Great Thinkers Research Articles

Kevorkian’s Legacy

This history of the modern introduction of assisted suicide in North America follow a tortuous course, with complete rejection of the idea, to implementation in many of its jurisdictions. North America was not a leader in this approach to end-of-life care, with the Netherlands and Belgium playing that role. Tracing the path from a felonious and ethically anathematic place in North American society it was resurrected into a legally and ethically acceptable practice over a period of two decades. The historical course of PAS (Physician Assisted Suicide) and MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) in many ways mimicked the evolution of other major changes in our view of the world, and like assisted suicide, experienced almost universal rejection and ultimately the embrace of those people and institutions that initially rejected the ideas first expressed by thoughtful and heroic persons. Galileo Galilei was one of the icons of science and discovery: he was almost burned at the stake during the Inquisition only to be “resurrected” to his place in the pantheon of great thinkers – but it took almost four hundred years to reach that pinnacle. We must be very careful how we interpret new ideas and thoughts about the process we apply and the consequences if we reject them.

VIRTUALLY HOSTED HACKATHONS FOR DESIGN RESEARCH: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE INTERNATIONAL DESIGN ENGINEERING ANNUAL (IDEA) CHALLENGE 2022

AbstractThe International Design Engineering Annual (IDEA) Challenge is a virtually hosted hackathon for Engineering Design researchers with aims of: i) generating open access datasets; ii) fostering community between researchers; and, iii) applying great design minds to develop solutions to real design problems. This paper presents the 2022 IDEA challenge and elements of the captured dataset with the aim of providing insights into prototyping behaviours at virtually hosted hackathons, comparing it with the 2021 challenge dataset and providing reflections and learnings from two years of running the challenge. The dataset is shown to provide valuable insights into how designers spend their time at hackathon events and how, why and when prototypes are used during their design processes. The dataset also corroborates the findings from the 2021 dataset, demonstrating the complementarity of physical and sketch prototypes. With this paper, we also invite the wider community to contribute to the IDEA Challenge in future years, either as participants or in using the platform to run their own design studies.

The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind by Jason M. Baxter

Reviewed by: The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind by Jason M. Baxter Ronald A. Hoyum The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind. By Jason M. Baxter. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2022. 165 pp. This is a beautifully-written examination of the literary influences that shaped C. S. Lewis's understanding of the Christian faith. [End Page 222] Lewis is well known as a powerful Christian apologist and the gifted author of the Narnia Chronicles. But another side to Lewis shaped the way he understood his faith as a Christian. Jason Baxter calls this the "Third Lewis." Baxter writes, "In addition to the Christian apologist, whose sagacious words delivered over radio waves had been so comforting during England's darkest hour, and in addition to Lewis the mythmaker, the creator of Narnia and fantastic tales of space travel, there was Lewis the scholar, the Oxford (and later Cambridge) don who spent his days lecturing to students on medieval cosmology and his nights looking up old words in dictionaries" (2). Each chapter is devoted to an examination of how Lewis's devotion to medieval literature shaped his Christian worldview. In the first chapter, "The Lost Cathedral," Baxter describes how Lewis embraced the beauty and majesty of the medieval vision of the cosmos. For Lewis, "the medieval universe was not just a system of exploded scientific beliefs, but the natural icon of transposition, the greatest example of the spiritual world expressing itself in the limited vocabulary of the physical, natural world" (22). Topics discussed in subsequent chapters include ethics, science, psychology, and how language influences our ideas of the world around us. In each chapter, Baxter draws upon Lewis's literary and apologetic writings to show how Lewis introduces us to a different way of looking at God's presence in the world and in our lives. One of Lewis's greatest gifts was his ability to "use his imaginative talent to create a feeling in which the ideas under consideration were no longer dead opinions sitting on the dissection table of the mind … but rather to live again" (37). Baxter points out that Lewis's view of the medieval period was quite expansive. "Lewis thought an ancient Roman had more in common with human beings from the eighteenth century … For this reason we can loosely think of Lewis's medieval period as the 'Long Middle Ages,' which extended from Plato to Samuel Johnson, and sometimes even to Wordsworth" (11). That is why Lewis could be thought of as a modern Boethius, whose works remind us of the lost wisdom of a previous age. "Lewis did something analogous to the late medieval writers (like Chaucer) who had translated Boethius from Latin into Middle English or French or Italian. He, too, [End Page 223] was a "popularizer" of ancient wisdom for a barbarian age. He was following in Boethius's footsteps" (15–16). Lewis never considered himself an original thinker. He simply wanted to retrieve insights and wisdom from the great writers of previous ages. Baxter examines the deep influence that writers as diverse as Plato, Cicero, Virgil, Dante, Donne, Rudolf Otto, and Martin Buber had on Lewis's apologetic works. Baxter argues with great force and conviction that Lewis's devotion to the past makes him all the more relevant today. Lewis believed that we suffer from "chronological snobbery," the belief that our modern view of the world is in all respects superior to previous ages. By reading great literature from the past we can break free from the "evil enchantment of the modern world" (69) so that we might breathe pure "Narnian air" (35). Lewis did not reject the modern world but felt that our view of life would be enriched by the wisdom of previous ages. Indeed, that is the secret to the power and enduring popularity of C. S. Lewis. And that is the overarching message you will discover in this wonderful and insightful book. Ronald A. Hoyum Port Madison Lutheran Church Poulsbo, Washington Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc.

Great minds think alike? A new measure of MEPs–voters congruence following the 2019 European Parliament elections

Great minds think alike? A new measure of MEPs–voters congruence following the 2019 European Parliament elections

A Brief History of Stereotactic Atlases: Their Evolution and Importance in Stereotactic Neurosurgery.

Following the recent acquisition of unprecedented anatomical details through state-of-the-art neuroimaging, stereotactic procedures such as microelectrode recording (MER) or deep brain stimulation (DBS) can now rely on direct and accurately individualized topographic targeting. Nevertheless, both modern brain atlases derived from appropriate histological techniques involving post-mortem studies of human brain tissue and the methods based on neuroimaging and functional information represent a valuable tool to avoid targeting errors due to imaging artifacts or insufficient anatomical details. Hence, they have thus far been considered a reference guide for functional neurosurgical procedures by neuroscientists and neurosurgeons. In fact, brain atlases, ranging from the ones based on histology and histochemistry to the probabilistic ones grounded on data derived from large clinical databases, are the result of a long and inspiring journey made possible thanks to genial intuitions of great minds in the field of neurosurgery and to the technical advancement of neuroimaging and computational science. The aim of this text is to review the principal characteristics highlighting the milestones of their evolution.

Sudden bio-mathematical self-similarity and the uniqueness of human mass societies: from T-patterns and T-strings to T-societies.

With the explosive growth of human knowledge especially in the twenteeth century with even greater facilitation of access to knowledge, the world of even relatively recent great thinkers becomes daunting as seen from a modern viewpoint. Recently, humans ignored the existence of the complex intracellular world of cell organs, giant information molecules such as DNA, societies of specialized worker molecules (proteins), and generally the surprising nanoscale world visible to humanity since only a few decades ago. Moreover, computational power and video technology were inaccessible to all scientists from, for example, Aristotle to Freud, so new views and ideas seem to be expected about phenomena at all scales including nano and human. Some have arrived very recently. Thus urgently needed knowledge about the biology of animal and human behavior received the first Nobel Prize as late as 1973, in Physiology and Medicine, shared by Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz, and Niko Tinbergen. Lorenz's Nobel lecture was entitled "Analogy as a Source of Knowledge" which did not mention self-analogy (self-similarity) as none of the species studied were part of others and knowledge of the nanoscale phenomena at the heart of this article had barely become available. The views and empirical findings presented in this article depend on such recent intracellular nanoscale insights and the development of a set of mathematical patterns, called T-system, of which only two are considered, the self-similar (i.e., parts having a structure similar to the whole) T-pattern and the derived T-string, a T-patterned material string (here, polymer or text). Specially developed algorithms implemented in the THEMETM software for T-pattern detection and analysis (TPA) allowed the detection of interaction T-patterns in humans, animals, and brain neuronal networks, showing self-similarity between animal interaction patterns and neuronal interaction patterns in their brains. TPA of DNA and text also showed unique self-similarity between modern human literate mass societies and the protein societies of their body cells, both with Giant Extra-Individual Purely Informational T-strings (GEIPIT; genomes or textomes) defining the behavioral potentials of their specialized citizens. This kind of society is here called T-society and only exists in humans and proteins, while the self-similarity between them only exists in human T-societies.

THE RECEPTION OF EDUCATIONAL THOUGHT OF CONFUCIUS (CHINA) THROUGH THE STUDY OF THE ANALECTS IN VIETNAM

Confucius (551- 479 BC) was a great thinker not only of China but of all mankind. He was honored as the "Master of the Universe" representing "eternal teacher". His teachings and conversation process with teachers and students have been collected and edited by students into the Analects, one of the Confucian classics widely used in building feudal state governments in China and Vietnam. In recent years, the Party and State of Vietnam have implemented many undertakings and policies aimed at building, developing and renovating education and training. Along with access to knowledge, and advanced and modern lessons from the West, Confucius's educational thought continues to be recognized and properly appreciated. Our research paper aims to show the application and reception of Confucius' educational ideas in current Vietnamese educational practice.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0007/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Philosophical and Religious Works of L.N. Tolstoy as a Starting Point in the Culture of the Silver Age

This paper examines the philosophical and religious creativity of the Great Russian writer and thinker Leo Tolstoy as a founder of national culture of the Silver Age. The author of this article argues that Tolstoy's works, both artistic and figurative, as well as his journalistic works, were imbued with religious content, which constituted the generic specificity of the culture of the Silver Age. For Tolstoy culture is based on spiritual and moral principles, which are inseparable from the Christian and religious foundation, which was the subject of this study. The aim of the paper was to identify and analyze such fundamental categories of Tolstoy's philosophy as Christian love and social nonviolence. Love according to Tolstoy is an emblematic fragment of the religious worldview, and non-resistance to evil by violence acts as a social and moral component, which is the only way to break the vicious circle of social and individual evil in human society. To prove his philosophical generalizations, Tolstoy makes extensive use of historical-cultural methodology and, as a rational thinker, uses the Cartesian paradigm of the priority of rationality and evidence. Tolstoy's unconditional faith is deeply rationalistic in character, as well illustrated by his commitment to moral utilitarianism or moral pragmatism. The problems and content of the article are relevant in light of the challenges that have become deeply pressing today in the upbringing of the younger generations. The conclusions of the work are significant not only in historical and philosophical terms, but they contribute to the substantiation of the idea of the importance of religious consciousness for contemporary Russian society.

IMAGES OF PROPHETS IN THE POETRY OF ALISHER NAVOI

This article focuses on the problems of artistic interpretation of the images of the prophets in the lyrics of the great thinker of Uzbek classical literature Alisher Navoi. As is known, the tradition of interpreting the artistic images of the prophets has a special place in the classical literature of the Islamic East, in particular in poetry. In this sense, the poetry of Alisher Navoi is considered to be the leader in the poetic depiction of the prophets. The reflection of the artistic images of the prophets mentioned in the works of Alisher Navoi can serve as a source for a separate scientific study. This article highlights the statistics and classification of this topic. At the same time, some features of the symbolic and metaphorical images of the images of the prophets in the lyrics of Navoi are explored. There are eight Navoi lyrical sofas, seven of which were written in the Turkic language, and one in Persian. The main part of the poet's lyrics consists of four sofas, collected in the vault "Khazoyin ul-maoniy" ("Treasury of thoughts"). The article highlights the stated scientific problem on the basis of this lyrical divan.

Artificial neural network vision: Between myth and reality

Decades have passed since the world went crazy about the revolution of the machine. Through the years, pioneers in the field tried to imagine how such progress in artificial intelligence (AI) could influence our lives. Were we going to witness sentient machines among us? What would their capabilities, superpowers, and limitations be? Were there ghosts in the machines? Many of these questions confused the greatest minds of our era.

Review of The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind

Review of The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind

NGUYEN TRAI's THOUGHTS ON ETHICS, EDUCATION AND THEIR MEANINGS IN VIETNAM TODAY

Nguyen Trai (1380-1442) was a great thinker in Vietnam around the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries. His ideas in many disciplines arose from the reality of fighting Ming invaders to defend the land and establish the early Le dynasty. Among those principles, Nguyen Trai's perspective on ethics and education is one of the most distinctive, representing patriotism, love for the people, a lifetime struggle for national independence, and people's happiness. The article “Nguyen Trai's thoughts on ethics and education and their meaning in Vietnam today” focuses on the content and characteristics of that thought, drawing its meaning for the duties of training morality and fostering knowledge for Vietnamese people today in order to meet the requirements of the country's industrialization and modernization.

A Friend's Death: C.S. Lewis' Disagreement with St. Augustine

Lewis did nothing to conceal his admiration of—and theological pedigree to—Augustine: as he wrote, Augustine “is a great saint and a great thinker to whom my old glad debts are incalculable.”3 This is why the only time he explicitly disagrees with Augustine on an important point concerning love, he does so “with trembling.”4 Lewis’ sentiments in having to disagree with Augustine may be comparable to Stanley Hauerwas disagreeing with Lewis. It is difficult, Hauerwas wrote, “to criticize a writer who has done so much good as C. S. Lewis.”5 The purpose of the present article is to evaluate the gentlemanly engagement between Lewis and Augustine.

Great Kazakh thinker Abai and Azerbaijan

The article deals with hard and honourable way of life of an outstanding classic of the Kazakh literature, great Kazakh poet and thinker Abai Kunanbay (1845-1904) who reflected national-spiritual values of Kazakh people. It is mentioned that the years of study in Semipalatinsk were of special importance in the formation of Abai Kunanbayev's outlook. Abay, who studied at a madrasa on his father’s advice, learnt Arabic and Persian, but later dropped out and got an opportunity to study the rich Russian literature and culture at a Russian school in Semipalatinsk. Writing poems that glorify the people’s spirit caused him to be persecuted by the authorities.However, in spite of all this, he sought the way of prosperity of the people only in enlightenment, in national-spiritual self-awareness. Abai's first poem, written when he was 10 years old – "Chasing a camel" – tells about his great talent. The social themes reflected in his poems are similar to the problems expressed in 19th century Azerbaijani literature from Abbasgulu agha Bakikhanov to Gasim bey Zakir and Seyid Azim Shirvani. The peak point of Abai Kunanbayev's creative work was considered his novel “Agliyya” (“Black Words”). This novel reflects the whole evolution processes from Abai's moral theory to enlightened realism.The article also touches on the points that connect the life and work of Abai Kunanbayev with Azerbaijan. It is also noted that Nizami Ganjavi and Mahammad Fuzuli has an important role in forming his worldview. Translation work in Abai Kunanbayev’s activity who has a wide range of other creative activities also has a special place. He liked Alexander Pushkin's novel “Eugene Onegin” and popularized many parts of this work among the Kazakh people by repeating. Books and articles published in Azerbaijan are essential contributions of Azerbaijani science and literary and social thought to Abai studies.

Was Thomas Hobbes the first biopolitical thinker?

Thomas Hobbes's name often comes up as scholars debate the history of biopower, which regulates the biological life of individual bodies and entire populations. This article examines whether and to what extent Hobbes may be regarded as the first biopolitical philosopher. I investigate this question by performing a close reading of Hobbes's political texts and by comparing them to some of the most influential theories on biopolitics proposed by Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, and others. Hobbes is indeed the first great thinker to assert the supreme political importance of safeguarding life. Furthermore, this prominence of non-contemplative life is not limited to mere survival but also seeks to allow for the people's happiness. This may indeed allow us to consider him as the first biopolitical philosopher, at least in some limited capacity. However, the Englishman's biopolitical stance lacks the practical aspects seen in examples of ‘properly modern’ biopolitics. Moreover, peoples’ lives were already governed radically in antiquity. I argue that Hobbes's biopolitical system was, therefore, minimal in the sense of a ‘biopolitical nightwatchman state’. However, he acted as an undeniable catalyst to the ‘properly biopolitical era of modernity’, when mundane life and happiness became the explicit main objects of virtually all politics.

Universal Human Values in When the Mountains Fall Novel by Chinghiz Aitmatov and Their Pedagogical Analysis

The article reveals one of the urgent problems of teaching and shaping the current young generation in the right direction. In particular, the article considers the issue of When Mountains Fall novel by Ch. Aitmatov, which notes the importance of values and their place in human life in the context of globalization. The great thinker’s novel describes in detail the changes in values in people's lives with the advent of a market economy. As society develops, the character and consciousness of people change, and at the same time spiritual values are pushed aside. This issue is not limited to the review of literature, but a pedagogical analysis of the values in the novel is proposed using the method of content analysis within the framework of scientific pedagogy. The relevance lies in the fact that, especially at the present time, it is necessary to carefully and attentively address the issues of upbringing and education of the younger generation.

ABC for Adults Textbook by Haji Kerim Sanyly

The article deals with the alphabet for adults of Haji Karim Sanyly. He lived in XX century. He was a great thinker and teacher. He graduated from the Gori Teachers’ Seminary and devoted his whole life to education and upbringing of the younger generation. His first book for adults was published in 1924. In his book he showed how to learn alphabet and numbers and he wrote something interesting from geography, biology and physics. The author had used from some translations, different poems and from the poets who lived in his age.

The Entangled Imagination: W.B. Yeats’ “Moods” and the Psychologization of Magic

Among modern practitioners of magic, the “psychologization of magic” has become a common strategy to adapt practices such as rituals of invocation to naturalistic thought. In this article, I discuss what was probably the most elaborate attempt to bridge the gap between the magic of the past and magic suited for the present that took place within the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (1888–1903). Approaching the Order’s teachings through the lens of contemporaneous literary discourse, the Irish poet and magician William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) attempted to consolidate supernaturalist and naturalist understandings of magic throughout the 1890s. In 1892, he made the concept of the “immortal moods” a key to both his poetry and his magical practice. Evoked through symbols in a ritual or a poem, these moods would descend “like a faint sigh into people’s minds” and move them to action, causing “all great changes in the world.” Yeats explored this concept in theoretical writings, poetic experiments, and his ritual practice, finding his own imagination entangled with past imaginations. Serving a brief term as the Golden Dawn’s Imperator and Instructor in Mystical Philosophy in 1901, he condensed the insights gained from this work in the doctrines of the “great mind and great memory.” Presenting a study of Yeats’ psychology of the universal mind, this article shows how his amalgamation of literary and folkloristic theorizing paved the way to connect magical and poetic practice to the emerging psychological discourse.

생태주의 비평의 관점에서 본 꽃 이데올로기의 의미와 한계

Victorian floral ideology socioculturally restricts people’s (in particular women’s) behavior and lifestyles as well as their consciousness through the symbolization of flowers on the presupposition that flowers have linguistic characteristics in themselves. In this paper the floral ideology is used as a “nodal point” for reading the writings of great Victorian thinker John Ruskin and 20th - century modernist feminist Virginia Woolf and analyzing them from the perspective of ecological criticism. Firstly, focused on the representations of flowers and women I search for the nascent ecological characteristics in Ruskin and the prototypical ecofeminism in Woolf's writings respectively; I also reconsider the significance that each of those archetypes has. Secondly, given that not only Ruskin but also cultural ecofeminists have been criticized for being essentialists, I read Woolf's essays “Ruskin” and “The Patron and the Crocus” and Ruskin's Proserpina and “Of Queen's Gardens” in the light of those criticisms. Thirdly, I contrast Ruskin's understanding of women— i.e., that care is women’s specific quality and duty—with eco - feminist claims that women are superior to men in the most important matter of caring which makes women superior to men, at least as far as care ethics is concerned. Ruskin highlights women's decorative and familial functions and idealizes pure and sacred women, but Woolf rejects these features violently. In “Killing the Angle in the House”, Woolf revises the Victorian floral ideology to dismantle the dichotomy and reposition women and nature.

LITTLE INNOVATIONS THAT MAKE A BIG IMPACT

AbstractThe authors, including Murray, the President of Lackawanna College in Scranton, Pennsylvania; write about innovation initiatives at the school, and their relevance to other organizations. They focus on what they call “Little Innovations,” described in their words as innovation born from necessity as an organization considers how to solve a central, pressing problem. They delineate five steps to little innovations, which in their words are: (1) Wild Questions: Why Can’t We? (2) Practical Questions: How Can We? (3) Build a Team of Great Thinkers (4) Successful Failures (5) Follow Through. Step one has sub‐questions, such as “What if we re‐imagine the basic assumptions of our business?” In step two, “Think about how to break a big idea into its component parts and try it, taking care to create a timeline and assessment plan to figure out if the initiative is worth continuing or taking to a larger scale.” In step three, “Without a culture of trust and a genuine belief in each other’s brain power, free‐flowing conversations can’t happen.” In step four, “Share your failures and how they helped you pivot to the winning idea.” And in step five, “An idea itself isn’t an innovation until a leader or team can make it come to life and create tangible outcomes.”