A dialogue of traditions on the reality of mind: Thomas Nagel and Bernard Lonergan

The scientific picture of the world is one of invisible particles and empty space, but this is not the world of our everyday experience. How can we reconcile the scientific view of the world with the view from our ordinary perspective? This thesis puts Thomas Nagel and Bernard Lonergan into dialogue on the question of the mind’s place in the world. Coming from different philosophical traditions, both thinkers provide a bigger picture in which to place materialism and to assess its errors. Thomas Nagel criticises modern forms of materialism because they try to explain away the reality of our perspective by reducing it to physical events in a perspectiveless scientific picture. He criticises the fundamental conception of the physical world upon which these reductionist theories depend, a conception that had its origins in the seventeenth century scientific revolution and one which conceived of the physical world as having no place for subjects’ perspectives. In Lonergan’s opinion, the reduction of the human consciousness to mere physical events is the result of a truncated conception of objectivity. The reason for this mistaken conception is that we confuse two distinct kinds of knowing, which in turn is because of a mistaken cognitional theory. This thesis argues that Nagel makes some insightful contributions to the place of mind in the cosmos, but that he, like the reductive materialists that he criticises, is limited by a truncated conception of objectivity that prevents him grasping the nature of the mind. This suggests that future philosophies of mind need to examine their presuppositions more deeply and be open to dialogue with one of the less well-known traditions of philosophy in contemporary scholarship – the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, in which Lonergan worked

Opstand in architectenland: De restauratie van de Grafelijke Zalen en de strijd over de monumentenzorg

In late 1895, in response to an ostensibly innocuous budget debate in the Lower House, a public war of words erupted over the prospective restoration and conversion of the Grafelijke Zalen (Counts’ Chambers) in the Binnenhof. Its desirability was not in dispute. However, in a matter of weeks, the discussion about which course to pursue and who should assume responsibility for the project escalated into a full-scale duel. On one side of the debate stood the Ministry of the Interior, led by the chief civil servant of the Department of Arts and Sciences (Kunsten en Wetenschappen or K&W), Victor de Stuers, and the architect Pierre Cuypers. Opposing them were the Ministry of Water, Trade and Industry (Waterstaat, for short) and the Society for the Advancement of Architecture (Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Bouwkunst). After De Stuers and Cuypers had implicitly claimed the project for the Ministry of the Interior, the Society registered a highly critical protest: it demanded that the Lower House leave responsibility for this ‘national treasure’ with the Ministry of Water, Trade & Industry and break with the fifteen-year-long approach to restorations dictated by K&W. The ‘stylistic purity’ demanded by De Stuers and Cuypers, based on their rather linear view of architectural history, left little scope for the Society’s somewhat more relativist approach, which combined restoration of a building’s artistic and historical values with the possibility of preserving multiple chronological layers. In the past De Stuers and Cuypers had nearly always managed, with the help of a few political intrigues, to impose their architectural vision, but on this occasion they were blocked by the Lower House. The Minister of Water, Trade & Industry set up a four-member restoration commission – his own government architects, D.E.C. Knuttel and C.H. Peters, plus C. Muyskens and F.J. Nieuwenhuis from the Society – and invited his colleague from the Ministry of the Interior to appoint a fifth member. It was not until eighteen months later that Cuypers was duly appointed to the position and the restoration commission could set to work. The normally assertive Cuypers appears to have exerted very little influence over the course pursued by the commission. Instead of his highly developed appreciation for the gothic style, it was the concrete building history research of Peters and Nieuwenhuis that underpinned the commission’s choices. De Stuers and Cuypers continued to wield influence, but their near total dominance of government policy was a thing of the past and after the completion of the restoration in 1905 there was gradually more scope for other views on heritage restoration ethics.Eind 1895 ontstond naar aanleiding van een schijnbaar onschuldige budgetbespreking in de Tweede Kamer een publiek debat over de eventuele restauratie en herbestemming van de Grafelijke Zalen op het Binnenhof. Over de wenselijkheid daarvan was iedereen het wel eens. De discussie over welke koers daarbij moest worden aangehouden, en onder wiens verantwoordelijkheid het project zou dienen te vallen, escaleerde echter binnen een aantal weken volledig. In het debat stonden aan de ene kant het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken, met voorop de hoofdambtenaar van de afdeling Kunsten en Wetenschappen (K&W) Victor de Stuers en architect Pierre Cuypers. Daar tegenover stonden het ministerie van Waterstaat en de Maatschappij tot Bevordering der Bouwkunst. Nadat De Stuers en Cuypers het project impliciet hadden opgeëist voor het ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken, kwam vanuit de Maatschappij een uiterst kritisch protest: de Tweede Kamer werd dringend verzocht de verantwoordelijkheid voor dit ‘landsgebouw’ bij Waterstaat te laten en te breken met de vanuit de afdeling K&W al vijftien jaar gedicteerde koers bij restauraties. De eisen die De Stuers en Cuypers vanuit hun nogal lineaire benadering van de architectuurgeschiedenis aan ‘stijlzuiverheid’ stelden, lieten weinig ruimte over voor de wat meer relativistische benadering van de Maatschappij, waarin naast herstel van de artistieke en historische waarde van een gebouw ook het behouden van meerdere tijdlagen mogelijk was. Tot dan waren De Stuers en Cuypers vrijwel altijd in staat geweest met de nodige politieke intriges hun architectuurhistorische visie door te drukken, maar nu werden ze door de Tweede Kamer geblokkeerd. De minister van Waterstaat stelde een restauratiecommissie in van vier leden – de eigen rijksbouwmeesters Knuttel en Peters en vanuit de Maatschappij Muysken en Nieuwenhuis – en nodigde zijn collega van Binnenlandse Zaken uit om daar een vijfde lid aan toe te voegen. Pas anderhalf jaar later werd Cuypers als zodanig benoemd en kon de restauratiecommissie starten. De invloed van de doorgaans zeer dominante Cuypers op de koers van de commissie lijkt zeer beperkt te zijn geweest. Niet diens hoogontwikkelde gevoel voor de gotische stijl, maar het concrete bouwhistorische onderzoek van Peters en Nieuwenhuis vormde de basis voor de gemaakte keuzes. De Stuers en Cuypers bleven invloedrijk, maar hun vrijwel totale dominantie van het overheidsbeleid was voorbij en na de afronding van de restauratie in 1905 ontstond langzaam meer ruimte voor andere visies op restauratie-ethiek

That all may Justice Share: Sydney Catholics in the interwar years 1919-1929

While the years immediately following Australia’s participation in World War I have received much academic attention, the churches in the post-war era have been largely overlooked. Responding to Michael McKernan’s claim that Australian churches became less relevant to Australian society after the war, this thesis examines the response of the Catholic Church in Sydney to life after the war. Utilising a dual methodology of religious history and social history, this thesis analyses the role of the Church at this time by examining its works and activities, drawing on primary sources in Archdiocesan archives and the archives of specific Catholic lay groups. It focuses in particular on two rarely studied organisations, the Catholic Returned Soldiers and Sailors Association and the Knights of the Southern Cross. In the final analysis, this thesis finds that the Church in post-World War I Australia played a significant role in the lives of its own members, that Catholic organisations responded to particular social challenges of the period, and that there was a move towards both a more nationalist definition of and an international perspective in Australian Catholicism, culminating in the 29th International Eucharistic Congress of 1928. In studying the Catholic Church in Sydney in the decade following World War I, this thesis contributes towards a more nuanced understanding of the history of Australia in the 1920s and, more specifically, to the history of the Catholic Church in Australia, while challenging the claim that Australian churches became less relevant after the war

Generalized Fibonacci Numbers and Music

Mathematics and music have well documented historical connections. Just as the ordinary Fibonacci numbers have links with the golden ratio, this paper considers generalized Fibonacci numbers developed from generalizations of the golden ratio. It is well known that the Fibonacci sequence of numbers underlie certain musical intervals and compositions but to what extent are these connections accidental or structural, coincidental or natural and do generalized Fibonacci numbers share any of these connections

Speaking of Mysteries: Atonement in Teenage Fantasy Books

The question of how we can speak of a transcendent God and God’s relationship with creation has been pondered for millennia. Today particular difficulties arise when communicating Christian atonement theories to a generation for whom the world of the Bible is increasingly foreign, and in a time when theologians and philosophers are questioning both the violence of some atonement theories and the existence of “superior transcendence.” This study explores the presence of biblical motifs in the stories of atonement in young adult fantasy works. It suggests that the use of these motifs to make sense of atonement within fantasy worlds may assist readers to make sense of the same motifs when they are used to portray the Christian story of atonement. The investigation begins by discussing the place of imagination, reason and transcendence in religious language and argues for the centrality of metaphor and myth in religious expression. It suggests that young people today still seek intermediaries—“priests and prophets”—between themselves and the unknown, but they now find them in the fantasy authors who continue to use imaginative language to communicate transcendence. A central trope in contemporary fantasy fiction is that of a death that saves the world. Contrary to the expectations raised by René Girard’s work, these are not the violent deaths of a helpless scapegoat. The biblical mythologems incorporated in these works allow the authors to explore instead ideas of divine and human self-giving. This is demonstrated by tracing how mythological understandings of blood, victory and covenant in the Bible are incorporated into the atonement process of three fantasy series: the Old Kingdom Chronicles by Garth Nix (1995-2003), the Mortal Instruments trilogy by Cassandra Clare (2007-2009), and the Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling (1997-2007). The thesis proposes that the presence of biblical mythologems in contemporary fantasy stories of atonement means that a better understanding of their use in each domain can both enrich our appreciation of this kind of literature and provide teenagers with an imaginative language with which to consider aspects of Christian atonement. The prevalence of atonement ideas within recent fantasy books suggests that, by attending to the mythologems of atonement drawn from the Bible, the church might both rediscover the imaginative power of her own story and convey it meaningfully to young readers of fantasy literature today