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This chapter presents a discussion of Rawls' argument that ‘public reason’ expressed in the legislature should exclude explicitly religious voices. There is religion participation in England in the legislature, through the membership of some of the bishops of the Church of England in the House of Lords, as Lords Spiritual. The chapter examines the discourse of these religious leaders, both against the argument that such discourse will invalidate the nature of public reason, and against the charge that such discourse will be theologically weak. A case study is presented of two bishops who were active in public policy debates. Finally, the speeches of Rowan Williams, who is both a distinguished theologian and Archbishop of Canterbury, throw a different light on the concerns of Rawls. Williams' contribution is not made principally in the legislature, but in the ‘background culture’.

Two contradictory Protestant truths. Nature of church establishment in England and Scotland. Its non‐existence in Wales and Northern Ireland. A confused archbishop. Prevalence of religious belief in the United Kingdom since 1851. Religion and social policy: variation in social attitudes between religious and non‐religious people in the United Kingdom. Withdrawal of Prime Minister from appointing bishops 2007: de facto disestablishment? Whether religious representatives have a role in a democratic parliament. Religious pluralism and charitable regulation. The theology of Calvinism from Andrew Melvill to the Percy case. Status of the Church of Scotland Act 1921.

This chapter begins with a discussion of how Gregory of Nyssa's spiritual writings have rarely been the subject of extended and systematic theological reflection in English, nor do they seem to have been a useful place of reference for those interested in spirituality from a more practical point of view. The reason for the latter is because unlike many of the medieval mystics, Gregory gives no account of his own spiritual experiences, nor, arguably, any account which can be read as a straightforward description of a spiritual experience in the modern sense (as defined, for example, by William James or Rudolf Otto). It is argued that Gregory's reflections on spirituality arise from a profound belief in the transformation of human individuals in all their relationships (with each other as well as with God) as a result of the complex interplay between grace and humans' remaking of themselves.

This chapter presents a selective analysis of commentators who argue for anagogical or analogical interpretations of the dynamics of the De Trinitate, mainly Olivier Du Roy and Karl Barth. Other commentators (especially Karl Rahner), who trace the alleged modalistic bent of Western Trinitarian theology back to Augustine and attribute to him the opposition between the prominence given to the philosophy of the essence in the West versus the apophatic or ‘communional’ approach of the East, are then considered. Finally, the review of secondary literature examines ways of preventing ‘proto‐Cartesian’ readings of the De Trinitate through alternative more accurate examinations of the anthropology and the Christology of the treatise (Rowan Williams and Lewis Ayres).

Unlike most contemporary philosophers, Cavell refuses to dismiss theological concerns and remains respectfully open to theological dialogue, confessing that “to choose between Judaism and Christianity is … still a live issue for me.” This chapter examines the moments in his work when those theological concerns surface most explicitly. Drawing on the work of Rowan Williams and Karl Barth, it shows how Cavell's account of the human and a theological anthropology rooted in the incarnation can be important resources for each other.

While Emerson is an indispensable resource for Cavell, Cavell worries about the “lack of a concrete other” in Emerson's work. Emerson prefers instead to turn to nature or to “the great man” as the other who is necessary for the self's transformation. Cavell's work, however, is full of such concrete others, most obviously in the comedies of remarriage. Less obvious is Cavell's insistence on acknowledging the victim, ours or society's. Such a claim is foundational to Christian theology. Building on Cavell's assertion that “the crucified human body is our best picture of the unacknowledged human soul,” this chapter turns to Rowan Williams, Sebastian Moore, and Herbert McCabe to provide theological companionship for Cavell's anthropology.

This chapter focuses on the place where William Clyde Friday was born—Raphine, Virginia, a Shenandoah Valley village so small that it did not merit mention in that year's federal census as an incorporated town. Nestled in the hills of northern Rockbridge County, Raphine was home to Friday's mother, Mary Elizabeth Rowan Friday. After teacher training farther north at Harrisonburg State Normal, Beth traveled at her father's urging to the hill country of Gaston County, North Carolina, to enroll in Linwood College, a four-year Associate Reformed Presbyterian (ARP) school that had existed since 1914 at the foot of Crowders Mountain southeast of Gastonia. Her father, William Henry Rowan, insisted that his children attend ARP schools, and she was no exception.

The last important poem to be written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge was printed under the simple tide of ‘Epitaph’ as the final poem in the Poetical Works of 1834. It is the culmination of a lifelong interest, for in the course of his career Coleridge wrote numerous epitaphs and epitaph-like poems, both for himself and for others. The earliest-published of which date from 1794: namely, the ‘Epitaph on an Infant’ that has already been mentioned in connection with the poet's conversation with William Rowan Hamilton, and ‘Lines on a Friend Who Died of a Frenzy Fever Induced by Calumnious Reports’. These were included among ‘Juvenile Poems’ in the Poetical Works of 1828, 1829, and 1834. Coleridge's two most ambitious and most successful epitaphs were written during the period of his later poetry, each of them has a special relation to Romantic inscription poetry.

In the introduction to his book Principles of Mechanics, Heinrich Hertz emphasised that one of the advantages of his geometric formulation of his mechanics is that it throws a bright light upon William Rowan Hamilton's method of treating mechanical problems by the aid of characteristic functions. Hertz developed the geometric version of the Hamilton formalism in the first kinematic book and then applied these results to the motion of free holonomic systems, and finally to the motion of unfree systems. Thus, Hertz was able to express the analytical equations of the Hamilton formalism for a conservative system, without taking the hidden system into account except through the force function U. The geometry that made his theory for the straightest distance so appealing no longer holds in his description of conservative systems. However, it is possible to introduce a different metric in configuration space, so that the geometric part of the theory also applies to conservative systems.

This chapter begins with various authors concerned to raise a distinctively Christian voice within secular higher education, arguing that Christians can participate in distinctive ways in the ordinary practices of secular academic reason. It moves on to authors such as Stanley Hauerwas, for whom the ordinary practices of secular academic reason themselves come into the theological spotlight, and who raise serious questions about the supposed neutrality of these practices. It finishes with the work of a selection of Anglican theologians who have, in different ways, suggested that the ordinary practices of secular academic reason are already shaped towards God’s purposes, and might be opened to them more deeply.

This chapter describes how an ordinary ‘little gray bird’ became extraordinary because of its appeal to bird watchers and its fascination for scientists interested in how species form and how they time their migrations and other events of the annual cycle. The chapter introduces researchers who studied the junco in earlier times and shows how their contributions paved the way for the junco’s current role as a model for study in evolutionary and organismal biology

The Islamic law or shariah is interpreted according to four schools of law, but the basic elements are the same throughout the Islamic world, particularly the practice of religious rites. Over the ages, the ethical norms related to shariah have been the injunctions of the Quran and sunnah. In other words, shariah is practising Islam in one's everyday life. Shariah in its deeper meaning is concerned with ordinances or hudud, which literally means the ‘limits’ set by Allah. By the middle of the nineteenth century in many Islamic countries, the rule of the shariah as a legal system was either limited to personal laws governing the family and inheritance, or replaced by Napoleonic codes or English common law and European-style courts. By the time Islamic countries gained their independence after World War II, the full shariah was limited and applied to a few countries, such as Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Afghanistan — countries which were not subjected to two different legal systems and philosophies. This chapter discusses indignation about the proposal to include shariah law in Britain. It discusses firstly Dr. Rowan William's comments on shariah law in the context of British law. Secondly, it examines the reporting of the shariah law in the British press and the validity of the anger that resulted in society. The chapter finishes by discussing the comments of young Muslims and adult Muslims on the implications of the shariah law and its impact on their identity.

It has long since been remarked by mathematicians that William Rowan Hamilton's method contains purely geometrical truths, and that a peculiar mode of expression, suitable to it, is required in order to express these clearly. But this fact has only come to light in a somewhat perplexing form, namely, in the analogies between ordinary mechanics and the geometry of space of many dimensions. Together with an explicit reference to the work of Eugenio Beltrami, Rudolf Lipschitz, and Jean-Gaston Darboux, Heinrich Hertz made only one other reference to the work on mechanics done by contemporary mathematicians. Hertz correctly connected their work with his own treatment of the Hamiltonian formalism. This chapter gives a short summary of the mathematical developments in Hamilton-Jacobi formalism during the period 1828-1888 and compares them with those of Hertz. The views of Johann Carl Friedrich Gauss and Hamilton on geodesics, optics, and dynamics are discussed, along with those of Joseph Liouville and Lipschitz on the principle of least action, and trajectories as geodesics.

A grounded account is never final or closed; rather than an end result it is an ongoing process. This chapter considers the results of the empirical research which suggest engagement with parts of Tillich’s theology as yet unconsidered, for example, his presentation of the ‘spiritual community’ in his Systematic Theology. In light of questions raised by the empirical research, Tillich’s approach is contrasted with essays on revelation by Paul Ricoeur and Rowan Williams. The chapter closes with the suggestion that Tillich’s account is sensitive and compelling precisely because of its phenomenological attentiveness to real life experience, notably his own experience, of the power of art. However, it also suggests that it might be helpful to identify a stronger link than Tillich allows between the subject matter of the artwork, the content of revelation and the effect of revelation.

Multiculturalism is a subsidiary strategy adopted by liberal-democratic societies in order to further the primary or dominant strategy of individual autonomy, and more specifically the autonomy of the individual as a citizen of the liberal-democratic nation-state. Pluralism, by contrast, proffers exogenous limits to state authority that result in contested sovereignties and jurisdictional competition. While pluralists might recommend similar institutional arrangements as multiculturalists, their defence of associational authority stands on different grounds which do not depend on cultural difference. This is due, in part, to the structure of associations not corresponding to that of cultures. This is illustrated through the tension between Rowan William’s pluralism and Ayelet Schachar’s concept of transformative accommodation. Ultimately, multiculturalism is unable to resolve the problem of multiple authorities that concerns political pluralism.

This book concludes with an epilogue, which traces the evolution of graph theory, from the conceptualization of the Königsberg Bridge Problem and its generalization by Leonhard Euler, whose solution led to the subject of Eulerian graphs, to the various efforts to solve the Four Color Problem. It considers elements of graph theory found in games and puzzles of the past, and the famous mathematicians involved including Sir William Rowan Hamilton and William Tutte. It also discusses the remarkable increase since the 1960s in the number of mathematicians worldwide devoted to graph theory, along with research journals, books, and monographs that have graph theory as a subject. Finally, it looks at the growth in applications of graph theory dealing with communication and social networks and the Internet in the digital age and the age of technology.

The unknown George Green, from Nottingham, self-published An Essay on the Mathematical Analysis of Electricity and Magnetism, in which the potential function, V, was defined for the first time. The mathematical prodigy William Rowan Hamilton, inspired by Descartes, described the geometry of light rays algebraically. He extended this method to the motion of particles—his optico-mechanical theory—showing that particles exhibited wave features, but now ‘action’ was minimized instead of time. When a dual system of generalized coordinates (q and p) was used, and when T in the Lagrangian was normalized to a special form, a new energy function emerged—the Hamiltonian, H. The form of the Hamiltonian determined the evolution of the given mechanical system. The ‘canonical’ coordinates p and q occurred in an imaginary (virtual) phase space, and mapped out the range of mechanical possibilities. The links to Poisson brackets and Schrodinger’s wave mechanics are mentioned.

Chapter 4 scrutinizes a sequence of changes that Wordsworth made to The Prelude in the 1820s and 1830s which suggest that his numerous scientific connections at Trinity College, Cambridge, rarely mentioned in biographies of the poet, alongside his close friendship with William Rowan Hamilton, spurred him to integrate the latest innovations in mathematics and astronomy into his autobiographical poem. Wordsworth’s proximity to scientific advance in later life effected a ‘transfiguration’ in his poetics, given that his amendments to several passages of The Prelude suggest that he thought language could become outmoded like a mathematical formula or a technical instrument.

This chapter offers a Christian theological response to the inevitability of syncretism in Christian thought and action. Putting theologians Jean-Marc Éla and Rowan Williams into conversation, it offers an understanding of divine revelation that is always in process along with an understanding of Jesus growing across time, transfiguring seeming contingencies of every human culture. The Spirit builds up the body of Christ in history as more and more persons are grafted into that body. Regarding the book’s themes of race and revelation, Éla’s entry point into these questions is race, while Williams’s is revelation by way of his writing on historicism. Finally, given the book’s arguments about syncretism and cultural mixture, this chapter concludes by briefly addressing theological questions concerning mixture between Christ’s humanity and divinity.

This chapter considers Hamiltonian graphs, a class of graphs named for nineteenth-century physicist and mathematician Sir William Rowan Hamilton. In 1835 Hamilton discovered that complex numbers could be represented as ordered pairs of real numbers. That is, a complex number a + bi (where a and b are real numbers) could be treated as the ordered pair (a, b). Here the number i has the property that i² = -1. Consequently, while the equation x² = -1 has no real number solutions, this equation has two solutions that are complex numbers, namely i and -i. The chapter first examines Hamilton's icosian calculus and Icosian Game, which has a version called Traveller's Dodecahedron or Voyage Round the World, before concluding with an analysis of the Knight's Tour Puzzle, the conditions that make a given graph Hamiltonian, and the Traveling Salesman Problem.