classics digests, reflections and reviews
When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, The moon and the stars, which You have ordained, What is man that You are mindful of him, And the son of man that You visit him? Psalm 8:3-4 The Creation Debate All Christians believe that God designed and created the universe and all living things. However, there is a wide range of opinions on how the process unfolded, based on […]
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Who is this who darkens counsel By words without knowledge? Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me. Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements? Surely you know! Job 38:2-5 The Argument of Design The Intelligent Design (ID) argument was first put forth by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, and […]
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The Origin of Evolution The word “evolution” came from the Latin word evolutio, meaning unrolling or unfolding, as in unrolling a scroll. Before the codex was developed, the scroll had been the major form of written text in the ancient world. The scrolls were typically rolled up for storage and transportation. So one must first unroll the scroll to peruse the text. For sacred texts revered by adherents of religions […]
Read moreRethinking Evolution Having been raised as an atheist by scientist parents, and spent most of my life in and around scientific research institutes, I’ve always taken the theory of evolution for granted, although I’ve never read Darwin’s book The Origin of Species. Mark Twain rightly defines classic as “something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read”. However, the recent widespread debate on the relationship between religion […]
Read moreContraries as Principles All philosophers identify their principles with the contraries. They differ, however, from one another in that some assume contraries which are more knowable in the order of explanation, i.e. universal, others those more familiar to sense, i.e., particular. ‘The great and the small’, for example, belong to the former class, ‘the dense and the rare’ to the latter. In any one genus there is only one contrariety, […]
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What is Dance Aristotle gives this definition of motion in Physics: Motion is the fulfilment of what exists potentially, in so far as it exists potentially, namely, of what is alterable qua alterable, of what is movable qua movable,…Motion is in the movable, by the action of that which has the power of causing motion; and the actuality of that which has the power of causing motion is not other […]
Read moreSublimity is the image of greatness of soul. The effect of elevated language upon an audience is not persuasion but transport. Skill in invention, and due order and arrangement of matter, emerging as the hard-won result not of one thing nor of two, but of the whole texture of the composition, whereas Sublimity flashing forth at the right moment scatters everything before it like a thunderbolt, and at once displays […]
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