During the middle ages and early modern period, dozens of Jewish commentaries were written on Qohelet, in Arabic and Hebrew, and representing a very full range of methods and approaches, from Karaite to Rabbanite, grammatical to pietistic, Neoplatonic, Aristotelian, and anti-Aristotelian, even kabbalistic. The purpose of this article – dedicated to the memory of Kalman Bland – is to present some experiments related to the telling of the history of medieval Jewish exegesis of Qohelet in hermeneutical context.

Despite the lack of invariance problem (the many‐to‐many mapping between acoustics and percepts), human listeners experience phonetic constancy and typically perceive what a speaker intends. Most models of human speech recognition (HSR) have side‐stepped this problem, working with abstract, idealized inputs and deferring the challenge of working with real speech. In contrast, carefully engineered deep learning networks allow robust, real‐world automatic speech recognition (ASR). However, the complexities of deep learning architectures and training regimens make it difficult to use them to (...) provide direct insights into mechanisms that may support HSR. In this brief article, we report preliminary results from a two‐layer network that borrows one element from ASR, long short‐term memory nodes, which provide dynamic memory for a range of temporal spans. This allows the model to learn to map real speech from multiple talkers to semantic targets with high accuracy, with human‐like timecourse of lexical access and phonological competition. Internal representations emerge that resemble phonetically organized responses in human superior temporal gyrus, suggesting that the model develops a distributed phonological code despite no explicit training on phonetic or phonemic targets. The ability to work with real speech is a major advance for cognitive models of HSR. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1909 Edition.

At long last a comprehensive tool in English for a better understanding of the most basic terms in Aristotle's philosophy. A careful comparison of the original Greek, medieval and renaissance Latin translations and a reappraisal of English usage make the work a definitive source for the precise grasp of what has been the historical Aristotle as far as the documents permit one to judge. -- provided by the publisher.

This paper describes a new course in Medical Technology and Critical Decisions, part of the Technology Studies Program at Wellesley College, established with the support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's New Liberal Arts Program. The course uses the dramatic new options in medicine presented by technology to individuals and society as a vehicle for promoting general technological literacy in liberal arts students. The course motivates the study of the scientific principles on which the technology rests and the mathematical principles (...) of a methodology for making rational choices. A case in point is the decision of a pregnant woman whether or not to undergo amniocentesis, a procedure used to determine the genetic make-up of a fetus from cells in the amniotic fluid. The course introduces students to the underlying notions of genetics; the physical principles behind the ultrasound imaging technique used to position the needle that draws the fluid; the probability and statistics needed to understand the risks to the woman and fetus both of having and of not having the procedure; and the methodology of decision analysis, increasingly used by genetic counselors to help prospective parents incorporate their personal values into the decision-making process. (shrink)

Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica makes it clear that Theodore of Tarsus, the seventh-century archbishop of Canterbury, is a figure who should command an immense amount of interest. His learning and cosmopolitan formation call upon the scholar to ask what it is that he contributed to the English Church in his time and beyond. Yet interest in Theodore as a theologian has been lacking to date, most likely due to the limited amount of material attributable to him. Jane Stevenson’s work (...) on the anonymous Laterculus Malalianus in the early 1990s suggested Theodore as the most likely author. That this suggestion has proven consistent with other, cumulative evidence of Theodore’s life and work makes the Laterculus an invaluable text for the student investigating his theology. The following paper seeks to present the theological themes of the text, especially as they relate to the person and work of Christ, and to introduce the reader to Theodore of Tarsus as a figure of interest in the study of early medieval Christology. (shrink)