The purpose of this article is to develop a Christian doctrine of the Incarnation in the light of a process philosophy of the type expounded by A. N. Whitehead and E. S. Brightman. Rather than offer at this time a detailed defence either of the idea of incarnation or of process philosophy, I wish to show that the two can be coherently related in such a way that each receives a greater degree of completion and clarity. Of course risks are (...) unavoidable in any attempt to make Athens and Jerusalem respond to one another. But the risks and losses would be even greater if the way of isolation and of mutually ignoring one another were accepted. (shrink)

Purpose: Explore public attitudes towards the trade-offs between justice and medical outcome inherent in organ allocation decisions.Background: The US Task Force on Organ Transplantation recommended that considerations of justice, autonomy and medical outcome be part of all organ allocation decisions. Justice in this context may be modeled as a function of three types of need, related to age, clinical urgency, and quality of life.Methods: A web-based survey was conducted in which respondents were asked to choose between two hypothetical patients who (...) differed in clinical urgency , age, pretransplant and post-transplant quality of life, and life expectancy.Results: A pool of 1600 people were notified via email about the survey; 623 responded. Respondents preferred giving organs to younger people up to an age difference of <15.4 years and more clinically urgent people up to a difference in urgency of <2.54 months . Priority varied with the quality of life of the worst-off patient and the relative status of the patients. If both had worse than average quality of life, respondents preferred the better-off patient. When both had better than average quality of life, they preferred the worse-off patient. In analysis according to age versus clinical urgency, the older the patient, the more urgency needed to receive priority. In quality of life versus clinical urgency, the better the control’s quality of life, the more urgency the competing patient required. The worse the patient’s post-transplant outcome, the more urgency needed to receive priority.Conclusions: It appears that clinical urgency is only one of many factors influencing attitudes about allocation decisions and that respondents may invoke different principles of fairness depending the relative clinical status of patients. (shrink)

The problem of the nature and scope of Causation has again been raised into prominence by recent research on atomic structures and processes, the result being that many physicists maintain that the causational principle must now be restricted to macroscopic changes regarded as the averaged outcome of microscopic events, each of which alone may not be causally determined, or at least not completely so. Of this markedly new departure Professor Eddington is perhaps the best-known advocate. “Physics,” he asserts, “is no (...) longer pledged to a scheme of deterministic law; the search for a scheme of strictly causal law not practical politics.” But the issue concerns not Physics only, for Dr. Eddington at once proceeds to interpret his viewpoint by contending that “science withdraws its opposition to free will”; and thus the realms of consciousness and conduct are once more brought into intimate connection with the realm of physical phenomena. It must of course be recognized that the question still remains highly debatable; for, as Sir Oliver Lodge has recently urged, “break down causality, and we are left with chance. That is wholly unsatisfactory. Chance is no solution”; and he likewise expands his survey beyond Physics by adding, “not in that way would I aim at freedom.” It is scarcely necessary to refer to current controversy in the biological sphere, between those who regard living processes as falling, if only to some degree, outside the domain of causal action, and those who insist that such action is universal, the indubitable proof of their position being prevented only by the difficulties of investigation. (shrink)

No tragic poet uses the phrase μxs22EFνος πνxs22EFουσαν, except Aeschylus, who employs it in describing the Erinyes, not a Greek maiden. Similarly Homer of his ‘Mut-schnaubende’ heroes and of the savage steeds of Diomed. Hence, in the Sophoclean passage, some scribe may have mistaken the familiar ΜΕΝΟCΠΝΕΟΤCΑΝ for the more unusual ΜΕΝΕΙCΙCΤΝΟΤCΑΝ. Initial C attached itself to the preceding word, and ΤΝΟΤCΑΝ became ΠΝΟΤCΑΝ, which was promptly changed to πνxs22EFουσαν.