ON CRITICAL THINKING AND MODERN LIMITS TO HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

: We are currently living in a world literally flooded with all types of information, and people have ended up dealing with various kinds of limitations to how much they can or choose to know. We can, thus, identify modern limits to human knowledge falling under (at least) two large categories: either limitations imposed by others (such as authorities, mass media, bosses or leaders, etc), or what we may call self-imposed limitations, i.e. choosing to disregard some information or another, refusing to keep up to date with a state of facts, rejecting scientifically proved data, etc. We are actually talking about outer manipulation (in option A above), or inner manipulation, if we may call it as such, namely the protection of personal comfort even over irrefutable evidence (in option B above). “Ignorance is bliss” (The Matrix, 1999), right? At least for some people. Yet, in this intricate matrix of human knowledge some of us are plagued with an incurable disease: critical thinking. A genuine bogeyman of any authoritarian system or regime, critical thinking is responsible for many glitches in this matrix, always at war against any sort of limitations imposed on human knowledge and rationale. We need to keep critical thinking alive and encourage it, and, in this process, identify the decisive vectors capable of disseminating the concept and its value, as well as its applications in everyday life.

MATHEMATICS, THE "BOOK OF NATURE" AND THEOLOGY - GALILEO GALILEI AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN SCIENCE

Starting from the cycle of letters known as The Copernican Letters (1613-1615) and following through to the 1632 Dialogue, I will attempt to outline the context in which Galileo Galilei’s work is constituted as a veritable theory of nature research based on mathematics. Galilei rests on the principles of science to ground his choice for the Copernican model, as well as the separation of natural research from theology, but his concern for a unified philosophy of the natural world is intertwined in his work with the dignity of creation understood as “the great book of the world” by which divinity talks to man in the language of mathematics.

ENCODING REALITY INTO FICTION/ DECODING FICTION AS REALITY: POSTMODERN HISTORIOGRAPHY AS CRITICAL THEORY

This paper is intended as a brief critical review of three interrelated, fairly similar critical theories, born out the necessity of looking into cultural forms and products with a view to finding the politics at work therein. While American New Historicism is more historically oriented, British Cultural Materialism, with its more obvious influence from Marxism, Postcolonialism and other theories which place the margin at their centre, seems to be more in tune with contemporaneity, and so is the area of Cultural Studies, with its emphasis on cultural representations. It is advocated here that contemporary fiction cannot be fully separated from other textual forms, which are considered here historiographic (not historical) because of their nature of texts produced subjectively, within a certain political, social and cultural context, irrespective of their assumed scientific objectivity. Literature, it is further argued, has become a discourse-oriented endeavour with an active participation, an idea supported in the present study by making reference to several critical and polemic writings by Salman Rushdie, which, in a topsyturvy, postmodernist manner, are foregrounded before, and not after the literature review proper.

PHILOSOPHICAL PATHOS IN MARÍA ZAMBRANO AND ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER

This work first analyses María Zambrano's reflections on the limits of philosophy, based on the suspicion of its vanity and the ambivalence of its origins. Zambrano explores the genealogy of the traditional conception of the origin of philosophy as wonder, a wonder that she would share with poetry. She postulates a horizon of the conjunction of philosophy and poetry, to respond to the wonder at reality, but she also refers to the possibility of rescuing a more venerable form of philosophy. Secondly the work examines whether Schopenhauer's philosophy, with its proverbial pessimism and its conception of philosophical admiration as dismay, could be regarded as an example of this venerable form of philosophy and, finally, whether aspiring to create this conjunction with poetry is still philosophy.

THE FIRST FOUR DAYS: A SCIENTIFIC VIEW FOR THE CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE

The first four days of Genesis are scientifically interpreted according to the author’s well-developed black hole universe model. From this scientific view for the creation of the universe described in the book of Genesis, God in the first day created the space and time, matter and motion, charge and fundamental forces, energy and light for the infinite large entire universe. Then, in the second day, God hierarchically structured the entire universe by separating the matter and space with infinite layers that are bounded by event horizons and further formed our finite black hole universe. In the third day, God constructed the interiors of our finite black hole universe with planets, stars, galaxies, and clusters, etc. And, in the fourth day, God finally created our home planet Earth and the solar system and made lights including the Sun, Moon, and stars to give light to our universe and Earth. This up-to-date explanation to God’s creative work during the first four days has bridged the gap between Genesis and observations of the universe and brought us a scientific view and understanding on the book of Genesis. This innovative interpretation of Genesis also strongly supports the black hole universe model to be capable of revealing the mysteries of the universe. This is a synthetic article of the four papers recently published on IJTPS to interpret the first through fourth day of Genesis according to the black hole model of the universe.

TWO RESEARCH PARADIGMS, WITH OR WITHOUT „GOD HYPOTHESIS”: C.S. LEWIS AND RICHARD DAWKINS

In this present paper we try to learn something about how to cope with analytical investigation of reality, by comparing the ideas of two iconic Oxford figures. On the one hand, the renowned atheist Richard Dawkins, and the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, on the other. It is more than interesting to know how two great thinkers of the 20th century can raise and answer to questions of life, such as Reasoned belief, the so-called „God hypothesis” or concerning our place and purpose in this world. Both Dawkins and Lewis see intellectual reflection on the big questions as natural and significant. Both insist that their beliefs – atheism and Christianity respectively – demand and deserve intellectual seriousness and are capable of being developed into larger systems. Lewis’s apologetic approach generally takes the form of identifying a common human observation or experience, and then showing how it fits, naturally and plausibly, within a Christian way of looking at things. For Dawkins, there is no room for faith in science, precisely because the evidence compels us to draw certain valid conclusions. He proposes an absolute dichotomy between ‘blind faith’ and the ‘overwhelming scientific evidence. Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator, God, almost certainly does not exist, and that belief in a personal god qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. An inevitable conclusion is that both Dawkins and Lewis are men of faith, in that both hold committed positions that cannot be proved right, but which they clearly regard as justified and reasonable. We must learn to live with a degree of rational uncertainty about our deepest beliefs and values.

THE RELATION BETWEEN STUDENTS ANXIETY AND COGNITIVE STYLES

The key to academic success is not only good quality teaching but also a individualized teaching and individualized approaching to the student’s cognitive styles of learning and anxiety. The present paper tries to answer the question if the teachers and school counsellors may help improve students’ learning by helping them to manage their behaviour and attitudes more effectively. Precisely, it postulates that as long as teachers may adapt their communication styles and teachings to the cognitive styles of their student’s better results and more efficient learning they will get from them. It first presents a short literature review of anxiety and of cognitive styles of learning the relation, followed by the relation between anxiety and the cognitive styles and it finally postulates the main methodological approaches that any teachers should adopt to make his teaching more effective having in mind the relation between the two variables. Finally, implications for teaching are discussed, as are suggestions for the future researches.

GALILEO GALILEI´S THESIS EXPANDED

In this short article, I try to show alternative maths to real numbers in such a way that these maths (especially Transreal Numbers by James Anderson and Arithmetic of Infinity by Yaroslav Sergeyev) can also be considered as legitimate instruments for presenting the structure of reality. I call this thesis of expanding the possibilities of understanding Nature mathematically the "Galileo Galilei´s thesis extended". As an example of the application of the thesis that the mathematics that is at the base of Nature must be extended to a better assessment of the scope of physical laws, here we present the Heisenberg´s Uncertainty Principle, approached in an alternative way from a mathematical point of view.

CLASSICISM AND NEO-CLASSICISMS IN THE HISTORY OF MUSIC

In one of his articles, Octavian Paler draws attention in a metaphorical-mythologizing manner upon one of the risks taken by those who chose tradition as their source of inspiration. The epigonic spirit, because this is what he refers to, cannot escape idolatrising tradition, phenomenon that happens within an alterity of the creative identity, within the pettiness of controlling the artistic means, within the infatuation of his own image which is placed under the protection of the great creative figures. The epigone masters in an embryonic form some techniques which, for various reasons, he cannot manipulate creatively. He is somehow suspended between two sensibilities, hence his failure. On the one hand, he is not aware of the risk of assuming past sensibilities, and on the other, he does not assume his contemporariness. Giving in to the temptation of looking too much into the past, the epigonic artist loses his identifying sensibility. “The mistake of neo-classicism, with its statues painted or sculpted based and antique models, is Orpheus’ mistake. As we no longer have the soul of the ancient Greeks, imitating their art is useless because in art too, looking back kills if there is no conscience of the irreversibility. From this point of view, there is no turning back unless in order to desolate everything” (Paler, 2016, pp. 189-190). This quote refers to neo-classicism perceived in its most rudimentary form, in which it would identify itself with the epigonic phenomenon. Of course, no relation of equality can be claimed between an epigone and a neo-classicist. If we are to give a brief definition in which to establish a relationship between these two terms, the epigone is a neo-classicist that lacks fantasy. Neo-classicism means to creatively take over technical means, past sensibilities in order to anchor them in the tumultuousness of contemporary times. Neo-classicism represents the happiest mixture between past and present, that form of artistic reverberation in which modernity still makes room for the seal of the past. Not servility, not obedience, not anachronism which denote the incapacity to assimilate new composing techniques or the lack of vigour of creative energies, but the power to adapt to new sensibilities through restorative interventions. Starting from here, we will trace a re-echeloning line of various types of neo-classic sensibilities specific to the end of the 19th century and to the entire 20th century

SCIENTIFIC LINGUISTICS, A NEVER-ENDING HISTORY

1866 was a turning point in scientific linguistics when the Linguistic Society of Paris banned all papers and presentations on the origin of language. De Saussure locked up the debate with two concepts, diachrony and synchrony. I intend to examine the emergence of the hypothesis of a single origin of human articulated languages, in Africa first, and then Black Africa. The phylogenic approach of biological studies has today spread to linguistics. Sally McBrearty rejected the idea of a Neolithic revolution. Consequently, Black Africa became a major field of archaeological research. Yuval Noah Harari stating the existence of a symbolic revolution around 70,000 years ago, rejected Black Africa along with the Americas, and the Denisovans. Asia has become a major archaeological field. Julien d’Huy implements phylogenetic arborescent technique to the study of myths. The oldest form of a myth is not the origin of it. In oral civlizations some literate individual had to tell the story behind representations for the people to understand, appreciate, and remember them. I will then consider structural linguistics (Noam Chomsky & Universal Grammar). UG has never been able to develop semantics within its own system (Generative Semantics & George Lakoff). Science is always a temporarily approximate vision of what it considers. First, what any science explores is constantly evolving following phylogenic dynamics that are contained in the very objects of such scientific studies. Second, any new knowledge appearing in the field concerned causes a complete restructuration of what we knew before.