In Homer’s account of the adventurous journey of Odysseus, the song of the sirens was so appealing and tempting that it lured sailors to their deaths. Warned by the goddess Kirke, Odysseus overcame the trap by plugging his crew’s ears with wax. An archaeo-acoustical research expedition undertaken by members of Humboldt University Berlin made sound propagation experiments at the supposedly historical scene at the Galli Islands where it’s said that the sirens originally sung. At the site we broadcasted both synthetic (...) signals and natural voices via loudspeakers in the direction Odysseus most probably should have approached the Siren’s island. Subjective listening as well as objective acoustic analysis of the recorded signals revealed evidence for a combination of site-specific acoustic effects, which may explain the nature and origin of the song of the sirens in Homer. The local arrangement of the three islands deforms the acoustic signals by amplification and by changes in timbre. Two female singers from the Berlin State Opera were asked to sing differently pitched musical intervals to be tested in the Li Galli environment. The experiment evinced that the first overtones would be merged by the echo of the rocks; yet when singing pure thirds and less consonant intervals, which yield higher orders in the overtone series, the voices appear recognisable as being two. As a result, and particularly because Homer stresses the number of exactly two sirens several times, the evidence of our research supports the musicological theory for a rather early existence of enharmonic tunings and most prominently a two-part polyphonic singing of Greek songs. Given that the rocky formation of the Galli Islands most likely didn’t change during the geological tick of just 2,700 years, we conclude that there has been a real acoustic basis for the myth reported by Homer and that a “song of the Sirens”, most probably based on natural voices, was transformed by the particular acoustic conditions of the landscape in such a way that signals were amplified and sent out in one concrete direction. Based on these results, we continue to discuss further leading acoustic theories that offer new insights into the mythology and which were essential to motivate our expedition in the first place. After all, the question remains open what kind of beings the first emitters of the song might have been. (shrink)

The paper builds on both a simply typed term system ${\cal PR}^\omega$ and a computation model on Scott domains via so-called parallel typed while programs (PTWP). The former provides a notion of partial primitive recursive functional on Scott domains $D_\rho$ supporting a suitable concept of parallelism. Computability on Scott domains seems to entail that Kleene's schema of higher type simultaneous course-of-values recursion (scvr) is not reducible to partial primitive recursion. So extensions ${\cal PR}^{\omega e}$ and PTWP $^e$ are studied that (...) are closed under scvr. The twist are certain type 1 Gödel recursors ${\cal R}_k$ for simultaneous partial primitive recursion. Formally, ${\cal R}_k\vec{g}\vec{H}xi$ denotes a function $f_i \in D_{\iota\to\iota}$ , however, ${\cal R}_k$ is modelled such that $f_i$ is finite, or in other words, a partial sequence. As for PTWP $^e$ , the concept of type $\iota\to\iota$ writable variables is introduced, providing the possibility of creating and manipulating partial sequences. It is shown that the PTWP $^e$ -computable functionals coincide with those definable in ${\cal PR}^{\omega e}$ plus a constant for sequential minimisation. In particular, the functionals definable in ${\cal PR}^{\omega e}$ denoted ${\cal R}^{\omega e}$ can be characterised by a subclass of PTWP $^e$ -computable functionals denoted ${\rm PPR}^{\omega e}$ . Moreover, hierarchies of strictly increasing classes ${\cal R}^{\omega e}_n$ in the style of Heinermann and complexity classes ${\rm PPR}^{\omega e}_n$ are introduced such that $\forall n\ge 0. {\cal R}^{\omega e}_n ={\rm PPR}^{\omega e}_n$ . These results extend those for ${\cal PR}^\omega$ and PTWP [Nig94]. Finally, scvr is employed to define for each type $\sigma$ the enumeration functional $E^\sigma$ of all finite elements of $D_\sigma$. (shrink)

The paper studies a domain theoretical notion of primitive recursion over partial sequences in the context of Scott domains. Based on a non-monotone coding of partial sequences, this notion supports a rich concept of parallelism in the sense of Plotkin. The complexity of these functions is analysed by a hierarchy of classes ${\cal E}^{\bot}_n$ similar to the Grzegorczyk classes. The functions considered are characterised by a function algebra ${\cal R}^{\bot}$ generated by continuity preserving operations starting from computable initial functions. Its (...) layers ${\cal R}^{\bot}_n$ are related to those above by showing $\forall n \ge 2.{\cal E}^{\bot}_{n+1} ={\cal R}^{\bot}_n$ , thus generalising results of Schwichtenberg/Müller and Niggl. (shrink)

Auch als originar politischer Denker ist Karl Jaspers reich an Einsichten: Ausgehend vom Ethos der Freiheit jedes Einzelnen richtet er seinen Blick auf die konkrete politische Gestaltung einer Freiheitsordnung. Dabei steht fur ihn im Hinblick auf die noch junge Bundesrepublik die Selbsterziehung in Freiheit im Zentrum seiner oft mahnenden Worte. Ganz im sokratischen Sinne fordert er intellektuelle Redlichkeit und politische Wahrhaftigkeit ein, um den beiden grossen Gegenwartsherausforderungen gewachsen zu sein: einer atomwaffenbestuckten Welt, die sich jederzeit selbst ausloschen kann, und (...) dem modernen Totalitarismus, der in seiner Verherrlichung des Antipolitischen allen politischen Ordnungsbestrebungen die Vernichtung androht. Jeder Frieden, der mehr ist als die Friedhofsruhe eines Waffenstillstands, grundet fur Jaspers in der politischen Freiheit handelnder Burgerinnen und Burger, die gemeinsam Sorge fur die Integritat ihres politischen Gemeinwesens tragen. Mit Beitragen von Karl-Heinz Breier, Alexander Gantschow, Anton Hugli, Annabelle Petschow, Kurt Salamun, Reinhard Schulz, Bernhard Sutor, Bernd Weidmann. (shrink)

Romano Guardini gilt als einer der massgeblichen christlichen Denker des 20. Jahrhunderts. Seine Schriften, philosophische und theologische Abhandlungen, aber auch zahlreiche meditative und spirituelle Texte, haben eine weltweite Verbreitung gefunden und pragen ungebrochen bis heute Generationen von Leserinnen und Lesern. Der vorliegende Band, der aus Anlass des 50. Todestages Romano Guardinis am 1. Oktober 2018 sowie zur Eroffnung des Seligsprechungsprozesses erscheint, versammelt Beitrage namhafter Autorinnen und Autoren. Aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven widmen sie sich insbesondere Guardinis Buch "Der Herr" uber Person und (...) Botschaft Jesu Christi, aber beispielsweise auch Aspekten der Gottesfrage, der Ethik oder des Gebets. Eine Fundgrube fur alle, die sich der Person und dem Denken Guardinis neu nahern mochten. Mit Beitragen von Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, Jean Greisch, Karl Kardinal Lehmann (+), Peter Reifenberg, Marius Reiser, Peter Schallenberg, P. Kosmas Lars Thielmann OCist, Karl-Heinz Wiesemann. (shrink)

We study a notion ofpartial primitive recursion (p.p.r.) including the concept ofparallelism in the context of partial continuous functions of type level one in the sense of [Krei], [Sco82], [Ers]. A variety of subrecursive hierarchies with respect top.p.r. is introduced and it turns out that they all coincide.

In literature and the humanities, guilt has the same major importance as in penal law. Due to the anthropocentric legal system, however, guilt is the linchpin par excellence within the framework of penal law. The article confirms this emphasis on guilt through an examination of the constitutional determinants of penal law, the development of the concept of guilt, and also a change in its perspective which has shifted to an emphasis on the purpose of punishment rather than on the reasons (...) for it. Penal law is intended to ensure legal peace and map out a path for reconciliation within society. (shrink)

Kann die Kritische Theorie im erziehungswissenschaftlichen und bildungspolitischen Diskurs noch Aktualität beanspruchen? In ihren Beiträgen befassen sich die Autorinnen und Autoren mit einzelnen erziehungs- und bildungstheoretischen Aspekten des aktuellen Diskurses sowie mit pädagogisch relevanten Themen aus dem gesellschaftspolitischen Bereich. Im Fokus steht die Frage, ob die Denkinstrumente der Kritischen Theorie noch zur Analyse von Entwicklungen und zur Aufklärung über Widersprüche im erziehungswissenschaftlichen Diskurs beitragen können.

How do Chinese and Western philosophical traditions interact today? In the underlying collection of articles both Chinese and Western scholars carefully examine the issue, one of fundamental importance for the mutual understanding of China and the West. The volume is the result of a symposium which sought to initiate a dialogue between China and the West on questions ranging from philosophy to politics and aesthetics. -/- The papers deal with various topics of cross-cultural hermeneutics, such as differences between Chinese and (...) Western concepts of man's relation to the universe, human rights, self and community, good and evil, and beauty. In some of the contributions attempts are made to adapt the Chinese philosophical inheritance to the modern or post-modern condition. A useful reference for all those - historians of ideas, political scientists, and China watchers alike - who want to understand the dynamics of the cultural flow between East and West and the significance of Chinese thought in a global context. (shrink)

A key problem in implicit complexity is to analyse the impact on program run times of nesting control structures, such as recursion in all finite types in functional languages or for-do statements in imperative languages.Three types of programs are studied. One type of program can only use ground type recursion. Another is concerned with imperative programs: ordinary loop programs and stack programs. Programs of the third type can use higher type recursion on notation as in functional programming languages.The present approach (...) to analysing run time yields various characterisations of fptime and all Grzegorczyk classes at and above the flinspace level. Central to this approach is the distinction between “top recursion” and “side recursion”. Top recursions are the only form of recursion which can cause an increase in complexity. Counting the depth of nested top recursions leads to several versions of “the μ-measure”. In this way, various recent solutions of key problems in implicit complexity are integrated into a uniform approach. (shrink)