Wordsmiths and Warriors explores the heritage of English through the places in Britain that shaped it. It unites the warriors, whose invasions transformed the language, with the poets, scholars, reformers, and others who helped create its character. David and Hilary Crystal drove thousands of miles to locations throughout Britain, David providing the descriptions, Hilary the full-colour photographs. Their book reflects the language's history starting with Anglo-Saxon arrivals and ending in London with apps for grammar. In between lie (...) encounters with places associated with Chaucer, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Wycliffe, Tyndale, Johnson, Murray, and numerous others. Among its many joys are the unexpected discoveries the authors make at every stage of their epic journey. (shrink)

_A many-faceted exploration of spoken eloquence: how it works, how it has evolved, and how to tap its remarkable power_ We all know eloquence when we hear it. But what exactly is it? And how might we gain more of it for ourselves? This entertaining and, yes, eloquent book illuminates the power of language from a linguistic point of view and provides fascinating insights into the way we use words. David Crystal, a world-renowned expert on the history and (...) usage of the English language, probes the intricate workings of eloquence. His lively analysis encompasses everyday situations as well as the oratory of great public gatherings. Crystal focuses on the here and now of eloquent speaking—from pitch, pace, and prosody to jokes, appropriateness, and how to wield a microphone. He explains what is going on moment by moment and examines each facet of eloquence. He also investigates topics such as the way current technologies help or hinder our verbal powers, the psychological effects of verbal excellence, and why certain places or peoples are thought to be more eloquent than others. In the core analysis of the book, Crystal offers an extended and close dissection of Barack Obama’s electrifying “Yes we can” speech of 2008, in which the president demonstrated full mastery of virtually every element of eloquence—from the simple use of parallelism and an awareness of what _not_ to say, to his brilliant conclusion constructed around two powerful words: _dreams_ and _answers_. (shrink)

One of the most significant trends within linguistics in the 1970s has been the move away from the formalised models of language introduced by Chomsky towards an account of language that incorporates functional premises. As Charles Fillmore put it, in a 1972 paper, the emphasis on formalisation needs to be balanced by a consideration of what exactly it is that linguists want to formalise. Putting this another way, a contrast can be drawn between the stress laid in the 1960s on (...) the specification in formal terms of the common factors that underlie utterances and the stress laid in the 1970s on the specification in functional terms of the differences between language forms, as captured by such notions as dialect, style, level, etc. (shrink)

Title from title page of source document.

This book offers both the theoretical background behind the minority effect, teachers' personal experiences as they experienced being a minority, and their analyses and insights for teaching diverse learners. This book uses real-life experiences of diverse people to illustrate that, if not understood and addressed, situational minorities at school or work are unlikely to perform at their highest potentials.

The author has had a lifelong interest in design and its application. In this book he shows how the perceptions about the nature of the universe inform the art of their times, for example the form and fluidity of primitive art or the crystalline order of Islamic patterns.

The newest addition to the successful Oxford Readings in Philosophy series, this collection contains the most important contributions to the recent debate on the philosophy of science. The contributors crystallize the often heated arguments of the last two decades, assessing the skeptical attitudes within philosophy of science and the counter-challenges of the scientific realists. Contributors include Nancy Cartwright, Brian Ellis, Arthur Fine, Clark Glymour, Larry Laudan, Peter Lipton, Alan Musgrave, Wesely C. Salmon, Lawrence Sklar, Bas C. van Fraassen, and John (...) Worrall. (shrink)

The Snowden revelations about National Security Agency surveillance, starting in 2013, along with the ambiguous complicity of internet companies and the international controversies that followed provide a perfect segue into contemporary conundrums of surveillance and Big Data. Attention has shifted from late C20th information technologies and networks to a C21st focus on data, currently crystallized in “Big Data.” Big Data intensifies certain surveillance trends associated with information technology and networks, and is thus implicated in fresh but fluid configurations. This is (...) considered in three main ways: One, the capacities of Big Data intensify surveillance by expanding interconnected datasets and analytical tools. Existing dynamics of influence, risk-management, and control increase their speed and scope through new techniques, especially predictive analytics. Two, while Big Data appears to be about size, qualitative change in surveillance practices is also perceptible, accenting consequences. Important trends persist – the control motif, faith in technology, public-private synergies, and user-involvement – but the future-orientation increasingly severs surveillance from history and memory and the quest for pattern-discovery is used to justify unprecedented access to data. Three, the ethical turn becomes more urgent as a mode of critique. Modernity's predilection for certain definitions of privacy betrays the subjects of surveillance who, so far from conforming to the abstract, disembodied image of both computing and legal practices, are engaged and embodied users-in-relation whose activities both fuel and foreclose surveillance. (shrink)

This paper comments on a recent article “Revolutionary poetry and liquid crystal chemistry: Herman Gorter, Ada Prins and the interface between literature and science” by Hub Zwart, in which the author explores the influence of the liquid crystal research of Ada Prins on the epic poem Pan written by her long-time lover Herman Gorter. The present paper reviews the basic science of liquid crystals and explains the connections between the work of Prins and its influence on the poem. (...) Other examples of the use of “liquid crystal” as a literary device are identified from renaissance poetry, and the uses of the metaphor in these poems are analysed from a scientific perspective. From these examples it is suggested that creative concepts from poetry may contain elements of substance that appear in hitherto unrecognised scientific realities. (shrink)

In a 2015 article entitled “The Irrelevance of Ethics,” MacIntyre argues that acquiring the moral virtues would undermine someone’s capacity to be a good trader in the financial system and, conversely, that a proper training in the virtues of good trading directly militates against the acquisition of the moral virtues. In this paper, we reconsider MacIntyre’s rather damning indictment of financial trading, arguing that his negative assessment is overstated. The financial system is in fact more internally diverse and dynamic, and (...) more reformable, than suggested by MacIntyre’s treatment. The challenge at the heart of MacIntyre’s claims can be crystallized in the question, “under which conditions, if any, can a person be an effective trader and simultaneously live a worthy human life?” We conclude that there are realistic possibilities of integrity and growth in moral virtue for those who work in the financial sector, at least for those operating in a work environment minimally permissive toward virtue, provided they possess characters of integrity and genuine aptitude for the skills and attitudes required in their professional tasks. (shrink)

Much of a culture’s history – its knowledge, capacity, style, and mode of material engagement – is encoded and transmitted in its artifacts. Artifacts crystallize practice; they are a type of meme reservoir that people interpret though interaction. So, in a sense, artifacts transmit cognition; they help to transmit practice across generations, shaping the ways people engage and encounter their world. So runs one argument.

Gladstone's ideas are far more accessible for analysis now that, following the publication of his diaries, a record of his reading is available. This book traces the evolution of what the diaries reveal as the statesman's central intellectual preoccupations, theology and classical scholarship, as well as the groundwork of his early Conservatism and his mature Liberalism. In particular it examines the ideological sources of Gladstone's youthful opposition to reform before scrutinizing his convictions in theology. These are shown to have passed (...) through more stages than has previously been supposed: he moved from Evangelicalism to Orthodox High Churchmanship, on to Tractarianism and then further to a broader stance that eventually crystallized as a liberal Catholicism. His classical studies, focused primarily on Homer, also changed over time, from a version that was designed to defend a traditional worldview to an approach that exalted the depiction of human endeavour in the ancient Greek poet. An enduring principle of his thought about religion and antiquity was the importance of community, but a fresh axiom that arose from the modifications of his views was the centrality of all that was human. The twin values of community and humanity are shown to have conditioned Gladstone's rhetoric as Liberal leader, so making him, in terms of recent political thought, a communitarian rather than a liberal, but one with a distinctive humanitarian message. As a result of a thorough scrutiny of Gladstone's private papers, the Victorian statesman is shown to have derived a distinctive standpoint from the Christian and classical sources of his thinking and so to have left an enduring intellectual legacy. It becomes apparent that his religion, Homeric studies and political thought were interwoven in unexpected ways.The evolution of Gladstone's central intellectual preoccupations, with religion and Homer, is the theme of this book. It shows how the statesman developed from Evangelism to Orthodox High Churchmanship, on to Tractarianism and then further to a broader stance that eventually crystallized as a liberal Catholicism. It demonstrates also that his Homeric studies developed over time. Neither aspect of his thinking was kept apart from his politics. Gladstone's early conservatism emerged from a blend of classical and Christian themes focusing on the idea of community. While that motif persisted in his speeches as Liberal leader, the category of the human emerged from his religious and Homeric ideas to condition the presentation of his Liberalism. In Gladstone's mind there was an intertwining of theology, Homeric studies and political thought. (shrink)

Gladstone's ideas are far more accessible for analysis now that, following the publication of his diaries, a record of his reading is available. This book traces the evolution of what the diaries reveal as the statesman's central intellectual preoccupations, theology and classical scholarship, as well as the groundwork of his early Conservatism and his mature Liberalism. In particular it examines the ideological sources of Gladstone's youthful opposition to reform before scrutinizing his convictions in theology. These are shown to have passed (...) through more stages than has previously been supposed: he moved from Evangelicalism to Orthodox High Churchmanship, on to Tractarianism and then further to a broader stance that eventually crystallized as a liberal Catholicism. His classical studies, focused primarily on Homer, also changed over time, from a version that was designed to defend a traditional worldview to an approach that exalted the depiction of human endeavour in the ancient Greek poet. An enduring principle of his thought about religion and antiquity was the importance of community, but a fresh axiom that arose from the modifications of his views was the centrality of all that was human. The twin values of community and humanity are shown to have conditioned Gladstone's rhetoric as Liberal leader, so making him, in terms of recent political thought, a communitarian rather than a liberal, but one with a distinctive humanitarian message. As a result of a thorough scrutiny of Gladstone's private papers, the Victorian statesman is shown to have derived a distinctive standpoint from the Christian and classical sources of his thinking and so to have left an enduring intellectual legacy. It becomes apparent that his religion, Homeric studies and political thought were interwoven in unexpected ways.The evolution of Gladstone's central intellectual preoccupations, with religion and Homer, is the theme of this book. It shows how the statesman developed from Evangelism to Orthodox High Churchmanship, on to Tractarianism and then further to a broader stance that eventually crystallized as a liberal Catholicism. It demonstrates also that his Homeric studies developed over time. Neither aspect of his thinking was kept apart from his politics. Gladstone's early conservatism emerged from a blend of classical and Christian themes focusing on the idea of community. While that motif persisted in his speeches as Liberal leader, the category of the human emerged from his religious and Homeric ideas to condition the presentation of his Liberalism. In Gladstone's mind there was an intertwining of theology, Homeric studies and political thought. (shrink)

ExcerptFred Siegel’s passing on May 7th of this year was a profound loss for us all. A frequent guest and participant at our events, he contributed to Telos from the 1980s to the 2020 publication of his last book, The Crisis of Liberalism: Prelude to Trump. His ideas had a defining impact on Paul Piccone and the journal’s development, laying the foundations for what would become the Telos populist critique of liberalism. With a keen ear for the right turn of (...) phrase to describe a complex idea, he titled his seminal essay for Telos “Is Archie Bunker Fit to Rule? Or: How Immanuel Kant Became One of the Founding Fathers.”1 Setting Archie Bunker as the representative of democracy against the intellectual Immanuel Kant, Siegel succinctly crystallized what was at stake as well as the audacity of his argument, especially for a Telos readership that was inclined to support German philosophy over American pop culture. In making his case for Archie Bunker, Siegel attacked with eloquence and perspicacity the intellectual foundations of liberal thinking. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Desire and Monstrosity in the Disaster Film:Alfred Hitchcock's The BirdsDavid Humbert (bio)The theme of the relationship between desire and violence appears regularly in modern film criticism, and studies of this issue range in theoretical orientation from the Lacanian to the feminist.1 Though René Girard's view of this relationship is also regularly mentioned in studies of film violence, it is often with less than full appreciation of the way in (...) which it contradicts central features of structuralist and psychoanalytic approaches to film, approaches that, until recently, have dominated film theory. Furthermore, cinema is mentioned only in passing by Girard himself, sometimes derogatorily, while Girardian studies of films and film makers are relatively few and far between.2 One of the yardsticks by which René Girard demonstrates the validity of his theory of violence is the degree to which it illuminates key aspects of great literature that previously remained unexplained or were passed over in silence. The fundamental concepts of the scapegoat, the double, the rival, and triangular desire can be shown to illuminate similar interpretive lacunae in a wide variety of films of many genres.Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds3 is a case in point. I intend to argue the relevance of the mimetic theory of violence to this film largely as Girard does [End Page 87] himself in relation to works of literature, and hence with no pretense to originality. The theory of the scapegoat and triangular desire persuades because of the particular way it brings to view, and explains, previously unnoticed features of Hitchcock's films, notably The Birds. One must bear in mind, however, that, previous to The Birds, Hitchcock produced a remarkable body of work that is consistently (some would say obsessively) built upon the cluster of themes that Girard identifies with the scapegoat problem. For those who are familiar only with Hitchcock's later, more sensational work, like Psycho4 and The Birds, it may come as a surprise to discover that the director earlier produced films like I Confess5 or The Wrong Man,6 or Vertigo,7 in which the suspense is largely psychological, and in which themes of faith, romantic obsession, or moral conflict take center stage. The Birds is a variation on the works of the 1950s, rather than a completely new point of departure. It is an apocalyptic crystallization of the themes that had always preoccupied Hitchcock.The Birds is perhaps the only film by Hitchcock that envisions total societal breakdown, a disaster of the proportions of a medieval plague. Generally, Hitchcock's films are set in stable, if modern and troubled, societies in which there are at least more or less unquestioned social and economic orders. Flaws in these social orders, however, are evident in the small-scale disasters that happen to individuals in many of Hitchcock's scenarios. The Wrong Man focuses on the story of Manny Balestreros, who is wrongly identified as a criminal and has his life destroyed by a morally blind justice system. In Rope, the practitioners of a nihilistic thrill-kill are shown to be symptomatic of a pervasive moral and intellectual vacuum in contemporary society. Both these films and others by Hitchcock underline the need for morality and social order to withstand the irrational tendencies of human nature. Psycho, in particular, stresses the ambivalence of man in modern civilization. Norman Bates, it seems, is both the product of and yet the immoveable obstacle to the drive for civilization and order.In contrast to these films, The Birds is a film in which civilizational disaster is abrupt, all-consuming, and catastrophic. For no reason, out of the blue, birds collectively mass to attack human beings. The film is nothing more, some would argue, than one more film in the "revenge of nature" genre. But the attack of the birds is not a response called forth by a moral transgression. It is not a reciprocal act of violence, as the "revenge of nature" mode of interpretation would imply. In fact, the very randomness, irrationality, and suddenness of the attack is the key to understanding the film. The preeminent question is, as Slavoj Žižek puts it, "the stupid and... (shrink)

We highlight the various domains of the flavivirus virulence factor NS1 and speculate on potential implications of the NS1 3D structure in understanding its role in flavivirus pathogenesis. Flavivirus non‐structural protein 1 (NS1) is a virulence factor with dual functions in genome replication and immune evasion. Crystal structures of NS1, combined with reconstructions from electron microscopy (EM), provide insight into the architecture of dimeric NS1 on cell membranes and the assembly of a secreted hexameric NS1‐lipid complex found in patient (...) sera. Three structural domains of NS1 likely have distinct roles in membrane association, replication complex assembly, and immune system avoidance. A conserved hydrophobic inner face is sequestered either on the membrane or in the interior of the secreted hexamer and contains regions implicated in viral replication. The exposed variable outer face is presented to cellular and secreted components of the immune system in infected patients and contains candidate regions for immune system modulation. We anticipate that knowledge of the distinct NS1 domains and assembly will lead to advances in elucidating virus‐host interactions mediated through NS1 and in dissecting the role of NS1 in viral genome replication. (shrink)

The suddenness of phase change is examined as an example of a discontinuity in nature, in which an apparently random microscopic event can trigger a macroscopic change of state such as the crystallization of a liquid. Recent advances in nucleation theory that have helped to quantify but not eliminate this randomness are described, and analogies with the modes of God's action in the world are explored.

[186 pages] Just as the six branches of a snow crystal converge in regular proportions toward their common center, the six contributions to this book point toward a future philosophy of cosmic life. In this sense, this edited volume represents a multidisciplinary and transcultural polylogue of distinguished authors from three continents, which aims to establish highly innovative perspectives and open new frontiers of developing philosophical reflections and scientific foundations for the emergence of a common cosmic consciousness, for an integral (...) ecology, and for a cooperative planetary civilization of humanity. John B. Cobb, Jr. uses a process-philosophical foundation to describe life as living events expressing novelty and the cosmos as a process of self-enriching and self-evolving “Life Itself.” Chandra Wickramasinghe unfolds his scientific and philosophical perspective on cosmic life in twelve successive steps, offering a wide range of arguments and insights that support an up-to-date theory of panspermia. Attila Grandpierre presents the "Cosmic Life Principle" and the comprehensive science based upon it that is inextricably linked to the healthy and cooperative civilization, to the biological laws of nature, to the laws of logic, to the uplifting of the well-being of people and ecological communities. Chunyou Yan introduces the approach of his holographic philosophy, according to which the universe must be understood as a vast living entity, every aspect of which represents life. Bei Peng shows that the proportions of energy meridians in traditional Chinese medicine correspond to musical intervals, and on this basis she demonstrates the analogy of the human body to macrocosmic phenomena. David Bartosch offers an examination of three important systematic foundations for a poly-contextural, transcultural philosophy of cosmic life with roots in Greek, Chinese, South and West Asian, and European traditions of thought. (shrink)

By creatively expanding Deleuze's concept of the time-image crystal, I productively fold together and engineer an encounter between two comparable cinematic movements otherwise separated by huge vistas of time and space. Here, I work to plicate the post-war Italian neorealist movement which Deleuze saw inaugurating the modern cinema, with a ‘postsocialist’ mainland Chinese movement that I playfully call ‘neo-realism’. The films of both historical moments formulate comparable break-away cinemas which are often considered moral or socially responsible art cinemas best (...) approached through André Bazin's ‘ontological’ film philosophy lens. By using Deleuze, however, I hope to move beyond these realist discussions to explore how both movements are also fruitfully thought in terms of introducing distinct yet analogous mental relations into the image during historical junctures defined by radically transforming psycho-geographies. Like Deleuze's discussions of neorealism, neo-realism is considered a loose impulse or mode that collectively bears witness to confusing and bewildering mental experiences from within a turbulent period of cultural, ideological and historical upheaval: which demands new ways of perceiving, thinking and acting. Without wanting to fall into a problematic auteur paradigm, I necessarily employ the films of Wang Xiaoshuai as emblematic examples of the wider impulse or trend. Indeed, Wang's films perfectly reify a new ethico-aesthetic form of Chinese cinema marked by a proliferation of new spaces, characters, experiences and narrative structures. Here, I also strive to do what Deleuze did not in his writing upon film, and explore the break-ups, breakdowns and breakthroughs in specific relation to a complex contextual web of political and cinematic ecosystems. Throughout this process I try to put Deleuze to work by using the films and context to re-interrogate and re-evaluate the time-image models as they appear within and across his Cinema books. (shrink)

In his temporal philosophy based on the writing of Henri Bergson, Gilles Deleuze describes duration ( durée ) as a becoming that endures in time. Reifications of this complex philosophical concept become artistically expressed, I argue, in the form and content of South African artist William Kentridge's series of 'charcoal drawings for projection.' These exhibited art works provide intriguing and illuminating 'philosophical' examples of animated audio-visual media, which expressively plicate distinct images of movement and time. The composition of Kentridge's films (...) at once illuminate a regime of animated 'movement-images' that can trace their aetiological roots to classical forms of film and animation, whilst concurrently folding in complex philosophical expressions of time as duration which invoke the crystalline 'time-image' concepts of philosophers such as Bergson and Deleuze, as well as literary authors like Marcel Proust. Over and above these co-existent regimes of movement and time, Kentridge's artistic technique and exhibition practices further expose a multifarious 'geology' of other embedded time lines that serve to enrich/complicate these temporal expressions. I argue here that diegetic time- and movement-images ostensibly co-exist alongside different 'archaeologies' of time relevant to the context and creation of the artworks. For this reason, the animated drawings formulate intriguing artistic/philosophical expressions that muse on the nature of matter, memory, time and space. (shrink)

Though ubiquitous across the medical social sciences literature, the term “biomedicine” as an analytical concept remains remarkably slippery. It is argued here that this imprecision is due in part to the fact that biomedicine is comprised of three interrelated ontological spheres, each of which frames biomedicine as a distinct subject of investigation. This suggests that, depending upon one’s ontological commitment, the meaning of biomedicine will shift. From an empirical perspective, biomedicine takes on the appearance of a scientific enterprise and is (...) defined as a derivative category of Western science more generally. From an interpretive perspective, biomedicine represents a symbolic-cultural expression whose adherence to the principles of scientific objectivity conceals an ideological agenda. From a conceptual perspective, biomedicine represents an expression of social power that reflects structures of power and privilege within capitalist society. No one perspective exists in isolation and so the image of biomedicine from any one presents an incomplete understanding. It is the mutually-conditioning interrelations between these ontological spheres that account for biomedicine’s ongoing development. Thus, the ontological dissection of biomedicine that follows, with particular emphasis on the period of its formal crystallization in the latter nineteenth and early twentieth century, is intended to deepen our understanding of biomedicine as an analytical concept across the medical social sciences literature. (shrink)

An analysis of the sources of Wittgenstein’s picture theory — which include not only his moment of insight on reading a magazine story about the use of models in a traffic court, but also the work of Russell, Hertz, and Boltzmann — provides the basis for an exploration of Wittgenstein’s articulation of a pictorial conception of representation in his wartime notebooks and its crystallization in the Tractatus. A discussion of Wittgenstein’s later criticism of the picture theory and his notion of (...) a “philosophical picture” illustrates the fundamental reversal in his transition to his later conception of philosophy: instead of taking literal pictures as a guide to the nature of meaning, he came to regard philosophical theories as akin to expressing an aesthetic preference for a certain style of representation. Wittgenstein’s treatment of factual language in the picture theory is related to his Tractarian approach to logical form, and the role of the show/say distinction in his early conception of logic and language. Particular attention is given to the difficulties generated by the idea that the conditions for the possibility of a given domain of discourse cannot be described in language, but must be shown by the form of words in question. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 21.1 (2001) 109-111 [Access article in PDF] Seventh International Buddhist-Christian Conference David W.Chappell Soka University of America Pack your bags! The annual meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies in Nashville decided that the next international conference will be held August 5-12, 2003, in Chiang Mai, Thailand.An invitation was extended to the society by Dr. John Butt, director of the Institute for the Study of Religion (...) and Culture (ISRC), and by the president of Payap University, Dr. Boonthong Poocharoen. As a Presbyterian faculty member of the McGilvary Faculty of Theology, John has extensive interreligious experience in Thailand and participated in the society's last international conference held in Tacoma, Washington, in August 2000.The institute's associate director, Professor Saeng Chandrangam, is a former Buddhist monk and is one of Thailand's most highly respected Buddhist laymen. He was Chair of the Department of Oriental Studies and the Department of Modern Languages and was Dean of Humanities of the government's Chiang Mai University, where he taught philosophy and theology. Currently he teaches at a Buddhist university in Chiang Mai as well as serving as the associate director ofISRC. Also, Donald Swearer, who has been active with the society since the first international conference in 1980, will be in residence in Chiang Mai in the springs of 2002 and 2003 and can help plan the conference.Payap University was founded in 1974 by the Church of Christ in Thailand, a consortium ofThai Christian congregations begun by Presbyterian, American Baptist, and Disciples missionaries. However, about 95 percent of Payap University's nine thousand students are Buddhist since Chiang Mai is centrally located in the Burmese-Thai axis with the heaviest concentration of Buddhists in the world. As a result, the conference will be set in a context of Protestant missions within a Theravadin Buddhist culture. This setting will increase the presence of conservative and evangelical Christians, as well as Theravadin Buddhists, to serve as an important balance to the already strong Mahayana and Catholic dialogue leaders in our international conferences. John wrote that "Holding the next conference here would demonstrate that there are other forms of Christian faith quite different from that represented by the evangelical missionaries" and that there are other ways of understanding and approaching other different religious communities. Accordingly, a possible theme [End Page 109] might be "Rethinking Mission Motivation and Practice (both Buddhist and Christian) for the Twenty-first Century."Chiang Mai is a city of a population of about three hundred thousand that preserves much of the charm of traditional Thai culture, while also having modern conveniences like Western fast foods and ATMs, but has not yet succumbed to the congestion of Bangkok. Its weather should be in the eighties or nineties and its hotels are inexpensive (about twenty-five dollars per day for two). The meetings at Payap University will be in air-conditioned rooms in a picturesque setting. Payap has three campuses and is affiliated with the McCormick Hospital. It offers twenty-four undergraduate degrees, as well as master's degrees in divinity, linguistics, business administration, international business, Teaching English as a Foreign Language, philosophy, and Christianity.Payap University can draw on considerable experience for hosting foreign programs. The vice president for external affairs, Martha Butt (wife of John), heads a committee that has planned, developed, and operated the in-country segments of all the Thai Elderhostel programs involving over three thousand participants. Also, they will be joined by faculty members from Mahidol, Chulalongkorn, and Thammasat Universities, including Dr. Parichart Suwanbubbha of Mahidol University, a Thai Buddhist (with a degree from Chicago comparing the concepts of karma and grace), who attended the Tacoma conference in 2000.ISRC is located on the Crystal Spring campus of Payap University and was founded in 1996 to serve as a research and study center for scholars and others interested in the comparative study of religion and culture. The institute's primary goal is to provide and nurture a broad ecumenical religious vision for the people ofThailand and Southeast Asia and for others visiting or working... (shrink)

Constitutional (liberal) democracy pursues an ambitious project. It weaves together majority rule and minority rights and encapsulates a political and institutional organization of public life deliberately orchestrated to guarantee and safeguard rights and freedoms, the peaceful resolution of social and political conflict, and the widest-possible participation of citizens in democratic self-rule. Critical for these goals are procedural mechanisms that enhance the responsiveness and accountability of elected officeholders, contain the power of the governing majority, enable the mutual checks and balances involved (...) with institutional prerogatives, and allow citizens to periodically assess their representatives and, should they want to, select new ones. This vision crystallized in the second half of the twentieth century, in the aftermath of totalitarian monopartyism and the two world wars; it seemed destined for global hegemony after the end of the Cold War and—supposedly—of history. However, the present and future of constitutional, liberal democracies around the world looks less idyllic than the optimism seen at the turn of the century might have suggested. Even before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, debates about the wellbeing of liberal democratic regimes around the globe had been at the core of academic and public debates for at least a full decade. (shrink)

Structural biology has experienced several transformative technological advances in recent years. These include: development of extremely bright X-ray sources and the use of electrons to extend protein crystallography to ever decreasing crystal sizes; and an increase in the resolution attainable by cryo-electron microscopy. Here we discuss the use of these techniques in general terms and highlight their application for biological filament systems, an area that is severely underrepresented in atomic resolution structures. We assemble a model of a capped tropomyosin-actin (...) minifilament to demonstrate the utility of combining structures determined by different techniques. Finally, we survey the methods that attempt to transform high resolution structural biology into more physiological environments, such as the cell. Together these techniques promise a compelling decade for structural biology and, more importantly, they will provide exciting discoveries in understanding the designs and purposes of biological machines. Structural biology is undergoing technological advancements that now reveal the structures of previously inaccessible biological machines. Microfocus synchrotron beamlines, X-ray free electron lasers, and MicroED cope with vanishingly small crystals, while cryo-electron microscopy targets single molecules at near atomic resolution. These advances promise an exciting decade for structural biology. (shrink)

Ethnic competition theory provides a powerful explanation for ethnic conflict, by demonstrating how variation in ethnic mobilization relates to intergroup struggles over scarce resources. However, the tendency to capture such relationships at the aggregate level, through macro-level proxies of intergroup competition, offers little insight into the processes through which ethnic grievances mobilize into contentious action. This article integrates insights from the social movements literature to address how competitive contexts crystallize into broader conflicts. Drawing on data from the civil rights-era Ku (...) Klux Klan—perhaps the quintessential case of contentious ethnic organization in the United States—the analysis focuses on the ways in which meso-level arrangements mediate the relationship between overarching competitive contexts and ethnic conflict. Results of a paired comparative analysis of KKK mobilization in Greensboro and Charlotte demonstrate that social and spatial relations within each city shaped the contours of perceived competition and subsequent ethnic organization in ways that were not always predictable through observation of conventional proxies of competition. (shrink)

In this substantive book, Robert Adams distills and crystallizes much of his previous work into an impressive two-tiered ethical framework: a divine nature theory of the Good and a divine command theory of the morally obligatory. The result is an expansive, integrated, and sophisticated ethical theory that merits great attention. Four major parts comprise the book: The Nature of the Good, Loving the Good, The Good and the Right, and The Epistemology of Value.

his volume investigates Proclus' own thought and his wide-ranging influence within late Neoplatonic, Alexandrine and Byzantinian philosophy and theology. It further explores how Procline metaphysics and doctrines of causality influence and transition into Arabic and Islamic thought, up until Richard Hooker in England, Spinoza in Holland and Pico in Italy. John Dillon provides a helpful overview of Proclus' thought, Harold Tarrant discusses Proclus' influence within Alexandrian philosophy and Tzvi Langermann presents ground breaking work on the Jewish reception of Proclus, focusing (...) on the work of Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591-1655), while Stephen Gersh presents a comprehensive synopsis of Proclus' reception throughout Christendom. The volume also presents works from notable scholars like Helen Lang, Sarah Wear and Crystal Addey and has a considerable strength in its presentation of Pseudo-Dionysius, Proclus' transmission and development in Arabic philosophy and the problem of the eternity of the world. It will be important for anyone interested in the development and transition of ideas from the late ancient world onwards. (shrink)

Readers expecting a history of nineteenth‐century pathology are in for a surprise. They will find instead a self‐conscious example of cultural studies, critical of some assumptions made in this field and of some feminist writing, but containing some alarming sentences like “My goal has been to give shape to the accidental palimpsests of an inveterately verbal, and increasingly visual, culture; to assemble a particular series of hermeneutic loose ends into a coherent account of how an extraordinarily bizarre system of signification (...) came into being” . With learned English like that, who needs Latin? But once we get into the main part of the book, things get much better. We are confronted with a study of the fringes of science, in popular writings, in literature, and in raree‐shows, one working from sources that the more austere scientifics of the Victorian period despised and that historians of science are prone to ignore. Metaphor and analogy are everywhere, and sensitive stomachs will be churned by vivid accounts of disease, deformity, and surgery.The first chapter is concerned with the cholera morbus, the plague of the nineteenth century, and with the way it could be perceived as an indicator of social ills. John Ruskin's word “illth” as an opposite of health is revived, and the terrible blackness of the shriveled and dehydrated victims of this disease imported from the East is linked with colonial and racist notions. The theme that a healthy body is like a well‐run state leads into the next chapter, on breast cancer. Surgery was not only agonizing but ineffective in the first half of the nineteenth century, but then the survival rate after three years rose gradually from 4.7 percent to 45 percent by 1900. O'Connor asks whether this saga, with cancer seen as cellular overproduction, reveals close connections with gender construction and the symbolic importance of breasts, concluding that it does not and that the language used really was neutral rather than sexual.She then looks at amputations and artificial limbs, seeing amputation as a threat to the whole masculine body that could be countered by prostheses almost undetectable to the observer. This allows reflection on illustration, where curiously disembodied hands are shown carrying out amputations; on dissembling and artificiality; on materialism; and on metaphors of wholeness and replacement and of extending senses and capacities. We see some extraordinary advertisements where men with artificial legs climb ladders and skate, perhaps on thin ice. The final chapter examines deformity, with monsters and freaks . P. T. Barnum is prominent here, but interesting links are also made to the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace and its successors and the numerous museums that were such a feature of the Victorian period. They are strikingly placed in a continuum, rather than opposed, in a discussion of chaos and order, capitalism and health, deformity and degeneration. Wonder is presented as the key to modern sensibility, and there is a nice quotation on page 152: “If Beauty and the Beast should be brought into competition in London at the present day, Beauty would stand no chance against the Beast in the race for popularity.” Readers will have been led into a fascinating world at the periphery of the respectable science that most of us study and will rejoice in the extraordinary sights they see. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Rhetoric 36.3 (2003) 189-206 [Access article in PDF] First Philosophies and Regressive Philosophy Chaïm Perelman "As a crystal reconstitutes itself from one of its particles, all philosophy creates itself from the idea of an open dialectic, and carries, in itself, the same dialectical character." —Ferdinand Gonseth A number of metaphysicians, including Bergson and Heidegger, consider metaphysics the only knowledge of consequence and use the word to (...) refer to their own philosophies. But a large number of eminent metaphysicians, among them Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Fichte and Hegel had only disdain for metaphysics and used the word to discredit the philosophy of their adversaries. D'Alembert (602-604) once noted that those referred to as metaphysicians had little regard for one another. "I have no doubt," he added, "that this title will soon be an insult to our great minds, just as the name sophist which, although it meant wise, was debased in Greece by those who bore it and rejected by the true philosophers."The preceding remarks should, I think, convince the few who would still doubt it that declaring oneself an adversary of metaphysics does not mean that one does not do metaphysics. On the contrary, the very fact of opposing a certain conception of metaphysics presupposes that one advocates another conception of metaphysics; this needs to be made explicit, if it is only implicit. In a very interesting study, Mr. Everett W. Hall has recently analyzed the metaphysical assumptions of four types of positivism (Mach, Comte, Watson, Carnap). Even without this analysis the conclusion is predictable; he who is opposed to a certain manner of treating a problem remains himself within the same problematic. Indeed, such oppositions produce a continuous expansion and dialogue about the meaning of the word "metaphysics." This happens not through an automatic and necessary dialectic, but through the dialectic directed by the philosopher's concerns.The first metaphysicians set forth a particular philosophy of being [être]; those opposed advocated a different philosophy of being. By expanding its meaning, Aristotle gave metaphysics its first dialectical movement and identified it as the study of being as being and ontology. Kantian criticism treats dogmatic metaphysics with disdain, and shows that all theories [End Page 189] of being must be preceded by a theory of knowledge: the first principles of philosophy would be those of epistemology and not those of ontology. Since Kant, and for more than a century, metaphysical debates would be about the primacy of ontology or epistemology, and the opposition to their variants, realism and idealism. Then, at the end of the nineteenth century, the debate broadened. Under the influence of pragmatism, the philosophy of values, and Bergsonism, a strong current of philosophical thinking developed, which integrated the theory of knowledge into a general theory of action. It proclaimed the primacy of a philosophy of action, philosophy of life, and philosophy of values. It is within a metaphysics broadened by these various developments that different conceptions of metaphysics will struggle to establish the primacy of their principles. But, despite their differences, all of these metaphysics can be considered first philosophies.Aristotle wrote a treatise on first philosophy, the first to be called metaphysics. First philosophies refer to any metaphysics that purports to determine first principles such as the fundamentals of being (ontology), of knowledge (epistemology), or of action (axiology). First philosophies position first principles as absolute and that they underlie all philosophical questions. The word "first" informs the argumentation used to establish the primacy of first philosophies. A principle is first when it comes before all others in a temporal, logical, epistemological or ontological order; the insistence on this point serves to emphasize its primacy or axiologic pre-eminence. That which is first or basic, that which precedes or presupposes all the rest, is also first in order of importance.As systematic metaphysics, first philosophies establish an interdependence among ontology, epistemology, and axiology. The course taken by first philosophies is determined by a starting point constituted by a necessary reality, a self-evident concept, or an absolute value before which one can... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding DialogueDavid R. LoyPsychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue. Edited by Jeremy D. Safran. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2003, Pp. xvii + 443.In the burgeoning literature on Buddhism and psychoanalysis/psychotherapy, Psychoanalysis and Buddhism: An Unfolding Dialogue stands out. True to its subtitle, the format is designed to encourage genuine dialogue. Following an excellent introduction by the editor, Jeremy D. Safran, all of its nine chapters (...) are by experienced therapists who are also committed to Buddhist practice; several of them are teachers within their respective traditions. Each chapter is followed by the commentary of an established psychoanalyst (many of them associated with the journal Psychoanalytic Dialogues), and after that there is a reply by the original chapter author. The conversations are given plenty of space to develop; several chapters are over fifty pages long. In most cases the commentators rise to the occasion, with sympathetic but trenchant interrogations. The result is a fascinating discussion that raises the interaction between Buddhism and psychology to a higher level of intensity and insight.Safran's introduction looks at the different cultural contexts of psychoanalysis and Buddhism. He focuses on their own internal tensions, especially a shared one between agnosticism and faith. Recent psychoanalysis has shifted from a rationalistic, ego-oriented approach toward a relational and constructivist understanding of [End Page 363] the multiple self, a perspective more open to various narratives. "It has become clear that psychoanalysis is not a science in the same sense that physics or chemistry are, but rather a secular form of spirituality. In some ways it functions to fill the void once filled by religion" (p. 2). This shift to a therapy of faith and commitment highlights a similar tension within Buddhism, for example between the rationalist approach of Nāgārjuna's Karikas and the devotionalism of Pure Land Buddhism. In contrast to the classical Freudian emphasis on the reality principle controlling the pleasure principle and the Mādhyamikas' radical deconstruction of all narratives, letting go of the need to understand and control can lead to awe and reverence in the face of life's mystery. The advantage of a comparison between psychoanalysis and Buddhism is that each can help the other avoid crystallizing into an orthodoxy that tends to lose its liberative power.Several of the contributors refer to Freud's recommendation that the analyst keep an "evenly-suspended attention," and they emphasize how their Buddhist practice helps them to do this. In chapter 4, "An Analyst's Surrender," Sara Weber describes a difficult case study that began to flourish when there was "a shift in the nature of holding." Instead of trying to "fix" the patient, she surrendered herself to deeper, lesser-known areas of her patient's being and her own. She refers to Lacan: although we need others as mirrors, there is always an element of illusion in any organized meaning we frame for ourselves. The solution is to employ models loosely, allowing one's therapeutic techniques as well as one's clients to be in flux. She concludes by emphasizing that the analyst's role as "holder" of the patient "is insufficient unless we see it as a special case of that more profound faith in being that is temporarily embodied in ourselves" (p. 189). In chapter 3, "The Dissolving of Dissolving Itself," Robert Langan offers a personal and phenomenological meditation that plays with multiple perspectives as a way to reflect on the "in-between," the openness that both Buddhism and psychoanalysis at their best encourage: keeping room in the analytic process for paradox and contradiction, for gaps and emptiness.In chapter 6, Barry Magrid eloquently defends the need for analytic work as well as Buddhist practice. "Too often, it seems that both students and teachers have mastered their pain but succumbed to their impulses, experienced a oneness with all beings but remained in conflict with their families, discovered the emptiness of the self but continued to abuse their authority, found peace on their cushions but not in their lives" (p. 257). Yet we should not conclude that Buddhism and analysis are concerned with different aspects of our lives. "Like psychoanalysis, Zen practice is a... (shrink)

Although a large body of literature exists propounding the importance of space in aged care and care of the older person with dementia, there is, however, only limited exploration of the ‘acute care space’ as a particular type of space with archetypal constraints that maybe unfavourable to older people with cognitive impairment and nurses wanting to provide care that is person‐centred. In this article, we explore concepts of space and examine the implications of these for the delivery of care to (...) older people who are cognitively impaired. Our exploration is grounded in theorisations of space offered by key geographers and phenomenologists, but also draws on how space has been constructed within the nursing literature that refers specifically to acute care. We argue that space, once created, can be created and that nursing has a significant role to play in the process of its recreation in the pursuit of care that is person‐centred. We conclude by introducing an alternative logic of space aimed at promoting the creation of more salutogenic spaces that invokes a sense of sanctuary, safeness, and inclusion, all of which are essential if the care provided to the older person with cognitive impairment is apposite to their needs. The concept of ‘person‐centred space’ helps to crystallize the relationship between space and person‐centred care and implies more intentional manipulation of space that is more conducive to caring and healing. Significantly, it marks a return to Nightingale's wisdom, that is, to put the person in the best possible conditions for nature to act upon them. (shrink)

© Ginn et al. 2016.The indexing methods currently used for serial femtosecond crystallography were originally developed for experiments in which crystals are rotated in the X-ray beam, providing significant three-dimensional information. On the other hand, shots from both X-ray free-electron lasers and serial synchrotron crystallography experiments are still images, in which the few three-dimensional data available arise only from the curvature of the Ewald sphere. Traditional synchrotron crystallography methods are thus less well suited to still image data processing. Here, a (...) new indexing method is presented with the aim of maximizing information use from a still image given the known unit-cell dimensions and space group. Efficacy for cubic, hexagonal and orthorhombic space groups is shown, and for those showing some evidence of diffraction the indexing rate ranged from 90% to 151%. Here, the indexing rate refers to the number of lattices indexed per image. (shrink)

Nothing is more mysterious for man than the substance of his own body. Every society has attempted in its way to give a particular answer to this primary enigma in which man has his roots. Innumerable theories of the body that have followed each other during the course of history or that still coexist today are directly connected to the world views of these different societies. Even more, they are dependent on the conceptions of the person. The modern view of (...) the body, that which anatomo-physiology incarnates, is a direct function of the emergence and development of individualism within the European societies of the Renaissance, especially in the 17th century, that marks a crystallization, very clear at the social level, of this tendency. Moreover, the explosion of the present knowledge of the body that makes anatomophysiology one theory among others, even though it is dominant, denotes another stage in individualism, a yet stronger falling back on the ego: the emergence of a society in which the atomization of individuals has become an important fact, an atomization submitted to or desired, according to the case, which does not appear in contradiction to present research in new ways of socializing, new forms of tribalism and so on, as is clearly indicated by what we agree to call the associative phenomenon. This is a characteristic of societies in which individualism is a structural fact: the development of an infinitely plural and polyphonic character. In these societies, in fact, the initiative is assumed by individuals or groups more than it is in a culture that tends to become a simple formal framework. (shrink)

David Crystal (b. 1941) is a veritable language institution. As a writer, editor, lecturer, and broadcaster on all aspects of language he is not only an eminent linguist but also a widely known spo...

In this book, which thoroughly revises and greatly expands his classic work Sameness and Substance, David Wiggins retrieves and refurbishes in the light of twentieth-century logic and logical theory certain conceptions of identity, of substance and of persistence through change that philosophy inherits from its past. In this new version, he vindicates the absoluteness, necessity, determinateness and all or nothing character of identity against rival conceptions. He defends a form of essentialism that he calls individuative essentialism, and then a (...) form of realism that he calls conceptualist realism. In a final chapter he advocates a human being-based conception of the identity and individuation of persons, arguing that any satisfactory account of personal memory must make reference to the life of the rememberer himself. This important book will appeal to a wide range of readers in metaphysics, philosophical logic, and analytic philosophy. (shrink)