True Vision Research Articles

ROMANO GUARDINIS THEOLOGISCHE KRITIK DES MODERNEN ZEITALTERS

Summary The name of Romano Guardini, the German theologian of Italian origin, is not often mentioned in the contemporary discussions of modernity and postmodernity. This is rather strange, since most of his works are attempts to deal with the question of the difficult relationship between modernity and the christian faith. In order to have an objective frame of reference with which to judge the contemporary views of the world and the person, Guardini creates a method which he calls “katholische Weltanschauung”. It is essentially a theological understanding of the world: The ultimate frame of reference of this method is God, and more specifically Christ and his Church as mediators of the Truth. Only if one looks with the eyes of Christ, one does have the possibility of a clear and true vision of the world. Guardini uses this method to formulate a critique of modernity in confrontation with the Revelation. He is the first theologian to use the expression “das Ende der Neuzeit” to characterize the present si...

The Development of the Ideas of A. S. Makarenko in the Theory of Upbringing

In the history of science there are names which, like milestones, mark the transition of scientific knowledge to a qualitatively new stage. The great workers in science accumulate the accomplishments of their predecessors and, with a mighty surge of creative thinking, draw near to a true vision of the subject and discover the fundamental relations linking phenomena in their development. In doing so, they simultaneously create a new method of scientific knowledge, thereby making the path shorter and easier for those who come after them. Anton Semenovich Makarenko is among these genuine pioneers in science. His scientific creativity is inseparable from the revolutionary process of the creation of socialist pedagogy, and we have the right to call his pedagogical experiment the very body and soul of the experience of the best fighters for a new, unified labor polytechnical school. Along with his many comrades and fellow thinkers, Makarenko consistently implemented and sought out the best methodological applic...

Glare disability devices for cataractous eyes: A consumer's guide

We evaluated five commercially available glare testers to determine how accurately each device predicted outdoor Snellen acuity in cataract patients. Predicted outdoor Snellen acuity was compared to actual Snellen outdoor acuity for the Miller-Nadler glare tester, the brightness acuity tester (BAT), the InnoMed true vision analyzer (TVA), the VisTech VCT 8000, and the EyeCon 5. All five devices were evaluated in a single series of eyes. We ranked the five glare testers as follows based upon their ability to predict outdoor Snellen acuity within one Snellen line: (1) BAT (73%), (2) TVA (69%), (3) VisTech VCT 8000 (56%), (4) Miller-Nadler (47%), and (5) EyeCon 5 (15%). All five devices were also evaluated for their capacity to provide false negative or false positive results and for testing time per eye, test difficulty level for the patient, versatility, upgrading capacity, examining room adaptability, and price. We concluded that glare testing of cataract patients is necessary to measure visual disability and that glare testing devices vary in their ability to predict outdoor vision.

Digital harmony —a personal history of music vision

Color and tonality have more potential for fusion than imaginative composers, poets and artists ever dared to believe in their dreams. Visionaries from Aristotle to Scriabin repeatedly invoked the mind's image of gracefully intertwining painting with music, spawning a collective archetype which may become associated with a remarkable digital technology. Whatever the dream a true vision or a strained fusion of dissimilar ideas the interweaving of color with tone has acquired a dramatic prospective reality only in this decade. A few television producers advocate fusion and are dedicated to raising music from subordinance to prominence within the realm of video and videodisc broadcast. Yet it's hard to expect music to succeed, even as well as seasonal football, on today's television. Despite MTV-type programs, composers haven't begun to study some of the vast structural and compositional unknowns surrounding the challenge to unite sight with sound. Nevertheless, information technology and a variety of new techniques derived from science stimulate rapid transformations in both art and contemporary music. At this moment in history, powerful forces for change in all arts encourage more technical than true artistic innovation. In fact, important developments in computer music and graphics with liquid colors, promise to draw together the roles of artist and composer. A kind of artist/ composer is redirecting creative attention to computers where one can structure color in motion with skills that were formerly applied to complex tonal architecture by itself. Compose/rs may needlessly envy the independence of a painter or sculptor whose product is immune to performance and secondary interpretation. Few composers perceive that digital musical creations can be substantial as marble. Digital technologies permit a composer to create 'realized music' in finished form as if it possessed the permanence and finality of an art object rendered in paint or stone. Sooner or later, a few such digital art objects, combining music with color, will acquire the integrity and lasting qualities of a classic. A few will be offered among the limited-edition multiples sold at the galleries of the major art dealers of the world. Popular publishable videodisc formats are bound to proliferate. Sooner or later, that forementioned collective archetypal dream or vision will begin to seem very real. Despite limited experience with these evolving forms, there is substance in the concept of a structural interface between music and art. This assertion is deduced from my own study and practice within the aesthetics of audio-video 'complementarity ' , (my term for the specific potentials for aural/visual harmonic relationships that reside within computer instrumentation). An outline of the course of my study runs somewhat as follows: Long ago, I was able to reconcile an attraction to music composition with my earliest work as a filmmaker. While studying in Paris in the 1930's, I began composing a unique form of music, working with an optical printer and with the comparatively new sound-film's optical music track. This was many years before the invention of magnetic recording, computer technology and digital media had kindled today's interests in electronics among growing numbers of composers. My work, essentially music composed measure-for-measure with abstract design on film, soon won international attention because of an excitement about new technoartistic creativity that arose out of the post-war flux. However, the awards bestowed upon this early work came from a select underground avantgarde, whose members shared with me misguided assumptions about an artist's creative potential in art or music within cinema technology. In truth, what ideas I did share with these cineasts were less important to me than those concepts I shared with my brother and a few contemporaries who, like Wassily Kandinsky, years earlier, envisioned music-like potentialities in the spiritual abstract constructivist formalisms of painting. Those filmmaking contemporar-

Om Grundtvigs tænkning og den nyere tids filosofi. Introduktion til Danne-Virke II

Om Grundtvigs tænkning og den nyere tids filosofi. Introduktion til Danne-Virke II

Grundtvig og mystikken

Grundtvig and mysticismBy Hellmut ToftdahlThe article appraises Grundtvig in relation to the Eros-agape tradition in Christianity. Common to mysticism and gnosticism is the idea that through Eros-love an can attain union with God and thereby grasp truth, together with the fact that the important thing is self-redemption through achievement. Both are hostile to institutions and are a threat to the Church, for institutional fellowship and the outward actions of the Church are unimportant. Worship, dogmatics and the institution give place to subjective experience or higher cognition. The distance between God as the Creator and man as the creature is obliterated and Christ is conceived as an incorporeal link between God and man.Eros-love is often expressed in Grundtvig’s poetry, especially in his early poetry, where he has a tendency to overestimate his own importance as the spiritual leader of the Danish people, and to place himself on a par with the prophets of the Old Testament, i. e. a man whose personal visions represented truth and guidance for a whole people. A controversy between Grundtvig and H. C. Ørsted in 1815 makes Grundtvig admit the necessity of being on his guard against his own visions. False as well as true visions exist, and because of man’s condition as a creature in time and space it is not possible for him to distinguish clearly between true and false prophets. After 1815 Grundtvig no longer sees himself as a prophet but as a poet. To him a poet is a visionary, a seer of divine truths or diabolical hallucinations. Grundtvig’s attitude to his visions is based on ethical considerations of their truth value and he consciously eliminates any visions that reflect self-willedness or acute depression. He places his poetry at the disposal of the community in baptism, Holy Communion and hymn singing. His work is the result of an uncommon individual steering an even course between a universe based on personal struggles and the striving of the Eros-love to go beyond this universe. For Grundtvig the criterion for an even course is solidarity with his own social context, and not, as in the case of the mystic, development into an ecstatic vision of the boundlessness of the Ego. Grundtvig’s congregation exists in time and grows with time. The mystic is sufficient to himself in ecstacy and his experience is beyond time and space. The mystic seeks eternity in the present and the world around fades as inspiration grows. Grundtvig acts within time. His poetic universe is a cosmos in which chaos is always present as a possibility that he will not accept. Grundtvig’s Eros-love attains fullness through preaching, the confession of faith, and praise within the limits of this cosmos; in the community which the congregation creates through this activity there is the possibility that the Eros-love will be met by agape, but only if God so wishes and only if the individual has prepared himself for agape through fruitful, collective activity.

Restoring the image: The confessor and the challenge of pornography

Increasingly, many confessors are confronted with penitents who have become involved with pornography. This article provides some statistics illustrating the scope of pornography and then analyzes the harm that pornography causes, both to the dignity of the human person and in relation to the virtues of chastity and justice. The article invites confessors to help penitents understand that involvement with pornography is more than simply breaking a commandment, but rather affects a penitent’s capacity for self-giving and thus one’s authentic emotional and spiritual growth. Confessors should guide penitents who struggle with this issue to cultivate the true vision of human love in place of the distorted image offered by pornographic material. The confessor should be prepared to turn a penitent’s attention to effective spiritual remedies as well as in some cases suggesting a penitent seek professional assistance so that the authentic image of God may be restored and the penitent be helped to attain true freedom from the vice of pornography.

Centennial of the birth of Dr. Edward H. Angle

I T IS most fitting at this time that we, as a group of orthodontists, should pause, consider, and pay deserved tribute to Dr. Edward Hartley Angle in this, the one-hundredth anniversary year of his birth. This should be done with the deepest gratitude, as there is little in dental history to indicate that there would now be world-wide specialization and organization by capable orthodontists, except for the genius of this man. It has been said, ((Genius consists of 3 per cent inspiration and 97 per cent perspiration,” but it is impossible in all eases to determine the relative values of these two requisites. In this instance, the history of the profession reveals that, through hundreds of years, many men with fine, educated minds and lofty purposes had left meticulous records of their words and ideas. However, they failed to pass on to their successors any definite and workable systems of procedure in orthodontic practice. After these many comparatively fruitless generations, there suddenly appeared on the scene, in 1878, a young graduate, Dr. Edward H. Angle, who already had a true and comprehensive vision of the past, present, and future of orthodontic problems. In that vision, there were revealed to him the tremendous potentialities for human good that had been wasted through failure to treat malocclusion understandingly. Also, it was obvious to him that this was due to neglect on the part of schools and appropriate organizations to select and train men to perform this very important, undeveloped dental service. Later he stated: “In 1880 I had become very much interested in orthodontia, and I came to believe that some time, perhaps after a long time, orthodontia would be practiced as a specialty, for it seemed to me that its importance entitled it to a closer study and application in practice and that only would enable anyone to become sufficiently familiar with its principles and master its technique, to overcome its difficulties and be successful in its practice. This conviction has constantly grown upon me in the years that have followed. In 1896, I advocated it,s teaching and practice as a specialty in a paper read before the Western Pennsylvania Dental ASSOciation. ” It was in accordance with this educational concept of the problem that Dr. Angle spent much time in teaching in dental colleges and in writing papers and books. His hope was that the schools in time would come to see the wisdom of increasing their efforts in this respect. However, the results were so disappointing after seventeen years of such sacrifice that he resigned in

A VISUAL TEST CARD DESIGNED FOR USE IN EXAMINATIONS FOR THE ARMED FORCES

The purpose of this paper is to present a visual test card that has been adapted to the needs of the examination for entrance into the armed forces. This examination presents certain problems that are not usually encountered in the routine examination of eyes in private practice. Now, at a time when the armed forces are being rapidly expanded, large numbers of men are examined in groups and the measurement of vision must be accomplished quickly and as accurately as possible as part of the whole examination. Every effort must be made to determine the man's true vision during this hurried examination, as the examiner is confronted both by men with poor vision, who are anxious to get into the service and so try to make their vision appear better than it actually is, and by men who are malingering to evade service. The test conditions and the tests used

The Bronzes of Leonardo da Vinci

Two difficulties face the student of the smaller Renaissance sculptures. Because of the relative unimportance of the works it is not easy to find literary evidence on which attributions may rest; the works being easily moveable and intrinsically of great value, they have traveled far from their original sources. The piece in a precious or semi-precious metal has about it a glamour due to some mystic subconscious memory from prehistoric days when man first learned to wrest from mother nature the secrets of metallurgy. The power of the active elements may be felt in a Chinese or Renaissance bronze flowing before our eyes in pleasurable vital forms. Because of this value and mystery connoisseurs have approached the subject with more aesthetic reverence than true analytic vision.