scholarly journals The Hand Extending Beyond the Cosmos: Discussions on the Khalā’ [Void] Between the Baṣran and Baghdād Schools of Mu’tazila

Author(s):  
Ahmet Mekin Kandemir

We can find the origins of the notion of void in the Kalām tradition’s recognition of atomism. However, the main debates on the subject appeared after the Greek philosophical heritage transitioned to the Islamic world in the 3 rd century of Hijra. The literature of Kalām, just as in the metaphysical tradition, has two main types for this void being discussed. The first one is the external void (extracosmic) in which the cosmos floats. In the sources of Kalām, the question of whether such a type of void exists is debated around the questions of whether anyone who might look beyond the cosmos can see anything or whether someone who stretches their hand outside the cosmos can move it. The second type of void, which occupies more of the mutakallimūn (Muslim theologians) agenda, is the internal void (intercosmic), assumed to be within the cosmos and between the body-forming atoms. This kind of void is discussed around the question of “Whether separating the two atoms is possible so that a third one can be inserted between them?” An ongoing discussion on the intercosmic void is found between the Baṣran and Baghdād Schools of Mu’tazila. Ibn Mattawayh and al-Nīsābūrī narrated the evidence presented in these discussions in their original form. The current essay discusses the debates between the two Schools and assesses the theoretical and experimental arguments both Schools present to justify their viewpoints, considering their philosophical origins.

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-135
Author(s):  
Enung Asmaya

Sufism is one of the Islamic sciences that specifically addressed the inner truth of a man (hakikat). Human existence is very dependent on the inner side, from this, human could be directed into a positive (taqwa) or negative person (fujur). Moreover, study of this hakikat is usually done through a sufistic approach. Some of the well-known Sufi figures whose worthy of research is Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali ath-Thusi asy-Shafi’I, commonly called Imam al-Ghazali. The study of the hakikat conducted by Ghazali is very influential on the Islamic world and in fact modern-west. This study uses library research approach using books and literatures on his thoughts especially related to the subject of a man and Sufism. Result from this study shows that according to Ghazali, the concept of hakikat or the inner truth is posits inside an integrated individual soul and body, the soul as determinant of life and body as a container of the soul. If someone’s soul is clean (taqwa) then the body is also become clean (taqwa) and vice versa if his soul is dirty (fujur) then the body is become negative (fujur). Hakikat would be appeared when a man become a ma’rifatullah . The attainment of the soul into ma’rifatullah stage must go through three processes. firstly takhalli , secondly, tahalli and tajalli and the third is al-nafs almuthma’innah which means having a calm and peaceful soul to be always together with the eternal substance.


2009 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-92
Author(s):  
Susan Jones

This article explores the diversity of British literary responses to Diaghilev's project, emphasising the way in which the subject matter and methodologies of Diaghilev's modernism were sometimes unexpectedly echoed in expressions of contemporary British writing. These discussions emerge both in writing about Diaghilev's work, and, more discretely, when references to the Russian Ballet find their way into the creative writing of the period, serving to anchor the texts in a particular cultural milieu or to suggest contemporary aesthetic problems in the domain of literary aesthetics developing in the period. Figures from disparate fields, including literature, music and the visual arts, brought to their criticism of the Ballets Russes their individual perspectives on its aesthetics, helping to consolidate the sense of its importance in contributing to the inter-disciplinary flavour of modernism across the arts. In the field of literature, not only did British writers evaluate the Ballets Russes in terms of their own poetics, their relationship to experimentation in the novel and in drama, they developed an increasing sense of the company's place in dance history, its choreographic innovations offering material for wider discussions, opening up the potential for literary modernism's interest in impersonality and in the ‘unsayable’, discussions of the body, primitivism and gender.


2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-21
Author(s):  
Amanda Dennis

Lying in ditches, tromping through mud, wedged in urns, trash bins, buried in earth, bodies in Beckett appear anything but capable of acting meaningfully on their environments. Bodies in Beckett seem, rather, synonymous with abjection, brokenness, and passivity—as if the human were overcome by its materiality: odours, pain, foot sores, decreased mobility. To the extent that Beckett's personae act, they act vaguely (wandering) or engage in quasi-obsessive, repetitive tasks: maniacal rocking, rotating sucking stones and biscuits, uttering words evacuated of sense, ceaseless pacing. Perhaps the most vivid dramatization of bodies compelled to meaningless, repetitive movement is Quad (1981), Beckett's ‘ballet’ for television, in which four bodies in hooded robes repeat their series ad infinitum. By 1981, has all possibility for intentional action in Beckett been foreclosed? Are we doomed, as Hamm puts it, to an eternal repetition of the same? (‘Moments for nothing, now as always, time was never and time is over, reckoning closed and story ended.’)This article proposes an alternative reading of bodily abjection, passivity and compulsivity in Beckett, a reading that implies a version of agency more capacious than voluntarism. Focusing on Quad as an illustrative case, I show how, if we shift our focus from the body's diminished possibilities for movement to the imbrication of Beckett's personae in environments (a mound of earth), things, and objects, a different story emerges: rather than dramatizing the impossibility of action, Beckett's work may sketch plans for a more ecological, post-human version of agency, a more collaborative mode of ‘acting’ that eases the divide between the human, the world of inanimate objects, and the earth.Movements such as new materialism and object-oriented ontology challenge hierarchies among subjects, objects and environments, questioning the rigid distinction between animate and inanimate, and the notion of the Anthropocene emphasizes the influence of human activity on social and geological space. A major theoretical challenge that arises from such discourses (including 20th-century challenges to the idea of an autonomous, willing, subject) is to arrive at an account of agency robust enough to survive if not the ‘death of the subject’ then its imbrication in the material and social environment it acts upon. Beckett's treatment of the human body suggests a version of agency that draws strength from a body's interaction with its environment, such that meaning is formed in the nexus between body and world. Using the example of Quad, I show how representations of the body in Beckett disturb the opposition between compulsivity (when a body is driven to move or speak in the absence of intention) and creative invention. In Quad, serial repetition works to create an interface between body and world that is receptive to meanings outside the control of a human will. Paradoxically, compulsive repetition in Beckett, despite its uncomfortable closeness to addiction, harnesses a loss of individual control that proposes a more versatile and ecologically mindful understanding of human action.


Author(s):  
Aleksey Klokov ◽  
Evgenii Slobodyuk ◽  
Michael Charnine

The object of the research when writing the work was the body of text data collected together with the scientific advisor and the algorithms for processing the natural language of analysis. The stream of hypotheses has been tested against computer science scientific publications through a series of simulation experiments described in this dissertation. The subject of the research is algorithms and the results of the algorithms, aimed at predicting promising topics and terms that appear in the course of time in the scientific environment. The result of this work is a set of machine learning models, with the help of which experiments were carried out to identify promising terms and semantic relationships in the text corpus. The resulting models can be used for semantic processing and analysis of other subject areas.


2021 ◽  
pp. 097168582110159
Author(s):  
Sital Mohanty ◽  
Subhasis Sahoo ◽  
Pranay Kumar Swain

Science, technology and human values have been the subject of enquiry in the last few years for social scientists and eventually the relationship between science and gender is the subject of an ongoing debate. This is due to the event of globalization which led to the exponential growth of new technologies like assisted reproductive technology (ART). ART, one of the most iconic technological innovations of the twentieth century, has become increasingly a normal social fact of life. Since ART invades multiple human discourses—thereby transforming culture, society and politics—it is important what is sociological about ART as well as what is biological. This article argues in commendation of sociology of technology, which is alert to its democratic potential but does not concurrently conceal the historical and continuing role of technology in legitimizing gender discrimination. The article draws the empirical insights from local articulations (i.e., Odisha state in eastern India) for the understandings of motherhood, freedom and choice, reproductive right and rights over the body to which ART has contributed. Sociologically, the article has been supplemented within the broader perspectives of determinism, compatibilism alongside feminism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 247-257
Author(s):  
Laura Schaefer ◽  
Frank Bittmann

The present study focuses on an innovative approach in measuring the mechanical oscillations of pre-loaded Achilles tendon by using Mechanotendography (MTG) during application of a short yet powerful mechanical pressure impact. This was applied on the forefoot from the plantar side in direction of dorsiflexion, while the subject stood on the ball of the forefoot on one leg. Participants with Achilles tendinopathy (AT; n = 10) were compared to healthy controls (Con; n = 10). Five trials were performed on each side of the body. For evaluation, two intervals after the impulse began (0-100ms; 30-100ms) were cut from the MTG and pressure raw signals. The intrapersonal variability between the five trials in both intervals were evaluated using the arithmetic mean and coefficient of variation of the mean correlation (Spearman rank correlation) and the normalized averaged mean distances, respectively. The AT-group showed a significantly reduced variability in MTG compared to the Con-group (from p = 0.006 to p = 0.028 for different parameters). The 95% confidence intervals (CI) of MTG results were disjoint, whereas the 95% CIs of the pressure signals were similar (p = 0.192 to p = 0.601). We suggest from this work that the variability of mechanical tendon oscillations could be an indicative parameter of an altered Achilles tendon functionality.


1985 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 9-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Berggren

In Recent Years, many discoveries in the history of Islamic mathematics have not been reported outside the specialist literature, even though they raise issues of interest to a larger audience. Thus, our aim in writing this survey is to provide to scholars of Islamic culture an account of the major themes and discoveries of the last decade of research on the history of mathematics in the Islamic world. However, the subject of mathematics comprised much more than what a modern mathematician might think of as belonging to mathematics, so our survey is an overview of what may best be called the “mathematical sciences” in Islam; that is, in addition to such topics as arithmetic, algebra, and geometry we will also be interested in mechanics, optics, and mathematical instruments.


1887 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 248-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. H. Traquair

The now well-known Liassic Acipenseroid fish Chondrosteus acipenseroides was named by Agassiz in 1843, but not described by him. It subsequently formed the subject of an elaborate memoir by Sir Philip Grey-Egerton, Bart., in which, besides giving a minute account of the structure of the genus, he named two additional species—C. pachyurus and C. crassior. Putting the results of Sir Philip's investigations as briefly as possible, he maintained that while “in all essential points” Chondrosteus resembled the recent Sturgeon, nevertheless in certain others, and notably in the structure of the opercular and hyoid regions, it constituted a transitional form towards the more ordinary Ganoids. Moreover, the skin of the body presented the same naked condition seen in the recent Polyodon.


1974 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Barth

Encompassing the body of Pauline theology, Ephesians (volumes 34 and 34A of the acclaimed Anchor Bible series) has been called "the crown of St. Paul's writings," yet both its authorship and addressees are the subject of continuing dispute. Through line-by-line examination of its vocabulary, its difficult style, its Qumran and Gnostic affinities, its parallels with and distinctions from the undisputed Pauline corpus, its use of the Old Testament, and its dialogue with orthodox and heretical Judaism, Markus Barth demonstrates that Paul was almost certainly the author. And, after exploring previous explications of this hymnic and admonitory epistle in detail, he concludes that it was intended for Gentile Christians converted after Paul's visits to Ephesus.


Janus Head ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-122
Author(s):  
Tom Sparrow ◽  

Alphonso Lingis is the author of many hooks and renowned for his translations of Levinas, Merleau-Pontyy and Klossowski. By combining a rich philosophical training with an extensive travel itinerary, Lingis has developed a distinctive brand of phenomenobgy that is only now beginning to gain critical attention. Lingis inhabits a ready-made language and conceptuality, but cultivates a style of thinking which disrupts and transforms the work of his predecessors, setting him apart from the rest of his field. This essay sketches Lingis phenomenobgy of sensation in order to give expression to some dimensions of Lingisian travel. As we see, Lingis deploys a theory of the subject which features the plasticity of the body, the materiality of affect, and the alimentary nature of sensation.


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