How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University

Hymns have always been part of Christian liturgy, expressing the faith in congregational song. The NZ hymnwriter of the late twentieth century writes within a secular society which increasingly questions the relevance of religion. This thesis examines and describes issues with which modern hymnwriters are confronted in the practice of their work, the intention being to produce a work of practical benefit to those using hymns in some way. The thesis begins with an historical overview of the ways hymnology has developed. From this background it is possible to ascertain a working definition of a hymn, and to discover how hymns have been used over the centuries to express certain theological points of view about the nature of the church, particularly as it relates to society as a whole. Hymns are a combination of doctrine and song. How words and music combine to form the complex experience of a hymn is discussed in Chapter two. Music has always been a contentious issue within the church for it brings the possibility of the "secular" into worship. Music style is an expression of a church's theology of church in the world. The choice of music as part of the experience of a hymn is a crucial issue. In a secular society, the charge of irrelevance is levelled at religion in general, and hymns in particular. Chapter Three discusses the meaning of "relevance" for hymnology. This is related to hermeneutics, liturgy, and tradition, with particular focus on Reader-Response Criticism as a tool for understanding the dynamics of the texts relationship to the reader/singer. The modern hymnwriter must overcome the conservatism of hymnbook collections. The quest for relevance and the exploration of new styles takes place largely outside the confines of hymnbooks. As liturgy is the milieu within which hymns are experienced and for which they are written, the thesis raises four questions by which to test the effectiveness of hymns in worship. During the writing of this thesis an issue arose several times which is more properly the province of religious sociology or theology; the way in which hymns express the power struggle between the "organisation" and the people. many music forms used in the church began as people's songs and dances, but church use has dampened the original liveliness of these forms. I have addressed this issue in passing without exploring it fully. Because I am a Methodist presbyter, there are times when my Methodist bias shows. I make no apology for that. The NZ context from which I write is also an important factor in the choosing of illustrative material. I have deliberately used With One Voice as a source book for most hymn quotations as it is used in many NZ churches and can therefore add to the practical nature of this work. The thesis is not a critique of With One Voice

Accidental rightness

In this paper I argue that the disagreement between modern moral philosophers and (some) virtue ethicists about whether motive affects rightness is a result of conceptual disagreement, and that when they develop a theory of ‘right action,’ the two parties respond to two very different questions. Whereas virtue ethicists tend to use ‘right’ as interchangeable with ‘good’ or ‘virtuous’ and as implying moral praise, modern moral philosophers use it as roughly equivalent to ‘in accordance with moral obligation.’ One implication of this is that the possibility of an act being right by accident does not pose a problem for consequentialism or deontology. A further implication is that it reveals a shortcoming in virtue ethics, namely that it does not—yet needs to—present an account of moral obligation

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land? : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English at Massey University

Hymns have always been part of Christian liturgy, expressing the faith in congregational song. The NZ hymnwriter of the late twentieth century writes within a secular society which increasingly questions the relevance of religion. This thesis examines and describes issues with which modern hymnwriters are confronted in the practice of their work, the intention being to produce a work of practical benefit to those using hymns in some way. The thesis begins with an historical overview of the ways hymnology has developed. From this background it is possible to ascertain a working definition of a hymn, and to discover how hymns have been used over the centuries to express certain theological points of view about the nature of the church, particularly as it relates to society as a whole. Hymns are a combination of doctrine and song. How words and music combine to form the complex experience of a hymn is discussed in Chapter two. Music has always been a contentious issue within the church for it brings the possibility of the "secular" into worship. Music style is an expression of a church's theology of church in the world. The choice of music as part of the experience of a hymn is a crucial issue. In a secular society, the charge of irrelevance is levelled at religion in general, and hymns in particular. Chapter Three discusses the meaning of "relevance" for hymnology. This is related to hermeneutics, liturgy, and tradition, with particular focus on Reader-Response Criticism as a tool for understanding the dynamics of the texts relationship to the reader/singer. The modern hymnwriter must overcome the conservatism of hymnbook collections. The quest for relevance and the exploration of new styles takes place largely outside the confines of hymnbooks. As liturgy is the milieu within which hymns are experienced and for which they are written, the thesis raises four questions by which to test the effectiveness of hymns in worship. During the writing of this thesis an issue arose several times which is more properly the province of religious sociology or theology; the way in which hymns express the power struggle between the "organisation" and the people. many music forms used in the church began as people's songs and dances, but church use has dampened the original liveliness of these forms. I have addressed this issue in passing without exploring it fully. Because I am a Methodist presbyter, there are times when my Methodist bias shows. I make no apology for that. The NZ context from which I write is also an important factor in the choosing of illustrative material. I have deliberately used With One Voice as a source book for most hymn quotations as it is used in many NZ churches and can therefore add to the practical nature of this work. The thesis is not a critique of With One Voice

Aesthetic values in science

Scientists often use aesthetic values in the evaluation and choice of theories. Aesthetic values are not only regarded as leading to practically more useful theories but are often taken to stand in a special epistemic relation to the truth of a theory such that the aesthetic merit of a theory is evidence of its truth. This paper explores what aesthetic considerations influence scientists' reasoning, how such aesthetic values relate to the utility of a scientific theory, and how one can justify the epistemic role for such values. The paper examines ways in which the link between beauty and truth can be defended, the challenges facing such accounts, and explores alternative epistemic roles for aesthetic values in scientific practice

Dedication of the Palomar Observatory and the Hale Telescope

The dedication of the Palomar Observatory, if it were being held in England, would be accompanied by brilliant pageantry both of the state, with its knights, heralds, pursuivants, kings at arms, admirals and captains, and of the church with its bishops, priests and deacons, crucifiers and choirs; and I am sure that we feel the quality of religion in this ceremony. We would hear the choirs chanting in antiphony that great canticle which so delights the choir boys: Benedicite, omnia opera Domini

In Praise of Simplicity not Mathematistry! Ten Simple Powerful Ideas for the Statistical Scientist

Ronald Fisher was by all accounts a first-rate mathematician, but he saw himself as a scientist, not a mathematician, and he railed against what George Box called (in his Fisher lecture) mathematistry . Mathematics is the indispensable foundation for statistics, but our subject is constantly under assault by people who want to turn statistics into a branch of mathematics, making the subject as impenetrable to non-mathematicians as possible. Valuing simplicity, I describe ten simple and powerful ideas that have influenced my thinking about statistics, in my areas of research interest: missing data, causal inference, survey sampling, and statistical modeling in general. The overarching theme is that statistics is a missing data problem, and the goal is to predict unknowns with appropriate measures of uncertainty

The Church Musician as Steward of the Mysteries

(Excerpt) It hardly comes as a surprise to most that in the midst of the confusion generated, on the one hand, by proponents of a rigid representation of worship practices or, on the other hand, by the downright liturgical silliness perpetuated by those determined to sell religion in the worst possible way, there is equal confusion as to the role of the musician in the life and worship of the church. Proponents on either side of this great divide have radically different understandings of the role of music in the church. And if there is little agreement on the role of music in the life and worship of the church, it is hardly surprising that there should be so little agreement as to the role of the church musician

An autonomist view on the ethical criticism of architecture

It is a fact that there is ethical criticism about art. Art critics, the general public and even artists point out moral flaws in artworks while evaluating them. Philosophers, however, have maintained a hot debate on the meaning of such criticism. This debate can be understood as a disagreement about the kind of relation between the artistic value of artworks and their alleged moral value. While some claim that moral value can contribute to artistic value (moralism), others claim that there cannot be such a contribution (autonomism). Since at least some works of architecture are artworks, that debate also concerns architecture. A moderate moralist view claims that some works of architecture have moral flaws/merits that bear on their artistic evaluation. In an apparently promising version, the contention is that some moral flaws/merits are aesthetically relevant. In this paper I argue against such contention and defend an autonomist view. Following some taxonomy remarks I distinguish the views in the debate and present two points in favour of autonomism: its simplicity and not having the burden of proof. Then I discuss Carroll’s merited response argument for moralism and I argue that in its best interpretation either it begs the question against autonomism or it is compatible with it. I conclude with some possible objections that may help further investigations on the subject

The Aesthetics of Theory Selection and the Logics of Art

Philosophers of science discuss whether theory selection depends on aesthetic judgments or criteria, and whether these putatively aesthetic features are genuinely extra-epistemic. As examples, judgments involving criteria such as simplicity and symmetry are often cited. However, other theory selection criteria, such as fecundity, coherence, internal consistency, and fertility, more closely match those criteria used in art contexts and by scholars working in aesthetics. Paying closer attention to the way these criteria are used in art contexts allows us to understand some evaluative and developmental practices in scientific theory selection as genuinely aesthetic, enlarging the scope of the goals of science