Although Lermontov is traditionally viewed as Russia's “second greatest poet,” the bard of Russia's beauty and the critic of Russia's “superfluous men,” the philosophical content of his poetry and prose remains relatively unexamined. The article considers Lermontov's themes of the rebellious angel, freedom, and fate, and argues that although these themes were a product of his time, they are still relevant today.

Sky Marsen proposes a new way of reading philosophy, through the lens of narrative semiotics she highlights the similarities between creative and philosophical writing and shows how theoretical texts, such as philosophy, rely to a large extent on strategies of communication present also in fictional narratives.

How we can rethink our lives and reality to remove our filters and realize the wholeness that is inherent in ourselves and in our world.

__Rural Education in America_ provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the diversity and complexity of rural communities in the United States and for helping rural educators implement and evaluate successful place-based programs tailored for students and their families._ Written by educators who grew up in rural America and returned there to raise their children, the book illustrates how efficacy is determined by the degrees to which instruction, interventions, and programs address the needs and strengths of each unique rural community. Geoff (...) and Sky Marietta weave research, compelling case studies, and personal experience to illustrate effective approaches along the P-16 pipeline. Emphasizing the value and vitality of these communities, the authors advocate for solutions that fit the sociocultural and historical reality of the community, rather than strategies that fundamentally support out-migration. They also provide tools that can be used to evaluate rural educational initiatives and implement place-based strategies that are aligned with the strengths of a particular community. _Rural Education in America_ includes examples from a range of geographic locations, including Eastern Washington, Montana, Ohio, northern Minnesota, North Carolina, Mississippi, Kentucky, and the Navajo Nation. Core chapters focus on critical issues for advancing rural education including early literacy, STEM education, and college completion while highlighting successful programs and partnerships in these areas. This book presents a vision of what rural education can be and how it can attend to the well-being of the people, places, and regions that it serves. (shrink)

The introduction of respiratory machines in the 1950s may have saved the lives of many, but it also challenged the notion of death itself. This development endowed “machines” with the power to form a unique ontological creature: a live body with a “dead” brain. While technology may be blamed for complicating things in the first place, it is also called on to solve the resulting quandaries. Indeed, it is not the birth of the “brain-dead” that concerns us most, but rather (...) its association with a web of epistemological and ethical considerations, where technology plays a central role. The brain death debate in Israel introduces highly sophisticated religious thought and authoritative medical expertise. At focus are the religious acceptance and rejection of brain death by a technologically savvy group of rabbis whose religious doctrine––along with a particular form of religious reasoning––is used to support the truth claims made from the scientific community but challenge the ways in which they are made credible. In our case, brain death as “true” death is made religiously viable with the very use of technological apparatus and scientific rhetoric that stand at the heart of the scientific ethos. (shrink)

Two experiments involving an international collaboration of experimenters sought to replicate and extend a previously published psi experiment on precognition by Daryl Bem that has been the focus of extensive research. The experiment reverses the usual cause–effect sequence of a standard psychology experiment using priming and reaction times. The preregistered confirmatory hypothesis is that response times to incongruent stimuli will be longer than response times to congruent stimuli even though the prime has not yet appeared when the participant records their (...) judgments. The confirmatory hypothesis for Experiment 1 was not supported. Exploratory analyses indicated that those participants who completed the English-language version rather than a translation showed a significant effect, as was the case in the original study; no significant departure from chance was found in data involving non-English translations. Experiment 2 sought to enhance the predicted effect by having each participant read either a pro-psi or an anti-psi statement at the beginning of the experiment to test the pre-recorded hypothesis that a pro-psi statement would produce a larger effect than an anti-psi statement. The results did not support the primary psi hypothesis and there was no effect in the English-language sample. However, there was mixed support for the effect of the psi statement on performance; those participants who received the pro-psi statement had a greater psi score than those who received the anti-psi statement. As in the original experiment, neither the experimenters’ nor participants’ beliefs were significantly associated with the dependent measure. In sum, the pre-registered confirmatory hypotheses were not supported. The importance of the personality variable Sensation Seeking, a component of extraversion, as a correlate of psi performance is discussed as are the challenges and implications for international collaborations and replication in controversial science. Keywords: priming; expectancy effect; retrocausation; consciousness; sociology; precognition; psi; replication Two experiments involving an international collaboration of experimenters sought to replicate and extend a previously published psi experiment on precognition by Daryl Bem that has been the focus of extensive research. The experiment reverses the usual cause-effect sequence of a standard psychology experiment using priming and reaction times. The preregistered confirmatory hypothesis is that response times to incongruent stimuli will be longer than response times to congruent stimuli even though the prime has not yet appeared when the participant records his or her judgments. The confirmatory hypothesis for Study 1 was not supported. Exploratory analyses indicated that those participants who completed the English-language version rather than a translation showed a significant effect, as was the case in the original study; no significant departure from chance was found in data involving non-English translations. Study 2 sought to enhance the predicted effect by having each participant read either a pro-psi or an anti-psi statement at the beginning of the experiment to test the pre-recorded hypothesis that a pro-psi statement would produce a larger effect than an anti-psi statement. The results did not support the primary psi hypothesis and there was no observed association between belief and experience of ESP and psi outcome. However, there was mixed support for the effect of the psi statement on performance; those participants who received the pro-psi statement had a greater psi score than those who received anti-psi statement. As in the original experiment, neither the experimenters’ nor participants’ beliefs or expectations were significantly correlated with the dependent measure. In sum, the pre-registered confirmatory hypotheses were not supported. The importance of the personality variable Sensation Seeking, a component of extraversion, as a correlate of psi performance is discussed as are the challenges and implications for international collaborations and replication in controversial science. (shrink)

Members of the Student Clinical Ethics Committee discussed the ethical and legal issues arising in a case referred for consideration – the family of a very elderly non-English speaking Asian lady did not want her to be informed that she had incurable lymphoma. The case study summarises the reflections of the Committee and focusses on: the role of cultural norms in healthcare decision making; the extent to which the views of the family about what is best for the patient should (...) be respected, whether the patient should have been informed of her terminal diagnosis and the role of the clinician in navigating complex family dynamics. (shrink)

This article explores some innovations in the concept of identity in contemporary science fiction film. Using a narrative-semiotic method of analysis, the article discusses an emerging trend in science fiction that questions mainstream cultural beliefs regarding motivations for action and definitions of individual agency. Focusing on Alex Proyas's Dark City and Andrew Niccol's Gattaca, the article traces the ways in which this trend rearranges elements in narrative positioning to bring to light relational possibilities that challenge privileged attitudes toward who we (...) are and why we act the way we do. The selected films deal creatively with questions concerning the causal eects of past events, origins, or heritage, and give innovative answers to complex philosophical issues about the nature of reality. At the same time, they retain a popular aesthetic and a classical narrative structure. Their common characteristic is a narrative program composed of signs of resistance to notions of a fixed identity 'caused' by biography or genetic inheritance. These signs, furthermore, form the basis of unconventional interpretations of self and action that serve as catalysts in dismantling outmoded definitions of identity. The article explores these issues following a content-based approach that focuses on how agents and acts are constructed on the story level. (shrink)

I criticize the widely-defended view that the quantum measurement problem is an example of underdetermination of theory by evidence: more specifically, the view that the unmodified, unitary quantum formalism (interpreted following Everett) is empirically indistinguishable from Bohmian Mechanics and from dynamical-collapse theories like the GRW or CSL theories. I argue that there as yet no empirically successful generalization of either theory to interacting quantum field theory and so the apparent underdetermination is broken by a very large class of quantum experiments (...) that require field theory somewhere in their description. The class of quantum experiments reproducible by either is much smaller than is commonly recognized and excludes many of the most iconic successes of quantum mechanics, including the quantitative account of Rayleigh scattering that explains the color of the sky. I respond to various arguments to the contrary in the recent literature. (shrink)

“One day the day will come when the day will not come.” Bleak, but passionately political in its analysis of the social destruction wrought by modern technologies of communication and surveillance, Open Sky is Paul Virilio's most far-reaching and radical book. Deepening and extending his earlier work, he explores the growing danger of what he calls a “generalized accident,” provoked by the breakdown of our collective and individual relation to time, space and movement in the context of global electronic media. (...) But this is not merely a lucid and disturbing lament for the loss of real geographical spaces, distance, intimacy or democracy. Open Sky is also a call for revolt—against the insidious and accelerating manipulation of perception by the electronic media and repressive political power, against the tyranny of “real time,” and against the infantilism of cyberhype. Virilio makes a powerful case for a new ethics of perception, and a new ecology, one which will not only strive to protect the natural world from pollution and destruction, but will also combat the devastation of urban communities by proliferating technologies of control and virtuality. (shrink)

Traditions that share the least number of motifs are located in continental Eurasia and Melanesia. African mythologies are poor and stand nearer to the Indo‑Pacific than to the Continental Eurasian pole. The Indo‑Pacific mythology preserved its African core. In Continental Eurasia a new set of motifs began to spread after the Late Glacial Maximum. Both sets of motifs were brought to the New World. The Indo-Pacific complex predominates in Latin, the Continental Eurasian one in North America. Sky‑maiden tales, largely unknown (...) in Africa and Australia, emerged in the Indo-Pacific borderlands of Asia. Both in Southeast Asia and in Latin America different images of the magic wife coexist (different birds, sky-nymphs, etc.), stories are often integrated into the anthropogenic myths. More specialized Swan-maiden stories spread across Northern Eurasia after the Late Glacial Maximum. Only Khori‑Buryat versions are related to actual mythology. Swan‑maiden was brought to America late by the Eskimo. (shrink)

The philosophical image of a “universe of discourse” can be misleading in the suggestions it carries about how to read Wittgenstein and how to approach the topic of the relation between language and reality. That is what I try to show by examining Ilham Dilman's discussion of medieval cosmology. I sketch an alternative account of the relation between medieval beliefs about the heavens and our astronomical beliefs, and I consider in detail the disagreement between the two accounts.

In this article, I propose to take up the concept and physical space of a photographic 'darkroom' located in Stone Town, Zanzibar, to explore a set of images from the Capital Art Studio (1930-present) collection produced by Ranchhod Oza (1907-93), and inherited by his son Rohit Oza (1950-). I employ a concept of darkness to read this visual archive differently and propose multiple 'other lives' for a set of images. First, by bringing this African photography collection to light, I am (...) taking it out of the 'dark rooms' of history in one sense and exposing it for interpretation. Second, I focus my lens on the Oza physical darkroom located in the back of the studio on Kenyatta Road in Stone Town, where photographs of a range of Zanzibari persons were both developed and printed and that open up the darkroom as a place of photographic complexity and sensorium, and not just mechanical reproduction. Third, I develop darkness as a form of beauty in certain images of sky, water and skin from this archive that showcase Zanzibar's position as an Indian Ocean island and port city whilst under rule by the Omani Sultanate (1698-1964) and British Protectorate (1890-1963). Fourth, I conceptualise the Zanzibar Revolution of 1964 as a time of visual darkness, which temporarily restricted photographic practices operating in Stone Town under the new Afro-Shirazi political party. Throughout my analysis, I use a framing of 'darkness' to interrogate photography as an aesthetic practice deeply immersed in materialities and metaphors of dark and light, black and white, and as integral to Zanzibar's oceanic islandness. (shrink)

For centuries philosophers have disputed whether the sky really is blue or whether this ;blueness ; is only in the eye of the beholder. But perhaps there is a better way to think about perception . . . In this controversial and challenging book, Jamie Carnie introduces a radical new perspective on the way our senses operate, setting out to save our instinctive belief that colors, sounds, flavors, textures, and scents are features of the ;real ; world and not just (...) mental constructs that disappear the moment we look away. A minimal model of the mind as a virtual machine helps us formulate Carnie's universe. (shrink)

This is an exceptional volume which expands upon the World Phenomenology Institute's recent research: the study of the beautiful intertwining of the skies and the cosmos with the human pursuits of philosophy, literature and the arts. The relationship of humans to the cosmos is examined through the exploration of phenomenology, metaphysics and the arts. The authors of this volume write on a variety of topics which all seek to open the reader's eyes to the relationship of humans and our perception (...) of our place in the cosmos. This volume offers a framework in which to present a rich panorama; a variety of perspectives illustrating how the perception of the interplay between human beings and the celestial realm advances in common experience and worldviews. This attempt to uncover our cosmic position is a great and worthwhile intellectual challenge. Philosophy as well as literature and the arts are nourished by this human quest for knowledge and understanding. (shrink)

Concise and understandable, the book explains pertinent findings of modern neuroscience and describes how consciousness arises in complex brains.

This paper presents an ontological perspective that enables evaluating the effectiveness of business models from an integrative worldview. Different groups’ fragmented and reductionist views on this topic create a dichotomy that makes it difficult to compare and analyze them in practice. Such groups use different values for some components, which may result in neglecting others and their interrelationship. This study discusses a functional characteristic of business models that academia still needs to address. It explores new frontiers in the field, such (...) as business models for networks, sustainability, and their practical evaluation. To achieve an integrative ontology and avoid focusing on specific constructs or systems at the expense of others, we draw upon the theory of worldviews from Wilhelm Dilthey, reformational philosophy, and Herman Dooyeweerd’s theory of modal aspects. Society should move beyond dualistic thinking and embrace practical and applicable solutions. To help companies develop effective models, we introduce a new business model framework based on an integrative worldview that enables comparisons and evaluations of companies in practice. Creating competitive advantages and value appropriations synergizes with essential aspects of reformational philosophy. Analyzing and interrelating such elements are fundamental to understanding the real applied value of business models. (shrink)

Looking at the finding of several archeoastronomers, who examine the relationship of built cultures to celestial bodies, this essay speculates on the unique relationship of the inhabitants of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico to the earth and sky. The Anasazi who populated this region suddenly disappeared around 1000 A.D. and little is known about their culture, religion, and world except by studying the structures they left behind. This essay looks at their kivas, dwellings, the puzzling “Sun dagger” monument, and the (...) petroglyphs throughout the canyon to understand the many ways that each structure through use of light andspace marked the occurrence of a surprising number of celestial events. There is good evidence that the Anasazi dwelled within the sky and felt a continuity between earth and sky in a way to which postmodern cultures have little access. The unity of body and surround, especially as ascending into the sky from the earth, is linked to a spirituality at odds with the legacy of Plato and others, who oppose the celestial to the earthly, as an inferior realm. (shrink)

I want to report a thoroughly (perhaps surreally) modern experience I had recently. First a little context. I've always been a zealous scholarly letter writer (to the point of once being cited in print as "personal communication, pp. 14 - 20"). These days few share my epistolary penchant, which is dismissed as a doomed anachronism. Scholars don't have the time. Inquiry is racing forward much too rapidly for such genteel dawdling -- forward toward, among other things, due credit in print (...) for one's every minute effort. So I too had resigned myself to the slower turnaround but surer rewards of conventional scholarly publication. Until I came upon electronic mail: almost as rapid and direct and spontaneous as a telephone call, but with the added discipline and permanence of the written medium. I quickly became addicted, "logging on" to check my e mail at all hours of the day and night and accumulating files of intellectual exchanges with similarly inclined e epistoleans, files that rapidly approached book length. (shrink)

The philosophy of historical sciences investigates their distinct objects of study, epistemic challenges, and methodological solutions. Rethinking astronomy in this light offers a contribution. First, the methodology of historical sciences adds to a more adequate description of how astronomers study and utilize token events. Second, astronomy faces a typical difficulty in identifying traces of some past events and has developed a delicate solution. This enriches the idea of trace and suggests a methodology that relies on iterations between data-driven approaches and (...) theory-driven approaches, together with the cross-validation between multiple relevant historical events or datasets. (shrink)

A look into one artist’s philosophical perspective regarding the successes and challenges of creating public art installations. The essay explores the development of a series of large-scale temporary works through the artist’s intuitive, conceptual, and spiritual response to particular locations, which have ranged from Baltimore to New York to Seoul, Korea. The article comes to focus upon a particularly controversial installation constructed in Quiet Waters Park in Annapolis, Maryland. It explores the relationship between plastic debris and driftwood collected from the (...) faltering ecosystem of Chesapeake Bay beaches and what the public perceives as a natural environment of that park.The installation was created on top of the ruined foundation of an early twentieth-century hunting lodge located in a stand of old trees, which contained additional artifacts of the site’s original farm. The artist’s intent was to create an explicit walk-through environment with an implicit meaning in order to allow the public to contemplate and interpret the associations and meanings. What resulted was a well-publicized controversial split over spiritual questions, which exposed a divisive fault line between wealthy conservatives and the general public. (shrink)

The opinion has been expressed frequently of late, notably by Professor Mackail and Miss Stawell, that the Odyssey may well be the work of the advanced years of the Homer of the Iliad. Miss Stawell remarks that one of an alert mind must feel that the Odyssey is the poem of an older man—one who has conceived and written a poem before. She suggests that that poem may have been the Iliad. So Professor Mackail argues that a “different mind may (...) come to a poet with the lapse of years and with fresh experiences,” and that “the poet who produced the Iliad in the early prime of his life was a poet capable of the artistic and poetical change that is felt in the Odyssey, among new surroundings, with an altered view of life, with an imaginative ardour burning less strongly and with increased constructional mastery.”. (shrink)

Represented as the face of Venice, the houses of the Grand Canal were used during the Renaissance to support the portrayal of the Venetian Republic's unique structure of governance. Paolo Paruta's dialogue, Della perfettione della vita politica, a work of political theory on the Venetian Republic, is one such text used here to examine how in a changing context of modernization, architecture has been presented as a representation of state. Paruta's use of architecture as a representation of state was conceptually (...) different from those earlier writers such as Gasparo Contarini who presented the uniqueness of Venice's social qualities through its orderly governance and law. Fundamental to Paruta's incorporation of architecture to the conceptualization of Venice was Daniele Barbaro's interpretation of Vitruvius’ representation of the body-of-state, being reflected in the architectural makeup of the city. However, Vitruvius’ text, De architectura, described the monarch's body reflected in the architecture and urban strategies of the late Roman Republic. Paruta's use of the text and of Daniele Barbaro aimed to transfer these values to the Venetian Republic and its social formations. Subtly forging links between the radicalism of Doge Andrea Gritti's renovatio programmes and the power struggles of the young patricians, Paruta's aim for architecture was to support the preservation of Venetian values as distinct from those of Rome. Indications are that Paruta's message was understood. To examine the comprehensibility of Paruta's political propositions, his terms and arguments are analysed in the context of three different architectural composition types used in Venetian houses of the mid-sixteenth century. (shrink)

In delineating a trajectory of human history, anthropology and other social sciences have tended to describe traditional life in particular geographic terms while leaving modem experience universal in scope. Studies of science and technology, while helping to locate and describe centers of modern practice, have less frequently explored their edges. Using a case study of the location of the primary French/european space launch site in French Guiana, this article examines technologies associated with the development of space beyond the atmosphere by (...) evaluating the impact of rockets and satellites on the construction of human space on the ground. Exploring the social significance of a modem sky and its transformation of one tropical margin into a technical center, the question of where things are becomes one of how they are defined. The modem appears less a placeless universal center and more a moving boundary, one dividing humans, nature, and technology into less stable domains. (shrink)

Understanding the development and practice of power based on an in-depth observation of human psychology has been a part of traditional Chinese thought for thousands of years and is considered a prerequisite for mastering the arts of strategy and leadership. "Thunder in the Sky" presents two secret classics of this ancient Chinese tradition. The commentary by Thomas Cleary the renowned translator of dozens of Asian classics highlights the contemporary application of these teachings.

Does living on Earth not also for human beings mean being open to the sky? Watching day alternate with night, relying on the seasonal cycle, finding their way according to the position of the stars, humans have always been aware of their dependence on the sky and tried to understand the origin of life in relation to it. And it is up to the sky again that their imagination and thoughts fly whenever they feel cramped in their earthly habitat. Following (...) the axis of their own vertical position, the earth that is the floor for humans is seen as a ‘down here’ by opposition to an ‘up there’, the sky, towards which they turn their heads and raise their eyes. Up there is the origin of the metaphorical figure and /or dream image of the flight up into the high heavens, or the journey to other stars, or to a spiritual land beyond. (shrink)