Peter Abelard (1079–1142 ce) was the most wide‐ranging philosopher of the twelfth century. He quickly established himself as a leading teacher of logic in and near Paris shortly after 1100. After his affair with Heloise, and his subsequent castration, Abelard became a monk, but he returned to teaching in the Paris schools until 1140, when his work was condemned by a Church Council at Sens. His logical writings were based around discussion of the “Old Logic”: Porphyry's Isagoge, aristotle'S Categories and (...) On Interpretation and boethius'S textbook on topical inference. They comprise a freestanding Dialectica (“Logic”; probably c.1116), a set of commentaries (known as the Logica [Ingredientibus], c. 1119) and a later (c. 1125) commentary on the Isagoge (Logica Nostrorum Petititoni Sociorum or Glossulae). In a work Abelard called his Theologia, issued in three main versions (between 1120 and c.1134), he attempted a logical analysis of trinitarian relations and explored the philosophical problems surrounding God's claims to omnipotence and omniscience. The Collationes (“Debates,” also known as “Dialogue between a Christian, a Philosopher and a Jew”; probably c.1130) present a rational investigation into the nature of the highest good, in which the Christian and the Philosopher (who seems to be modeled on a philosopher of pagan antiquity) are remarkably in agreement. The unfinished Scito teipsum (“Know thyself,” also known as the “Ethics”; c.1138) analyses moral action. (shrink)

In the theory of epigenesis living beings are created by agglutination of different elements. The monstrous entities are the result of a non regular agglutination. Nonetheless, on another side, an apparent disorder is what explicitly shows the inner nature of divine powers. Agglutinations of heterogeneous parts mirror the hidden connections of a net that crosses the universe, making divination, rituals and liturgies possible. The article lists evidence of this cosmological conception in different kinds of textual cuneiform documents.

Correction . Online publication date: 2‐Feb‐2006. We inadvertently printed three erroneous internal cross references in S. H. Rigby's review of Miguel Cabrera's Postsocial History: An Introduction in theFebruary 2006 issue of : On p. 114, "p. 458" should read "p. 112." On p. 120, the two references to "p. 460" should both read "p. 114." Professor's Rigby's review was rescheduled from an earlier issue and unfortunately we did not notice that these references needed to be updated.