Lady from the sea (Ibsen): * see Endnote 52

play (1888); Ibsen was a child of the scientific movement, he believed that the hidden laws of society and the natural world could be rationally explained. His true subject (like Freud) was the human psyche.  He questions in his plays how people could find their true selves, become fully-rounded human beings.  He knew the search for self-realisation causes a struggle between duty to ourselves & duty to those around us.  With an instinct for the tragic, he knew this can lead to disaster for all, that the untrammelled individual can be just as dangerous as the repressed.   He knew self-realization was especially challenging for the women of his time, where opportunities for self-realisation were limited while duty were enormous.  Thus women occupy central roles in his greatest plays.

 

quand meme:

French, still, anyway, nonetheless

 

physiognomic: * see Endnote 53

assessment of character or personality from a person's outer appearance, especially the face. The term can also refer to the general appearance of a person, object, or terrain without reference to its implied characteristics.

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protoplasm:

the living matter of organisms regarded as the physical basis of life, having the ability to sense and conduct stimuli;  Huxley (1869) referred to it as the "physical basis of life".  It took precedence over the cell as the fundamental unit; considered an obsolete term today

 

rain worms:

Spengler is referring sardonically to earthworms who surface when it rains.

 

bipeds:
an animal that uses two legs for walking; man

 

aether:

in ancient and medieval science the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere; commonly the clear sky; the upper regions of air beyond the clouds

 

Monist:

the reduction of all processes, structures, concepts to a single governing principle; the theoretical explanation of everything in terms of one principle

 

trans-phenomenal:

(philosophy, especially Kantianism) relating to a process, nature or realm which cannot be directly experienced using human faculties such as perception (using the 5 senses) or conceptualization (treating something as a general notion or idea).   Spengler is saying the physicist’s numbers can neither be seen, exprienced or contained in human thought.

 

"conventional sign":

Any of various words or symbols that acquire their function through linguistic custom; widely recognized signs or sign systems that signify a concept or idea that all members of a group understand based on a common cultural understanding, differing from contextual symbols, which are defined by a situation or the signs surrounding it.