Art. VIII.—On the Origin of the Ancient Northern Constellation-figures

1897 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-226
Author(s):  
Robert Brown

Amongst the most remarkable instances of the result of careful observation and systematized thought which Western Asia has given to the world at large, are the Signs of the Zodiac, and the ancient extra-zodiacal constellation-figures, northern and southern; and by ‘ancient’ I mean those which have been enshrined for all future time in the Phainomena of Aratos. Of the Twelve Signs I shall only speak incidentally. It is now many years since Ideler and Guigniaut, contrary to the views of Letronne, arrived at the correct conclusion that the Signs of the Zodiac came, with so much else of archaic thought and civilization, from, the Euphrates Valley; and, having firmly established themselves in Hellenic usage, were afterwards carried by Greek conquerors as far as India in the east and Egypt in the south. But, although modern research has supplied an immense amount of material for the purpose, it is remarkable that the classic work of Ideler still gives the best account of the constellation-figures and their various stars. Surely, then, it is time that an effort was made to utilize in a connected form some at least of the results of subsequent investigation; and, although the inquiry, like all such, is progressive, and, like all researches into the ancient and archaic past, is beset with numerous difficulties, yet the principles to be applied and the general outlines of the subject are clear and distinct.

1938 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 251-262
Author(s):  
Giuseppe Furlani

The religions of ancient Western Asia, though presenting in detail a number of differences, agree in their conception of the relation between man and god. This is the same relation that exists between the servant and his master, or between the subject and his king or prince. According to the religions of ancient Western Asia, man had to serve his god, his king and his master, and this service constituted his religion. In fact, man was created solely to serve god, and all his life therefore was but a series of religious acts in the service of his god. The religious texts of all palaeo-oriental nations afford us ample proofs that this was the fundamental principle of their religion. I refer to Semitic nations, that is, to those who spoke Semitic languages, or to peoples of other tongues: the Sumerians or the Phoenicians, the Hittites or the South Arabs. All these saw divinity in masters, princes, or kings who had man as subject or servant.


When, about fifteen years ago, I along with many other new workers in the field of rock magnetism, started to read ourselves into the subject of continental drift, we found a complex, controversial and perplexing situation, with a very long history. In about 1620, Francis Bacon, in his search for regularities in nature, wrote: ‘...the very configuration of the world itself in its greater parts presents Conformable Instances which are not to be neglected. Take for example Africa and the region of Peru with the continent stretching to the Straits of Magellan, in each of which tracts there are similar isthmuses and similar promontories; which can hardly be by accident. Again, there is the Old and New W orld; both of which are broad and extended towards the north, narrow and pointed towards the south.’ Though Bacon thought the similarity of shape could not be by accident, he did not explicitly suggest that the two continents might have once been together. This hypothesis seems to have been first mentioned by von Humboldt about 1800: he also suggested a possible mechanism as to how the continents might have drifted apart:


Author(s):  
Mostafa Rahimi Rad

Temporal references have been the subject of many studies around the world. Futurity is specially an elusive concept really difficult to perceive and describe. The present study tries to launch an investigation regarding the variability of future tense in Farsi. 130 sentences extracted from 8 interviews have been explored along with age, gender, presence or absence of temporal adverbial and animacy of the subject. 5 possible variabilities for expressing futurity are considered in the present study. Future time is especially difficult to perceive and in fact it might not occur. This forces us when it comes to the modality in which statements about the future may be interpreted. Not only do we just talk about those future events which are planned, but also that is the only (natural) modality that we can ascribe to those events. Following Fleischman (1982) and Comrie (1985), we suggest that the notion of future tense or futurity marking is a second class function, and the means available to futurity marking are typically borrowed from other constructions in the language However, before a further discussion of the circumstances giving rise to the idea, as well as some facts that seem to follow from this constraint on modality, we would like to give a brief sketch of some ways that futurity is expressed in different languages.


2015 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tanya Van Wyk

This article attempts to draw the scope and content of contemporary Political Theology, based on a review of the 2013 publication titled, Political Theology: Contemporary challenges and future directions, edited by Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, Klaus Tanner and Michael Welker. The book is a collection of contributions which explore the contemporary content and potential future of the subject discipline. ‘Political Theology’ as critical theology and as a ‘theology with its face towards the world’ is committed to ‘justice, peace and the integrity of creation’ and is multifaceted. It represents a discipline with which theologians reflect on political-theological objectives across continents and paradigms. The article concludes with a brief investigation of the implications of insights offered in the book for the South African context (as part of the African continent).


Author(s):  
Jennifer Hawkins

Chapter 12 explores radical personal change and its relationship to well-being, welfare, or prudential value. Many theorists of welfare are committed to what is here called the future-based reasons view (FBR), which holds (1) that the best prudential choice in a situation is determined by which possible future has the greatest net welfare value for the subject and (2) what determines facts about future welfare are facts about the subject and the world at that future time. Although some cases of radical change are intuitively prudentially good, many cases of really radical change are not. Yet FBR has trouble explaining this. Many people instinctively reach for the notion of identity to solve this problem—arguing that really radical change cannot be good because it alters who someone is. Yet, as the chapter argues, there are reasons to doubt that appeals to identity are appropriate. The chapter ends with the suggestion that prudential facts may explain why and when retaining identity matters, rather than the other way around, and points to a possible way forward for a theorist of welfare committed to FBR.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew David Jackson

German journalist Jürgen Hinzpeter won the 2003 Song Kun-ho Press Award for his reporting of the 1980 Kwangju Uprising. He was also the subject of documentaries and the 2017 hit movie A Taxi Driver, which credit him as the first journalist to expose the Kwangju Uprising to the world. In fact, Hinzpeter was one of many journalists who revealed what had happened at Kwangju. Since the production of the 2003 documentary Hinzpeter – the Blue-Eyed Witness to May 1980, interest in the many other foreign journalists who covered Kwangju has been elided, raising the question of why only Hinzpeter's contribution is remembered and celebrated. Using ideas about historical memory developed by Paul Cohen, I argue that a narrative about Hinzpeter's actions in Kwangju has emerged, which has little to do with who first broke the news of the Kwangju Uprising. The story of Hinzpeter's relationship with the South Korean democratization movement as well as the film he shot of the moment Kwangju citizens seized power and established an alternative government to military rule – have become important weapons for the activist generation in an ongoing struggle over the memorialization of the Kwangju Uprising.


Author(s):  
I. Stychynskyi

This article analyses the living conditions of the Russian Imperial Army soldiers in the front-line during the World War I.The main aspects of living conditions of the soldiers on the South – Western front-line are illustrated on the basis of testimonials of the participants during said period. The importance of the sources (such as memorandums, epistolary heritage, etc.) and the clear geographical limits are underlined during the studying of this topic. The subject importance of soldiers’ living in front-line conditions is shown as one of the most important elements in the whole subject studying of military daily life during the conflict.


2016 ◽  
pp. 33-50
Author(s):  
Pier Giuseppe Rossi

The subject of alignment is not new to the world of education. Today however, it has come to mean different things and to have a heuristic value in education according to research in different areas, not least for neuroscience, and to attention to skills and to the alternation framework.This paper, after looking at the classic references that already attributed an important role to alignment in education processes, looks at the strategic role of alignment in the current context, outlining the shared construction processes and focusing on some of the ways in which this is put into effect.Alignment is part of a participatory, enactive approach that gives a central role to the interaction between teaching and learning, avoiding the limits of behaviourism, which has a greater bias towards teaching, and cognitivism/constructivism, which focus their attention on learning and in any case, on that which separates a teacher preparing the environment and a student working in it.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-124
Author(s):  
Sandy Henderson ◽  
Ulrike Beland ◽  
Dimitrios Vonofakos

On or around 9 January 2019, twenty-two Listening Posts were conducted in nineteen countries: Canada, Chile, Denmark, Faroe Islands, Finland, Germany (Frankfurt and Berlin), Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy (two in Milan and one in the South), Peru, Serbia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, and the UK. This report synthesises the reports of those Listening Posts and organises the data yielded by them into common themes and patterns.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37
Author(s):  
Syarifudin Syarifudin

Each religious sect has its own characteristics, whether fundamental, radical, or religious. One of them is Insan Al-Kamil Congregation, which is in Cijati, South Cikareo Village, Wado District, Sumedang Regency. This congregation is Sufism with the concept of self-purification as the subject of its teachings. So, the purpose of this study is to reveal how the origin of Insan Al-Kamil Congregation, the concept of its purification, and the procedures of achieving its purification. This research uses a descriptive qualitative method with a normative theological approach as the blade of analysis. In addition, the data generated is the result of observation, interviews, and document studies. From the collected data, Jamaah Insan Al-Kamil adheres to the core teachings of Islam and is the tenth regeneration of Islam Teachings, which refers to the Prophet Muhammad SAW. According to this congregation, self-perfection becomes an obligation that must be achieved by human beings in order to remember Allah when life is done. The process of self-purification is done when human beings still live in the world by knowing His God. Therefore, the peak of self-purification is called Insan Kamil. 


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