The World as a Harmony

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-44
Author(s):  
Laura Rosella Schluderer
Keyword(s):  
Complex Structure ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Mathematical Structure ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Explanatory Framework ◽  
Musical Harmony ◽  
The World ◽  
Structural Principles

In line with the growing recognition of fifth century Pythagoreans as the main developers of a Pythagorean philosophy, the article offers a reconstruction of Philolaus’ metaphysical framework, arguing for its potential explanatory power and anticipating some key notions in ancient metaphysics. Starting from the scala naturae in B13, I reconstruct Philolaus’ overall metaphysical framework from his fragments, exploring how it might have worked when applied to micro-macrocosmic ontology. Key to this reconstruction is musical harmony. It is shown how, by using musical harmony as a paradigm and making explicit its mathematical structure, Philolaus (a) possessed a rather sophisticated explanatory framework, capable of accounting for the complex structure of the cosmos and of living beings; and (b) began to grasp the importance of a normative, abstract, structural principles working at a different metaphysical level from the constituents of things, thus anticipating Aristotle’s distinction between material and formal causes.

On ‘the one’ in Philolaus, fragment 7

1996 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. S. Schibli
Keyword(s):  
World Order ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Greek Philosophy ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Musical Harmony ◽  
The World ◽  
Presocratic Philosophy ◽  
The One ◽  
Explanatory Concept ◽  
Universal Application

Presocratic philosophy, for all its diverse features, is united by the quest to understand the origin and nature of the world. The approach of the Pythagoreans to this quest is governed by their belief, probably based on studies of the numerical relations in musical harmony, that number or numerical structure plays a key role for explaining the world-order, the cosmos. It remains questionable to what extent the Pythagoreans, by positing number as an all-powerful explanatory concept, broke free from Presocratic ideas that certain stuffs or material elements sufficed to account for the source (⋯ρχ⋯) and constitution of the world, but apparently number found such a universal application with them that Aristotle could summarize the Pythagorean position as ‘numbers…are the whole universe’ (Met. 986a21). Historians of Greek philosophy have generally accepted Aristotle's assessment. Of late, however, certain scholars have argued that the Pythagorean number doctrine is Aristotelian (mis-) interpretation, unjustly foisted upon the Pythagoreans. Enlisted in support of their arguments are the fragments of Philolaus of Croton. Here we have the foremost representative of fifth-century Pythagoreanism, who states as his basic principles, not numbers exactly, but ‘limiters’ and ‘unlimiteds’, and who, it is argued, regards number solely as an epistemological aid for understanding the structure of reality. So Philolaus is called upon as a witness against Aristotle. The rationale goes something like this: Aristotle most likely had written sources for his knowledge of Pythagorean teachings; the only texts we know of with any certainty are Philolaus' book and the writings of Archytas; since Aristotle treats Archytas separately, he is mainly relying on Philolaus; because Philolaus does not expressly state that things are numbers, Aristotle's interpretation is wrong.

Persons in a World of Things

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Classic Essay

This chapter focuses on the reality of persons in a world of things. It begins and ends with some relevant views drawn from the Jewish philosophers Buber (1878–1965), Heschel (1907–72), and Joseph B. Soloveitchik (1903–93). Framed by the Jewish concerns, it turns to a philosophical exploration of human personhood. The chapter begins by consiering Sellars's classic essay on the scientific and manifest images of “man-in-the-world.” Sellars shows how urgent and difficult it is to sustain a recognizable image of ourselves as persons in the face of scientism. With additional help from Nagel and Kant, it argues that persons cannot be conceptually scanted in a world of things. Notwithstanding the explanatory power of science, there is more to life than explanation. Explanation of what we are needs supplementing by a conception of who we are, how we should live, and why we matter. Those are questions to which Jewish sources can speak.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Fearn
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Literature ◽  
Critical Theory ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Valuable Resource ◽  
The World

The introduction sets the following discussions in their scholarly context, with particular attention to other contemporary approaches to lyric both within Classics and in comparative literature and critical theory, as well as to art-historical approaches. Literary approaches to lyric deixis are brought together with art-historical and other literary approaches to visuality, subjectivity, and ecphrasis. Pindar’s immersion in a world of material culture and attention to the world as perceived visually fosters a special poetic creativity. The upshot is a poetics of referentiality, according to which Pindar’s consumers are invited to consider the distance between their own situatedness and the worlds being creatively referred to, through the complex mediation of poetic voices. The sensibilities, attitudes, and experiences being constructed also contribute to a new understanding of the importance of lyric as a culturally valuable resource in fifth-century Greece.

Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

1986 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 197-216
Author(s):  
Michael Tanner
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Primary Concern ◽  
Classical Scholarship ◽  
The World ◽  
Birth Of Tragedy ◽  
Tragic Drama ◽  
Good And Evil

Although Nietzsche's greatness is recognized more universally now than ever before, the nature of that greatness is still widely misunderstood, and that unfortunately means that before I discuss any of Beyond Good and Evil (henceforth BGE) in any detail, I must make some general remarks about his work, his development and the kind of way in which I think that it is best to read him. Unlike any of the other philosophers that this series includes, except Marx and Engels, Nietzsche is very much concerned to address his contemporaries, because he was aware of a specific historical predicament, one which he would only see as having worsened in ways which he predicted with astonishing precision in the century since he wrote his great series of works. For he was above all a philosopher of culture, which is to say that his primary concern was always with the forces that determine the nature of a particular civilization, and with the possibilities of achievement which that civilization consequently had open to it. One of the reasons that The Birth of Tragedy, his first book, published when he was twenty-eight, created such a surge of hostility in the world of classical scholarship was that in it, whilst undertaking an investigation of what made possible the achievements of fifth century BC Greece in tragic drama, he felt it necessary to elicit the whole set of fundamental beliefs which the Greeks shared, and also to draw metaphysical conclusions from the fact that they were able to experience life in such a way that they needed great tragedies in order to endure it.

Democracy and Dictatorship in Interwar Western Europe Revisited

1998 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 475-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Ertman
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
International System ◽  
Explanatory Framework ◽  
The World ◽  
Entire Universe ◽  
Western European ◽  
Methodological Advance

Almost none of the conditions that, according to the latest research, favor democratic durability were present in Western Europe between the world wars. Yet only four Western European states became dictatorships during this period, whereas the others remained democratic despite economic crisis, an unhelpful international system, and the lure of nondemocratic alternatives. Several recent works offer new explanations for this pattern of interwar outcomes. Insofar as these works analyze the entire universe of Western European cases, they represent an important methodological advance. However, they remain too wedded to a class-coalitional framework to provide both a parsimonious and a historically accurate account of why democracy collapsed in some states but not in others. This article proposes an alternative explanatory framework that focuses on how political parties can shape association life in such a way as to support or undermine democracy.

Mathematical modeling of fluid movement inside the eyeball during intravitreal injection

2021 ◽  
pp. 106-109
Author(s):  
D.V. Lipatov ◽  
◽  
S.A. Skladchikov ◽  
N.P. Savenkova ◽  
V.V. Novoderezkin ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Modeling ◽  
Mathematical Model ◽  
Residence Time ◽  
Complex Structure ◽  
Posterior Vitreous Detachment ◽  
Vitreous Body ◽  
Complete Removal ◽  
Intravitreal Injections ◽  
The World

Background. The avalanche-like growth of intravitreal injections in the world has significantly increased interest in the hemodynamics of the processes that occur in the eye when a drug is injected into the vitreous cavity. Every year, the number of intravitreally used drugs and promising areas in which they can be used is growing. This also applies to the creation of new combined medicines and the development of drugs with a long-term therapeutic effect. Aims. Create mathematical model of eyeball to evaluate the movement of the drug substance in it; to estimate the time of the drug's presence in the eye cavity before its complete removal, to characterize the ways of its removal from the eye cavity; to assess the significance of posterior vitreous detachment during the time when the drug is present in the eye cavity; to evaluate the effect on the hydrodynamics of the depth of drug administration. Results. When the drug is administered closer to the center of the eyeball, its residence time increases in comparison with the parietal administration. With a complete posterior detachment of the vitreous body, the time of finding the drug in the eye is prolonged compared to its absence. The obtained results of mathematical modeling of the movement of the drug administered intravitreally cannot be mechanically transferred to the human eye, due to the more complex structure of the latter. Key words: intravitreal injections, vitreous body, mathematic computing.

Reasons First

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Action Theory ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Justify Belief ◽  
Moral Worth ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Common Currency ◽  
Normative Concepts ◽  
The World ◽  
Explanatory Priority

The last fifty years or more of ethical theory have been preoccupied by a turn to reasons. The vocabulary of reasons has become a common currency not only in ethics, but in epistemology, action theory, and many related areas. It is now common, for example, to see central theses such as evidentialism in epistemology and egalitarianism in political philosophy formulated in terms of reasons. And some have even claimed that the vocabulary of reasons is so useful precisely because reasons have analytical and explanatory priority over other normative concepts—that reasons in that sense come first. Reasons First systematically explores both the benefits and burdens of the hypothesis that reasons do indeed come first in normative theory, against the conjecture that theorizing in both ethics and epistemology can only be hampered by neglect of the other. Bringing two decades of work on reasons in both ethics and epistemology to bear, Mark Schroeder argues that some of the most important challenges to the idea that reasons could come first are themselves the source of some of the most obstinate puzzles in epistemology—about how perceptual experience could provide evidence about the world, and about what can make evidence sufficient to justify belief. And he shows that along with moral worth, one of the very best cases for the fundamental explanatory power of reasons in normative theory actually comes from knowledge.

scholarly journals COMPLEXITY-BASED ANALYSIS OF THE ALTERATIONS IN THE STRUCTURE OF CORONAVIRUSES

Fractals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (02) ◽  
pp. 2150123
Author(s):  
HAMIDREZA NAMAZI ◽  
ALI SELAMAT ◽  
ONDREJ KREJCAR
Keyword(s):  
Hurst Exponent ◽  
Complex Structure ◽  
Approximate Entropy ◽  
Sample Entropy ◽  
Long Term Memory ◽  
Complex Structures ◽  
Term Memory ◽  
The World ◽  
First Time

The coronavirus has influenced the lives of many people since its identification in 1960. In general, there are seven types of coronavirus. Although some types of this virus, including 229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1, cause mild to moderate illness, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and SARS-CoV-2 have shown to have severer effects on the human body. Specifically, the recent known type of coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has affected the lives of many people around the world since late 2019 with the disease named COVID-19. In this paper, for the first time, we investigated the variations among the complex structures of coronaviruses. We employed the fractal dimension, approximate entropy, and sample entropy as the measures of complexity. Based on the obtained results, SARS-CoV-2 has a significantly different complex structure than SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV. To study the high mutation rate of SARS-CoV-2, we also analyzed the long-term memory of genome walks for different coronaviruses using the Hurst exponent. The results demonstrated that the SARS-CoV-2 shows the lowest memory in its genome walk, explaining the errors in copying the sequences along the genome that results in the virus mutation.

White Man’s IR: An Intellectual Confession

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1112-1122 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Lake
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Life Stories ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Life Experiences ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
White Male ◽  
Professional Practices ◽  
Good Work ◽  
The World

Drawing largely on my own career in academia, I elaborate on the need for greater gender, racial and other forms of diversity in International Relations. Although theories are thought to be “objective,” what goes into those theories and, in turn, their explanatory power is ultimately shaped by subjective, lived experiences. Different individuals with different life stories will develop different intuitions about how the world “works,” and thus will write different theories to capture those intuitions and, in turn, larger patterns of politics. I explain here how my life experience as a privileged white male has shaped the intellectual contours of my work on international hierarchy. Building from this foundation, I then explore how professional practices elevate as gatekeepers individuals with generally similar life experiences and, thus, intuitions about what constitutes “good” work in the field, which in turn reinforces those professional practices and priorities. The final section focuses on problems of eroding the disciplinary hierarchy and broadening the pipeline into the profession.

How Universal Is Media Entertainment, Really? On the Enriching Potential of Cross-Cultural Approaches for Existing Entertainment Scholarship

2021 ◽  
pp. 101-122
Author(s):  
Özen Odağ
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Thinking Styles ◽  
Western World ◽  
Cultural Variation ◽  
The World ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Behavior And Cognition

The current chapter focuses on the (cross-)cultural appeal of existing entertainment theories, showcasing the meager evidence that exists with respect to their universality. The central argument throughout the chapter is that most entertainment theories have originated in the Western world and little has so far been done to apply them to the much larger rest of the world. The rest of the world has shown to be profoundly different, however, with respect to various dimensions of human behavior and cognition, including self-concepts, emotion appraisal and display, valued affect, thinking styles, values, and well-being maxims. The chapter scrutinizes five pertinent entertainment theories for their ability to explain this cultural variation. It suggests the inclusion of fruitful macro- and micro-level concepts from cross-cultural psychology and intercultural communication to increase their global explanatory power. The main aim of the current chapter is to spark an overdue (cross-)cultural evolution of media entertainment scholarship.

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