
• Foucault traced modern systems of discipline, surveillance, and biopolitics.

Learning & Knowing

• Plato grounded Western epistemology with his theory of forms and knowledge.
• Dewey advanced pragmatism, linking knowledge to experience and education.
• Freire promoted critical pedagogy as a practice of liberation through dialogue.

Technology & Tools

• Heidegger warned that technology enframes and reduces beings to resources.
• McLuhan argued that media shape perception, famously stating 'the medium is the message'.
• Haraway challenged boundaries between human, machine, and nature.

Imagination & Play

• Kant described the productive imagination as a bridge between sense and reason.
• Huizinga proposed play as a foundational element of culture in Homo Ludens.
• Vygotsky showed how play drives cognitive and social development in children.

Emotion & Expression

• Aristotle explained catharsis as the purgation of emotions through art and drama.
• Nietzsche contrasted Dionysian expression with Apollonian order in culture.
• Darwin studied how emotions are expressed biologically across humans and animals.

Paradigms & Patterns

• Kuhn defined scientific revolutions as paradigm shifts in shared frameworks of inquiry.
• Bateson highlighted patterns of communication and feedback in complex systems.
• Lakatos described science as evolving through competing research programmes.