Hello, I'm Apaugasma. Welcome to my user page!
I am a devoted student of the history of philosophy, religion, and science. Although I can find my way in Greek and Latin texts (especially if a translation exists), I primarily work on early Arabic sources.
To me, contributing to Wikipedia is a way to fulfill one of my scholarly duties, which is to make sure that the specialist knowledge produced by the academic community reaches as broad an audience as possible. Of course, it's also just fun, and somewhat extremely addictive.
For any queries, please feel free to contact me on my talk page (click 'New section' above).
My contributions
I contribute to a great variety of articles, but the following have been largely or entirely (re)written by me:
Best articles: also known as: you might actually want to read those
Other articles: well, they're articles
Stubs: barely articles these
Article sections: not articles
- Hermeticism (only the lead)
- Hydrochloric acid#History (excluding subsections)
- Sabians (lead)
Templates: definitely not articles
- {{Alchemy}}
- {{Hermeticism}}
I have also written an essay arguing that, contrary to a widespread rumor among experienced editors, we at Wikipedia are not biased. (shortcut: WP:NOTBIASED)
Explanation of my user name
The following is merely meant as an explanation of my user name, for those who are interested. It is not a Wikipedia article, and it is not based on any sources other than my own investigations of historical philosophical texts. However, it does give a good picture of where my general interests lie, and on what kind of subjects you might find me contributing to Wikipedia.
Apaugasma (ἀπαύγασμα) is an ancient Greek word derived from apō (ἀπό, meaning "from") and augē (αὐγή, meaning, a.o., "sunlight", "bright light", "brightness", "gleam"; also, "dawn") or augazō (αὐγάζω, meaning, a.o., "illumine", "shine", "reflect"), combined with the suffix -ma (-μα, denoting the result or the product of something). Thus, it means something like 'what results from bright light', i.e., "a portion of bright light", "a gleam of light" (cf. LSJ: "radiance", "effulgence", "light beaming from a luminous body"), or "a reflection".
It is perhaps most famous for its appearance in the New Testament book Hebrews (second half of first century CE) 1:3 "He [sc. Christ] is the reflection [apaugasma] of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word [...]" (tr. NRSV).
However, it was first used in the apocryphal Bible book Wisdom of Solomon (c. 100 BCE – 100 CE) 7:26 "For she [sc. the world-creating Wisdom, Greek sophia] is a reflection [apaugasma] of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness" (tr. NRSV).
It was also used several times by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria (c. 20 BCE – c. 50 CE). See De specialibus legibus 4:123 "as for that which was breathed in [i.e., the breath of life in Genesis 2:7, which Philo identified with the rational soul], it is clear that it was an ethereal spirit [aitherion pneuma], or if there is something better than an ethereal spirit, a portion of light [apaugasma] from the blessed and thrice-blessed nature" (my tr.). See also Philo, De opificio mundi 146 "[...] in what concerns the mind, every human being is intimately related to the divine Word [logos], having come into being as an impression, a detached particle [apospasma], a portion of light [apaugasma] from the blessed nature [...]" (my tr.). See also Philo, De plantatione 50.
While some Platonizing elements are clearly present (i.e., the identification of the divine with an eternal light, of which all other things are only reflections, images, or impressions), these seem to be understood within the materialist theoretical framework of Stoic physics, in which both the light and the reflections become corporeal substances. What appears to be at play here is the Stoic idea that the human soul is a detached particle (Gr. apospasma) of the world-creating (i.e., demiurgical or craftsman-like), divine, all-pervading, ethereal (i.e., very thin and fine, like the aithēr or "upper air") but still corporeal, active cause or "nature" (phusis), which was fire according to Zeno of Citium, heat or flame (flox) according to Cleanthes, pneuma ("breath", "spirit") or augē ("gleam") according to Chrysippus, and a corporeal logos (a.o., "proportion", "ratio", "rational discourse", "reason", "word") according to all Stoic philosophers.
In the scriptural sources (Wisdom of Solomon and Hebrews), this Stoic conceptualization was assimilated to the pre-existing Biblical notion of the divine spirit. However, in the Biblical view, the divine spirit is not identical to God (as it is in the Stoic view), but rather proceeds from God as His word or breath, and is granted only to the pious (see, e.g., Isaiah 11:2). As a consequence, the world-creating principle of the scriptural sources (Lady Wisdom, or the Spirit of Christ) has itself become an apaugasma (from the eternal light of God Himself), and is not an individual soul but rather a kind of 'super-soul' which would descend only on devout believers. Philo, by contrast, in a way stayed closer to the Stoic concept by identifying the divine spirit directly with the rational soul which God has breathed into every human being, though for him this divine in-breathed spirit was not a portion of the light of God Himself, but rather from His creative Word.
The Stoic concept of a subtle but corporeal world-creating principle which is the active cause informing and holding together all material things (and also, though much less often, the idea that the human soul is itself an apaugasma of that luminous active principle) was picked up by some Church Fathers and a range of late antique and medieval philosophers. It would be especially influential among those interested in alchemy and magical properties (see, e.g., the Emerald Tablet). Its persistence as a physical theory may be gauged from the fact that a version of it was still cited by Isaac Newton (1642–1726/27), who in the concluding paragraph of the third (1726) edition of his Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy added a brief note "concerning a certain very subtle spirit pervading gross bodies and lying hidden in them", by whose "force and actions, the particles of bodies attract one another at very small distances and cohere when they become contiguous" (tr. Cohen, Whitman, and Budenz 1999).