These essays use particular issues, thinkers and texts to engage the question of God in early Christianity.

Обобщен опыт работы по диагностике микробиологических повреждений памятников искусства и культуры. Большой иллюстративный материал и конкретные примеры проведения микологических экспертиз памятников помогут разобраться в представленном материале.

v. 1. De l'ineffable et de l'Un -- v. 2. De la triade et de l'unifié -- v. 3. De la procession.

В указателе собраны изданные в стране за период 1990-2008 гг. сочинения, представителей религиозно-философской мысли русского зарубежья, начало творчества которых в России пришлось на конец XIX в. Для специалистов.

Монография посвящена вопросу о специфики исторических условий, в которых возникает ка античная демократия. так и демократия Нового и Новейшего времени. Для специалистов.

The aim of this text is to teach beginning students, not about philosophy, but how to philosophize. It presents the enduring problems of Western philosophy through artful selection from the writings of Plato, Descartes, and the British Empiricists, together with analysis and criticism of the positions and their supporting arguments. After a short essay on pre-Socratic contributions, the student is conducted through the Phaedo with frequent halts for recapitulation and examination of the issues. The thesis of the Phaedo is seen (...) to involve problems of the nature and function of value, the sources and validity of knowledge, the nature of reality, the nature of the mind and the self, and the relation of mind and body. The same technique of alternate text and commentary is used with excerpts from Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy; Books I, II, and from Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book IV; Berkeley's Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous; and Book I of Hume's A Treatise of Human Nature. The focus shifts from problems of value and conduct to those of the nature of the self and of knowledge, and the student learns that old themes have new aspects and that each still involves all the others. A contrast between the complementary doctrines of rationalism and empiricism emerges, with the inadequacies of each clearly exhibited. This leads into a masterly condensation and exposition of Kant's attempted reconciliation in the Critique of Pure Reason. Bertrand Russell's article, Logical Atomism, forms a coda, indicating the assumptions underlying contemporary analytic philosophies and the kinship of logical and linguistic problems with those of earlier philosophical traditions.--L. G. (shrink)

Although Mach insisted that he was a scientist, not a philosopher, many of his ideas were genuinely philosophical. This collection of essays indicates, among other matters of mathematical and scientific interest, how such ideas grew from Mach's work and something of their philosophical significance. In particular, discussions of Mach's experiments in aerodynamics and psychology show how he made physical phenomena observable and applied "causal" concepts to sensory processes. Having done this, Mach felt that he could hold a phenomenalism of neutral (...) elements which are neither subjective nor objective. He thought that a unified science could be based on such elements and that he would then no longer have to change his conceptual frame in going from one discipline to another, as from "atoms" to "mind" in going from physics to biology. Young Albert Einstein was deeply impressed by Mach's attitude toward fundamental concepts. One essay discusses the influence on Einstein's theory of general relativity of Mach's Principle, i.e., Mach's substitution of the concept of motion with respect to the distant stars for the unobservable Newtonian concept of motion with respect to absolute space. A discussion of Mach's own use of the atomic theory illustrates his attitude toward theories and suggests that he was able to reject the atom because this concept is not particularly useful in the fields with which he was primarily concerned. An essay by editor Cohen on the implications of Mach's theory of knowledge argues that a phenomenalism of neutral elements collapses into mysticism, i.e., into a submergence of the ego in the universal consciousness. Also interesting is Philipp Frank's classification of Mach as an "Enlightment" philosopher, or one who criticizes the abuse of concepts. Just as the men of the eighteenth century Enlightenment opposed theological concepts in physics, so Mach opposed physical concepts in biology, thereby clearing science of old error to make way for new truth. Some biographical data and an extensive bibliography are appended, as well as an index of proper names.--L. G. (shrink)

The thesis of this book is that there is a philosophy implicit in Plato's dialogues, but philosophers cannot agree about its content because it is the imaginative vision of a way of life, rather than a system. The positions advocated are characters in a dramatic conflict of ideas, written by a poet for an audience of intellectuals and depicting with irony, ambiguity, and consummate artistry the Idea of Talk. Plato's own position is that in an imperfect world we can have (...) a vision of it perfected and, in the light of this vision, can see the really real, that is, what is worthwhile. This is, however, neither metaphysics nor epistemology, but a value statement and an attitude toward life. Plato is saying that knowledge of the Good is knowledge of man's possibilities, and that to know the Good is to love the Good, to make passionate commitment to the object of knowledge. Other points: Immortality is not future life but present life lived in the vision of the Ideal. The Republic is not a program but an ironic picture of the Idea of the Spartan state, warning that, while the search for perfection is the source of all order in life, overemphasis of a single value is the death of the rest. Plato advised the study of mathematics because, since it comes to indisputable conclusions, he hoped it would teach that intellectual rigor which the humanities and social sciences, being matters of opinion do not. Plato's doctrine emerges only from the earlier, "Socratic" dialogues. The later ones are dogmatic, rather than dramatic, and seem to provide starting points for Aristotle.--L. G. (shrink)

This paper is part of a series in which we had worked in the last 6 months, and, specifically, intend to investigate the notion of timbre through the ecological perspective proposed by James Gibson in his Theory of Direct Perception. First of all, we discussed the traditional approach to timbre, mainly as developed in acoustics and psychoacoustics. Later, we proposed a new conception of timbre that was born in concepts of ecological approach. The ecological approach to perception proposed by Gibson (...) (1966, 1979) presupposes a level of analysis of perceptual stimulated that includes, but is quite broader than the usual physical aspect. Gibson suggests as focus the relationship between the perceiver and his environment. At the core of this approach, is the notion of affordances, invariant combinations of properties at the ecological level, taken with reference to the anatomy and action systems of species or individual, and also with reference to its biological and social needs. Objects and events are understood as relates to a perceiving organism by the meaning of structured information, thus affording possibilities of action by the organism. Event perception aims at identifying properties of events to specify changes of the environment that are relevant to the organism. The perception of form is understood as a special instance of event perception, which is the identity of an object depends on the nature of the events in which is involved and what remains invariant over time. From this perspective, perception is not in any sense created by the brain, but is a part of the world where information can be found. Consequently, an ecological approach represents a form of direct realism that opposes the indirect realist based on predominant approaches to perception borrowed from psychoacoustics and computational approach. (shrink)

This book presents an exposition and criticism of Husserl's essential ideas, explaining what is defective and what meritorious in them and offering a philosophical program based on the merit. The author's aim is to provide a point of entry for the study of phenomenology. In the opening section he states the key concepts of The Idea, following Husserl's summary. These are: the contrasting notions of natural thinking and philosophical thinking; intentional immanence; the "pure seeing" of reflective cognition; and eidetic abstraction. (...) He proceeds to a developmental reconstruction showing how these concepts grow out of one another. Intentionality, the active relatedness of consciousness to its object, is the foundation concept. By being aware of one's own intentionality and abandoning the natural standpoint, phenomenological reduction can be achieved and the universal experienced in eidetic abstraction. According to Pettit, the merit of Husserl's method is that it recalls philosophy to the self and to the evidence, i.e., to man as a conscious subject and to the obvious, incontestable data of consciousness. Phenomenology's defect is that, since every experience implicitly contains a description, the supposed eidetic experience is absurd. Philosophy should aim at explanation, i.e., at a non-reductive account of conscious experience, which makes the experience intelligible. Pettit concludes with a phenomenological program, listing the dimensions and types of human behavior and showing how the traditional divisions of philosophy fit into the classification. There is a bibliography but no index.--L. G. (shrink)

These essays concern what one of the writers calls "the philosophical problems raised by the existence of modern science," distinguishing and relating various ways of knowing, especially the scientific and philosophic. For R. J. Henle in the first and eighth essays, science and philosophy are set off from the humanities as alike in seeking pure intelligibility, but different in that science knows indirectly through a constructional concept while philosophy knows directly the ontological concept. J. Maritain discusses the shortcomings of the (...) Vienna school of philosophy of science and the kinds of knowing proper to theology, philosophy, and science. J. Fitzgerald considers Maritain's inclusion of modern science in the Aristotelian-Thomist concept of scientific knowledge. R. Blackwell sketches four approaches to a theory of discovery in science: logical, psychological, historical, and epistemological. G. P. Klubertanz, discussing modern science in the light of Thomist doctrine, finds it like the philosophy of nature in having as its object the sensible material thing but differing in definitions, principles, and modes of proof. J. Ladrière argues the importance of intentionality in one essay, and later that both science and philosophy are authentic knowing, but that science is a description of regional ontologies while philosophy is the foundation of those ontologies. E. McMullin discusses the change from Aristotelianism to modern scientific "qualified" realism. E. Caldin finds that theological and scientific knowledge have the same structure but answer different questions. The last five essays deal with more specialized topics. F. J. Crosson: Can a machine be conscious? R. J. Henle: How does anthropology contribute to an understanding of man? A. Fisher: Freud and Husserl, and the essential intentionality of psychical life. Two surveys of modern analytic philosophy conclude the volume, E. J. McKinnon: Reflections on a methodology for integrating philosophy and science; and G. P. Klubertanz: A proposal for integrating the schools of philosophy of science.--L. G. (shrink)

Paterson sees Bruno as a philosopher of rational thought and the open society, martyred by the forces of social constraint. She outlines his cosmology and shows how his theory of knowledge and his ethics derive from it. For Bruno, the fabric of the universe is a dynamic, spirited, divine power which continually generates the infinite multiplicity of things and draws them back into itself. Man's intellect mirrors the universal motion of creation and corruption, drawing ideas from sensibility as the divine (...) intellect draws the natural species from matter. Since the good and the true coincide in the divine unity, man's good consists in harmonizing them and so mirroring the divine. He whose efforts are directed to this harmony and to expanding constantly his knowledge and achievements is universal man. Paterson argues that a rational ethic is implicit in Bruno's thought. Also implicit is the method of modern science, i.e., a speculative leap, followed by empirical testing. The author points out that much work remains to be done by translators, editors, historians, and philosophers before any stable assessment of Bruno can be made.--L. G. (shrink)

This scholarly and perceptive account makes Hindu beliefs and practices intelligible by showing how the contradictions which have puzzled Westerners are rooted in human diversity. The author's thesis is that Hinduism is best understood neither as a philosophy nor as a religion but as a way of life. It is a process and a becoming, a continual progress toward moksa. It is each man's quest for the realization of his individual potentialities, never achieved because man's potential is infinite and because (...) it is his nature to become rather than to be. His aim is fourfold: to grasp Satcitänanda which is both Reality and himself; to become spiritualized, that is, to come to consider the human body, physical life, and rational faculties solely as instruments of the quest; to integrate all activities, thoughts, and feelings by understanding them as ways of being human, and hence as aspects of the quest; and finally to become free both from finitude and for fulfillment. There are four märgas or paths to these goals: thought, action, devotion, and discipline. There is no conflict among, or within, the märgas as, for example, between the yoga of ascetic contemplation and the Tantric yoga of erotic ecstasy. All are merely different paths to the same goal, suitable for different men or the same man at different times. There is an extensive bibliography.--L. G. (shrink)

This book, the first in the Chicago Series in Biology, is an informal attempt to enrich ecological theory with some useful and general concepts. The author's purpose is to escape the "microscopic" level of analysis, that is, the level of interaction between a predator and its prey and of population response to changes in the environment, and to take a "macroscopic" point of view. He does this by first interpreting ecological relationships in terms of cybernetic theory. For example, he takes (...) "information" to be something brought about within the system by its own operation, which in turn influences its future. "Energy gates" are aspects of the system which involve transfer of information from the less organized sub-system to the more organized. Then he takes a cybernetic look at succession, maturity, and exploitation, illustrating his analysis with examples from his speciality of marine biology. He emphasizes that, since we are dealing with a dynamic system, it is important to work with trends and gradients rather than with point values. Finally, he considers evolution as a process going on in an ecosystem. An intellectual synthesis of the paleontological picture of evolution and the contemporary picture of succession should give us working principles for understanding the history of life. As an illustration, he suggests conditions which might have fostered man and his culture. This is a brilliant little book, simply written and absorbing.--L. G. (shrink)

This volume is third in a series, Monuments of Western Thought, which Cantor and Klein are editing at Colgate. The bulk of this book consists of excerpts from the work of Dante and Machiavelli. Of the Dante material, seventy-five pages is from the Divine Comedy, the rest from De Monarchia. Of the Machiavelli material, thirty pages are from The Prince, the rest excerpted from various works and arranged under such heads as "Warfare" and "Fortune." The text is introduced by a (...) sketch of the intellectual, social, and political context in which Dante and Machiavelli lived, and by brief intellectual biographies. The book closes with short critical selections, assessing and interpreting the source material. On Dante: E. Gilson deals with the ideological frame of the Divine Comedy, social order under divine Authority: J. A. Mazzeo with the hierarchy of light in the Paradiso; G. Santayana with Beatrice as woman and symbol. On Machiavelli: J. W. Allen argues that Machiavelli's originality lies in looking at men and affairs without concerning himself with what they ought to be and do; H. Butterfield that Machiavelli admired ancient Rome and advocated close imitation of her; F. Chabod argues that the theme of The Prince is that society is amorphous, waiting the impress of a dominant individual of supreme virtù; F. Meinecke that virtù, fortuna, and necessità are the basic themes of Machiavelli's thought. Each section is followed by a list of questions designed to challenge the student's understanding of what he has read and to send him back to the text.--L. G. (shrink)