On spirituality as practiced and lived in India.

Life in a Himalayan hermitage, by L. Reymond.--Talks on sâmkhya, by Shrî Anirvân.--The Bâüls of Bengal, by Shrî Anirvân.--Mystic songs.

Most people encounter art images as digital reproductions on a computer screen instead of as originals in a museum or gallery. With the development of digital technologies, high-resolution artworks can be accessed anywhere and anytime by a large number of viewers. Since these digital images depict the same content and are attributed to the same artist as the original, it is often implicitly assumed that their aesthetic evaluation will be similar. When it comes to the digital reproductions of art, however, (...) it is also obvious that reproductions do differ from the originals in various aspects. Besides image quality, resolution, and format, the most obvious change is in the representation of color. The effects of subjectively varying surface-level image features on art evaluation have not been clearly assessed. To address this gap, we compare the evaluation of digital reproductions of 16 expressionist and impressionist paintings manipulated to have a high color saturation vs. a saturation similar to the original. We also investigate the impact of viewing time and expertise, two other aspects that may impact the perception of art in online contexts. Moreover, we link these dimensions to a recent model of aesthetic experience [the Vienna Integrated Model of Top-Down and Bottom-Up Processes in Art Perception ]. Results suggest that color saturation does not exert a major influence on liking. Cognitive and emotional aspects, however, are affected – to different extents for experts and laypersons. For laypersons, the increase in color saturation led to more positive assessments of an artwork, whereas it resulted in increased confusion for art experts. This insight is particularly important when it comes to reproducing artworks digitally. Depending on the intended use, increasing or decreasing the color saturation of the digitally reproduced image might be most appropriate. We conclude with a discussion of these findings and address the question of why empirical aesthetics requires more precise dimensions to better understand the subtle processes that take place in the perception of today’s digitally reproduced art environment. (shrink)

The recent publication of A Grammar of Qumran Aramaic by T. Muraoka provides a much-needed analysis of this important corpus of Aramaic texts. The grammar treats not only the corpus of texts found near Wadi Qumran, collectively known as the Dead Sea Scrolls, but also texts from neighboring regions along the Dead Sea, including Wadi Murabba’at and Naḥal Ḥever. The book is thorough and well written and represents the first in-depth grammar of these texts; it goes well beyond the only (...) other existing grammar, that of Ursula Schattner-Rieser, L’araméen des manuscrits de la mer Morte: I. Grammaire. Muraoka’s grammar lists copious textual citations that give a reader the sense that the observations are backed up by solid data. All the same, it does not attempt to state more than the evidence can allow. The thoroughness of the treatment allows one to compare afresh some points of contact between the grammar of these texts and that of the Hebrew scrolls. Despite the usefulness of this grammar and the nuance with which it is realized, the grammar does contain some points of confusion and inconsistency, some of which are outlined below. (shrink)

Le « je pense, donc je suis » doit être interprété comme la vérification d’une hypothèse, c’est-à-dire comme une intuition qui porte sur un existant et qui est explicitée au moyen d’un syllogisme hypothétique. L’activité du sujet pensant dépend aussi bien du pouvoir déductif que du pouvoir appréciatif de la raison. La recherche métaphysique a pour tâche de découvrir les conditions dernières de l’existence et de l’activité du sujet pensant et de son rapport avec ce qui se pose devant lui (...) comme un « donné ». (shrink)