ABSTRACT
The substantial contribution of Dr. Throop to this Afterword virtually qualifies her to be named co-author. Vengeance, though often involving much calculation, was also deeply infused with passion, in ways that defy easy analytical separation. Barbara Rosenwein, the most prominent current guide for medievalists, declines to see vengeance as any kind of simple universal and so allows for differing attitudes to it within what she calls "emotional communities". Feud is the mode of vengeance-seeking that most often catches the imaginations of scholars and ordinary folk alike. Newton may prompt us to ask whether it may not even be in some sense hard-wired into us as an instinctive reaction. Obviously human reactions to the actions of others raise very different questions from the kind that trouble specialists in thermodynamics. Physicists, operating as they claim to do at the very pinnacle of human reason, seldom acknowledge the need to consider emotional questions.
