Scholars of religion and science have generated remarkable scholarship in recent years in their explorations of love. Exactly how scholars involved in this budding field believe that love and science should relate and/or be integrated varies greatly. What they share in common is the belief that issues of love are of paramount importance and that the various scientific disciplines—whether natural, social, or religious—must be brought to bear upon how best to understand love. I briefly introduce the emergence of the love‐and‐science (...) research program and note that scholars have not done well defining what they mean by love. I suggest that the present surge in love scholarship will fail to produce the positive results that it otherwise might if love is not defined well. I provide and defend a definition of love adequate for those doing love‐and‐science research: To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others (including God), to promote well‐being. To explain better what this simple definition entails, I explore its three main phrases. Love is said to have many forms, but agape is the form to which the love‐and‐science literature most commonly refers. I comment briefly on the debates about how to best understand agape, noting sixteen different definitions proposed by major scholars. I identify weaknesses in many of them and then offer what I argue is a more adequate definition of agape as intentional response to promote well‐being when confronted by that which generates ill‐being. In short, agape repays evil with good. While research on love and science requires much more than adequate definitions, I believe that the definitions I proffer can prove useful in furthering the love‐and‐science research program. (shrink)

Keith Ward is right in Christ and the Cosmos that “the idea of God as a sort of society is a bad idea”. Christian theology would make better sense if Christians did not say God is comprised of three persons, each with distinct centers of consciousness, distinct relations, distinct wills, and so on. This formulation of the Trinity is more tritheistic than monotheistic. I argue that for a host of reasons, Christians should conceive of the Trinity as one God who (...) instantiates in three forms. I also suggest Christians would be wise to say God is essentially loving and essentially related to creation. (shrink)

Theists in general and Christians in particular have good grounds for affirming divine action in relation to twenty-first-century science. Although humans cannot perceive with their five senses the causation—both divine and creaturely—at work in our world, they have reasons to believe God acts as an efficient, but never sufficient, cause in creation. The essential kenosis option I offer overcomes liabilities in other kenosis proposals, while accounting for a God who acts personally, consistently, persuasively, and yet in diversely efficacious ways. We (...) can reasonably infer that the love, beauty, and truth expressed in creation derive from divine and creaturely causation. (shrink)

Poets, theologians, romantics, scientists, and revolutionaries alike have explored the many facets of love. Judging by the wide use of the word love and the high praise it typically receives, we might think that philosophers have thoroughly analyzed love. But this is not the case. This book takes a step toward rectifying the neglect of a philosophical analysis of love. It brings together fifteen philosophical perspectives that explore some of loves most important facets. Most of the essays have theistic or (...) religious concerns in mind. (shrink)

This anthology brings together for the first time leading essays and book chapters from theologians, philosophers, and scientists on their research relating to ethics, altruism, and love. Because the general consensus today is that scholarship in moral theory requires empirical research, the arguments of the leading scholars presented in this book will be particularly important to those examining issues in love, ethics, religion, and science. The first half of _The Altruism Reader_ offers key selections from religious texts, leading contemporary scholars, (...) and cutting-edge ethicists. Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism are represented. Among the highly respected writers are Thomas Aquinas, the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hanh, John Polkinghorne, Stephen Pope, Louis Fischer, Amira Shamma Abdin, Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, and Daniel Day Williams. Primary readings on love and altruism from the sciences are featured in the second half of the book. Here the focus is on anthropology, psychology, sociology, biology, and neurology, with material written by Daniel C. Batson, David Sloan Wilson, Robert Wright, Stephen G. Post, Robert Axelrod, Richard Dawkins, Holmes Rolston III, and other renowned scientists and philosophers. "Virtually all people act—and often talk—as if they have some inkling about love. We speak about loving food, falling in love, loving God, feeling loved, and loving a type of music. We say that love hurts, love waits, love stinks, and love means never having to say you're sorry.We use the word and its derivatives in a wide variety of ways.... My own definition of love is this: To love is to act intentionally, in sympathetic response to others, to promote well-being."—_Thomas Jay Oord_. (shrink)

For some time now, I have written and talked about Thomas Jay Oord as the most "cutting edge" person on the theological scene today. This may sound like a bold claim, but what Oord has accomplished in bridging the gap between evangelicals and liberals is remarkable both in terms of background and personal commitment. He has a foot in the evangelical camp, yet as a product of Claremont Graduate University, he has another foot solidly in the liberal (...) camp. Intellectually, at least, Oord has had an easygoing relationship with both camps. As a result of his indefatigable efforts, the Open and Relational Theologies Group of the American Academy of Religion has been one of the best attended and most successful groups... (shrink)

Evidence-Centered Design (ECD) is a framework for the design and development of assessments that ensures consideration and collection of validity evidence from the onset of the test design. Blending learning and assessment requires integrating aspects of learning at the same level of rigor as aspects of testing. In this paper we describe an expansion to the ECD framework (termed e-ECD) such that it includes the specifications of the relevant aspects of learning at each of the three core models in the (...) ECD, as well as making room for specifying the relationship between learning and assessment within the system. The framework proposed here does not assume a specific learning theory or particular learning goals, rather it allows for their inclusion within an assessment framework, such that they can be articulated by researchers or assessment developers that wish to focus on learning. (shrink)

This is a review of Thomas Jay Oord’s book on The Uncontrolling Love of God in which he develops a very persuasive and highly original process account of how God’s love, power, and providence relate to matters of human freedom, randomness in nature and history, natural laws, miracles, and evil. This review summarizes the main points in each of his eight chapters and offers a few critical and constructive comments on them.

A summary and brief critique of two closely related books by Thomas Jay Oord.

Exploring how people represent natural categories is a key step toward developing a better understanding of how people learn, form memories, and make decisions. Much research on categorization has focused on artificial categories that are created in the laboratory, since studying natural categories defined on high-dimensional stimuli such as images is methodologically challenging. Recent work has produced methods for identifying these representations from observed behavior, such as reverse correlation (RC). We compare RC against an alternative method for inferring the structure (...) of natural categories called Markov chain Monte Carlo with People (MCMCP). Based on an algorithm used in computer science and statistics, MCMCP provides a way to sample from the set of stimuli associated with a natural category. We apply MCMCP and RC to the problem of recovering natural categories that correspond to two kinds of facial affect (happy and sad) from realistic images of faces. Our results show that MCMCP requires fewer trials to obtain a higher quality estimate of people’s mental representations of these two categories. (shrink)

We study the isomorphism and bi-embeddability relations on the spaces of Kazhdan groups and finitely generated simple groups.

Traditional combinatory logic uses combinators S and K to represent all Turing-computable functions on natural numbers, but there are Turing-computable functions on the combinators themselves that cannot be so represented, because they access internal structure in ways that S and K cannot. Much of this expressive power is captured by adding a factorisation combinator F. The resulting SF-calculus is structure complete, in that it supports all pattern-matching functions whose patterns are in normal form, including a function that decides structural equality (...) of arbitrary normal forms. A general characterisation of the structure complete, confluent combinatory calculi is given along with some examples. These are able to represent all their Turing-computable functions whose domain is limited to normal forms. The combinator F can be typed using an existential type to represent internal type information. (shrink)

Corporate-level environmental information disclosure is increasingly common. This article studies the impact of a prominent media-generated sustainability ratings program, Newsweek’s 2009 ranking of the 500 largest U.S. firms. Using an event study methodology, the authors find the rankings had a significant impact on shareholder value. Firms in the top 100 experienced abnormal returns after the information release that were 0.6%–1.0% higher than returns of firms in the bottom 400. The form of the information released had significant effects as well. Nuanced (...) environmental score variables had no independent impact on market outcomes; only the final ranking mattered. This article also explores possible channels through which the rankings may have had their impact. The authors find suggestive evidence that private and public politics mechanisms were the most important. (shrink)

_Sweet Reason: A Field Guide to Modern Logic, 2nd Edition_ offers an innovative, friendly, and effective introduction to logic. It integrates formal first order, modal, and non-classical logic with natural language reasoning, analytical writing, critical thinking, set theory, and the philosophy of logic and mathematics. An innovative introduction to the field of logic designed to entertain as it informs Integrates formal first order, modal, and non-classical logic with natural language reasoning, analytical writing, critical thinking, set theory, and the philosophy of (...) logic and mathematics Addresses contemporary applications of logic in fields such as computer science and linguistics A web-site linked to the text features numerous supplemental exercises and examples, enlightening puzzles and cartoons, and insightful essays. (shrink)

This study examines how one student teaching seminar employed collective critical observation and reflection of an experienced high school social studies teacher's pedagogy using a multimedia representation of teaching. Pre-service teachers watched this teacher implement two full class lessons and reflections on teaching about freedom of speech. This study's pre-service social studies teachers exhibited a developing ability, through collective observation, to critically reflect on their individual methodological and philosophical goals, social studies teaching and learning, and professional and curricular visions in (...) relation to their student teaching experiences and future practice. The study's findings offer implications for how pre-service social studies teachers critically reflect on their practice, while also developing knowledge of learners, subject matter, and teaching social studies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:BonaventureJay M. HammondChristopher M. Cullen, Bonaventure, Great Medieval Thinkers Series. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN: 0-19-514925-4 (paperback); 0-19-514926-2 (hardback). Pages: xviii + 251.This volume makes a valuable contribution to the "great medieval thinkers" series from OUP by providing an accessible introduction to the philosophy and theology of the great Franciscan St. Bonaventure († 1274). The Preface presents the book's organizing principle: "to analyze Bonaventure's thought by following (...) his own division of the branches of philosophy and theology" (xi) as found in the Bonaventure's classic text On the Reduction of the Arts to Theology (text explained on 29-32; oddly the book never addresses the discrepancy in the dating of the text, c. 1254 or c. 1270). This text considers how the new core subjects of the arts, heavily influenced by Aristotle and expanding beyond the trivium and quadrivium, are illuminations that should lead back to theology, that is to Scripture, which "lies hidden in all knowledge and in all nature."Part I, contains two chapters: the Introduction and another on the definition of Christian Wisdom, the ultimate goal of the Reduction of the Arts. Part II, "The Light of Philosophical Knowledge," contains three chapters on Bonaventure's physics, metaphysics, and moral philosophy. Part III, "The Light of Theological Knowledge," includes seven chapters organized according to Bonaventure's Breviloquium: the Trinity, Creation, Sin, the Incarnation, Grace, the Sacraments, and the Last Things.The preface sets out three claims that color the rest of the book. First, as mentioned, the book attempts an "introduction to the philosophy and theology" of Bonaventure, which the book calls "Christian Philosophy" (a term introduced by Étienne Gilson, Leon Veuthey and later adopted by John Quinn). Yet, I agree with the preface that "it is not easy to say precisely what this means in practice" (xi). Although Bonaventure did employ the phrase "Christian Wisdom" throughout his writings, he never used the phrase "Christian [End Page 541] Philosophy." More explanation of this key term would have been helpful because it seems to relate more to the neo-scholastic disputes of the early to mid twentieth century than to Bonaventure's thirteenth century thought. Second, the book claims that "his Commentary on the Sentences should have a priority of place in any accurate reading" of his thought. On this point the book delivers by citing more from the Sentence Commentary than any other of Bonaventure's works (139 times overall, 63 from Book II alone), but with the much shorter Breviloquium coming in a close second (128 times). Four works come in a distant third (Hexaemeron 38, Itinerarium 32, De mysterio Trinitatis 21, and De scientia Christi 21). Unfortunately little attention is given to Bonaventure's sermons, scripture commentaries, hagiographies and spiritual tracts. Third, whatever shortcomings the book has regarding the coverage of Bonaventure's many works, the book still fulfills its claim to provide "an overview of [Bonaventure's] synthesis," which is "an elaborate and sophisticated synthesis, created in a specific historical context" (xiv).The book begins with an introductory sketch of Bonaventure's life framed by three key historic movements of the thirteenth century: the rediscovery of Aristotle, the emergence of the "universities," and the rise of the mendicant orders. These overlapping contexts are indispensable to understanding Bonaventure's writings, which the introduction surveys in general chronological order and according to genre. After reviewing his life and works, the Introduction concludes with a consideration of Bonaventure's influence. The Introduction is helpful in orienting the modern reader to Bonaventure's thought, particularly his unique synthesis of Augustine and Aristotle. However, some of the dating is imprecise. For example, in October 1255 (not 1256) Bonaventure responded to William of Saint-Amour's attacks against the mendicants with Q.1 De humilitate of his De perfectione evangelica. Thus, Bonaventure entered the secular-mendicant controversy before Thomas Aquinas and Thomas of York (12, 17). Likewise, Bonaventure most likely incepted into the Parisian consortium of masters in April 1254 not October 1257 (11).While all of Part II provides good information on the intricacies of Bonaventure's philosophy, the sections explaining [End Page 542] his hylomorphic metaphysics (42... (shrink)

Thomas Friedman’s best-selling The World is Flat has exerted much influence in the west by providing both an accessible analysis of globalisation and its economic and social effects, and a powerful cultural metaphor for globalisation. In this review, we more closely examine Friedman’s notion of the social contract, the moral centre of his hopeful vision of a globalised world. While Friedman’s social contract holds a more generous view of social and state obligation than his neoliberal economic analysis might otherwise (...) allow, his fallacious assumptions about education rest on poorly argued claims about the nature of human beings, the proper aims of schooling, and meanings of justice in a globalised world. (shrink)

ABSTRACT While—as Yancy himself reminds us regularly in this book—philosophy may begin in wonder, it cannot end there. Philosophical thought must move from wonder to commitment, whether that commitment is to something as abstract as the nature of numbers or as morally pressing as the response to racism. Philosophy, however intellectual an exercise it may be, is only worth pursuing if it addresses what is important to us, and only if in philosophizing we commit ourselves to making a difference, to (...) transforming ourselves and to benefiting our fellows. I was particularly struck when reading Across Black Spaces by Prof. Yancy’s project of recovery, specifically his recovery of the work of Thomas Nelson Baker, Gilbert Haven Jones, and Joyce Mitchell Cook—three profoundly original African American philosophers whose achievements are largely ignored in America today. My interest in this section of the book was piqued in part because of my own experience, in close collaboration with my colleague Nalini Bhushan, in a recovery project. In that case we were working to recover the work of Indian philosophers of the late 19th and early 20th century whose work had fallen into obscurity. That project led us to reflect on our own reasons for engaging in this kind of history of philosophy. John Makeham’s work recovering the work of the early 20th‐Century New Confucians, who fused Buddhist Yogācāra, Confucian ethics, and Pragmatist philosophy of science provides another example of this kind of enterprise. Reflection on these projects constitutes the background for my own thoughts about Prof. Yancy’s similar project. (shrink)

He is currently a research fellow at the University of Frankfurt. Theory and Politics is included in the series, Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

This article offers a critique of Anders Nygrens influential theory of love, which radically distinguishes among ^ros, agape, and philm. By contrast, a defense is offered of Thomas Jay Oord's view, which I label "kenotically donated love" or "full-Oorded" love. Comparisons are developed of related biological relationships like mutualism, commensalism, and parasitism.

Are humans alone in their ability to reminisce about the past and imagine the future? Recent evidence suggests that food-storing birds (scrub jays) have access to information about what they have stored where and when. This has raised the possibility of mental time travel (MTT) in animals and sparked similar research with other species. Here we caution that such data do not provide convincing evidence for MTT. Examination of characteristics of human MTT (e.g. non-verbal declaration, generativity, developmental prerequisites) points to (...) other avenues as to how a case for animal MTT could be made. In light of the current lack of evidence, however, we maintain that MTT is a uniquely human characteristic. (shrink)

Thomas Henry Huxley designated three men as the finest intellects of 19th century natural history: his dear friend Charles Darwin; his most worthy opponent Georges Cuvier; and Karl Ernst von Baer, who discovered the mammalian egg cell in 1827 and wrote the founding treatise of modern embryology in 1828. Of these three, posterity has largely forgotten von Baer, who suffered a severe mental breakdown in the 1830's, but then recovered and moved to Russia (not uncommon for a German-speaking Estonian (...) national), where he enjoyed a distinguished second university career, largely in anthropology and lasting well into the 1870's. (shrink)