Harry S. Broudy has studied the utility of general education through the development and testing of his Newspaper Test of the Uses of Schooling (NPT). The results of research with a new version of the NPT are reported in this essay and some options for future research are presented. The results of the study indicate that continued development and testing of the NPT will prove important. Promising new versions of the test are suggested for future research to pursue, including a (...) Hypertest version. Additional instruments and research strategies are also suggested that could be used to broaden the "search for evidence" of the uses of schooling. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:TRANSCENDENTAL THOMISM AND THE THOMISTIC TEXTS JOHN F. x. KNASAS Genter for Thomistic Studies Houston, Temas SOME THIRTY YEARS ago in the journal Thought, there appeared an article by Fr. Joseph Donceel, S.J., entitled " A Thomistic Misapprehension? " Its thesis is that American Thomism had seen too much of the a posteriori in Aquinas's noetic.1 In fact the interpretation was so a posteriori that it bordered on (...) empiricism and positivism. Donceel intends to balance the American understanding of Aquinas by spotlighting various Thomistic texts that speak of an a priori contribution of the intellect to human knowledge. Donceel is merely calling attention to something that some outstanding European Thomists, e.g., Defever, Marechal, and Rahner have known for some time. Donceel's " balanced" interpretation is what is called Transcendental Thomism. In sum, the position claims that the human intellect is not so complete a tabula rasa that it fails to make an a priori contribution to the data of sensation. This contribution is the intellect's very dynamism to Infinite Being. The dynamism has a constitutive role in human experience. Swept up within this intellectual torrent, the data of sensation stand before us in consciousness as finite and limited. So " objectified " the data are disposed for the traditional abstvactive account of the specific and generic natures. After the Second Vatican Council, Thomism generally fell into disrepute among American Catholic intellectuals. Phi1 Joseph Donceel, " A Thomistic Misapprehension?" Thought, 32 (1957) : 189. 81 82 JOHN F. X. KNASAS losophy departments " pluralized." Their members represented analytic, existential, and process philosophy.2 If Thomism remained vibrant, it was in the a priori strain. Both on the philosophical and theological levels, it was at home with the pluralism tha.t marked the time.3 The current emphasis on political activism, however, ha:s caused even Transcendental Thomism to suffer an eclipse. In the heat of political struggle, Transcendental Thomism, too, appears decadent and bourgeois. The case can be made, though, that the uncovering of the intellect's a priori dynamism to the Infinite was a crucial move for liberationists. Gutierrez notes 4 that the Transcendental Thomist understanding of the human intellect posits a single finality for human nature. The traditional distinction between the temporal and eternal planes loses meaning. Human history becomes salvation history. In this way, then, Transcendental Thomism continues to exercise its influence. This paper investigates the purported Thomistic texts expressing an apriorism. The texts cited by Donceel are all found in Marechal's Cahier V.5 There MarechaI mentions many others besides. Hence, my paper will use the Marechalian collection. My treatment focuses upon the texts that are seemingly most a priori. I. A central text for Marechal is De Veritate, q.l, a.4, ad 5m (first set). Aquinas remarks: 2 See "Is a 'Catholic' Philosophy Department Possible? " by the Committee on Research (Thomas I.angan, K. I,. Schmitz, Jude P. Dougherty) of the ACPA (HJ78). 3 On Transcendental Thomism's capacity to admit a theological pluralism without falling into a relativism, see Gerald A. McCool, Catholic Theology in the Nineteenth Gent1.ry (New York: The Seab1iry Pres8, 1977), pp. 258-9. 4 Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. by Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (New York: Orbis Books, 1973), p. 69. 5 Oahier V is a volume in Jl.riarechal's monumenfal Le point de depart de la metaphysique. Subsequent references to Oahier V are from Donceel's substantive translation A J,[wrechal Reader (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970). TRANSCENDENTAL THOMISM AND THE TEXTS 83 The truth by which the soul passes judgment on all things is the first truth; for, just as from the truth of the divine intellect there flow into the angelic intellects those: intelligible species by which angels know all things, so does the truth of the first principles by which we judge everything proceed from the truth of the divine intellect as from its exemplary cause. Since we can judge by means of the truth of these first principles only insofar as this truth is a likeness of the first truth, we are said to judge everything according to the first truth.6 The text illustrates a " dynamic exemplarism " in Aquinas... (shrink)

The present paper examines the arguments and data presented by Nisbett and Wilson relevant to their thesis that subjects do not have access to their own cognitive processes. It is concluded that their review of previous research is selective and incomplete and that the data they present in behalf of their thesis does not withstand a demand characteristics analysis. Furthermore, their use of observer-subject similarity as evidence of subjects' inability to access cognitive processes makes tests of their hypothesis confounded and, (...) at the same time, reveals limitations in the application of the pre-inquiry quasi-control to research on social behavior. Problems with postexperiment questionnaires, such as the demand characteristics of the inquiry procedure are also considered. Although there are difficulties in assessing subjects' cognitive processes, many of these may be overcome through the application of novel techniques and research conducted on more traditional methods. In contrast to the view that subjects have limited access to cognitive processes and that their verbal reports are not valid, it is concluded that subjects' verbalizations are a rich source of psychological data which must be pursued if we are to tap their cognitive processes and are to gain an adequate understanding of human behavior. (shrink)

Talks collected from lectures given by Bennett with Gurdjieff's approval, to help people understand All and Everything: Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson. Bennett regarded Gurdjieff's All and Everything as a work of superhuman genius.

This AV Column is about the Universal Solvent of modern physics which we call antimatter, and about a bottle in which it can be and has been kept. However, before getting to the hardware I want to talk about antimatter as it relates to the fundamental symmetries of the universe.

This column is about the apparent quantization of cosmological red-shifts, the persistent astronomical observation that the red-shifts and velocities of distant galaxies are not randomly distributed but rather grouped in clumps of similar values. About eight years ago I had considered an AV column on this mysterious phenomenon, but after looking at the data then available I decided against it. As an experimental physicist I've seen too many "structures" in poor-statistics data that vanished as the statistics improved. Over the years, (...) however, the red-shift data has improved to the point where the evidence that this is a real effect is now fairly convincing. So here it is, a persistent and puzzling astronomical observation that does not fit with our present understanding of the laws of physics and the universe and that has no accepted explanation. (shrink)

Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics deals with these problems is reviewed. A new interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics, the transactional interpretation, is presented. The basic element of this interpretation is the transaction describing a quantum event as an exchange of advanced and retarded waves, as implied by the work of Wheeler and Feynman, Dirac, and others. The transactional interpretation is explicitly nonlocal and thereby consistent with recent tests of the Bell inequality, yet is relativistically invariant and fully causal. (...) A detailed comparison of the transactional and Copenhagen interpretations is made in the context of well-known quantum-mechanical Gedankenexperimenre and "paradoxes." The transactional interpretation permits quantum-mechanical wave functions to be interpreted as real waves physically present in space rather than as "mathematical representations of knowledge" as in the Copenhagen interpretation. The transactional interpretation is shown to provide insight into the complex character of the quantum-mechanical state vector and the mechanism associated with its "collapse." It also leads in a natural way to justification of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and the Born probability law (P = ii iij*), basic elements of the Copenhagen interpretation. (shrink)

It is now possible to speak of something fundamentally new in biblical studies, not in the sense that older and more traditional approaches have been rendered obsolete, but that a new set of assumptions has made it possible to understand early Christianity in significantly new ways.

Leading philosophers reflect on what belief in God, or its absence, means for the subject and what difference it makes to the flow and perceived significance of someone’s life. A stimulating juxtaposition of views including the different perspectives of Christians, Buddhists, Jews, atheists and agnostics Contributors include Sir Anthony Kenny, Alvin Plantinga, John Haldane, Richard Norman, David Benatar and John Cottingham Enables the reader to see how crucial issues about the nature and significance of religious belief are dealt (...) with from widely differing philosophical and religious perspectives. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive theory of the ethics and political philosophy of public health surveillance based on reciprocal obligations among surveillers, those under surveillance, and others potentially affected by surveillance practices. Public health surveillance aims to identify emerging health trends, population health trends, treatment efficacy, and methods of health promotion--all apparently laudatory goals. Nonetheless, as with anti-terrorism surveillance, public health surveillance raises complex questions about privacy, political liberty, and justice both of and in data use. Individuals and groups can (...) be chilled in their personal lives, stigmatized or threatened, and used for the benefit of others when health information is wrongfully collected or used. Transparency and openness about data use, public involvement in decisions, and just distribution of the benefits of surveillance are core elements in the justification of surveillance practices. Understanding health surveillance practices, the concerns it raises, and how to respond to them is critical not only to ethical and trustworthy but also to publicly acceptable and ultimately sustainable surveillance practices. The book is of interest to scholars and practitioners of the ethics and politics of public health, bioethics, privacy and data technology, and health policy. These issues are ever more pressing in pandemic times, where misinformation can travel quickly and suspicions about disease spread, treatment efficacy, and vaccine safety can have devastating public health effects. (shrink)

Sex/gender is a continuous variable that researchers frequently treat as dichotomous. This practice can mask continuous underlying adaptive traits and yield spurious dichotomous “sex differences.” As such, many sex differences in self-protection may be evolutionary by-products of underlying adaptations rather than adaptations themselves. Binary analysis of continuous sex/gender is ill-considered science that can contribute to inequality and counterproductive public policy.

This book shines bright light into the dim recesses of quantum theory, where the mysteries of entanglement, nonlocality, and wave collapse have motivated some to conjure up multiple universes, and others to adopt a "shut up and calculate" mentality. After an extensive and accessible introduction to quantum mechanics and its history, the author turns attention to his transactional model. Using a quantum handshake between normal and time-reversed waves, this model provides a clear visual picture explaining the baffling experimental results that (...) flow daily from the quantum physics laboratories of the world. To demonstrate its powerful simplicity, the transactional model is applied to a collection of counter-intuitive experiments and conceptual problems. (shrink)

Under the sumptuous immensity of the sky, the snow covered the endless forests, the frozen rivers, the plains of an immense country, obliterating the landmarks, the accidents of the ground, levelling everything under its uniform whiteness, like a monstrous blank page awaiting the record of an inconceivable history.Increased interest in the experience of space in literature in recent decades has resulted in numerous commentaries on such topics as colonial space, geographical space, gendered space, liminal space, psychic space, and signifying space. (...) In fact, Con Coroneos suggests that Homi Bhabha’s “DissemiNation”1 considers as many as forty different types of space.2Conrad studies have not been silent during this... (shrink)

Recently, social-media tools have been widely credited with igniting pervasive social upheavals in the Middle East, some of which brought down governments. This article explores the putative structure of such gatherings and considers new developments in what such collectives might be from a Sartrean perspective, in particular as mediated by the arrival of social media. A Sartrean perspective on the still indefinite composition of media collectives is offered under Sartre's concept of the groupe en fusion , yet still open to (...) discussion under his concept of individual free choice. Throughout, the chimerical presence of the We-subject, as an ontologically suspect entity arises, in particular when reification is attempted by socialmedia users living under illiberal political regimes. The situation of dissident women in the Middle East is often referred to. (shrink)

This column is a followup to a previous Alternate View column [Analog, June-'89] about "wormholes", faster-than-light travel, and time machines, which was based on a spectacular theoretical breakthrough in general relativity. It described how a sufficiently advanced civilization might construct a stable wormhole (a curved-space shortcut between one region of space and another) and use it both for faster-than-light travel and for time travel, with no laws of physics violated in the process except causality (the principle that a cause must (...) precede its effects). (shrink)

Nanocon 1: The First Northwest Conference on Nanotechnology was held at the University Plaza Hotel in Seattle, Washington, on February 17-19, 1989. The conference was sponsored by the Seattle Nanotechnology Study Group and the University of Washington Student Nanotechnology Study Group. This AV column is a report on the conference.

The purpose of this AV Column is to describe a physical paradox involving what seems to be an loophole in a well established physical law, the famous Second Law of Thermodynamics. The 2nd Law states that the amount of disorder (entropy) always either increases or remains constant for any isolated system of particles, whether they are gas molecules or light photons. An yet, as we will see, laser physicists seem to have provided us with a way of making the 2nd (...) Law work backwards for a system of photons, so that the disorder decreases. (shrink)

I'm sure you know the plot: a lost magical formula has eluded the wisest practitioners of the arcane art down through the ages. Now a cabal of young upstarts, with disdain for conventional wisdom and working against all odds, discovers the key ingredients that make the magic spell work, with spectacular results.