An omnipresent, non-local/non-analytical energy that pervades everything enters the Universe through all infinitesimal points. Without determining its origin, our approach is to explain our gravity theory based on Einstein’s relativity theory and the behavior of space-time flow. This influx occurs continuously throughout all of space-time, making the universe expand. Our theory presents two kinds of expansion: (PUE) space-time primary universal expansion and the (VME) virtual matter expansion that occurs with the interaction of space-time with the matter. The internal space-time in (...) atoms produces a virtual slight broadening of the matter’s atoms. From our frame of reference, we can only distinguish the perturbation that occurs to the (PUE) primary universal expansion if it encounters matter. This perturbation finally is restored by a Gaussian distribution at the spherical environment. We call it the (STD) Space-time accelerated displacement. It is the inertial-gravity field. Thus, matter expands by the superposition of atoms (molecules). The accelerated expansion increases proportionally to the number of atoms that radially constitute matter. The effect is manifested immensely increased in the surface of the stellar objects. Then the surface of the massive stellar objects pushes and displaces the object’s external surrounding space-time. The acceleration of the (STD) space-time displacement decreases with the radius squared from the center of mass as it is distributed concentrically. The acceleration we feel at the Earth’s surface is permanently fixed, because when space expands, time also proportionally expands. The associated speed (ds/dt) is immersed in the accelerated expansion of space-time; the time base is the same as the acceleration of the PUE (space-time primary universal expansion) (d2s/dt2). Otherwise, in a short time, this acceleration and its associated velocity would reach the speed of light. Our theory introduces a different concept: “repulsion instead of attraction”. The expansion of space-time produces gravity instead of counteracting it. Finally, we explain using this gravity theory: Earth’s oceans, creating tidal bulges on opposite sides of the planet. (shrink)

A common misperception, both within academia and without, is that the premodern, Judeo-Christian picture of the universe was of a small, cramped one. This allowed people to believe that the Earth and its inhabitants were the most important thing in it. But this misfires in several ways: First, the premodern cosmos is only small in comparison to what contemporary science has discovered, not absolutely. Second, the premoderns felt just as insignificant as we do in light of the universe’s size, but (...) we cannot translate this into a scientific or philosophical argument. Third, it assumes that the Judeo-Christian view is that humanity is the most important thing and that God created the universe for us. Fourth, whatever value human beings have in the Judeo-Christian tradition is derivative, based on being created in God’s image, and the size of the universe has no bearing on it. (shrink)

The introduction of the long-term history of the Earth into the preoccupations of historians has triggered a crisis because it has become impossible to keep the “planet” as one single entity outside of history properly understood. As soon as the planetary intruded into history, it became impossible to keep it as one naturalized background. By problematizing the planetary, Dipesh Chakrabarty has forced philosophers, historians and anthropologists to extend pluralism to the very ground on which history was supposed to unfold. Hence (...) Bruno Latour’s attempt at counting the number of “planets” whose attractions are simultaneously being felt today on any political question. Each of his eight planets are defined by the disconnect between where they are situated and where they are imagined to be moving, which means that each planet is led by a different and incommensurable philosophy of history. Such a “fictional planetology” is then discussed by Chakrabarty, who reviews the difficulties historians have had in taking the nonhuman as a historical agent and then adds to Latour’s count a new planetary body which further complicates the geopolitical situation. The result of their joint effort is to shift questions of philosophy of history to philosophy of geography. (shrink)

Following the influential thought experiments by Hilary Putnam and others, philosophers of language have for the most part adopted semantic externalism concerning natural kind terms. In this article, we present results from three experiments on the reference of natural kind terms. Our results confirm some standard externalist assumptions, but are in conflict with others: Ordinary speakers take both appearance and underlying nature to be central in their categorization judgments. Moreover, our results indicate that speakers’ categorization judgments are gradual, and proportional (...) to the degree of similarity between new samples and familiar, “standard” samples. These findings pose problems for traditional theories, both externalist and internalist. (shrink)

The Earth agglomerates and heats. Convection cells within the planetary interior expedite the cooling process. Volcanoes evolve steam, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide and pyrophosphate. An acidulous Hadean ocean condenses from the carbon dioxide atmosphere. Dusts and stratospheric sulfurous smogs absorb a proportion of the Sun’s rays. The cooled ocean leaks into the stressed crust and also convects. High temperature acid springs, coupled to magmatic plumes and spreading centers, emit iron, manganese, zinc, cobalt and nickel ions to the ocean. Away (...) from the spreading centers cooler alkaline spring waters emanate from the ocean floor. These bear hydrogen, formate, ammonia, hydrosulfide and minor methane thiol. The thermal potential begins to be dissipated but the chemical potential is dammed. The exhaling alkaline solutions are frustrated in their further attempt to mix thoroughly with their oceanic source by the spontaneous precipitation of biomorphic barriers of colloidal iron compounds and other minerals. It is here we surmise that organic molecules are synthesized, filtered, concentrated and adsorbed, while acetate and methane—separate products of the precursor to the reductive acetyl-coenzyme-A pathway—are exhaled as waste. Reactions in mineral compartments produce acetate, amino acids, and the components of nucleosides. Short peptides, condensed from the simple amino acids, sequester ‘ready-made’ iron sulfide clusters to form protoferredoxins, and also bind phosphates. Nucleotides are assembled from amino acids, simple phosphates carbon dioxide and ribose phosphate upon nanocrystalline mineral surfaces. The side chains of particular amino acids register to fitting nucleotide triplet clefts. Keyed in, the amino acids are polymerized, through acid–base catalysis, to alpha chains. Peptides, the tenuous outer-most filaments of the nanocrysts, continually peel away from bound RNA. The polymers are concentrated at cooler regions of the mineral compartments through thermophoresis. RNA is reproduced through a convective polymerase chain reaction operating between 40 and 100°C. The coded peptides produce true ferredoxins, the ubiquitous proteins with the longest evolutionary pedigree. They take over the role of catalyst and electron transfer agent from the iron sulfides. Other iron–nickel sulfide clusters, sequestered now by cysteine residues as CO-dehydrogenase and acetyl-coenzyme-A synthase, promote further chemosynthesis and support the hatchery—the electrochemical reactor—from which they sprang. Reactions and interactions fall into step as further pathways are negotiated. This hydrothermal circuitry offers a continuous supply of material and chemical energy, as well as electricity and proticity at a potential appropriate for the onset of life in the dark, a rapidly emerging kinetic structure born to persist, evolve and generate entropy while the sun shines. (shrink)

(The Kindle book can be ordered for $3.21 from Amazon) -/- Thinking is a fundamental activity of our species – those that give names to other creatures and call themselves humans. Textbooks tell us that there is about 1.2 kg of matter called the brain inside the human body. It sounds small but actually is proportionally the biggest among all animals on Earth. -/- I became more aware of thinking at around 5th grade upon hearing about an ancient paradox. It (...) can be summarized as follows. -/- ¤ -/- Once upon a time, there was a stupid king. In his kingdom lived a sage who was highly respected for his intelligence. The King did not appreciate this fact. Maybe the Sage made fun of the King’s intellect, but I am not so sure. Anyway, one day, the King summoned the Sage, intending to kill him. -/- The King said, “Wise man, I heard you earn a living by thinking and arguing. Now I give you two options to die.” -/- The Sage said, “Please tell me the choices, Your Majesty.” -/- The King continued, “You live by your tongue, so I will let you say one sentence before you die. If what you say is true, you will die by hanging. If what you say is false, you will die by beheading.” -/- Little did the King know that this was a stupid order. After a short while, the Sage confidently spoke his “last words”, which actually were what saved his life: -/- “Your Majesty, I am about to be beheaded!” -/- ¤ -/- As a “wild animal” going out into life from a young age, my brain spent a lot of time and energy looking for food. Now that I have become older, my body no longer needs so much sustenance. However, my mind craves a different type of nourishment: food for thought. -/- Food for thought can directly lead to food (on the table). My main job as a scientist exemplifies what I have just stated. Maybe we were wrong. Maybe it has been “thought for food” all along, like in such a sequence as TFFTTTFTFFTTFFFT... -/- In the hyper-chaotic infosphere today, we are surrounded by the noises of information, not only as wavy shores or waterfalls but also mega-tsunamis, through Twitter, Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, Youtube, etc. More than ever, tranquility and calmness are necessary. Like what you have seen in wilderness video clips, predators such as lions, bears, and alligators act lightning-fast when catching prey. But when food is served, the natural world returns to its peaceful, soothing silence. -/- This short book is in its own tidy infosphere, where each little story is also brief and self-contained. Despite this small appearance, I hope the content inside carries the value of tranquility and life observation. The book is petite, but pretty sure not malnourished. A not-too-small detail is that the way the content was shaped and distilled reflects some innovations of mine and my research team: the mindsponge theory, a new theory of serendipity, the bayesvl R package, the BMF analytics, as well as other experiences from working in the field of science. After all, scientific works were my main source of food (before this book sells well – if it does). -/- Welcome to the priceless sober moments – with a chicken-burger price tag! -/- I hope this book will bring readers some moments of calmness, peaceful smiles, and maybe a couple of good laughs too. -/- ~~~ -/- *This update: December 12, 2023 (Third edition, with additions). (shrink)

Recent work on Kant’s conception of space has largely put to rest the view that Kant is hostile to actual infinity. Far from limiting our cognition to quantities that are finite or merely potentially infinite, Kant characterizes the ground of all spatial representation as an actually infinite magnitude. I advance this reevaluation a step further by arguing that Kant judges some actual infinities to be greater than others: he claims, for instance, that an infinity of miles is strictly smaller than (...) an infinity of earth-diameters. This inequality follows from Kant’s mereological conception of magnitudes (quanta): the part is (analytically) less than the whole, and an infinity of miles is equal to only a part of an infinity of earth-diameters. This inequality does not, however, imply that Kant’s infinities have transfinite and unequal sizes (quantitates). Because Kant’s conception of size (quantitas) is based on the Eudoxian theory of proportions, infinite magnitudes (quanta) cannot be assigned exact sizes. Infinite magnitudes are immeasurable, but some are greater than others. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Francis Sparshott THE CASE OF THE UNRELIABLE AUTHOR Narratology, as the study of narrative in its most general sense, has made great advances in the last decade, ranging from the rhetorical and syntactic study of narrative forms to an interpretation of human life as a fabric of stories we tell ourselves and each other. I do not keep up with these studies, and the intention of die present article (...) is not to add to them. The standpoint from which it is written is not that of the literary theorist, but that of the relatively plain reader. I write as someone who reads stories that people have written for relatively naive people like me to read, though I have fortified myselfwith a handful of appropriately down-to-earth theoretical works to help me out. The article presents some reflections prompted by a novel that I have found disturbing, not as a special sort of being called a reader and correlated with an equally special writer, but as someone who has been reading a book and has had to come to terms with the fact of being transformed into a person who has read it. In 1966, the English novelist Anthony Burgess announced his intention of writing a novel "of Tolstoyan proportions."1 In 1980 it appeared, under the title Earthly Powers, and was duly described by some reviewers as his War and Peace.2 But why? Perhaps it was just the size of it, 649 pages. Perhaps it was the way the novel combined a story of private life with a background of world history. But perhaps what the reviewers found relevant in Tolstoy was not only the length and the epic scale but also the way his novel conveyed a view oflife, partly in the story invented, partly in the opinions of favorably presented characters, and partly in the way he supplemented his story with comments directiy addressed to the reader — or should we rather say, projected into the readerly void. As for Burgess himself, he probably had nothing more specific in mind than the narrowness he elsewhere complains of in English novelists, whose interests remain typically domestic and suburban when they could be "expanding the 145 146Philosophy and Literature resources of literature to find out more about die whole human complex, the roots on which societies are built."3 Suppose we take the parallel with Tolstoy seriously. War and Peace reads as if told in a voice which is that of the implicit author, a distinctive and cranky character represented for us by the name "Tolstoy" on the title page. A distinctive character, but not a character in the book; it is just the putative owner of a voice projected by the tone in which the book is written. However, much of the special effect of War and Peace comes from our tendency to identify this highly personalized voice-bearer with a real person. The authorial voice ofthe book becomes that ofthe person who wrote it, Count L. Tolstoy himself, quite widiout regard to who this person was in real life and what the real life was that he was in. The book reads like a communication, and mat is how many ofus read it. As it happens, the actual person Tolstoy was himselfat least sometimes prepared to read books that way. Our first question to a new author, he said when writing about Maupassant, is: "What sort of a man axe you? Wherein are you different from all die people I know, and what can you tell me that is new, about how we must look at this life ofours?"4 That is, a book is not only a text to exercise our readership on, and a story told for us to follow in delight or suspense, but also a message from a real person who writes, to real people who read, about the world they all share. Note that we do not have to read War andPeace that way. Fielding's Tom Jones is written in a comparably distinctive and insistent authorial voice, as of someone buttonholing the reader and sharing a joke about the world; but I, and many other readers, take mis to be a... (shrink)

Basic characteristic of Islamic heritage law, principally it has accepted the two-to-one ratio between the male and the female children/siblings in division of heritage. In Islamic inheritance law, the main/basic reason why the share of the male is twice the share of the female is no “value” judgments given to female/women in creation and gender in Islam, on the contrary, are real realities related with the roles and financial obligations that man and woman have undertaken, in other words, related with (...) “socio-economic structure/fact” in the family and society structure foreseen by Islam. As a matter of fact, “need principle” is based on in division and succession of heritageand a fair arrangement has been made in accordance with the rights and responsibilities of the husband and wife in Islamic Law. In some classical tafsīr books, the concept of “degree” in the verse “... Men have a degree (right) over women” (Al-Baqara 2/228) mentioning the mutual rights and responsibilities of women and men; and the expression of “lil al-dhakari mithlu haẓẓ al-unthayain” in the verse –the inheritance of man is the share of two women– (Al-Nisā 4/11) mentioning the inheritance shares of boys and girls is interpreted against the woman by disregarding the intended purpose and socio-economic contexts of these verses. As a result of this interpretation, the share of men in inheritance is twice the share of women in Islamic law is ontologically (existential/creation) based on a justification that “man is superior to woman”. In this article/study, an analyticallook atthe interpretations in some classical tafsīr books on the axis of “daraja/degree” and “lil al-dhakari mithlu haẓẓ al-unthayain” that today sheds light on the sociological-historical background of depriving the daughter from the heritage will be made. Summary: Just as there is no way to determine a person’s sex, it is not either possible by reason to have such an opportunity. - With the possibility of medical intervention nowadays - sex is determined by the discretion of the Supreme Creator rather than will. Indeed, it is mentioned in the Qur’ān: To Allah belongs the dominion of the heavens and the earth; He creates what he wills. He gives to whom He wills female [children], and He gives to whom He wills males (Al-Shūrā 42/49.)In addition to human biological sex, there is also social gender. Indeed, the term “sex” refers to being biologically female or male, while the term "gender" refers to the social and cultural identity of a woman or man, or the social roles that occur in the historical process.Accordingly, while it is not possible to determine biological sex (in normal circumstances in advance), determining gender is shaped by the cultural will of individuals and societies. As a matter of fact, gender is shaped according to the religions, customs and cultures of the societies and it shows differences according to time, culture and family structure. In this context, in the pre-Islamic Arab society, the gender of the girl or the woman was shaped by the custom of the ritual and customs. Indeed, it is a known fact that during the period of Jahiliyyah, in terms of social gender, the girl/woman has been deprived of many social and economic rights, especially heritage. The Qur’ān has brought the girls who, in the period of Jahiliyyah, were oppressed in terms of gender, deprived of many social and economical rights, treated as second class human, embarrassed of themselves and buried alive, to the same position as man. In this context, as it is in every field in the direction of social structure and social conditions of that day, also in the field of inheritance law, a number of regulations were made in the Qur’ān and the Sunnah being the main sources of Islam. The divisions of the inheritance were connected with religious and legal rules and the shares of the inheritance of the sons and daughters were determined by naṣṣ (verses and hadiths).However, in Islamic inheritance law, as a requirement of the structure of family and society accepted by Islam, in principle, “two-to-one” measures have been adopted between male and female children. As a matter of fact, in this aspect, it is mentioned in the Qur’ān: Allah instructs you concerning your children: for the male, what is equal to the share of two females (Al-Nisā 4/11.)On one hand, the principle that Islamic law brings between boys and girls; Seems to be an inequality in terms of the arrangement in which "the inheritance share of the male child is twice the share of the female child", while on the other hand, within the border of in the family foreseen by Islam, this regulation has not been seen as an injustice and inequity by Muslim societies, because in Islamic family law, a man is obliged to ensure the livelihood of the family after marriage. He is also obliged to give his wife her mahr when marrying.In Islamic inheritance law, “necessity principle” is taken as the basis of responsibility that women and man have undertaken in family and society. Therefore, even though giving nothing at all to those who are not in need and giving less to those who are in less need, giving too much to those who are in much need might seem contrary to the principle of equality, it is a necessity of the principle of justice and fairness. As a matter of fact, while "law equality, necessity in sharing" principle, law is arranged according to people's qualifications, goods and wealth sharing is divided according to the needs of people. In this context, there has been a fair division in Islamic heritage law based on the necessity, (distributive) justice and fairness principle. Indeed, the French philosopher Roger Garaudy (1913-2012), who chose /converted to Islam, evaluates the following about the proportion of male child in the Qur'an to that of female child: “When we consider that in the Arab society all the obligations of the family and of the care of the parents and of all the things that we call ‘social security’ today are put on the shoulders of the husband, the hereditary male child's share must be twice as high as the female child’s is”.As Garaudy argues, the difference in the inheritance of women and men in Islamic inheritance law is not a legal discrimination/inequality, but a form of divisiveness stemming from a need based on the role and responsibility that women and men have undertaken in the family and society. Therefore, giving nothing to those who need nothing, giving little to those who need little, and giving a lot to those who need a lot,even though may seem contradictious to the principle of equality, it becomes a necessity of equity and (distributive) justice principle. In this case, in Islamic inheritance law, the basic reason why the share of the male child is twice the share of the female child, is social and economic reasons and it is possible to rank them as follows:1) According to Islamic law, women are not obliged to make their own economic livelihoods. The woman’s economic responsibility belongs to her father or brothers before marriage, and then to her husband after marriage. 2) When a woman is married she is not responsible for herself or other family members’ livelihood. The male is obliged to make a living for himself, his wife and his children.3) While married, the male is obliged to give the wife mahr. The woman has no such responsibility.As it is understood from the above explanations, in Islamic inheritance law, the basic reason why the share of the male child is twice the share of the female child is not about the ontologically “value” based on creation and sex given to the woman (girl child) in Islam. On the contrary, it is the real facts concerning the family and society structure that Islam predicts, the roles and financial obligations that man and woman have undertaken, namely “socio-economic structure/fact”.In some commentaries in classical commentary books, the rights and responsibilities of women and men are referred to, like: the word “degree” mentioned in: …but the men have a degree over them [in responsibility and authority (Al-Baqara 2/228), and the talk about the inheritance shares of boys and girls in: for the male, what is equal to the share of two females (Al-Nisā 4/11). Eventually, the concepts “lil al-dhakari mithlu haẓẓ al-unthayain” have been associated with the gender of the woman/girl child ontologically (based on social fact) by ignoring the referent purpose and socio-economic contexts of these verses. As a result of these interpretations, it was desired that the Islamic law principle of inheritance share of male child being twice the share of female child, ontologically, should be based on a justification that “man is superior to woman”.In this study, some of the era’s dominant culture classical interpretations grounding women's inheritances share on her gender and based on the axis of the concepts of "degree" and “lil al-dhakari mithlu haẓẓ al-unthayain” in the related verses of the Qur'ān will be elaborated. (shrink)

Humans have slowly built more productive societies by slowly acquiring various kinds of capital, and by carefully matching them to each other. Because disruptions can disturb this careful matching, and discourage social coordination, large disruptions can cause a “social collapse,” i.e., a reduction in productivity out of proportion to the disruption. For many types of disasters, severity seems to follow a power law distribution. For some of types, such as wars and earthquakes, most of the expected harm is predicted (...) to occur in extreme events, which kill most people on Earth. So if we are willing to worry about any war or earthquake, we should worry especially about extreme versions. If individuals varied little in their resistance to such disruptions, events a little stronger than extreme ones would eliminate humanity, and our only hope would be to prevent such events. If individuals vary a lot in their resistance, however, then it may pay to increase the variance in such resistance, such as by creating special sanctuaries from which the few remaining humans could rebuild society. (shrink)

This volume is a 'stand alone' follow up and companion to the forthcoming volume Metatheory for the 21st-Century: Critical Realism and Integral Theory in Dialogue. Whereas Vol. I is primarily theoretical in its focus, this volume (Vol. II) will build on many of the theoretical foundations laid in Vol. I while applying them more concretely and practically to addressing the complex planetary crises of a new era that many scholars now refer to as 'the Anthropocene.' We live in a time (...) when humanity's powers have become so powerful and ubiquitous that our impact on nature has literally reached tectonic proportions. Welcome to the Anthropocene (Crutzen, 2002): a new epoch marked by the profound and far-reaching causal power of human, social life in shaping the trajectory of Earth system processes, including the climate system. The state of the world is thus profoundly influenced by the shortcomings of our dominant philosophies and metatheories and the collective self-understanding(s) they have produced. A key aim of this volume is thus to develop metatheoretical applications that serve emancipatory praxis toward a flourishing world. This volume will be of interest to upper-undergraduate and post-graduate students of philosophy, sociology and critical realism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"An Encyclopedic Pico della Mirandola"?Rethinking Aquinas on Christ's Infused KnowledgeJoshua H. LimIntroductionIn what has come to be known as Thomas's account of the triple knowledge of Christ, the infused knowledge holds a tenuous place. It stands awkwardly between two kinds of knowledge, beatific and acquired, which are explicitly linked to the fulfillment of Christ's redemptive mission.1 Christ's earthly [End Page 147] beatific knowledge, controverted though it may be, nevertheless (...) has for Thomas a definite soteriological end.2 As the author of salvation, Christ, from the moment of conception, had to possess in actu the very knowledge to which he was to lead the rest of humanity, namely, the supernatural and beatific knowledge of the divine essence and of all things in it. Christ's acquired knowledge is also ordered to our salvation; it is necessary on account of exigencies arising from the integrity of human nature. In the assumption of a complete human nature, it was necessary for Christ to possess acquired knowledge, for without an agent intellect having its proper operation (i.e., abstracting intelligible species from phantasms arising from the senses), Christ's humanity would have been incomplete, imperfect.3 Thus, according to the patristic dictum that what is not assumed is not redeemed, Christ's redemption of human nature would have been imperfect. In contrast to these two types of knowledge, it is not clear whether and how the infused knowledge contributes to human salvation. Unlike the beatific knowledge, the infused knowledge does not belong intrinsically to the state of the comprehensor, for beatitude does not consist in a knowledge of created things in themselves, but in God;4 and unlike the acquired knowledge, the infused knowledge is not necessary for the assumption of an integral human nature.5 Add to this Thomas's passing description of Christ's infused knowledge as "proportioned to the angelic nature," encompassing all intelligible species of things knowable through nature and through the light of grace. In this vein, the infused knowledge threatens to transform Christ into a caricature of a man—turning Christ into what É. H. Wéber has disparagingly called an "encyclopedic Pico della Mirandola."6 [End Page 148]Herein lies the problem. Given the acquired and beatific knowledge, what use is there for the infused knowledge? The knowledge of all that can be known by nature is already attributed to Christ through his acquired knowledge; further, the knowledge of all the mysteries of grace is accessible to Christ through his beatific knowledge of God and all things in Verbo. While humans, as viatores, gain knowledge through the senses, and, as comprehensores, behold God through an elevation of the soul through glory, it is unclear whether a third kind of knowledge, the infused knowledge, is necessary and, if so, to what end. If, according to the Scholastic dictum, God and nature do nothing in vain, what sense can be made of Christ's infused knowledge?At least since the seventeenth century, Thomists have typically sought to resolve this tension by appealing to the unique role of infused knowledge in Christ's earthly transmission of knowledge. Thus, the infused knowledge fills a gap between the beatific and acquired modes of knowing, providing Christ's soul with a mode of knowledge which enables him to communicate supernatural truths, the mysteria gratiae,7 otherwise known in the blessed vision of the Word, through created and, therefore, humanly communicable intelligible species. Christ's acquired knowledge, restricted to what is naturally knowable, is insufficient to lead "many brothers to glory,'" while the beatific knowledge, though saving, nevertheless remains unconceptualizable and therefore incommunicable in mode.8 According to this view, therefore, the necessity of the infused knowledge arises as a bridge of continuity between the beatific and acquired knowledge, enabling Christ to communicate the truth of the kingdom of God in a way that is proportioned to the human nature in via.Such an account has two clear points in its favor. First, by highlighting the gulf between the beatific and acquired modes of knowledge, it makes room for a distinct, third mode of knowledge. Second, and related to the first point, by accounting for the... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Seeking the Sources of a Theologian:In Memory of Fr. Roch Kereszty, O.Cist. (1933–2022)Joseph Van House O.Cist.Fr. Roch Kereszty long enjoyed thinking about how, and how much, we can discover the truth about Jesus of Nazareth through historical research into his earthly life. Fr. Roch also often enjoyed indicating that at least part of the answer is that research about a human being can never be content with descriptions of (...) any number of empirical facts or ideas from that person's life. The true goal of one who writes or reads about the life of another is insight into the meaning of that person's life. Such insight is possible some extent while the person's life is ongoing, but it calls for a more decisive kind of assessment after the person's death. The meaning of a life also cannot truly reveal itself when viewed through the lens of an inadequate philosophy or theology. Indeed, Fr. Roch tended to think that philosophy itself is adequate to show that any quest to understand another human being cries out to be structured by love, or at least some form of empathy: I can truly understand another only in my proportion to my ability to discover communion or affinity with that person, to find in him or her another self who is in some deep way similar to my own self.1 [End Page 781] Although Fr. Roch elaborated such ideas to guide historians seeking to write a "biography" of Jesus, and although they make great demands of many kinds, it nevertheless seems fitting to consider them when beginning to memorialize Fr. Roch himself.Last December, God granted Fr. Roch the gift of a passage from this life that was surrounded by the love of many people who had known him on earth. Among them were many who had known him through his theological writings and had found them to offer a special combination of intellectual vigor and personal relevance. It is a blessing now to be able to offer a short memorial for the benefit of his sympathetic readers of the past and the future. Attempting to explain the golden thread that unites his many books and articles seems unreasonable; the writings themselves remain their own best explanation. Such an approach could also perhaps suggest that we are most loved in our productivity rather than in the ways we are dependent on God and others. For both of these reasons, one good way to serve love and communion with a theologian of interest would be to portray him in some of the ways that he himself was loved, fathered forth and shaped, by the One from whom all fatherhood is named. In this essay, then, I offer a simple and very fragmented portrait of the sources of a theologian, the fontes theologi: the different ways that God fathered in Roch Kereszty a theological writer who was a blessing to people who read periodicals such as this one. If I provoke either fresh appreciation of his writings or deeper reflection on the variety and patterns in the ways God leads his children generally (and especially those who are interested in theology), then this act of thanksgiving to God for a good teacher will have been successful.A Reader Raised in RomeIt is suggestive to notice that Fr. Roch was born in central Europe just six years after Joseph Ratzinger, and died seventeen days before him; their lifespans as theologians roughly overlapped and were formed by engagement with many of the same theological movements and crises. This said, moving quickly to the specifics of the person in question, it seems especially natural to attend to the character of Fr. Roch's formal theological education. This education took place in Rome, in the company of a handful of fellow bright young refugee Hungarian Cistercians, from 1957 to 1962 (during which time he also made his solemn vows and was ordained). In those days leading up to the Second Vatican Council, theology in the Roman universities was dominated by an increasingly stale and self-contained Neo-Scholasticism. The Benedictine Athenaeum of Sant'Anselmo, where young Roch and his [End... (shrink)

It should be clear that Lyell's scientific contemporaries would hardly have agreed with Robert Munro's remark that Antiquity of Man created a full-fledged discipline. Only later historians have judged the work a synthesis; those closer to the discoveries and events saw it as a compilation — perhaps a “capital compilation,”95 but a compilation none the less. Its heterogeneity made it difficult to judge as a unity, and most reviewers, like Forbes, concentrated on the first part of Lyell's trilogy. The chapters (...) on glaciation were admired by Lyell's friends but had relatively little appeal to more general readers. His discussion of the species question hedged far too much to please those who accepted the cogency of Darwin's evidence and arguments. This last section of the book blatantly lacks originality or commitment and certainly has no claim to classical status in anthropology.We are left, then, with the first twelve chapters, for it was this portion that dictated the book's title and that amassed the available evidence favoring the antiquity of the human species. Did it do anything more than marshall the evidence that others had discovered? I think not. Lyell could write with style and verve. Principles of Geology is a remarkably readable book. But Antiquity is the work of a geologist, not of a systematic student of man. Despite its occasional touches of power, it never captures the freshness and immediacy of Lubbock's Pre-historic Times nor the theoretical brilliance of E. B. Tylor's Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865).96 Antiquity utilizes little of the comparative method whereby Lyell's contemporaries used data from modern “savagery” to elaborate the possible social functions of the prehistoric remains being uncovered. It contains little social theory and has virtually no integrated framework. Even the first twelve chapters do not really hang together. As Hooker, commenting to Darwin on Lubbock's review, sadly wrote: “Lubbock in [the] N[atural] H[istory] Review, had in a note called attention to Lyell's ... ‘doing injustice’ to Prestwich & Falconer. I modified this expression ‘injustice’ in Lubbock's paper (which was friendly and apologetic). I am deeply sorry for it, but what can one do? I do think Lyell's first XII chapters a complete mess.”97 In another letter to Darwin, Hooker described this first portion of Antiquity as “confused and confusing.”98Part of the problem, of course, lay in the subject's novelty for Lyell and for most of his contemporaries. At a deeper level, however, I believe that the book accurately reflects Lyell's uncertainties about Darwin's work and its implications for man.99 Leonard Wilson's edition of Lyell's Scientific Journals provides a unique insight into Lyell's mind during the years just before he began to write Antiquity.100 Preoccupied with the human implications of evolutionary biology, Lyell was not clear how many of those implications were compatible with his deep convictions about the dignity of man's place in the cosmos. With a certain naiveté, Lyell complained in 1873 that many of his readers had failed to see the “natural connections” among the three portions of Antiquity.101 Connections could indeed be drawn between man's antiquity and his evolutionary origins; Lyell's private Scientific Journals movingly demonstrate that he was well aware of this fact. But he never fully made the connections in his published writings. Antiquity of Man is more appropriately seen as the last gasp of the heroic period in British geology than as the opening salvo in a new, post-Darwinian anthropological synthesis. Between the founding of the Geological Society of London in 1807 and the middle of the nineteenth century, geology was recognized as one of the most exciting and innovative scientific fields in Britain.102 Lyell himself had contributed much to that drama, and by the 1860's he was a public figure of venerable proportions. More then any other man he represented a geology that had extended the boundaries of process, time, and life. The fundamental achievements of Lyell and his colleagues had been assimilated into the wider Victorian consciousness, yet the earlier public debates about “genesis and geology” had left untouched in its essentials the concept of Man as a moral, responsible, created being.103Lyell never abandoned this view of his own species, and in 1863 it was a completely responsible creature which, under the weight of empirical evidence, Lyell admitted had lived on earth far longer than had previously been thought. Certainly this more generous allowance for human existence was constitutive to what Burrow calls the evolutionary social theory of midcentury Britain.104 Unlike Lyell, the younger representatives of this anthropology quietly accepted both man's antiquity and his aboriginal animality. Herbert Spencer's Principles of Psychology (1855), as well as the other volumes of his grand Synthetic Philosophy, presented as part of the cosmic process the development of human from prehuman beings.105 Tylor's discussion of what in his Researches (1865) he called the “gesture-language” presupposed the gradual and de novo origin of language in early human populations.106 Lubbock's young and polished mind was untroubled by the human implications of Darwin's work, and he cast his Prehistoric Times into such a perfect mold that it and its companionpiece (On the Origin of Civilization, 1870) went through seven editions each between 1865 and World War I, with their original theoretical structures intact. In a way that Lyell could not grasp, Lubbock was intrigued by questions concerning the origins of moral and religious beliefs and did not flinch at the thought of an amoral, atheistic creature as an ancestor.107 Indeed, as the German naturalist Carl Vogt pointed out in his Lectures on Man, translated into English the year after Antiquity, both Darwin's theories and the primitive flint knives of the Stone Age bore witness to a time beyond that imaginable from the condition of the lowest present-day “savage”:From such a low condition [little better than anthropomorphous apes], compared to which that of the so-called savages of the old and new world is a refined civilisation, has the human species gradually extricated itself, in a bitter struggle for existence, which it was well able to maintain, by being gifted with a larger amount of brain and intelligence than that possessed by the surrounding animal world.108The easy integration of biological and social themes was perhaps the distinguishing hallmark of Victorian anthropology of the 1850's and 1860's. After his fashion, Lyell got both themes into Antiquity, but he carefully separated them with a seven-chapter wall of glacial ice. Lyell's anthropology was not that of a thoroughgoing evolutionist like Lubbock, Tylor, or Spencer. For Lyell prehistoric man was not a product of biological evolution. Rude and superstitious he may have been, but he possessed ritual and a belief in a future state, and thus deserved “the epithet of ‘noble,’ which Dryden gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as the primitive condition of our race: as Nature first made man/when wild in woods the noble savage ran.”109As a systematic argument, Lyell's book was at best a significant failure. As a popularization, it was a success — largely because of the personal stature of its author and the particular moment of its appearance. It helped establish the fact of man's antiquity with a wider Victorian audience, in itself no mean achievement. But Lyell was unable to exploit the fuller implications of his material in the service of a secular science of man. Ironically, he exploited only his colleagues' discoveries. Though the aging Lyell, with failing eyesight but unfailing mental powers, can still be seen as a man of considerable importance, his Antiquity belongs to the carefully circumscribed world of British geology rather than to the less disciplined world of Victorian anthropology. (shrink)

Immigration restrictions close-off large portions of the earth to large proportions of the earth’s population. For those who regard the earth and its natural resources as belonging to mankind equally and in common, this is a morally impermissible state of affairs. This is because, if the earth and its resources belong to all equally, then the exclusion of anyone from any portion of the earth will be a violation of their natural ownership rights. A commitment to Natural Resource Egalitarianism (NRE) (...) is therefore held to entail a commitment to substantially more open, or even fully open borders. This paper does not seek to directly refute the claims of NRE, but rather seeks to demonstrate the failure of arguments from NRE, to establish the moral necessity of a general opening of borders. This paper addresses the two most prominent accounts of Open Borders NRE—Equal Division NRE and Egalitarian Ownership NRE—as well as a more recent attempt to advocate for open borders by combining these two positions into a so-called ‘Combined Model’. This paper argues that none of these three positions can plausibly and coherently account for the moral necessity of open borders. (shrink)

This article is about a spiritual response to environmental crisis, an emerging field of ethics that joins ecology and environmentalism with the awareness of sacred within the creation2. It investigates into the Vedic texts for finding out the philosophical attitude about the earth and our spiritual obligations and responsibilities to the planet in resolving environmental issues. In the vedic-tradition3, it is the course of experiencing nature as spiritual presence and the awareness to it about our conduct as the moral and (...) rational being. It is a world view that values all that in totality is called “nature” that is, generally, taken as “other” in contrast to human, as existence or spirit. The ethics of respect to “others”, against the effects of imperialistic, ideological conflicts, religious terrorism, industrial, atomic and corporate pollutions, must be worked out as a remedy. The basic argument of spiritual ecology lies in the view that we can find no God more than the spirit abiding in all units of the globe. One must have the view of spirit as ubiquitous principle in treating with and enjoying our needs with the things that the nature permeates as gifts of his care to it. Thus, spiritual ecology of the Vedic tradition has a therapeutic importance; it helps in cultivating our conduct and overcoming the fear of a risk against living on the earth. I am of the view that the rationality of a man and that of a nation is to be determined in proportion to the cultivation and progress of attitude and treatment with “other” but not the vice versa. (shrink)

WHEN MAN FIRST BEGAN to interpret the nature of things—and this he did when he began to be man—life was to him everywhere, and being the same as being alive. Animism was the widespread expression of this stage, "hylozoism" one of its later conceptual forms. Soul flooded the whole of existence and encountered itself in all things. Bare matter, that is, truly inanimate, "dead" matter, was yet to be discovered—as indeed its concept, so familiar to us, is anything but obvious. (...) That the world is alive is really the most natural view, and largely supported by prima facie evi dence. On the terrestrial scene, in which experience is reared and contained, life abounds and occupies the whole foreground exposed to man's immediate view. The proportion of manifestly lifeless matter encountered in this primordial field is small, since most of what we now know to be inanimate is so intimately intertwined with the dynamics of life that it seems to share its nature. Earth, wind, and water—begetting, teeming, nurturing, destroying—are anything but models of "mere matter." Thus primitive panpsychism, in addition to answering powerful needs of the soul, was justified by rules of inference and verification within the available range of experience, continually confirmed as it was by the actual preponderance of life in the horizon of its earthly home. Indeed not before the Copernican revolution widened this horizon into the vastness of cosmic space was the proportional place of life in the scheme of things sufficiently dwarfed so that it became possible to disregard it for most of what henceforth was to be the content of the term "nature." But to early man, standing on his earth arched by the dome of its sky, it could never occur that life might be a side-issue in the universe, and not its pervading rule. His panvitalism was a perspective truth which only a change of perspective could eventually displace. Unquestioned and convincing at the beginning stands the experience of the omnipresence of life. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dante's Inferno as Poetic Revelation of Prophetic TruthWilliam FrankeIDante's Inferno demands to be understood as the culmination of a series of visits to the underworld in ancient epic tradition. Dante's most direct precedent is Aeneas's journey to meet his father in Hades, as told by Virgil in Book VI of the Aeneid. Aeneas's voyage is modeled in turn on Odysseus's encounter with shades of Hades in Book XI of (...) the Odyssey. The epic quest in each of these models pivots, in various ways, on a visit to the world of the dead, a discensus ad inferas, as a climactic episode at its center. However, Dante makes this episode the general framework of the whole poem: from beginning to end, Dante's poem represents a voyage through the world beyond the grave. In this respect, Dante's Inferno, and indeed the whole Divine Comedy, is conceived primarily as an expansion of the ancient epic motif of the katabasis or "going down" of the protagonist to the underworld for a revelation of his destiny from beyond the threshold of death. Like Virgil, Dante interprets history prophetically, finding in it the essential pattern of things to come. But this projection now reaches to an eschatological future beyond history altogether—to an uncannily dynamic realization of eternity.The other world that is visited by Dante asserts itself unequivocally as ultimate reality. It is not just some shadowy world of bloodless phantasms like the shades that approach Odysseus, nor is it vacuous and inane, as are Virgil's "houses void and empty realms of Dis" ("domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna," Aeneid VI.269). This "other" world shows up as even more vivid than the world of ordinary sense-perception by virtue of a strikingly realistic, indeed surrealistic imagery. Dante heightens the [End Page 252] mythological topos of the visit to the underworld that he inherited from Virgil and Homer to a level where it represents the true essence of life on this earth transposed into a transcendent dimension. The world of the dead is not just one in a series of episodes befalling the protagonist but rather the final and definitive experience that reveals the true meaning of all possible experiences and thereby the meaning of the world as a whole. This is perhaps implicit and incipient in Homer and Virgil, since the journey to the underworld in each case encloses a revelation that illuminates the meaning of everything else and orients the protagonist's subsequent life in the world up to his death. But Dante's other world is more than the place for a miraculous glimpse into the true meaning of life: it is itself the vera vita, the "true life."Of course, Virgil had interpreted the whole of Roman history through the optics of prophecy, but his prophetic history was directly disclosed only in privileged moments within his poem. Dante's entire poetic narrative transpires in an eschatological dimension of existence; it thereby aspires to reveal beyond the limits of history a full-blown vision of eternity—that is, history as projected into the eternal worlds that it prefigures. While at the level of content Dante expands the theme of a visit to the underworld into an entire poem of epic proportions, more deeply, at the level of genre and in terms of its mode, Dante's whole poem is prophetic in character. History and narrative become in themselves prophetic rather than only forming a background for prophecy and framing it.The descent to the world of the dead—a symbol for the place of revelation of the meaning of life—is a thematic issue that runs as a thread through each of the epic works that have been mentioned so far. But in Dante it becomes the central axis of a poem that emerges in its entirety as religious revelation, and Dante greatly intensifies the self-conscious grasp of this function of poetry. His work represents an unprecedentedly powerful reflection on poetry as revelation in the mode of prophecy, for the customary literary means of poetic expression are now revealed in their intrinsically prophetic potency. From the Aeneid Dante could learn... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Generational Timescapes and Biotic Kinship in Omar El Akkad's American WarMichael Boyden (bio)References to future generations and how they might be impacted by decisions in the present abound in climate change communication—from scholarship dealing with the energy transition and climate control, to international agreements, and to public debates in civil society generally. One oft-noted reason why generational views are so frequently invoked in such contexts is that they serve (...) to make tangible otherwise intractable problems so vast in proportion that they tend to confound conventional ways of allocating ethical responsibilities and considerability. Conjuring the ways in which our choices and actions affect the quality of life of concrete individuals to whom we are connected by means of kinship ties awakens the present generation's sense of obligation toward the future.As a number of scholars have noted, however, generational views might also hamper our ability to work toward the kind of sustained transformation of the global economy that is required to ensure that Earth remains inhabitable in the future. In philosophy, political science, and adjacent fields, critiques of generational discourse have revolved around the limitations of governing models of ethics, as in discussions of Derek Parfit's "repugnant conclusion" (388) and in efforts to find new models of distributive justice that depart from utilitarian and contractualist approaches.1 In turn, scholars working in the interdisciplinary frameworks of critical posthumanism and queer feminism have attempted to rethink notions of kinship in ways that consider the ethical value of the nonhuman world and identities not grounded in biological kinship.2In this article, I argue that climate change fiction has the potential to [End Page 11] dramatize the conflicting valences of generational discourse—in ways that less layered, nonfictional narratives often fail to do—and in doing so points up the possibility of conceiving of environmental ethics in a different, less kinship-based fashion. Using Omar El Akkad's American War (2017) as my tutor text, I will argue that this novel presents a potent critique of the kind of generational discourse prevalent in debates about global warming today.My analysis is meant to show how El Akkad's novel, which adopts a markedly transcultural perspective that questions Western exceptionalism, brings out the limitations of—and visualizes alternatives to—the generational schemes through which the consequences of anthropogenic climate change are rendered intelligible. At the same time, I suggest, the novel offers pathways toward conceiving an ecocentric ethical framework that does not reproduce the anthropocentric assumptions of generational discourse.Climate Change and Generational DiscourseI start by defining more closely what we mean when we talk about generations. Political scientist Jonathan White has usefully distinguished three strands of generational views that tend to blend into each other in recent debates on climate change but that deserve to be kept analytically separate. The first of these is the genealogical understanding of generations, which pertains to familial "relations between individuals in their specificity" (765). This genealogical conception of generations has been with us for a long time. It is present, for instance, in biblical texts and classical historiography, which invoke family bonds to justify a given social order. Genealogical views are equally present, however, in modern evolutionary thinking and in the ordinary understanding of the generations of a family. The second strand identified by White is the sociological understanding of generations, which refers to "social groups defined by an apparent unity of ideas and attributes, irrespective of personal ties" (765). Sociological generations convey differences between young and old, or progressive and backward-looking forces, in times of societal transformation. Scholars trace this sociological conception of generations back to the nineteenth century, when the forces of industrialism and nationalism [End Page 12] magnified experiential divergences among social groups. Finally, White considers philosophical generations, which refer to "a society at different moments of existence" (765). Here, we may think of postrevolutionary contexts, when the clock is figuratively turned to zero and a new understanding of the social order emerges. Contrary to genealogical and sociological schemes, such philosophical generations are not grounded in a specific empirical formation; rather, they constitute a conceptual formula for organizing the (long-term) future.What makes generational... (shrink)

Scientific observation has led to the discovery of recurring patterns in nature. Symmetry is the property of an object showing regularity in parts on a plane or around an axis. There are several types of symmetries observed in the natural world and the most common are mirror symmetry, radial symmetry, and translational symmetry. Symmetries can be continuous or discrete. A discrete symmetry is a symmetry that describes non-continuous changes in an object. A continuous symmetry is a repetition of an object (...) an infinite number of times. A consequence of continuous symmetry is the existence of conservation laws. A natural system with discrete and continuous symmetries displays several physical properties, such as the existence of long-range order. Geometric shapes exhibit symmetry as mirror reflections of each other. Symmetry in nature has been a model of beauty since the beginning of civilization. Since the earliest times, nature itself has manifestly been a model, evincing regularity in sundry forms and occurrences–from minerals and plants to the anatomy of living beings, to the regularly recurring stellar constellations. For Ancient Greek philosophers, proportion, symmetry, and harmony, were the basics to determine whether something is beautiful or not. Ancient Greek philosophers were known for bringing logic and rational thinking to phenomena that were previously explained by mythology and Gods. They observed the natural world around them and used their knowledge to answer questions about the proportion in observable objects and the origin of Earth. The Greek words _summetria_ and _summetros_ appear frequently in the Timaeus, defined as parts with each other and with the whole. Plato has a very rough concept of symmetry, and when he uses “beauty” to characterize the so-called Platonic Solids in the Timaeus, he seems to be emphasizing their regularity and indirectly their symmetry. Plato believes the four elements (earth, air, fire, water) have been constructed by the Demiurge, or a divine craftsman who appoints order in an otherwise chaotic universe. Minerals are representative examples of beauty, order, and symmetry in inorganic materials. Well-formed minerals (crystals) are a collection of equivalent faces related by symmetry. The goal of this paper is to relate the perspective of symmetry in ancient Greek philosophy with the modern scientific evidence of the geometric description of crystal structures. The five Platonic solids are ideal models of geometrical patterns that occur throughout the world of minerals. In this paper, minerals serve as a model of connecting the symmetry theory in Plato’s philosophy and modern advances in mineralogy. (shrink)

Nature's simplest atom and mother of all matter, hydrogen feeds the stars as well as interlaces the molecules of their biological descendants – to whom it ultimately whispers the secrets of quantum reality. Hydrogen’s most prevalent earthly guise lies within the composition of water. A slight electrical disturbance can split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas, resulting in diaphanous bubble clouds slowly rising towards the liquid’s surface. Though the founding fathers of electrochemistry posited that the mass of liberated bubbles is (...) directly proportional to the input voltage, certain modes of electrolysis release more energy than is spent. One such mode involves water’s Janus-faced capacity to react as either an acid or a base. Emanating from an array of electrodes at the bottom of a water-filled chamber, strings and strata of hydrogen bubbles meticulously trace their emergent surroundings. In addition to eddy formations incited by a bubble's rapid growth and subsequent detachment from the electrode surface, acoustic vibrations permeate the two-phase fluid. As the sonic frequency and amplitude rises, the hydrogen bubbles start to coalesce with one another. When the sound field reaches maximum intensity, it can trap bubbles within its antinodes. The vibrations are generated both by transducers and by the bubbles themselves, which emit frequencies ranging from the audible spectrum to as high as 800 kHz. A white laser sheet scans and illuminates the hydrogen bubble trajectories. Each quivering bubble-lens divides the white light into its constituent spectrum of colors. While scanning, the laser sheet also swiftly pulsates and thereby extends the perceivable resolution of micro-momentary bubble dynamics. Before it even begins to map out its vibratory environment, a bubble goes through various stages of spatio-temporal evolution. During the first phase of growth, a bubble nucleus inflates linearly with time. At the second stage, bubble growth is limited by the diffusion of gas within the liquid, causing its size to increase as the square root of time. The final phase before detachment is limited by the kinetics of dissolved gas production, causing the bubble to grow as the cube root of time.1 Beyond macroscopically observable bubbles, an expanse of nanobubbles hides within the water’s internal architecture. Some researchers presume that these nanobubbles of dissolved gas are the carriers of water’s magnetic ‘memory’, enabling electromagnetic fields to saturate its innards for hours and even days after their initial appearance. In the seas and oceans, the lingering presence of electromagnetic fields photonically imparted by sunlight, triggers the electrolysis responsible for most of the Earth’s hydrogen. An essential form of photosynthesis, solar water splitting is the cleanest and most efficient means imaginable for generating and storing energy. —Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand *** Animals and plants are formed in earth and in water because there is water in earth, and there is pneuma in water, and there is soul heat in all pneuma ; so that in a way all things are full of soul. Hence plants and animals quickly form once this gets enclosed; and when this enclosing happens, when the corporeal liquids get heated, a sort of frothy bubble is formed. Now the difference between the various creatures which are produced in this way are due to the stuff which makes up the envelope around the soul-source.2 Throwing light into this pneumatic spray of perdurances, which would otherwise swarm below the threshold of human visibility, Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand’s Hydrogeny saturates the viewer’s sensorial space with the nano-architectures of froth. Straddling the cell wall between scientific enquiry and artistic praxis, Hydrogeny , beckons a recasting of Lucretius' clinamen in tune with the technologies of the modern observer. For Lucretius it was the indeterminate swerving of an atomistic layer of reality which accounted for the unpredictability of change and the existence of free will. Taken up by Harold Bloom to describe the swerving of cultural production from that which has already been made, the idea has since been textually redressed by Lacan, Derrida, Serres, Deleuze, Nancy, and Badiou. Here we have been given a kaleidoscopic technique for refining and expanding awareness of our enmeshment with so many nested, atomistic layers of object-bubbles—of things—as Aristotle might say,“full of soul.” The gravitational pull of Hydrogeny ushers a de-centered human spectatorship to the ever more intimate recesses of what media philosopher N. Katherine Hayles calls our capacity for “deep attention.”3 Vaporous attention suspended and re-oriented. Microscopic as these diaphanous waves are, the calling they produce is anything but inconsequential. Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand are two-thirds of the Amsterdam-based Art–Science Labratory, Optofonica , an atelier initiated by the Italian interdisciplinary artist TeZ in 2006. Follow more of their work at www.portablepalace.com —Isaac Linder NOTES (1) cf. Brandon, Kelsall, Levine, & Smith. “Interfacial Electrical Properties of Electrogenerated Bubbles.” Journal of Applied Electrochemistry 15 (1985):485-493. (2)Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals, 762a18, tr. A. L. Peck (Cambridge, MA: Loeb Classical Library, 1942). (3)“ My article on hyper and deep attention ,” N. Katherine Hayles, accessed on September 14, 2011. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Dante's Inferno as Poetic Revelation of Prophetic TruthWilliam FrankeIDante's Inferno demands to be understood as the culmination of a series of visits to the underworld in ancient epic tradition. Dante's most direct precedent is Aeneas's journey to meet his father in Hades, as told by Virgil in Book VI of the Aeneid. Aeneas's voyage is modeled in turn on Odysseus's encounter with shades of Hades in Book XI of (...) the Odyssey. The epic quest in each of these models pivots, in various ways, on a visit to the world of the dead, a discensus ad inferas, as a climactic episode at its center. However, Dante makes this episode the general framework of the whole poem: from beginning to end, Dante's poem represents a voyage through the world beyond the grave. In this respect, Dante's Inferno, and indeed the whole Divine Comedy, is conceived primarily as an expansion of the ancient epic motif of the katabasis or "going down" of the protagonist to the underworld for a revelation of his destiny from beyond the threshold of death. Like Virgil, Dante interprets history prophetically, finding in it the essential pattern of things to come. But this projection now reaches to an eschatological future beyond history altogether—to an uncannily dynamic realization of eternity.The other world that is visited by Dante asserts itself unequivocally as ultimate reality. It is not just some shadowy world of bloodless phantasms like the shades that approach Odysseus, nor is it vacuous and inane, as are Virgil's "houses void and empty realms of Dis" ("domos Ditis vacuas et inania regna," Aeneid VI.269). This "other" world shows up as even more vivid than the world of ordinary sense-perception by virtue of a strikingly realistic, indeed surrealistic imagery. Dante heightens the [End Page 252] mythological topos of the visit to the underworld that he inherited from Virgil and Homer to a level where it represents the true essence of life on this earth transposed into a transcendent dimension. The world of the dead is not just one in a series of episodes befalling the protagonist but rather the final and definitive experience that reveals the true meaning of all possible experiences and thereby the meaning of the world as a whole. This is perhaps implicit and incipient in Homer and Virgil, since the journey to the underworld in each case encloses a revelation that illuminates the meaning of everything else and orients the protagonist's subsequent life in the world up to his death. But Dante's other world is more than the place for a miraculous glimpse into the true meaning of life: it is itself the vera vita, the "true life."Of course, Virgil had interpreted the whole of Roman history through the optics of prophecy, but his prophetic history was directly disclosed only in privileged moments within his poem. Dante's entire poetic narrative transpires in an eschatological dimension of existence; it thereby aspires to reveal beyond the limits of history a full-blown vision of eternity—that is, history as projected into the eternal worlds that it prefigures. While at the level of content Dante expands the theme of a visit to the underworld into an entire poem of epic proportions, more deeply, at the level of genre and in terms of its mode, Dante's whole poem is prophetic in character. History and narrative become in themselves prophetic rather than only forming a background for prophecy and framing it.The descent to the world of the dead—a symbol for the place of revelation of the meaning of life—is a thematic issue that runs as a thread through each of the epic works that have been mentioned so far. But in Dante it becomes the central axis of a poem that emerges in its entirety as religious revelation, and Dante greatly intensifies the self-conscious grasp of this function of poetry. His work represents an unprecedentedly powerful reflection on poetry as revelation in the mode of prophecy, for the customary literary means of poetic expression are now revealed in their intrinsically prophetic potency. From the Aeneid Dante could learn... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:LAW AND THOMISTIC EXEMPLARISM JOHN PETERSON University of Rhode Island Kingston, Rhode Island CIVIL LAW differs from empirical law in that the former prescribes regularities in human action while the latter describes and predicts regularities in the world apart from human action. By an empirical or descriptive law scientists mean a law that is knowable on the basis of observed regularities. An example is Boyle's law. That at a (...) constant temperature the volumes occupied by a constant mass of gas are in inverse ratio to the pressures they support is an observed regularity. This law also describes and predicts a regular occurrence in the world apart from human action. The same is true of Galileo's law that the acceleration of free fall on Earth is thirty-two feet per second per second. But the law that citizens ought to pay taxes in proportion to their incomes prescribes a type of action human beings are obliged to take at regular intervals. A notable difference is that predictability is much lower in the case of civil law than it is in the case of empirical law. You can infallibly predict that the inverse ratio of volumes to pressures in a gas will hold in the next case or that the next free fall will accelerate at thirtytwo feet per second per second. But that your neighbors will pay their fair share of taxes next year is a risky guess. This is part of what it means to say that empirical natural laws are in the world in a way that the laws of society and the state are not. Events, activities, or relationships in the world do not fail to conform to laws whereas actions of citizens often fail to conform to the laws of the state. From empirical laws scientists distinguish theoretical laws. These more general laws are usually called theories or hypotheses. Unlike empirical laws, theories are never generalizations drawn from observations of phenomena. Moreover, theories are often the explanation of empirical laws. So the latter both enter 81 82 JOHN PETERSON into the explanation of a phenomenon and are for their own part explained by theories. Empirical laws are thus both explanans and explanandum as regards phenomena and theories respectively. Thus, Galileo's law of acceleration both enters into the explanation of the particular event of the free fall of this stone at thirty-two feet per second per second and is itself partly explain~d by Newton's laws of motion and his law of gravity.1 But whether or not causal-deductive explanation includes empirical laws that are themselves explained by theoretical laws, all such explanation includes both explanandum and explanans. The former is always some empirical phenomenon. And the latter, as Carl Hempel and Paul Oppenheim point out, is generally made up of two parts, a law or laws and statements of fact or antecedent conditions.2 In the following schema the first two lines comprise the explanans and the last line the explanandum. Thus: C1, C2,..., Cn (statements of conditions) L1, L2,... Ln (laws) E (description of phenomenon to be explained)3 While much causal-deductive explanation in science follows this pattern, not all of it does. For while the explanans must include a law, it need not include a statement that is not a law. For example, Hempel and Oppenheim cite the case in which the regularities that govern the motion of the double stars are explained solely in terms of the laws of celestial mechanics.4 In any case, whether it is the explanandum of a theory or the explanans of a particular observed phenomenon, an empirical law has these three characteristics: first, it is originally based on observations; second, no term in the statement of it fails to occur in the observation statements from which (in the order of knowl1 Carl G. Hempel and Paul Oppenheim, "Studies in the Logic of Explanation," in Janet A. Kourany, ed., Scientific Knowledge: Basic Issues in the Philosophy ofScience (Belmont, Cal.: Wadsworth, 1987), 31. 2 Ibid., 31.·1 Ibid., 32. 4 Ibid., 31. LAW AND THOMISTIC EXEMPLARISM 83 edge) it is based; and third, no values of its variable terms are determined in relation... (shrink)

We understand from the oldest sources that have reached us that according to their status, racial characteristics, culture, religion etc. people called their adressees with many different names besides their own names. The Arabic nicknames and titles, which are the main subject of our research result of this necessity. Before the formation of Islamic culture and civilization, different titles were used in all civilizations, especially in the Byzantine and Sassanid empires, for the members of the group, which were considered as (...) the elite class, apart from their names. Of course, the Arab society of jahiliyyah was also greatly influenced by his. In the political and bureaucratic structure created by the rapid spread of Islam and the interaction from different civilizations, a new naming, or rather nicknames, were made by using religious figures. This happened to such extend that the original names of many rulers remained in the shadows. The strict centralist structure of the Umayyad state required an authoritarian state administration that would not need excessive credit or definition. Therefore, the caliph did not need an extra nickname or title to define himself. At the same time, it would be appropriate to say that they never had any thoughts of praising the politicians and bureaucrats affiliated with them. The radical change in the political understanding with the Abbasid revolution also led to a great change in naming strategies. In fact, it is possible to explain the differentiation in this management approach through titles in the shortest way. The famous names of the Abbasid caliphs are nothing but nicknames. These names, which are adorned with the words of Allah, are actually an effort to show religious sensitivity to the subjects. The sensitivity in the language of diplomacy has come to the fore even more with the special divans established. The language of religion and the language of politics have been intertwined, and the caliph, who is the representative of the creator on earth, has been giving nicknames/titles around him. We see the actual situation of this practice as concrete in relation to the vassal states. During the Abbasid period, the level of relations between the states, which first emerged as semi-independent and later independent, and the caliphate differed according to time and conditions. In proportion to the political power of the Abbasid state, these heads of state were given different ranks. In this research, we try to reveal the background of the ranks given to the heads of vassal state established in the Khorasan and Transoxiana region and carrying out very important activities in the political sense. Additionally, we aim reveal to find out the political, religious and social structure of Tahirids, Saffarids, and Samanids, who are also very important in terms of Turkish history and serve as a bridge between the region and the center of the caliphate, Baghdad. We think that the subject discussed is important in order to discover the unknown aspects of the historical process in the political and bureaucratic formation of the Turkish empires established after the collapse of these three vassal states. In fact, it can be said that even today, the historical anatomy of the ranks used in terms of status determination and the arrangement of the political field in different Islamic geographies is being explored. Most importantly, in this study, we try discover the cornerstones of the communication dimension of the mawali with the Arab power. The location of the Transoxiana and Khorasan geographies before the Islamic conquests and the population fluidity accelerated by the Turkish migrations were an important factor in the political formation of the region during the Abbasid period. The historical background was taken into consideration in the titles given to the vassal state rulers. It is remarkable that the caliph gave the old Turkish title “ıhsid” to a Turkish leader of a state established in Egypt. There are many other examles such as this with regard to the vassal states in the East. The conclusion we have obtained from our study is that titles play a decisive role in the political connection between the center of the caliphate and the affiliated states. On the one hand, this regulates the balance between the center and local administrators, on the other hand, it determines the moral as well as the material rank of the sultans in the eyes of the people. In fact, the successes in the conquests led the caliphs to rank the vassal sultans with titles. This situation is a kind of password that determines the balance between the religious authority, the caliphate, and the worldly authority. (shrink)

"This book is commended to all good and progressive men and women who believe that by studying Mind, discovering its laws and applying them to human betterment, the career of man on earth could be greatly improved. And that the appalling errors, war, alcohol, oppression, injustice, crime and poverty can be abolished, together with a large proportion of disease, pain and unhappiness. This book is being written under an impression so strong that it rises to the dignity of a (...) theory, that Mind, expressing as human, or, in the human phase, is able by studying the material universe, to discover some facts relating to its Creator. The main object in publishing this volume is to convince the reader that the universe stands upon a mental base, rooted and grounded in Mind; and that Mind created what we have named electrons. No hope is entertained by the author that the true nature of either Mind or matter will be discovered in this study, but hope is expressed that a few clews will be found"--p. [341]. (shrink)

The epic life of Pope John Paul II touches virtually all aspects of the human being in time and space. His successful world outreach achieves unprecedented superlative proportions in his search for universal harmonies among peoples, cultures and religions. Significantly, his death confirms the success of his positive mission on the Earth as his death caused an extraordinary unity of people, cultures, and religions during his funeral. No one else has unified such opposing opposites in a memorial service in a (...) millennium! Thus, Pope John Paul II by his calling served the sacred; his deeds achieve a synchronized symphony of the sacred and secular. This paper examines the views of Pope John Paul II, as expressed in Laborem Excercens, through the concept of the unity of oppositesin sacred and secular architecture. (shrink)

The epic life of Pope John Paul II touches virtually all aspects of the human being in time and space. His successful world outreach achieves unprecedented superlative proportions in his search for universal harmonies among peoples, cultures and religions. Significantly, his death confirms the success of his positive mission on the Earth as his death caused an extraordinary unity of people, cultures, and religions during his funeral. No one else has unified such opposing opposites in a memorial service in a (...) millennium! Thus, Pope John Paul II by his calling served the sacred; his deeds achieve a synchronized symphony of the sacred and secular. This paper examines the views of Pope John Paul II, as expressed in Laborem Excercens, through the concept of the unity of oppositesin sacred and secular architecture. (shrink)

A central task of climate justice is to agree upon a just distribution of the right to emit greenhouse gases. According to the equal per capita shares view, the right to emit should be divided equally between every inhabitant of Earth, since to emit is to use up the resource of atmospheric absorptive capacity, and this is a resource to which no one person has any stronger claim than any other. The fact that a significant proportion of the Earth’s (...) ability to absorb and sequester greenhouse gases actually comes not from the atmosphere, but from terrestrial climate sinks that are located within national borders, and that are therefore plausibly subject to legitimate territorial claims, poses a serious challenge to the intuitive egalitarian simplicity of the equal per capita shares view. A defence of this view, then, is tantamount to a defence of the redistribution of terrestrial sink capacity, and therefore must involve either (1) an argument against the legitimacy of territorial claims to terrestrial sink capacity, or (2) an argument for why legitimate territorial claims to terrestrial sink capacity should nevertheless be ignored in favour of an equal per capita distribution of emissions shares. One strategy for doing so involves applying Charles Beitz’s resource redistribution principle to terrestrial sink capacity. Some authors have argued that this strategy will fail due to important differences between the nature of ‘conventional’ natural resources, and the nature of a resource link climate sink capacity. In this paper, I consider five arguments to this effect that seek to establish the legitimacy of territorial claims to terrestrial sink capacity. Respectively, they appeal to attachment, identity, self-determination, improvement and fairness in order to do so. I argue that each one either fails to establish the legitimacy of territorial claims to terrestrial sink capacity, or, where they do plausibly establish legitimacy, they do so in a way that renders them vulnerable to type-(2) objections that suggest territorial claims to terrestrial sink capacity should nevertheless be ignored. I conclude that, if one is willing to adopt the resource redistribution principle, a just distribution of emissions shares need not respect territorial claims to terrestrial sink capacity. (shrink)

Elaborating on an old conjecture by Blackett, we formulate a new conjecture about the neutrality of matter according to which any physical system possesses an active electric charge proportional to its mass. We discuss limits on the conjecture coming from existing laboratory experiments on the neutrality of matter and from the observation of the global surface electric field of the Earth. In a cosmological setting, we show that a cosmic rotation of the Universe is inevitable if our conjecture is true (...) and if the magnetic fields observed today in large-scale gravitationally bounded objects and cosmic voids have a primordial origin. Finally, we discuss the possibility that the angular momentum of spiral galaxies could be a signature of a rotating Universe. (shrink)

The eighth book of Martianus Capella’s famous De Nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii deserves a prominent place in the history of astronomy because it is the oldest source that came down to us unambiguously postulating the heliocentrism of the inner planets. Just after the paragraph in which Capella asserts that Mercury and Venus revolve around the Sun, he describes a method for calculating the size of the Moon, as well as the proportion between the size of its orbit and the (...) size of the Earth. It is possible to find some descriptions of the argument in general histories of astronomy or in books dedicated to Capella’s work, but usually they do not try to make sense of the argument. Rather, they limit themselves to describe or paraphrase what Capella says. As far as I know, there is no single study of the argument itself. The explanation for this absence is simple: the calculation offers many difficulties in its interpretation, for it shows obvious inconsistencies in the steps of the argument and apparent arbitrariness in the selection of the data used. In this article, I offer an interpretation that tries to discover, behind Capella’s confusing presentation, a well-sound argument for calculating the Moon’s absolute size. Interestingly, we have no records of this argument in other sources, at least in the form described by Capella. (shrink)

This article observes that both the similar and the dissimilar are of ethical importance in discourse on human identity. There is a need for a common humanity and to guard against domination in the name of difference – precisely by recognising the otherness of the other. This also applies to reflections on what it means to be human in the age of the human, namely the Anthropocene. A survey is offered of how this tension between the similar and the dissimilar (...) plays itself out in the work of five theorists, namely Dipesh Chakrabarty, Clive Hamilton, Dona Harraway, Michel Serres and Kathryn Yusoff. On this basis, six tentative conclusions are offered: Despite the appropriate ethical emphasis on difference and otherness, the quest for the universal in the particular cannot be readily abandoned. Such a sensitivity for the universal in the particular needs to be extended to a recognition of the way in which an integrated earth system functions. The ethical emphasis on difference and otherness should be extended to non-human animals. Human dignity and the ‘integrity of creation’ are not necessarily inversely proportioned. Relations may well have an ontological priority over individuals. Identity need not be constituted by the distant past or the immediate presence as if continuity over time forms a guarantee for a sense of identity.Contribution: This article explores a core question in discourse on the Anthropocene, namely ‘What does it mean to be human in the age of humans?’ It compares the views on human identity of five theorists, namely Dipesh Chakrabarty, Clive Hamilton, Dona Harraway, Michel Serres and Kathryn Yusoff and on this basis offers six observations to take the debate forward. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 26.1 (2002) 107-124 [Access article in PDF] Shakespeare and Political Philosophy John D. Cox Though Shakespeare has been praised as one of the greatest thinkers who ever lived, he has no standing in the history of Western philosophy, being at best a footnote to the derivative neo-Platonists and skeptics of the late Renaissance. He died in 1616, more than twenty years before Descartes's Discourse on Method (...) heralded the autonomous rationalism of the Enlightenment, and Shakespeare did not achieve a reputation as a deep thinker until the nineteenth century, as a consequence of admiration for his characters. People seemed to think that a reflective and witty prince who could say to his friend, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy" must be the product of a keenly philosophical intelligence—never mind that Hamlet is referring to the "antique Roman" philosophy he so admires in Horatio, i.e., Stoicism, which by 1599 was little more than an oft-repeated set of moral and social platitudes. 1 To assert that there are more things in heaven and earth than late Renaissance Stoicism is not to assert very much.But other ways of thinking about Shakespeare philosophically are more promising than character analysis. He was indeed a thoughtful playwright, and though he had no university education, he was a voracious and incisive reader, so the influences on his plays and poems include many writers who have some standing in the history of philosophy. More complex than discerning historical philosophical influences on Shakespeare is what might be called the hermeneutical approach, i.e., the interpretation of the plays and poems with particular philosophers and philosophies in mind, regardless of their possible historical influence in the sixteenth century. To survey the range of philosophical influences and hermeneutical approaches is impossible [End Page 107] in a single essay, but a manageable example of Shakespeare's thinking is his political philosophy, where both ways of understanding him can be discerned. The most influential interpreter of Shakespeare's history plays for the second half of the twentieth century, for example, was E. M. W. Tillyard, who purported to excavate the neo-Platonic assumptions of Shakespeare's political culture: order, degree, hierarchy, and obedience. 2 Though questions were increasingly raised concerning Tillyard's assumptions and documentation, the decisive challenge to his authority was issued in the 1980s by New Historicists and Cultural Materialists, whose allegiance was more or less explicitly Marxist, and who therefore interpreted Shakespeare in light of a particular nineteenth-century philosophy. 3 A clearer example of the difference between history and hermeneutics in understanding Shakespeare is hard to imagine.The clarity of the difference, however, does not mean that the two approaches are mutually exclusive. Tillyard construed Shakespeare's emphasis on hierarchical order as an advocacy of divine-right monarchy, and much in the plays of Shakespeare supports this construal. Despite his sympathetic portraits of particular characters, including commoners, remarks in his plays about commoners taken together ("the people") are always slighting and mistrustful—often indeed scornful—and the proportion of upper-class to lower-class characters reflects their perceived social importance, for the former invariably outnumber the latter, even in the comedies, whereas the aristocracy were a tiny fraction of the total population in Shakespeare's England. Shakespeare's portrayal of pre-imperial Rome, in Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus, shows little understanding of, and less sympathy with, republican alternatives to one-person rule. Shakespeare was not responsive to Calvin's spirited defense of the "poor common people" against rapacious kings (even, or especially, under godly magistrates), and Shakespeare's plays offer no support to the nascent republicanism of those who took arms against the king of England in the mid-seventeenth century, largely inspired by Calvinism. 4 Shakespeare, in short, was no Milton.This is not to say, however, that he was an uncritically idealizing royalist, as we can see from his first venture into writing about English history: his four early plays on the civil unrest of the fifteenth century. Three of these plays... (shrink)

There is a growing body of scholarship that is addressing the ethics, in particular, the bioethics of space travel and colonisation. Naturally, a variety of perspectives concerning the ethical issues and moral permissibility of different technological strategies for confronting the rigours of space travel and colonisation have emerged in the debate. Approaches ranging from genetically enhancing human astronauts to modifying the environments of planets to make them hospitable have been proposed as methods. This paper takes a look at a critique (...) of human bioenhancement proposed by Mirko Garasic who argues that the bioenhancement of human astronauts is not only functional but necessary and thus morally permissible. However, he further claims that the bioethical arguments proposed for the context of space do not apply to the context of Earth. This paper forwards three arguments for how Garasic’s views are philosophically dubious: (1) when he examines our responsibility towards future generations he refers to a moral principle (which we will call the principle of mere survival) which, besides being vague, is not morally acceptable; (2) the idea that human bioenhancement is not natural is not only debatable but morally irrelevant; and (3) it is not true that the situations that may arise in space travel cannot occur on Earth. We conclude that not only is the (bio)enhancement of humans on Earth permissible but perhaps even necessary in certain circumstances. (shrink)

Many studies have deduced subterranean dialogues between Hannah Arendt and Carl Schmitt from indirect evidence. This article uses new evidence from marginalia in Arendt’s copy of Nomos of the Earth and finds that she formed, but never published, an incisive critique of Schmitt’s geopolitics. Through an analysis of Arendt’s comments on the topics of soil, conquest, and contract, I show that Arendt deemed Schmitt’s theory to be imperialist and in contradiction with itself. Her reading of Schmitt prompts important new questions (...) regarding the scholarly use of Schmitt’s conception of nomos as a tool of critique against American empire in the post-9/11 era. The marginalia also suggests, against past scholarship, that Arendt thought justice should play a central role in politics. I propose that we look to Arendt’s own conception of nomos, which she developed later, in order to form an alternative geopolitics. Because of her focus on intersubjective world-building, Arendt’s nomos embraces contract and promise-mak... (shrink)

This essay interrogates the motives of eighteenth-century European naturalists to alternately show and hide their laboring-class fossil suppliers. Focusing on rare moments of heightened visibility, I ask why gentlemen naturalists occasionally, deliberately, and even performatively made visible the marginalized science workers on whom they crucially depended but more typically ignored or effaced. Comparing archival fragments from elite works of natural history across a considerable stretch of time and space, including Italy, France, Switzerland, Britain, Ireland, Germany, Spain, and French, Spanish, and (...) British America, this essay sketches the contours of a disparate group of people I term ‘earth workers’: laborers of very low social rank, such as quarrymen, shepherds, ditch-diggers, and fieldworkers, whose daily labor in and on the earth enabled the discovery of subterranean specimens. At the same time, archival traces of laboring lives ultimately reveal more about the naturalists who created them than they do about the marginalized laborers whose lives they faintly record. Cultural norms of elite masculinity and scholarly self-presentation in the Republic of Letters help us to understand why some eighteenth-century naturalists felt they had to publicly disavow a form of labor that would come to be recognized as a crucial and skilled part of scientific fieldwork in the modern era. Compared to other kinds of invisible labor that historians of science have brought into view, the social meaning of earth work rendered it uniquely visible in some ways and uniquely invisible in others. (shrink)

This volume presents four of his key writings on the irrational in mass culture : From Astrology to Fascism ; from anti-Semitism to to the Occult.

In this article the author argues that we need not just to ‘decolonize’ the Anthropocene but also to ‘desecularize’ it – to be aware that in the new age of the Earth we may be coeval with gods and spirits. Drawing particularly on the work of Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari and Georges Bataille, and using concepts from both thermodynamics and fluid dynamics, the author starts to develop an interdisciplinary theory of planetary spirit and use this to speak of both the (...) ‘laminar’ high gods of time that are being invoked to summon the story of Earth’s ongoing transformation into a canonical mythos, and the turbulent lower spirits of place which manifest particular, situated dynamics on an Earth crossed by interlocking gradients and flows of energy, value, power and entropy. He suggests that what might once have been distinct territorialized ‘cultures’ or ‘natures’ in which humans engaged in particular situated patterns of interaction with animals, spirits and other beings are increasingly being convened into a global multinatural system. (shrink)

In some sections of On Certainty, Wittgenstein uses the term “persuasion,” pitting it, on the one hand, against “giving reasons”, and comparing it, on the other, to conversion, while, finally, defining it as “giving someone one's own picture of the world.” In this essay, I analyse these sections, in an effort to fit them into the broader context of On Certainty, and to clarify the meaning and the limits of the comparison between persuasion and conversion. My aim is to show (...) that persuasion as Wittgenstein understands it here is quite similar to what we could call “re-education.”. (shrink)

_Explores the ancient and perennial notion of the four elements as environmental ideas._.

Around 3 decades ago, Jayant Narlikar & Halton Arp argued on possible variable mass hypothesis cosmology (VMH). In the meantime, the Earth expansion problem has attracted great interest, and recent study gives geodetic evidence that the Earth has been expanding, at least over the recent several decades. Therefore, in the present article discusses some interesting effects related to varying G, but here we argue that instead of varying G we can think of varying mass (M). Among other things we discuss (...) receding planets from the Sun, calculation of Pioneer spacecraft anomaly as proposed by B.G. Sidharth, and also possible slight change of LAGEOS Satellite. Further observation to verify or refute this conjecture is recommended, especially based on geological evidence of expanding earth. (shrink)

Intergenerational transfers are a core feature of the practice of private philanthropy. A substantial portion of the resources committed to charitable causes comes from transfers (either during life or at death) that continue to pay out after death. Indeed, much of the power of the charitable foundation lies in its ability to extend the life of an enterprise beyond the mortal existence of its initiating agents. Despite their prevalence, whether and in what way the instruments of intergenerational philanthropy can be (...) justified is controversial. Many have argued that these instruments unfairly privilege the interests of the dead at the expense of the living and unborn. More recently, others have argued that intergenerational charitable transfers comport with the demands of distributive justice and are therefore legitimate. This paper contends that both of these perspectives fail to see the problem for what it is. Intergenerational charitable transfers may indeed promote justice in certain respects, but they do so at the cost of imposing the judgments of the dead onto the living. Respecting the wishes of the past conflicts with an interest in “generational sovereignty.” The paper concludes that properly accounting for this interest in generational sovereignty doesn’t require the abolition of intergenerational philanthropy. But it does tell in favor of a different regulatory orientation than most legal systems currently adopt. (shrink)