Category Archives: Rationalism

When starting philosophy, it is important to understand rationalism meaning. Rationalism is the epistemological view that considers reason to be the chief source and test of knowledge, or in other words, it is any view that appeals to reason as the source of knowledge or its justification. In a more formal sense, rationalism may be defined as the methodology or theory in which the criterion for truth is an intellectual and detective one rather than a sensory one.

Rationalism argues that the objective truth is the only truth and only those things that the intellect can grasp should be considered as truths. They asserted that certain principles of rationality exist within the realm of ethics, mathematics, metaphysics, and logic which are so fundamentally true that denying them in any way, shape, or form would cause one to fall into contradiction. There are different opinions on the degree of emphasis that needs to be used in this method which led to a wide range of rationalist standpoints from the moderate position that logic should be given precedence over otherwise of gaining knowledge to the more extreme position that reason is the only back to knowledge.

Today there are many different types of specialized rationalism meaning that have been identified such as rationalist expressivism, rationalist pragmatism, and linguistic rationalism among others.

Read the original here:

Rationalism - Teachmint Explanation and Meaning|

This article is taken from the October 2022 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now were offering five issues for just 10.

In 1985, Martin Scorseses career was at such a low ebb that he had to take the movie-director equivalent of a menial job. Now, those days of the low-budget, narrow-horizoned After Hours are long forgotten: his position as oneof historys all-time greats is seemingly unassailable. No studio dares utter the word no to him.

The result is a debasing of his talent: new Scorsese films are routinely an hour too long. The truth, though, is that his directorial talent has never been as great as occasional masterpieces like Goodfellas (1990) tricked us into believing it was.

Perhaps we can forgive the gaucheries of Mean Streets (1973) on the grounds that it was Scorseses first proper feature film. Even so, its noticeable thatits not just overly episodic but in places actively badly directed. Witness the contretemps in the pool hall when Charlie and Johnny Boy push over Joey Scalas men to make their escape. Because it suits Scorseses narrative convenience for them to not give chase, the hardened thugs stay on the floor like overturned tortoises.

Taxi Driver made Scorseses name in 1976, but lacks momentum or moral, relying for its gritty power on the shock value of Jodie Fosters child-prostitute character and on it constituting by simple happenstance a snapshot of a Big Apple that then seemed on an unstoppable ride to dystopia.

New York, New York (1977) is curiously soap opera-like if reasonably entertaining, but 1980s Jake LaMotta biopic Raging Bull is quite simply across-the-board bad filmmaking, afflicted by preposterously exaggerated boxing action, an atmosphere-flattening lack of a soundtrack, agonisingly repetitive dialogue, endless and tedious confrontationalism and irritatingly pointless black-and-white stock. The critical esteem in which this gruesome concoction is held is the definition of Emperors New Clothes.

It cant be denied that Scorseses career is speckled with genuine greatness. The King of Comedy (1982) is a fine meditation on the haves and have-nots of talent and is executed with a surprisingly light touch. After Hours is actually a very good and funny urban comedy and succeeded in its objective of edging Scorsese back into contention after the crushing disappointment of the initial failure to secure funding for his dream project, The Last Temptation of Christ, and the commercial underachievement of The King of Comedy.

Truly magnificent is Goodfellas, from its stylish construction to its brutally thought-provoking narrative to its blizzard of iconic scenes. In this year of celebrations of the half centenary of The Godfather, we are reminded how comparatively little we have heard in recent times about that once omnipresent Francis Ford Coppola picture: quite simply, Goodfellas instantly eclipsed it in terms of being the definitive gangster flick.

Since then, though, Scorsese has lazily settled on Mafia-Picture Director as a main calling. This might be a worthwhile pursuit if it described an upward aesthetic gradient, but the fact that, in Goodfellas, he had already delivered the genres ideal makes it instead a grand exercise in futility.

Its also akin to obsessive-compulsive disorder. Casino (1995) and The Irishman (2019) contain broadly the same milieu, set pieces and morality lessons. Scorsese is simply moving the furniture around. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that he, in another act of laziness, uses the same actors over and over: seeing Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Harvey Keitel in a Scorsese mobster movie for the umpteenth time makes for a bizarre feeling of dj vu-cum-musical chairs.

The Irishman took this rinse-and-repeat casting to a risible breaking point, with Scorsese deciding that advances in CGI meant that he could get away with giving the septuagenarian De Niro another turn as a vigorous and violent young hood. New levels of surrealism were created by an artificially unlined De Niro setting about antagonists with limbs stiffened by age.

Fine offerings like The Aviator (2004) and Shutter Island (2010) might sporadically show that Scorsese still has it, but other efforts suggest that he doesnt understand his own talent. The Irishman and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) are achingly slow, the momentum of what could be great narratives dragged down by longueurs just begging for the application of a brave editors scissors.

Whisper it lightly, but Scorsese doesnt really believe in cinema

But then, such ill-discipline may very well lie at the heart of the mans craft. Whisper it lightly, but Scorsese doesnt really believe in cinema. He has consistently refused to work within the art forms natural parameters, whether it be by using voiceovers (surely somebody who understands that film is a show-dont-tell medium doesnt need to resort to such a cheat) or by whimsically breaking the fourth wall (Ray Liottas peroration direct to camera at the endof Goodfellas almost ruins a film reliant for its impact on naturalism).

The most pathetic and petty example of that postmodernism was Scorsese ostentatiously and vengefully superimposing a black bar over an aeroplane ticket in Goodfellas because an image-protective American Airlines had refused to allow the director to show its logo.

Scorsese pioneered the use of everyday music in soundtracks. Up to the late Seventies, rock and pop was usually deployed in feature films only as source music (songs that the characters in the narrative can theoretically hear). Yet while Scorsese is to be applauded for his insistence on the legitimacy of popular music as underscore, his use of it is fatuous.

What relevance does George Harrisons romantically worshipful What is Life have to the scene in Goodfellas where a frazzled Henry and Karen are doing a drug deal? What conceptual sense does it make for a moon-in-June love song like the Ronettes Be My Baby to be playing behind the montage that opens Mean Streets? Scorsese always has his convoluted rationales for such things, but in reality hes self-indulgently shoving in some of his favourite listens.

Scorsese recently slammed the Marvel Cinematic Universe, asserting that its component films are sensationalist and empty. In fact, thoughtfulness and rationalism suffuse every single one of them. In Captain America: Civil War, the vigilante nature of superheroes and costumed crime fightersis subject to profound questioning.

Such solipsism demonstrates that this former paragon of New Hollywood has somewhere along the line become old-school. Or perhaps that should be Establishment? How else to describe somebody whose overlong latter-day efforts prove that he has reached that status of untouchable impunity that so many successful artists attain?

It is obtained, of course, always to their and our disadvantage.

The rest is here:

Martin Scorsese: rinse and repeat self-indulgence | Sean Egan - The Critic

Its fitting that Andrew Cummings debut feature opens with stories told around a campfire it has themes that date back, not just to the birth of cinema, but probably to the beginning of storytelling itself not for nothing is this titled The Origin. We have the terror of the night and the mysteries beyond the circle of firelight of our known world. We have the fear of the other. We have superstition vs rationalism. We have the question who is the real monster here? and we have, especially, a threatened mans fear of women. These are deep, primal themes, revisited over and again since humanity first saw shadows reflected on the cave wall (thank you Mr Plato).

Universal and ancient though the themes might be, Cummings, whose film is premiering at the LFF (the two remaining performances are already sold out), has given his debut a relatively novel setting: 45,000 years into the past, delving into the previously neglected genre of caveman horror. The Origin features a small cast wandering a vast, imposing and rather bleak landscape, with dialogue entirely in the fictitious stone age language of Tola, developed especially for the film by Swedish linguist Dr Daniel Andersson (thankfully subtitled in English).

We follow a small band of travelers: grumpy tribal elder Odal (Arno Luening), out-of-his-depth chieftain Aden (Chuku Modu), his pregnant partner Ave (Lolo Evans) and two sons Heron (Luna Mwezi) and Geir (Kit Young), and stray girl Beyah (Safia Oakley-Green), found wandering along the way. The group are migrating, searching for a new, safer place to settle, and find themselves starving and isolated in a hostile, seemingly uninhabited and unforgiving land (unmistakably shot in the mist-shrouded Highlands of Scotland). To make matters worse, something is prowling the edge of their firelight, prompting the question what monster could be lurking in the dark?

For a fairly low-budget film from a first time director, The Origin is remarkably accomplished. Its soundscape is, well, horrible but in the best possible way. Like Texas Chainsaw Massacre before it, the rising terror comes from unseen snarls and screeches, the howling of the wind and rustling of trees, by turns distant and horribly close. The sound design is augmented by a chilling, minimalist score from Adam Janota Bzowski, whose work on last years Saint Maud was equally affecting. Cinematographer Ben Fordesmans balletic camera work (another Saint Maud alum the two films share producers) is incredibly effective. His use of POV and focus, plus occasionally swooping the camera upside down, gives the film a continually unsettled feel, balancing beautifully stark landscapes lit by the slate-gray skies alone, and the soft play of firelight on faces once night falls. Its a genuinely terrifying film, but it looks beautiful.

Most impressive of all is how well paced Cummings, writer Ruth Greenbery and editor Paulo Pandolpho (all making their feature debuts) keep their film. A story with a cast of just six, filmed entirely out of doors with dialogue in a completely unknown language could easily feel ponderous, especially with its weighty themes of monstrosity and humanity. Yet Terrence Malick this isnt The Origin is a lean, brutally effective chiller and an extremely impressive debut. Bold, unsettlingly creepy and absolutely worth your time.

Link:

The Origin Review - LFF 2022 - HeyUGuys

Prominent voices continue to frame the debate over whether critical race theory (CRT) should be taught in schools as a debate over whether we should teach accurate racial history.

A few days ago, in an interview with Time magazine, Harvard University researcher Donald Yacovone (author of Teaching White Supremacy: Americas Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity) said of the controversy: one of the major reactions is this resistance to the teaching of the past. Slavery is real. Racial domination is real. But theyre doing their best to deny it, to affirm the innocence of whiteness.

This is a strawman attack. Few Americans of any stripe or generation object to teaching about slavery and Jim Crow. The problem with CRT in schools is theres a lot more to it than just teaching Americas checkered history of race relations, and its this more that many parents are objecting to.

For starters, CRT is essentially postmodernism. Stephen Sawchuk, associate editor of Education Week, notes in a piece praising CRT that, Critical race theory emerged out of postmodernist thought.

Postmodernism is the idea that there is no truth, no universal morality, and no reality except what we create. There are no facts because everything is socially constructed. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanicas entry on postmodernism, it dismisses as naive realism the idea that there is an objective natural reality.

Postmodernism is the philosophical equivalent of a funhouse mirror. Anything can be changed, created, and thrown away; and any new narrative is no more or less true than other narratives; because there is no such thing as objective fact or objective reality.

This philosophy comes through clearly in the works of critical race theorists such as Robin DiAngelo and Ozlem Sensoy, who reject the idea of objective knowledge and the scientific method in their book, Is Everyone Really Equal?

Importantly for American parents, postmodernism and CRT take careful aim at the Enlightenment values that America was founded on, including the idea that all humans are created equal.

Sawchuk points out how postmodernism (and by extension CRT), tends to be skeptical of the idea of universal values, objective knowledge, individual merit, Enlightenment rationalism, and liberalism.

In her classes on intersectionality (itself an offshoot of CRT), the late Kathryn Pauly Morgan, who was a University of Toronto professor of philosophy and co-founder of the feminist philosophy journal Hypatia, taught that people exist on 14 axes of privilege and oppression: from male to female, from white to non-white, from heterosexual to gay/lesbian, etc.

That is, a white male lives at the intersection of two types of privilege, a black female lives at the intersection of two types of oppression, and so on. As she described it, Privilege involves the power to dominate in systematic ways. Oppression involves the lived, systematic experience of being dominated by virtue of ones position on various particular axes.

This kind of teaching can help open our eyes to the experiences of people unlike us, but it can also function to create a hierarchy. In their bestselling book The Coddling of the American Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression President Greg Lukianoff point out, These interpretations of intersectionality teach people to see bipolar dimensions of privilege and oppression as ubiquitous in social interactions.

More generally, they continue, what will happen to the thinking of students who are trained to see everything in terms of intersecting bipolar axes where one end of each axis is marked privilege and the other is oppression? Since privilege is defined as the power to dominate and to cause oppression, these axes are inherently moral dimensions. The people on top are bad, and the people below the line are good. [emphasis in original]

Maybe some parents are upset that critical race theory doesnt put white people on top. We suspect far more are angry at an ideology that puts any skin color on top, rather than treating them all as equals. Thats a denial of the core American tenant espoused in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal and one that Americans of many generations fought to ultimately realize.

Besides jettisoning a foundational American tenet, its also important to note CRT isnt educational in the traditional sense.

While CRT teaches students what to think, its openly hostile toward approaches that teach students how to think. In fact, many CRT advocates explicitly reject the concept of critical thinking altogether.

Dr. Alison Bailey, the director of the Womens and Gender Studies Program at Illinois State University, spells out the logic:

the tools of the critical-thinking tradition (for example, validity, soundness, conceptual clarity) cannot dismantle the masters house: they can temporarily beat the master at his own game, but they can never bring about any enduring structural change (Lorde 1984, 112). They fail because the critical thinkers toolkit is commonly invoked in particular settings, at particular times to reassert power: those adept with the tools often use them to restore an order that assures their comfort.

Baileys argument boils down to this: Some people can outthink us, and those people might have power; so if were going to dismantle power structures (a key goal of CRT and postmodernism), then we need to reject critical thinking completely.

Apart from the bare-knuckle politics of all this and the arguments self-evident absurdity, is a tool really bad because its used by those in power? Its not hard to see the problems of introducing these ideas in K-12 schools. Most parents want their kids to learn how to think. They might be justifiably wary of an ideology that teaches that critical thinking is bad because it doesnt bring about systemic change in society.

Its not just Bailey, it must be pointed out. Plenty of CRT advocates reject objectivism and Enlightenment rationalism. In their book Is Everyone Really Equal?, DiAngelo and Sensoy even take aim at the scientific method: Critical Theory [the parent philosophy of critical race theory] developed in part as a response to this presumed superiority and infallibility of the scientific method.

If you reject the basic concepts of scientific inquiry and critical thinking, what are you left with? A strong focus on scholarship as activism, which filters down into pedagogy: CRT advocates often see their classrooms as incubators to raise a new generation to fight the system.

Maybe parents who reject CRT being taught in schools are simply picking up on this. Perhaps they want their kids to be educated in how to think, instead of being indoctrinated and trained to be future social justice advocates.

Finally, its unlikely that the opposition to teaching CRT in schools actually comes from racism. Support for interracial marriage, often used as a proxy for race relations, is at an all-time high. Ninety-four percent of Americans approve of interracial marriage, including 93 percent of white Americans and 93 percent of Southerners (for context, when that question was first asked in 1958 the answer was 4 percent support across the board).

Were not saying race relations are perfect, and certainly, racism still exists in the United States. But many CRT advocates dont seem to realize that its no longer 1960 and the vast majority of white Americans dont make decisions based on trying to maintain racial hierarchies. Parents oppose teaching CRT in schools, not because theyre secretly hoping white supremacy becomes the law of the land again, but for a number of better reasons.

Julian Adorney is a writer and marketing consultant with the Foundation for Economic Education (fee.org), and has previously written for National Review, The Federalist, and other outlets.

See the original post:

No, Critical Race Theory Isn't About Teaching That 'Slavery Is Real' - The Federalist

BARI, Italy Six months after a group of Italian scientists made a breakthrough discovery using new X-ray dating techniques to show the Holy Shroud of Turin dates back to around the time of Christs death and resurrection, the scientists have now used the same experiments to determine the probable geographical route of the priceless relic.

The six-member research team estimated the natural aging for different localities where the Shroud could have been kept before its European history, and then compared the result with the experimental value obtained by X-ray.

The researchers then found that the most likely route that best matched the X-ray measured natural aging of the Shroud was Jerusalem-Beirut-Constantinople-Lirey-Chambry-Turin, although other paths cannot be totally excluded. The findings were published in a peer-reviewed paper on Sept. 28.

In this Oct. 4 interview with the Register, chief researcher Liberato De Caro of Italys Institute of Crystallography of the National Research Council in Bari discusses the findings in more detail and whether a judgment on the authenticity of the Shroud can be definitively made. He also contends that, according to their research, the Holy Shroud of Turin is currently being preserved in conditions in Turin cathedral not ideal for the visible image on the fabric, and that a much lower temperature should be used for the controlled atmosphere of the reliquary.

Dr. De Caro, earlier this year, you published research using new techniques which showed that the Holy Shroud does coincide with Christian tradition by dating back to around the time of Christs death and resurrection. What do your latest findings tell us?

The Turin Shrouds fabric is made by linen. Natural aging of linen is influenced by temperature and relative humidity. The dependence of natural aging on the temperature is strongly non-linear. All those who have obtained a driving license know that speed and stopping distances don't increase at the same rate. Small increases in speed result in bigger increases in stopping distances. This is a typical non-linear effect. The same thing happens for temperature and natural aging: A small increase in temperature causes a big increase in the linen aging.

In my previous works, the natural aging of linen has been calculated by using secular average values for the temperature and relative humidity. But this approach is more suitable for linen fabrics kept in deep underground tombs where daily, monthly, and seasonal temperature variations are almost completely filtered out.

For example, if we visit a cave in summer, the temperature inside will be much lower than outside. Actually, it is nearly constant for all the year. Since it is more probable that, for all its history, the Shroud should have been kept either in churches or in other private buildings, not underground, the natural aging of its linen should have suffered seasonal variations of temperature.

In the last research we have taken into account monthly variations of temperature and relative humidity for calculating the natural aging of linen, leading to theoretical predictions more reliable for fabrics kept in private buildings, churches and not underground.

Can you explain in more detail and in laymans terms how your research can be applied to the geographical path of the Shroud and how it helps to confirm its authenticity?

We have an experimental estimate of the natural aging of the linen of the Shroud, obtained by X-rays. This aging is influenced by monthly temperatures and relative humidity of the localities where the relics could be kept over the centuries.

Spending the summer in the heat of Egypt is not the same as spending it in Iceland. Our skin, without any protection, will be very different at the end of summer. If after an entire summer, a friend of ours is not tanned at all, he hardly spent it in Egypt. Similarly, linen cellulose ages much faster if the environmental temperature and relative humidity are much higher.

We know the European history of the Shroud, where it has been kept. If it has 2,000 years, as deduced by the X-ray dating, where could it have been kept? We can theoretically estimate the natural aging for different localities where the Shroud could have been kept before its European history and compare the result with the experimental value obtained by X-ray. The best match will indicate the more probable localities, the more probable geographical path that the Shroud would have done during the centuries before its European history.

Your findings suggest the Holy Shroud took the Jerusalem-Beirut-Constantinople-Lirey-Chambry-Turin path. What other route possibilities are there, and do we know why the Holy Shroud took these possible particular routes?

Many scholars think that the ancient traditions of acheiropoieton images of Jesus Christ, i.e., icons made without hands, could be related to the Shroud. There are historical sources for these images present in several localities. The most important are Memphis (Egypt), Edessa (today, anliurfa, in Turkey), Camulia (Cappadocia, Turkey), Beirut (Lebanon) and Constantinople (today, Istanbul, in Turkey).

The average annual temperature at Memphis is greater than 22 Celsius [72 Fahrenheit]. Instead, at Camulia it is less than 10 Celsius [50]. This causes an enormous difference in terms of natural aging, due to the non-linear effects of temperature on cellulose aging.

For each locality, where there is an ancient tradition of an acheiropoieton image of Jesus Christ, we can calculate the alleged contribution to the natural aging of the Shroud. Comparing these theoretical evaluations with the X-ray measured value, we can have an indication on the historical/geographical path that the Shroud could have done before its known European history.

The Jerusalem-Beirut-Constantinople-Lirey-Chambry-Turin path is the one that best matches the X-ray measured natural aging of the Shroud, even if some other paths cannot be fully excluded. Going into the details of this path, in Jerusalem, the Shroud could not have been kept for long because of the outbreak of the revolt of the Palestinian Jews against Rome.

Indeed, according to Eusebius the Christians of Jerusalem escaped to Pella, bringing with them all the relics and main religious objects. Their escape occurred before the destruction of the Temple (year 70), probably at the beginning of the revolt. In particular, the Icon of Beirut was described as an image representing the entire body of Jesus Christ with the wounds endured during the Passion by Anastasius the Librarian in the year 873, who also narrated its origin and travel from Jerusalem to Beirut, where it remained until the year 975.

After this period, this icon was brought to Constantinople where, if it coincides with the Shroud, it remained until 1204 the year of the Sack of Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, when it was allegedly stolen by crusaders.

The Shroud appeared publicly for the first time in Europe, in 1354 in the hands of Geoffroy de Charny. In 1350, he built a small church in Lirey (France), where he was the lord, with the purpose of hosting several relics, among which the Shroud was likely included. In 1453, his granddaughter Marguerite gave the Shroud to the Savoy, a noble family based in Chambry, where it was damaged by fire in 1532. It was moved to the new Savoyard capital, Turin, in 1578, where it is still kept.

Calculating the natural aging of linen for each of the above historical/geographical steps, we obtain a theoretical value that can be compared with experimental value obtained by X-ray. The above-described path is the more probable because it gives a prediction for the natural aging of linen, which best matches the experimental value obtained by X-rays, even if other possibilities cannot be fully excluded.

You mention the environment in which the Holy Shroud is now stored in Turin. Can you explain this aspect more for us and how it helps determine the ageing process of the Shroud and therefore its probable age?

Since 2000, the Shroud has been preserved in a reliquary with a controlled atmosphere of 99.5% argon and 0.5% oxygen, at equalized atmospheric pressure, at 50% relative humidity, and a temperature of 19-20 Celsius [66-68]. A 100% oxygen-free environment favors the increment of anaerobic organisms on the Shroud. Therefore, some oxygen has been added in the controlled atmosphere of the reliquary where the Shroud is kept. Moreover, fully dried environments allow shrinking of textile fibers. To avoid this shrinking effect, some water vapor has been added to the controlled atmosphere. But, in presence of water vapor, the value of temperature at which the Shroud is kept today, according to our calculations, could be too high.

Following the previous example, its like always living in Egypt: it would become impossible not to see that ones skin becomes more and more tanned, although this is due to ultraviolet rays and not to room temperature. But this simple example immediately clarifies what are the possible dangers for the Shroud. Indeed, natural aging causes also yellowing of the linen, allowing the formation of chromophores (color centers) just in correspondence of the chain breaks of the polymeric structure of the cellulose constituting the linen. This, in turn, should cause a lowering of the image contrast of the image of the Man of the Shroud.

According to our estimates, to preserve the visibility of this image, as long as possible in the next centuries, a much lower temperature of the controlled atmosphere of the reliquary should be used.

Do your findings effectively bring to an end the debate over the authenticity of the Holy Shroud, in your view?

Since there are two different dating techniques that on the Shroud give different results (Carbon-14 and X-rays), in principle, it would be necessary to have further experimental tests to close this debate.

In any case, there are many other traces in history (coins, Christs icons, paintings, etc.) which, indirectly, attest the existence of the Shroud well before the 14th century. If it had been any other object of the past, all these indirect proofs would have already been sufficient to attest to its authenticity. Instead, for the Shroud the situation is different because many scientists, even editors and reviewers, hinder the publication of studies concerning the Shroud. Some of them are strongly influenced by their rationalism and their conclusions are biased. But many others do it as an authentic service to knowledge, as they take it for granted that the Shroud is a medieval forgery.

Therefore, the fact that the Shroud could be the burial sheet of Jesus Christ is considered only a myth to dispel. Moreover, it is often affirmed that science cannot deal with arguments concerning the Christian faith, like the Resurrection of Christ, because it is not a physical phenomenon allowed by the physical laws that we have discovered, and it cannot be reproduced in a laboratory. But even the Big Bang, the birth of the universe, cannot be reproduced in the laboratory, and it cannot be explained by the physical laws that we have discovered until now. In fact, to understand the birth of the universe and why ordinary matter is made just as it is, we are still waiting for new revolutionary theories in physics. Even if the Big Bang cannot be reproduced in a laboratory, even if it is not still explained by our scientific knowledge, the first instants of its evolution are extensively studied by many researchers in the world. It could be argued that the birth of the universe has left a trace: the cosmic microwave background radiation, that can be studied. But how can we exclude with certainty that the image of the Man of the Shroud cannot be a consequence of the Resurrection? If a researcher studies the image visible on the Shroud, to have possible indications about the Resurrection, is considered by many colleagues as a visionary, and his study is with certainty hindered by almost all scientific journals. In some ways, he lives the same experience Paul lived at the Areopagus: When they heard about resurrection of the dead, some began to scoff, but others said, We should like to hear you on this some other time.

How did your research into the Holy Shroud come about and could you give us more details on who else is on your research team?

Interest in the Turin Shroud was born, by chance, during a 2016 conference where I met Giulio Fanti, professor at Padua University, who was presenting the results of his long-lasting study. Since then, a fruitful collaboration has been born with him that has also led to this last work. Other authors of our last research on the Shroud (downloaded for free here), are some of my colleagues of the Institute of Crystallography of the National Council of Research (IC-CNR), in Bari (Italy), where I work: Teresa Sibillano and Cinzia Giannini.

In that first meeting with Professor Giulio Fanti, in 2016, there was also Cinzia Giannini, who is the current director of the IC-CNR Institute. I have been working with Cinzia for the last 32 years, really many! Another of the authors is Professor Emilio Matricciani, engineer of the Polytechnic of Milan (Italy). And finally, there is Csar Barta, a Spanish physicist, now retired, and also an expert in Shroud studies.

Is there anything more you have discovered about the Holy Shroud in your research that has yet to be published, and what future projects do you have planned?

We are planning other X-ray measures on linen fibers to better understand the natural aging of linen and how it can be eventually influenced by other causes. Moreover, the Shroud is not the only linen relics associated to Jesus Christ. Among the wonders that the Gervase of Tilbury describes in an early 13th-century encyclopedic work, there is the Holy Face of Lucca, a crucifix, still venerated in Lucca (Italy) which, according to what Gervase writes, would actually be a reliquary. Indeed, according to him, inside it was kept the sheet used to carry Jesus to the sepulcher when he was taken down from the cross. This is not the Shroud. It should be a different relic used only for carrying Jesus to the sepulcher.

A recent radiocarbon dating of the crucifix has indicated that it is very old, of the eighth century. It would therefore be the oldest wooden sculpture in the Western world. Moreover, it has just the shape of a reliquary on its back. Therefore, it cannot be excluded that it could be a copy of a more ancient wooden reliquary, which has been lost, perhaps because it was fully ruined.

Some medieval historical sources attest the presence of a sudarium kept in Lucca, giving indications where it should be searched. If it is really kept where it has been described and if it is of linen, it could be dated in the same way as the Shroud. Also the Sudarium of Oviedo, in Spain, a linen bloodstained piece of cloth, always related to the Passion of Jesus Christ, could be dated with the same X-ray technique, in order to compare the dating results with radio-dating already made.

All this research could allow us to discover new relics related to Jesus Christ but also discard false ones. To reach these important discoveries, we must have the will to know the truth fully, as only the truth will set us actually free (John 8:32).

See original here:

The Journey of the Holy Shroud of Turin - National Catholic Register

After bathing in waters of the sea, those rakshasasnow headed back toward Lanka,wet still with water of their griefit was as if they had immersed the image of thegoddess on the lunar tenth day of the Durga PujaThen Lanka wept in sorrow seven days and seven nights.

This is how Michael Madhusudan Dutts take on Ramayana, titled Meghnad Badh Kavya, the 18th-century Bengali epic, ended in American writer Clinton B. Selees translation, The Slaying of Meghanada. Dutt, one of the icons of the Bengal Renaissance, equated Ravans grief on his son Meghnads death with that of the bisarjan (immersion) of Durga idols on Bijoya Dashami, which in West Bengal is not the celebration of Rams return to Ayodhya, but a day of mourning. On this day, Durga, along with her children, returns to her husbands abode in the Himalayas, after spending five days with the family of her birth.

The Bengal Renaissance, which began about the same time as the rise of Rammohun Roy in Calcuttas intellectual circles in the second decade of the 19th century and the Young Bengal movement, saw Bengals new intellectual class breaking away from Hinduism, discarding idolatry, among other practices, and questioning everything old, from worldviews to conservative ideas. It was the scene of a raging battle between rationalism and religious conservatism.

The Ramayana, too, did not escape scrutiny. Apart from Dutt, who was a Christian, Sukumar Ray and Abanindranath Tagore of the Brahmo Samaj presented the epic in quite unconventional ways.

Meghnad Badh Kavya, published in 1861, was written in blank verse that Dutt had introduced in Bengali literature a year before. The poem presented Ravan and his son, Indrajit alias Meghnad, as heroes. The tragedy is divided into nine cantos, ending with Meghnads death, pathos being the dominant tone.

It became a talking point soon after, drawing both appreciation and opprobrium in equal measure. Some showered it with high praise, calling it an unparalleled masterpiece, while some criticised it for the writers bias towards Ravan and Meghnad and still some others criticised it for its difficult-to-comprehend, highly Sanskritised Bengali.

The Bengal Renaissance saw the new intellectual class breaking away from Hinduism, discarding idolatry, among other practices, and questioning everything old, from worldviews to conservative ideas.

Rajnarayan Basu, a friend of Dutt and an important figure of the Bengal Renaissance, though, held the work as a masterpiece, compared it with John Miltons Paradise Lost. The poet has tried his best to show his empathy for Ram, Lakshman and Sita in order to entertain the native readers, but he failed to hide his bias for the Rakshasa clan. Miltons Satan is worthier of the title of hero than Christ. But there is a difference between Milton and our poetMilton blundered unknowingly but our poet did it willingly He expressed his devotion for the Rakshasas, he said.

Villains as heroes

In his review, titled Meghnad Badh Samporke Du-Ekti Kotha (One or Two Words About Meghnad Badh), published in 1881 in Bangadarshan, which was edited by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay, editor and critic Shrish Chandra Majumdar wrote that every Hindu grows up carrying a divine image of Ram, Lakshman and Sita, while hatred for the Rakshas clan is etched in their hearts, but Dutt managed to reverse it. In his words, Meghnad Badh is built taking only one leaf out of Ramayana. But every reader will realise it is made of whats not there in Ramayana. No one feels like hating the rakshashas in Meghnad Badhthat feeling never arises. On the contrary, one feels sympathetic towards Lanka, a jewel on earth, at every step.

In 1887, Rabindranath, then 16, launched a scathing attack on Meghnad Badh in a detailed critique of the poem in his family journal, Bharati. He almost slayed Dutt for turning valorous characters like Ravan, Ram and Lakshman into feminine and weepers. But he discarded his views on the poem two decades later, describing them as insolent.

Describing Dutts work as an immortal poem Tagore wrote in his memoir Jibon Smriti, published in 1912: The text has rebellion in it. The poet has not only broken the barriers of rhyming, but has also daringly broken the stereotypes that we have created around Ram and Ravan. In this poem, Ravan and Indrajit have emerged greater than Ram and LakshmanIgnoring the power that very carefully obeys all the rules, the Kavya-Lakshmi (poetry goddess) garlanded the power that dares obey nothing.

A fun take

Meghnad Badh is, however, was not the sole iconic work that challenged the established Ramayana narrative. Take, for instance, Sukumar Rays play Lakshmaner Shaktishel (Lakshman and the Wonder Weapon), which playfully turns godly characters of the epic into something earthy and ordinary.

Here is a scene from the play, which borders on the profane and the irreverential:

(Chaos Outside) Ram: Whats the chaos outside about? Sugrib: Is it Ravan coming? Bibhishan and Jambuban: WhatRavan coming? What! Bibhishan: Wheres my umbrella? Wheres my bag? Jambuban: Hey, you got strength? Can you carry me on your shoulder?(The messenger enters as Jambuban tries to climb Bibhishans shoulder)

A few moments later in the play, as the chaos appears to be from people carrying an unconscious Lakshman to Rams court, Ram wails and faints. Monkeys cry, too, eating bananas in between wailing episodes. Hanuman tells Jambuban that he was not beside Lakshman when he was attacked as he was busy eating batasa (sweets made of sugar offered to deities). Jambuban imposes a fine on Hanuman and dozes off as soon as Sugrib calls for teaching Ravan a lesson.

After Ram regains consciousness, Jambuban writes a prescription for Lakshman and asks Hanuman to fetch vishalyakarani, the magic panacea. Hanuman agrees to go on the next day and suggests Jambuban to make do with homoeopathy for the day. Ultimately, Hanuman is persuaded to leave only after being bribed with bananas.

In his essay, titled Nonsense Club And Monday Club: The Cultural Utopias Of Sukumar Ray, critic Debasish Chattopadhyay says that Ray demytholises a serious episode from the Ramayana and compels these legendary, heroic figures to descend from the epic heights to a world of spoof and horseplay. He wrote, Sukumar belittles the mythical, heroic characters by endowing them with the traits of ordinary human beings.

Rays play, which was full of such absurdities, became one of the most popular pieces of childrens literature in Bengal since its publication in 1924, about a year after Rays death at the age of 37. In 1987, Sukumars more famous son, filmmaker Satyajit, arranged for an enactment of the play to include scenes in his documentary on his father.

Ahead of its time

Abanindranath Tagore, one of the pioneers of modern art in India, wrote Khuddur Jatra, alternatively called Khudi Ramleela, in 193435 for his grandson. Written in the style of Jatrapala, a loud form of musical theatre popular mostly in rural Bengal, the book did not change the basic narrative. The author juxtaposed the text with a wide range of visuals taken from modern printed material.

What was the most extraordinary about the book is that Abanindranath interspersed the narrative with cut-ups from reports and headlines in newspapersBengali and English advertisements of materials ranging from shoes and insurances to petrol, cigarettes and cosmetics; photographs, drawings and paintings of landscapes; dance and theatre performances; sports, airfields, aircrafts, bombing, war, living and dead birds and animals; sumptuous vegetarian and meat dishes; men drinking in a bar; and pages from European comic strips.

For example, the inscription Sitaharan (abduction of Sita) appears below a poster of the 1935 Hindi film, Hind Kesari, depicting a horse rider. The text deals with Surpanakha appearing before Ravan in his court at Lanka her nose and ears cut. As an angry Ravan leaves to abduct Sita, Kumbhakarna rebukes Surpanakha for stooping to chase a man and suggests to her to apply Boroflex, an antiseptic cream popular in early 20th-century Bengal, to her nose and ears.

In page 125, a photo of women posing around a pool, titled Bathing Beauties in Roman Scandal, accompanies the text where the trio of the narrators, Khudiram, Kenaram and Becharam, sing the glories of Ravans pleasure garden. In page 139, where the text deals with the building of the bridge to Lanka by Nala, Neela and Hanuman, an advertisement of Rohtas Cement appears with the catchline: For strength and durability.

There is nothing irrelevant or inessential in the work, artist and critic Ramananda Bandyopadhyay wrote about it. However, the work came in public knowledge after seven decades when it was published in 2009, along with an English translation by Samik Bandyopadhyay.

Abanindranath wrote several texts based on the Ramayana for children where the dialogues and characters were often funny.

In his piece, titled The Craft of Whimsy, Sankha Ghosh, one of the major postcolonial Bengali poets and a Jnanpith awardee, wrote that Khuddur Jatra was different in its treatment. [It] was not always a spirit of fun that motivated Abanindranath, but more often than not it was a critical mind at work, snapping at times at developments in the national and international political scenario, Ghosh said.

However, tweaking the Ramayana did not hurt religious sentiments.

Those were different times, then.

(This appeared in the print edition as "A Radical Recast")

Continue reading here:

Bengal's Tryst With Alternative Readings Of The Ramayana - Outlook India

When architect John Deuchrasss clients Petrea and Alan presented him with a battleaxe-shaped site set three lots back from the street, he welcomed the challenge. It helped that the couple, who have three young boys, were extremely flexible and open-minded toward his suggestions. Johns resulting design resolved the absence of views and lack of privacy by wrapping the new two-storey house around a courtyard. We worked with the concept that no part of the home was unseen, explains the director of JDA Studio Architects. So at ground level, the kitchen, dining and living areas all have direct views through to the courtyard and pool via full-height sliding glass doors.

The kitchen in particular benefits from a strong connection to the outdoors, and the flow between inside and out is seamless. It makes for a bright, breezy and ultimately relaxed setting that doesnt scream out that its a kitchen. Johns admiration for the minimalist work of John Pawson is evident in the pared-back design, which boasts a centrally positioned marble-top island bench and American oak veneer joinery. Polished concrete flooring complements the sparseness and the schemes clean lines really do instil a sense of calm. Theres rationalism at play minus the forced rigidity.

View gallery

Large sliding glazed doors create a generous and informal connection between the kitchen and courtyard.

Image: Tom Ferguson

I regarded the interior as a canvas upon which we wanted to express some detailing as well, so the kitchen and ensuite feature linear timber pull handles that have become the visually intriguing parts of the overall design, says John. The homes ground level ensuite is the schemes most innovative expression in the way it connects with the main bedroom. John took inspiration from contemporary hotel design and so, while the adults zone has a high-end aesthetic, its still soft and welcoming.

A custom oak veneer low-height headboard anchors the bed in the middle of the space, while, beyond it, double sliding cavity doors ensure the ensuite opens up to become part of the bedroom. The configuration is practical and accessible as well as being visually pleasing, with a symmetry thats in keeping with the rest of the homes minimalist stylings. Like the kitchen, this zone flows effortlessly into the courtyard, where the lush greenery cleverly adds another layer to the simple material and colour palettes. John has created a genuine retreat for Petrea, Alan and their children through an elegant scheme that looks inward, providing the family with a modern space in which they can comfortably live and grow.

Products and materials

Credits

Source

Houses: Kitchens + Bathrooms, June 2022

Read this article:

Warm and minimal: Riverview Courtyard House - Architecture AU

Study of the logic, methods, and foundations of social sciences

The philosophy of social science is the study of the logic, methods, and foundations of social sciences (psychology, cultural anthropology, sociology, etc...). Philosophers of social science are concerned with the differences and similarities between the social and the natural sciences, causal relationships between social phenomena, the possible existence of social laws, and the ontological significance of structure and agency.

Comte first described the epistemological perspective of positivism in The Course in Positive Philosophy, a series of texts published between 1830 and 1842. These texts were followed by the 1848 work, A General View of Positivism (published in English in 1865). The first three volumes of the Course dealt chiefly with the natural sciences already in existence (geoscience, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology), whereas the latter two emphasised the inevitable coming of social science. Observing the circular dependence of theory and observation in science, and classifying the sciences in this way, Comte may be regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term.[1] For him, the physical sciences had necessarily to arrive first, before humanity could adequately channel its efforts into the most challenging and complex "Queen science" of human society itself. His View of Positivism would therefore set-out to define, in more detail, the empirical goals of sociological method.

Comte offered an account of social evolution, proposing that society undergoes three phases in its quest for the truth according to a general 'law of three stages'. The idea bears some similarity to Marx's view that human society would progress toward a communist peak. This is perhaps unsurprising as both were profoundly influenced by the early Utopian socialist, Henri de Saint-Simon, who was at one time Comte's teacher and mentor. Both Comte and Marx intended to develop, scientifically, a new secular ideology in the wake of European secularisation.

The early sociology of Herbert Spencer came about broadly as a reaction to Comte. Writing after various developments in evolutionary biology, Spencer attempted (in vain) to reformulate the discipline in what we might now describe as socially Darwinistic terms (although Spencer was a proponent of Lamarckism rather than Darwinism).

The modern academic discipline of sociology began with the work of mile Durkheim (18581917). While Durkheim rejected much of the detail of Comte's philosophy, he retained and refined its method, maintaining that the social sciences are a logical continuation of the natural ones into the realm of human activity, and insisting that they may retain the same objectivity, rationalism, and approach to causality.[2] Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895. In the same year he argued, in The Rules of Sociological Method (1895):[3] "[o]ur main goal is to extend scientific rationalism to human conduct... What has been called our positivism is but a consequence of this rationalism."[4] Durkheim's seminal monograph Suicide (1897), a case study of suicide rates amongst Catholic and Protestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy.

The positivist perspective, however, has been associated with 'scientism'; the view that the methods of the natural sciences may be applied to all areas of investigation, be it philosophical, social scientific, or otherwise. Among most social scientists and historians, orthodox positivism has long since fallen out of favor. Today, practitioners of both social and physical sciences recognize the distorting effect of observer bias and structural limitations. This scepticism has been facilitated by a general weakening of deductivist accounts of science by philosophers such as Thomas Kuhn, and new philosophical movements such as critical realism and neopragmatism. Positivism has also been espoused by 'technocrats' who believe in the inevitability of social progress through science and technology.[5] The philosopher-sociologist Jrgen Habermas has critiqued pure instrumental rationality as meaning that scientific-thinking becomes something akin to ideology itself.[6]

Durkheim, Marx, and Weber are more typically cited as the fathers of contemporary social science. In psychology, a positivistic approach has historically been favoured in behaviourism.

In any discipline, there will always be a number of underlying philosophical predispositions in the projects of scientists. Some of these predispositions involve the nature of social knowledge itself, the nature of social reality, and the locus of human control in action.[7] Intellectuals have disagreed about the extent to which the social sciences should mimic the methods used in the natural sciences. The founding positivists of the social sciences argued that social phenomena can and should be studied through conventional scientific methods. This position is closely allied with scientism, naturalism and physicalism; the doctrine that all phenomena are ultimately reducible to physical entities and physical laws. Opponents of naturalism, including advocates of the verstehen method, contended that there is a need for an interpretive approach to the study of human action, a technique radically different from natural science.[8] The fundamental task for the philosophy of social science has thus been to question the extent to which positivism may be characterized as 'scientific' in relation to fundamental epistemological foundations. These debates also rage within contemporary social sciences with regard to subjectivity, objectivity, intersubjectivity and practicality in the conduct of theory and research. Philosophers of social science examine further epistemologies and methodologies, including realism, critical realism, instrumentalism, functionalism, structuralism, interpretivism, phenomenology, and post-structuralism.

Though essentially all major social scientists since the late 19th century have accepted that the discipline faces challenges that are different from those of the natural sciences, the ability to determine causal relationships invokes the same discussions held in science meta-theory. Positivism has sometimes met with caricature as a breed of naive empiricism, yet the word has a rich history of applications stretching from Comte to the work of the Vienna Circle and beyond. By the same token, if positivism is able to identify causality, then it is open to the same critical rationalist non-justificationism presented by Karl Popper, which may itself be disputed through Thomas Kuhn's conception of epistemic paradigm shift.

Early German hermeneuticians such as Wilhelm Dilthey pioneered the distinction between natural and social science ('Geisteswissenschaft'). This tradition greatly informed Max Weber and Georg Simmel's antipositivism, and continued with critical theory.[9] Since the 1960s, a general weakening of deductivist accounts of science has grown side-by-side with critiques of "scientism", or 'science as ideology'.[10] Jrgen Habermas argues, in his On the Logic of the Social Sciences (1967), that "the positivist thesis of unified science, which assimilates all the sciences to a natural-scientific model, fails because of the intimate relationship between the social sciences and history, and the fact that they are based on a situation-specific understanding of meaning that can be explicated only hermeneutically access to a symbolically prestructured reality cannot be gained by observation alone."[9] Verstehende social theory has been the concern of phenomenological works, such as Alfred Schtz Phenomenology of the Social World (1932) and Hans-Georg Gadamer's Truth and Method (1960).[11] Phenomenology would later prove influential in the subject-centred theory of the post-structuralists.

The mid-20th-century linguistic turn led to a rise in highly philosophical sociology, as well as so-called "postmodern" perspectives on the social acquisition of knowledge.[12] One notable critique of social science is found in Peter Winch's Wittgensteinian text The Idea of Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (1958). Michel Foucault provides a potent critique in his archaeology of the human sciences, though Habermas and Richard Rorty have both argued that Foucault merely replaces one such system of thought with another.[13][14]

One underlying problem for the social psychologist is whether studies can or should ultimately be understood in terms of the meaning and consciousness behind social action, as with folk psychology, or whether more objective, natural, materialist, and behavioral facts are to be given exclusive study. This problem is especially important for those within the social sciences who study qualitative mental phenomena, such as consciousness, associative meanings, and mental representations, because a rejection of the study of meanings would lead to the reclassification of such research as non-scientific. Influential traditions like psychodynamic theory and symbolic interactionism may be the first victims of such a paradigm shift. The philosophical issues lying in wait behind these different positions have led to commitments to certain kinds of methodology which have sometimes bordered on the partisan. Still, many researchers have indicated a lack of patience for overly dogmatic proponents of one method or another.[15]

Social research remains extremely common and effective in practise with respect to political institutions and businesses. Michael Burawoy has marked the difference between public sociology, which is focused firmly on practical applications, and academic or professional sociology, which involves dialogue amongst other social scientists and philosophers.

Structure and agency forms an enduring debate in social theory: "Do social structures determine an individual's behaviour or does human agency?" In this context 'agency' refers to the capacity of individuals to act independently and make free choices, whereas 'structure' refers to factors which limit or affect the choices and actions of individuals (such as social class, religion, gender, ethnicity, and so on). Discussions over the primacy of structure or agency relate to the very core of social ontology ("What is the social world made of?", "What is a cause in the social world, and what is an effect?"). One attempt to reconcile postmodern critiques with the overarching project of social science has been the development, particularly in Britain, of critical realism. For critical realists such as Roy Bhaskar, traditional positivism commits an 'epistemic fallacy' by failing to address the ontological conditions which make science possible: that is, structure and agency itself.

Read the original here:

Philosophy of social science - Wikipedia

image:Joint group picture of the editors of the scientific journal "Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics" (ACP) together with the Publications Committee of the European Union of Geosciences (EGU). They met on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the open access journal ACP at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz. view more

Credit: Dom Jack, MPIC

After more than 20 years of service, Ulrich Pschl and Thomas Koop officially stepped down as ACP Executive Editors. In the years 2000/2001 they created the journal together with Ken Carslaw and Rolf Sander, then all affiliates or alumni of the Max Planck Institute, and Bill Sturges from the University of East Anglia, UK. Barbara Ervens (CNRS & University of Clermont-Ferrand, France) and Ken Carslaw (University of Leeds, UK) will continue as Co-Chief Executive Editors.

It has been a great pleasure to design and develop our new approach of scientific exchange and quality assurance with a highly diverse team of colleagues from all over the world, says Uli Pschl. The interactive open access approach of ACP and EGU provides the basis for an epistemic web openly displaying and tracing both what we know and how we know it, i.e., how the published scientific knowledge has been validated by public review and discussion according to the principles of critical rationalism.

Interactive Community Platform EGUsphere

The EGU journals have been recently complemented by the repository EGUsphere that offers an even wider variety of options for scientific exchange and publication by combining the established openly discussed journal submissions (discussion papers) with classical preprints and conference abstracts. Exceeding the features of traditional preprint servers, EGUsphere also serves as a discussion forum that allows the quick publication of initial ideas as preprints, involvement of the scientific community by commenting on these papers and the seamless transition of such papers for consideration as journal articles as final peer reviewed publications.

A virtual collection or magazine of interdisciplinary highlight articles from all journals will be set up soon under the title EGU Editors Choice, compiling concise articles that report on major advances in geosciences or present agenda-setting and provocative viewpoints of highest interest to the geoscience community and broader public. Beyond this virtual collection, the EGU Publications Committee also discussed the perspectives of a separate new highlight journal under the working title EGU Letters. Moreover, EGU also offers the Encyclopedia of Geosciences, which is a virtual collection of peer-reviewed scientific review articles on topics relevant to the geosciences, written by the experts of the field and published in the EGU open access journals.

"The EGU publications successfully grow not only in number of journals and papers, but also by widening the variety of publication platforms such as EGUsphere and the virtual highlight collection. Such development and implementation of innovative features distinguishes the EGU publications from their competitors from the beginning, when the open peer review and interactive discussion concept was first introduced, says Barbara Ervens, Co-Chief Executive Editor at ACP and Chair of the EGU Publications Committee.

All EGU publications are operated by the scientific service provider and pure open access publisher Copernicus on behalf of EGU. Hundreds of journal editors, thousands of reviewers and about 50 EGUsphere preprint moderators provide volunteer services to ensure scientific quality and integrity of the publications, in line with the not-for-profit philosophy of the EGU.

Globally distributed network

Yafang Cheng, Senior Editor at ACP, says: For over 20 years, ACP has always been a journal that is from the community and for the community, as a group-effort of like-minded scientists sharing the same dream of better scientific communication. We pursue this approach with a globally distributed network of over 160 co-editors in close exchange with thousands of authors, reviewers, commenters, and readers.

In the development and launch of ACP, Paul Crutzen, Nobel Prize awardee and former director at MPIC, played an essential role. Honoring his contributions, this year the newly established annual "ACP Paul Crutzen Publication Award" was presented for the first time at this meeting to recognize authors of an outstanding ACP publication that was selected by an independent commission. Christoph A. Keller (NASA) and coauthors received the 2021 award for their publication Global impact of COVID-19 restrictions on the surface concentrations of nitrogen dioxide and ozone.

Ken Carslaw says: Paul Crutzen played such a critical role in getting the journal off the ground 20 years ago, so we are proud to be able to honor his contribution to ACPs success with the journals first publication award. We are also grateful to the independent commission, led by Prof Annica Ekman from Stockholm University, for selecting the paper from nearly one thousand articles published in 2021.

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

Read this article:

Expanding open access to scientific knowledge and discussion - EurekAlert

Monday 26 September 2022~1. Will Italys elections hurt Pope Francis?2. Thomism versus rationalism: 44 years after his death, tienne Gilsons ideas remain important3 . The canton of Lucerne does not want to finance the new Swiss Guards barracks4. Torpedoing the presidential election leads to the collapse of the Republic, worries Patriarch Rai5. German bishops meet amid crisis~

Yesterday, Sunday 25 September, Italians went to the polls to vote for a new parliament, which will lead to a new prime minister. The party that received the most votes is the right-wing Fratelli dItalia, which combines disaffection from Republican institutions with a nostalgia for the fascism of Benito Mussolini, comments Massimo Faggioli, Italian religion historian, in the liberal magazine, Commonweal. The partys victory means that its leader, Giorgia Meloni, will be Italys first woman and first hard-right-wing prime minister. Faggiolis opinion article, however, centers on the Vatican and the Churchs unusually cautious reaction to these elections and how a right-wing victory could affect Pope Francis position in the country. The Italian historian underlines, for example, how the Jesuit magazine close to the Vatican, Civilt Cattolica, has published nothing about whats at stake in these elections, which it usually has during other elections. The Italian bishops did publish a statement encouraging citizens to vote and reminding them to remember the most marginalized, but Faggioli analyzes that the Catholic leadership is overwhelmed by the gap between the seriousness of the situation and the forces at their disposal, underscoring the growing political irrelevance of the Catholic Church in Italy. Faggioli also emphasizes a difficulty of communication between Francis and the Italian bishops. The new president of the bishops conference, Bologna Cardinal Matteo Zuppi, is part of the Community of SantEgidio, which has seen some of its members running for parliament on a slate connected to the center-left Democratic Party, whose positions do not always coincide with the Church. On the other hand, Zuppi knows that some clerics and Catholics would welcome a right-wing government that, although anti-immigration, could also oppose recognizing LGBT rights or relaxing abortion laws. The Italian historian assesses that the influence of Catholicism politically in Italy is far weaker than in the past and also wonders whether Italian bishops and the Vatican are underestimating the repercussions of these elections on the Church. With a hard-right government in Italy, Francis would be forced to find a way to live with political leaders who have a very different worldview and even a different language than he has. A new government in Italy could very easily strengthen opposition to Francis and severely limit the social and political reception of his pontificates core message, concludes Faggioli.

Commonweal, English

On the occasion of the 44th anniversary of the death of the French historian of philosophy tienne Gilson (1884-1978), Quebec Catholic magazine Le Verbe published a long article on the life of this intellectual, who is often misunderstood but who played an essential role in the rediscovery of the Christian philosophical heritage. Alex La Salle, the author of the article, underlines how useful Gilsons thought is for understanding why Christianity cannot be associated with irrationality. The French historian, at a time when rationalism had become the dominant thought, was the first to demonstrate that the roots of modern rationality were to be found in the Thomistic scholasticism of the Middle Ages, at the time considered by the Hegelian philosopher Victor Cousin as the night of thought. The Middle Ages conquered the rights of reason for modern thought, estimated Gilson, who had a lot of difficulty finding his place in a French university where atheism, under the guise of secularism, often forbade interest in Christian thinkers. Initially hostile to scholasticism himself, he changed his point of view when he discovered that the figurehead of modern rationalism, Ren Descartes, had himself been strongly inspired by medieval thought. Gilson went on to become one of the greatest specialists in Christian thought, and in particular in Saint Thomas Aquinas.

Le Verbe, French

3 . The canton of Lucerne does not want to finance the Swiss Guards new barracks

In Switzerland, the people of Lucerne have rejected with 71.48% of the votes the possibility to contribute up to 400,000 francs to the reconstruction of the Swiss Guards barracks in Rome.

Cath.ch, French

4. Torpedoing the presidential election leads to the collapse of the Republic, worries Patriarch Rai

Any attempt to torpedo the presidential deadline aims to cause the fall of the Republic, on the one hand, and to marginalize the Christian role, especially Maronite, at the level of power, on the other hand, while we are the fathers of this Republic and the standard bearers of the national partnership, lamented Cardinal Bechara Boutros Pierre Ra, in his homily on Sunday. In Lebanon, presidential elections are expected to take place in the fall.

IciBeyrouth, French

5. German bishops meet amid crisis

The autumn plenary assembly of the German Bishops Conference begins a few weeks after the fourth synodal assembly, which revealed tensions within the episcopate concerning a possible reformulation of sexual morality.

Katholisch.de, German

Go here to see the original:

Rome & the World: Italys elections and the Church Etienne Gilson 40 years after his death - Aleteia