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Belief in propositions has had a long and distinguished history in analytic philosophy. Three of the founding fathers of analytic philosophy, Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, and G. E. Moore, believed in propositions. Many philosophers since then have shared this belief; and the belief is widely, though certainly not universally, accepted among philosophers today. Among contemporary philosophers who believe in propositions, many, and perhaps even most, take them to be structured entities with individuals, properties, and relations as constituents. For example, the proposition that ‘Glenn loves Tracy’ has Glenn, the loving relation, and Tracy as constituents. What is it, then, that binds these constituents together and imposes structure on them? And if the proposition that ‘Glenn loves Tracy’ is distinct from the proposition that ‘Tracy loves Glenn’ yet both have the same constituents, what is it about the way these constituents are structured or bound together that makes them two different propositions? This book formulates an account of the metaphysical nature of propositions, and provides fresh answers to the above questions. In addition to explaining what it is that binds together the constituents of structured propositions and imposes structure on them, the book deals with some of the standard objections to accounts of propositions: it shows that there is no mystery about what propositions are; that given certain minimal assumptions, it follows that they exist; and that on this approach, we can see how and why propositions manage to have truth conditions and represent the world as being a certain way. The book also contains a detailed account of the nature of tense and modality, and provides a solution to the paradox of analysis.

Philosophy in the English-speaking world is dominated by analytical approaches to its problems and projects; but theology has been dominated by alternative approaches. Many would say that the current state in theology is not mere historical accident, but is, rather, how things ought to be. On the other hand, many others would say precisely the opposite: that theology as a discipline has been beguiled and taken largely deleterious. The methodological divide between systematic theologians and analytic philosophers of religion is ripe for exploration. This book attempts to bring a much-needed interdisciplinary conversation about the value of analytic philosophical approaches to theological topics. Most of the chapters are sympathetic to the enterprise of analytic theology; but with an eye towards balance.

Reading a paragraph of Latin without attention to the word order entails losing access to a whole dimension of meaning, or at least using inferential procedures to guess at what is actually overtly encoded in the syntax. This book introduces the linguistic concepts, formalism, and analytical techniques necessary for the study of Latin word order. It then presents and analyzes a representative selection of data in sufficient detail to foster both an intuitive grasp of the often rather subtle principles controlling Latin word order and a theoretically grounded understanding of the system that underlies it. Combining the rich empirical documentation of traditional philological approaches with the deeper theoretical insight of modern linguistics, this book aims to reduce the intricate surface patterns of Latin word order to a simple and general cross-categorical system of syntactic structure which translates more or less directly into constituents of pragmatic and semantic meaning.

All developed human beings possess a practical mastery of a vast range of concepts, including such basic structural notions as those of identity, truth, existence, material objects, mental states, space, and time; but a practical mastery does not entail theoretical understanding. It is that understanding which philosophy seeks to achieve. This book sets out to explain and illustrate a certain conception of the nature of analytical philosophy. The author draws on his many years of teaching at Oxford University, during which he refined and developed his route to understanding the fundamental structure of human thinking. Among the distinctive features of his exposition are the displacement of an older, reductive conception of philosophical method (the ideal of ‘analysing’ complex ideas into simpler elements) in favour of elucidating the interconnections between the complex but irreducible notions which form the basic structure of our thinking; and the demonstration that the three traditionally distinguished departments of metaphysics (ontology), epistemology, and logic are but three aspects of one unified enquiry.

The importance of sound in poetry is indisputable, yet it is not at all an easy subject to discuss, and is rarely treated systematically by literary scholars. This book uses a variety of computer-based processes to construct a systematic analytical description of the sounds of Dante's Divine Comedy in the sense of their overall distribution within the text. The description is developed through a comparative treatment of the same features in a range of related texts, with a view to defining the distinctive characteristics of Dante's practice; and by a discussion of the function and effect of sounds in the work, with special attention to unusually high incidences of particular features. The book is thus both a contribution to the scholarly debate about Dante's poem, and an illustration and discussion of the ways in which new electronic technology can be used for this kind of purpose.

The field of molecular evolution has experienced explosive growth in recent years due to the rapid accumulation of genetic sequence data, continuous improvements to computer hardware and software, and the development of sophisticated analytical methods. The increasing availability of large genomic data sets requires powerful statistical methods to analyse and interpret them, generating both computational and conceptual challenges for the field. This book provides a comprehensive coverage of modern statistical and computational methods used in molecular evolutionary analysis, such as maximum likelihood and Bayesian statistics. It describes the models, methods and algorithms that are most useful for analysing the ever-increasing supply of molecular sequence data, with a view to furthering our understanding of the evolution of genes and genomes. The book emphasizes essential concepts rather than mathematical proofs. It includes detailed derivations and implementation details, as well as numerous illustrations, worked examples, and exercises.

This book provides an innovative and mathematically sound treatment of the foundations of analytical mechanics and the relation of classical mechanics to relativity and quantum theory. A distinguishing feature of the book is its integration of special relativity into teaching of classical mechanics. After a thorough review of the traditional theory, the book introduces extended Lagrangian and Hamiltonian methods that treat time as a transformable coordinate rather than the fixed parameter of Newtonian physics. Advanced topics such as covariant Langrangians and Hamiltonians, canonical transformations, and Hamilton-Jacobi methods are simplified by the use of this extended theory. And the definition of canonical transformation no longer excludes the Lorenz transformation of special relativity. This is also a book for those who study analytical mechanics to prepare for a critical exploration of quantum mechanics. Comparisons to quantum mechanics appear throughout the text. The extended Hamiltonian theory with time as a coordinate is compared to Dirac’s formalism of primary phase space constraints. The chapter on relativistic mechanics shows how to use covariant Hamiltonian theory to write the Klein-Gordon and Dirac equations. The chapter on Hamilton-Jacobi theory includes a discussion of the closely related Bohm hidden variable model of quantum mechanics. Classical mechanics itself is presented with an emphasis on methods, such as linear vector operators and dyadics, that will familiarise the student with similar techniques in quantum theory. Several of the current fundamental problems in theoretical physics, such as the development of quantum information technology and the problem of quantising the gravitational field, require a rethinking of the quantum-classical connection.

This book is a transdisciplinary analysis of The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African, first published in England in 1789. It was one of the earliest and remains to this day one of the best-known English language “slave” narratives. This now famous work was not really meant to be in any simple respects autobiographical; and it does not unproblematically register the several interests and motivations of a slave, spiritual, or travel narrative. Notwithstanding the inclusion of some formal elements of all these genres, it is best read as something else altogether—as a reflexive social-political commentary and criticism disclosed by a simple narratological framework. What Equiano wrote was not so much his life story as it was his creative effort to describe, critique, and reshape dominant society through his mimetics of what he, as strategically positioned “stranger,” understood to be—and named as—the “magic” that was the (British-inflected) practice of scripture reading, reflected within the structure of discourse and power relations that the author calls “scripturalization”. The book uses Equiano’s narrative to think with; it is a site for historical and contemporary social-critical excavation, using scriptures as social-cultural phenomenon and dynamics as analytical wedge. This scripturalizing mimetics open an analytical window onto the dynamics and structuring of British (and by extension Euro-American) civilization as a kind of ideological-discursive and social-psychological slavery, the representations of which are the deeper interest of this book. The form of enslavement identified as scripturalization in turn poignantly raises the possibility—with Equiano the ex-slave as model—of a particular type of negotiation or escape: ideological-psychological marronage, if not freedom in absolute terms. In Equiano’s reflexive thinking and discursive are the elements for the construction of “the African,” or “the Ethiopian,” the complex self within a reconceptualized modern, pluralistic society.

Do places make a difference to people's health and well-being? This book demonstrates how the physical and social characteristics of a neighborhood can shape the health of its residents. Researchers have long suspected that where one lives makes a difference to health in addition to who one is. Almost everyone understands that smoking, unhealthy eating, lack of exercise can compromise longevity and good health, but can a person's ability to maintain a healthy lifestyle be affected by the smoking habits of other people close by, or access to grocery stores, or the existence of safe parks and recreational space? The answers to this question and other similar ones require new ways of thinking about the determinants of health as well as new analytical methods to test these ideas. This book brings together these ideas and new methods. The book contains various parts. The first part deals with methodological complexities of undertaking neighborhood research. The second part showcases the empirical evidence linking neighborhood conditions to health outcomes. The last part tackles some of the major cross-cutting themes in contemporary neighborhood research.

Since the rise of analytical philosophy, the relation of philosophy and its past is more hotly debated among philosophers than ever. Some scholars analyse historical texts without reference to current debates and their terminology, while others pursue first-order philosophy by focusing on problems instead of doxography—that is, without reference to their predecessors. A growing group, though, doubts that philosophy can be studied effectively on the basis of this sharp division. But does the study of the history of philosophy contribute to current philosophy? And, if it does, what precisely is the contribution? Does making such a contribution depend on using a specific method which determines how the historical perspective is related to systematic philosophy and philosophy in general? More generally, how do our assumptions about the relationship between historical and systematic perspectives affect our methodology and metaphilosophy or philosophy of philosophy? This volume presents and debates answers to these questions, which deserve to be addressed in their own right and not just as an adjunct to other discussions. The contributors of this volume provide diverse answers based on historical references, stretching from ancient philosophy to the most current debates, and also refer to various philosophical sub-disciplines.