Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Alfred Lothar Wegener (1880-1930)
A German glacial meteorologist who was an early proponent of the theory of Continental Drift. In 1912, he first pro¬ posed the theory that the continents had once been united into one single land mass the super continent Pangaea. In 1915 he published Die Entstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane (The Origin of Continents and Oceans)…
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Weeping statues
A phenomenon whereby a statue made of stone, terra cotta, or plaster suddenly appears to weep real tears or even blood from its eyes. Many weeping statues of the Virgin Mary have, on closer inspection, turned out to be fakes. The only recent weeping Madonna to be recognized by the Roman Catholic Church is that…
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Water divining
The specific practice of using a divining rod, usually a forked twig, to look for water. The stick’s forked ends are held, one in each hand, the stem pointing upwards. When the dowser walks over the area to be surveyed, the stick is suddenly seen to twist violently and point downward, indicating where to dig…
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Water cures
Also called hydrotherapy; a cure for various ailments, water is used to enhance beauty, alleviate stress, or for the derivation of pleasure. Overall, its uses go far beyond quenching thirst or keeping clean; it has always been so. Water, whether fresh, sea water, or containing naturally occurring substances such as sulfur, is bathed in publicly…
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Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913)
British naturalist who developed a theory of evolution by means of natural selection at the same time as Charles Darwin. Wallace, who did most of his work with insects in the Amazon and the Malay Archipelago, concluded that bio¬ logical evolution must be governed by a mechanism that closely resembled the theory proposed by the…
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Vulcan
A hypothetical planet in the solar system that was thought to orbit closer to the Sun than Mercury. In the early 1800s, there were many reports of black objects passing across the face of the Sun, presumed to be the profiles of small planets. Early 19th-century observations were sufficiently positive to encourage leading French astronomer…
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Voodoo
The name given to the religious beliefs and the practice of Magic of certain sub-Saharan African peoples, also called vodou and vodun. (All three terms come from a West African word meaning “god” or “spirit.”) During the days of the slave trade, Voodoo was carried to the southern United States and the West Indies, especially…
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Erich Von Daniken (1935- )
The immensely successful author of a series of books about visitation by extraterrestrials. The most widely known is Chariots of the Gods? (1969). In his works, Von Daniken claimed that alien beings had visited Earth 10,000 years ago and created humans by altering the genes of apes in their own image. According to his theory,…
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Wilburglen Voliva (c. 1880-1942)
The leader of the Christian Apostolic Church, a community of about 6,000 members in Zion, Illinois, who believed that the earth is flat. Voliva was more than a “member”; he was, in fact, the community’s ruler, its General Overseer, for more than 30 years. He established strict rules for the community’s behavior and articulated its…
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Virgil (70-19 B.C.E)
Ancient Roman poet whose Aeneid is still used today as an oracular book, purportedly to predict, interpret, and so it is hoped, control the future. In the Aeneid Virgil set out a mythological history for Rome to show his people retrospectively where their destiny lay. The admonitory stand and the giving of moral instructions to…
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