The _Platform Sutra_ records the teachings of Hui-neng, the Sixth Patriarch, who is revered as one of the two great figures in the founding of Ch'an (Zen) Buddhism. This translation is the definitive English version of the eighth-century Ch'an classic. Phillip B. Yampolsky has based his translation on the Tun-huang manuscript, the earliest extant version of the work. A critical edition of the Chinese text is given at the end of the volume. Dr. Yampolsky also furnishes a lengthy and detailed (...) historical introduction which contains much information hitherto unavailable even to scholars, and provides the context essential to an understanding of Hui-neng's work. He gives an account of the history and legends of Ch'an Buddhism, with particular attention to the traditions associated with Hui-neng, quoting or summarizing the most important narratives. He then discusses the various texts of the _Platform Sutra_, and analyzes its contents. (shrink)

Western thought has for several hundred years been plagued by the reductionist malady, one form of which is that men and animals are nothing but complex machines. Having failed in this direction, some have invented machines and then promptly endowed them with human attributes. Plato would have been charmed by the ironic twist Other cases include electric current flow, which it appears we have to conceive as consisting of three dimensional objects in motion, the strange idea in biology that the (...) first living entity must be both simple and astonishingly complex, and the psychological notion that every notion is the consequent of antecedent causal chains. All four ideas involve basic contradictions which it would have delighted Socrates and his friends to discuss. (shrink)

In this volume of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, early philosophers of the classical period, the "golden age," are represented as well as a number of other figures whose contributions gave shape and direction to philosophy in America in the nineteenth and twentieth century.

Several interesting and important quantum field theories must contain the coupling constant in the boundary conditions. The theories considered include quantum electrodynamics of spin-1/2 fermions and gauge field theories.

The effort here is to use the plainest of plain language. It is assumed that the reader is familiar with the tenets of Pragmatism, Operationalism or Functionalism. If not, he may refer to innumerable philosophical works, or, if he must glance and run, he must perforce accept the fact that those terms are here used interchangeably to remind the reader of our basic idea that ideas are hypotheses.

In this volume of the Dictionary of Literary Biography, notable British philosophers from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are represented, including thinkers from the traditions of empiricism, idealism, logical positivism, and analytical philosophy.

The 2006 outbreak of E. coli O157:H7, traced to bagged spinach from California, illustrates a number of contradictions. The solutions sought by many politicians and popular food analysts have been to create a centralized federal agency and a uniform set of production standards modeled after those of the animal industry. Such an approach would disproportionately harm smaller-scale producers, whose operations were not responsible for the epidemic, as well as reduce the agroecological diversity that is essential for maintaining healthy human beings (...) and ecosystems. Why should responses that only reinforce the problem be proffered? We use the framework of accumulation and legitimation to suggest corporate and government motives for concealing underlying problems and reinforcing powerful ideologies of individualism, scientism, and centralizing authority. Food safety (or the illusion of safety) is being positioned to secure capital rather than public welfare. We propose implementing the principle of subsidiarity as a more democratic and decentralized alternative. Because full implementation of this principle will be resisted by powerful interests, some promising intermediate steps include peer production or mass collaboration as currently applied to disease prevention and surveillance, as well as studying nascent movements resisting current food safety regulations. (shrink)