Search Results (220)

Personalized medicine regarding the biopsychosocial model can extend to females considering fertility choices through online one-on-one interactions. This finding is relevant, as recent publications suggest that online one-on-one interventions might help them in this regard. An examination of one online one-on-one intervention considers its conceptual appropriateness. The investigation is through a narrative historical analysis of a previous online group meeting, personalized to help researchers reduce their burnout. The finding is that, with an adaptation of the group process to the individual’s schedule, some participants became overwhelmed by being responsible for their schedule. By using a modification of the same process—one that does not depend on them determining their participation schedule—females can respond to writing prompts that reveal their values, from the most objective to those that are increasingly subjective. However, notably, those who are clear about their values would likely experience the least difficulty in assuming responsibility for their participation. In this regard, methodological examples of possible prompts for the modified process are offered. Through the appropriate personalization of an online, one-on-one process, the future aim in testing this process is to improve the likelihood of success in helping females clarify their values for making fertility-related decisions. Full article

This study examines the renewal of Ignatian spirituality from the Spanish school, emphasizing the contributions of General Pedro Arrupe during his eighteen-year tenure leading the Society of Jesus. Arrupe’s vision prioritized deep interior experience over mere religious practices, advocating for a spirituality rooted in divine gift and surrender. His leadership inspired a return to the fundamental principles of Ignatian spirituality, marked by a profound sense of God’s presence, self-offering, and a commitment to the apostolic mission. The research is organized around three main axes: textual and exegetical, historical and contextual, and systematic or dogmatic Ignatian theology. The first axis explores the contributions of scholars like Antonio María de Aldama and José Calveras, who emphasized returning to the original Ignatian texts and their exegetical significance. Their work highlighted the centrality of Christ, the spiritual exercises as a transformative tool, and the dynamic relationship between mission and identity within the Society. The second axis focuses on historical and contextual analysis, particularly through the work of Cándido de Dalmases, Ricardo García-Villoslada, and Jesús Iturrioz. These scholars reassessed Ignatius of Loyola’s biography and historical influences, moving beyond hagiographical narratives to consider broader theological and social movements of the 16th century, such as Erasmus’ humanism and the Catholic Reformation. The third axis, systematic Ignatian theology, is examined through figures like Pedro de Leturia and Ignacio Iparraguirre, who explored the doctrinal dimensions of Ignatius’ writings. Key themes include the Christocentric nature of Ignatian spirituality, the role of discernment in governance, and the balance between mysticism and apostolic mission. This research underscores the ongoing relevance of Ignatian spirituality by contextualizing its renewal within historical, exegetical, and theological frameworks, demonstrating its adaptability and enduring significance in contemporary spiritual discourse. Full article

This article offers a conceptual and historical analysis of the rabbinic term maḥloqet, arguing that it functions not merely as a descriptor of disagreement but as a culturally embedded legal category with shifting meanings and purposes across rabbinic history. The article traces maḥloqet through two key moments: its institutionalization in the Mishnah and its attempted elimination in Maimonides’ legal writings. In the Mishnah, maḥloqet is presented as a legitimate and even constructive feature of halakhic discourse, enabling pluralism, preserving dissenting voices, and fostering a collective sense of legal authorship. By contrast, Maimonides views maḥloqet as a symptom of a dysfunctional legal system and seeks to eliminate it through his codificatory project in the Mishneh Torah. Drawing on both legal and philosophical writings, the article argues that for Maimonides, the eradication of maḥloqet is necessary for halakhah to fulfill its unifying social function. The article concludes that the term maḥloqet cannot be fully translated into terms like “dispute” or “controversy,” as it carries distinct legal, political, and epistemological valences unique to rabbinic culture. Its layered function across time highlights the complex interplay between law, authority, and dissent in the Jewish legal tradition. Full article

This article analyses Isaiah 53:10 in the context of the so-called ‘Fourth Servant Song’, exploring whether its meaning is exclusively sacrificial or whether it also responds to a strategy of legitimizing authority in post-exilic Israel. Through a methodology that combines synchrony with diachronic reflection, the Neo-Babylonian and Persian historical background is reconstructed, identifying the social, political, and religious tensions that influenced the writing of the book of Isaiah. The study examines how the centrality of Jerusalem, the fracture between deportees and the indigenous population, and the struggle for the legitimization of religious authority are reflected in the text. The sacrificial vocabulary, especially the term אָשָׁם, and its metaphorical use in Isaiah 53:10, as well as the dynamics of guilt and benefit transfer, are analyzed in detail. The article concludes that the passage not only redefines sacrifice outside the cultic and priestly sphere, but also legitimizes a prophetic–scribal group as mediators of salvation, displacing the priestly monopoly and proposing the surrender of life as the theological core of atonement and restoration of the community. Full article

The formation of collective identity and cultural memory is deeply influenced by the historical context and the area in which they develop. Memorial writing entails the reconstruction of the realities of the age under focus, drawing on the author’s objective and especially subjective memories. It is influenced by the one who analyses the events, the language and the underlying values. Thus, the boundary between fiction and reality is often indistinct, as memory gaps are filled with the aid of imagination, without diminishing the documentary value of the text. Since memoirs represent a crossover between history, identity, and literature, an armed conflict can be narrated in many ways. This is also true for Romania’s military campaign in 1913, a moment that is not sufficiently explored by Romanian historiography and literature. Those who serve as chroniclers of the time, enduring endless marches through hostile environments and encountering a largely unfriendly population, contribute to Romanians’ discovery of a reality of the country south of the Danube River that is both similar to and different from theirs. Writers, historians, and publicists fill their pages with memories of a campaign where almost no shots were fired but which resulted in over 5000 victims killed by cholera. Full article

This paper investigates how architectural theories from the Bauhaus in the 1920s have the opportunity to influence approaches to wellbeing through the built environment today. Through a literature review, the study examines work and writings by primarily Hungarian artist László Moholy-Nagy and German architect Siegfried Ebeling, as well as their contemporaries and predecessors at the Bauhaus. The research identifies a gap in architectural history where past architectural theories and practices have been underexplored in relation to wellbeing, particularly in early modernist discourse. By analyzing Moholy-Nagy and Ebeling writings, this paper reveals how their work prefigures and expands contemporary concerns in wellness design. The key finding is: in the examined works there are clear links between metaphysical thinking, environmental conditions, construction innovation and wellbeing. This study contributes to architectural discourses by: firstly proposing that metaphysically informed design thinking can offer valuable insights for architectural practices aiming to enhance occupant wellbeing; secondly, recontextualizing historical ideas within present-day design challenges, and thirdly offering future research directions for developing understandings of wellbeing in relation to architecture. Full article

This article commences by noting that most accounts of Spiritualism during World War One and its aftermath consider that it was harnessed to assist either with the war effort, or to provide comfort for those on the Home Front who were grieving for the dead or missing. However, as this article uncovers and elaborates, there was a brand of Spiritualism which looked beyond this nationalism to provide a form of universalism which sought to heal the wound of both current and past conflicts, instead to provide a world of harmony in the post war world. The population of England was to be reunited culturally with its dead through a rewriting of the history of the Reformation, informed by Spiritualist contact with the Tudor World and individuals within it. By looking at the wartime and immediately post wartime careers of three individuals (Edward Bligh Bond, William Packenham-Walsh and Margaret Murray) the article demonstrates the work of this area of Spiritualism to suggest collective approaches to reconciliation and the writing of past historical wrongs. These individuals also provide evidence of a commitment to creating a shared psychological, anthropological and cultural heritage that would bring Europeans together to transcend the rationalist nightmare created during the war years. Full article

The theological rendering of economics in the Bahá’í Faith—particularly from ‘Abdu’l-Bahá—advocated progressive taxation, a strong welfare state, the abolition of trusts, and the redistribution of wealth. These orientations directly diverge from “neoliberal” economic theory, especially as articulated by Frederick Hayek: concerns that social justice exacerbates poverty and claims that progressive taxation is “discrimination.” Despite these seemingly antithetical orientations, there has been a slow and tentative, if not uneasy, meeting of Bahá’í and neoliberal ideals in global organizations and scholarship. Through a comparative analysis of the writings of both ‘Abdu’l-Bahá and Friedrich Hayek, I first illuminate the fundamental disagreements on economy and society between Bahá’í theology and neoliberalism. Second, I cover recent scholarship on the moralization of markets and the sacralization of financial actors in order to contextualize the historical and contemporary unions of theology and economy. Third, I outline how ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s theological vision and Hayek’s neoliberal theories accrete around four mutual worldviews, which can tempt hermeneutic deemphases of the fundamental divergences in Bahá’í and neoliberal logics: (1) the duality of human nature, (2) the limits of materialist reason, (3) the apotheosis of the market and self-love, and (4) sacrificial submission to transcendent authority. Full article

Recent advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI) have enabled the creation of AI-generated characters modeled after historical figures, offering new opportunities for reflective and interactive engagement in both cultural heritage and education. This study explores the development and evaluation of a large language model representation of Joseph Lister (1827–1912), a pioneer of antiseptic surgery, within a retrieval-augmented generation framework. The purpose was to examine the model’s accuracy, authenticity, and reliability, highlighting challenges, best practices, and ethical considerations. Drawing on primary and secondary sources, including Lister’s writings, the model was constructed using OpenAI’s GPT-4o and refined through iterative validation. Prompts were categorized by cognitive complexity, and responses were evaluated against historical materials. The findings revealed a strong fidelity to Lister’s voice, with appropriate tone, diction, and temporal limits. Moreover, the model demonstrated behavioral control, reflective depth, and consistency across the different prompts. However, minor lapses in temporal framing and occasional embellishments were noted. The findings suggest that, when developed with care, AI-generated characters can support ethically grounded, historically sensitive learning experiences. At the same time, this approach warrants continued scrutiny and underscores the need for further interdisciplinary research and responsible implementation. Full article

Tibet occupies a central place in the avant-garde narratives of Ma Yuan (b. 1953), whose works significantly advanced the thought liberation movements of the 1980s in the People’s Republic of China. As global interest in the intersection of religion, literature, and cultural identity grows, Ma Yuan’s experimental writings offer a unique lens into the reconfiguration of religious and marginalized narratives in modern Chinese literature. While previous research has focused on his formal and stylistic innovations, this study uncovers how Ma Yuan transforms Buddhist rituals, myths, and customs within Tibetan culture to reexamine the spiritual dimensions of trauma and identity among marginalized groups. By engaging with Tibet as both a cultural reality and a mythological allegory, his narratives explore the interplay between body and soul, sacred and secular, and center and periphery within the late twentieth-century Chinese artistic landscape. This interdisciplinary study highlights how modernist literature reinterprets sacred practices and bridges Tibetan cultural heritage with China’s socio-historical modernization, contributing to broader understandings of cultural and intellectual transformations in the study of religion. Full article

In 1891, the Ceylonese Anagarika Dharmapala made his first pilgrimage to Bodh Gaya, the supposed site where Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, in northern India. Following his visit, Dharmapala established the Maha Bodhi Society and himself became a household name in subcontinental Buddhist circles, especially for his campaigns to reclaim Buddhist ownership over the Bodh Gaya site. While Bodh Gaya currently remains a popular pilgrimage location for Buddhists from what is today Sri Lanka—with various governmental, religious, and commercial initiatives established to facilitate pilgrimages—this was not always the case. Indeed, before Dharmapala’s fateful visit, the island’s Buddhists appeared to have little to no engagement with what was, in theory, Buddhism’s holiest site and with the wider Middle Ganges region in which it is located. This article will provide a historical overview of how and why Sri Lankan Buddhists came to first accept, and then venerate, Bodh Gaya as a critical location in their Buddhist practice before Dharmapala. Referencing the scholarship of Indologists and the writings of Buddhists themselves, this article will describe the conditions that led to Dharmapala’s pilgrimage in 1891 and the emergence of both Bodh Gaya and the wider Middle Ganges region in the orbit and memory of Ceylonese Buddhists. This article will further build on existing scholarship on pilgrimage and sacred spaces and demonstrate how Bodh Gaya and its surroundings became part of a tradition of sacred Buddhist geography fixed around northern India for Ceylonese Buddhists. Full article

Alongside historical narratives, there exists, in Old Kalmyk literature, a lesser-known corpus of travel writing that documents pilgrimages to major religious and political centers such as China, Tibet, and Mongolia. One notable and extant example of this genre is the travel account of Baaza Menkedjuev, a Gelung from the Maloderbetovskiy Ulus, more widely known as Baaza Bagshi. His first-person narrative was translated into Russian by A. M. Pozdneev in 1897 under the name “Skazanie o khozhdenii v Tibetskuiu stranu malo-dörbötskago Baaza Bagshi” [Narrative of the travel to Tibet by the Maloderbet Baaza Bagshi] and offers valuable ethnographic insights into a Kalmyk pilgrim’s journey to Tibet in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Until recently, scholarship on Baaza Bagshi’s Tibetan sojourn has been confined to his own account, with no corroborating evidence found in Tibetan-language sources. This study addresses that lacuna by examining references to Baaza Bagshi in the Tibetan-language biography (Tib. rnam thar) of the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso (Tib. thub bstan rgya mtsho, 1876–1933). The significance of these references lies not only in the information provided about the number of audiences with the Dalai Lama Baaza Bagshi received, the dates of his visits, and the content of their meetings, but also in the fact that they demonstrate how the Kalmyks—despite living in the European part of Russia, the furthest from the Mongolian Buddhist world—did not lose their religious ties with Tibet. The corroboration of Baaza Bagshi’s visit in both Kalmyk and Tibetan sources allows for a more integrated understanding of Kalmyk–Tibetan relations and contributes to the study of interregional Buddhist networks. Methods of historical contextualization, historiographical critique, and comparative source analysis were used for this research. Full article

The study of historical monuments within both architectural and literary frameworks reveals a dynamic interplay between scientific observation and artistic interpretation—a vital characteristic of travel writing/the travelogue. This approach, exemplified by British traveler and writer Henry Finnis Blosse Lynch (1862–1913), reflects how factual detail and creative representation are seamlessly integrated in depictions of sites, landscapes, and cultural scenes. This case study highlights Lynch as a pioneering explorer who authored the first comprehensive volume on Armenian architecture and as a writer who vividly portrayed Armenian monuments through both verbal description and photographic imagery, becoming the first traveler to document such sites using photography. Additionally, this paper emphasizes the significance of Lynch’s detailed accounts of architectural monuments, churches, monasteries, cities, villages, populations, religious communities, and educational institutions in vivid language. The careful study of his work can contribute meaningfully to the investigation of the travelogue as a literary genre and to the preservation and protection of the architectural heritage of historical and contemporary Armenia, particularly in regions facing cultural or political threats. Full article

In 1978, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie insisted that the first program to write in a new language is one to print the words “hello, world.” From then until now, “hello, world” has frequently been the first exercise in introductory programming courses. On one hand, this does seem like a good first program because it makes something familiar—a greeting—appear on the screen. On the other hand, it is extremely strange. How can it be understood as a greeting? Who is greeting whom? Unfortunately, the bulk of formal means for defining programming languages provides very little help for assigning a meaning to the “hello, world” program. It is argued that the weakness of older theories and methods of programming language semantics is due to the historical, disciplinary segregation (in logic, semiotics, and linguistics) of semantics as a study apart from syntax and pragmatics. Drawing from both more recent work in programming language semantics that addresses side effects and on speech-act-based programming language design, this paper proposes a possible reintegration of semantics and pragmatics in order to better define the meaning of “hello, world” and the programming languages used to produce speech acts more generally. Full article

Biographies of Max Wilson and Gunnar Jungner were published in 2017 and 2020. An in-depth appreciation of the Wilson and Jungner principles, and the publication they were presented in, ‘Principles and Practice of Screening for Disease’, published as nr. 34 in the Public Health Paper-series of the World Health Organisation (W.H.O), called PHP-34 hereafter, was not published as yet. Here an analysis is given of PHP-34 and the ten screening principles, focusing on three subjects. First, by careful analysis of PHP-34, the literature published in the peer reviewed scientific literature, and other sources, the historical background and origin of the ten principles is determined. Second, the precise composition of PHP-34 is described, as parts of the monograph were derived from other seminal works published between roughly 1950 and 1965. Third, it is determined what the contributions of both authors of the monograph were. Results together are discussed in relation to the time PHP-34 was conceptualized and the importance of PHP-34 and the ten principles in the current era. Results show that in the 15 years preceding the publication of PHP-34, many principles of screening were published by authors in the United States of America, a selection of which ended up in PHP-34. Secondly, about 33% of the 145 pages of PHP-34 are drawn from other publications and studies on screening. Thirdly, the case can be made that the actual writing of PHP-34 was done (almost) entirely by Wilson. Regardless, Wilson and Jungner to this day should be applauded for their work. It is a testimony to the value of PHP-34 that we are still reflecting upon, discussing and seeking to intelligently apply the screening principles almost 60 years after their original publication. Full article