On cosmology in relation with Malay culture.

Today the issue of ethics and most importantly moral values are being seen as merely based upon opinions and emotions. This has led towards a relativisation of moral values and thus towards the erosion of values amongst societies. This paper would analyze and suggest ways of preserving values for the structuring of developmental ideas for thinkers in developing countries. Coming from an Islamic standpoint the ideas of virtues have to be rooted within the transcendent or the Absolute. Such defense of (...) virtues are definitely beyond the grasp of usual western philosophy as the philosophy that is propagated by Islam is not a mere intellectual exercise but a transformative exercise which connects the profane to the sacred, the outer to the inner and the physical world to the spiritual world. The loci or the focus point is the human being thus developing the idea of being human via the inculcation of and preservation of virtues is of utmost importance. The virtues most important in Islam such as justice, moderation or temperance have been discussed by various muslim philosophers. These virtues are rooted in the Absolute and through His presence in the various levels of existences are they known. For Using ideas from malay cosmology and soteriology based upon the writings of Malay scholars, this paper would highlight ways to preserve and ensure Malay society does not fall under the threat of relativism of moral values. (shrink)

The epistemic terrain of humanitarian morality hasundergone a profound paradigmatic transformationin recent years. The turn towards “resilience” as a structuring principle in aid programmes has produced new modes of governance that challenge what I call the moral exceptionalism of humanitarianism’s mandate. This article traces the trajectory of moralism in humanitarian studies, exploring how the productive tension between contrapuntal readings of humanitarianism as moral intent or biopolitical care is transcended by the resilience paradigm’s ontological vision of an intrinsically fragileand vulnerable world. (...) Contrary to theoretical critiques of resilience as an extension of neoliberal tenets to global governance, I draw on the context of the Syrian refugee crisis in Jordan to argue that resilience humanitarianism has in fact prompted a return to state welfare as the final guarantor of refugee rights. (shrink)

Corrupt regulatory environment encourages firms to deploy middlemen for speedy and assured acquisition of different services from regulatory agencies. Using a World Bank dataset of 2210 Indian manufacturing firms, this article examines how firms with middlemen deal with corrupt governmental agencies for its operational efficiency. Our results demonstrate that deployment of middlemen by the firms is often accompanied by a substantial increase in operational delay, relatively trigger more consumption of senior management’s time on regulatory disentanglement, enhance the likelihood/tendency to pay (...) bribe, and likely to face more court cases as a means of restitution of legal rights. As firm-specific attributes may contaminate our preliminary results, we utilized the propensity score framework to examine relationships among variables of interests. Our study contributes to the inconspicuous part of the corruption literature by attempting to present a comprehensive but indirect assessment of the functions of middlemen that predominantly remained unattended except some scattered descriptive, case-based anecdotal presentations. (shrink)

Darwin described biological species as groups of morphologically similar individuals. These groups of individuals can split into several subgroups due to natural selection, resulting in the emergence of new species. Some species can stay stable without the appearance of a new species, some others can disappear or evolve. Some of these evolutionary patterns were described in our previous works independently of each other. In this work we have developed a single model which allows us to reproduce the principal patterns in (...) Darwin’s diagram. Some more complex evolutionary patterns are also observed. The relation between Darwin’s definition of species, stated above, and Mayr’s definition of species is also discussed. (shrink)

This essay proposes a comprehensive blueprint for the hylomorphic foundations of cosmology. The key philosophical explananda in cosmology are those dealing with global processes and structures, the regularity of global regularities, and the existence of the global as such. The possibility of elucidating these using alternatives to hylomorphism is outlined and difficulties with these alternatives are raised. Hylomorphism, by contrast, provides a sound philosophical ground for cosmology insofar as it leads to notions of cosmic essence, the unity of complex essences, (...) and globally emergent properties. These are used as the basis to account for the aforementioned cosmological explananda and to resolve two problems in the philosophy of cosmology: the meta-law dilemma and the uniqueness of the universe. In summary, cosmology needs hylomorphism because it is able to ground cosmology’s efforts as a scientific inquiry. It can do so because hylomorphism philosophically accounts for changing substances and aggregates of substances, the various scales of law-governed behavior measured by the natures of those substances, and how those substances as parts relate to the universe as a whole. (shrink)

This chapter aims to shed new light on the arguments and philosophical significance of Kant’s Universal Natural History by examining the work’s natural-philosophical methodology. The 1755 cosmological treatise, Kant asserts, follows “the leading thread of analogy”. After introducing the work’s main cosmological analogy, I examine the historical context of Kant’s analogical method. The most relevant context, I argue, is not the prior tradition of cosmology and natural history but rather works of scientific methodology and logic. Next, to better understand and (...) assess the principal analogy of the Universal Natural History, I outline Kant’s later theories of analogy. Kant distinguishes between analogies of similarity and fourfold analogies of proportion; the latter are concerned not with things but with relations. Analogies of proportion are further subdivided into inferential and non-inferential analogies. Based on these distinctions, I propose an interpretation of the kind of analogical reasoning that is employed in the Universal Natural History. (shrink)

Process and Reality, Whitehead’s magnum opus, is one of the major philosophical works of the modern world, and an extensive body of secondary literature has developed around it. Yet surely no significant philosophical book has appeared in the last two centuries in nearly so deplorable a condition as has this one, with its many hundreds of errors and with over three hundred discrepancies between the American and the English editions, which appeared in different formats with divergent paginations. The work itself (...) is highly technical and far from easy to understand, and in many passages the errors in those editions were such as to compound the difficulties. The need for a corrected edition has been keenly felt for many decades. (shrink)

In a rather old paper, Mario Liu described a hydrodynamic Maxwell equations. While he also discussed potential implications of these new approaches to superconductors, such a discussion of electrodynamics of superconductors is made only after Tajmar’s paper. Therefore, in this paper we present for the first time a derivation of fluidic Maxwell-Proca equations. The name of fluidic Maxwell-Proca is proposed because the equations were based on modifying Maxwell-Proca and Hirsch’s theory of electrodynamics of superconductor. It is hoped that this paper (...) may stimulate further investigations and experiments in superconductor. It may be expected to have some impact to cosmology modeling too, for instance we consider a hypothetical argument that photon mass can be origin of gravitation. Then, after combining with the so-called chiral modification of Maxwell equations (after Spröessig), then we consider chiral Maxwell-Proca equations as possible alternative of gravitation theory. Such a hypothesis has never considered in literature to the best of our knowledge. (shrink)

The connection between the infinite nature of Quantum Cosmology and the infinite nature of God is presented here. At the beginning of the creation process, there was a single God/Void that was divided into many Gods/Voids all filled with Dark Energy consisting of photons which were responsible for creating the Multiverses made of matter, antimatter, space, time, charge, and multiple dimensions of space. The one God initially had no material existence which along with the laws of science was a creation (...) of the powers of His infinite mind. Since the process of creation started with the Dark Energy of the Voids, the Conservation of Energy Principle applied to all of them. If the Dark Energy of each Void were to be finite, then its energy would begin to decrease as Multiverses were created, and the only solution for not violating the Conservation of Energy Principle was that the Dark Energy of each of the Voids must be infinite implying that the Voids themselves must be infinite, and with infinite amount of energy be able to create an infinite number of Multiverses. According to Mathematics, all infinite numbers are not equal, some infinities are greater than other infinities. Hence of the many infinite Voids that were initially created, some Voids were greater than others. Each Void has a Supreme Leader that we refer to as God, and therefore there exist many Gods, some Gods more powerful than other Gods. (shrink)

A reprint of the Routledge edition of 1935.

The concept of the universe is used in physical cosmology differently from the usual meaning of the term, naively considered as the entire reality. Traditionally, thinking about the whole led to logical contradictions. Taking as reference the Kantian antecedent, different contemporary philosophical notions of the universe are analysed in the first part of this paper, including realist and constructivist approaches, as well as a notion of the universe as a physical object. In the second part, the specific notion from the (...) standard physical cosmology is discussed. Although modelling the universe as a physical system provides a specific way to define some global properties, the universe as a whole remains empirically inaccessible. Hence, the discussion about the under-determined global properties depends ultimately on philosophical preferences. Under these circumstances, it is argued that the realist interpretation of such properties becomes problematic because it leads to unstable conclusions. Finally, it is argued that the notion of the universe as conceived in standard cosmology is not necessarily consistent with an approach that considers it to be a physical object. (shrink)

Most scholars have not assigned much interpretive importance to the specific use of the term ‘persuasion’ in the cosmology of Plato’s Timaeus. This paper suggests understanding cosmological ‘persuasion’ in conjunction with ‘force,’ another trait of divine agency in the Timaeus. It analyses the nature of intelligent causation in the cosmology of the Timaeus, particularly in the construction of the cosmic body and soul. Then, it gives a detailed characterization of the causation of necessity, appearing in the Timaeus in three different (...) versions, and relates it to the complex notion of intelligent agency. Ultimately, it claims that the cosmic music in the Timaeus, the primary agent of ordered causation in the cosmos, functions on two levels of conflict with the disorder of the sensible aspect of the world. (shrink)

I present a recent historical case from cosmology—the story of inflationary cosmology—and on its basis argue that solving explanatory problems is a reliable method for making progress in science. In particular, I claim that the success of inflationary theory at solving its predecessor’s explanatory problems justified the theory epistemically, even in advance of the development of novel predictions from the theory and the later confirmation of those predictions.

Precision Medicine has become a common label for data-intensive and patient-driven biomedical research. Its intended future is reflected in endeavours such as the Precision Medicine Initiative in the USA. This article addresses the question whether it is possible to discern a new ‘medical cosmology’ in Precision Medicine, a concept that was developed by Nicholas Jewson to describe comprehensive transformations involving various dimensions of biomedical knowledge and practice, such as vocabularies, the roles of patients and physicians and the conceptualisation of disease. (...) Subsequently, I will elaborate my assessment of the features of Precision Medicine with the help of Michel Foucault, by exploring how precision medicine involves a transformation along three axes: the axis of biomedical knowledge, of biomedical power and of the patient as a self. Patients are encouraged to become the managers of their own health status, while the medical domain is reframed as a data-sharing community, characterised by changing power relationships between providers and patients, producers and consumers. While the emerging Precision Medicine cosmology may surpass existing knowledge frameworks; it obscures previous traditions and reduces research-subjects to mere data. This in turn, means that the individual is both subjected to the neoliberal demand to share personal information, and at the same time has acquired the positive ‘right’ to become a member of the data-sharing community. The subject has to constantly negotiate the meaning of his or her data, which can either enable self-expression, or function as a commanding Superego. (shrink)

Modern and contemporary scholars generally evaluate Zhoud-unyi's theory as cosmology. However, there is a difference in the specific content. As a representative example, Zhubokun defines Zhoudunyi's study as 'cosmogeny' based on Taijitushuo. Mozong-nsan defines Zhoudunyi's study as 'becoming' based on Tongshuo. ‘Cosmology’ originates from ‘Kosmos’ originally proposed by Pythagoras. Pythagoras interprets ‘Kosmos’ as ‘Universe’ and also presents the ‘form’ of ‘number’ as the cause of such a universe. And this ‘form’ defines ‘matter’ and the universe is created. In this way, (...) in the cosmology established by ‘matter’, ‘form’ and ‘dualistic world view’, ‘cosmogeny’ and ‘becoming’ are not particularly distinguished, and fact and value are separated. However, in the cosmology of Yi-ology, facts and values are continuous. The cosmology of Yi-ology is based on agricultural culture which is why it is 'becoming', and at the same time, its internal causes and principles have an ethical character. This is expressed as the law of ‘yiyinyiyang(一陰一陽)’. In this way, the philosophical meaning of cosmology, which can be confirmed in Yizhuan, is a continuation of facts and values, which leads to the thought of ‘the unity of heaven and human(天人合一)’. Taijitushuo has the character of 'becoming' but also the charac-ter of 'cosmogeny'. However, the theory of spontaneous generation by the movement of ‘Yuanqi(元氣)’ itself in Taijitushuo as supported by Zhu Xi has limitations in terms morality and of ethics. It is that in the process of cosmogony, the moral nature or essence by confucianism cannot be dealt with. If so, the theory of cosmogeny in Taijitushuo will be reduced to non-essentialism or a search for facts. Zhu Xi is solving these problems through 'Li-bunti(理本體)'. In other words, by setting up a transcendental and conceptual space, the principle of ‘yiyinyiyang(一陰一陽)’ can always function as a natural law and a normative law throughout the entire process of ‘Qihua(氣化)’. If so, Taijitushuo's theory of cosmogeny means value and practical discussion, and also means ‘the unity of heaven and human(天人合一)’. Based on this, Zhu Xi's 'Li-buntilun(理本體論)' does not oppose cosmology, but rather supplements it. (shrink)

Despite some important observations and after decades of widespread consensus around the big bang cosmology, Fred Hoyle, one of the proponents of the steady-state cosmology, continued to fight the big bang idea throughout his life. We can try to understand this persistent attitude of Hoyle through a Holtonian thematic approach, by admitting that personal preferences and choices of scientists are conditioned by themata. Thematic analysis shows that big bang cosmology is mainly based on a set of themata consisting of evolution, (...) finitude, life cycle (which has a beginning), and change; the steady-state cosmology is based on opposite themata: steady-state, infinity, continuous existence, and constancy. Personal preferences seem to have been important in the strong and passionate dispute between big bang and steady-state ideas, and Hoyle is a very illustrative example of a personal commitment remarkably long-lived to some themata, in this case to the opposite themata of the big bang cosmology. In his personal and persistent struggle against the big bang idea, Hoyle always refused the way how some experimental observations were considered decisive in favor of this cosmology. This is a typical thematic attitude: letting some personal thematic preferences influence the acceptance or rejection of scientific evidence. In this case, that corresponds to the existence of selection effects and biases regarding important cosmological observations, in order to sustain a persistent rejection of the big bang idea. (shrink)

This study is based on the many cosmological problems in Islam as aspects of thought that receive serious attention. In fact, there are also many polemics of thought that occur amongst Muslim scholars, which can be divided into two main groups: traditionalists and rationalists. The traditionalists, represented by Al-Ghazali and the Ash’ariyah theologians, put forward their cosmological thinking on the principle of God’s absolute will, while the rationalists, especially those represented by Avicenna, proposed their cosmological thinking based on the theory (...) of emanation from Plotinus in terms of its creation and the concept of a geocentric Ptolameus in terms of its structure. In this conflict of thought between the two groups, Averroes proposed a cosmological thought different from the two. This study seeks to elaborate on the thought of Ibn Rushd’s cosmology which is different from that of Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali.Contribution: This research provides a clear understanding of the cosmological thoughts put forward by earlier Muslim thinkers. In particular, it wants to bridge the differences regarding the concept of cosmology as put forward by Ibn Sina and Al-Ghazali and how Ibn Rushd bridges the two. (shrink)

The successes scored by the big bang model of cosmic evolution in the 1960’s led to an intensive application of quantum theory to the problem of how the expansion might have begun and what its likely first stages were. It seemed as though an incredibly precise setting of the initial conditions would have been needed in order that a long-lived galactic universe containing heavy elements might develop. One response was to suppose that the fine-tuning could somehow be explained by the (...) presence of humans in the universe. This ran quite counter to the traditional supposition, according to which an initial "chaos" was sufficient. This essay outlines the history of the two principles, argues that the so-called "weak" anthropic principle is banal, distinguishes between two sorts of anthropic explanation, and assesses the prospects of the anthropic turn in cosmology. (edited). (shrink)

Through criticism and analysis of ancient traditions, Kahn reconstructs the pattern of Anaximander’s thought using historical methods akin to the reconstructive techniques of comparative linguists.

본고의 연구목적은 ｢건착도(乾鑿度)｣와 ｢건곤착도(乾坤鑿度)｣를 중심으로 『역위(易緯)』의 도가적 우주론을 탐구하는데 있다. 『역위』의 우주론의 가장 큰 특징은 『역경』의 ｢계사전｣의 ‘태극(太極)’ 개념에 바탕을 둔 우주생성론에 도가의 ‘무(無)’ 사상을 결합시켰다는데 있다. 구체적으로, ｢계사전｣의 “역유태극(易有太極)”과 『노자』의 “도생일(道生一)” 및 “유생어무(有生於無)”를 결합하여 유(儒)･도(道)의 융합이라는 결과를 낳았다. 『역위』 우주론의 특성은 다음의 두 가지로 요약될 수 있다. 첫째, 『역위』에서는 우주의 근원적 존재를 태역(太易)으로 설정하였다. 만물의 생성은 태역으로부터 시작되기 때문에 태역은 만물의 생성모체가 된다. 둘째, 『역위』에서는 ‘유생어무(有生於無)’의 과정을 태역(太易)·태초(太初)·태시(太始)·태소(太素)·혼륜(渾淪)의 5단계로 설명하였다. 특히, 태초(太初)·태시(太始)·태소(太素)의 과정은 기(氣)･형(形)･질(質)의 세 요소의 충족과정이다. 혼륜(渾淪)은 기(氣)･형(形)･질(質)의 세 (...) 요소가 모두 갖추고 있으나 아직 분화(分化)가 이루어져 있지 않다. 혼륜에서 분화가 이루어짐으로써 비로소 천지(天地)가 형성된다. 기(氣)는 우주의 근원에 있는 질료적 요소로서 태역(太易)에는 무형(無形)의 상태에 있으나, 절대무(絶對無)로서 존재하는 것은 아니다. 요컨대, 태역(太易)·태초(太初)·태시(太始)·태소(太素)·혼륜(渾淪)의 5단계는 무형(無形)의 기(氣)가 형(形)과 질(質)을 얻어서 유형으로 나아가는 과정이다. 이와 같이 한대(漢代)의 기화우주론에 바탕을 둔 우주생성론은 『역위』와 동시대에 활동한 엄준과 양웅의 우주론에서도 유사하게 나타난다. 뿐만 아니라, 세 문헌에 유(儒)･도(道)의 사상적 융합이라는 경향성이 공통적으로 나타난다는 점은 당대 사상계의 필연적 흐름이었다고 할 만하다. (shrink)

장자는 여러 곳에서 동일한 비유를 즐겨 사용하였다. 그것은 나선형적인 율동의 이미지이다. 이런 비유는 자연에너지의 근원적 율동을 나선형으로 이해한 것이며, 이로부터 장자의 기 우주론 역시 밝혀 낼 수 있다. 장자는 ‘윤리를 초월한 윤리’를 주장하였는데, 그의 이러한 입장을 나선형적 기 우주론으로부터 도출할 수 있다. 장자와 비슷하게 나선형적 율동으로 자연 에너지의 흐름을 설명하고 있는 현대 과학자로 빅터 샤우버거가 있는데, 장자와 빅터는 동일하게 삼림군이라는 직업을 가졌다. 숲 관리인이었던 그들답게 깊은 숲에서 발원하는 물에 대해서도 양자는 비슷한 사유를 전개하고 있다. 물에 대한 이들의 사유는 자연계와 우주에 (...) 흐르는 기에너지의 율동을 이해하는 계기로 삼을 수 있다. 장자에게 물은 유가와 노자를 뛰어 넘어서 의식을 반영하거나 직관을 가능케 하는 실질적 매개체일 뿐만 아니라, 나선형적 흐름을 보이고 부양력을 수반하기 때문에 자연계에 충만한 기에너지를 가시적으로 볼 수 있는 생명활력이라고 할 수 있다. 물이 나선형적 율동을 보이는 것과 마찬가지로 자연계에 흐르는 에너지는 나선형적 율동으로 활동한다. 장자에 나오는 회오리바람, 양뿔, 맷돌, 소용돌이치는 물, 깃털의 회전 등은 나선형의 율동의 이미지를 보여주는 것이라 할 수 있다. 실제로 머리의 가마와 손톱의 꼬임에서 부터 dna의 이중나선, 나선은하에 이르기까지 우리는 에너지의 보텍스 운동을 구체적으로 볼 수 있다. 장자는 이러한 기에너지를 체험할 수 있는 길로 직관과 수련을 제시하고 있다. 우리 인체의 기 역시 차크라를 중심으로 하는 나선형적 기의 회전을 보인다. 나선형적 기의 운동은 주변에서부터 중심으로 회전하여 돌아가는 구심성 나선운동의 형태를 보이고 있다. 이러한 기에너지의 운동으로부터 물질이라는 것이 발생한다. 물질은 에너지라고 생명활력에 비해 찌꺼기에 해당한다고 할 수 있다. 중요한 것은 기 에너지라는 생명활력이며, 이 생명활력은 기 에너지가 모이는 나선형운동의 중심인 동공에 가득 차 있다. 나선형적 운동의 중심은 장자사상에 따르면 환중(지도리의 중심)이고, 그 주변은 바로 순환변화하는 세계이다. 순환변화하는 세계는 양과 음, 남성과 여성, 선과 악, 대와 소 등으로 갈마들고 변화하는 세계이지만, 그 세계가 갖는 분열과 대치를 극복하는 길은 환중에 설 때만이 가능하다. 따라서 에너지의 중심인 환중은 바로 선과 악이라는 윤리를 초월한 윤리를 제시하는 제물론적 인식의 상태에 해당한다. 따라서 장자사상은 윤리와 정치의 폐기가 아니다. 자연의 섭리에 따라 움직이는 기 에너지의 흐름을 이해하고 체화함으로써 새로운 윤리와 정치적 비전을 제시하는 윤리와 정치의 소환이라고 할 수 있을 것이다. 이는 빅터 샤우버거의 과학사상에도 그대로 드러난다. (shrink)

Abstract:Kant's 1770 Dissertation is surprisingly rarely read as a cosmological treatise about the "world." The few commentators who do so invariably claim that, in the fourth section of the work, Kant presents a purely intellectual cosmology, a relic of dogmatic, Leibnizian-Wolffian metaphysics. This article aims to show that attention to some often-overlooked passages yields a very different picture. Key to how Kant conceives of the form of the world is his distinction between the relations of co-ordination and subordination of substances. (...) On the basis of this distinction, the author argues that the "principle of the form of the intelligible world" does not pertain to a transcendent intelligible world. Instead, the principle concerns an intellectual perspective on the world of substances co-ordinated in space and time. This interpretation has various consequences for our understanding of the development of Kant's critical philosophy. (shrink)

No God, No Science: Theology, Cosmology, Biology presents a work of philosophical theology that retrieves the Christian doctrine of creation from the distortions imposed upon it by positivist science and the Darwinian tradition of evolutionary biology. Argues that the doctrine of creation is integral to the intelligibility of the world Brings the metaphysics of the Christian doctrine of creation to bear on the nature of science Offers a provocative analysis of the theoretical and historical relationship between theology, metaphysics, and science (...) Presents an original critique and interpretation of the philosophical meaning of Darwinian biology. (shrink)

One of the major philosophical texts of the 20th century, Process and Reality is based on Alfred North Whitehead’s influential lectures that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in the 1920s on process philosophy. Whitehead’s master work in philsophy, Process and Reality propounds a system of speculative philosophy, known as process philosophy, in which the various elements of reality into a consistent relation to each other. It is also an exploration of some of the preeminent thinkers of the seventeenth (...) and eighteenth centuries, such as Descartes, Newton, Locke, and Kant. The ultimate edition of Whitehead’s magnum opus, Process and Reality is a standard reference for scholars of all backgrounds. (shrink)

Anne-Lise Rey’s account of Maupertuis’s physical theology challenges the efforts on the part of commentators to align his work with Newton, Leibniz, or critics of Leibniz by examining the innovative epistemological principles that inform his Essay on Cosmology (1750). Through an analysis of his proofs of the existence of God in this work, she investigates Maupertuis’s view on how we can obtain certain knowledge of nature and the place he affords to experimentation and contingency in this regard. Rey claims that (...) Maupertuis, despite his hostility toward Descartes, Leibniz, and Wolff, did not abolish the idea of a metaphysics of nature per se, but tried to strike a new balance between, on the one hand, the deduction of laws from the nature of bodies and, on the other hand, experimentation. More specifically, she argues that Maupertuis in the Essay on Cosmology affirms our epistemic incapacity to grasp the whole system of nature and, hence, argues that the probable truths we can obtain in physics by means of experiments are superior to the geometrical truths that Descartes and his followers aimed to establish in both physics and metaphysics. (shrink)

Wolff’s relation to Leibniz and Kant’s relation to both are notoriously vexed questions. First, this paper argues that Wolff’s most serious departure from Leibniz consists in his (so far overlooked) rejection of the latter’s infinitism. Second, it contends that the controversies that surrounded Wolff’s early acceptance of infinite causal regress and prompted his conversion to finitism played a prominent role in shaping the theses of Kant’s Antinomies. Whereas Leibniz and the early Wolff considered infinite regress to provide support for the (...) contingency of the world and the existence of God, Wolff’s enemies condemned it as Spinozistic. After Wolff, the claim that an infinite chain of causes is impossible became the standard view among both Wolffian and anti-Wolffian metaphysicians. (shrink)

This book examines Aristotle's critical reaction to the mathematical cosmology of Plato's Academy, and traces the aporetic method by which he developed his own ...

Ellis and Murphy show how contemporary sciences actually support a religiously based ethic of nonviolence, not by appealing to the Enlightment's mechanismic ...

Provides a set of normative measure sto assess the value of nature and proposes the new discipline of foundational ecology as a response to environmental crisis.

I explain the difficulty of making various concepts of and relating to probability precise, rigorous and physically significant when attempting to apply them in reasoning about objects living in infinite-dimensional spaces, working through many examples from cosmology. I focus on the relation of topological to measure-theoretic notions of and relating to probability, how they diverge in unpleasant ways in the infinite-dimensional case, and are even difficult to work with on their own. Even in cases where an appropriate family of spacetimes (...) is finite-dimensional, and so admits a measure of the relevant sort, however, it is always the case that the family is not a compact topological space, and so does not admit a physically significant, well behaved probability measure. Problems of a different but still deeply troubling sort plague arguments about likelihood in that context, which I also discuss. I conclude that most standard forms of argument used in cosmology to estimate the likelihood of the occurrence of various properties or behaviors of spacetimes have serious mathematical, physical and conceptual problems. (shrink)

Most of the works on creation theology in the past have departed from a functional point of view with the assumption that creation is for the sake of human use, thus a means to an end. It has been believed that this utilitarian perception is supported by the sacred texts of theistic religions, saying that people were masters and possessors of the natural world. They were created in the likeness of God, ‘in His image’, and the rest of creation existed (...) solely for human benefit, to serve a human need. If there is an issue regarding the protection of the environment, it is behind the logic of convenience. Thus, eco-theology aims to be a practical ethic controlling and shaping human behaviour towards the natural environment. This article discusses a different approach to nature that is not a utilitarian point of view, but mystical, which regards creation as self-disclosure of God, so that each has its intrinsic meaning for itself and there is genuine and deep respect for the integrity of creation.Contribution: This article gives an alternative approach to the issue on environment in the study of eco-theology. The approach is an Islamic mystical approach. It also promotes inter-religious studies on the subject and demonstrates the textual studies within Christian and Islamic traditions, and beyond. (shrink)