Alonzo church:his life,his work and some of his miracles

This paper is dedicated to Alonzo Church, who died in August 1995 after a long life devoted to logic. To Church we owe lambda calculus, the thesis bearing his name and the solution to the Entscheidungsproblem.His well-known book Introduction to Mathematical LogicI, defined the subject matter of mathematical logic, the approach to be taken and the basic topics addressed. Church was the creator of the Journal of Symbolic Logicthe best-known journal of the area, which he edited for several decades

This paper is in three sections. The first is written in journalistic style:the story of the life of AlonzoChurch is told, including some of the many anecdotes I have collected from different sources. The secondpart is devoted to his work, but is far from being exhaustive. The last part is more original; in it I attempto show that Church’s great discovery was lambda calculus and that his remaining contributions weremainly inspired afterthoughts in the sense that most of his contributions as well as some of his pupils derivefrom that initial achievement. Included are Kleene’s Recursion Theory and the completeness proof ofHenkin. I have added an appendix in which is presented the typed lambda calculus and a proof of theundecidability of first-order logic     

Einstein,his theories,and his aesthetic considerations

This article deals with the question whether aesthetic considerations affected Einstein in formulating both his theories of relativity. The opinions of philosophers and historians alike are divided on this matter. Thus, Gerald Holton supports the view that Einstein employed aesthetic considerations in formulating his theory of special relativity whereas Jim Shelton opposes it, one of his reasons being that Einstein did not mention such considerations. The other theory, namely, that of general relativity, is discussed by John D. Norton. He asserts that the successful completion of this theory was due to Einstein's adherence to mathematical simplicity resulting from experience, as Einstein himself stated, and not from an aesthetic drive, to which he did not refer. The present work attempts to overcome this deficiency indirectly by investigating Einstein's aesthetic awareness and its consequences for his work. It is found that this awareness was imbedded in his perception of nature and is linked to the criteria (such as simplicity) that guided him in formulating his theories. The conclusion thus reached is that aesthetic considerations did play a role in Einstein's endeavour, contrary to the assertions of Shelton and Norton.     

Frege and his groups

Frege's docent's dissertation Rechnungsmethoden, die sich auf eine Erweiterung des Grössenbegriffes gründen(1874) contains indications of a bold attempt to extend arithmetic. According to it, arithmetic means the science of magnitude, and magnitude must be understood structurally without intuitive support. The main thing is insight into the formal structure of the operation of ‘addition’. It turns out that a general ‘magnitude domain’ coincides with a (commutative) group. This is an interesting connection with simultaneous developments in abstract algebra. As his main application, Frege studies iterations of functions. He does not yet pose the question of existence proofs. Measurement of magnitudes is also connected to numbers, but the discussion is here ambiguous in a way which calls for the systematic account of numbers in Grundgesetze     

On his brother's blindness

This commentary is slightly different from previous ones in that the clinical work presented took place some 20 years ago. This gave an opportunity, for those commentators who wished to, to take up how they think the work of a child psychotherapist might have changed in the intervening years.     

张无梦圆梦

北宋年间,陕西凤翔周至有户张姓人家,家道殷实。当家张财主尽管学问不浅,但却屡试不第,一生与纱帽无缘。有一天晚上,张财主喝了点酒,早早入睡,得了一个梦,梦中张财主正在为仕途发愁,突然大门外鼓乐齐鸣,一队仪仗威风凛凛地款款而来,一名钦差走到他面前,高声宣读圣旨道:“奉天承     

Charles Williams and his Imagery

Based on a talk given in London in 1986 to mark the centenary of the birth of Charles Williams, the theological writer and poet.     

The pastor and his privacy

Pastoral Psychology -     

Touching God in his Image

The essay defends praying with images (icons) against those who claim this type of prayer is objectionable. The hermeneutical defence consists of three arguments. (a) First I observe that people relate to ordinary photos in ways that cannot be explained in terms of the image's sign‐value (or similitude) alone. (b) Second, I develop an account of praying with images as a form of symbolic practice. (c) Finally, in order to bolster my account, I compare icons with a particular class of symbolic objects, viz. relics. The general idea I put forward is that icons have to be understood as expressions of the reality they represent, and not simply as accurate or inaccurate visual representations of that reality. Icons are not created by human hands; instead, the hand of the painter is the instrumental cause of God's self‐expression, via the painter, on the canvas.     

Frege's theorem and his logicism

As is well known, Frege gave an explicit definition of number (belonging to some concept) in §68 of his Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik     

The transvestite and his wife

This study reports the analysis of a transvestite man through focusing on his marital interaction and his wife's complementary behavior to his perversion. In his marriage, this patient dramatically recapitulated many of his infantile core conflicts, fixations, and traumas associated with his cross-dressing. These were: (1) the marital crisis which brought him into analysis and its associations with his split gender identifications; (2) his wife's ability to force him into cross-dressing on cue; (3) the extent to which his cross-dressing was dependent on the degree of psychic separateness he felt from his wife; and (4) his and his wife's complementary transvestite fantasies. Both this man and his wife's attempted to use their marriage as a cure for resolving their complementary transvestite problem. The extent to which they were able to accomplish this before the husband's "breakdown" (brought about by the wife's affair) was examined. The nature of his transvestite transference--what was termed his "John Wayne transference"--provided him with the ideal vehicle for the transferential working-through of the many aspects of his transvestite pathology. The continuance of a strong positive and unanalyzed transference after the formal end of the analysis was commented upon.     

环境思想视野中的马克思

西方环保主义者在如何评价马克思与环保思想之间的关系上之所以未成功是因为他们没能真正地理解马克思的自然概念。马克思的自然概念应包括三个层次:存在论层次、使用价值层次和价值层次。自然便是这三个层次的统一体。