《周易参同契》之"鄞鄂"义考

《汉语大词典》等释"鄞鄂"为"边界""形体"义,并认为《参同契》中的两处"鄞鄂"亦是此义.此释有两处不足:首先,"鄞鄂"的内涵要比上述释义丰富得多；其次,以《参同契》句子为例不妥,《参同契》之"鄞鄂"在炼丹术中是专门术语,有其特定的专门语义."鄞鄂"源自垠鄂写法,垠鄂包括凹凸状纹饰、开放空间或器物、某空间的四周高起貌等含义.后两种含义为各种词典所无,但它们恰恰决定了"鄞鄂"用作道教炼丹术语时的含义,即表示炼内丹的神室和炼外丹的容器.而《中华道教大辞典》及其他专业词典将"鄞鄂"理解为元神和根蒂等,是借代或是其他比喻的修辞方式,或是空间重合的另外说法.     

Simulating a skilled typist: a study of skilled cognitive-motor performance

We review the major phenomena of skilled typing and propose a model for the control of the hands and fingers during typing. The model is based upon an Activation-Trigger-Schema system in which a hierarchical structure of schemata directs the selection of the letters to be typed and, then, controls the hand and finger movements by a cooperative, relaxation algorithm. The interactions of the patterns of activation and inhibition among the schemata determine the temporal ordering for launching the keystrokes. To account for the phenomena of doubling errors, the model has only “type” schemata—no “token” schemata—with only a weak binding between the special schema that signals a doubling, and its argument. The model exists as a working computer simulation and produces an output display of the hands and fingers moving over the keyboard. It reproduces some of the major phenomena of typing, including the interkeystroke interval times, the pattern of transposition errors found in skilled typists, and doubling errors. Although the model is clearly inadequate or wrong in some of its features and assumptions, it serves as a useful first approximation for the understanding of skilled typing.     

The relationship between birth stress and writing hand posture

Variations in handwriting posture (inverted versus noninverted) were measured in 1203 individuals for whom birth histories, based upon retrospective maternal reports, were available. A history of birth complications was associated with an increased incidence of inverted handwriting posture. Effects interacted with sex and hand preference; the largest difference in handwriting posture between the birth-stressed and non-birth-stressed groups occurred in left-handers and in males.     

Risk- and protective factors for memory plasticity in aging

ABSTRACT

Risk and protective factors for cognitive function in aging may affect how much individuals benefit from their environment or life experiences by preserving or improving cognitive abilities. We investigated the relations between such factors and outcome from episodic-memory training in 136 healthy young and older adults. Tested risk factors included carrying the ?4 variant of the apolipoprotein E allele (APOE), age, body mass index, blood pressure, and cholesterol. Protective factors included higher levels of education, intelligence quotient (IQ), physical activity, fatty acids, and vitamin D. Average increases in memory performance were seen after training, with ample variation between individuals. Being young, female, and having higher IQ were positive predictors of memory improvement. No other relationships were observed. Similar benefit was observed across APOE allelic variation. This indicates that beyond IQ, age, and sex, known risk -and protective factors of cognitive function in aging were not significantly related to memory plasticity.     

E pluribus unum and civil harmony at election time

One way to formulate the task of the public theologian at election time is to interpret America's motto, e pluribus unum (out of many, one). Civility both presumes oneness while promoting oneness. After four years of ceaseless divisiveness from the White House, America needs political leadership that promotes a sense of belonging that includes persons of all races, ethnicities, economic classes, ages, genders, and country of origin. The public theologian combats xenophobia and the fear of replacement by demanding police reform, establishing a comprehensive national health delivery system, and comforting those who are anxious about their future in the unum.     

CONSUETUDO CARNALIS IN AUGUSTINE'S CONFESSIONS: Confessing Identity/Belonging to Difference

The political theorist William E. Connolly reads Augustine's Confessions as an exhortation to deny the paradox of identity/difference. The paradox for Connolly is this: if one confesses a true identity, one must be false to difference, but if one is true to difference, one must sacrifice the promise of true identity. I revisit Augustine's Confessions here in order to offer a reading of their paradoxical character that contrasts with Connolly's. I will argue that Augustine's confession does not deny the paradox of identity/difference but exemplifies what it means to struggle within it. I turn to James Wetzel's work on Augustine's idea of free will and Catherine Keller's work on the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo to suggest that treating Augustine's confession as confession reveals this struggle.     

Beyond androgyny: The emergence of sex-role transcendence as a theoretical construct

Recent trends in sex-role research are reviewed with the purpose of showing a paradigm shift in the kinds of issues and questions thought to be important for an understanding of sex-role development. Two recent advances, conceptualizations of androgyny and sex-role transcendence are described with particular emphasis on the emergence of sex-role transcendence as a new theoretical construct. It is argued that while personality, social-learning, and structural-developmental theories account for sex-role identity and androgyny, only structural-developmental theory provides an adequate conceptual framework for the construct of sex-role transcendence. Questions are raised concerning the empirical demonstration of the concept.     

Conceptual combination with prototype concepts

This paper deals with how people combine simple, prototype concepts into complex ones; e.g., how people combine the prototypes for brown and apple so they can determine the typicality of objects in the conjunction brown apple. We first consider a proposal from fuzzy-set theory (Zadeh, 1965), namely, that the typicality of an object in a conjunction is equal to the minimum of that object's typicality in the constituents (e.g., an object's typicality as a brown apple cannot exceed its typicality as a brown or as an apple). We evaluated this “min rule” against the typicality ratings of naive subjects in two experiments. For each of numerous pictured objects, one group of subjects rated its typicality with respect to an adjective concept, a second group rated its typicality vis-à-vis a noun concept, and a third group rated its typicality with respect to the adjective-noun conjunction. In both studies, most objects were rated as more typical of the conjunction than of the noun. These findings violate not only the min rule but also other simple rules for relating typicality in a conjunction to typicalities in the constituents. As an alternative to seeking such rules, we argue for an approach to conceptual combination that starts with the prototype representations themselves. We illustrate one version of this approach in some detail, and show how it accounts for the major findings of the present experiments.