We show that for random bit strings, Up, with probability, image, the first order quantifier depth D) needed to distinguish non-isomorphic structures is Θ, with high probability. Further, we show that, with high probability, for random ordered graphs, G≤,p with edge probability image, D)=Θ, contrasting with the results for random graphs, Gp, given by Kim et al. [J.H. Kim, O. Pikhurko, J. Spencer, O. Verbitsky, How complex are random graphs in first order logic? Random Structures and Algorithms 26 119–145] of (...) D)=log1/pn+O. (shrink)

Peer review is a widely accepted instrument for raising the quality of science. Peer review limits the enormous unstructured influx of information and the sheer amount of dubious data, which in its absence would plunge science into chaos. In particular, peer review offers the benefit of eliminating papers that suffer from poor craftsmanship or methodological shortcomings, especially in the experimental sciences. However, we believe that peer review is not always appropriate for the evaluation of controversial hypothetical science. We argue that (...) the process of peer review can be prone to bias towards ideas that affirm the prior convictions of reviewers and against innovation and radical new ideas. Innovative hypotheses are thus highly vulnerable to being “filtered out” or made to accord with conventional wisdom by the peer review process. Consequently, having introduced peer review, the Elsevier journal Medical Hypotheses may be unable to continue its tradition as a radical journal allowing discussion of improbable or unconventional ideas. Hence we conclude by asking the publisher to consider re-introducing the system of editorial review to Medical Hypotheses. (shrink)

We show that for random bit strings, Up, with probability, image, the first order quantifier depth D) needed to distinguish non-isomorphic structures is Θ, with high probability. Further, we show that, with high probability, for random ordered graphs, G≤,p with edge probability image, D)=Θ, contrasting with the results for random graphs, Gp, given by Kim et al. [J.H. Kim, O. Pikhurko, J. Spencer, O. Verbitsky, How complex are random graphs in first order logic? Random Structures and Algorithms 26 119–145] of (...) D)=log1/pn+O. (shrink)

St. Augustine's just war theory involves eight principal elements: a) a punitive conception of war, b) assessment of the evil of war in terms of the moral evil of attitudes and desires, c) a search for authorization for the use of violence, d) a dualistic epistemology which gives priority to spiritual goods, e) interpretation of evangelical norms in terms of inner attitudes,f) passive attitude to authority and social change, g) use of Biblical texts to legitimate participation in war, and h) (...) an analogical conception of peace. It does not include non-combatant immunity or conscientious objection. A contemporary assessment of the elements is offered. (shrink)

A school of idealism: meditatio laici, by J. Cappon.--Beati possidentes, by R. M. Wenley.--Moral validity: a study in Platonism, by R. C. Lodge.--Plato and the poet's eidōla, by A. S. Ferguson.--Some reflections on Aristotle's theory of tragedy, by G. S. Brett.--The function of the phantasm in St. Thomas Aquinas, by H. Carr.--The development of the psychology of Maine de Biran, by N. J. Symons.--A plea for eclecticism, by H. W. Wright.--Some present-day tendencies in philosophy, by J. M. MacEachran.--Evolution and personality, (...) J. G. Hume.--Emergent realism, by J. Muirhead.--Bibliography of publications by Dr. John Watson (p. 343-346). (shrink)

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John Dee’s arrangements at his Mortlake house have received some attention as an English ‘academy’ or ‘experimental household.’ His ideas for St Cross, which he requested as a suitable living in 1592, have received less detailed attention. This paper examines Mortlake and his St Cross plans in detail and argues that, at their core, they shared an aspiration to create a national research institute. These plans are related to the context of Dee’s pursuit of royal patronage and his idea (...) of the social and intellectual role of the natural philosopher. His ideas for a research institute are also placed in the context of alternatives to traditional sites of learning, including contemporary academies, princely courts, and independent establishments, indicating that Dee’s ideas, while part of a Renaissance vogue for such alternatives, were independent of other models. Discussion includes the historiographic debate regarding openness versus secrecy in the pursuit of natural knowledge. Finally, Dee’s ideas are contrasted with Francis Bacon’s proposal for a research institute, which also originated in the 1590s and culminated in ‘Solomon’s House.’. (shrink)

The idea of translating Gerdil into English is brilliant, the translation is very good and the introduction of William Frank precise and inspiring.... Rousseau proposes a complete break with tradition. A new man will arise who is severed from the whole heritage of the past. With him the history of mankind begins anew. In one sense we have here a transposition in the field of philosophy of education of the Cartesian cogito. The subject begins with himself. To this philosophical project (...) Gerdil opposes the idea of tradition. We have not made ourselves. Our parents have procreated us. The parents do not only procreate their offspring, they also introduce them into the natural and social reality, that is they educate. No education is possible without a lively dialogue with history and society. Since the beginning man stands in a close relationship to others, is made for the human society.... In these our times one form of modernity is collapsing and the mood of the day is an unclear postmodernity that in some of its versions could well be a return to barbarianism. All the more important is then that another form of modernity be rediscovered and brought to the attention of the American public. - Rocco Buttiglione, University of St. Pius V, Rome A timely translation of a compelling 18th century critique of Rousseau by the neglected Italian author, Hyacinth S. Gerdil. Gerdil's Anti-Emile may have been written as a critique of Rousseau's Emile, but it can equally be read as a critique of the philosophy embraced by the American educational establishment. Through the influence of John Dewey, Rousseau came to inform much of the educational theory regnant in the United States, with disastrous consequences, now acknowledge by nearly all. In a valuable preface to his translation, Professor Frank, drawing upon his experience both here and abroad, not only places Emile in context, but defends Gerdil's time-transcending, classical view of education against its modern detractors. "Gerdil," Frank tells us, "addressed his Anti-Emile to elders responsible for education, be they parents, teachers, or political authorities, who might find themselves swayed by the powerful rhetoric of Rousseau's Emile." The same may be said of this translation and its informative prefatory material, for it is clearly a study that will be valued by anyone interested in principled education. - Jude P. Dougherty, Catholic University of America Cover image: "Adam and Eve" by Tintoretto. St. Augustine's Press acknowledges the kind permission granted by la Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Venice, for the use of the image. All rights reserved by la Scuola Grande di San Rocco. (shrink)

The prolific English poet John Lydgate has been known as the “monk of Bury” since the early fifteenth century. Both his popularity and perceptions of his literary merit have fluctuated wildly since his zenith as the famous laureate of Henry V, Henry VI and Duke Humphrey, but readers have been constant in their association of Lydgate with the Benedictine abbey from which the epithet derives. However, there has been remarkably little examination of the details of Lydgate's existence at Bury: (...) the critical emphasis has been on Lydgate's contact with Lancastrian society rather than on his quotidian life as a monk. “To trace in detail the connection between the Bury library and the characteristic configuration of Lydgate's thought and work, to see how his mind was formed and influenced by the books with which he was in such familiar contact” remains an unfulfilled desire. In particular, given the range of Lydgate's literary and intellectual allusions, it is surprising that there has been no full attempt to compare what we know of Bury's sizeable late medieval library, catalogued in the late fourteenth century by Henry Kirkstede, with Lydgate's poetic output. Likewise, few critics have attempted to trace connections between Lydgate's poetry and the intellectual and cultural atmosphere of a grand Benedictine abbey in the late medieval period. This article, a study of one manuscript from Bury that Lydgate certainly handled and that is typical of the type of book he would have encountered in great numbers in the monastic library, endeavours to reassert the importance to his poetry of the environment in which Lydgate spent most of his life. (shrink)

This volume contains thirty-one papers grouped under the following headings: "The Nature of Philosophy," "Man and Knowledge," "God and Religious Knowledge," "Ethics," "Law," and "Texts." A few of the papers discuss the Augustinian tradition. Munoz-Alonso, Blondel, and Sciacca are mentioned as men who have renewed for our time the thought of Augustine. The papers on St. Bonaventure include an analysis by John O. Riedl of some of Bonaventure’s texts on Dionysius the Areopagite, a comparison and contrast by Bernardino Bonansea (...) of the position of Bonaventure and Thomas on the question of creation from eternity, a study by Ewert Cousins of Bonaventure’s dynamic self-diffusive God, and a discussion of his symbolic theology by Leonard Bowman. Scholars will be interested in the report of Ignatius Brady on the Quaracchi edition of Bonaventure’s writings, as well as in the report of James P. Reilly, Jr. on the Leonine Commission’s work on the texts of Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

More's Latin reply to Bugenhagen, given here with a facing English translation, is a comparatively brief but intense rebuttal of the principal points of Lutheran teaching concerning scripture ant tradition, faith and works, grace and free will, clerical celibacy, and the sacraments. It presents arguments elaborated at much greater length in More's other polemical works. _Supplication of Souls_ refutes _A Supplication for the Beggars_, an anticlerical pamphlet by Simon Fish which Henry VIII seems to have regarded with some favor. More (...) places his response in the mouths of the souls in purgatory. In the first book, he contemptuously demolished Fish's loose railery with accurate statistics and historical analysis. In the second, he defends the traditional doctrine of purgatory with brief arguments drawn from reason and a detailed analysis of scriptural passages. _Letter against Frith_ answers John Frith's Zwinglian arguments against the physical presence of Christ in the more. Written to an unknown correspondent, it is the briefest and mildest of More's polemical works and anticipates arguments presented moer elaborately in More's _The Answer to a Poisoned Book_. Besides full introductions and commentaries, a glossary, and an index, this volume contains seven appendices giving the works to which More is replying and other thematic, historical, and bibliographical matter closely related to the three works by More. (shrink)

Berkeley's immaterialism has more in common with views developed by Henry More, the mathematician Joseph Raphson, John Toland, and Jonathan Edwards than those of thinkers with whom he is commonly associated (e.g., Malebranche and Locke). The key for recognizing their similarities lies in appreciating how they understand St. Paul's remark that in God "we live and move and have our being" as an invitation to think to God as the space of discourse in which minds and ideas are identified. (...) This way of speaking about God, adapted by Karl Barth and Paul Tillich, opens up new ways to think about the relation between God and finite minds. (shrink)

A collection of articles, mainly by members of the faculty of St. John's University, on the concept of freedom as now held and taught by Roman Catholic philosophers. After discussions of the epistemological, metaphysical and psychological aspects of freedom, its relevance in individual acts and in various social contexts is described. The book is of considerable interest, and deserves the special prize it received from the Freedoms Foundation.--L. H. E.

Professional responsibility -- Social justice -- Professional development -- Actionable knowledge -- Expert knowledge and skills -- Strategy and artistry -- Professional effectiveness -- Critical social challenges -- Transformational practice -- Conclusions.

In Evangelium vitae, Pope St. John Paul II recognized that scientific progress would bring about new attacks on the dignity of the human person. Since that time, remarkable expansion in our knowledge and understanding of the human genome has brought forth questions of ownership rights via patents on human genes and related technology. This article argues that patenting human genes is incompatible with human dignity as it commodifies that which is priceless. In contrast, granting patents to manipulations of human (...) genes does not violate human dignity so long as it is utilized toward the common good. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 15.2 : 265–285. (shrink)

Contemporary leadership theory -- Leading with heart -- Moses -- Gautama Buddha -- Confucius -- Jesus Christ -- Muhammad -- Mahatma Gandhi -- Martin Luther King, Jr. -- St. Pope John Paul II -- St. Mother Teresa -- Pope Francis I -- What have you learned -- Appendix: Diagnostics (Heart Smart surveys I & II).

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 453 PAUL HENRY (19o6-1984) Paul Henry was a renowned scholar of Plotinus and Neo-Platonism. Born in Louvain, the son of a chemistry professor at the university there, he was sent to school in England during World War I. He then returned to Belgium, and studied philosophy and theology at Louvain, and joined the Society of Jesus. He did further studies in Paris in Middle Eastern culture, and (...) studied Arabic in Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. In Rome he did further studies and received an S.T.D. from the Pontifical Gregorian University, as well as a Licentiate in Sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Gregorian University. He was appointed professor at the Institut Catholique in Paris. He published several fundamental studies on Plotinus and the development of NeoPlatonism in Western thought. He and Hans Rudolf Schwyzer of Zurich collaborated on the critical edition of Plotinus's Enneads,and he and his former student, Pierre Hadot, produced the critical edition of the theological treatises of Marius Victorinus. Paul Henry made his first visit to the United States in 1952 where he was a visiting professor at Fordham. At a meeting of the American Philosophical Association that year he met Richard Popkin. They became close friends. This led to Henry being invited to be a visiting professor at the University of Iowa, to give the Foster lecture on the immortality of the soul at the University of California, Berkeley, and to his later being appointed a regular professor at the University of California, San Diego. He also was a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Duke, Northwestern, the College of New Rochelle and St. John's University in New York. Paul Henry was an important consultant and adviser to the JournaloftheHistoryofPhilosophy in its early years. With his vast erudition, his understanding of the different kinds of scholarship being undertaken in Europe and America, in Catholic and non-Catholic institutions, he was able to assist us in finding the best scholarly articles, the best referees and reviewers of materials in many fields. Paul Henry was a person of immense charm, vivacity and humanity. He was able to break down barriers between people of differing backgrounds, and to form deep, abiding friendships with students and scholars all over the world. He took great interest in a variety of ventures to increase learning and understanding in intellectual history. His concerns ranged from early Christian thought, pagan Neo-Platonism, the fusion of the two in Victorinus and Augustine, up to leading intellectual ideas in modern European thought such as the structuralism of LeviStrauss and the theology of Teilhard de Chardin. He encouraged young and maturing scholars in America and Europe, and tried to bring out the very best of their abilities. He encouraged the understanding of different thought systems, the appreciation of their strengths and weaknesses. And, perhaps as much as any one in the post-second-World-War period, he encouraged frank and open discussions between Catholic and non-Catholic scholars, and thereby built many bridges. Those who knew him have profited immensely from his learning, wisdom and humanity. Those who worked to launch and develop the Journal are especially grateful for his help and support in the early days of this venture. We hope that his scholarship will encourage many others to develop fresh understandings of Neo-Platonism and its importance in the philosophical, theological and scientific world, from ancient times to the present. He will be sorely missed, but he has left a great legacy to those working in the history of philosophy. RICHARD H. POPKIN... (shrink)

Eva Brann, who has taught at St. John’s College, Annapolis, for sixty years, wrote these essays largely as clarifying incitements to students who were reading, or ought to have been reading, the works discussed. In her words: "The first essay looks at the 'Pre-Socratics' Heraclitus and Parmenides. They appear to be in radical opposition, but they are really doing the same, new thing: seeing the world as an intelligible whole. Both observe external nature, construing it in their minds—so, from (...) the outside in. The final essay again describes two ways of world-construing from the outside in—one by penetrating the surface of reality, the other by spinning a web of complexity over it. "The five essays in between focus on works by Kant and display the world as constituted from the human inside out. An appreciative review of the Critique of Pure Reason shows how Kant brilliantly justifies a science of nature by making nature itself the construct of our understanding. But he leads us to the abyss of more idealism; externality and realism escape him. The explication of his one absolute moral commandment similarly defines his morality entirely in terms divorced from objective good and concentrated on internal integrity. Finally, his huge unpublished legacy agonizes about bringing a god, first conceived as an inner need, into external existence.". (shrink)

A celebration of Eva Brann, prolific author and beloved teacher at St. John's College.

Is there an opposition between spectacles and the Church? Such is the question that normally comes to one's mind in reading the diatribes of the Fathers of the Church against spectacles. The subject is thicklish and should be handled with precision and tact, without preconceived prejudice. In examining the passages on the subject in ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, the author has precisely made the attempt to solve the problem. Methodical in his proceedings, he first examines the part, spectacles played in (...) the life of the peoples of A n t i o c h and C o n s t a n t i n o p l e. So engrossed with the love of spectacles had they become, that the only two things, requested from their masters by this frivolous population, were: bread and games! The whole of Antioch, the whole of Constantinople was to be found in the Circus or in the Theatre. On holidays, christians rushed to the hippodrome, with the same ardor as the pagans. Like so many of the Fathers, C h r y s o s t o m, condemned this frequentation, which he considered an apostasy and a return to the idols, one of the greatest enemies of purity and one of the most serious obstacles to his pastoral mission. Seldom does he attack comedies and tragedies, directing his most strenuous efforts against Pantomimes. In latter years, taking up again the same textes, B o s- s u e t fell into regrettable exaggerations. Austere moralist and rigorist, he condemned the theatre without discrimination. In locating the debates, by first giving an historical account of the struggles which divided the Church and the theatre, the author ascertains that nowadays a more charitable and just conception of the spectacle and the artist, dedicating his life thereto, has been reached. The pleasure of the spectacle is innocent in itself and the Catholic Church finds no fault with it: the sole requirement, the Church imposes, being that this pleasure, in its application, be subjected to the principles of christian morals. (shrink)

Under the general tutelage of Kant, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) introduced American pragmatism to yet another philosophical dialectic: between a neglected transcendental instinct and earthly authorities. The dialectic became Peirce’s response to various evolutionary schemes in the 19th century. Guided by the recollected voices of Socrates, Jesus, St. John, Anselm, and Kant, as well as his own brand of pragmatism, Peirce eventually developed a “Neglected Argument for the Reality of God” a century ago, in 1908. Here, Peirce endorsed a (...) more adventurous god than ecclesiastical or theological authorities could imagine, a god of love (agapism) and chance (tychism), but still rife with fallibility. (shrink)

In this philosophically sophisticated and historically significant work, John H. Zammito reconstructs Kant's composition of The Critique of Judgment and reveals that it underwent three major transformations before publication. He shows that Kant not only made his "cognitive" turn, expanding the project from a "Critique of Taste" to a Critique of Judgment but he also made an "ethical" turn. This "ethical" turn was provoked by controversies in German philosophical and religious culture, in particular the writings of Johann Herder and (...) the Sturm und Drang movement in art and science, as well as the related pantheism controversy. Such topicality made the Third Critique pivotal in creating a "Kantian" movement in the 1790s, leading directly to German Idealism and Romanticism. The austerity and grandeur of Kant's philosophical writings sometimes make it hard to recognize them as the products of a historical individual situated in the particular constellation of his time and society. Here Kant emerges as a concrete historical figure struggling to preserve the achievements of cosmopolitan Aufkl-rung against challenges in natural science, religion, and politics in the late 1780s. More specifically Zammito suggests that Kant's Third Critique was animated throughout by a fierce personal rivalry with Herder and by a strong commitment to traditional Christian ideas of God and human moral freedom. "A work of extraordinary erudition. Zammito's study is both comprehensive and novel, connecting Kant's work with the aesthetic and religious controversies of the late eighteenth century. He seems to have read everything. I know of no comparable historical study of Kant's Third Critique."-Arnulf Zweig, translator and editor of Kant's ;IPhilosophical Correspondence, 1759-1799;X "An intricate, subtle, and exciting explanation of how Kant's thinking developed and adjusted to new challenges over the decade from the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason to the appearance of the Critique of Judgment. "--John W. Burbidge, Review of Metaphysics "There has been for a long time a serious gap in English commentary on Kant's Critique of Judgment Zammito's book finally fills it. All students and scholars of Kant will want to consult it."--Frederick Beiser, Times Literary Supplement. (shrink)

A collection of articles, mainly by members of the faculty of St. John's University, on the concept of freedom as now held and taught by Roman Catholic philosophers. After discussions of the epistemological, metaphysical and psychological aspects of freedom, its relevance in individual acts and in various social contexts is described. The book is of considerable interest, and deserves the special prize it received from the Freedoms Foundation.--L. H. E.

Unethical practices in education come at too great a cost when our future generation is at stake. Educators are role models for students in their future careers and so must believe in and use ethical practices. In politics, in big and small business, and in legal and medical practice the question of ethical practices surrounds us. Have people become desensitized to ethics? Are we condoning unethical practice? Our educational profession must stand up for honesty and integrity. We, as educators, have (...) the obligation of setting the standards for ethics. Ethical Dilemmas in Education addresses the dilemmas teachers face every day throughout all aspects of education in a comprehensive manner. The book outlines standards of professionalism and presents information teachers can use for the challenges teachers face. With the policies of today's educational system, teachers need to stand up for honesty and integrity, providing role models for students in their future careers. This book guides teachers towards developing ethical habits and a professional demeanor. (shrink)