Illness is a reality that affects all people, and healing is the main reason why people attend worship services in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the Ritual Studies scholar Ronald Grimes, illness is a social reality; it is socially imagined and constructed. Healing in the church is something that many believers experience, also in the context of worship and liturgy. In order to explore such healing as it occurs in liturgy a research project was undertaken making use of both empirical work (...) and a literature study. The aim of this research was to take the light off of direct pastoral care and investigate how the liturgy affects individuals within the congregation with regard to healing. A praxis-theory cycle was followed in the research, and a preliminary liturgical theory for praxis was developed based on the insight from the empirical study and ritual theory that healing through worship entails either transformation or reconciliation. (shrink)

High quality images sell products. Here's how you do it. From cereal boxes to billboards to photos on Amazon, product photos have a strong impact on viewers. Now you can master the secrets of effective product photography with this essential guide. Author J. Dennis Thomas guides you through the basics, from selecting the right equipment and practicing different lighting techniques to controlling exposure, using backgrounds and props, and much more. Whether it's jewelry, food, fashion, or other products, learn how to (...) photograph for effective selling, while building the skills and tools you need for a career. Explains how to produce quality photos for product or commercial photography, including fashion, food, jewelry, technology, and more The author is a professional photographer whose work has been published in major U.S. magazines including Rolling Stone, Elle, W Magazine, and US Weekly Covers choosing the right equipment, practicing different lighting techniques, controlling exposure, using backgrounds and props, and more Gives new and even experienced photographers the tools they need to build careers in product photography Take photographs that impress, intrigue, dazzle, and sell with The Art and Style of Product Photography. (shrink)

Taking Blair’s recent contribution to the debate about the triad as its starting point, the article discusses and challenges attempts to reduce the intricate relationship between rhetoric, dialectic and logic to a trichotomy with watertight compartments or to separate them with a single clear-cut criterion. I argue that efforts to pinpoint an essential difference, among the various typical differences partly grounded in disciplinary traditions, obscure the complexities within the fields. As a consequence, crosscutting properties of the fields as well as (...) the possibilities for theoretical bridging between them are neglected. (shrink)

J.W. Olson addresses the Christian doctrine of revelation by asking how theological truth claims can possibly be rooted in God’s incarnational self-communication. Engaging with the phenomenology of Martin Heidegger, Olson offers an interpretation of the Eucharist that grounds Christian knowledge in an embodied understanding of the sacrament.

J. Krishnamurti was one of the most influential and widely known spiritual teachers of the twentieth century. Here, he inquires with the reader into how remembering and dwelling on past events, both pleasurable and painful, give us a false sense of continuity, causing us to suffer. His instruction is to be attentive and clear in our perceptions and to meet the challenges of life directly in each new moment.

Signs of mankind's solidarity, by J. R. Nelson.--Mankind, Israel and the nations in the Hebraic heritage, by M. Greenberg.--Christian insights from biblical sources, by C. Maurer.--Muhammad and all men, by D. Rahbar.--The impact of New World discovery upon European thought of man, by E. J. Burrus.--The effects of colonialism upon the Asian understanding of man, by J. G. Arapura.--Religious pluralism and the quest for human community, by S. J. Samartha.--From Confucian gentleman to the new Chinese 'political' man, by D. A. (...) Robinson.--The scientific revolution and the unity of man, by B. Towers.--Language and communication, by E. A. Nida.--Man and the son of man, by J. Moltmann.--The potentiality of conciliarity: communion, conscience, council, by W. B. Blakemore.--Oneness must mean wholeness, by J. R. Nelson. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the target article “From Objects to Processes: A Proposal to Rewrite Radical Constructivism” by Siegfried J. Schmidt. Upshot: My suggestion is that the shift from objects to processes can be seen as grounded in the processes of self-generation common to all living organisms. Specifically human cognition is a subsequent evolutionary emergence.

Open peer commentary on the article “Constructivist Model Building: Empirical Examples From Mathematics Education” by Catherine Ulrich, Erik S. Tillema, Amy J. Hackenberg & Anderson Norton. Upshot: The target article by Ulrich et al. is a good example of constructivist research in mathematics education, and illustrates how constructivism can ground a research endeavour toward modelling students’ mathematical understandings. I propose to delve into these issues of model building and reflect on Maturana’s notion of the observer. I do this through discussing (...) issues about the language used in the article and of data description, and of analysis of students’ mathematical activity. (shrink)

Following the ideas of Poincaré, Reichenbach, and Grunbaum concerning the convention of setting up clock systems, we analyze clock systems and light propagation within the framework of four-dimensional symmetry. It is possible to construct a new four-dimensional symmetry framework incorporatingcommon time: observers in different inertial frames of reference use one and the same clock system, which is located in any one of the frames. Consequently, simultaneity has a meaning independent of position and independent of frame of reference. A further consequence (...) is that the two-way speeds of light alone are isotropic in any frame. By the choice of clock system there will be one frame in which the one-way speed of light is isotropic. This frame can be arbitrarily chosen. The difference between one-way speeds and two-way speeds of light signals is considered in detail. (shrink)

Pulvermüller's work in extending Hebb's theory into the realm of language is exciting. However, we feel that what he characterizes as a single cell assembly is actually a set of cooperating cell assemblies that form parts of larger cognitive structures. These larger structures account more easily for a variety of phenomena, including the psycholinguistic.

When traditional virtue ethics is applied to clinical medicine, it often claims as its goal the good of the individual patient, and focuses on the dyadic relationship between one physician and one patient. An alternative model of virtue ethics, more appropriate to the practice of emergency medicine, will be outlined by this paper. This alternative model is based on the assumption that the appropriate goal of the practice of emergency medicine is a team approach to the medical wellbeing of individual (...) patients, constrained by the wellbeing of the patient population served by a particular emergency department. By defining boundaries and using the key virtues of justice and team loyalty, this model fits emergency practice well and gives care givers the conceptual clarity to apply this model to various conflicts both within the department and with those outside the department. (shrink)

Ballard et al. model eye position as a deictic pointer for spatial perception. Evidence from research on gaze control indicates, however, that shifts in actual eye position are neither necessary nor sufficient to produce shifts in spatial perception. Deictic context is instead provided by the interaction between two deictic pointers; one representing actual eye position, and the other, intended eye position.

For the conference and the special issue of the_ Journal of Consciousness Studies_ that lie behind this book, pairs of researchers were asked to tackle from different standpoints concepts of consciousness such as realism, representation, intentionality, information, control, memory and the self.