Healthcare workers in Pakistan are still fighting at the frontline to control the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 and have been identified as the earliest beneficiaries for COVID-19 vaccination by the health authorities of the country. Besides, the high vaccination rates of frontline healthcare workers are essential to overcome the ongoing pandemic and reduce the vaccines hesitancy among the general population. The current research employed the theory of planned behavior to investigate the COVID-19 vaccination behavior among FHWs in (...) Pakistan as well as the predictors of such behavior. Following the epidemic control and prevention policies, a sample of 680 FHWs were accessed to fill in the questionnaire evaluating the components of the TPB. Moreover, the potential role of anticipated regret and perceived susceptibility on COVID-19 vaccination behavior was also assessed. The partial least square structural equation modeling results revealed that the TPB components, as well as the AR, have positive associations with the COVID-19 vaccination behavior. The results further confirmed that PS positively affects the anticipated regret, attitude, and subjective norm to vaccinate against SARS-CoV-2. The perceived susceptibility also has a positive association with COVID-19 vaccination behavior through the mediation of anticipated regret, ATT, and SN. Our findings highlighted the importance of COVID-19 vaccination among healthcare workers, which can be applied to reduce vaccine hesitancy among the general public. (shrink)

Many social scientists report that they find it difficult to frame adequate definitions of the important terms of the field. At present they are definition-shy. It is the purpose of this paper to show that this avoidance reaction is neither necessary nor desirable as a means for advancing social science. In order that this be made clear, an analysis of an important term will be presented. First, however, a few preparatory questions about the technique of defining must be asked and (...) answered. (shrink)

Of course it has always been recognized, in philosophical circles at least, that such deductions are at best plausible inferences, rather than a species of logically valid inferences, and we will not pretend otherwise. Still, it seems interesting to consider the question: why do people have puzzles, games of chance, games of strategy, and aesthetic objects, universally in human societies?

This article analyzes the figure of Omar Khayyam by looking at his famous quatrains or rubayat,focusing on the reception and review of the Arab philosophies of his time, and the defense that he makes of Persian Archaic, Zoroastrian, Mazdean and Manichean culture and philosophy.

Nous avons cherch dcle sur le Livre V des ments d'Euclide, m; et notamment de traduire en anglais les passages que nous avons jug d'expliquer pourquoi certains maths lfinition des grandeurs proportionnelles que l'on trouve au dléments.

We here present the Arabic text, with an English translation, of certain pages dedicated by al-Khayyām to the mathematical theory of music. Our edition is based on a manuscript extant in a library in Manisa, and corrects the mistakes found in another transcription. Lastly, we compare the theory of al-Khayyām with other Arabic theories of Music, and with those coming from other traditions. Résumé Nous présentons ici le texte arabe, avec traduction anglaise, de certaines pages consacrées par al-Khayyām à la (...) théorie mathématique de la musique. Notre édition se fonde sur un manuscrit conservé dans une bibliothèque de Manisa et corrige les erreurs d'une autre transcription. Nous comparons enfin la théorie d'al-Khayyām avec d'autres théories arabes de la musique, et avec certaines théories issues d'autres traditions. (shrink)

The critical narrative of this interdisciplinary book offers a first-time look at the interrelationship between biology, mythology and philosophy in human development. Its daring premise follows the trajectory of human thought, starting with the biological roots of fear and the original need for religion, truth-seeking, and myth-making. The narrative then innovatively links a number of maverick philosophical teachings over the centuries, from pre-Buddhist times to the Buddha, from Epicurus and Pyrrho to Lucretius, and eventually to the seminal poetry of Omar (...) Khayyam. These emergent philosophies exemplified liberation from the grasp of mythical and religious thinking and instead espoused an empirical and joyful mind. The narrative concludes with a look at the emancipating philosophical movement that resulted in the European Enlightenment, and it suggests that the philosophical teachings explored in the book may offer the potential for a second, broader Enlightenment. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to identify the parameters of cyclization, as well as techniques for updating the ancient form and technique of polyphonic writing by modern musical means in a cappella choral music. The subject of the study is the choral creativity of Sergei Ekimov. The object of the research is the study of the architectonics of the cyclic form and the consideration of polyphonic techniques in thirteen five-voice madrigals "From the Rubayat of Omar Khayyam" by S. (...) Ekimov. The musical language of the St. Petersburg master is saturated with semantic concentration, differs in the expression of the utterance. The appeal to ancient polyphonic genres, forms and techniques of writing in S. Ekimov's choral cycles is characterized by an individual approach to solving creative ideas. S. Ekimov embodies the images of Omar Khayyam's poetry in music and forms his own author's concept of the entire cycle. Through the synthesis of research methods, including musicology, poetics and choral studies, the parameters of musical composition are revealed: the architectonics of the cycle, genre specificity and musical. The author examines in detail such an aspect of the topic as the dialectical interaction of constructive and destructive formants of the architectonics of the musical form of polyphonic compositions for chorus. The main conclusion of the research is the paradigm of artistic connections of the Western European polyphonic tradition with the achievements of Russian musical culture through the prism of modern techniques of compositional writing (sonorica, aleatorica). The attention is focused on the need to study the problems associated with the architectonics of modern choral polyphonic a cappella cycles, due to the general artistic and historical potential and the significance of Russian choral music. The novelty of the research lies in the fact that for the first time the polyphonic cycle of choral creativity a cappella by a modern Russian composer is analyzed from the standpoint of musicology and choral studies. A special contribution of the author to the disclosure of the topic is the study of Sergei Ekimov's essay "From the Rubayat of Omar Khayyam", which has not previously been the object of special research, and its introduction into modern scientific usage. (shrink)

Dans l'introduction à un texte majeur consacré à la composition des rapports et dans lequel on s'accorde à voir un pas important dans l'élaboration de la notion de nombre irrationnel, al-Khayyām remarque.

Indeterminism is opposed to the philosophic theory of determinism, of which Sir Arthur Eddington, in a recent pronouncement on this subject, 1 quotes three definitions. On the ground that it expresses unequivocally what we all feel to be the gist of the theory, he gives preference to the third, from Omar Khayyám:—.

Girolamo Saccheri (1667--1733) was an Italian Jesuit priest, scholastic philosopher, and mathematician. He earned a permanent place in the history of mathematics by discovering and rigorously deducing an elaborate chain of consequences of an axiom-set for what is now known as hyperbolic (or Lobachevskian) plane geometry. Reviewer's remarks: (1) On two pages of this book Saccheri refers to his previous and equally original book Logica demonstrativa (Turin, 1697) to which 14 of the 16 pages of the editor's "Introduction" are devoted. (...) At the time of the first edition, 1920, the editor was apparently not acquainted with the secondary literature on Logica demonstrativa which continued to grow in the period preceding the second edition \ref[see D. J. Struik, in Dictionary of scientific biography, Vol. 12, 55--57, Scribner's, New York, 1975]. Of special interest in this connection is a series of three articles by A. F. Emch [Scripta Math. 3 (1935), 51--60; Zbl 10, 386; ibid. 3 (1935), 143--152; Zbl 11, 193; ibid. 3 (1935), 221--333; Zbl 12, 98]. (2) It seems curious that modern writers believe that demonstration of the "nondeducibility" of the parallel postulate vindicates Euclid whereas at first Saccheri seems to have thought that demonstration of its "deducibility" is what would vindicate Euclid. Saccheri is perfectly clear in his commitment to the ancient (and now discredited) view that it is wrong to take as an "axiom" a proposition which is not a "primal verity", which is not "known through itself". So it would seem that Saccheri should think that he was convicting Euclid of error by deducing the parallel postulate. The resolution of this confusion is that Saccheri thought that he had proved, not merely that the parallel postulate was true, but that it was a "primal verity" and, thus, that Euclid was correct in taking it as an "axiom". As implausible as this claim about Saccheri may seem, the passage on p. 237, lines 3--15, seems to admit of no other interpretation. Indeed, Emch takes it this way. (3) As has been noted by many others, Saccheri was fascinated, if not obsessed, by what may be called "reflexive indirect deductions", indirect deductions which show that a conclusion follows from given premises by a chain of reasoning beginning with the given premises augmented by the denial of the desired conclusion and ending with the conclusion itself. It is obvious, of course, that this is simply a species of ordinary indirect deduction; a conclusion follows from given premises if a contradiction is deducible from those given premises augmented by the denial of the conclusion---and it is immaterial whether the contradiction involves one of the premises, the denial of the conclusion, or even, as often happens, intermediate propositions distinct from the given premises and the denial of the conclusion. Saccheri seemed to think that a proposition proved in this way was deduced from its own denial and, thus, that its denial was self-contradictory (p. 207). Inference from this mistake to the idea that propositions proved in this way are "primal verities" would involve yet another confusion. The reviewer gratefully acknowledges extensive communication with his former doctoral students J. Gasser and M. Scanlan. ADDED 14 March 14, 2015: (1) Wikipedia reports that many of Saccheri's ideas have a precedent in the 11th Century Persian polymath Omar Khayyám's Discussion of Difficulties in Euclid, a fact ignored in most Western sources until recently. It is unclear whether Saccheri had access to this work in translation, or developed his ideas independently. (2) This book is another exemplification of the huge difference between indirect deduction and indirect reduction. Indirect deduction requires making an assumption that is inconsistent with the premises previously adopted. This means that the reasoner must perform a certain mental act of assuming a certain proposition. It case the premises are all known truths, indirect deduction—which would then be indirect proof—requires the reasoner to assume a falsehood. This fact has been noted by several prominent mathematicians including Hardy, Hilbert, and Tarski. Indirect reduction requires no new assumption. Indirect reduction is simply a transformation of an argument in one form into another argument in a different form. In an indirect reduction one proposition in the old premise set is replaced by the contradictory opposite of the old conclusion and the new conclusion becomes the contradictory opposite of the replaced premise. Roughly and schematically, P,Q/R becomes P,~R/~Q or ~R, Q/~P. Saccheri’s work involved indirect deduction not indirect reduction. (3) The distinction between indirect deduction and indirect reduction has largely slipped through the cracks, the cracks between medieval-oriented logic and modern-oriented logic. The medievalists have a heavy investment in reduction and, though they have heard of deduction, they think that deduction is a form of reduction, or vice versa, or in some cases they think that the word ‘deduction’ is the modern way of referring to reduction. The modernists have no interest in reduction, i.e. in the process of transforming one argument into another having exactly the same number of premises. Modern logicians, like Aristotle, are concerned with deducing a single proposition from a set of propositions. Some focus on deducing a single proposition from the null set—something difficult to relate to reduction. (shrink)

The volume D'al-Khwārizmī à Descartes is a monumental contribution to the world history of mathematical sciences, showing clearly that Arabic mathematics was an indispensable predecessor of early modern European mathematics. Roshdi Rashed is known, first of all, as an editor of classical mathematical writings in Arabic by such authors as al-Khwārizmī, Thābit ibn Qurra, Ibrāhīm ibn Sinān, Ibn al-Haytham, al-Khayyām, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, as well as of the Arabic versions of Apollonius' Conics , Diophantus' Arithmetica , and Diocles' Burning Mirrors (...) . As the volume under review shows, he is also a historian of mathematics of the first class who has transformed historiography. This book is, in a sense, a manifesto of Prof. Rashed's entire œuvre. (shrink)

In order to find positive solutions for third-degree equations, which he did not know how to solve for roots, m proceeds by the intersections of conic sections. The representation of an algebraic equation by a geometrical curve is made possible by the choices of units of measure for lengths, surfaces, and volumes. These units allow a numerical quantity to be associated with a geometrical magnitude. Is there a trace of this unit in the mathematicians to whom al-Khayyām refers directly in (...) his Algebra? How does this unit enable the measurement of quantities and rational and irrational relations? We find answers to these questions in the commentaries to Books V and X of the Elements. (shrink)

Libertad o utopía? -- Unamuno en el infierno -- El año de los poetas -- El hombre superior -- Concursos y premios literarios -- Por fortuna aún contamos con la poesía -- Desahogo lírico -- Xenofobia -- Variaciones sobre un tema de Omar Khayyam -- Simón Bolívar y la lectura -- El tierno encanto de las pequeñas ciudades.

There are, plainly, very many reasons why a controversy should be inconclusive and abortive, and yet constantly reviving. It might, for example, be one that interests only the very stupid or prejudiced; or one that interests everyone deeply, demanding an answer of everyone, yet not yielding any really decisive evidence; or the controversy might be one in which thesis and antithesis are natural expressions of opposed psychological types ; or it might be one that is commonly conducted in terms that (...) are vague, misleading, and question-begging. In this paper I shall confine myself to the last of these reasons: the use of language which makes it extremely difficult to understand what either of the parties are really asserting, and where, if at all, they contradict each other. I hope I shall not be thought to exaggerate the importance of this familiar factor, but I hope to show that in many important controversies the best will in the world and all the patience and tolerance a man can muster are not sufficient: special training and considerable independent reflection are necessary if the debate in question is not to prove as profitless as those described by Omar Khayyam of Naishapur: Myself when young did eagerly frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same Door as in I went. (shrink)