再论《周易》与中国画

本文对《周易》的直观意象思维和中正和谐思想与中国画的创作特点进行了深入的比较分析,表明了《周易》思维方式对中国画的深刻影响,同时,对《周易》的玩占与艺术家们的玩墨也作了比较研究,揭示了玩占与玩墨所体现的深刻文化意蕴。     

从中外医学教育标准的差异看医学生的人文素质培养

通过中外医学教育标准在知识目标、技能目标、职业价值观上的若干差异的比较,探讨人文素质,包括医生职业价值观念、医学人文知识、“批判性思维”能力和交流技巧、沟通能力的培养等在国际医学教育标准的重要地位,并对改进我国医学教育的人文内涵提出建议。     

Improving college students’ evaluation of text learning using idea-unit standards

When recalling key definitions from class materials, college students are often overconfident in the quality of their responses. Even with commission errors, they often judge that their response is entirely or partially correct. To further understand this overconfidence, we investigated whether idea-unit judgements would reduce overconfidence (Experiments 1 and 2) and whether students inflated their scores because they believed that they knew answers but just responded incorrectly (Experiment 2). College students studied key-term definitions and later attempted to recall each definition when given the key term (e.g., What is the availability heuristic?). All students judged the quality of their recall, but some were given a full-definition standard to use, whereas other students first judged whether their response included each of the individual ideas within the corresponding correct answer. In Experiment 1, making these idea-unit judgements reduced overconfidence for commission errors. In Experiment 2, some students were given the correct definitions and graded other students’ responses, and some students generated idea units themselves before judging their responses. Students were overconfident even when they graded other students’ responses, and, as important, self-generated idea units for each definition also reduced overconfidence in commission errors. Thus, overconfidence appears to result from difficulties in evaluating the quality of recall responses, and such overconfidence can be reduced by using idea-unit judgements.     

On critical African philosophy: Mapping the boundaries of a good philosophical tradition

This essay deploys the existence of epistemic vices in the trajectory of Western philosophy to map the erasures and complicities that accompanied the emergence of contemporary African philosophy (CAP₁). It argues that the complicity of CAP₁ in the hyperspecialization and academic self-absorption that marked the professionalization of Western philosophy, makes it difficult to attend to the conditions for its own possibility. CAP₁ arguably needs to make a critical turn into critical African philosophy (CAP₂), understood as a metatheoretical and metaphilosophical framework for an internal transformation that is emancipatory. CAP₂ is envisioned, first, as a critique of postcoloniality that rehumanizes the autonomous African subject; and, second, as an ethicopolitical project that explores the cracks between philosophy as theoretical practice and philosophy as praxis in opening up the spaces for postcolonial emancipation. The essay identifies three conditions that instigate the emancipatory possibility of philosophizing on the continent: the spatial/platial, demosophic, and political.     

Philosophy,writing, and liberation

In responding to the three creative interpretive discussions in the symposium on my book Philosophy and the Art of Writing, this paper explores the different styles of philosophical discourse and their role in the practice of philosophy as a way of life that extends beyond the discursive and that combines self-cultivation with care for others in the ethical-aesthetic pursuit of living beauty. In advocating this aesthetic model of philosophical life over a purely therapeutic model, I suggest how the former can incorporate the latter's concerns for spiritual health and liberation. In developing my response to the symposiasts while elaborating on the themes of my book, I consider issues of ineffability, creative performance, embodiment, truth, heroism, vulnerability, possession, art, spirituality, love, and liberation.     

The User Interface in Computer-based Selection and Assessment: Applied and Theoretical Problematics of an Evolving Technology

Although its central role in human-computer interaction is recognized by industry, the user interface (UI) has received scant attention in the computer-based testing (CBT) literature. Industrial and European Community ergonomic directives have been established regarding UI design issues, however, which may significantly impact upon CBT. Accordingly, the UI’s CBT role is discussed regarding central CBT/UI constructs and dynamics. On the basis of one CBT UI design issue (here: paging) it is shown that many ergonomic regulatory definitional traps exist for the unwary CBT practitioner and UI designer. Newer UI developments in windowing technology and computer-based UI ergonomic regulation conformance analysis are described. Finally, open issues regarding CBT UI problematics are discussed, showing that, rather than continuing to lead a shadowed existence, the UI is deserving of considerably increased research effort regarding its CBT impact.     

Professional standards: Can they shape practice in an international context?

A summary of the career of a Russian engineer who practiced a century ago in western Europe, as well as in Russia, provides an example of how ethical standards can influence practice across national boundaries. An examination of his career and his conception of engineering, of the evolution of engineering standards and codes, and of the process of formulating codes in particular instances explains how international standards can shape practice in an international context. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Engineering Foundation Conference on “Ethics for Science and Engineering Based International Industries”, Durham, NC, USA, 14–17 September 1997.     

THE SENSE OF THE BEAUTIFUL AND APOPHATIC THOUGHT: EMPIRICAL BEING AS IKON

This essay is an interdisciplinary study of beauty that attempts to bridge the gap between religion/theology and science in some measure by drawing from Dionysius the Areopagite (c. 500) a notion of being that I argue is consonant with the notion of the sense of the beautiful, which I develop using Steven Weinberg's and Werner Heisenberg's discussions of empirical beauty. I use the term ikon to refer concisely to Dionysius' theophanic notion of being, namely, that the beyond‐being is nonsubstantially present in being.     

新发现西周筮数的研究

长安西仁村西周时期陶拍上的数字卦是西周存在《周易》经文的证明。西仁村采集:2上的数字卦由纵线顺箭头方向环读,共有四组筮数,转化为《周易》卦爻,依次为师、比、小畜、履四卦。而采集:1上亦纵刻筮数两行,转化为《周易》卦爻,自右迄左依次为既济、未济二卦。由师至履、既济至未济两处局部卦序,不难推想当时所用《周易》的卦序大同于今传本卦序,而且可以看出当时已存在六十四卦“非覆即变”错综关系的概念。文章还分别对陕西扶风齐家村出土的一片有字卜骨上的文字与筮数、对北京房山镇江营出土的一片卜骨上的筮数进行了识读,并对它们所采用的揲蓍法进行了推测。在对房山镇江营卜骨进行识读后,还通过对镇江营和周原西周甲骨文字刻写特点的比较,否定了字迹刻写微小者出现早、疏大者出现晚的说法,同时又指出,镇江营与周原西周甲骨文字刻写特点的相似是西周与诸侯国燕在文化上密切相关的明显证据。