Introduction

Abstract

The idea of restoration is not new. Life, as it happens, is full of accidents, mishaps, and untoward events, from breaking a tool to growing old and dying, and the desire to avoid the consequences of these events by reversing or undoing them in order to return to some happier previous or “original” condition seems to be as old as our species. It is the root aspiration behind religion, that oldest of human institutions. It is also a constant theme of both public and private life, and it may even be grounded in the capacity for self-repair that is a peculiarity of life itself.