Worlds within Worlds: Kabbalah and the New Scientific Paradigm

Beginning with relativity and quantum theory, the deterministic view that has dominated and shaped Western culture for more than 2,500 years has begun to unravel, leading to the emergence of a new paradigm. This new paradigm effectively reformulates the project of science, conceiving of existence as an interpenetrating web of coevolving, cocreative relationships. By exploring Kabbalah and the new scientific paradigm within the context of shared evolutionary principles, I seek to demonstrate a viable alternative to the prevailing deterministic worldview. By going beyond the limits of determinism and re–visioning existence as an evolutionary, emergent phenomenon, we can establish a new basis for an authentic dialogue between science and religion.     

The origin of language: A scientific approach to the study of man

The Enlightenment regarded language as one of the most significant achievements of man. Consequently inquiries into the origin and development of language play a central role in eighteenth-century moral philosophy. This new science of man consciously adopts the method of analysis and synthesis used in the natural sciences of the time. In moral philosophy, analysis corresponds to the search for the basic principles of human nature. Synthesis is identified with the attempt to interpret all artificial achievements of man (arts, sciences and institutions) as the effect of these principles and of man's physical and social environment - an attempt known as theoretical history. The type of explanation envisaged by theoretical historians is based on the principle of causality. It consists in a genetic reconstruction of the social phenomenon under investigation. Inquiries into the origin of language follow this pattern of explanation. They form part of theoretical history and thus represent a major aspect of the eighteenth-century scientific study of man.     

Four Worlds: An Approach to Occupational Guidance

Because existing career patterns are changing so rapidly and radically, new approaches to vocational guidance are needed. One approach, used by a team of teachers instructing a vocational guidance course in a junior high school, was to broaden students' overall understanding and awareness of the world, rather than to focus on specific career areas. The rationale for this approach was that if students are even to begin making meaningful vocational investigations they must first become more aware of the almost infinite possibilities that are open to them—their worlds must be enlarged. Students were, therefore, introduced to four worlds: the Natural, the Technological, the Aesthetic, and the Human World. Students seemed to become not only more aware of new worlds, but also more cognizant of the problems and challenges confronting man today.     

Picture naming in young children: a developmental study on interhemispheric collaboration

The aim of the present study was to determine how interhemispheric collaboration and visual attention in basic lexical tasks develop during early childhood. Two- to 6-year-old children were asked to name two different pictures presented simultaneously either one in each visual hemifield (bilateral condition) or both in a single hemifield (either right or left, unilateral condition). In the bilateral condition, children were overall more accurate in naming right visual field than left visual field pictures. This difference was significant for 2- and 3- to 4-year-old children, but not for 5- to 6-year-old children. These results show that the right and left cerebral hemispheres do not develop naming competencies equally well in early childhood. A second analysis, based on the order of report, showed that when 2- and 3- to 4-year-old children named both the left and the right visual field pictures, they named the right visual field picture first. In contrast, at the age of 5-6 years, children named the left visual field picture first and overall naming performance reached a ceiling level. Several interpretations are proposed to explain this shift of visual attention at the age of 5-6 years. In the unilateral condition, no difference was found between naming accuracy in the right and left visual fields, presumably because interhemispheric pathways are functional: visual stimuli presented to the right hemisphere can be processed by the most competent left hemisphere without degradation of information. This result confirms previous findings on the development of interhemispheric collaboration.     

一条通往和平的道路

帕普罗那,西班牙那瓦拉省(Navarra)的首府,一座古老而宁静的城市。我作为中国惟一的宗教界代表,于2006年11月18日参加了2006年亚欧会议青年对话,即第一届亚欧青年宗教间对话。到达当天,天空中飘着蒙蒙细雨,但当见到其他与会代表时,旅途的劳累     

The scientific error of sexist research: A case study

Examination of a recent article on sex differences in response to being touched (Whitcher & Fisher, 1979) illustrates that current preoccupation with using nonsexist referents in APA journals does not necessarily produce meaningful modification where it matters most — in the conceptual analysis of the psychological process under investigation.     

Situation Models: The Mental Leap Into Imagined Worlds

Situation models are mental representations of the state of affairs described in a text rather than of the text itself. Much of the research on situation models in narrative comprehension suggests that comprehenders behave as though they are in the narrated situation rather than outside of it. This article reviews some of this evidence and provides an outlook on future developments.     

Pointing the way to a fictional place: A study of direction giving in Iran and England

This study was concerned with the popular impression that Near Easterners will give directions to a place even if they do not know its whereabouts. It confirmed the hypothesis that significantly more Iranians than English people will give directions to a fictional place, and offered experimental evidence to show that this cultural difference could not be explained in terms of the greater mischievousness of Iranians. Instead, it was suggested that the difference in behaviour between Iranians and English people could be traced to a difference in value systems. The study examined direction giving, avoidance of the experimenters, and time spent with experimenters in relation to nationality, sex and social class.     

Strong Necessitarianism: The Nomological Identity of Possible Worlds

Dispositional essentialism, a plausible view about the natures of (sparse or natural) properties, yields a satisfying explanation of the nature of laws also. The resulting necessitarian conception of laws comes in a weaker version, which allows differences between possible worlds as regards which laws hold in those worlds and a stronger version that does not. The main aim of this paper is to articulate what is involved in accepting the stronger version, most especially the consequence that all possible properties exist in all worlds. I also suggest that there is no particularly strong reason for preferring the weaker to the stronger version. For example, Armstrong's instantiation condition on universals entails that according to strong necessitarianism every property is instantiated in all possible worlds. But first we do not need to accept Armstrong's instantiation condition, in part because his arguments for it are forceful only for a contingentist about laws and properties. Secondly, even if we do accept the condition, the consequence that all properties are instantiated is not itself contradictory, so long as any form of necessitarianism holds. Strong necessitarianism is prima facie counter‐intuitive. But for that matter so is weak necessitarianism. Accepting either weak or strong necessitarianism requires denying the force of intuition in this area. And indeed we have every reason to deny the force of intuition and its primary source, imagination, concerning modal facts.     

The Four Worlds of Spiritual Assessment and Care

From the dawn of human consciousness, religious and spiritual expressions have been inexorably intertwined with some degree of assessment toward more effective care— whether such care is offered by shaman, imam, rabbi, shirpa, prophet, priest, pastor, physician, nurse, or lay minister. Currently, two major forces have brought spiritual assessment and care into sharp focus regarding the delivery of health care in the U.S. The first is the advent of managed care. The shift in emphasis from sickness-based to wellness-based reimbursement, spurred by spiraling costs, has brought close scrutiny to provider effects on patient outcomes. The second major force, related to the first, has been increased attention to alternative medicine and to previously unacknowledged adjuncts to traditional health-care delivery, most often understood by the terms holistic health or wellness. One of the sub-areas within holistic health is spiritual care. A measure of the increasing importance of spiritual care within the delivery of U.S. health care is the fact that the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Health Organizations (JCAHO) is gradually upgrading the place of chaplaincy services in the Standards. Thus, a clear, simple, user-friendly, inclusive, valid, reliable, useful diagnostic, care-anticipating, and outcomes-measurable spiritual-care model is becoming more a necessity in the increasingly demanding discipline of clinical chaplaincy.associated before retirement with the     

The impetus to scientific psychology: A recurrent pattern

In the nineteenth century, the personal equation, which concerned individual differences in the accuracy of astronomical observations, provided an impetus to the development of experimental psychology. During the first decade of Wundt's laboratory, the measurement of the duration of mental acts received more experimental attention than any other subject. Twentieth century developments in theoretical physics have stimulated interest in the nature of mental operations and conceptual transformations, a topic which is currently receiving increased attention in psychology. It is suggested that the history of psychology may provide a useful data source for additional work in this area.     

Effects of pair collaboration and word-frequency in recognition memory: a study with the remember-know procedure

The present study investigated the effects of pair collaboration and word-frequency on recognition memory, using the "remember-know" procedure. The aim was to test the predictions of the information-exchange hypothesis (Clark, Hori, Putnam & Martin, 2000), which states that collaborative facilitation occurs when participants are able to share their recollective memories with other members of the group. Results showed that recognition performance was significantly better in the collaborative than in the individual condition, and better for low-frequency than for high-frequency words. The advantage of collaborating dyads was produced by an increase of correct hits, coupled with a significant reduction of false alarms. Furthermore, the analysis of the "remember" (R) and "know" (K) responses indicated that the effects of both pair collaboration and word-frequency were larger on recollection than on familiarity processes. It is concluded that, in a collaborative condition, arguments based on the retrieval of the contextual details associated with the target words are more effective than those based on familiarity in increasing the proportions of correct hits. In addition, it is proposed that collaboration may lead to a reduction of the probability to accept new items on the basis of familiarity (K) responses.