During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a wide variety of American writers proposed the existence of energies connecting human beings to cosmic processes. From varying points of view--scientific, philosophical, religious, and literary--they suggested that such energies would eventually result in the perfection of individual and collective bodies, assuming that assimilation into larger networks of being meant the expansion of humanity's powers and potentialities--a belief that continues to inform much posthumanist theory today. Universes without Us explores a lesser-known countertradition in (...) American literature. As Matthew A. Taylor's incisive readings reveal, the heterodox cosmologies of Edgar Allan Poe, Henry Adams, Charles Chesnutt, and Zora Neale Hurston reject the anthropocentric fantasy that sees the universe as a kind of reservoir of self-realization. For these authors, the world can be made neither "other" nor "mirror." Instead, humans are enmeshed with "alien" processes that are both constitutive and destructive of "us." By envisioning universes no longer our own, these cosmologies picture a form of interconnectedness that denies any human ability to master it. Universes without Us demonstrates how the questions, possibilities, and dangers raised by the posthuman appeared nearly two centuries ago. Taylor finds in these works an untimely engagement with posthumanism, particularly in their imagining of universes in which humans are only one category of heterogeneous thing in a vast array of species, objects, and forces. He shows how posthumanist theory can illuminate American literary texts and how those texts might, in turn, prompt a reassessment of posthumanist theory. By understanding the posthuman as a materialist cosmology rather than a technological innovation, Taylor extends the range of thinkers who can be included in contemporary conversations about the posthuman. (shrink)

In the past, no research has been found on onomastics from a mystical perspective in literature. This study investigated onomastics in the tetralogy of novels by Ki Padmasusastra. The main point of view is the meaning of Javanese cosmology. Qualitative methods are used as research guidelines. The primary data are four Javanese novels. Hermeneutic techniques and content analysis are applied to analytical strategies. The results showed that the onomastics in TNKP are symbols of Javanese cosmology. This element (...) of Javanese cosmology has transformed onomastics through three things: the novel title, figure's name and location name. The symbolisation of the onomastic is implicit because it is wrapped in the aesthetics of the literary language. The name structure of each onomastic subsection has no clear meaning because the name element is intended for the sense of 'the other'. Names have an explicit function, namely as hypertextual fragments of symbols that transcend the narrative text structure. An important implication of this investigation is that onomastics can promote the transdisciplinary aspects of religion in international theology in the study of narrative texts. The cosmological transformation of Java can be reflected in various parts of culture, including in novels. TNKP is a cross-disciplinary meeting: fiction, linguistics, mystical, social, cultural and philosophical, contributing to further theological studies.CONTRIBUTION: This article contributes to the purpose of HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies to promote the transdisciplinary aspects of religious studies in the international theological arena of hermeneutic and philosophical studies behind the narrative text. (shrink)

Cosmology raises novel philosophical questions regarding the use of probabilities in inference. This work aims at identifying and assessing lines of arguments and problematic principles in probabilistic reasoning in cosmology. -/- The first, second, and third papers deal with the intersection of two distinct problems: accounting for selection effects, and representing ignorance or indifference in probabilistic inferences. These two problems meet in the cosmology literature when anthropic considerations are used to predict cosmological parameters by conditionalizing the (...) distribution of, e.g., the cosmological constant on the number of observers it allows for. However, uniform probability distributions usually appealed to in such arguments are an inadequate representation of indifference, and lead to unfounded predictions. It has been argued that this inability to represent ignorance is a fundamental flaw of any inductive framework using additive measures. In the first paper, I examine how imprecise probabilities fare as an inductive framework and avoid such unwarranted inferences. In the second paper, I detail how this framework allows us to successfully avoid the conclusions of Doomsday arguments in a way no Bayesian approach that represents credal states by single credence functions could. -/- There are in the cosmology literature several kinds of arguments referring to self- locating uncertainty. In the multiverse framework, different "pocket-universes" may have different fundamental physical parameters. We don’t know if we are typical observers and if we can safely assume that the physical laws we draw from our observations hold elsewhere. The third paper examines the validity of the appeal to the "Sleeping Beauty problem" and assesses the nature and role of typicality assumptions often endorsed to handle such questions. -/- A more general issue for the use of probabilities in cosmology concerns the inadequacy of Bayesian and statistical model selection criteria in the absence of well-motivated measures for different cosmological models. The criteria for model selection commonly used tend to focus on optimizing the number of free parameters, but they can select physically implausible models. The fourth paper examines the possibility for Bayesian model selection to circumvent the lack of well-motivated priors. (shrink)

In studying the characteristics of cultures, literature and philosophies of different civilisations, scholars inevitably wish to search for similar and different features inherent in particular societies. When this desire is completely justified, then certain questions remain that require additional reflection. For instance, studying the cosmological and natural-philosophical ideas inherent in Ancient China and among Native Americans, scholars face the difficult task of logically substantiating the possibility of studying these two diametrically opposed cultures together. This article is based on a (...) general overview of cosmological and philosophical views in Ancient China and among Native Americans. The authors reveal an important principle that significantly distinguishes “non-Western” cultures and manifests itself in ethnocentrism and harmonization of the relationship between humans and nature. The article gives a logical basis for research and attempts to answer the question of whether Feng shui practice is a science or a religion. To this end, the legacy of Yang Yunsong, one of the founders of the teachings of Feng shui, a Chinese sage of the Tang era from Guangdong province, was studied. The authors suggest that Yang Yunsong’s cosmology, geomancy, and Feng shui practice have much in common with the worldview of indigenous peoples around the world, particularly the Native Americans. (shrink)

Approximately 1,500 years ago John Philoponus proposed a simple argument for the existence of God. The argument runs thus: Whatever comes to be has a cause of its coming to be. The universe came to be. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its coming to be. ;Due to the influence of William Lane Craig, this argument and the family of arguments that support it have come to be known as the "kalam" cosmological argument . Craig's account of the KCA (...) incorporates features that serve to distinguish his version as a significant advance. First, conceptual advances in mathematics now permit a clearer presentation of the argument than was previously possible. Second, contemporary Big Bang cosmology confirms the central contention of the KCA, namely, that the past existence of the universe is finite. Reflection upon the implications of using Cantorian transfinite mathematics to model physical processes allowed Craig to develop a distinctively philosophical version of the KCA which is relatively independent of changes in contemporary scientific cosmology. This dissertation is intended as a critical investigation and development of this philosophical strand of the KCA. The literature relating to the KCA has grown however to a significant bulk, and there is now danger of duplication and misassessment due to the plurality of interpretations that the argument has received. Part I of the dissertation addresses this need by laying bare the underlying logical structure of the KCA and by providing a comprehensive "state of the question" . Part II of the dissertation, comprising chapters 3 through 6, focuses upon an important species of objection made to the KCA. This species of objection relies upon thought-experiments designed to show that an actual infinity is possible. I reply: this objection is effectively answered by introducing a metaphysics of substances. In the course of presenting a systematic response I develop an interpretation of the notion of substance that is useful for analytic philosophy, present a general account of the logical requirements of KCA thought-experiments, and outline a theory of logical modality suited to the metaphysical requirements of the KCA. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Nihilistic Cosmology and Catonian Ethics in Lucan’s Bellum CivileR. Sklenár*For many years, a powerful communis opinio dominated the scholarly literature on Lucan: that the poet is not merely influenced by Stoicism but is himself a committed Stoic, who expounds his doctrines both in his own voice and in the speeches of Cato. 1 The obvious difficulty with this argument is that Cato’s Stoic ideal defies reconciliation with (...) some of the most powerful and characteristic utterances of Lucan’s authorial voice. A more recent line of interpretation, typified by W. R. Johnson (1987), John Henderson (1988), and Jamie Masters (1992), 2 has rejected the putatively Stoic Lucan in favor of a dark, sinister, at times grimly parodic poet who both describes and exemplifies a view of the cosmos as chaotic, fragmentary, and ultimately meaningless. Under this reading, which has gained currency mostly since the mid-1980s, 3 Lucan’s Cato becomes a nasty caricature both of the Stoic sage and of the traditional Roman vir bonus. 4 While this satirical interpretation of Lucan’s Cato represents a significant improvement over the orthodoxy which it has displaced, it still does not adequately account for the systematic opposition between Cato’s Stoic ideal and the universe in which he attempts to practice it, or for the painful futility of his attempt to make sense of a world where senselessness is sovereign.The Stoic morality according to which Cato regulates his life presupposes a Stoic cosmos, both governed by and part of a divine logos. This cosmos is reason and order, all its processes part of a divine plan. 5 Since the task of human beings is to understand this plan and [End Page 281] consciously to conform their actions to it, the highest ethical plane is reached when human reason, brought to perfection, governs all aspects of a person’s behavior, for it brings that person into harmony with the rationally ordered cosmos. In other words, the height of wisdom and the height of goodness are one and the same (Long and Sedley 1987, I 374). But Lucan deposits Cato into a universe devoid of reason, “one wholly without purpose or meaning” (Johnson 1987, 10), marked by “the blatant absence of any design” (8)—in short, a nihilistic universe, 6 where the cosmological prerequisites for Catonian ethics necessarily fail. Cato’s pursuit of the Stoic ideal is in a literal sense doomed from the start, as Lucan assigns a prominent section of the Bellum Civile’s long proem to an exposition of his anti-rational cosmology:Fert animus causas tantarum expromere rerum, immensumque aperitur opus, quid in arma furentem impulerit populum, quid pacem excusserit orbi. invida fatorum series summisque negatum stare diu nimioque graves sub pondere lapsus nec se Roma ferens. sic, cum compage soluta saecula tot mundi suprema coegerit hora antiquum repetens iterum chaos, [omnia mixtis sidera sideribus concurrent,] 7 ignea pontum astra petent, tellus extendere litora nolet excutietque fretum, fratri contraria Phoebe ibit et obliquum bigas agitare per orbem indignata diem poscet sibi, totaque discors machina divulsi turbabit foedera mundi.(1.67–80)As many commentators have noted, the imagery of this passage is strongly reminiscent of the Stoic theory of ekpyrosis, 8 in which the celestial fire draws the other elements up toward itself and thereby consumes [End Page 282] the entire universe; hence Lucan’s image of the stars falling into the sea (ignea pontum astra petent): in fact the sea would be rising up toward the stars, but Lucan adopts the perspective of a terrestrial observer, from which the stars would appear to be falling. The world-conflagration, moreover, is a metaphor for the civil war and its causes. 9 These causes, though multiple, are not discrete; instead, they comprise a chain of causation, as indicated by series in the first cause (invida fatorum series) and further suggested by the paratactic arrangement in which all four causes are listed. The semantic force of series does not confine itself to the first cause, but rather governs a sequence in which each cause results directly from its predecessor. Summisque negatum / stare diu and nimioque graves sub pondere lapsus, then, are both consequences of fate’s... (shrink)

In this book, a Burmese manuscript from the mid-nineteenth century is the catalyst for a study of the multifaceted Buddhist cosmos. The manuscript not only lays out the complex array of realms in the Buddhist universe but also ventures into a number of esoteric and little-understood aspects of the Therav da cosmological system and its inhabitants. By presenting translations and narration of much of the manuscript's text and sharing his careful analysis of its vivid illustrations, the author uncovers fascinating details (...) of the Therav da Buddhist cosmos. Detailed color and black-and-white illustrations, including a complete reduced-scale reproduction of the manuscript, help clarify and explain the complex, segmented Buddhist cosmology. (shrink)

In the 1780s Kant’s critique of rational cosmology clearly identified the limits of theoretical cosmology in agreement with the doctrine of transcendental idealism of space and time. However, what seems to be less explored, and remains still a desideratum for the literature, is a thorough investigation of the implications of transcendental philosophy for Kant’s view of cosmology in the 1790s. This contribution fills this gap by investigating Kant’s view of teleology and measurement in the Critique of (...) Judgment, exploring their implications for Kant’s late view of cosmology. Considering the historical and scientific context in which Kant developed his reflections motivates my proposal to read Kant’s late view of the universe in terms of “functional cosmology.” -/- . (shrink)

Baofu offers a new theory to transcend the existing approaches in the literature on cosmology in a way not conceived before, especially in relation to its contested beginnings and speculative ends.

Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God and A Man of the People, the first four novels by Chinua Achebe, the contemporary Nigerian novelist, are among the most outstanding works of African postcolonial literature. As a matter of fact, each of these four novels focuses on a different colonial or postcolonial phase of history in Nigeria and through them Achebe intends to provide an authentic record of the negative and positive impacts of ‘hybridity’ on different aspects (...) of the life of native subjects. Briefly stated, Achebe is largely successful in taking advantages of variable discursive tools he structures based on the potentials of the hybrid, Igbo-English he adopts. Thus, it might be deduced that reading these four novels in line with each other, and as chains or sequels of Tetralogy, might result in providing a more vivid picture of the Nigerian (African) subjects and the identity crises emerging in them as a result of colonization. To provide an account of the matter, the present study seeks to focus on one of the discursive strategies Achebe relies on in those four novels: Igbo Naming Cosmology and Name-symbolization. (shrink)

The essays in this collection, many originally presented at a 2008 colloquium on Celtic Cosmology and the Power of Words, aim to examine the worldviews held by the Celtic peoples, particularly the Gaelic (Irish and Scottish) perspectives. Texts and inscriptions, some of them pre-Christian, in Celtic languages and in Celtic Latin provide the sources for the worldviews under study. This area of research is also linked to that of the power of words, which refers to human belief in powerful (...) speech acts. Naming and story-telling processes convey knowledge of the cosmos; this knowledge is connected to the landscape and its roads, rivers, mountains and hills. Cosmology is a description of the order and structure of the world as perceived by human beings, and its study is a study of layers – in the earth, in the language and in the tales. (shrink)

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Nero's tutor and advisor, wrote philosophical essays, some of them in the form of letters, and dramas on Greek mythological topics, which since the early Renaissance have exercised a powerful influence on the European theater. Because in his essays Seneca, in his own eclectic way, subscribes to the philosophy of the Stoic school, scholars and critics have long been asking the question whether the plays, also, could be regarded as transmitters of Stoic thought. Various answers, ranging from (...) a categorical no to an uneasy yes, have been given. With few exceptions, the students who have concerned themselves with this question have looked for their enlightenment in Stoic psychology and Stoic ethics. In this book, Thomas G. Rosenmeyer proposes instead to look at the Stoic science of nature, of the world and human beings in the world, as a more plausible grounding for the difference between Senecan drama and its Greek predecessors. In the process of looking at what the Stoics, especially the early Stoics, had to say about the forces determining natural phenomena, the author uncovers a deeply pessimistic strain in Stoic cosmology, and an interest in physicality and environmental tension, that he finds replicated in the theater, not only of Seneca, but also of the later European tradition indebted to him. Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Nero's tutor and advisor, wrote philosophical essays, some of them in the form of letters, and dramas on Greek mythological topics, which since the early Renaissance have exercised a powerful influence on the European theater. Because in his essays Seneca, in his own eclectic way, subscribes to the philosophy of the Stoic school, scholars and critics have long been asking the question whether the plays, also, could be regarded as transmitters of Stoic thought. Various answers, ranging from a categorical no to an uneasy yes, have been given. With few exceptions, the students who have concerned themselves with this question have looked for their enlightenment in Stoic psychology and Stoic ethics. In this book, Thomas G. Rosenmeyer proposes instead to look at the Stoic science of nature, of the world and human beings in the world, as a more plausible grounding for the difference between Senecan drama and its Greek predecessors. In the process of looking at what the Stoics, especially the early Stoics, had to say about the forces determining natural phenomena, the author uncovers a deeply pessimistic strain in Stoic cosmology, and an interest in physicality and environmental tension, that he finds replicated in the theater, not only of Seneca, but also of the later European tradition indebted to him. (shrink)

This study explores humans’ ecological responsibility, firstly from an evolutionary perspective and then by emphasising especially the order and creation theology in the Old Testament wisdom literature. Ultimately, these entities will be connected. The following aspects will be addressed: cosmology, ecology, evolutionary biology and order in the wisdom literature. These concepts are seen by many as exclusive towards each other, but this article will endeavour to portray them as interlocutors in dialogue with each other.

While the problem of nihilism is derived from a particular historical and intellectual context in Western philosophy, i.e., the pantheism controversy in modern German philosophy and the ideas of Nietzsche, non-Western thinkers also engaged with it and developed responses to it. In this article, I am interested in analyzing Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938), a leading Muslim thinker (a Sufi) from India, engagement with the problem of nihilism and his response to it from a Sufi perspective. Arguing that the existing literature (...) on Iqbal fails to understand the deeper impact of Nietzsche’s ideas on Iqbal’s philosophy and the dramatic role “the problem of nihilism” played in causing changes in Iqbal’s philosophy, or on Iqbal’s intellectual development, in this article, I analyze how Iqbal’s encounter with the ideas of Nietzsche during his study period in Europe between 1905 and 1908 has introduced him to the problem of nihilism in its Nietzschean form, how this led Iqbal to a nihilistic mood/crisis from 1909 to 1913, and then how he later developed a response to nihilism by reconstructing the Sufi cosmology and by revaluating the Sufi values of the pantheistic/Persian type of Sufism – the outcome of which is found in his philosophical poemAsrar-i-Khudî(1915). (shrink)

This work inaugurates a critical inquiry into whether the ideas of Karl Popper, a philosopher of science, are used by astronomers and astrophysicists, a practicing community of scientists. It examines four basic components of Karl Popper's philosophy— falsification, prohibition, simplicity, and risk taking— and the extent that these themes become integrated into recent scientific literature on astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, and stellar evolutionary theory. It concludes that the philosophy of science is highly relevant to the practice of astronomy, and (...) that Karl Popper plays a unique role in directing different communities of astronomers and cosmologists. (shrink)

The Mössbauer rotor effect recently gained a renewed interest due to the discovery and explanation of an additional effect of clock synchronization which has been missed for about 50 years, i.e. starting from a famous book of Pauli, till some recent experimental analyses. The theoretical explanation of such an additional effect is due to some recent papers in both the general relativistic and the special relativistic frameworks. In the first case the key point of the approach is the Einstein’s equivalence (...) principle, which, in the words of the same Einstein, enables “the point of view to interpret the rotating system K’ as at rest, and the centrifugal field as a gravitational field”. In this paper, we analyse both the history of the Mössbauer rotor effect and its interpretation from the point of view of Einstein’s general theory of relativity by adding some new insight. In particular, it will be shown that, if on one hand the “traditional” effect of redshift has a strong analogy with the gravitational redshift, on the other hand the additional effect of clock synchronization has an intriguing analogy with the cosmological redshift. Finally, we show that a recent claim in the literature that the second effect of clock synchronization does not exist is not correct. (shrink)

I argue that quantum decoherence—understood as a dynamical process entailed by the standard formalism alone—carries us beyond conceptual aspects of non-relativistic quantum mechanics deemed insurmountable by many contributors to the recent quantum gravity and cosmology literature. These aspects include various incarnations of the measurement problem and of the quantum -to-classical puzzle. Not only can such problems be largely bypassed or dissolved without default to a particular interpretation, but theoretical work in relativistic arenas stands to gain substantial physical and (...) philosophical insight by incorporating decoherence phenomena. (shrink)

Process and Reality, Whitehead’s magnum opus, is one of the major philosophical works of the modern world, and an extensive body of secondary literature has developed around it. Yet surely no significant philosophical book has appeared in the last two centuries in nearly so deplorable a condition as has this one, with its many hundreds of errors and with over three hundred discrepancies between the American and the English editions, which appeared in different formats with divergent paginations. The work (...) itself is highly technical and far from easy to understand, and in many passages the errors in those editions were such as to compound the difficulties. The need for a corrected edition has been keenly felt for many decades. (shrink)

In this paper, three problems that have hardly been noticed or even gone unnoticed in the available literature in the cosmology of Philolaus are addressed. They have to do with the interrelationships of the orbits of the Earth, the Sun, and the Moon around the Central Fire and all three of them constitute potentially insurmountable obstacles within the context of the Philolaic system. The first difficulty is Werner Ekschmitt’s claim that the Philolaic system cannot account for the length (...) of the day (νυχϑήμερον). It is shown that this problem can be solved with the help of the distinction between the synodic day and the sidereal day. The other two problems discussed in this paper are concerned with two hitherto unnoticed deficiencies in the explanation of lunar eclipses in the Philolaic system. The Philolaic system cannot account for long-lasting lunar eclipses and according to the internal logic of the system, during lunar eclipses the Moon enters the shadow of the Earth from the wrong side. It is almost unbelievable that nobody, from the Pythagoreans themselves up to recent authors, has noticed these two serious deficiencies, and especially the latter, in the cosmology of Philolaus the Pythagorean. (shrink)

ArgumentDuring the two decades before the turning point in Copernicus's personal and scientific development in 1510, he had experience of political activity which has been largely ignored by the existing Copernicus literature but part of which is reconstructed in outline in this paper. Given the close linkage between politics and astrology, Copernicus's likely reaction to astrology is re-examined here. This reconstruction also suggests that the turning point in 1510, when Copernicus left his post as secretary to his uncle Lucas (...) Watzenrode the prince-bishop of Warmia, was not only linked to Copernicus's first version of his heliocentric theory in theCommentariolus, but also to major political setbacks being experienced by Watzenrode during these years, and with the publication of Copernicus's translation of theLettersof Theophylactus Simocatta. Some of these considerations contribute to maintaining the view that Copernicus and his work were in several respects exceptional. (shrink)

The doctrine of creation out of nothing was conceptually sharpened as the Church Fathers engaged the cosmological views of their opponents. This article discusses the emergence of this doctrine in the second century, focusing on the polemic of Irenaeus against the Gnostics. For Irenaeus, creatio ex nihilo was already a part of the “rule of truth,” which provided a hermeneutical key to the scriptures. Irenaeus also used rational arguments to show that Gnostic cosmologies obscured, rather than explained the origins of (...) the world. A different challenge arose in the fourth century, when Arius began to teach that the Son was created out of nothing, thereby treating the divine act of the generation of the Son analogously to the creating of the world. Athanasius of Alexandria introduced an important distinction by correlating the eternal generation of the Son with the divine essence and the creation of the world with the will of the Father. (shrink)

While the problem of nihilism is derived from a particular historical and intellectual context in Western philosophy, i.e., the pantheism controversy in modern German philosophy and the ideas of Nietzsche, non-Western thinkers also engaged with it and developed responses to it. In this article, I am interested in analyzing Muhammad Iqbal’s (1877–1938), a leading Muslim thinker (a Sufi) from India, engagement with the problem of nihilism and his response to it from a Sufi perspective. Arguing that the existing literature (...) on Iqbal fails to understand the deeper impact of Nietzsche’s ideas on Iqbal’s philosophy and the dramatic role “the problem of nihilism” played in causing changes in Iqbal’s philosophy, or on Iqbal’s intellectual development, in this article, I analyze how Iqbal’s encounter with the ideas of Nietzsche during his study period in Europe between 1905 and 1908 has introduced him to the problem of nihilism in its Nietzschean form, how this led Iqbal to a nihilistic mood/crisis from 1909 to 1913, and then how he later developed a response to nihilism by reconstructing the Sufi cosmology and by revaluating the Sufi values of the pantheistic/persian type of Sufism – the outcome of which is found in his philosophical poem Asrar-i-Khudî (1915). (shrink)

This study examines rivers as a literary phenomenon, particularly in the poetry of Vergil. It first considers the Greco-Roman understanding of the river in its primary symbolic roles, cosmological, ritual and ethnographical, and then analyzes the river as a literary device, arguing that descriptions of rivers in Roman poetry are, in many cases, a form of authorial comment on the progress or structure of a narrative.

The idea of "spirit" has manifold meanings and plays a crucial role in Early Modern medicine, psychology, religion, natural philosophy, and cosmology. This book contains twenty papers, written by international experts; it explores how those disciplines conceived of the spirits and shows that knowledge of the spirits is an essential prerequisite for the understanding of Renaissance literature and music. The volume focuses on the way in which the spirits act upon the soul's perception, imagination, and cognition, and on (...) the cultural practices which aim to use, purge, or ban the spirits. (shrink)

In a rather old paper, Mario Liu described a hydrodynamic Maxwell equations. While he also discussed potential implications of these new approaches to superconductors, such a discussion of electrodynamics of superconductors is made only after Tajmar’s paper. Therefore, in this paper we present for the first time a derivation of fluidic Maxwell-Proca equations. The name of fluidic Maxwell-Proca is proposed because the equations were based on modifying Maxwell-Proca and Hirsch’s theory of electrodynamics of superconductor. It is hoped that this paper (...) may stimulate further investigations and experiments in superconductor. It may be expected to have some impact to cosmology modeling too, for instance we consider a hypothetical argument that photon mass can be origin of gravitation. Then, after combining with the so-called chiral modification of Maxwell equations (after Spröessig), then we consider chiral Maxwell-Proca equations as possible alternative of gravitation theory. Such a hypothesis has never considered in literature to the best of our knowledge. (shrink)

Since ancient times epidemics have been a central topic in Chinese medical thought. The explanations for their emergence, spread and transmission, however, have ranged widely. Whereas much of the populace believed in transmission by demons, elitist medical theory, since at least the second century, has emphasized cosmological and meteorological factors. This paper introduces the different approaches to epidemics in general, examining the etymological, historical and medical literature of early Imperial times. It then traces two lines of tradition in Chinese (...) medical thought: one supporting contagionism, the other opposing it.1 The controversy that began as early as the fourth century, peaked in the twelfth century and ended only with the modern era, reveals a widening gap in the elitist medical theory — the dichotomy of empirical knowledge and theoretical framework. (shrink)

Dispositionalism is most often paired with some form of realism about universals, whether moderate or Platonic. However, both historically and in the contemporary literature there have been advocates of nominalist dispositionalism. Here I argue that such a combination is likely to be workable only given the truth of theism. For those already inclined to favor nominalism and dispositionalism, a novel cosmological argument for theism results. Correspondingly, for nominalists already opposed to theism, it provides new reason to oppose dispositionalism, while (...) for dispositionalists opposed to theism it provides new reason to reject nominalism. (shrink)

This book deals with a topic that has been largely neglected by philosophers of science to date: the ability to refer and analyze in tandem. On the basis of a set of philosophical case studies involving both problems in number theory and issues concerning time and cosmology from the era of Galileo, Newton and Leibniz up through the present day, the author argues that scientific knowledge is a combination of accurate reference and analytical interpretation. In order to think well, (...) we must be able to refer successfully, so that we can show publicly and clearly what we are talking about. And we must be able to analyze well, that is, to discover productive and explanatory conditions of intelligibility for the things we are thinking about. The book’s central claim is that the kinds of representations that make successful reference possible and those that make successful analysis possible are not the same, so that significant scientific and mathematical work typically proceeds by means of a heterogeneous discourse that juxtaposes and often superimposes a variety of kinds of representation, including formal and natural languages as well as more iconic modes. It demonstrates the virtues and necessity of heterogeneity in historically central reasoning, thus filling an important gap in the literature and fostering a new, timely discussion on the epistemology of science and mathematics. (shrink)

This contribution examines the relationship between human beings and landscape in selected medieval texts. Literary concepts of landscape appear innately bound up with human experiences that lend expression to religious, political and aesthetic convictions. The religious appropriations of landscape revolve around cosmological ideas for or against life in this world in political contexts, landscape functions as a medium of power for the legitimisation of rule, or as an apocalyptic backdrop. Courtly poetry exploits certain details of landscape to symbolise the status (...) of individuals in society or the condition of society itself. In accounts of pilgrimage, the sense of landscape is reduced to a consideration of the accessibility of holy sites and the measurable distance of the journey. (shrink)

In Part 9 of David Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, a series of five criticisms is presented against the Cosmological-Ontological Proof of God’s necessary existence. In essence, the Cosmological-Ontological Proof seeks to establish that that the chain of causes and effects that constitutes the world, despite being eternal, requires a cause, in virtue of the contingency of the chain and its members. The argument attempts to defend the position that, of the four possible causal explanations for the chain of causes (...) and effects -a contingent being that exists outside the chain; chance; nothing (in the Aristotelian sense of thisterm); or a necessarily existent being-only the latter can be successfully defended, leading to the conclusion that the cause of the world is a necessarily existent being. Of the five criticisms directed against this argument in Part 9 of the Dialogues, the fourth of these is the one that is most neglected in the literature: it is this criticism that I have selected for discussion in my paper. This criticism holds that since the causal chain is held to be eternal, it cannot have a cause, given that causal relations require temporal priority in the cause in relation to the effect, and that the effect be a new existent. However, since the Cosmological-OntologicalProof insists on the contingency of the causal chain as a whole and of each of its members, the fourth criticism is not regarded as a relevant criticism, inasmuch as all contingent beings require a cause in order for them to exist, and this includes the eternal causal chain that constitutes the world. In my paper, I attempt to support the fourth criticism of the Cosmological-Ontological Proof, by establishing that, in the context of this argument, the contingency of the causal chain and its members is not sufficient to establish that the chain must have a cause. (shrink)

Approximately 1500 years ago John Philoponus proposed a simple and compelling argument for the existence of God: (1) Whatever comes to be has a cause of its coming to be; (2) The universe came to be; (3) Therefore, the universe has a cause of its coming to be. Due to the influence of William Lane Craig — analytic philosopher, Christian apologist, champion of Philoponus’s position, and author of The Kalam Cosmological Argument — this argument and the family of subarguments that (...) support it have come to be known as the Kalam Cosmological Argument (KCA). The term kalam comes from Medieval Arabic philosophy and broadly means "natural theology" or "philosophical theism." Despite being one of the most widely discussed and hotly debated arguments in philosophy today, it has been more than twenty-five years since any systematic presentation of the argument as a whole has been attempted. The present book helps remedy that situation, laying bare the logical structure of the KCA as it has emerged from continuous philosophical refinement. A handy taxonomy of major objections and replies to the KCA has been included as an aid to understanding the argument and its background literature. This book breaks new ground by arguing that future progress on the KCA requires that the argument be situated within a substance-based metaphysics. In addition to providing an analytic account of substances, this book describes a modal theory sensitive to the possibilities and necessities that obtain for substances. With these conceptual tools, the characteristic thought-experiments supporting the KCA can be properly assessed. (shrink)

This two-chapter work brings together Heraclitus, Kant, and Nietzsche in an effort to explore transition and motion, two concepts derived from Kant’s Opus Postumum that the author argues are indications of Kant’s cosmological-aesthetic approach in his late work. At times, the book seems to want to be a work of Kant scholarship, addressing the question of the role of the Opus Postumum in the Kantian corpus. Indeed, the most sustained engagements with secondary literature occur in the sections on Kant. (...) At other times, however, Erman Kaplama extracts the notion of transition from Kant’s work in order to make broader claims about the way in which the human faculty of sense intuition... (shrink)

Wes Morriston contends that William Lane Craig's argument for the impossibility of a beginningless past results in an equally good argument for the impossibility of an endless future. Craig disagrees. I show that Craig's reply reveals a commitment to an unmotivated position concerning the relationship between actuality and the actual infinite. I then assess alternative routes to the impossibility of a beginningless past that have been offered in the literature, and show that, contrary to initial appearances, these routes similarly (...) seem to support the impossibility of an endless future. (shrink)

Cosmological narratives like the creation story in the book of Genesis or the modern Big Bang are popularly understood to be descriptions of how the universe was created. However, cosmologies also say a great deal more. Indeed, the majority of cosmologies, ancient and modern, explore not simply how the world was made but how humans relate to their surrounding environment and the often thin line which separates humans from gods and animals. Combining approaches from classical studies, anthropology, and philosophy, this (...) book studies three competing cosmologies of the early Greek world: Hesiod's Theogony; the Orphic Derveni theogony; and Protagoras' creation myth in Plato's eponymous dialogue. Although all three cosmologies are part of a single mythic tradition and feature a number of similar events and characters, Olaf Almqvist argues they offer very different answers to an ongoing debate on what it is to be human. Engaging closely with the ontological turn in anthropology and in particular with the work of Philippe Descola, this book outlines three key sets of ontological assumptions - analogism, pantheism, and naturalism - found in early Greek literature and explores how these competing ontological assumptions result in contrasting attitudes to rituals such as prayer and sacrifice. (shrink)

Representations of the heavens in various levels of detail can be found in a number of branches of Arabic literature. One particular genre, the hay'a texts, has as its purpose a full though non-mathematical discussion of the arrangement of the celestial orbs; hay'a writers are particularly sensitive to the philosophical requirements which all systems must meet. The pivotal work in this genre, On the Configuration, was written by Ibn al-Haytham. Later writers continued to produce works in the spirit of (...) On the Configuration. In the east, al-Tusi and his followers developed new models; in the west, a group of thinkers tried to rediscover the models which, so they thought, were the ones endorsed by Aristotle himself. (shrink)

This article examines the use of political metaphors and analogies in ancient discussions of Epicurean atomism, ranging from the philosophical dialogues of Cicero in the 1st century BC to Claudian’s epic invective In Rufinum in the 390s AD. Building on earlier scholarship that traces the emergence of monarchical and imperial analogies for the Greco-Roman pantheon in Post-Hellenistic philosophy, I argue that ancient critics of atomism shared a common tendency to depict Epicurean physics as the conceptual opposite of a well-ordered state. (...) In particular, depictions of Epicurean theology as a form of divine ‘banishment’ and of atomic cosmology as a form of cosmic ‘democracy’ or ‘anarchy’ appear in texts by a wide range of Greek and Roman authors, revealing the great extent to which philosophical disagreements over atomic physics were influenced by political and social ideas. (shrink)

A prominent Thomistic cosmological argument maintains that an infinite regress of causes, which exhibits a certain pattern of ontological dependence among its members, would be vicious and so must terminate in a first member. Interestingly, Jonathan Schaffer offers a similar argument in the contemporary grounding literature for the view called metaphysical foundationalism. I consider the striking similarities between both arguments and conclude that both are unsuccessful for the same reason. I argue this negative result gives us indirect reason to (...) consider metaphysical infinitism as a genuine possibility, the view that chains of ontological dependence or ground can descend indefinitely. (shrink)

This volume focuses on cosmological and cosmogonical concepts in hermetic writings and studies their syncretistic origins, subject matter and impact from an interdisciplinary perspective. In doing so, it incorporates articles from various fields of research and academic disciplines.

The stories we tell in our attempt to make sense of the world, our myths and religion, literature and philosophy, science and art, are the comforting vehicles we use to transmit ideas of order. But beneath the quest for order lies the uneasy dread of fundamental disorder. True chaos is hard to imagine and even harder to represent, especially without some recourse to the familiar coherency of order. In this book, Martin Meisel considers the long effort to conjure, depict, (...) and rationalize extreme disorder, with all the passions, excitements, and compromises the act has provoked. In seven chapters--"Shaping Chaos," "Nothing and Something," "Number," "Carnival," "War," "Energy," and "Entropy"--Meisel builds a rough history from major social, psychological, and cosmological turning points in the imagining of chaos. He uses examples from literature, philosophy, painting, graphic art, science, linguistics, music, and film, particularly exploring the remarkable shift in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from conceiving of chaos as disruptive to celebrating its liberating and energizing potential. Discussions of Sophocles, Plato, Lucretius, Calderon, Milton, Haydn, Blake, Faraday, Chekhov, Faulkner, Wells, and Beckett, among others, are matched with incisive readings of art by Brueghel, Rubens, Goya, Turner, Dix, Dada and the futurists. Meisel addresses the revolution in mapping energy and entropy and the manifold impact of thermodynamics. Known for his pathbreaking studies of literature, drama, and the visual arts, Meisel uses this chaotic frame to elaborate on larger concerns of purpose, mortality, meaning, and mind. (shrink)

Much of Hume’s "Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion" is spent debating the experimental design argument for the existence of God. A change of scene occurs in the ninth part of the "Dialogues" when the character of Demea presents an a priori cosmological argument that purports to demonstrate God’s necessary existence. The argument is then criticized by the characters of Cleanthes and Philo. The conversation in the ninth part of the dialogue has occasioned a mixed legacy. For some scholars, the objections raised (...) by Cleanthes and Philo to the cosmological argument in Part 9 are persuasive and inspiring, whereas for others the objections are ineffective and overrated. This paper critically assesses the mixed legacy of Hume against the cosmological argument, in particular, one of Cleanthes’s famous objections to do with a collection of twenty particles of matter. This objection has had a lasting impact in the philosophy of religion literature in the form of the much disputed, ‘Hume-Edwards Principle’ (HEP). However, I claim that the HEP misrepresents the text on two counts, and that via the spokesperson of Cleanthes, Hume’s point against the cosmological argument has yet to be fully appreciated by critics. (shrink)

Tianxia--conventionally translated as "all-under-Heaven"--in everyday Chinese parlance simply means "the world." But tianxia is also a geopolitical term found in canonical writings that has a deeper historical and philosophical significance. Although there are many understandings of tianxia in this literature, interpretations within the Chinese process cosmology generally begin with an ecological understanding of intra-national relations that acknowledge the mutuality and interdependence of all economic and political activity. This volume contextualizes the tianxia vision of geopolitical order within a variety (...) of strategies drawn from a broad spectrum of cultures and peoples: Buddhist, Islamic, Indian, African, Confucian, European. The conversation among the contributors is guided by several central questions: Is tianxia the only model of cosmopolitanism? Are there ideas and ideals comparable to tianxia that exist in other cultures? What alternative perspectives of global justice have inspired Western, Indian, Islamic, Buddhist, and African cultural traditions? The fundamental premise here is that in order for a planetary tianxia system to be relevant and significant for the present time and for our vision of the future, it must acknowledge the plurality of moral ideals defining the world's cultures while at the same time seek practical ways to formulate a minimalist morality that can provide the solidarity needed to bring the world's people together. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 61.1 (2000) 19-37 [Access article in PDF] Eudaimonism and Theology in Stoic Accounts of Virtue Michael Gass The Stoics were unique among the major schools in the ancient world for maintaining that both virtue and happiness consist solely of "living in agreement with nature" (homologoumenos tei phusei zen). We know from a variety of texts that both Cleanthes and Chrysippus, if not also (...) Zeno, characterized such conduct both in essentialist terms, as a matter of living purposively in a manner natural for the human species, and in cosmological terms, as a matter of living in agreement with the purposes of nature as a whole, this being regarded as identical to Zeus. This is not to suggest, however, that cosmo-theological speculation figured prominently in the ethical systems of the early Stoics. Judging from extant summaries and discussions of Stoic ethical doctrines, those doctrines were justified in a dialectical fashion, not by appeal to facts about the purposive order of nature but simply from an analysis of ethical concepts patterned after similar analyses by earlier philosophers (most notably, Aristotle). It is this kind of learning that Chrysippus apparently had in mind when he maintained that ethics should be studied prior to undertaking a systematic investigation of nature: [T]here are three kinds of philosopher's theorems, logical, ethical and physical.... [W]hat should be ranked first of these are the logical, next the ethical, third the physical; and what should come last in the physical theorems is theology. 1On the other hand, as we learn from the testimony of Plutarch (and also from other indirect textual evidence examined recently by Jacques Brunschwig), 2 [End Page 19] Chrysippus also believed that physics in general and theology in particular yield a quite distinct, demonstrative knowledge of the matters first studied in ethics. A. A. Long and others have suggested that such knowledge was regarded by the Stoics as encompassing not just information about the ways in which virtuous living is encouraged by, and fits into, the wider aims of nature at large but also a deeper understanding of the very essence of virtue. 3 Specifically, virtue is revealed to consist in a conscious and deliberate harmonization of one's actions with the purposes of the divine architect. Thus, under this interpretation of their ethical intentions, the Stoics thought of the initial, analytical approach to ethics as necessarily incomplete even in its treatment of strictly ethical topics; the systematic study of nature was thought to impart additional wisdom regarding ethical matters.In her recent study of ancient ethical theories, Julia Annas seeks to counter this view of the place of cosmo-theological speculation in early Stoicism by arguing that such a religious characterization of virtue is incompatible with the eudaimonism to which all schools of ancient philosophy, including Stoicism, were committed. 4 She concedes that first Cleanthes and then much later the Roman Stoics did regard virtue in religious terms, but in her assessment this represents a radical departure from mainstream Stoic thinking on this subject (which is identified mostly with the views of Chrysippus and his disciples, all of whom were clearly and consistently committed to the eudaimonistic model of ethical inquiry). Annas argues that whereas the Stoic sage was traditionally depicted as a person whose commitment to morally appropriate conduct stems from his own rational reflection on his own needs and interests, a person who identified completely with the aims of the divine architect in his purposive activity would be someone who surrendered his right to decide for himself what his needs and interests are, and who therefore could even be required to act in violation of what he might judge by himself to be crucial to his happiness.In what follows I demonstrate that this argument, often advanced in the literature as a reductio ad absurdum of divine command theories of morality, falls wide of the mark in the present case due to the fact that those Stoics who characterized virtue in religious terms did so apparently because they regarded a complete identification with... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of ScienceNancy R. HowellBuddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science. By Paul O. Ingram. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008. 155 pp.To my knowledge, Paul Ingram’s Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science undertakes a new project: Systematic and methodological analysis of how Buddhist-Christian dialogue can be shaped by focus on the natural sciences, or, alternatively, how science-religion dialogue can be enhanced through (...) interreligious dialogue. Either description is appropriate and remarkable in light of the accomplishments of a modestly brief book. While I have participated in multireligious dialogue on science, never have I seen a cogent guide for undertaking the conversation until Ingram’s book appeared.The thesis of Ingram’s argument is that bringing the natural sciences into Buddhist-Christian dialogue promises mutual creative transformation of Buddhism, Christianity, and the natural sciences (p. 2). In such a compact sentence is much to be explained, and Ingram unfolds the meaning of the thesis particularly in chapters 2 and 6. Ingram describes both Christian and Buddhist understandings of the relationship of science and religion, as well as approaches to dialogue between the religions. Ingram’s book is focused on conceptual interreligious dialogue, which engages theological and philosophical worldviews and self-perceptions and how the religions can learn from each other (p. 10). (Not surprisingly, the Whiteheadian Ingram names John B. Cobb Jr. as an exemplar for conceptual dialogue.) Ingram proposes that Buddhism and Christianity enter conceptual dialogue with the natural sciences, with the goal of mutual creative transformation (p. 15). Creative transformation is a Whiteheadian concept defined as “a process of growth and novelty,” “the essence of life itself,” and “a process that alters the nature of...elements without suppressing or destroying them” (p. 120). Creative transformation is possible when all participants in the dialogue Ingram proposes have some particularity to contribute, so the challenge in Ingram’s book is to describe how Buddhism and Christianity have particular contributions to make to dialogue about the natural sciences, as well as whether the sciences can be creatively transformed by encounter with world religions (p. 121).The structure of the book, which includes chapters on Buddhist and Christian encounter with cosmology, evolutionary biology, and cognitive sciences, provides specific awareness of the literature about how the religions have individually engaged the natural sciences. Ingram presupposes and names the awe, wonder, and reverence generated by the natural sciences, whose insights shape our worldviews and inform understanding of ourselves. Scientific insights, according to Ingram, generate “an urgent cultural need to reflect thoughtfully and critically on these changes and challenges in a constructive dialogue involving the world’s religious traditions” (p. 130). Ultimately the dialogue must overcome compartmentalized, disciplinary knowledge and engage in integrative, inclusive, multireligious dialogue (p. 130). Ingram envisions that the “purpose of interdisciplinary and interreligious dialogue is mutual creative transformation” (p. 130), which can occur only when the complex details of the sciences and Buddhist and Christian traditions are honored. [End Page 209]Following Ian Barbour, Ingram recommends a critical realist stance, which he adopts as his approach. He understands critical realism to mean that scientific, Christian, and Buddhist conclusions, practices, and worldviews intend to correspond with reality. However, correspondence to reality, “the way things really are,” (p. 37) must be understood provisionally, so that conclusions and worldviews must always be subjected to correction and reformulation. In Ingram’s view, the need for reformulation is the justification for Buddhist–Christian–natural science dialogue because no single view “possesses the final truth about the natural order or ultimate reality” (p. 37). Buddhism, Christianity, and the natural sciences offer distinctive expressions of the search for truth, which (Ingram avers) “requires...some form of mutual critical integration” in the process of dialogue (p. 37).Concentrating more on the constructive methodology of the book (rather than the three chapters with examples of engagement of the natural sciences with Buddhism and Christianity), I want to address one feature of the argument. Chapter 1, “A Common Cosmology,” proposes appropriately that “[while] scientific cosmology cannot simply replace the basic content of religious creation myths, current scientific cosmology can clarify and transform religious creation myths” (p... (shrink)

Recently, the government of Zimbabwe unveiled a newly constructed statue of the esteemed spirit medium and liberation icon who intrepidly fought against the British imperialism. The distinguished heroine is passionately known as Mbuya Nehanda Charwe Nyakasikana. The lexical item, ‘Mbuya’ in Shona language literally means grandmother. This study examines the ways in which the spectres of religion, historiography, gender and national politics find expression in often contested state narratives of Mbuya Nehanda and in selected Zimbabwean fictional writings. Foucault’s theorisation of (...) socio-political practices and subjectification as sites of power, together with the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) framework and bell hooks’ feminist thought of ‘talking back’, provide provocative insights about regimes of power that could be more edifying in the interlocking discursive terrain of the African cosmology, frequently disputed archeology of historical memory, socio-political relations, which are noticeable in discourses and gender politics. The study interrogates whether the Nehanda grand narrative is told by politicians as the revolutionary story of all citizens or not. If not, what alternative versions are proffered in selected Yvonne Vera and NoViolet Bulawayo’s literary texts? Arguably, the mythology of Nehanda in the chosen literary texts locates women as agents of revolution thereby generating semantic dissonance in the Zimbabwean context, which is largely considered as land of the Fathers. Contribution: The study situates the Nehanda narrative within contested terrains of national history, gender and religion in Zimbabwe’s transitional politics and literature. It concludes that in Vera and Bulawayo’s writings, the Nehanda narrative is deployed to interject significations of woman (hood) and nation (hood) which seek to marginalise some sections of the society. The dissonances embedded in the Nehanda narrative produce a dialoguing space that’ talks back’ and rebuts single storytelling. (shrink)

Contemporary historiography holds that it was the practices and technologies underpinning both the Great Voyages and the 'New Science', as opposed to traditional book learning, which led to the major epistemic breakthroughs of early modernity. This study, however, returns to the importance of book-learning by exploring how cosmological and cosmographical 'novelties' were explained and presented in Renaissance texts, and discloses the ways in which the reports presented by sailors, astronomers, and scientists became not only credible but also deeply disturbing for (...) scholars, preachers, and educated laymen in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century France. It is argued here that dialectic--the art of argumentation and reasoning--played a crucial role in articulating and popularizing new learning about the cosmos by providing the argumentative toolkit needed to define, discard, and authorize novelties. The debates that shaped them were not confined to learned circles; rather, they reached a wider audience via early modern vernacular genres such as the essay. Focusing both on major figures such as Montaigne or Descartes, as well as on now-forgotten popularizers such as Belleforest and Binet, this book describes the deployment of dialectic as a means of articulating and disseminating, but also of containing, the disturbance generated by cosmological and cosmographical novelties in Renaissance France, whether for the lay reader in Court or Parliament, for the parishioner at Church, or for the student in the classroom. (shrink)

In a 1967 article, A. C. Graham made the claim that 情 qing should never be translated as "emotions" in rendering early Chinese texts into English. Over time, sophisticated translators and interpreters have taken this advice to heart, and qing has come to be interpreted as "the facts" or "what is genuine in one." In these English terms all sense of interrelationality is gone, leaving us with a wooden, objective stasis. But we also know, again partly through the work of (...) Graham, that interrelationality was of fundamental importance in the early Chinese cosmology and that qing, by later carrying the meaning of "emotions," expressed that interrelationality. I take as my project in this article the recovery of an emotional adumbration in the qing of early Chinese texts, notably the Mencius, from which Graham begins his discussion. With an eye to explicating qing in the Mencius, and with a sensitivity to an implied notion of interrelationality in early texts, I survey early literature from the Shu Jing to late commentaries on the Yi Jing. I find that usages of qing and contexts in which qing is used inevitably illuminate it as key term in the evocation of interrelationality, shading it with emotional overtones. Emotions, of course, are inherently interrelational, and even more so in a Chinese world in which the internal and the external are in constant communication by way of a cosmic interchange of arousal and response among all things. That qing, as a term which later comes to explicitly mean "emotions," should have a centuries old convention of emotional connotation prior to its explicit definition should come as no surprise. The corroboration of this supposition entails a complex investigation and analysis, however, and it is a preliminary step in this investigation and analysis that I undertake here. (shrink)

In logic, Aristotelian diagrams are almost always assumed to be closed under negation, and are thus highly symmetric in nature. In linguistics, by contrast, these diagrams are used to study lexicalization, which is notoriously not closed under negation, thus yielding more asymmetric diagrams. This paper studies the interplay between logical symmetry and linguistic asymmetry in Aristotelian diagrams. I discuss two major symmetric Aristotelian diagrams, viz. the square and the hexagon of opposition, and show how linguistic considerations yield various asymmetric versions (...) of these diagrams. I then discuss a pentagon of opposition, which occupies an uneasy position between the square and the hexagon. Although this pentagon belongs neither to the symmetric realm of logic nor to the asymmetric realm of linguistics, it occurs several times in the literature. The oldest known occurrence can be found in the cosmological work of the 14th-century author Nicole Oresme. (shrink)