I emphasize four points: Socratic dialectic challenges the interlocutor not only to acquire the correct moral opinions, but to question and think for oneself and to develop one's own moral rationality; it involves anticipatory acts of several types of virtue: courage, moderation, and justice and concern for the common good as opposed to competition and jealousy; what is at stake is not only the topic of the particular exchange, but the opportunity for membership in a rational/educational community; and the fact (...) that Socrates' interlocutors typically reject the opportunity for moral insight and personal growth he makes available to them explains why he cannot be said to possess a techne of moral education, and why he insists that virtue cannot be taught. The process of education through the elenchus is not a matter of correct instruction, but of rational elicitation, which must be responded to by personal choice. Thus Socrates' principles may represent not only beliefs he has tested over many years of dialogue, but also values he has come to through participation in elenctic inquiry, the idealized extension of norms required by and created in the practice of dialectic. Socratic education involves the interlocutor in the confrontation with a self whose irrational attachments of appetite and ego are exposed and must be overcome for the interlocutor to experience catharsis. (shrink)

The past decade has witnessed significant advances in our understanding of nonlinear systems, both theoretically and experimentally. In turn, these insights have led to applications over a broad range of subjects, as well as to new interpretations of complex behavior. Inevitably, it seems, there has been a concomitant rush to re-interpret various well-understood aspects of thermodynamic behavior in manybody systems by means of these mechanisms. It is perhaps useful, therefore, to examine these notions critically, and in doing so we are (...) able to illuminate somewhat the origins of, and motivations for, various dubious descriptions of these systems. Among other things, one notices in such discussions an unfortunate focus on “randomness,” rather than on the actual role of probabilities in describing the phenomena. Although valuable insights into some areas of complex behavior have arisen from studies of so-called “deterministic chaos,” we can detect no influence they may have on the predictions of statistical mechanics, and thus conclude that they are of little relevance to the thermodynamic behavior of large systems. (shrink)

Southerwood, WT One of the greatest of the great 'Men of '38' has been neglected by mainstream Catholic historians. Unlike the others, Thomas Butler spent his forty-two years of priestly ministry on the island of Tasmania, which is sometimes left off maps of Australia-including the ecclesiastical map. For example, there are only four passing references to him in John O'Brien's famous work.