St. Symeon the New Theologian and Western Dissident Movements

The trial at Orleans in 1022 of a group of aristocratic clergy, who included the confessor of Queen Constance of France, and their followers on the charge of heresy is the most fully reported among the group of heresy trials which were conducted in the Western Church during the first half of the eleventh century. Although the alleged heretics of Orleans are usually considered a part of a wider pattern of Western religious dissent, the charges brought against them differ considerably from those levelled against the other groups brought to trial in that period. The heterodox beliefs with which the canons of Orleans were charged bear a strong resemblance to the teachings of the Byzantine abbot, St. Symeon the New Theologian, who died in 1022. St. Symeon taught that it was possible for a Christian to experience the vision of God in this life if he or she received ascetic guidance from a spiritual director, who need not be a priest. In the late tenth and early eleventh centuries a significant number of Orthodox monks visited northern Europe, including Orleans, and some of them settled there. It is therefore possible that the Canons of Orleans who were put on trial had been trained in the tradition of St. Symeon by one of those Orthodox monks who were familiar with it. St. Symeon was part of the Hesychast tradition in the Byzantine Church. Even so, his emphasis on the supremacy of personal religious experience at the expense of the corporate worship of the institutional Church was strongly criticised by some of his contemporaries. A study of his writings shows that he was, in fact, completely Orthodox in faith and practice and that these criticisms were ill-judged. Nevertheless, if, as we have suggested, the Canons of Orleans had tried to live in accordance with his teachings, the hostile reactions of the Western hierarchy would be comprehensible. For there was no tradition of Hesychasm in the spirituality of the Western Church, and the fact that the dissidents at Orleans saw little value in observing the rituals of the established Church would have alarmed conventional churchmen

The Signature of God in Medicine and Microbiology An Apologetic Argument for Declarative Design in the Discoveries of Alexander Fleming

In logic and reasoning, a signature indicates the presence of an author; likewise, the characteristics of staphylococci indicate the presence of a Creator. Staphylococci and its “kind” are common bacteria, particularly in colonized people.1 Staphylococcus aureus has a complex molecular mechanism of assembling its golden pigment, staphyloxanthin. The biosynthesis of staphyloxanthin is a stellar example of irreducible complexity. Similar to staphylococci, the life and works of Alexander Fleming show the fingerprints of Providence. The so-called “serendipitous” achievements of Fleming have contributed to modern medicine, convincing Fleming and others that God was at work in his life. Fleming recognized that his life’s discoveries and the “weaving” of events were more than chance; it was the invisible hand of God on his life and works. The molecular complexities of staphylococci mechanisms and the achievements of Fleming indicate the signature of a divine Designer who has placed his signature on his art piece, staphylococci

The Antibiotic Revolution

In 1928, Alexander Fleming discovered Penicillin, which revolutionized the way infections were treated. This discovery was revolutionary because it impacted the scientific field, the medical field, the pharmaceutical industry, and all of humanity. Alexander Fleming’s discovery of Penicillin sparked the development of antibiotics, which has continued to save people’s lives since the revolution. Thomas Kuhn would qualify the discovery of Penicillin by Alexander Fleming as a revolution because it led to a paradigm shift. Prior to the discovery of Penicillin, patients died from trivial injuries and infections. Fleming’s discovery of Penicillin is revolutionary because it changed the worldview of the way doctors treat patients with infectious diseases; and as a result of the antibiotic revolution, individuals are not vulnerable to death by bacterial diseases

Kuhn on discovery and the case of Penicillin

Book description: Nowadays, philosophy and methodology of science appear as a combination of novelty and continuity. This blend is clear both in the general approaches to science (those thought of as any science) and in the specific perspectives on every science, either formal or empirical. There are new topics for philosophical reflection, such as key issues in philosophy of medicine and central problems raised by neuroscience. Thus, new contents have brought attention to aspects that previously went almost unnoticed. In addition, there are new angles for philosophical study, such as the repercussion of society on scientific activity (in aims, processes, and results). But the background of the main philosophical and methodological trends of the twentieth century is, in many ways, still in place. Wenceslao J. Gonzalez is Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science. He has been a visiting researcher at the Universities of St. Andrews, Münster and London (LSE), as well as Visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh. He has given lectures at the Universities of Pittsburgh, Stanford, Quebec and Helsinki. The conferences in which he has participated include those organized by the Universities of Uppsala, New South Wales, Bologna, and Canterbury (New Zealand). He has edited 21 volumes, among them are Philosophy and Methodology of Economics (1998) and Science, Technology and Society: A Philosophical Perspective (2005). Jesus Alcolea is Reader [Titular Professor] of Logic and Philosophy of Science. He undertook research at Smith College (Northampton, MA) with Th. Tymoczko. His focus of research has been on philosophy of mathematics: “Proof as a Way to Increase Understanding” (1996), “Fallibilism and Realism in Lakatos” (1999), “Vigencia del Pensamiento filosófico-matemático de Imre Lakatos” (2001), and “La extensión de los conceptos matemáticos” (2005)

Non-Pickwickian Belief and 'the Gettier Problem'

That in Gettier's alleged counterexamples to the traditional analysis of knowledge as justified true belief the belief condition is satisfied has rarely been questioned. Yet there is reason to doubt that a rational person would come to believe what Gettier's protagonists are said to believe in the way they are said to have come to believe it. If they would not, the examples are not counter-examples to the traditional analysis. I go on to discuss a number of examples inspired by Gettier's and argue that they, too, fail to be counter-examples either for reasons similar to those I have urged or because it is not clear that their subject does not know

Treatment of Workers with Disabilities Under Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act

CRS_February_2005_Treatment_of_Workers_with_Disabilities.pdf: 6624 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

An Operational Petri Net Semantics for the Join-Calculus

We present a concurrent operational Petri net semantics for the join-calculus, a process calculus for specifying concurrent and distributed systems. There often is a gap between system specifications and the actual implementations caused by synchrony assumptions on the specification side and asynchronously interacting components in implementations. The join-calculus is promising to reduce this gap by providing an abstract specification language which is asynchronously distributable. Classical process semantics establish an implicit order of actually independent actions, by means of an interleaving. So does the semantics of the join-calculus. To capture such independent actions, step-based semantics, e.g., as defined on Petri nets, are employed. Our Petri net semantics for the join-calculus induces step-behavior in a natural way. We prove our semantics behaviorally equivalent to the original join-calculus semantics by means of a bisimulation. We discuss how join specific assumptions influence an existing notion of distributability based on Petri nets.Comment: In Proceedings EXPRESS/SOS 2012, arXiv:1208.244

Trialogue between Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Nāgārjuna in Todtnauberg.

The following philosophical dialogue between three philosophers is a thought experiment like Einstein's. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is the most written about 20th century philosopher. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) is a critical thinker of the highest order, who proclaimed the death of God and is considered the last western metaphysician. He found Platonism everywhere. The Acharya Nagarjuna (2-3d century AD) is perhaps the greatest single Indian philosopher; he is considered the greatest Buddhist thinker after the Buddha himself. Nagarjuna although less famous than the other two philosopher, his audacious and unique eastern way of thinking may provide some fundamental solutions to Heidegger's and Nietzsche's stickler dilemmas; and their morass and entanglement in their western philosophical predicaments and knots. Should we say, Nagarjuna will act as cutting the Gordian Knot? Written in 2011

Vernacular museum: communal bonding and ritual memory transfer among displaced communities

Eclectically curated and largely ignored by the mainstream museum sector, vernacular museums sit at the interstices between the nostalgic and the future-oriented, the private and the public, the personal and the communal. Eluding the danger of becoming trivialised or commercialised, they serve as powerful conduits of memory, which strengthen communal bonds in the face of the ‘flattening’ effects of globalisation. The museum this paper deals with, a vernacular museum in Vanjärvi in southern Finland, differs from the dominant type of the house museum, which celebrates masculinity and social elites. Rather, it aligns itself with the small amateur museums of everyday life called by Angela Jannelli Wild Museums (2012), by analogy with Lévi-Strauss’ concept of ‘pensée sauvage’. The paper argues that, despite the present-day flurry of technologies of remembering and lavishly funded memory institutions, there is no doubt that the seemingly ‘ephemeral’ institutions such as the vernacular museum, dependent so much on performance, oral storytelling, living bodies and intimate interaction, nevertheless play an important role in maintaining and invigorating memory communities