2,337 research outputs found
THE CONCEPT OF ‘BEING’ IN AQUINAS AND PALAMAS
Get PDFThe aim of the present dissertation is a comparative analysis of the issue of being as found in the writings of St. Gregory Palamas and St. Thomas Aquinas. Primarily, I set two main focuses for my research: firstly, an overview of the life and work of the great Byzantine theologian and, secondly, a comparative analysis with St. Thomas Aquinas on the issue of being.
Although the present dissertation deals with both theological and philosophical issues, my research remains mainly a theological one. I am not interested in a merely theoretical evaluation of the history of being, but rather in how this notion is applied in the dynamics of the relation between God and man.
I structured my thesis around the evaluation of the concept of being in its applicability on God, on man, and on the way in which the two are linked. Therefore, I developed my analysis on each of the two authors, discussing in separate sections on: the divine being, the created being, the issue of grace and the views on deification. Before commencing the examination of the proposed issue, I found relevant to include an introduction dealing with the historical matters concerning each of the two theologians and their ‘dialogue’ within Eastern and Western theological framework. A final section concluded this study tracing the reception of their thought within the twentieth century Theology
Grace in Spoofax
No full textGrace is a programming language that aims to be an example of a contemporary object-oriented language, to be used for teaching university level students. The language specification of Grace is informal, and its various implementations are difficult to comprehend and change. Spoofax Grace is an implementation of the Grace programming language, meant to serve both as a reference implementation, but also a specification, that can be easily read, understood and changed. Spoofax Grace is implemented using the Spoofax language workbench, providing a declarative grammar, program transformations and dynamic semantics. From these specifications a language interpreter is generated that can execute Grace programs. The system covers the core aspects of Grace, yet a number of language features remain unimplemented. The implementation can be correlated to the informal Grace specification, and can be changed or extended at will.Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer ScienceSoftware TechnologyProgramming Language
The 'Prehistory' of Gregory of Tours: An Analysis of Books I-IV of Gregory's Histories
Get PDFThis thesis is concerned with the structure and agenda of the first four books of Gregory of Tours� Histories. Building on the idea that it was the death of Gregory�s patron, king Sigibert, at the end of Book IV, that stimulated the writing of the Histories, I argue that the agenda of the first four books, the �Prehistory�, relates directly to the events that brought about the Civil War that resulted in Sigibert�s death. This focus has previously gone unrecognised. I suggest that there is a strong structural framework to this section of the Histories, designed to promote the author�s agenda. This confirms that Books I-IV were conceived as one unit, and also heightens the level at which modern scholarship should view Gregory�s literary achievement. This in turn should illuminate the state of Merovingian education and society as a whole.
The message behind Gregory�s carefully structured �Prehistory� is an expansion of the Preface to Book V, in which Gregory pleads with his audience, his contemporary kings, to follow the path of God, like their ancestor, Clovis. This will bring peace and an end to greed and Civil War. This path, continually espoused by the agents of the Lord, His bishops, would lead to a successful reign and a healthy kingdom. Failure to listen to Gregory and his colleagues, would lead only to ruin, a message reiterated throughout the Prehistory, and highlighted in the death of king Sigibert
Language and theology in St Gregory of Nyssa
Get PDFThis MA thesis focuses on the work of one of the most influential and authoritative theologians of the early Church: St Gregory of Nyssa (†396). My topic of research consists in the relationship between language and theology, as it shaped in Gregory’s polemical works against the radical Arians, in particular against Eunomius of Cyzicus (†395).The first chapter tackles the historical side of the controversy and provides the chronology of the dogmatic disputes on the dogma of Trinity following the Council of Nicaea (325). The second chapters illustrate the conflict being at stake between two theological methodologies: Gregory's grammar of thought is scriptural, whereas Eunomius' theology is much more philosophical and inflexible in its terms. Eunomius claimed that one can know God by his essence in the concept of 'ingenerate'. On the contrary, for Gregory of Nyssa, God 'is above all names'. For him, language and sexuality are realitites of the post-lapsarian world, which made human mind opaque and the exercise of interpretation indispensable. Gregory included also the episode of Babel in the genealogy of our linguistic finitude. The third and the fourth chapters focus on the relationship between language and theological knowledge in St Gregory's third book Contra Eunomium. All words used in human language - including Eunomius' concept of agennetos – have complementary meanings, since no one can describe the essence of an object or of any part of reality. On this basis, Gregory develops his 'theory of relativity' of names, which can never befit God's majesty and glory. In the last chapter, under the heading 'Pragmatics of Language', I investigate the immediate consequences of Gregory's 'theory of relativity'. Speech is treated as a sphere, which resembles the creative power of the hypostatic Word. Therefore, rhetoric becomes the perfect tool for his pastoral concern in doing theology. By choosing rhetoric, Gregory is free to start his theological argument from anywhere, since theology is a discourse about God's redemptive economy. In conclusion, I try to emphasise the actuality of Gregory's theory of names and its importance for the contemporary debates in the Church on thorny issues as Trinitarian theology or gender. I also evaluate Gregory of Nyssa's self-consistency in positive terms
Grace Aguilar’s historical romances
No full textPhDMy dissertation looks critically at Grace Aguilar’s historical romance novels and short
stories, and investigates English writers’ uses of history in early- to mid-nineteenth century
fiction. Shifting the current critical emphasis on Aguilar’s Jewish texts, I
have analyzed the ways in which Aguilar revises the genres of the national tale, the
gothic romance, and the medieval romance in order to demonstrate her participation
in the construction of nineteenth-century domestic values.
In Chapter One, I introduce to critical debate Aguilar’s juvenilia, relying on
unpublished manuscripts and novels published only in the twentieth century to
establish the origins of Aguilar’s interest in history and historical writing. Locating
Aguilar’s narrative style in the early nineteenth-century national tale, I show that as a
child Aguilar envisioned the English and Scottish nations as a family, making
domesticity both a private and a public—a female and a male—value.
Chapter Two focuses on Aguilar’s use of history to express nineteenth-century
domestic ideals in her version of the gothic romance. Deploying the setting of the
Catholic Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, Aguilar writes gothic tales that unite
Jewish and Protestant gender values. She makes heroic the Jewish female martyr to
suggest not only that nineteenth-century Protestants and Jews share similar domestic
principles, but also that Jewish women could be seen as ideal models for Protestant
women.
Finally, in Chapter Three I explore Aguilar’s participation in the nineteenth-century
medievalist tradition by reflecting on her revision of nineteenth-century literary
idealizations of the Middle Ages. In these short stories, Aguilar fictionalizes the
sixteenth-century European chivalric ethos, looking critically at the role of women in
court society at the end of the Middle Ages. Deploying the tropes prevalent in
popular nineteenth-century anti-medievalist fiction, Aguilar debunks celebrations of
the Middle Ages by showing how chivalry is antagonistic to nineteenth-century
domesticity
Radiogenic and stable Sr isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr, d88/86Sr) as tracers of riverine cation sources and biogeochemical cycling in the Milford Sound region of Fiordland, New Zealand
No full textThis study reports radiogenic Sr isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr), stable Sr isotope ratios (?88/86Sr), and major ion concentrations for river, rock, sediment, soil, and plant samples collected from the Cleddau and Hollyford catchments in the Milford Sound region of Fiordland, New Zealand. The catchments primarily drain gabbro, but some tributaries access limestone and volcanogenic sediments. The goal of the study was to understand controls on riverine ?88/86Sr values in a landscape with multiple factors that may influence chemical weathering, including dense vegetation, high rainfall, and abundant, freshly-eroded Holocene fluvio-glacial and landslide debris.Rivers draining gabbro have higher ?88/86Sr values than bedrock, by as much as ?0.14‰, and the ?88/86Sr values strongly correlate with molar Ca/Sr ratios (R2 = 0.69). Leaching of rocks and sediment reveals no evidence for the preferential dissolution of minerals having high ?88/86Sr values and Ca/Sr ratios. In-stream Sr isotope fractionation seems unlikely because comparison against 87Sr/86Sr and Ca/Sr ratios demonstrates that riverine ?88/86Sr values conservatively trace water-mass mixing. The riverine data are best explained by the input of soil water, which is distinct from potential bedrock end-members (i.e., silicates and carbonates) based on ?88/86Sr but indistinguishable in terms of Ca/Sr and 87Sr/86Sr. While strontium isotope fractionation during secondary mineral formation and pedogenesis is possible, clay mineral formation is minor and most soils are poorly developed. Instead, soil water ?88/86Sr values more likely reflect plant uptake. Plant samples yielded a wide range of ?88/86Sr values, but on average, they are lower than those for bedrock, consistent with the expectation that plants preferentially incorporate lighter Sr isotopes. Mass-balance constraints, together with 87Sr/86Sr ratios, indicate that soil water ?88/86Sr values are ?0.30‰ higher than bedrock ?88/86Sr values, and mixing calculations show that the plant-fractionated soil water pool contributes ?27% of the riverine Sr. For tributaries accessing limestone and volcanogenic sediments, Ca/Sr and 87Sr/86Sr ratios appear consistent with two-component mixing between silicate and carbonate weathering, but ?88/86Sr values reveal a third contribution from soil water inputs, similar to gabbro catchments.The results of this study suggest that Sr isotopes behave conservatively during water mass mixing and stream transport but non-conservatively in soil, where plant uptake can elevate soil water ?88/86Sr values relative to bedrock. Plant uptake, or related biogeochemical processes, such as ion-exchange on organic matter surfaces, also appear to modify soil water Ca/Sr ratios. Many studies use 87Sr/86Sr and Ca/Sr ratios to apportion riverine solutes between silicate and carbonate weathering, but Ca/Sr ratios may be non-conservative in densely vegetated areas. The stable Sr isotope tracer shows promise for resolving riverine cation sources, as well as effects from biological cycling
Silicate versus carbonate weathering in Iceland: New insights from Ca isotopes
No full text) to trace sources of Ca in Icelandic rivers. We report elemental and Ca isotope data for rivers, high- and low-temperature groundwater, basalt, hydrothermal calcite (including Iceland Spar), and stilbite and heulandite, which are two types of zeolites commonly formed during low-grade metamorphism of basalt. In agreement with previous research, we find that rivers have higher ?44/40Ca values than basalt, with a maximum difference of ?0.40‰. This difference may reflect isotope fractionation in the weathering zone, i.e., preferential uptake of 40Ca during clay mineral formation, adsorption, and other geochemical processes that cycle Ca. However, calcite ?44/40Ca values are also up to ?0.40‰?higher than bedrock values, and on a diagram of ?44/40Ca versus Sr/Ca, nearly all waters plot within a plausible mixing domain bounded by the measured compositions of basalt and calcite, with glacial rivers plotting closer to calcite than non-glacial rivers. Calcite and heulandite form during hydrothermal alteration of basalt in the deep lava pile and often occur together in metabasalts now exposed at the surface. Because heulandite ?44/40Ca values are ?1–2‰?lower than basalt, we suggest that 40Ca uptake by heudlandite explains the relatively high ?44/40Ca values of calcite and that calcite weathering in turn elevates riverine ?44/40Ca values. High mechanical erosion rates are known to facilitate the exposure and weathering of calcite, which explains the isotopic contrast between glacial and non-glacial watersheds. Using a mixing model, we find that calcite weathering provides ?0–65% of the Ca in non-glacial rivers and ?25–90% of the Ca in glacial rivers, with silicate weathering providing the remainder. Icelandic hydrothermal calcite contains mantle carbon. Noting that zeolite facies metamorphism and hydrothermal fluid circulation are ubiquitous characteristics of basaltic eruptions and assuming that hydrothermal calcite in other basaltic settings also contains mantle carbon, we suggest that the contribution of basalt weathering to long-term CO2 drawdown and climate regulation may be less significant than previously realized
3D reconstruction of a shallow archaeological site from high-resolution acoustic imagery: The Grace Dieu
Get PDFAcoustic imaging and characterisation of buried objects (and in particular archaeological materials) in shallow-water (<5 m) is often unsuccessful owing to problems related to vessel-induced bubble turbulence and the restricted acoustic geometry of the system. A 2D surveying method that tackles these problems has been tested on the known wreck of the Grace Dieu (1418), Henry V’s flagship, currently buried within the inter-tidal sediments of the Hamble River. The wooden hull is recognisable in the seismic sections as a high amplitude anomaly underlain by an acoustic blanking zone. Close survey line spacing (ca. 1 m) allowed the construction of time slices, identifying the ovate plan of the hull. High, predominantly negative, reflection coefficients suggest this anomaly corresponds to degraded oak timbers buried within the sediment. Combining the data enabled the construction of a (pseudo)-3D image, revealing the dimensions and shape of the hull remains for the first time
Jews and gender in British literature 1815-1865.
No full textPhDThis thesis examines the variety of relationships between Jews and gender in early
to mid-nineteenth century British literature, focussing particularly on representations
of and by Jewish women. It reconstructs the social, political and literary context in
which writers produced images and narratives about Jews, and considers to what
extent stereotypes were reproduced, appropriated, or challenged. In particular it
examines the ways in which questions of gender were linked to ideas about religious
or racial difference in the Victorian period.
The study situates literary representations of Jews within the context of
contemporary debates about the participation of the Jews in the life of the modern
state. It also investigates the ways in which these political debates were gendered,
looking in particular at the relationship between the cultural construction of
femininity and English national identity.
It first considers Victorian culture's obsession with Rebecca, the Jewess created in
Walter Scott's influential novel Ivanhoe (1819). It examines Rebecca's refusal to
convert to Christianity in the context of Scott's discussion of racial separatism and
modern national unity.
Evangelical writers like Annie Webb, Amelia Bristow and Mrs Brendlah were
prolific literary producers, and preoccupied with converting Jewish women.
Particularly during the 18'40s and 1850s, evangelical writing provided an important
forum for the construction and consolidation of women's national identity.
Grace Aguilar's writing was an attempt to understand Jewish identity within the
terms of Victorian domestic ideology. In contrast, Celia and Marion Moss, in their
historical romances, offered narratives of female heroism and national liberation,
drawing on the contemporary debate about slavery.
Benjamin Disraeli's construction of a "tough version of Jewish identity was a
response both to the contemporary stereotype of the feminised Jew and to the debate
about Jewish emancipation. It also drew on the virile ideology of the Young England
movement of the 1840s
Not All Grace Periods Are Created Equal: Building a Grace Period From the Ground Up
Get PDFThe grace period for patent application filing is the amount of time a patent applicant has to file the application after the invention has been disclosed to the public. The rules and amount of time allowed vary greatly among countries. This comment explores the theoretical justifications for a grace period, the structural elements of a grace period, and other approaches to a grace period used in countries outside of the United States. The author proposes an ideal grace period model that would create international harmonization
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