This article examined the warning against evil companions in Proverbs 1:8–19 and the role of the church in addressing the involvement of Tiv youths in crime in Benue State and its implications for actions. Wicked people were zealous in seducing others into the paths of destruction. Would young people shun temporal and eternal ruin? This was the reason for Solomon’s instruction in Proverbs 1:8–19. He admonished his son with the caption ‘hear,’ which presented the son with a choice. However, (...) Solomon implored the child to refuse to take any step in destructive paths of evildoers. The persuasive nature of the pericope was important in addressing the growing crime rate amongst Tiv youths in Benue State. Most youths in Tiv communities were being enticed into joining criminal gangs, secret cults and rituals in order to make quick wealth. Unfortunately, the number of youths in these immoral acts such as YahooYahoo amongst Tiv youths kept on increasing in the midst of the growing number of churches in most Tiv societies. Rhetoric analysis was used as the methodology. As part of recommendations, parents should instruct, discipline and stop their children from engaging in acts that lead to death. The youths should also avoid evil companions to avoid falling into trouble. Contribution: Youths are the leaders of tomorrow, which makes admonition to youths a necessity for the growth of the Tiv Society. Proverbs 1:8–19 provides roadmaps that Tiv leaders and the church could adopt in preserving morality among Tiv youths. (shrink)

This article examined the warning against evil companions in Proverbs 1:8-19 and the role of the church in addressing the involvement of Tiv youths in crime in Benue State and its implications for actions. Wicked people were zealous in seducing others into the paths of destruction. Would young people shun temporal and eternal ruin? This was the reason for Solomon's instruction in Proverbs 1:8-19. He admonished his son with the caption 'hear,' which presented the son with a choice. However, (...) Solomon implored the child to refuse to take any step in destructive paths of evildoers. The persuasive nature of the pericope was important in addressing the growing crime rate amongst Tiv youths in Benue State. Most youths in Tiv communities were being enticed into joining criminal gangs, secret cults and rituals in order to make quick wealth. Unfortunately, the number of youths in these immoral acts such as YahooYahoo amongst Tiv youths kept on increasing in the midst of the growing number of churches in most Tiv societies. Rhetoric analysis was used as the methodology. As part of recommendations, parents should instruct, discipline and stop their children from engaging in acts that lead to death. The youths should also avoid evil companions to avoid falling into trouble.CONTRIBUTION: Youths are the leaders of tomorrow, which makes admonition to youths a necessity for the growth of the Tiv Society. Proverbs 1:8-19 provides roadmaps that Tiv leaders and the church could adopt in preserving morality among Tiv youths. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume Studies Volume XXVI, Number 1, April 2000, pp. 129-142 Hume on ''Greatness of Soul" GRAHAM SOLOMON The "great-souled man" was first described in detail in Book iv of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Simon Blackburn concisely summarizes Aristotle's portrait of this "lofty character": "The great-souled man is of a distinguished situation, worthy of great things, 'an extreme in respect of the greatness of his claims, but a mean in (...) respect of the Tightness of them', perfectly virtuous, good at conferring benefits but ashamed of receiving them, neither humble nor vain. The combination involves proper pride or magnanimity." Such men will enter politics with the aim of preserving justice and working for the good of society, or they will exhibit great personal courage in battle, or, more generally, they will aim at virtuous action at all times, even when faced with painful choices and life-threatening circumstances. Historians disagree about whether Aristotle held that the great-souled man is motivated in part by a desire to be admired by others, but certainly he held that the great-souled man was capable of performing great and virtuous actions that would be admired.1 By the mid-eighteenth century, greatness of soul could be found in much less distinguished situations. Consider, for example, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy. Tristram attributes greatness of soul to his mother for wanting to give birth to him under the care of a midwife rather than a doctor. His father thinks that turning down a large purse of money offered in exchange for naming one's son Judas is an act of greatness of mind. And Tristram says his friend Jenny exhibited greatness of soul by purchasing a much less expensive piece of silk than the one she initially wanted, deferring to Tristram's unvoiced but Graham Solomon is at the Philosophy Department,Wilfrid Laurier University,Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3C5. e-mail: [email protected] 130 Graham Solomon obvious judgment.2 For an example from the nineteenth century, consider the following passage from the novel The Wrecker (1891) by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne. The narrator, a wealthy young American, is slumming as a bohemian art student in the Latin Quarter of Paris: "I always looked with awful envy... on a certain countryman of my own, who had a studio in the Rue Monsieur Ie Prince, wore boots, and long hair in a net, and could be seen tramping off, in this guise, to the worst eating-house of the quarter, followed by a Corsican model, his mistress, in the conspicuous costume of her race and calling. It takes some greatness of soul to carry even folly to such heights as these."3 There the character's greatness of soul seems to involve an ability to ignore or overlook or misinterpret the opinions others might have of him. While the phrase "greatness of soul" or "greatness of mind" is not commonly used nowadays,4 the Latin form "magnanimity" is still in use in ordinary, everyday, reasonably educated discourse. And occasionally "highmindedness " is used. The capacity to make magnanimous gestures is still widely felt to be a virtue. "Magnanimity" nowadays refers to a mix of unselfishness, generosity, the capacity to rise above petty feelings of resentment and revenge, and more generally and vaguely to a kind of nobility of heart and mind. These are features that Aristotle would recognize. But, it seems to me, we are prepared to apply the term to a far wider class of people than Aristotle would. Magnanimity is nowadays thought to be a virtue that can be exhibited by almost anyone. The first extended discussion in English-language philosophy of the concept of greatness of soul or mind is in David Hume's Treatise III iii 2, a section titled "Of greatness of mind." Hume's discussion contributed to a domesticated and democratized understanding of the concept, a more serious ancestor of the concept found in Tristram Shandy5 and The Wrecker. Donald Siebert argues in the chapter "In Search of the Hero of Feeling" in The Moral Animus of David Hume6 that after the initial exploration of the concept in the Treatise, Hume eventually settled in The History... (shrink)

This article offers an alternative approach to paradigms that cast culture solely as a nurturing influence on children's language development. It proposes a dimensional model of Child-Directed Communication to delineate ways in which a community's habitus may impede the communicative potential of children with neuro-developmental conditions such as severe autism. It argues that certain features of Euro-American CDC are illadapted for autistic children. Due to inertia, caregivers often find themselves unable to transcend the limitations of CDC habitus. Yet, occasionally, a (...) transformation in CDC emerges that more effectively engages children with impairments. The article analyzes one such transformation forged in the niche of a unique mother–son relationship in India and then introduced in the USA. (shrink)

It is acknowledged that most motifs used in Western art have an iconographic counterpart. It is inferred that the geometric and floral motifs that we encounter in Anatolia are provided by the world meanings such as “ornamentation”, “talisman”, “power” or “strength”, which have a wide place in folk beliefs, rather than creating a meaning by combining with religious images. In this study, it is focused that on the minaret of the Ibrahim Efendi Mosque in Kilis with the Seal of (...) class='Hi'>Solomon motif, which has been used on area of usage in Turkish-Islamic arts, from architectural surfaces to wall paintings, from manuscripts to under-glass paintings. According to the data provided by historical sources, the first work that has existed till now was built by Hacı İbrahim, the son of Hacı Mustafa, one of the residents of Kızılca township. For an unknown reason, a large part of the building was demolished and a second building group was built over time. According to the inscription, the second building group refers to a building group called “the New Mosque”, which was rebuilt in 1831 by Mehmet Pasha, the son of Mehmet Ali Pasha (1769-1849), the Governor of Egypt, who was the Governor of Aleppo. Since only the minaret has existed from the second building group, which consisted of a madrasah-mosque combination, which was demolished over time, this single work is also called “orphan minaret” among the people. In this study, it is emphasized that on the Seal of Solomon motif and the ornamentation of the building, which is especially concentrated in the minaret balcony section. The general acceptance of the six-armed star motif on the pedestal and its usage areas in different works within the Turkish motif tradition were emphasized, and the difference of this motif from the six-armed star, which has a symbolic context in the Jewish faith as Magen David, was determined. The visual data obtained during the survey, archival sources and literature on the structure are based on the documentation method. (shrink)

In his article, Florian Vermeiren attributes to Leibniz – like other interpreters before him – the distinction of two different kinds of relations: 1) relations in the proper sense of the word as, for example, the fatherhood subsisting between Sophroniscus and Socrates, which Leibniz considers situated ‘outside the subjects’ involved; 2) relational properties, such as being a father, inherent in Sophroniscus. The distinction is clearly present in Leibniz’s writings. According to Vermeiren, Leibniz considers ‘purely mental’ only the relations ‘out of (...) the subjects’ and not the relational predicates, by means of which, on the other hand, the individuals of the Leibnizian world would be truly related. In this sense, therefore, Leibniz would admit the reality of relations, which would play an important role in his ontology. At least since 1686 (the year in which he wrote the Discourse), however, Leibniz states that the world is made only of individuals with their internal modifications: just as there are no properties with a leg in one subject and a leg in another, there are no individuals bound together by any kind of material nexus or ‘real’ ties. Thus, if we make a list of all fathers on the one hand and sons on the other, there remains the problem of how to properly connect the fathers exactly with their sons. Attributing to each of two related individuals a relational property is not enough to connect them. Being a father in David must necessarily refer in some way to Solomon as a son. Leibniz is aware of this, as his attempts to analyze relational propositions in his essays on rational grammar show. Given the sentence ‘Cajus is killed by Titius’ for example, Leibniz attempts to reduce it to an inference between a pair of categorical sentences, each of which attributes a relational predicate to the subject. Relations (and relational properties) result from the substances and their modes, “without producing any change” of themselves but only in virtue of a consequence, that is of a logical inference. The image of the world derived so from the Monadology and other Leibnizian writings is that of a world composed of a collection of isolated individuals, independent of each other and lacking mutual connections. Relational properties correspond to internal modifications of each individual: the second term, in the case of binary relations (the ‘external’ one: Helen, if Paris loves Helen) is resolved into an internal representation (of Paris, in this case). It is God who coordinates the various representations of individuals with each other, to result in a harmonious whole. Since relations are a consequence of the existence of the individual substances with their intrinsic properties, God himself can be said to be the creator of relations, in so far as he calls the individuals into existence. And this is exactly what Leibniz states, in his commentary on Temmik’s book. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Veils: The Poetics of John Rawls*George Armstrong KellyPlutarch recounts in Sais, a holy place of Egypt, the image of Isis, understood by the Greeks to be a version of Pallas Athena, bore the inscription: “I am everything that has been, that is, and that shall ever be: no human mortal has discovered me behind my veil.” 1 This recalls a very different god, Yahweh, whose claim is also to (...) compress all knowledge into an eternal present and whose dwelling, in Solomon’s temple, is in a special sanctuary, the Holy of Holies, also guarded by a veil.There, one might say, the similarity ends. Yahweh is a masculine diety (“the father of his people”), though imagistically he remains a space or an absence filled by a name (“I Am That I Am”) indicative of the transcendent distance of the eternal. Isis is a female shape imaging carnal knowledge behind her veil (with its Machiavellian, Baconian temptations). Her truth, as Plutarch makes clear, is driven by desire, truth being a “desire for divinity,” “a study... and work more holy than the vow and obligation of chastity or the guarding and sealing of any....” 2 The almost certain wages, however, for the would-be ravisher is unfulfillment and death, whereas Yahweh, having become the God of the Christians, promises eternal life through the sacrifice of his only-begotten son and a truth above knowledge “that shall make you free” (John 8:32). [End Page 343]To the Semitic mind the name expressed and represented the power of the person: God was present in a special way wherever the “Name of Yahweh” was. 3 The content of the Holy of Holies, originally portable in the ancient Ark of the Covenant, was the two stone tablets of the Law received by Moses at Horeb (1 Kings 8:9). God’s presence, once installed in the Temple of Jerusalem, was represented as “a cloud [that] filled the house of the Lord” (ibid, 8:10; cf. 2 Chronicles 5:10, 13). God was cloud; knowledge was duty. Of the physical place of this indwelling principle of knowledge, Jesus said (John 2:19): “Destroy this sanctuary: within three days I shall raise it up again.” The evangelist explains that his metaphor is transferred to the new Christian idea of the word made flesh. 4 John’s gospel does not cite the rendering of the veil of the temple, but the synoptic gospels all recount that it was “rent in twain from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51, Mark 16:38, Luke 23:45) at Christ’s Crucifixion. The idea is essentially that knowledge as command and duty has been surpassed by a knowledge that is love in the crucified revelation of the Son of God. This returns us, ambiguously, to the image of the goddess Isis; for even in Hebrew scripture it is foretold: “The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me” (Song of Solomon 5:7). If there is here a clear prefiguration of the fate of both Christ and the temple, there is also an echo of the likely fate of the harlot Rahab, who let Joshua’s spies into Jericho, had God not saved her from the ruin of that city (Joshua 6:17).The purpose of this essay is not to dwell on obvious imagistic and psychological attachments between wisdom and sexual knowledge, but early notice of this liaison is needed to connect the philosophical discourse on veils with motifs disclosed in figurative literature. For the veil that hides the object of desire may also hide the reality of the name or of naming; preserving the veil may be a mode of love, just as challenging it is also. For example, when John Rawls writes: “The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances,” 5 what does his image of the veil intend to convey? What exactly is on each side of this veil? From... (shrink)

The rabbis found a measure of David's importance in the importance of his son Solomon, and an echo of that same sentiment is also at work in the New Testament traditions about David's messianic son.

Prologue 1. To begin with, the first principle from Whom all illumination descends as from the Father of Light, by Whom are given all the best and perfect gifts, the eternal Father do I call upon through His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, that by the intercession of the most holy Virgin Mary, mother of God Himself and of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and of the blessed Francis, our father and leader, He may enlighten the eyes of our mind to (...) guide our feet into the way of that peace "which surpasses all understanding", which peace our Lord Jesus Christ has announced and given to us; which lesson our father Francis always taught, in all of whose preaching was the annunciation of peace both in the beginning and in the end, wishing for peace in every greeting, yearning for ecstatic peace in every moment of contemplation, as a citizen of that Jerusalem of which that man of peace said, with those that hated peace he was peaceable, "Pray ye for the things that are for the peace of Jerusalem". For he knew that the throne of Solomon was nowise save in peace, since it is written, "His place is in peace and His abode in Sion". 2. Since, then, following the example of the most blessed father Francis, I breathlessly sought this peace, I, a sinner, who have succeeded to the place of that most blessed father after his death, the seventh Minister General of the brothers, though in all ways unworthy--it happened that by the divine will in the thirty-third year after the death of that blessed man I ascended to Mount Alverna as to a quiet place, with the desire of seeking spiritual peace; and staying there, while I meditated on the ascent of the mind to God, amongst other things there occurred that miracle which happened in the same place to the blessed Francis himself, the vision namely of the winged Seraph in the likeness of the Crucified. While looking upon this vision, I immediately saw that it signified the suspension of our father himself in contemplation and the way by which he came to it. 3. For by those six wings are rightly to be understood the six stages of illumination by which the soul, as if by steps or progressive movements, was disposed to pass into peace by ecstatic elevations of Christian wisdom. The way, however, is only through the most burning love of the Crucified, Who so transformed Paul, "caught up into the third heaven", into Christ, that he said, "With Christ I am nailed to the cross, yet I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me" ; who therefore so absorbed the mind of Francis that his soul was manifest in his flesh and he bore the most holy stigmata of the Passion in his body for two years before his death. Therefore the symbol of the six-winged Seraph signifies the six stages of illumination, which begin with God's creatures and lead up to God, to Whom no one can enter properly save through the Crucified. For he who does not enter by the door but otherwise, he is a thief and a robber. But if anyone does enter by this door, he shall go in and go out and shall find pastures. Because of this John says in his Apocalypse, "Blessed are they that wash their robes in the blood of the Lamb, that they may have a right to the Tree of Life and may enter in by the gates into the City"; as if he were to say that one cannot enter into the heavenly Jerusalem through contemplation unless one enter through the blood of the Lamb as through a gate. (shrink)

We show that every countable ideal of degrees that are low for isomorphism is contained in a principal ideal of degrees that are low for isomorphism by adapting an exact pair construction. We further show that within the hyperimmune free degrees, lowness for isomorphism is entirely independent of computable traceability.

Judaism is one of the oldest surviving religious traditions in the world. The Jews, who base their history on Abraham and his son Isaac, began to be called religion with Moses. The Jews, who lived their golden age in and around Jerusalem during the David and Solomon periods, also built the Temple, which was at the center of their religious life. The Jews, who rebuilt the Temple during the Babylonian exile and subsequently Ezra's reign, lived in these lands until (...) the destruction of the temple by the Romans in 70 AD. The statelessness that started after the destruction of the temple had an important place in the Jewish identity. The exile life, which continued for two thousand years, caused the Jews to go to different parts of the world and live there. In this period, which is expressed as the period of exile, Jews lived in many regions such as Africa, Anatolia, Europe and America. The arrival of the Jews in the Americas dates back to the Columbus era. Jews were present in South America and subsequently in the British colonies. Currently, most of the Jews in the world live in the USA. Among the Jews who went to the Americas, Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews constitute the majority. However, in the Americas, Jews have formed different groups over time. These include groups such as Conservative, Orthodox, Reformist, and Reconstructionist. Jewish groups formed by African-Americans also have a special place among these formations. These African-American Jews in the USA, are discussed within the framework of this article. In the article, firstly, a piece of brief information about Judaism in America was given, and then the relations between Blacks and Jews were discussed. Afterward, the main features of these formations, which are of African origin and consider themselves the descendants of the Israelites, are emphasized. Finally, the Jewish groups established by Black Jews were contacted and if they had different practices and beliefs from the others, they were included. The research was carried out based on the literature review and information was given about the prominent black Jewish groups. (shrink)

Historical myths are appealing primarily because they provide people with views of life and their role in it as significant and enduring. These worldviews help people manage death anxiety by enabling them to view themselves as part of something great that stretches far into the past and endures indefinitely into the future. We review empirical evidence supporting this analysis.

Ce travail explore l’origine d’un malentendu vieux de cinq siècles concernant la foi justifiante. Dieu justifie-t-il le pécheur par la foi seule ( sola fide ) comme le disent les luthériens ou par la foi formée par la charité ( fide caritate formata ) comme le disent les catholiques? Il s’agit d’une des différences les plus débattues entre les deux traditions. Une étude précise des sources et une comparaison entre les textes de Thomas d’Aquin et de Martin Luther consacrés à (...) l’interprétation de la fides caritate formata permet de constater que, malgré la compréhension différente de la formule, ils ont en réalité la même idée de la foi justifiante en raison d’une même fidélité à l’Écriture. C’est en puisant à cette source commune qu’aujourd’hui encore, ils montrent aux Églises un chemin d’unité. (shrink)

The main purpose of the article is to get clear what Leibniz's concerns about relations were. His: I do not believe that you will admit an accident that is in two subjects at the same time. My judgement about relations is that paternity in David is one thing, sonship in Solomon another, but that the relation common to both is a merely mental thing whose basis is the modifications of the individuals is best seen as akin to: Father is (...) true of David. Son is true of Solomon. But Being a father of is not true of any individual. Leibniz, like modern nominalist Nelson Goodman, could not allow the ordered pair . To establish this I must argue against Hidé Ishiguro's claim that Leibniz should have straightforwardly constructed a logic of relations, and Jaakko Hintikka's claim that Leibniz could have allowed the use of relational predicates in such forms as (Ex) Rax and (Ey) Ryb. I must also argue that what they say about the windowlessness doctrine (especially the as if formulation) is beside the point. (shrink)

The Sophia tradition was formed in European philosophical and religious creativity and was developed in the pre-Christian period by Plato. Then it was reflected in Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism, the writings of prominent theorists of Christianity - fathers and teachers of the church, mystics of the Middle Ages. This tradition was reflected in the temple architecture and iconography of the Orthodox East, and took a systematic form of the doctrine of sophiology in the "philosophy of unity." The doctrine of Sophia the (...) Wisdom of God is set forth in the biblical book of the parables of the Solomons, as well as in the non-canonical books of the Old Testament - the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach. In Ukraine, Sofia teaching has been known since medieval times and was a feature of Kyiv Christianity. (shrink)

In the past decade, Ethiopia has demonstrated a strong ideological convention to the East-Asian model of ‘developmental state’, which stands for state-led industrialisation as its underlying industrial policy premise. Nevertheless, the labour rights externalities of this industrial policymaking have been overlooked in the existing academic and practical policy debates. Hence, using qualitative empirical data, the article attempts to address the research gap by analysing why and how Ethiopia’s state-led industrialisation and the corporate behaviours of apparel-exporting firms, as well as their (...) respective global brand buyers, have contributed to the existing poverty wages and repressive practices against the associational rights of local industrial workers at those selected apparel-exporting industrial parks of the country. The maxim of industrialisation with a human face has increasingly become a promising alternative to the neoclassical intellectual view of labour relations following its fundamentals towards achieving a more sustainable industrial development in a given state. In light of this human right imperative, the finding revealed Ethiopia’s stateled industrialisation has firmly embraced strong business-state alliances, thereby curbing the power of local industrial workers. The Ethiopian government employs diverse de facto or de jure labour control mechanisms across those selected apparel-exporting industrial parks of the country. This is manifested through poverty wages and repressive measures todeny the associational rights of workers. Further, the flawed Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of employing firms and their respective global brands have contributed to the ongoing labour abuses across those selected apparel-exporting firms. Hence, Ethiopia’s industrial policy is expected to navigate a reasonable balance between facilitating industrial catch-up and ensuring labour standards for more viable and sustainable labour relations. (shrink)

In the vertex pursuit game of cops and robbers on finite graphs, the cop has a winning strategy if and only if the graph admits a dominating order. Such graphs are called constructible in the graph theory literature. This equivalence breaks down for infinite graphs, and variants of the game have been proposed to reestablish partial connections between constructibility and being cop-win. We answer an open question of Lehner about one of these variants by giving examples of weak cop-win graphs (...) which are not constructible. We show that the index set of computable constructible graphs is Π11 hard and the index set of computable constructible locally finite graphs is Π40 hard. Finally, we give an example of a computable constructible graph for which every dominating order computes 0″. (shrink)

ABSTRACTSchumpeter’s theory of socialism pivots on his response to Ludwig von Mises’s claim that rational economic calculation is “impossible” in a socialist economy. Mises held that because socialism eliminates market prices for the means of production, it is impossible under socialism to know the relative scarcities of productive inputs, and thus to determine rationally which of any number of technologically feasible production projects to pursue. Schumpeter appears to assume away Mises’s epistemic concerns about socialism by contending that it is theoretically (...) possible to determine which goods should be produced in a socialist economy if all the relevant data are known—which begs the question Mises had asked. Did Schumpeter really commit such an elementary error of interpretation? Or was the appearance of doing so part of his attempt to communicate to the reader of Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy a host of reservations about the likely consequences of socialism in practice, even as he ostentatiously praised its feasibility in principle? (shrink)

At the intersection of literature and history, three “antique romances” initiated a new genre in the mid-twelfth century by transposing into French the great stories of Greek and Latin epic: the fratricidal war of Oedipus's sons in the Roman de Thèbes, the founding of Rome in the Eneas, and the Roman de Troie's Trojan War based on Dares and Dictys. Rejecting Homer's version for these “eyewitness” accounts, Benoît de Sainte-Maure translated the full history of the Trojan War from its beginning (...) in the tale of Jason and the Argonauts to the annihilation of Troy and the victors’ unhappy homecomings. The myth of Trojan descent claimed by many European rulers, including the British and Normans, gives Benoît's translation more than entertainment value for his first public, the Plantagenêt court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Indeed, while repeatedly assuring his readers that this great estoire, story and history, will provide pleasurable enjoyment, Benoît also signals a more serious intent by invoking Solomon and the seven liberal arts: we would be like beasts if not for learning from the past that allows us to distinguish between wisdom and folly. The author/narrator's school training is on full display as he highlights the importance of remembering and the dangers of forgetting. Obliged to share his knowledge, Benoît will put into romanz matter that is at once old and new, lost and refound, so that lay readers without access to his Latin sources can “remember” their past as he shapes it in romance. The success of his enterprise can be gauged by the number of extant manuscripts as well as the romance's subsequent influence on multiple versions of Trojan history, from the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. But can we pinpoint more specifically what and how Benoît's public might remember? (shrink)

'Daring, learned and humane... A revelatory restoration of wonder' Stephen Greenblatt. We no longer think, like the ancient Chinese did, that the world was hatched from an egg, or, like the Maori, that it came from the tearing-apart of a love embrace. The Greeks told of a tempestuous Hera and a cunning Zeus, but we now use genes and natural selection to explain fear and desire, and physics to demystify the workings of the universe. Science is an astounding achievement, but (...) are we really any wiser than the ancients? Has science revealed the secrets of fate and immortality? Has it provided protection from jealousy or love? There are those who believe that science has replaced faith, but must it also be a death knell for mythology? Evolutions brings to life the latest scientific thinking on the birth of the universe and the solar system, the journey from a single cell all the way to our human minds. Reawakening our sense of wonder and terror at the world around us and within us, Oren Harman uses modern science to create new and original mythologies. Here are the Earth and the Moon presenting a cosmological view of motherhood, a panicking Mitochondrion introducing sex and death to the world, the loneliness of consciousness emerging from the memory of an octopus, and the birth of language in evolution summoning humankind's struggle with truth. Science may not solve our existential puzzles, but like the age-old legends, its magical discoveries can help us continue the never-ending search. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the implications of globalization for philosophy of technology. Various themes in philosophy of technology can be seen under a different light when globalization is understood in terms of modern technology. Among them is the conflict between methodologies of the classical philosophy of technology and the empirical turn. It is argued that once the phenomenon of globalization challenges the empirical turn approach in terms of (i) its focus on individual technologies; (ii) the importance (...) of normative aspect of philosophy of technology, and; (iii) theories of democratizing technology. This is followed by five suggestions concerning how the insights of the classical philosophy of technology can benefit current discourses on globalization and technology. (shrink)

Joseph Sheban attempts to prove that there is neither an Aryan nor a Semitic race, but rather one white race. He tells us that, according to the Bible, Abraham told his servant "Thou shalt go to my country and to my kindred, and take a wife unto my son Isaac." The servant went to Nahor in Mesopotamia. Now archaeologists have not found Nahor but they have found Ur, the inhabitants of which were Aryan Sumerians. Sheban concludes, "Therefore Abraham must have (...) been of the same race of his city. If the inhabitants of Ur were Aryans, Abraham must have been an Aryan boy." The Jewish people are not distinct as belonging to a Semitic race but only as a religious group, a group which includes diverse members of the single white race. Sheban first discusses the origin of the white race; it was located in the mountains east of the Mediterranean. This single race was a mixture of people with differing physical characteristics, with blond hair, black hair, brown eyes, blue eyes, etc. They had a religion, gods and a code of laws, much of which we still use. Sheban traces the migration of the white race by considering the movement of their gods. Sheban also argues that the Phoenicians are the original discoverers of America, that the Phoenicians did business with Solomon, which enabled Solomon to acquire the silver from America that made him one of the richest men of his age, that Columbus set out to rediscover America, not to go to India. In the opinion on this reviewer, the arguments in support of these points are unconvincing.—E. M. (shrink)

For the last forty years, two claims have been at the core of disputes about scientific change: that scientists reason rationally and that science is progressive. For most of this time discussions were polarized between philosophers, who defended traditional Enlightenment ideas about rationality and progress, and sociologists, who espoused relativism and constructivism. Recently, creative new ideas going beyond the polarized positions have come from the history of science, feminist criticism of science, psychology of science, and anthropology of science. Addressing the (...) traditional arguments as well as building on these new ideas, Miriam Solomon constructs a new epistemology of science. After discussions of the nature of empirical success and its relation to truth, Solomon offers a new, social account of scientific rationality. She shows that the pursuit of empirical success and truth can be consistent with both dissent and consensus, and that the distinction between dissent and consensus is of little epistemic significance. In building this social epistemology of science, she shows that scientific communities are not merely the locus of distributed expert knowledge and a resource for criticism but also the site of distributed decision making. Throughout, she illustrates her ideas with case studies from late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century physical and life sciences. Replacing the traditional focus on methods and heuristics to be applied by individual scientists, Solomon emphasizes science funding, administration, and policy. One of her goals is to have a positive influence on scientific decision making through practical social recommendations. (shrink)

"The thought of Immanuel Kant has had incalculable - and, many would say, negative - impact on the modern estimation of religion, religious belief, and religious knowledge. Yet, Davidovich argues in the strikingly original interpretation, the chief lines and import of Kant's work on religion have been crippingly misunderstood." "Davidovich radically refigures Kant scholarship by focusing decisively on his Third Critique, long thought his weakest, where she finds Kant confronting the results of his strong distinction between theoretical and (...) practical reason. There he attempts a comprehensive theory of reflective judgment, in which contemplative thought of a moral designer of the universe is a principle that overcomes the bifurcation of scientific (rational) and moral (practical) activities." "Moreover, this specifically religious consciousness, which harmonizes the lawfulness of nature with the purposiveness of freedom, is further developed, Davidovich maintains, by Rudolf Otto's and Paul Tillich's influential theories of religion. Today it can safeguard the status of religion and a normative science of religion." "Davidovich's work is an outstanding contribution, breaking new ground in both Kantian scholarship and the theory of religion."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

This article examines the discourse competence of high-functioning children with autistic spectrum disorders to participate in narrative introduction sequences with family members. The analysis illuminates the children’s own efforts to launch narratives, as well as their ability to build upon the contributions of others. Ethnographic, discourse analytic methodology is integrated with the theory of discourse organization and the weak central coherence account of autism. Introductions of both personal experience narratives as well as fictional narratives are examined. The children were especially (...) competent in the use of stable introductory practices when launching fictional narratives, pre-organized by the media of expression. Their challenge was not in the introduction, but in the narrative co-telling, which often was not globally organized over an extended course of propositions. The heterogeneity of the ASD children’s discourse competence and its implications for discourse analysis are discussed. (shrink)