"Weber not only translated the ancient theory, implicit and explicit, of 'transgressions' into the 'neutral' category of the 'extraordinary,' " Rieff writes, "but he merged the transgressive with its opposite, 'grace,' in its received, acknowledged and enacted meaning in our culture".
It's a bit unsettling to realize how much our ideas about manliness owe to an ancient theory holding that all men, no matter how noble, will eventually reveal their perversities.
Early Christians, influenced by the ancient theory that one death could serve as a substitute for others, believed that Jesus died on the cross so that believers would escape eternal destruction.
An ancient theory extending back at least to Aristotle held that a certain class of colour phenomena, such as the rainbow, arises from the modification of light, which appears white in its pristine form.
He grew up in Athens, and as a boy, visiting the museum, he often pondered the Mechanism; now as a professor of astrophysics, he uses it to connect with his undergraduate students, for whom ancient technology is often more compelling than ancient theory.
Reid offers two criticisms of the ancient theory, as he understands it.
