Gregory's Theory Research Articles

The Body and Desire: Gregory of Nyssa's Ascetical Theology by Raphael A. Cadenhead

Reviewed by: The Body and Desire: Gregory of Nyssa's Ascetical Theology by Raphael A. Cadenhead Anthony J. Thomas IV The Body and Desire: Gregory of Nyssa's Ascetical Theology. By RAPHAEL A. CADENHEAD. Christianity in Late Antiquity, vol. 4. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2018. Pp. xii + 267. Hardback, $95.00. ISBN: 978-0-520-29796-8. In The Body and Desire, Raphael A. Cadenhead provides an insightful analysis of the place of desire and sexuality in Gregory of Nyssa's ascetical writings, stressing the need for a diachronic understanding of spiritual maturation. Cadenhead demonstrates that apparent gender fluidity in Gregory's thought must be understood within the context of his larger program of ascetical transformation that progresses through specific stages. Part 1, examining the early phase in Gregory's career, considers marriage and virginity, primarily in De virginitate. Chapter 1 discusses the manner in which virginity supersedes Platonic pederasty and points to Gregory's moderate view of marriage. In a section that will particularly appeal to students of classical philosophy, while stressing that in the ancient world sexual practices were not intimately linked with sexual identity, he shows that Christian celibacy is intended to replace Platonic pederasty; celibacy provides the same beneficial results as pederasty, "fecundity and contemplation of the Form of Beauty," while removing the need for the young male erōmenos. In this fascinating section, Cadenhead argues that Gregory actually presents a critique of pederasty. Chapter 2 shows the implications of Gregory's "integrationist ethic" for his understanding of sexual virtue and vice. In the De virginitate, sexual excess is only treated as one of the vices, with gluttony taking center stage. By making fidelity to Christ, the Bridegroom, the factor uniting the virtues, and thus making any sin a form of adultery, Gregory Christianizes the idea originating in ancient philosophy that the virtues support each other. [End Page 239] Chapter 3 develops Gregory's early understanding of Christ as the proper end of desire. For Gregory, the passions do not have to be utterly extirpated but rather directed toward Christ. Discussing Gregory's use of ancient stereotypes that associate courage with males and weakness with females, Cadenhead argues that effeminacy, for Gregory, is not connected with homosexual identity, noting that it is mentioned in connection with married people. At the same time, the use of male and female imagery "does not refer to ontologically male or female referents"; both male and female imagery are used to depict the soul's relationship with Christ (70). Part 2, examining the middle phase in Gregory's career, considers the effects of the deaths of Gregory's siblings on his theology and also considers the doctrinal controversies in which Gregory was involved. Chapter 4 shows that in the middle phase Gregory nuances his account of marriage and asceticism; spiritual fecundity is superior, but physical fecundity is still good. Cadenhead also notes, against modern attempts to focus on Gregory's positive use of female imagery in describing spiritual ascent, that Gregory criticizes female vice and presents a hierarchical picture of the relations between the sexes. Chapter 5 shows that the deaths of Basil and Macrina led Gregory to consider the possibility that in the resurrection human bodies will not be sexually differentiated. While Gregory resists the confusion of the sexes when addressing married people, when he addresses ascetics, he presents ascetics of both sexes as appropriating virtues characteristic of both genders (89). Cadenhead, moreover, providing insight into an ongoing discussion in the scholarship, concludes that Gregory was not sure if the resurrected body would have genitalia. In considering Gregory's theory of desire in the De anima and the De hominis opificio, Cadenhead notes that Gregory makes use for the first time in his works of a distinction drawn by Hierocles and Seneca between hormai and pathē and suggests that the rationality resulting from being made in the imago Dei allows human beings to use their reason to overcome pathē. Chapter 6 discusses the influence on Gregory's understanding of asceticism of the Christological and Trinitarian controversies in which he was involved. Part 3, focusing on Gregory's Life of Moses and Commentary on the Song of Songs, works...

Fed to Perfection: Mother's Milk, Roman Family Values, and the Transformation of the Soul in Gregory of Nyssa

Prompted by Michel Foucault's observation that “salvation is first of all essentially subsistence,” this essay explores Gregory of Nyssa's discussion of Christian spiritual formation as a kind of salvific and transformative feeding of infants. This article argues that the prominent role of nourishment—and specifically breast milk—in Gregory's theory of progressive Christian perfection reflects broader Roman era family values concerning the power of breast feeding in the proper development of a child. With particular attention to Gregory's Encomium for Saint Basil, the Life of Moses, and his Homilies on the Song of Songs, this article demonstrates that references to the power of nourishment are no “mere metaphor” but rather represent an intensification of the prominent belief in antiquity that human nature can be altered according to the food a person eats. As such, Gregory employs the female body and its putatively maternal function as a regulatory symbol for Christian identity-formation. Mother's milk is thus offered as a mechanism for preserving and transmitting the ideal form of the Christian community that Gregory found embodied in the ambiguously gendered characters of the Song of Songs. True Christians, in Gregory's account, are identified by the milk on which they were fed and, in turn, the nurturing care they offer to others.

基于Gregory理论的光脉动法颗粒在线测量中背景光强的估算

基于Gregory理论的光脉动法颗粒在线测量中背景光强的估算

The apparent distance of interior and exterior corners: a test of Gregory's misapplied size constancy explanation for the Mueller-Lyer illusion.

Key to Gregory's misapplied size constancy explanation for the Mueller-Lyer illusion is the assumption that subjects perceive the central line segment of the fins-out figure, which is analogous to an interior corner, as projecting from a more distant object than does the central line segment of the fins-in figure, which is analogous to an exterior corner. We examined the validity of this assumption by having 20 college students judge the relative distance of three-dimensional model corners, presented in a monocular viewing box. The interior corner was perceived to be nearer than the exterior corner, indicating that the key assumption in Gregory's theory is either false or unfalsifiable.

Illusion Reversal Rate as a Function of Subjective Depth

Undergraduate students (N = 48) served as subjects in a test of Gregory's theory of illusions. Twenty-four students made judgments about the subjective depth of three reversible illusions--Necker cube, Book, and Pyramid--under the conditions of complete versus incomplete illusions and illusions without depth cues versus with depth cues. An additional 24 subjects recorded the three illusion reversal rates under slightly altered conditions. Differences were found among the various illusions with respect to complete versus incomplete illusions, reversal rate, subjective judgments of depth, and certain correlation values. Support for Gregory's theory of illusion as displaced or misleading depth perception is offered by these results.

The Ponzo Illusion in Pictures with and without Suggested Depth

figure was incorporated into two pictures depicting concrete scenes. The standard, abstract illusion remained unaltered when the Ponzo figure in the picture repre- sented the vertical face of an object viewed in the frontoparallel plane, but the illusion was increased when the figure represented an object extending in depth. The results are interpreted as failing to support Gregory's theory of 'misapplied' constancy scaling. The theory of geometrical illusions proposed by Gregory (1963, 1968) has not been confirmed by the results of several experiments ostensibly testing predictions derived from the theory. Gregory (1967) and Horrell (1971) have, however, defended the theory and clarified certain fre- quent misconceptions about the mechanisms involved in constancy scaling as proposed by the theory. The present experiment is a new test of Gregory's theory and is concerned with the role of primary depth cues in the Ponzo illusion in pictures with and without suggested depth. Gregory's theory should most clearly apply to the Ponzo illusion. In the present experiment, the extent of this illusion was measured under three conditions in which the converging lines of the Ponzo figure were incorporated into line drawings depicting different concrete scenes. In one condition, the converging lines of the Ponzo figure formed the sides of a gymnastic jumping box and thus represented the edges of a vertical (or nearly vertical) face of an object viewed in the frontoparallel plane. In the second condition, the converging lines of the Ponzo figure repre- sented the parallel sides of a road drawn in perspective. Finally, the Ponzo figure was presented alone, as an abstract drawing. The implications for Gregory's theory of the outcome of this procedure are considered in the discussion.

A Test of Gregory's Theory of Primary Constancy Scaling

Gregory's well-known account of the visual illusions depends on the observer's misconstruing certain lines as cues for depth. Proving the existence of these 'inappropriate' depth cues has been difficult. It is shown here that Gregory's major example of a 'primary' depth cue --converging lines --can be tested independently of the illusions by using a triangle configuration but that the outcome does not support the theory of primary constancy scaling.

Visual spatial illusions: a general explanation.

Representation at the visual receptors of such properties of the object as its size, shape, orientation, and movement undergo considerable variation as the distance, bearing, posture, and motion of the observer, relative to the object, changes. However, despite these gross and frequent deformations of the image, perceived properties remain extraordinarily stable. Such constancy has obvious biological utility; the observer perceives his world according to its fixed physicalfeatures rather than in terms of its variable sensory representation. Constancy of apparent size, shape, orientation, and movement is dependent on information for the distance, bearing, lateral tilt, and movement of the observer, respectively. Thus, as the retinal image shrinks with distance, constancy of apparent size is maintained by five classes of distance, stimuli that operate singly or in various combinations. Likewise, visual orientation and visual stimuli for the orientation of the observer, and movement constancy on visual and nonvisual stimuli for the movement of the observer. Illusion occur when stimuli that normally preserve constancy are operative but with the image of the object not varied. Thus if retinal disparity, convergence-accommodation, projected stimuli, or other distance stimuli are varied with the image not varied, illusions of size occur. Those rsluting from variation of projected stimuli are the. well-known geometrical size illusions and include the Mü llerLyer group. In essentially the same manner, independent manipulation of stimuli for the orientation and the motion of the observer, with the orientation and the motion of the image at the retina not varied, gives rise to illusory orientations and movements of the object. Limited attempts to explain size illusions in terms of the projected stimuli that preserve perceptual constancy are by no means new; Thiéry (51) proposed such a view in the later part of the last century, and in recent times there has been a spate of such proposals including the " misapplied constancy hypothesis" advanced by Gregory (2). However, Gregory's theory is confined largely to geometrical size illusions and invoks only distance scaling given by a limited number of projected stimuli. Furthermore, the Müller-Lyer illusion is seen by him to be a consequence of distance scaling resulting from the converging arrows. There is no recognition of the range of such effects with various attached elements, as shown in Fig3, and no attention is accorded the recently established difference between the illusions with inward and outward-directed elements. The theory of spatial illusions outlined here distinguishes between classes of illusory effect and, in linking each to its particular class of spatial constancy, offers a general and testable explanation. Failure to recognize classes of illusion(and perceptual constancy), such as those of size, orientation, and movement, can be regarded as among the major deficiencies of recent attempts (2, 44) to explain illusory effects. I do not claim that this explanation, which I call the general constancy theory, satisfactorily encómpasses all known illusions, but merely that it is more comprehensive than alternative explantions I conclude that any stimulus which serves to maintain perceptual constancy of a property of an object as the visual representation of that property varies will, when independently manipulated with the retinal image not varied, produce an illusion. This general principle predictS the conditions under which illusory effects will occur and has wide explanatory application.

Comments on L. E. Krueger's "disconfirming evidence" of R. L. Gregory's theory of illusions.

Comments on L. E. Krueger's "disconfirming evidence" of R. L. Gregory's theory of illusions.

Gregory's theory of illusions: some disconfirming evidence in the case of the Müller-Lyer illusion.

Gregory's theory of illusions: some disconfirming evidence in the case of the Müller-Lyer illusion.

The ponzo illusion: inadequacy of apparent depth explanations.

Os viewing the Ponzo figure reported a series of sudden changes in its phenomenal organization and orientation. In none of these was the vertical line nearer the vertex of the figure reported to be smaller than the vertical line nearer the open end, i.e., the illusion occurred with all percepts except a rare one of a flat stimulus. In two of the most frequent and persistent percepts, the illusion could be explained on the basis of apparent size-apparent distance relationship among the elements. This was also the case with Gregory's theory of misapplied size-constancy scaling. However, with other percepts neither of these explanations was tenable.

Retinal inhibition in visual distortion.

Objections to Gregory's theory of the visual distortions and illusions are reviewed and an alternative theory involving inhibitory processes at the retinal level is proposed. This theory, however, deals only with distortions and not with illusions.

Some observations on Gregory's theory of perceptual illusions.

Some observations on Gregory's theory of perceptual illusions.

II.—Problems of the Artesian Water Supply of Australia, with special reference to Professor Gregory's Theory; being the Clarke Memorial Lecture delivered before the Royal Society of New South Wales, 10 31st, 1907; by E. F. Pittman, Government Geologist of New South Wales. Proc. Roy. Soc. N.S.W., vol. xli.

II.—Problems of the Artesian Water Supply of Australia, with special reference to Professor Gregory's Theory; being the Clarke Memorial Lecture delivered before the Royal Society of New South Wales, 10 31st, 1907; by E. F. Pittman, Government Geologist of New South Wales. Proc. Roy. Soc. N.S.W., vol. xli.

Problems of the artesian water supply of Australia, with special reference to Professor Gregory's theory

Problems of the artesian water supply of Australia, with special reference to Professor Gregory's theory