ABSTRACT
In the Western cultural tradition, prejudices against marvellous transformation run deep, and metamorphosis has routinely functioned as the alien other of various norms and systems of belief. Efforts in definition and taxonomy such as those of Kuon and Zgoll, then, are heuristically valuable insofar as they force people to think about what 'the essence' of the term might be—and to situate it within a set of related ideas. Before leaving the realm of the dictionary, with its neat and tidy distinctions, people ought to acknowledge that, in practice, the various meanings may blur into one another in complex and unpredictable ways. In counterpoint to chaos, thinkers of a philosophical or religious bent have long hankered after absolute order and stability. The desire for a reality immune to change manifests itself in 'the old dream which Western metaphysics has dreamed from Parmenides to Hegel of a timeless, space-less, supra-sensuous realm as the proper region of thought.'.
