Sweet Spots: Writing the Connective Tissue of Relation

Sweet Spots thinks transversally across language and body, and between text and tissue. This assemblage of essays collectively proposes that words—that is, language that lands as written text—are more-than-human material. And, these materials, composed of forces and flows and tendencies, are capable of generating text-flesh that grows into a thinking in the making. The practice of acupuncture—and its relational thinking—often makes its presence felt to twirl the text-tissue of the bodying essays. Ficto-critical thinking is threaded throughout to activate concepts from process philosophy and use the work of other thinkers (William James, Félix Guattari and Gilles Deleuze, Baruch Spinoza, and Virginia Woolf, to name a few) to forge imaginative connections. Entangled in the text-tissue are an assortment of entities, such as bickering body parts, quivering jellyfish, heart pacemaker cells, a narwhal tooth, Taoist parables, always with ubiquitous, stretchy connective tissue — from gooey interstitial fluid to thick planes of fascia — ever present to ensure that the essaying bodies become, what Alfred North Whitehead calls the one-which-includes-the-many-includes-the-one. The essaying bodies orient towards the sweetest sweet spot which is found, not in the center, but slightly askew, felt in the reverbing more-than that carries their potential. Crucially, this produces a shift in perspective away from self-enclosed bodies and experts toward a care for the connective tissue of relation.

Evaluasi Pendidikan Menuju Insan Kamil Perspektif Filsafat Islam

This article aims to learn how to conduct an adequate evaluation using approaches based on Islamic philosophy. Because inconsistencies in the implementation of educational assessments can lead to less than optimal results after inspection, this requires appropriate methods for the full review. The author made this article with a library approach, collecting materials from library books, research reports, newspapers, books, research reports, theses, dissertations, and scientific journals in print and non-print media. In Islamic education, the purpose of the evaluation is to make al-Insan al-Kamil human or a complete human person. Likewise, the purpose of education is to educate students to have faith, be pious, develop a religious mentality, master science, and apply what has been learned in school to adapt to the life of the wider community. Evaluation can also provide feedback to students about their achievements and the extent of their perspectives and knowledge during the learning process. Philosophy also educates people to think, have insight, and reason broadly to view an event or problem from various perspectives, with the result being the correct answer.

Finite Element Model-Based Weight-Over Process Philosophy for Bridge Loading Capacity Evaluation and Rating Factor Estimation

Existing rating methods estimate bridge loading capacity and demand from secondary actions due to live loads in the primary structural components. In these methods, uniaxial yielding stress is traditionally used to detect component capacity using either stress quantities or shear-moment actions to compute the capacity demand of the bridge. These approximations can lead to uncertainties in load capacity estimation. This article presents the weight-over process (WOP), a novel computer-aided approach to bridge loading capacity evaluation based on tonnage and rating factor estimation. WOP is expected to capture different forms of failure in a more general manner than existing methods. In WOP, a bridge finite element model (FEM) is discretized into many sections and element sets, each containing a single material type, and each assigned a suitable 3D failure criterion. Then, factored gross vehicle weights (GVWs) are incrementally imposed on the bridge FEM with those predefined ultimate unfavored loading scenarios in a manner similar to proof load testing. WOP code runs nonlinear analysis at each increment until a stopping criterion is met. Two representative bridges were selected to confirm WOP’s feasibility and efficacy. The results showed that WOP-predicted values at the interior girders were between those of the conventional AASHTO and the nondestructive testing (NDT) strain measurement methods. That may put WOP in a favorable zone as a new method that is less conservative than AASHTO but more conservative than real NDT testing.

Literary dynamics in The.PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood

Interaction between text and reader is a prominent concern in stylistics. This paper focusses on interactions among stylistic processes and subconscious microcognitive processes that generate changes to narrative and interpretation during reading. Drawing on process philosophy and recent neuroscientific research, I articulate this dynamism through analysis of a brief narrative moment from each of The.PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson and Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. I argue that high densities of stylistic and microcognitive perturbations lead to frequent narrative and interpretive changes in the two moments. The analyses reinforce portrayals of reading as intensely complex, dynamic and changeable. Complexity, dynamism and mutability also characterise the stylistic changes in the two narrative moments. This paper advocates greater attention to the role of volatile stylistic and cognitive microdynamics in shaping the reading of prose fiction.

Co-Creating the Real: A Transdisciplinary Dialogue

This article is the fruit of a written dialogue between a sociocultural psychologist and a philosopher invested in the study of the Creative Real, in a context that resonates with process philosophy and posthumanism. Each of the two authors come from a different tradition (or, rather, different traditions) to the topic of posthuman creativity and their approaches overlap considerably but include as well important points of difference, ranging from writing style to key concepts and areas of application.

The Universe Is on Our Side

There has been a breakdown in American public life that no election can fix. Americans cannot even converse about politics. All the usual explanations for our condition have failed to make things better. Bruce Ledewitz shows that America is living with the consequences of the Death of God, which Friedrich Nietzsche knew would be momentous and irreversible. God was this culture’s story of the meaning of our lives. Even atheists had substitutes for God, like inevitable progress. Now we have no story and do not even think about the nature of reality. That is why we are angry and despairing. America’s future requires that we begin a new story by each of us asking a question posed by theologian Bernard Lonergan: Is the universe on our side? When we commit to live honestly and fully by our answer to that question, even if our immediate answer is no, America will begin to heal. Beyond that, pondering the question of the universe will allow us to see that there is more to the universe than blind forces and dead matter. Guided by the naturalism of Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy, and the historical faith of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we can learn to trust that the universe bends toward justice and our welfare. That conclusion will complete our healing and restore faith in American public life. We can live without God, but not without thinking about holiness in the universe.

Yes, the Universe Is on Our Side

Lonergan’s question is for all of us, including religious believers. The process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead renders the yes plausible, allowing us to understand the universe as more than dead matter and blind forces. There is no possibility of a final proof in answering Lonergan’s question, but there is knowledge. Kronman is not only the culmination of the no, he is the commencement of the yes. Accepting mortality engenders all human possibilities, including tenderness. The universe is emergent and creative. In its processes, the universe moves in the direction of life, complexity, intelligence, and morality. The stability and universality of the laws of nature support a friendly universe. The Earth maintains conditions for life. Quantum physics demonstrates our connection to matter. History is not circular but directional. Human life is purposeful. None of this is accidental.

Innovation research on foreign language teaching theory with Chinese characteristics based on Whitehead’s process philosophy

Since China’s reform and opening up, foreign language teaching (FLT) in China has achieved rapid development under the guidance of foreign language teaching theories both at home and abroad. However, problems such as ‘time-consuming and inefficient foreign language learning’ and the presence of ‘dumb foreign languages’ in FLT in China have not been fundamentally solved. Based on Whitehead’s process philosophy, this research aims to put forward feasible solutions to the existing problems in FLT in China so that the level of FLT in China can be promoted by discussing the purpose, contents, processes and stages of FLT and the relationship between teachers and students in both FLT and FLT evaluation systems.

Konsep Tuhan dan Agama Menurut Alfred North Whitehead

This article discusses the concept of God and religion according to Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy. The main issue is how to describe Whitehead's concept of God and its implications for religious life. Whitehead's critique of scientific materialism is an entry point to understand the characteristics of his thought. This criticism leads to Whitehead's cosmology in which each actual entity is in the process of becoming. God is not excluded from this cosmological scheme. In this way of thinking, God is the source of eternal objects or values. God experiences every actual event that occurs in the temporal world. Thus, God can be understood from two perspectives: the former refers to a cosmological frame, while the latter refers to religious experience. In Whitehead's language, God has two distinct natures, a primordial nature, and a consequent nature. From the perspective of religious life, Whitehead's concept of God seems to put more emphasis on divine immanence.