This book examines three notable philosophers' attempts to solve the political problem of religious pluralism: John Rawls, Jacques Maritain, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Although many philosophers have grappled with this problem, what has not been sufficiently explored is the reciprocal relationship of foundational belief to political theory and political theory to political practice. Kozinski, using thorough research and a high level of philosophical discourse, deals with these issues directly and astutely demonstrates how any solution that does not incorporate both political (...) philosophy and political theology is doomed to fail. (shrink)

This book examines three notable philosophers' attempts to solve the political problem of religious pluralism: John Rawls, Jacques Maritain, and Alasdair MacIntyre. Although many philosophers have grappled with this problem, what has not been sufficiently explored is the reciprocal relationship of foundational belief to political theory and political theory to political practice. Kozinski, using thorough research and a high level of philosophical discourse, deals with these issues directly and astutely demonstrates how any solution that does not incorporate both political (...) philosophy and political theology is doomed to fail. (shrink)

Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the foremost critics of liberalism. As an alternative to the abstract utilitarianism and emotivist relativism of liberal moral theory, he has proposed virtue-ethics and “tradition-constituted rationality.” As an alternative to the individualism and bureaucratization of liberal moral practice, he has proposed the practices and politics of local community. He has presented his anti-liberal moral and political vision in his great trilogy, After Virtue, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, in later (...) works such as Dependent Rational Animals, and in numerous articles, lectures, and interviews, and he has done so with…. (shrink)

“Strictly speaking, Descartes was not a philosopher; he was a sophist and a mytho-theologian. Furthermore, none of his historical descendants are philosophers. They are sophists and mytho-theologians”. Cartesian Nightmare is the first of three volumes constituting a radical reinterpretation of the history of philosophy wherein Descartes’s unimpeachable status as “the father of modern philosophy” is forcefully challenged. Building upon the work of Jacques Maritain in which Descartes is declared an “ideosophist,” Redpath argues that Descartes is not the father of modern (...) philosophy, or any philosophy, because he is, in fact, not a philosopher at all. (shrink)

A book with the sole intention of mediating the thought of G. K. Chesterton would seem unnecessary. Is not Chesterton himself known and loved precisely for his uncanny ability to mediate for us—through his utterly translucent prose—what often seems an incomprehensible and opaque universe? However, just as the multiple mediators in the Divine Comedy, the Virgin Mary, Lucia, Beatrice, Virgil, and St. Bernard, in virtue of whom Dante was finally proffered the visio Dei, did in no way dim his final (...) illumination, so also does Schall’s mediation of the light of Chesterton diminish none of its brightness. On the contrary, Schall’s reflections serve only to focus and intensify it. (shrink)

In The Peasant of the Garonne, Maritain criticizes the substitution of the simple word “common” for the pretentious word “communitarian,” remarking that “common is the right word; ‘communitarian’ is, in the present instance, a bastard word in which one find only [sic] because it sounds social-minded.” This example of the trend imperium that is modern education, using words to lead away from truth and toward desire, away from the common things of man and toward the private fancies of men, is (...) the pernicious path that Western education has been negotiating since Maritain’s time, when he first mapped out its crossroads. The inspiration for and thematic center of this collection of essays is the Yale University Terry Lectures of Jacques Maritain published in 1943 as Education at the Crossroads. Since this time higher education has traveled much farther down the dark path of sophistry, specialization, naturalism, and pragmatism. To turn us back to the crossroads is the intention of these writers, using St. Thomas and Jacques Maritain as guides. (shrink)

What is a book about the ideas of a self-identified journalist, whose targeted audience was the subscribers to a local newspaper, doing in a scholarly journal of metaphysics? The answer to this question is explained in this very book, in which G. K. Chesterton, the noted novelist, essayist, controversialist, and poet, is defended as a metaphysician as well. For Paine, Chesterton should not only be properly regarded as a philosopher, after the Angelic Doctor himself, but as the philosophical doctor for (...) diseased modern man. (shrink)

In Revering God, author and scholar Thaddeus Williams bridges the gap between abstract theology and awe-inspired devotion, helping readers better understand God and drawing them into a deeper state of joy and reverence for their Creator.

It is with good reason that the name Rutherford is closely linked with the early history of the alpha particle. He discovered them, determined their nature, and from 1909 used them to probe the structure of the atom. From 1898 to 1902 Rutherford construed alpha radiation as a type of non-particulate Röntgen radiation. On his theory of the locomotion of radioactive particles Rutherford proposed that alpha radiation consisted of negatively charged particles. During 1902 he confirmed the particulate nature of alpha (...) radiation but discovered that these alpha particles were positively charged. Although Rutherford suspected from 1903 that these alpha particles were related somehow with helium, the proof required six long years of investigation. By mid-1908 it seemed certain that the alpha particle possessed two units of the elementary charge. Since the e/m ratio had already been determined for alpha particles, this evidence enhanced the suspected connection with helium. However, this gain and loss of charge was still construed as an ionization effect. Since as late as 1908 gaseous ionization was assumed to involve the gain or loss of a single unit of charge, Rutherford's alleged case of doubly ionized alpha particles was presumably an exception. Yet helium was known to be an inert gas and thus hardly a likely candidate for such exceptional ionization behaviour. To establish the connection, therefore, Rutherford resorted to a spectroscopic test. He collected spent alpha particles shot into a thin glass tube and gradually observed the spectrum of helium. Rutherford had thus been correct in his assumption, but a proper explanation was possible only after the confirmation of the nuclear structure of the atom. (shrink)

A new working hypothesis of sleep-wake cycle mechanisms is proposed, based on ontogeny and functional/anatomic compression of two stochastic neuronal models of information coding that complement each other in a key/lock fashion: the axonal arbor patterns (AAP – “hardware”) and the neuronal spike interval inequality patterns (SIIP – “software”). [Hobson et al.; Nielsen; Revonsuo; Solms; Vertes & Eastman].

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Modernity as Apocalypse: Sacred Nihilism and the Counterfeits of Logos by Thaddeus J. KozinskiMehmet CiftciModernity as Apocalypse: Sacred Nihilism and the Counterfeits of Logos by Thaddeus J. Kozinski (Brooklyn, NY: Angelico, 2019), 231 pp.Whether the names Adrian Vermeule, Fr. Edmund Waldstein, and Sohrab Ahmari provoke anxiety or glee in readers' minds will depend on where they stand on integralism, the brand of Catholic traditionalism that (...) all three have sought to promote through various websites and publications. Presenting themselves as the authentic interpreters of magisterial teachings on church–state relations, the integralists have challenged the long-standing attempt (especially in North America) to combine the Catholic faith with a commitment to political liberalism, natural rights, religious liberty, and state neutrality toward religion. For the integralists, attempting such a combination succeeds only in distorting the Catholic faith and causes us to forget what the Church taught before the Second Vatican Council, which still obliges the assent of Catholics, they claim, and is desperately needed to stand against the onward march of secularism. [End Page 966]Although Thaddeus Kozinski, former professor at Wyoming Catholic College, may not be one of the more well-known integralists, his latest book presents an interesting iteration of Catholic traditionalism that displays both what is valuable and what is most worrying about contemporary traditionalism. Kozinski's previous book was a closely argued critique of John Rawls and Jacques Maritain using the thought of Alasdair MacIntyre. It built up a cumulative case for the impossibility of resolving the political problem of religious pluralism without moving beyond philosophy by making a decision to reject or accept the political importance of the Catholic Church and its teachings.1 Although the author's preference for some sort of confessional state was already clear in that book, he preferred not to defend it, but rather to argue that it is impossible to be agnostic or neutral toward the ideal of church–state union. Now he goes on the offensive, presenting in the twenty brief chapters of Modernity as Apocalypse his "sundry attempts over the past decade to grapple with the question of modernity" (14). More precisely, he is grappling with the questions of what defines modernity, how we arrived at where we are, and what Christians should do while living in it, particularly in the fields of education and politics.The two chapters that form the first part (entitled "Modernity") use Charles Taylor's A Secular Age to argue that modernity's increasingly pluralistic and secular culture creates "an entirely new incapacity to experience the reality of a particular worldview in a naïve way, that is, without the consciousness of there being other viable options" (37). Yet the problem also reveals a blessing. "Encountering reality through the lens of other perennial traditions can serve to expose that false dichotomy in our minds that leads us to interpret other views as nothing more than full-fledged errors and our own personal lenses as nothing less than the whole truth" (21). Anyone who has read what passes for commentary on websites such as Church Militant or Rorate Caeli will find that statement surprising and refreshing.The second part ("Logos") contains four chapters that lucidly discuss contemporary disagreements in ethics between Kantians and virtue-ethicists, between new natural lawyers and MacIntyreans. Chapter 4 makes an effective and moving argument to read Plato "as a precursor to Faith, and a guide along the way home" (50). There are some brief but suggestive remarks drawing on Benedict XVI's Caritas in Veritate in [End Page 967] chapter 6 to argue that an ethics of gift can enable us to express the moral teachings of the New Testament in terms that are potentially convincing to a broader audience. "Metanoia" is the title of the third part, dedicated to education. Chapters 7–8 and 10 give not very original and yet timely arguments for the importance of the liberal arts, the need for Catholic universities to be institutions that can foster, rather than deform, the practice of philosophy, and the need for pedagogy to be rooted in the transmission of a community's tradition.2However, one cannot help but be startled when... (shrink)

According to Fleck, a fact is not something objectively given but rather a social event. Scientific facts are no exception, as can be seen through the annals of medicine. Fleck argues that if the physical sciences initially appear to be immune to such social conditioning, this misconception can be corrected by recognizing the similarities between the natural sciences and medicine both historically and epistemologically. Fleck's ideas are not new, having been presented by him in 1935, but it is only recently (...) that they have begun to strike a responsive chord. Kuhn was aware of Fleck's work when he began to promulgate his own ideas in the 1960s. But there are important differences as well as similarities which can only be appreciated once Fleck's own work has had a proper hearing. To this end the University of Chicago Press has published a translation-edition of the full monograph in 1979. In ‘On the question of the foundations of medical knowledge’, Fleck's own precis to this major work, he correctly foretold the dawning of the sociology of cognition. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Ancillary to the emergence of nuclear physics in the 1930s, this important instrument soon became one of the most famous of all time. Yet little is known of its origin, how it differs from the Geiger Counter of 1913, or what role Walter Müller played in the invention of the Geiger-Müller counter of 1928. One of the most interesting features of this history is the absence of any ‘somking gun’—any specific novum for the assignment of credit unless it be the (...) gradual discernment and differentiation of the instrument's capabilities vis-à-vis the limits imposed by scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Frederick Soddy , one of the foremost radiochemists of his day, was awarded the 1921 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Soddy was also among the first of the scientific leaders of his age, along with Blackett , Bernal , and others, to become interested in the social implications of their work. In 1950 his colleague Paneth wrote that currently ‘there is widespread discussion on the responsibility towards the community of men of science and particularly experts in radioactivity; but a perusal of (...) Prof. Soddy's non-chemical writings of no less than thirty years ago [viz., during and after the first world war] shows how strongly he felt the duty to fight for a better order of things'. Soddy was a complex iconoclast often derided for dealing with what seemed to be disparate interests. What, it could be asked, could monetary reform possibly have to do with radiochemistry? But to make sense of Soddy, the question must rather be formulated in the other direction: What fundamental concern did Soddy have that enabled him to embrace holistically a variety of seemingly diverse activities? The answer can be given in a word: energy. And the way in which Soddy dealt with this issue involved him directly with social economics as well as with the social responsibility of scientists. (shrink)

Originally published in German in 1935, this monograph anticipated solutions to problems of scientific progress, the truth of scientific fact and the role of error in science now associated with the work of Thomas Kuhn and others. Arguing that every scientific concept and theory—including his own—is culturally conditioned, Fleck was appreciably ahead of his time. And as Kuhn observes in his foreword, "Though much has occurred since its publication, it remains a brilliant and largely unexploited resource." "To many scientists just (...) as to many historians and philosophers of science facts are things that simply are the case: they are discovered through properly passive observation of natural reality. To such views Fleck replies that facts are invented, not discovered. Moreover, the appearance of scientific facts as discovered things is itself a social construction, a _made_ thing. A work of transparent brilliance, one of the most significant contributions toward a thoroughly sociological account of scientific knowledge."—Steven Shapin, _Science_. (shrink)

Postulated before 1920 to account for observations such as the fluctuating measured half-life of polonium and the unusual migration of polonium causing radioactive contamination throughout laboratories, by 1930 the phenomenon of aggregate recoil had become part of international textbook science. The formation of radioactive aggregates has been confirmed, but their migration is probably due either to volatility and diffusion or to electrostatic polarity and attraction. Knock-on recoil and sputtering may contribute to the release of such aggregates from solid surfaces, whereas (...) carry-along recoil—the type of recoil event associated with the accepted theory of aggregate recoil—is shown here to run counter to known scientific principles. (shrink)

The Shroud of Turin, a linen cloth with but a faint image, continues to capture the interest of many people of diverse beliefs. Although the measured age of the cloth is relatively recent, other scientific findings indicate an earlier provenance. Any firm conclusions regarding the cloth's history remain premature. No satisfactory explanation has been found as yet for how the image on the cloth was produced structurally or stylistically. Iconographic evidence suggests that the image was the source of facial peculiarities (...) found in early works of religious art. The body image bears a striking yet preternatural correlation with Scriptural accounts of wounds. Curiously, the image on the cloth functions as a photographic negative, exhibiting a high degree of resolution, as if the original were produced in pixels. Despite serious efforts to discover some artistic origin md medium, scientific evidence points in the direction that it was not produced by hands. If it is tme that the medium is the message, as Marshall McLuhan wrote, then the Turin Shroud may be a parable for the modern age. (shrink)

To explain the origin of thorium, the Austrian geophysicist Kirsch in 1922 postulated a hypothetical isotope, thoruranium , by analogy with actinouranium. The theoretical life-time of thoruranium was predicted as being too short for it to have survived in the recent geological past. Available geological data was not inconsistent with this hypothesis, but neither did it confirm it. Within five years one new piece of geological evidence, which appeared not to conform with predictions based upon this alleged U-236, was accepted (...) even by Kirsch as sufficient to falsify his theory. However, during the 1940s, U-236 was produced artificially, and its characteristics were found to conform with those postulated for thoruranium. Subsequent research on the origin of the universe has confirmed that indeed a natural endowment of U-236 did once exist in considerable abundance. (shrink)