Modern physics has revealed the universe as a much stranger place than we could have imagined. The puzzle at the centre of our knowledge of the universe is time. Michael Lockwood takes the reader on a fascinating journey into the nature of things. He investigates philosophical questions about past, present, and future, our experience of time, and the possibility of time travel. We zoom in on the behaviour of molecules and atoms, and pull back to survey the expansion of the (...) universe. We learn about entropy and gravity, black holes and wormholes, about how it all began and where we are all headed. Things will never seem the same again after a voyage through The Labyrinth of Time. (shrink)

Review by A. Kanamori, Boston University (author of The Higher Infinite), review in The Bulletin of Symbolic Logic: “Notwithstanding and braving the daunting complexities of this labyrinth, José Ferreirós has written a magisterial account of the history of set theory which is panoramic, balanced and engaging. Not only does this book synthesize much previous work and provide fresh insights and points of view, but it also features a major innovation, a full-fledged treatment of the emergence of the set-theoretic approach (...) in mathematics from the early nineteenth century. Much of history is in the details, and much of good history is in tone, emphasis, and the drawing together of different strands. Without being Whiggish, Ferreirós is never far from major synthetic themes, themes that in the main work toward balance and pull back from excesses of emphasis of some recent histories. The main criticism of the book would have to be on matters of broad interpretation. Yet, Ferreirós brings a considerable mathematical acuity and expertise to his enterprise, and this makes his viewpoints the more compelling.” . (shrink)

The Labyrinth is man's symbol for his human condition; it is life itself, and not a prison to be escaped but to be lived in.

Labyrinths of Love is an interdisciplinary examination of the self, psyche, and soul, providing a comparative analysis from religious, paranormal research and transpersonal theory perspectives. The work creates a unique synthesis that unfolds what it means to be human and demonstrates a visionary epistemology of the self.

The Labyrinth of Mind and World: Beyond Externalism–Internalism. By Chakraborty Sanjit.

Heliodorus is known for his elaborate narrative technique. This effect is due to ekphrasis, a resource widely used by sophists and recommended in textbooks of rhetoric (Progymnasmata). In the first block of the work, Heliodorus uses this resource, but not randomly. There is an image, literally or metaphorically repeating itself: the labyrinth. Our intention is to demonstrate that the repetitions have a commonality, in addition to a strong hermeneutical appeal. Moreover, the labyrinths are introduced in the part where the (...) narrative is skillfully written in medias res. It is precisely in this passage that the reader, as in a labyrinth, is meanderingly led by several paths, until he reaches the understanding of the opening scene, at the mouth of the Nile. The analysis of the procedures used by Heliodorus leads to the conclusion that the succession of textual or imagethic labyrinths places the reader in a game, from which he can only emerge at the end of the fifth book. (shrink)

In the "Labyrinth of Legitimacy" and Ethos Analysis. Carl Schmitt and Herfried Münkler on the New Wars and New Warriors The article analyzes Münkler's continuation of Carl Schmitt's late work on international law in the book Kriegssplitter and emphasizes its divergent ethical approach.

In einer kühnen Metapher haben einst Hieronymus, Erasmus und Luther die Heilige Schrift als ein Labyrinth bezeichnet, das die Leser bei fortgesetztem Lesen in eine sich sogar steigernde Verwirrung stürze. Beinah im selben Atemzug wird eben dieselbe Heilige Schrift von eben denselben Autoren als der einzige Faden gepriesen, der die Leser aus dem Labyrinth ihres Lebens herausführe. Eines und dasselbe als Labyrinth und als Faden: Diese Figur ist paradigmatisch. Im Labyrinth der Ethik geht es nicht anders (...) zu. Nur wer sich ihm überläßt, findet aus ihm heraus. 24 Beiträge von namhaften Theologen und Theologinnen zur Theologischen Ethik finden sich in den fünf Abschnitten des vorliegenden Buches, das nacheinander "Biblische Grundlagen", "Theologische Systematik", "Ethische Modelle", "Ethische Leitbegriffe" und "Ethik und die Religionen" behandelt: Hans-Dieter Bastian: Zwischen Glauben und Handeln: Bibel-Lesen - Werner H. Schmidt: Glaube und Handeln. Aspekte des Alten Testaments - Wolfgang Schrage: Der 1. Korintherbrief als Paradigma paulinischer Ethik - Michael Wolter: Der Kompromiß bei Paulus - Jörg Haustein: Beobachtungen zum Schriftverständnis ökumenischer Dokumente - Gerhard Sauter: "Schrifttreue" in ethischer Urteilsbildung Günter Bader: Handeln im Namen Gottes - Erich Gräßer: Die ersten und die letzten Dinge. Bemerkungen zur theologischen und ethischen Schöpfungswahrnehmung - Marcin Hintz: Glaube, Tradition, Vernunft: Auf den Spuren theologischer Urteilsbildung im polnischen Protestantismus - Rolf Schäfer: Christliche Glaubens- und Sittenlehre bei Schleiermacher - Karl-Wilhelm Dahm: Herausforderungen für Selbstverständnis und Rolle des protestantischen Pfarrers im Zuge des Modernisierungsprozesses Traugott Jähnichen: Sozialethik auf dem Weg der Ausbildung von Bereichsethiken - Historische Traditionen und perspektivische Herausforderungen - Ulrich Eibach: Christengemeinde und christliches Leben und Handeln in der pluralistischen Gesellschaft - Ludger Honnefelder: Gesundheit unser "höchstes Gut"? Wertentscheidungen im Rahmen der Ressourcenallokation im Gesundheitswesen - Jörg Hübner: Kollektives Handeln im Zeitalter der Globalisierung. Perspektiven für eine zukünftige politische Ethik - Gottfried Hütter: Menschenwürde und Menschenrechte für Tiere? - Tobias Schlingensiepen: Adam, wo bist du? Die Entkontextualisierung menschlichen Lebens als Problem u. Herausforderung evangelischer Ethik Edgar Thaidigsmann: "Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben". Das Problem der Begründung einer Ethik der Verantwortung für das Lebendige bei Albert Schweitzer und Hans Jonas - Konrad Stock: Laster - der "vielnamige Frevel". Eine theologische Erinnerung an ein vergessenes Problem - Ulrich H. J. Körtner: Bildung und Wertebewußtsein. Anmerkungen zum Wertbegriff in der aktuellen Bildungsdiskussion - Hans G. Ulrich: Güter oder Werte? Zur Aufgabe der Theoriebildung in der evangelischen Sozialethik - Hartmut Kreß: Toleranz als Verpflichtung protestantischer Ethik Hans Waldenfels: Unterwegs zu einer interreligiösen Theologie - Sung-Hee Lee-Linke: Interreligiöse Ethik. Ein Modell für die Zukunft? (shrink)

As graduates embark on the next phase of their lives, what better way to get them accustomed to the rat race they are about to enter than by introducing them to the philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre? Cleverly told through the story of a pair of rats trapped in the labyrinth of existence, this allegory humorously conveys the key ideas of Sartre's existential philosophy in graphic-novel form - accessible for students and readers of all ages."--Back cover.

This article is written in the style and method of an autoethnography that focuses on the author's spiritual journey with God while living with chronic pain. The labyrinth is used as a metaphor and spiritual tool to describe this journey. The author's personal experience with religion and spirituality is described as well as the choice of moving from thinking about God being 'out there', far away and looking upon God's creation to discovering God within - God 'right here'. The (...) affects and effects of living with chronic pain are discussed in reference to the process of walking the circuits of a labyrinth. The role of different people who played a part in this journey is highlighted. This way of writing corresponds with a narrative way of living which concentrates on deconstruction of dominant discourses and looking for outcomes that may lead to hope and transformation. The difference between rainbow hope and reasonable hope is explained and the consequence of choosing reasonable hope is discussed. Transformation of the person through the journey becomes apparent in the article. (shrink)

In the preface to his Theodicy, Leibniz describes the whole of his philosophical work as an attempt to follow Ariadne’s thread through “the two famous labyrinths in which our reason goes astray.” The first and best known of these—the labyrinth of freedom—concerns the relation between contingency and necessity in history. The second—and the one I want to discuss—is what Leibniz calls the labyrinth of the composition of the continuum. The problem itself is relatively simple: how can indivisible and (...) distinct elements constitute a continuum? How, that is, can singularity possibly be thought if the real is everywhere continuous, without interruption or break? Leibniz, as is well known, affirms both extremes of these questions: what really exists are simple unities or wholes, and yet the totality of these unities constitutes a single, organically complete world. While one mode of approach would be to turn immediately to Leibniz’s elaboration of monadic expression and intrinsic predication, I want to examine the effects the problem generates for the specifically Leibnizian conception of the real and the ideal, as well as the transition this entails from the metaphorics of the labyrinth to the figure of the infinite library and the problem of repetition. (shrink)

This book carries forward the discourse on the mind’s engagement with the world. It reviews the semantic and metaphysical debates around internalism and externalism, the location of content, and the indeterminacy of meaning in language. The volume analyses the writings of Jackson, Chomsky, Putnam, Quine, Bilgrami and others, to reconcile opposing theories of language and the mind. It ventures into Cartesian ontology and Fregean semantics to understand how mental content becomes world-oriented in our linguistic communication. Further, the author explores the (...) liaison between the mind and the world from the phenomenological perspective, particularly, Husserl’s linguistic turn and Heidegger’s intersubjective entreaty for Dasein. The book conceives thought as a biological and socio-linguistic product which engages with the mind-world question through the conceptual and causal apparatuses of language. A major intervention in the field of philosophy of language, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers interested in philosophy, phenomenology, epistemology, and metaphysics . (shrink)

This book gathers together for the first time an important body of texts written between 1672 and 1686 by the great German philosopher and polymath Gottfried Leibniz. These writings, most of them previously untranslated, represent Leibniz's sustained attempt on a problem whose solution was crucial to the development of his thought, that of the composition of the continuum. The volume begins with excerpts from Leibniz's Paris writings, in which he tackles such problems as whether the infinite division of matter entails (...) perfect points, whether matter and space can be regarded as true wholes, whether motion is truly continuous, and the nature of body and substance. Comprising the second section is Pacidius Philalethi, Leibniz's brilliant dialogue of late 1676 on the problem of the continuity of motion. In the selections of the final section, from his Hanover writings of 1677-1686, Leibniz abandons his earlier transcreationism and atomism in favor of the theory of corporeal substance, where the reality of body and motion is founded in substantial form or force.Leibniz's texts (one in French, the rest in Latin) are presented with facing-page English translations, together with an introduction, notes, appendixes containing related excerpts from earlier works by Leibniz and his predecessors, and a valuable glossary detailing important terms and their translations. (shrink)

Les modifications profondes de notre système socio-culturel font émerger des questions éthiques nouvelles, à l'intérieur de toutes les disciplines qui ont l'homme pour objet, telles l'esthétique, la philosophie, la politique, le droit, la médecine.Pour comprendre ces questions, par-delà leur « actualité ponctuelle », dans le flux vivant de leur constitution, leur approche doit être patiente, complexe, parfois aussi éprouvante qu'une initiation au parcours du labyrinthe. C'est cette tâche difficile que les auteurs de ce livre ont tenté d'amorcer.Leurs contributions sont issues (...) du cycle de leçons publiques qui ont été organisées durant l'année académique 1984-1985, par l'École des sciences philosophiques et religieuses des Facultés universitaires Saint-Louis à Bruxelles. (shrink)

This important new book by a major voice in the Social Imaginaries movement offers the most systematic attempt to establish conceptual and historical links between the idea of modernity as a new civilization and the notion of multiple modernities. Arnason demonstrates a theory of globalization that is still compatible with the emphasis on unity and diversity of modernity as a civilization.

A fascinating account of exemplarity in the context of deconstruction.

This sharply intelligent, consistently provocative book takes the reader on an astonishing, thought-provoking voyage into the realm of delightful uncertainty--a world of paradox in which logical argument leads to contradiction and common sense is seemingly rendered irrelevant.

The problem at the center of this essay is how one can reconcile the continuity of space with a monadological theory of matter, according to which matter is ultimately composed of simple elements, a problem that greatly exercised Leibniz, the Wolffians, and Kant. The underlying purpose of this essay is to illustrate my reading of Kant’s philosophical development, and of his relation to the Wolffians and Leibniz, according to which, (a), this development was fueled by ‘home-grown’ problems that arose within (...) the framework of the Wolffian philosophy from which Kant started out, and, (b), on his journey to critical idealism, Kant gradually moved away from Wolffianism, but closer to Leibniz, which, however, he came to realize only some years after the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason. This reading is illustrated by showing that the problem of how to reconcile the continuity of space with a monadological theory of matter is a problem that Kant inherits from Leibniz and the Wolffians, in whose thinking it already plays an important role, that Leibniz’s mature solution to the problem differs markedly from the Wolffian solution, and that Kant’s early, pre-critical solution is largely Wolffian, while his later critical solution is largely Leibnizian, as he himself notes with gleeful satisfaction. The discussion also reveals that this problem is one of the key problems that fueled Kant’s philosophical development and, eventually, led him to the discovery of transcendental idealism. (shrink)

"Powerfully testifies to the persistence of intellectual engagement in an era of cynical exhaustion". -- Martin Jay.

The academic literature has viewed drivers of corruption in isolation and, consequently, failed to examine their synergistic effect. Such an isolated view provides incomplete information, leads to a misleading conclusion, and causes great difficulty in curbing corruption. This paper conducts a systematic literature review to identify the drivers of corruption in the construction industry. Subsequently, it develops a system dynamics (SD) model by conceptualizing corruption as a complex system of interacting drivers. Building on stakeholder and open systems theories, the proposed (...) SD model shows how the complex reinforcing relationship between authoritative, organizational, cultural, and financial drivers of corruption further increases corrupt practices. The new model also provides lessons that can be helpful in the development of policy frameworks to control corruption in the construction industry. To achieve success in the fight against corruption, the findings of this research suggest that (1) corruption must be understood at both the organizational and state levels, (2) anticorruption practices must be informed by ethically grounded stakeholder management strategies, and (3) anticorruption reforms must go hand-in-hand with strategies to tackle the economic downturn. (shrink)

This is a survey of the concept of continuity. Efforts to explicate continuity have produced a plurality of philosophical conceptions of continuity that have provably distinct expressions within contemporary mathematics. I claim that there is a divide between the conceptions that treat the whole continuum as prior to its parts, and those conceptions that treat the parts of the continuum as prior to the whole. Along this divide, a tension emerges between those conceptions that favor philosophical idealizations of continuity and (...) those that are more readily available for mathematico-scientific use. (shrink)

Philip Appleman sagely and eloquently addresses such questions as where we came from, whether there is a God, and if there is, why there is so much evil and turmoil in the world. Putting this in the illuminating context of our evolutionary development and cultural history, he also ponders the notion of an afterlife and what role it has in determining our behaviour while we are alive. Twenty-first-century thinkers, reflecting on the long and horrendous history of religious wars and atrocities, (...) are no longer willing to pay the traditional deference to religious authority, preferring instead to seek inside their own lives, thoughts and actions for the answers to life's greatest questions. Appleman concludes that a life well lived, short as it is in the eons of our planet's existence, is its own reward. (shrink)

In the Rules the young Descartes likens his method to the thread that guided Theseus. The simile is born of a confidence that he has seen through the art of the followers of Daedalus and this has given him a model of how to unriddle the labyrinth of the world. From the very beginning Descartes had an interest not only in optics, perspective, and painting, but in using his knowledge of them to duplicate some of the effects said to (...) have been created by the thaumaturgic magicians. Anamorphoses and automata not only provided Descartes with examples of deceptive appearance, but also pointed the way to the solution of the riddle they posed. Yet it is precisely the attempt to take this exit from the labyrinth of the world that threatens to lead back into it, as the search for truth is threatened by the infinity of space. To claim absolute truth, the natural philosopher would have to show that the mechanical model he has proposed is the only one that could account for the phenomena in question. This, as Descartes himself is forced to recognize, he is unable to do. Are we back in the labyrinth? Instead of seeing in Descartes's method an Ariadne's thread, Father Bourdin likens that method to Icarus. Annoyed, Descartes ridicules the good Father. But Bourdin's too often empty rhetoric raises a serious question: is Descartes Theseus, Daedalus, or Icarus? At stake is our understanding of the world we live in. (shrink)

This essay looks at the way in which the end of the world syndrome manifests itself regularly as a form of human consciousness. It makes us alert to the possibility of our own instant expiry, causing us both to introspect, as well as to imagine the future of the species. Digitalization and digitization of trauma permits us to see the normality of death as an every present occurrence. Within this context, words have tremendous power, showing us that at each moment (...) we are being ushered into a space not necessarily of our own making. While it frightens us, yet the choices we have are limited to the class and ethnic locations of our everyday survival. While we live, we dream. Negation does not end ambition, it only proves the ephemerality of individual existence and makes us seek to use time as best as our imagination and survival capabilities allow. Our sadness about corporeality is mitigated by the dream we have of species continuity. (shrink)

In God in the Labyrinth, Andrew Hollingsworth uses Umberto Eco's semiotic concept of the model encyclopedia as the basis for a new model and approach to systematic theology. Following an in-depth analysis of the model encyclopedia in Eco's semiotics, he demonstrates the implications this model has for epistemology, hermeneutics, and doctrinal development. This work aims to bridge the unfortunate gap in research that exists between the fields of systematic theology and semiotics by demonstrating semiotic insights for theological method.

With the help of Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein the problem of image and language and, related to that, the problem of ethics and aesthetics is developed. The train of thought begins with the early Wittgenstein, who can be seen as a ‘logoclast’ - ‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent’ - seeing possibilities for showing the ethical and the religious in art. Via Kierkegaard’s critique of the aesthetic image we then come to a critique of the shared presupposition of (...) ‘logoclasm’ and ‘iconoclasm’, namely that image and language are two separate ways, a right and a wrong one. The critique of this presupposition leads us to Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, where we find a fundamental qualification of the separation of word and image, and to a more complete Kierkegaard, where neither language nor image have exclusive rights. The ways are not separate and it is not true that one of them is right and the other wrong; moreover, there are no two great ways; image and language, both with Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard, are each exceedingly diverse. (shrink)

This article is based on the general introduction and the opening sections of chapters 1 and 2 from the author's book,Living in the Labyrinth of Technology. It revisits the process of industrialization as having a dual component: people changing technology and technology changing people. The latter is almost universally overlooked and provides a different perspective.

How to reconcile monadic simplicity with the successive plurality of the monadic states ? The doctrine of continued creation seems to entail the existence of independent temporal parts and thus lead to the thesis that the world contains only transitory things. I try to show how Leibniz has the resources to get out of this quandary. The analysis of the concept of extension shows that a plurality of states does not constitute a divisible aggregate. Then I examine the Leibnizian interpretation (...) of continued creation, by com- paring it to the scholastic and Cartesian Background. From thence I conclude that Leibniz’s final thesis is that monads are wholly present at each moment of their duration. (shrink)