Search Results (4)

This article develops a structural–analogical framework to investigate conceptual resonances between Qur’an 24:35—the Verse of Light—and contemporary relational models in physics, while maintaining firm epistemic boundaries between theology, philosophy, and empirical science. The Qur’anic metaphors of niche, glass, tree, oil, and layered light depict a graded ontology of manifestation in which being unfolds through ordered relations grounded in a transcendent divine command (amr). By contrast, modern physics—as represented by quantum field theory, loop quantum gravity, and cosmological models—operates entirely within immanent causality, conceiving spacetime and matter as relational, dynamic, and structurally emergent. Despite their distinct registers, both discourses converge structurally around a shared grammar of potentiality, relation, and manifestation. Drawing on classical Islamic metaphysics—especially al-Ghazālī’s Mishkāt al-Anwār—alongside contemporary relational ontologies in physics (Smolin, Rovelli, Markopoulou), the article argues that “real time” functions as an ontological choice that conditions intelligibility, agency, and novelty. The Qur’anic notion of nūr is interpreted not as physical luminosity but as the metaphysical ground of determinability, while the quantum vacuum is treated as a field of latent potential—without suggesting empirical equivalence. Rather than concordism, the comparison highlights a structural resonance (used here as a heuristic notion indicating pattern-level affinity rather than equivalence, correspondence, or empirical verification): both traditions affirm that reality is neither static nor substance-based, but arises through dynamic relational processes grounded—whether transcendently or immanently—in principled order. Full article

The Secret of the Golden Flower (Taiyi Jinhua Zongzhi 太乙金華宗旨), a Qing dynasty spirit-writing (fuji扶乩) text, is widely known through the Wilhelm–Jung translation lineage, where jinhua 金華 is rendered as “Golden Flower” and read as mandala-like symbolism. Based on a close reading of the Daozang Jiyao 道藏輯要version, this article argues that in the Chinese text jinhua is not primarily a floral image but a technical and experiential term for luminosity in Daoist inner-alchemical cultivation. Hua 華 is resemanticized from botanical “flower/flourishing” into “radiance,” and the work explicitly defines the key term as “jinhua is light”. The text further organizes cultivation into a three-stage trajectory—“sudden emergence”, “circulation”, and “great condensation”, through which qi 氣 is refined into light and luminosity stabilizes as spirit (shen 神). Finally, the analysis situates this luminous grammar within the work’s explicit Three Teachings (sanjiao 三教) framing: Confucian “illuminating virtue” (mingde 明德) and Buddhist idioms of luminous mind-nature (xin-xing guangming 心性光明) and dharma-body language function as a shared vocabulary for describing non-grasping awareness and embodied realization. On this basis, jinhua is best understood not as a decorative metaphor or a purely psychological symbol but as a practice-oriented mechanism of ontological luminosity, clarifying both the inner-alchemical logic of The Secret and the stakes of its modern reception. Full article

Virtual models’ production is of high pertinence in research and business fields such as architecture, archeology, or video games, whose requirements might range between expeditious virtual building generation for extensively populating computer-based synthesized environments and hypothesis testing through digital reconstructions. There are some known approaches to achieve the production/reconstruction of virtual models, namely digital settlements and buildings. Manual modeling requires highly-skilled manpower and a considerable amount of time to achieve the desired digital contents, in a process composed by many stages that are typically repeated over time. Both image-based and range scanning approaches are more suitable for digital preservation of well-conserved structures. However, they usually require trained human resources to prepare field operations and manipulate expensive equipment (e.g., 3D scanners) and advanced software tools (e.g., photogrammetric applications). To tackle the issues presented by previous approaches, a class of cost-effective, efficient, and scarce-data-tolerant techniques/methods, known as procedural modeling, has been developed aiming at the semi- or fully-automatic production of virtual environments composed of hollow buildings exclusively represented by outer façades or traversable buildings with interiors, either for expeditious generation or reconstruction. Despite the many achievements of the existing procedural modeling approaches, the production of virtual buildings with both interiors and exteriors composed by non-rectangular shapes (convex or concave n-gons) at the floor-plan level is still seldomly addressed. Therefore, a methodology (and respective system) capable of semi-automatically producing ontology-based traversable buildings composed of arbitrarily-shaped floor-plans has been proposed and continuously developed, and is under analysis in this paper, along with its contributions towards the accomplishment of other virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) projects/works oriented to digital applications for cultural heritage. Recent roof production-related enhancements resorting to the well-established straight skeleton approach are also addressed, as well as forthcoming challenges. The aim is to consolidate this procedural modeling methodology as a valuable computer graphics work and discuss its future directions. Full article

The moral principle that Mr. Floridi merely judges the Good and Evil with the amount of entropy is based on the simplicity and unipolar way of thinking. If practicing in accordance with his principle of Goodness that absolutely excluding entropy, then, in the field of nature and biology can only lead to the end of the dynamic changes, in the field of human mind and scientific development can only lead to rigid and stagnant, in the social field can only lead to fascist autocratic centralization system. The orderly and disorderly development of things have those limits, entropy and entropy increase is not absolute “Evil”, information and entropy reduction is not absolutely “Good”. In the evolution of universe and things embodied in it, there is no evil of eternal entropy increase, and no good of eternal entropy reduction. When the evolution of the whole entropy increases to a certain extent, it will naturally turn into the evolution of the whole entropy reduction; and vice versa, when the evolution of the whole entropy decreases to a certain limit, it will naturally turn into the whole Entropy increase in the evolution process. A reasonable ethical principle should reconcile opposing factors, such as information and entropy, orderly and disorder, integrity and reducibility, certainty and non-determinism, determinism and non-determinism, purpose and randomness, inevitability and contingency, and maintain a reasonable tension between these opposing factors. A reasonable conclusion can only be: Good—relaxation between order and disorder. In addition, the entropy theory (whether it is physical entropy or information entropy) that Floridi borrowed corresponding to order and disorder, and it only deals with grammatical information. The problem of information directly related to ethics and value is mainly in semantics and pragmatics, rather than simply in its grammar, and it is impossible to derive it simply and directly from the size of this formalized entropy. The lagging way of thinking, the deviation of the entropy and the understanding of information theory, led to Mr. Floridi’s information ethical framework hardly to support his ambition to establish macro-ethics. In the same way, his information ethics is also very difficult to be the philosophical foundation of his commitment to the construction of human ecological civilization. In fact, as early as the 20th century, 90 years, Chinese scholars have put forward a general philosophy of value transcended the human-centered narrow position in the name of the natural ontology. This philosophy of value is not only compatible with natural values and human values, but also compatible with material values and information values. It is the value and ethical paradigm putted forward by such a philosophy of value laid the foundation for the construction of human information ecological civilization and the general philosophical basis of sustainable development theory and practice. Full article