This study's objective is to explore the psychological defense mechanisms of Ukrainian service members as a regulatory system for personality stabilization that influences combat mission effectiveness. The study was carried out during 2019–2020. The respondents were 270 military personnel of the ground forces, who had gained experience in the Anti-Terrorist Operation hostilities in the East of Ukraine in 2017–2020. We used psychodiagnostic methods such as the Lifestyle Index by Plutchik, Kellerman, and Conte; Lazarus’s Coping Test; and Leontiev’s Meaningful Life Orientations (...) Test. Our work confirmed our research hypothesis that psychological defense mechanisms as part of the regulatory system of personality stabilization predetermine the effectiveness of the combat missions performed by military personnel of special branches. Military psychologists can use the results during their official training (psychological training and psycho-corrective measures) in order to acquire among the troops the required effectiveness in combat. Defense mechanisms will also contribute to the observance of military ethics, not least when faced with military immorality on the part of adversaries. (shrink)

C’est la première édition critique du Liber particularis de Michel Scot, traité cosmologique latin qui constitue la deuxième partie de son Liber introductorius, rédigé entre 1220 et 1235 environ. L’édition est effectuée sur la base du ms. Bodl. Canon. Misc. 555 (collationné avec les mss Vatican, BAV Rossi IX 11 et Milan, Ambrosiana L 92 Sup), afin de restituer une version qui circula, sous une forme relativement stable, en Italie dans la première moitié du xiv e siècle. Dans l’introduction, on (...) trouvera les données essentielles sur les manuscrits du Liber particularis, sur la place de ce traité dans l’œuvre de Michel Scot et dans le contexte intellectuel de la cour de Frédéric II, ainsi qu’un essai préliminaire visant à l’inscrire dans le développement des savoirs en Occident dans la première moitié du xiii e siècle. (shrink)

National scientists have elaborated the reform's gist, approaches, stages and consequences in the Ukrainian agricultural sector during the XX - XXI centuries. These studies have been conducted by N. Zhulkanych, S. Zhyvora, M. Zyza, M. Lendiel, E. Mazur, O. Malyarchuk, V. Nechytailo and many others. The paper aims to perform the comprehensive study of general trends and peculiar features of the agricultural development of the Ukrainian SSR in 1963-1990 and to define actual advances and drawbacks on the basis of analysis (...) of historical records and scientific literature. The object of research is agriculture as part of socialist economy in the USSR. The subject of research is the implementation features of agricultural policy of the Soviet power in the Ukrainian SSR, using the Western region of the Republic as an example. The economic strategy of the Soviet power involved a long-term industrialization of the agricultural sector. A distinguishing feature of the industrialization process was the use of systems of machinery in all branches of agriculture. The technological chain had to embrace the process from the sporadic application of machinery to the overall mechanization and automation of crop and livestock farming. The industrial background of production predetermined the implementation of the system of machinery with extensive power consumption, i.e. with the new technical bases. The resolutions of the March Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee defined the economic priorities and capacity development of the Republic. Capital investments were the economic basis for the increase of production potential of collective and state farms, solution of social problems in rural regions. The land productivity was increased mainly by means of land reclamation and production chemization, use of organic and mineral fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, etc. The supply of mineral fertilizers increased, but most of them were of low quality, non-concentrated and unbalanced in nutritional ingredients. In its turn it caused irreparable damage to the environment and polluted agricultural products with chemicals. The chemization undermined the population health and disrupted the ecological balance. Despite ultimate achievements in the rise of the industrial level of agriculture of the Ukrainian SSR, it didn't meet the needs of collective and state farms. A great number of labour-intensive processes in animal and crop farming were performed manually. In state farms, contrary to collective farms, the stock of tractors was newer, but much smaller. For many years the USSR was in the top ten countries of the world in terms of consumption of energy and proteins, contained in food products per capita. However, the food patterns were inconsistent with the scientifically grounded norm. Structural imbalance of the food ration was the manifestation of the food crisis in the USSR. To meet primary needs of Soviet citizens in food products the May Plenum of the CPSU Central Committee adopted the "Food Program of the USSR for the Period until 1990 and Measures of Its Implementation". The main issue of the Food program was to increase grain harvest. Grain production was the basis for food and fodder supply of the country. Alongside with a substantial increase in food products output in public economy the attention was given to the development of subsidiary individual holdings and fruit-and-vegetable cooperatives. The cooperatives and subsidiary holdings produced a great number of dairy and meat products, vegetables and fruits both for their own needs and for sale in collective farm markets. The state food program predetermined the solution of agricultural problems by means of formerly used methods. The major problem of agriculture had to be solved by means of increase in the gross grain harvest. Thus, the implementation of agricultural policy of Soviet power in the Ukrainian SSR lead to great changes in agricultural production. At that time there appeared such new branches of economy specialized in services to agricultural production as waterworks and land reclamation, feed mill industry, farm building, machine engineering for animal farming and fodder production, procurement of agricultural products and agricultural processing. The study of this policy implementation proves that the average annual rates of agricultural production increased but they were inconsistent with high investments. On the one hand, the Food program testified the "food crisis in the USSR", demonstrating the lag of the world socialist community from capitalist states. On the other hand, it had to increase the level of food self-sufficiency, decrease the procurement of agricultural products from abroad and promote the solution of the world food problem in general. (shrink)

The article discusses the current topic of international interuniversity exchanges in the field of theater education. The subject of the study is the interaction of theater schools in Russia and China within the framework of the experimental Russian–Chinese theater and educational project of the Central Academy of Drama and the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts. The project has been implemented since 2015. According to the terms of the project, Russian and Chinese teachers of acting and special disciplines work together (...) in St. Petersburg and Beijing. Upon graduation, students receive diplomas from two universities recognized in both countries. The author, a direct participant of the project, analyzes the results of this experiment from the position of compliance with the principles and requirements of the dialogue of cultures.  The novelty of the research lies in the substantiation of the cultural value, the prospects of the modern version of the interaction of theater schools in Russia and China. The results of the study were the following conclusions: in the implementation of the Russian-Chinese theater and educational project, all the basic conditions are present and fulfilled, which make it possible to determine the events, events and their results that took place within the framework of the project as a full-fledged dialogue of cultures. Today, as never before, there are points of contact and mutual enrichment of the cultures of Russia and China. There are mutually significant cultural ties, dialogue and interaction of cultures. This variant of intercultural interaction is also productive from the point of view of innovation, creating a unique field of cross-cultural experiments. (shrink)

Primatological and archaeological evidence along with anthropological accounts of hunter-gatherer societies indicate that lethal between-group violence may have been sufficiently frequent during our ancestral past to have shaped our evolved behavioral repertoire. Two simulations explore the possibility that heroism (risking one's life fighting for the group) evolved as a specialized form of altruism in response to war. We show that war selects strongly for heroism but only weakly for a domain-general altruistic propensity that promotes both heroism and other privately costly, (...) group-benefiting behaviors. A complementary analytical model shows that domain-specific heroism should evolve more readily when groups are small and mortality in defeated groups is high, features that are plausibly characteristic of our collective ancestral past. (shrink)

The relevance of the research reflects the unity of the requirements of the Beijing Philosophical Congress "Learning to be a man" and the anniversary report of the "Rome Club" "Come On! Capitalism, myopia, population and destruction of the planet", which the transformation processes of the socio-sphere are revealed from the standpoint the need for a radical breakdown of the spiritual and moral world of man and his worldview. The foundation of these transformations is the transition in education, as the hippocrine (...) of our knowledge, the source that quenches thirst in them to the "new Enlightenment" as a decisive factor in the learning of a person to be him. This determined the purpose and objectives of the article. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the natural and necessary character of the formation of the "new Enlightenment", to reveal the architectonics of its content. Research objectives : in the context of the goal to uncover the factors that determine the need for a transition in education to the "new Enlightenment", its qualitative difference from the Enlightenment of the 17th-18th centuries; to characterize the new content of "connectedness" in education based on the use of new information technologies; analyze the process of formation of a new spiritual and moral outlook of a specialist on the universal values of humanity; focus the learner’s attention on focusing knowledge of sustainable development as a determining factor of the global problems of mankind through the interrelation of academic disciplines; an important component presents the demand for the formation of a new integral thinking, innovative in its essence and qualitatively different from the analytical one. It is noted that the transition to the path of integral thinking contributes to the connection, coordination and organization into a single whole of the fragments of the object under study. Such thinking is characterized by stability, reliability, variability; it is original in its connections with science and education, and methodological influence on individual and social consciousness. Integral thinking reflects a qualitatively new level of intelligence. Research methods: to achieve the stated goal and constructive solution of the tasks, the article used the method of abduction, analysis and synthesis, historical and logical, synergistic approach. The results of the research: a new paradigm of education is represented – the noospheric-information one corresponding to the factuality of the “new Enlightenment”, as its ability to reproduce itself on a changing scale. The change in the scale of the socio-sphere is due to its globalization processes. The content of the “new Enlightenment” is explicated as a qualitatively new level of formation of students' sustainable knowledge based on the integral innovative type of thinking based on the information resources of society, the use of modern educational technologies, as well as on the values of society, as the quintessence of its wisdom and public intelligence. Conclusions. Thus, the formation of a "new Enlightenment" is natural and necessary. This follows from the requirements of the “learn to be human” program, as well as from the development of an internally ordered education process. “New Enlightenment” also has an attribute of uniqueness, since it does not have anything to compare with, identify; it is an objective, essential, unique phenomenon; it is single, relative, determined by the previous development of education. It is based on the processes of intellectualization, innovation, informational content, humanism and is capable of solving constructively the tasks facing society. (shrink)

The Crimea Conference is by all means an extremely complex historical event. Any attempt to estimate its role and significance without analyzing its ethical components would unavoidably result in unduly simplifying the historical reality of the time, as well as in forming erroneous assumptions that would necessarily be used in the analysis of the causes of Cold War. A thorough examination will show that as far as the ‘ethical’ issues are concerned, there are significant developments with regard to general methodology, (...) as well as its application to the sources. Generations of historians who have addressed the issue of Yalta Conference, although they have not been able to form a scientific, distinct ‘ethical’ tradition so far, have developed all the necessary prerequisites for its establishment. This is evident in the possibility of segmenting the issue in two parts on the one hand, and on the other in the availability of sufficient sources, structured databases, and selected outstanding works. Still, there are no studies about the Yalta Conference so far that address exclusively ethical issues concerning ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ ‘morality,’ ‘duty,’ and ‘honor.’ Although historiographical approaches are to a large extent dependent upon ethical viewpoints, in the case of Yalta agreements so far there have been no techniques available, so as to connect historical accounts with ideology, and historical facts with their philosophical background. In a sense, the situation is quite the same as it is with the study of prehistory: although there is an abundance of data and facts that can be primarily processed, there are no methodological guidelines, nor any devices to classify and explain them. This is also typical for any question raised about the ethics of the Yalta agreements in February 1945. (shrink)

This article analyzes changes in the relationship between society and money that are not yet reflected in economic and social theory but have already manifested in cinematic images. Interpreting th...

In the article, the author examines five main, in his opinion, theories of human origins and finally proposes his own, which consists in the formation of the so-called "associative capacity", which is part of the overall development of the psyche, including the conscious and unconscious.

Franciscan thought in the 1300's, starting with Duns Scotus, is quite a revolution in terms of a shift to relying on sensory and phenomenal experience in the construction of cognitive theories.1 However, we do not yet understand the full extent of its convergence with modern and contemporary thought. In what follows, we intend to advance this understanding. The experiential tendency in early fourteenth-century thought is undermined by a Cartesian-style doubt about the reliability of sensory perception and phenomenal experience that stems (...) from the 63rd proposition of the Condemnations of 1277, which rejects the thesis that "God cannot produce the effect of a secondary cause without the secondary cause itself":2 a... (shrink)

Статья посвящена анализу богословского ландшафта в современной социальной и церковной сферах. Эволюционирующая социальная динамика требует переоценки обоснования и дискурса, используемых для поддержки теологических взглядов, по сравнению с более ранними периодами. Уникальные характеристики современного российского культурного и исторического контекста вносят изменения в роль богословия и придают его природе более неопределенный и спорный характер, влияя на его статус и место в общественной сфере. В рамках данной работы я попытаюсь сформулировать перспективу, направленную на раскрытие богословской стратегии в форме аналогического и мирного видения.

The article deals with an approach to the analysis of propositional attitudes based on the type-theoretical semantics proposed by A. Ranta and originating from the type theory of P. Martin-Löf. Type-theoretical semantics contains the notion of context and tools of extracting information from it in an explicit form. This allows us to correctly formalize the dependence on contexts typical of propositional attitudes. In the article the context is presented as a dependent sum type (Record type in the proof assistant Coq). (...) Ranta’s approach is refined and applied to the analysis of Quine’s phrase “Ralph believes that someone is a spy”. Three variants of formalization for this phrase are described which differ in the content of contextual knowledge and the way the truth values of the phrase are derived. Contexts are connected through the function of conversion, making it possible to relate truth values. As a result, it is shown that the instruments for working with contexts provided by type-theoretical semantics allow us to avoid the problem of opacity described by Quine. Provided formalization along with proofs is coded in Coq and made freely available. (shrink)

This article focuses on the problem of criminal liability for unlawful engagement in economic activities, analyses the emergence and development of this norm in criminal law and the ways of its optimal explanation. Special attention is paid to the problem of identification of illegality of activities, based on specific tax and economic regulation. The study concludes that criminal liability must be limited to a violation of fundamental requirements for the legality of business, and does not include particular abuses occurring in (...) legal business. The author also deals with the criteria of delimitation of criminal and administrative liability for unlawful engagement in economic activities. Under Article 202(1) of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Lithuania, application of criminal liability is limited by two alternative conditions: either a person illegally undertakes activity in entrepreneurial way or on a large scale. According to the paper, the above-mentioned regulation lacks clarity and leads to the risk of unfounded prosecutions. The author gives practical examples, where on the basis of inexplicable criterion of an entrepreneurial way, criminal charges are filed in respect of petty economic activities. Such practice is incompatible with the purposes and principles of criminal law. The paper proposes to delete the criterion of an entrepreneurial way from the definition, leaving the possibility of criminal liability only in case of large scale illegal economic activity. The article also substantiates the conclusion that prohibited business activities provided for in Article 202(2) of the Criminal Code actually defies logical explanation and should be removed from the regulation. At the end of the article, the author offers a sample of optimal legal wording of unlawful engagement in economic activities in criminal law. (shrink)

Evasion of value added tax (VAT) is a pressing criminal justice problem; however, there still are no theoretical studies on the specific nature of this offense and the basis of its legal evaluation. This article is an attempt to explain the preconditions of the origin of this type of fraud and its connection with the Value Added Tax Law, to formulate the conceptual understanding of the offense, to reveal the important aspects of its legal evaluation and to discuss relevant examples (...) from the case-law. The preconditions of VAT fraud lie in the legal nature of tax administration and the particularity of VAT regulation creating opportunities to abuse the right of deducting the overpayment from the budget or reducing the tax payable. The system of tax crimes stipulated in the Criminal Code is not sufficient to properly assess the impact and danger of VAT fraud. The judicial practice considering VAT deception as property fraud is theoretically justified and welcome. (shrink)

У статті висвітлюються та досліджуються процеси становлення й розвитку законодавства про створення й діяльність політичних партій у сучасній Україні. Автор аналізує чинне законодавство України та формулює необхідність його вдосконалення, зауважуючи, що головною запорукою успіху законотворчої діяльності держави в царині розбудови законодавства щодо політичних партій є активна участь громадян у суспільно-політичному житті країни, залучення громадськості до обговорення стану й перспектив розвитку законодавства, принаймні того, що безпосередньо регулює реалізацію громадянських прав і свобод.

A careful evaluation of well-documented historical data, along with ancient and modern theological writings, reveals the matriarch Rebekah as one of the most important and controversial individuals of the biblical narrative. Her exceptional beauty, hospitality, morality, faithfulness and sacrificial love were highly admired and praised as iconic by ancient historians, philosophers, the Hebrew community, the Church Fathers and numerous other scholars; yet, some theologians and clerics of the past few 100 years have depicted Rebekah in a negative light. This article (...) intends to highlight this contradiction for the contemporary community of believers by providing an insightful description of the ancient hermeneutics of Rebekah's story. It further aims to encourage biblical scholars to methodologically re-evaluate Rebekah's life, investigating possible reasons as to why the positive image of Rebekah has been overturned in recent years, and thereby determine the cause of such a conceptual paradigm shift in interpreting this key biblical narrative. (shrink)

Publication date: 30 August 2017 Source: Author: Oleg Tarnopolsky This paper analyzes a project devoted to elaborating a new textbook of English for students majoring in “Tourism.” The textbook is designed on the basis of the constructivist approach, i.e. such an organization of the teaching/learning process that ensures students’ involuntary language acquisition through participation in target language communication which is implemented when performing learning tasks modeling the professional activities of the future university graduates. Those tasks are completed in the (...) form of experiential learning activities that provide for modeling the students’ future professional activities and professional target language communication, giving them opportunities of acquiring the language involuntarily through practical experience of participating in such communication. Examples of experiential learning activities are given – those that are used in every unit of the textbook as organized in the separate parts of every such unit. (shrink)

For a quasi variety of algebras K, the Higman Theorem is said to be true if every recursively presented K-algebra is embeddable into a finitely presented K-algebra; the Generalized Higman Theorem is said to be true if any K-algebra which is recursively presented over its finitely generated subalgebra is embeddable into a K-algebra which is finitely presented over this subalgebra. We suggest certain general conditions on K under which the Higman Theorem implies the Generalized Higman Theorem; a finitely generated K-algebra (...) A is embeddable into every existentially closed K-algebra containing a finitely generated K-algebra B if and only if the word problem for A is Q-reducible to the word problem for B. The quasi varieties of groups, torsion-free groups, and semigroups satisfy these conditions. (shrink)

Statistical physics cannot explain why a thermodynamic arrow of time exists, unless one postulates very special and unnatural initial conditions. Yet, we argue that statistical physics can explain why the thermodynamic arrow of time is universal, i.e., why the arrow points in the same direction everywhere. Namely, if two subsystems have opposite arrow-directions at a particular time, the interaction between them makes the configuration statistically unstable and causes a decay towards a system with a universal direction of the arrow of (...) time. We present general qualitative arguments for that claim and support them by a detailed analysis of a toy model based on the baker’s map. (shrink)

Shramko [. Truth, falsehood, information and beyond: The American plan generalized. In K. Bimbo, J. Michael Dunn on information based logics, outstanding contributions to logic...

In the article, I discuss the significance of the Aristotle’s approach to education. Four aspects of his approach are of special importance: 1. the integrity of knowledge, 2. wonder as the beginning of knowledge, 3. oral communication as a specific way of accessing knowledge and operating with it, 4. knowledge as a necessary element of way of life. While nowadays the individuality is the primary value, and the accessibility of information is becoming almost absolute, these points of the Aristotle’s way (...) of teaching are becoming crucial. Taking the Aristotelian approach to teaching as a model we observe the following significant changes: information is becoming structured only if it is well organized, the ability to wonder develops the ability to ask questions correctly and to have answers which are valued and well memorized, oral communication trains memory and involves pupils into the dialogue with teacher, and knowledge itself is taken as a necessary element of the ethical way of life rather than just as additional bit of information. (shrink)

Publication date: 22 December 2020 Source: International Letters of Social and Humanistic Sciences Vol. 89 Author: Oleg Tarnopolsky, Marina Kabanova The article analyzes using Content and Language Integrated Learning for teaching one of the optional humanities disciplines to Ukrainian university students of different majors. The discipline discussed in the article as an example of using CLIL methodology is “The Fundamentals of Psychology and Pedagogy” and it is in the list of optional humanities subjects for the first-year students of Alfred (...) Nobel University in Dnipro, Ukraine. However, unlike the other optional humanities disciplines, the methodology underlying this course is based on teaching the subject in English, instead of Ukrainian, following the CLIL approach widely used in the European education but still little known in Ukraine. The purpose of the paper is to expose and analyze the original methodology developed that conditioned the specific structure of the relevant course, and the specific learning activities used in it. The essence of the developed CLIL theory-based methodology and its practical application are manifested through learning activities that include students’ mini-lectures/workshop-type presentations, brainstorming, case-studies, discussions, and a learning project with its results summarized in students’ essays, abstracts, and summaries written in English. The students collect the information required for completing their tasks not only from the teacher’s lectures and the recommended literature but also by way of doing extensive Internet-search on psychological and pedagogical sites in English. All this makes CLIL in the case under discussion experiential-interactive, blended, autonomous, and cooperative. As the result, students mostly self-construct their knowledge of the discipline by way of using the target language as the tool for such self-construction. This makes the elaborated course a clear-cut case of constructivism in CLIL pedagogy. Subject Classification Numbers: PACS 01.40.-d. (shrink)

The author argues that according to Sextus Empiricus, (a) the "sensual" nature of the phenomenon is a metaphorical notion, since it is indistinguishably extended both to sensuality and thinking; (b) the phenomenon manifest itself with irresistible force of impact, through a wide range of passive states of mind; (c) the impact of phenomena is always mediated by our ego, because all skeptic expressions are strongly correlated with the first person singular. The article proves that Descartes could not refute the “excess” (...) of skeptical doubt and make an immanent critique of skepticism without borrowing the aforementioned statements of Sextus. Such borrowing (1) has created a common ground for discussion between Descartes and skeptics; (2) made it possible for the meditator to give persuasiveness to careful observation of his own internal experience. Descartes' search for certainty in "Meditations" is entirely based on [а] evidence of "phenomena", "states of mind", "passions"; [b] refusal to agree with the "non-evident" proclaimed by Sextus Empiricus. (shrink)

A well-known psychologist O. Asmolov speaks of a paradox of system thinking that touches such concepts as "element in the system" and "system in the element", "person in society" and "society in person". The formal logic does not fit the fact that the "person", as an element of the "social system", can not only accommodate the "social system", but potentially can lead to its changes.

A Reader in Early Franciscan Theology presents for the first time in English key passages from the Summa Halensis, one of the first major installments in the summa genre for which scholasticism became famous. This systematic work of philosophy and theology was collaboratively written mostly between 1236 and 1245 by the founding members of the Franciscan school, such as Alexander of Hales and John of La Rochelle, who worked at the recently founded University of Paris. Modern scholarship has often dismissed (...) this early Franciscan intellectual tradition as unoriginal, merely systematizing the Augustinian tradition in light of the rediscovery of Aristotle, paving the way for truly revolutionary figures like John Duns Scotus. But as the selections in this reader show, it was this earlier generation that initiated this break with precedent. The compilers of the Summa Halensis first articulated many positions that eventually become closely associated with the Franciscan tradition on issues like the nature of God, the proof for God’s existence, free will, the transcendentals, and Christology. This book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the ways in which medieval thinkers employed philosophical concepts in a theological context as well as the evolution of Franciscan thought and its legacy to modernity. A Reader in Early Franciscan Theology is available from the publisher on an open-access basis. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:It is difficult to do justice to a monumental study such as PJDS in a short review: only time will determine its real significance. We can only offer some preliminary comments, and in spite of anything we have to say, the mere fact that the book contains such a wealth of information justifies for it a permanent place on a bookshelf of a student of medieval thought.The title of (...) PJDS deserves special attention. While we have books on Scotus's theology or particular topics of his thought, there has been no comprehensive study of his "philosophy," seemingly for a good reason: Scotus is clearly a "fundamental" and systematic theologian who simply uses some classic tools of ancient philosophers and some of their texts and ideas as material for his own discussions. So first of all one needs to determine what constitutes "philosophy" in such a case. V. devotes considerable attention to this question, but unfortunately only at the very end of the study, in Part III, which constitutes almost a separate monograph on the historiography of the debate about "medieval philosophy" and Scotus's role in it. Dichotomizing medieval thought into "philosophy" and theology in recent debates comes from the post-Enlightenment habit of seeing "philosophy" , as opposed to "theology," as something positive in itself. In Chapter 14 V. makes a good observation that "philosophy" and "theology" in ancient and medieval thought are simply two systems that can be coherent in themselves but differ fundamentally as far as their premises are concerned. Using the terminology of contemporary hermeneutical-postcritical analysis, one could say that both disciplines are intratextual systems, with their own internal logic but with different "starting points," opened to a conversation ad extra to various degrees. The classification "intratextual system" based on a solid theoretical foundation in the hermeneutical-postcritical tradition would eliminate the unnecessary dichotomy in ancient and medieval thought. Indeed, it is difficult to see why some of Plato's, Aristotle's or Stoic texts should be classified as "philosophy," not to mention those of Plotinus and Proclus that are often clearly "theology." As a whole, V.'s verdict is that Scotus has his own coherent system of thought based on contingency, as opposed to the "necessitarianism" of ancient philosophers. As for the role of "philosophy," V.'s analysis of recent scholarship shows that "medieval philosophy" is often understood as the logical tools in the service of theology: the interpretation that explains the recent interest in the fourteenth-century thought where those tools were best developed.The book in general is quite readable, despite occasional infelicities in the English and some typos. V. employs a variety of styles, from purely scholarly, which includes a straightforward exposition of relevant texts, with some analysis of the diachronic development of issues, to more literary, ornate and emotional. Similarly varied is his presentation of issues: from dry exposition to creating prolonged "mystery plots" that lead to "discoveries." Unfortunately there is also some unevenness in the text flow: from very smooth to abrupt transitions from one statement to another .Although the book will definitely benefit a variety of readers, the exact readership is difficult to pinpoint. Some sections, such as the extended discussion of distinctions and relations in the section on logic, presuppose a very basic audience; often much of the material from previous sections is repeated . Yet other sections presuppose a rather sophisticated reader who is familiar with the context of the discussion and is able not only to follow but also anticipate the author's train of thought.PJDS provides an excellent coverage of Scotus's work, with one notable exception: the Reportatio tradition. Even though the Wolter/Bychkov edition-translation of Rep. I-A appeared perhaps.. (shrink)