The concepts of necessary being, or necessary existence, and contingent being, or contingent existence, continue to occupy a central position in philosophical appraisals of Christian theism. Some philosophers have been concerned of late to emphasize a crucial ambiguity in the terms ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent', an ambiguity which threatens seriously to bedevil assessment of the claim that God's existence is necessary and not contingent. An important consequence of getting clear on this point, it is suggested, is that certain brisk attempts to (...) demolish the concept of a necessary being may be seen at least to be premature, leaving untouched,, as they do, an apparently viable sense in which God can be said to be a, indeed the, necessary being.This, substantially, is the position advocated by Professor J.H. Hick in recent discussions of this point. Hick maintains that it is of the greatest importance to distinguish two fundamentally different and contrasting notions of necessary being or necessary existence. (shrink)

This volume collects essays by leading criminal law theorists to explore the principal themes in his work.

Systemic autoimmune diseases are characterized by the production of antibodies against a broad range of self-antigens. Recent evidence indicates that the majority of these autoantigens are modified in various ways during cell death. This has led to the hypothesis that the primary immune response in the development of autoimmunity is directed to components of the dying cell. In this article, we summarize data on the modification of autoantigens during cell death and the possible consequences of this for autoimmunity. BioEssays 22:627–636, (...) 2000. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (shrink)

Experimental results on spectra and wave functions of a ray-splitting microwave billiard are presented. The billiard is formed by a flat rectangular microwave cavity with a quarter-circle insert made of teflon in one of the corners. Using the Gutzwiller trace formula, the contribution of the periodic orbits of the billiard to the density of states are determined. The wave functions, many of them showing scars associated with periodic orbits, are interpreted in terms of the semiclassical Green function.

On the eminence and dignity of parents; in the light of Koran and Hadith (Islamic traditions).

From the beginning of the seventeenth century it has generally been held that the second Medicean is the parent of all the other extant manuscripts. In two articles C. W. Mendell has demonstrated that Leidensis B.P.L. 16. B is the manuscript once owned by Rudolphus Agricola and later by Th. Ryck, whose edition makes frequent allusion to its readings. Mendell's attempt to show further that L represents a tradition independent of the Medicean has found little support until recently, when E. (...) Koestermann, in the course of preparing the latest Teubner edition of Annals and Histories became convinced from his own study of L that Mendell's view—in spite of some arguments of dubious validity—was essentially correct. In an article in Philologus and in the preface to his edition of Histories Koestermann has marshalled the arguments which he believes prove L's independence of the Medicean line of descent. Since the new valuation that Koestermann puts upon L has produced a drastic revision of both text and apparatus criticus in his new editions, it may be worth while to examine the evidence that Koestermann adduces in support of his belief in L's independence. (shrink)

"We prove that any variety of relation algebras which contains an algebra with infinitely many elements below the identity, or which contains the full group relation algebra on some infinite group (or on arbitrarily large finite groups), must have an undecidable equational theory. Then we construct an embedding of the lattice of all subsets of the natural numbers into the lattice of varieties of relation algebras such that the variety correlated with a set [italic capital]X of natural numbers has a (...) decidable equational theory if and only if [italic capital]X is a decidable (i.e., recursive) set. Finally, we construct an example of an infinite, finitely generated, simple, representable relation algebra that has a decidable equational theory.'' -- Abstract. (shrink)

Ausonius has become a more accessible writer since the appearance of Professor Green's acclaimed commentary on him in 1991, which among other things stimulated discussion of his text and the textual tradition. This newly revised text takes advantage of recent criticism, both conservative and conjectural, and re-examines the difficulties inherent in the long held view that extant manuscripts derive independently from separate authorial editions. The opportunity has been taken to reassess earlier decisions on various problematic passages and to introduce several (...) new emendations, either in the text or in the apparatus criticus. There is a newly written introduction, in English, the apparatus criticus has been pruned, the concordances expanded, and the bibliography updated. The works in this new Oxford Classical Texts version of the text follow the same order as was established in Professor Green's previous edition of 1991. (shrink)