Cosmic Purpose and the Question of a Personal God

Purported evidence for purposeful divine action in the cosmos may appear to warrant describing God as personal, as Swinburne proposes. In this paper, however, I argue that the primary understanding of what is meant by a person is formed by the experience of ”I’ -- ”you’ or second-person relatedness, a mode of relation with God that is not part of natural theology. moreover, even among human beings, the recognition of purposeful agency does not invariably lead to the attribution of personhood in the usual sense. ”Person’ is therefore a misleading term to use of God on the evidence of cosmic purpose alone in the absence of suitable revelation

The Non-Aristotelian Virtue of Truth from the Second-Person Perspective

The claim has been made that when Aquinas speaks about the virtue of truth and its opposing vices in the Summa theologiae 2-2.109-113, he regards himself as speaking of the same virtue of truth as found in the Nicomachean Ethics 4.7. In this paper, I dispute this claim, showing how Aquinas’s account cannot be Aristotelian and, in particular, that the possibility of forfeiting the virtue of truth by one serious lie cannot be explained by habituation. I argue instead that Aquinas’s account can be better understood by reference to the kind of embodied experience most commonly encountered in joint attention or second-person relatedness, an approach that may offer new ways to address broader moral questions regarding truth

Archiving scientific blogs with ArchivePress

A poster describing the ArchivePress blog archiving approach and project, presented at the International Digital Curation Conference, London, December 2009

A systematic review of reported reassortant viral lineages of influenza A

BACKGROUND: Most previous evolutionary studies of influenza A have focussed on genetic drift, or reassortment of specific gene segments, hosts or subtypes. We conducted a systematic literature review to identify reported claimed reassortant influenza A lineages with genomic data available in GenBank, to obtain 646 unique first-report isolates out of a possible 20,781 open-access genomes. RESULTS: After adjusting for correlations, only: swine as host, China, Europe, Japan and years between 1997 and 2002; remained as significant risk factors for the reporting of reassortant viral lineages. For swine H1, more reassortants were observed in the North American H1 clade compared with the Eurasian avian-like H1N1 clade. Conversely, for avian H5 isolates, a higher number of reported reassortants were observed in the European H5N2/H3N2 clade compared with the H5N2 North American clade. CONCLUSIONS: Despite unavoidable biases (publication, database choice and upload propensity) these results synthesize a large majority of the current literature on novel reported influenza A reassortants and are a potentially useful prerequisite to inform further algorithmic studies. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12879-015-1298-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Catholicism, natural theology, and the gift of understanding

Since the Patristic era, the Catholic faith has acknowledged two kinds of theology, today called ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’, corresponding to the diverse worlds of discourse about God without and with what is particular to Christian revelation. The Church also formally defends the teaching that the one true God, Creator and Lord, can be known with certitude by those things which have been made, by the natural light of human reason. Drawing from Aquinas, however, I argue that the deeper distinction of natural and supernatural theology is in terms of subjective understanding, especially the understanding associated with the gift of the Holy Spirit in the life of grace. Progress in natural theology today will need to focus on this difficult topic of understanding, while recognising that natural theology alone can never bridge the gap between God and ourselves

Narnia: An Affirmative Vision

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The emplacement and metamorphism of the blue river ultramafic body, cassiar district, British Columbia, Canada

The blue river ultramafic body is one of many “alpine” peridotites intruded into the Sylvester volcanic series in Northern British Columbia. The primary duniteharzburgite assemblage consists of olivine (FO (_89) – FO (_95)) enstatite (En (_90) – En (_92), and spinel. The spinel chemistry is variable, dunite spinels give Crx100/ (Cr+Al) ratio of 58 and above, and peridotite spinels are invariably below this figure. The assemblage, which was evidently intruded hot as it has formed a “hornblende hornfels” facies amphibolite aureole, is inferred to have equilibrated with volcanic magma, present in the form of bodies gabbro. The body has been truncated by the Cassiar batholith. Metamorphism has affected both the primary assemblage, and also an early generation of marginal serpemtinite. Isograds have been established which mark the incoming of metamorphic olivine, tremolite, olivine with talc, and enstatite. Metamorphic olivine porphyroblasts in the outer aureole of the batholith are zoned. They have an inner turbid core enriched in Fe and Mn, and a clear outer margin enriched in Mg. Ni will enter olivine only in the absence of sulphur. A maximum core to margin range of FO (_85) – FO (_97) we found 4,000m from the contact. Above the olivine with talc isograd the assemblage is influenced by increased FO (_2). Primary spinels in both peridotite and serpentinite are oxidized. Al substitutes in the serpentine structure to form chlorite, and the spinel absorbs Fe, Mn and Ni. The al content in the chlorite increases towards the batholith contact. Metamorphic olivines are weakly or non zoned, and they reach a composition of Fo (_95). Metamorphic enstatite is similarly Fe depleted at En (_93). The body underwent partial alteration to antigorite during the waning stages of thermal metamorphism, and more pervasive serpentinization on cooling. Euhedral olivine porphyroblasts in a matrix of relict serpentine retain their original outlines, and they undergo volume for volume replacement. The lizardite-chrysotile assemblage contains abundant brucite, which envelopes serpentine pseudomorphs after metamorphic olivine. This is indicative of cation mobility during serperntinization

Essentializing the Experiences and Expertise of Adult Literacy Educators

Adult literacy educator expertise is being subsumed by the Essential Skills framework and IALS testing methodology as both are packaged as adult literacy pedagogy. Preliminary findings from an Institutional Ethnography illustrate how educators are becoming increasingly immersed in the discursive relations of the literacy regime as they: 1) get hooked into the discourse of the regime; 2) establish a direct link with assessments and accountability requirements; and 3) are taught to change the way they teach, discounting both research and practice based knowledge of literacy and adult learning

JISC Preservation of Web Resources (PoWR) Handbook

Handbook of Web Preservation produced by the JISC-PoWR project which ran from April to November 2008. The handbook specifically addresses digital preservation issues that are relevant to the UK HE/FE web management community”. The project was undertaken jointly by UKOLN at the University of Bath and ULCC Digital Archives department