Abstract
I grew up in a religious household, where the only book that was felt to be really necessary was the Bible. I learned that the body was something to be despised and that, like my own personal body, the Earth itself – which had been made something like 6,000 years ago – was tinder to be destroyed in a soon-to-be conflagration.
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Notes
- 1.
Memory fidelity is intimately related to high-arousal episodes. Obviously, what I experienced on this day was a high-arousal episode. On memory fidelity and high-arousal episodes, see: P.E. Gold, “Sweet memories.” American Scientist, 75 (1987):151–155.
- 2.
Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. New York: Pantheon Books, 1949; p. 51.
- 3.
William James, Principles of Psychology (New York: Dover, 1950 reprint of 1890 edition); vol. 2, pp. 296–297.
- 4.
Christopher Marlowe, The tragicall Historie of Doctor Faustus (1588/89?), in: The Works of Christopher Marlowe, ed. C. F. Tucker Brooke. Oxford: Oxford at the Clarendon Press, 1910, lines 235–239 and 248–249.
- 5.
William Wordsworth, “It is no spirit who from heaven hath flown”; composed 1803, published 1807.
- 6.
H. G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon, edited with an introduction by David Lake (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 47.
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Sheehan, W. (2010). Beginnings. In: A Passion for the Planets. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-5971-3_1
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