Icons, Sacred Relics, Obsolescent Plant

Abstract  Whether churches should be demolished, rebuilt, restored or preserved is a contentious issue. Some hold that the needs of a present worshipping community should take precedence over antiquarian or aesthetic interest, others that we owe a debt to the ages. Arguments mirror those between developers and environmentalists. It is argued here that it is not abstract rights that matter, but a sense of history, and of the sacred. Church buildings and landscapes are to be maintained not as museum pieces but as living elements of a humane piety.     

Icons,Liturgy, Saints: Ecological insights from Orthodox spirituality1

The technical language and specific images that we adopt when we speak about preservation of the natural environment depend on values and images that we promote and even presume in our daily behaviour and lifestyle. In Orthodox Christian spirituality, such language and images certainly play a crucial role. This presentation considers the central importance of: 1) the world of icons as the way we view and perceive creation; 2) the beauty of liturgy as the way we celebrate and respond to creation; and 3) asceticism in the lives of the saints as the way we respect and treat creation. It draws on classic Orthodox Christian texts as well as contemporary literature to provide fundamental spiritual insights into the way we comprehend God's creation and the way we should confront its exploitation in modern times.     

Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson as Cultural Icons of U.S. Foreign Policy

The conventional account of American diplomacy in the modern era is marked by a cultural tension between realist and idealist themes symbolized by the statecraft of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. However, a revisionist account has emerged to challenge and even reverse the conventional account of Roosevelt and Wilson. This poses an intriguing empirical puzzle that is essentially psychological, as it pertains to the belief systems of these two presidents. In order to investigate this puzzle and its implications for U.S. strategic culture, we employ an automated content analysis of the public statements by the two leaders regarding their operational code beliefs about the nature of the political universe and the best approach to effective political action. The results reveal similarities and differences in their belief systems and illustrate how psychological models can provide insights into the psychocultural origins of U.S. diplomacy that remain relevant to the present day.     

Temporal Perspectives of the Nanotechnological Challenge to Regulation: How Human Rights Can Contribute to the Present and Future of Nanotechnologies

Expectations play a central role in understanding scientific and technological changes. Future-oriented representations are also central with regard to nanotechnologies as they can guide policy activities, provide structures and legitimation, attract different interests, focus policy-makers’ attention and foster investments for research. However, the emphasis on future scenarios tends to underrate the complexity of the challenges of the present market of nanotechnologies by flattening them under the needs and promises of scientific research. This is particularly apparent if we consider the viewpoint of the regulator who faces two different ranges of problems with regard to the market and research and is expected, simultaneously, to manage two different types of regulatory instruments, pursuing at the same time the same goals. Instead, by favoring only the future scenarios, the regulator runs the risk of abruptly shifting from more flexible and elastic tools to forms of hard legislation, wasting, thus, the resources of the soft-regulation, in particular those of self-regulation. By referring primarily to the European context, human rights, also thanks to their normative structure of principles, can help in strengthening both the legislation needed for regulating the present market and the soft instruments needed for steering research and for fostering the stakeholders’ participation without sacrificing the coherence of the regulatory response.     

Icons,Science, and Faith: Comparative Examination of the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo

Abstract

The Shroud of Turin is a well-studied linen cloth bearing the image of a naked man that has been beaten, scourged, and crucified. A lesser-known, smaller cloth exists, the Sudarium of Oviedo, which contains bloodstains corresponding to the head wounds, both front and back, found on the Shroud. The Sudarium bears no facial imprint and has been proposed to represent the face-cloth (napkin) mentioned in the gospel of John (20:6–7). Here, the markings on the Shroud of Turin and the Sudarium of Oviedo are reviewed, and the possible relationship between the two cloths and their impact on faith is discussed.     

The Medical Vestment and Surgical Instruments of Saint Cosmas and Damian on Sinai Icons From the Seventh to the Eighteenth Century

The iconography of the doctor saints Cosmas and Damian and the artistic representations of their miracles are important sources for the history of medicine. Within the sphere of physician-saints, Cosmas and Damian have the greatest number of iconographic depictions in Byzantine and Post-Byzantine art. In most of their representations, they wear long robes as a sort of professional mantles and carry surgical instruments and boxes indicating their status as doctors. The progress of Byzantine surgery could be attested by these objects, some of them mentioned in collections of miracle stories and documented in medical sources.