Religion – Page 6 – artdiamondblog.com

Catholic Church Banned Infinitesimals from European Classrooms Taught by Jesuits

Source of book image: http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/08/science/08SCIB/08SCIB-superJumbo.jpg

(p. C9) Mr. Alexander’s narrative opens in the early 17th century, when Catholic Church administrators in Rome, following a campaign by Euclidean stalwart Christopher Clavius, banned the infinitesimal from the classrooms of Jesuit schools throughout Europe. Instructors’ teachings and writings were monitored to enforce strict adherence to the classical Euclidean geometrical tradition. Mr. Alexander portrays the church’s reactionary stance not as a huff over mathematical philosophy but as a desperate counterattack against existential threats: Euclid’s rules-based structure offered the church a model with which it hoped to rein in a restive flock, roiled by economic and political currents and by an ascendant Protestantism. Martial metaphors abound in the author’s telling: “war against disorder,” “enemies of the infinitely small,” “forces of hierarchy and order.” This was no friendly debate.

For the full review, see:
ALAN HIRSHFELD. “The Limit of Reason; In the 1700s, the idea of an infinitely tiny quantity was so unsettling that the Church banned it from classrooms.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., May 3, 2014): C9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 2, 2014, and has the title “Book Review: ‘Infinitesimal’ by Amir Alexander; The idea of an infinitely tiny quantity–the foundation of calculus–was so unsettling that in the 17th century the Church banned it from classrooms.”)

The book under review is:
Alexander, Amir. Infinitesimal: How a Dangerous Mathematical Theory Shaped the Modern World. New York: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

“Religious Muslims Generally Insist on the Literal Truth of the Quran”

(p. A16) There are few role models for former Muslims, . . .
One group . . . is Ex-Muslims of North America, . . .
Members of the group, founded last year in Washington and Toronto, recognize that their efforts might seem radical to some, and take precautions when admitting new members. Those interested in joining are interviewed in person before they are told where the next meeting will be held. The group has grown quickly to about a dozen chapters, in cities including Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York and San Francisco.
One of the group’s founders who was at the conference, Sadaf Ali, 23, an Afghan-Canadian, said that she had once been “a fairly practicing Muslim.”
During childhood, she said, “I was always fairly defiant.” As she grew older, she struggled with depression, and she thought that praying more and reading the Quran would help. She became more religious and looked forward to a traditional life. “I thought my life was sort of set out for me: get married, have children,” Ms. Ali said. “I might go to school. I’ll have a very domestic life. That’s what my family did, what my forefathers did.”
But as a university student, her feelings began to change.
As I started to investigate the religion, I realized I was talking to myself,” Ms. Ali said. “Nobody was listening to me. I had just entered the University of Toronto, and critical thinking was a big part of my studies. I have an art history and writing background, and I realized every verse I had come across” — in the Quran — “was explicitly or implicitly sexist.”
Quickly, her faith crumbled.
“So in 2009, I realized there probably is no God,” she said. “What is so wrong in having a boyfriend, or having premarital sex? What is wrong with wanting to eat and drink water before the sun goes down during Ramadan? What is so wrong with that? I couldn’t handle the cognitive dissonance anymore.”
. . .
The members of Ex-Muslims are adamant that they respect others’ right to practice Islam. The group’s motto is “No Bigotry and No Apologism,” and text on its website is inclusive: “We understand that Muslims come in all varieties, and we do not and will not partake in erasing the diversity within the world’s Muslims.”
But they are equally adamant that it is still too difficult for Muslims inclined to atheism to follow their thinking where it may lead. Whereas skeptical Christians or Jews can take refuge in reformist wings of their tradition, religious Muslims generally insist on the literal truth of the Quran.
“I would say it’s maybe 0.1 percent who are willing to challenge the foundations of the faith,” said Nas Ishmael, another founder of the Ex-Muslims group who attended the conference.

For the full story, see:
MARK OPPENHEIMER. “Leaving Islam for Atheism, and Finding a Much-Needed Place Among Peers.” The New York Times (Sat., MAY 24, 2014): A16.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MAY 23, 2014.)

Some Geographical Clusters Are Due to Chance (It Is Not Always a Miracle, When Good, Or the Environment, When Bad)

David J. Hand. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 12) Your latest book, “The Improbability Principle,” aims to prove that extremely improbable events are in fact commonplace. Can you explain that a bit? Things like roulette wheels coming up in strange configurations or the same lottery numbers hitting two weeks in a row are clearly very rare events, but if you look at the number of lotteries and the number of roulette wheels, then you realize that you should actually expect these sorts of things to happen. I think within the statistical community people accept this. They’re aware of the impact of the law of truly large numbers.
. . .
You also write that geographical clusters of people with diseases might not necessarily be a result of environmental issues. It could just be a coincidence. Well, they could be due to some sort of pollution or infectious disease or something like that, but you can expect clusters to occur just by chance as well. So it’s an interesting statistical problem to tease these things out. Is this a genuine cluster in the sense that there’s a cause behind it? Or is it a chance cluster?

For the full interview, see:
Chozick, Amy, interviewer. “‘The Wonder Is Still There’; The Statistician David J. Hand on Eerie Coincidences and Playing the Lottery.” The New York Times Magazine (Sun., FEB. 23, 2014): 12.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in original.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date FEB. 21, 2014, and has the title “David J. Hand’s Lottery Tips.”)

Hand’s book is:
Hand, David J. The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day. New York: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014.

Louise Carnegie Expressed Pompous Sanctimony While Leaving the Drudgery to Others

Andrew Carnegie’s fiancée Louise:

(p. 294) “I certainly feel more in harmony with all the world after having been in communion with you, my Prince of Peace. I say this reverently, dear, for truly that is what you are to me, and I am so glad the world knows you as the Great Peacemaker.” “What ideal lives we shall lead, giving all our best efforts to high and noble ends, while the drudgery of life is attended to by others. Without high ideals, it would be enervating and sinful. With them, it is glorious, and you are my prince among men, my own love.”

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: underline in original.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

Organic and Kosher Chicken Have as Much Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria as Regular Chicken

(p. D3) . . . after a trip to Israel for his sister’s bat mitzvah, Jack Millman came back to New York wondering whether the higher costs of kosher foods were justified.
“Most consumers perceive of kosher foods as being healthier or cleaner or somehow more valuable than conventional foods, and I was interested in whether they were in fact getting what they were paying for,” said Mr. Millman, 18 and a senior at the Horace Mann School in New York City.
That question started him on a yearlong research project to compare the prevalence of antibiotic-resistant E. coli bacteria on four types of chickens: those raised conventionally; organically; without antibiotics, and those slaughtered under kosher rules. “Every other week for 10 weeks, I would go and spend the entire Saturday buying chicken,” he said. “We had it specifically mapped out, and we would buy it and put it on ice in industrial-strength coolers given to us by the lab, and ship it out.”
All told, Mr. Millman and his mother, Ann Marks, gathered 213 samples of chicken drumsticks from supermarkets, butcher shops and specialty stores in the New York area.
Now they and several scientists have published a study based on the project in the journal F1000 Research. The results were surprising.
Kosher chicken samples that tested positive for antibiotic-resistant E. coli had nearly twice as much of the bacteria as the samples from conventionally raised birds did. And even the samples from organically raised chickens and those raised without antibiotics did not significantly differ from the conventional ones.

For the full story, see:
STEPHANIE STROM. “A Science Project With Legs.” The New York Times (Tues., November 5, 2013): D3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 4, 2013.)

The academic article on E. coli in different types of chicken, is:
Millman, Jack M., Kara Waits, Heidi Grande, Ann R. Marks, Jane C. Marks, Lance B. Price, and Bruce A. Hungate. “Prevalence of Antibiotic-Resistant E. Coli in Retail Chicken: Comparing Conventional, Organic, Kosher, and Raised without Antibiotics.” F1000Research 2 (2013).

Puritan Slavery

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

We are taught in elementary school that the roots of America lie in the religious Puritans and Pilgrims. But I believe that there is something to Russell Shorto’s argument that we under-appreciate the contribution of the secular libertarian Dutch of New Amsterdam. In this continuing debate, it is useful to have an accurate history of all sides.

(p. A11) The great Puritan divine John Winthrop, founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, probably wouldn’t make it through Allegra di Bonaventura’s book without suffering a cardiac episode. Set principally in the seaport town of New London, Conn., “For Adam’s Sake” provides an astonishing worm’s-eye view of Winthrop’s beloved Bible Commonwealth in the throes of its ghastly unraveling, even as it narrates an intimate history of racial slavery in early New England through the entwined lives of five families (the Winthrops among them).

Many readers will be surprised to learn that slavery flourished in colonial New England–albeit on a smaller scale than on the plantations of the antebellum South. And they might be forgiven their incredulity: “New Englanders in the nineteenth century,” Ms. di Bonaventura writes, “studiously erased and omitted inconvenient and unsavory aspects of their region’s collective past in favor of a more heroic and wholesome narrative of their own history.” Such acts of moral cleansing all but obscured the lives of enslaved New Englanders well into our own time.

For the full review, see:
KIRK DAVIS SWINEHART. “BOOKSHELF; Not Your Parents’ Puritans; Slavery flourished in colonial New England. Yet the Puritans’ erasure of its signs have obscured their crimes well into our own time.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Aug. 5, 2013): A11.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Aug. 4, 2013.)

The book under review is:
di Bonaventura, Allegra. For Adam’s Sake: A Family Saga in Colonial New England. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2013.

The relevant book by Russell Shorto is:
Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America. New York: Doubleday, 2004.

Among 1890s Wall Street Elite, “It Was Fashionable to Be Anti-Semitic”

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A11) J.P. Morgan may well have been the most powerful banker who ever lived. Certainly he was the most powerful American banker. But the banking world that he and his firm dominated was a short-lived one, lasting only from the 1890s to the Depression of the 1930s. Susie J. Pak explores Morgan’s world, especially its social aspects, in “Gentlemen Bankers,” and the exploration is very interesting indeed.
. . .
In Wall Street at the time, there were two groups of private banking firms; those with Jewish partners and those with gentile ones. And while they did business together, often forming syndicates to handle large underwritings, they led separate social lives. They belonged to different clubs, stayed at different hotels and resorts. They didn’t attend the weddings of one another’s children. The reason, of course, was anti-Semitism. But as Ms. Pak notes, it had nothing to do with the ancient, religiously motivated anti-Semitism typical in Europe. This latter-day anti-Semitism was essentially social in character: To be blunt, it was fashionable to be anti-Semitic.
In earlier decades of the 19th century, affluent Jews had mingled socially with their gentile neighbors. They had been among the founding members of such old-line clubs as the Union Club (est. 1836) and the Union League Club (1863). Jesse Seligman, a partner in the well-regarded Jewish banking firm of J. & W. Seligman, was vice president of the Union League Club in 1893. But when he put his son up for membership that year, he was rejected. “Those who voted against him,” a biographer of the Seligman family wrote, “said they had nothing against him personally; they objected to his race.” His stunned father resigned from the club. He died the next year, aged 66; some said the incident contributed to his death.

For the full review, see:
JOHN STEELE GORDON. “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Gentlemen Bankers’ by Susie J. Pak; In the age of J.P. Morgan, the sons of Jewish bankers attended Ivy League colleges, but were excluded from the myriad social and athletic organizations.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri, August 30, 2013): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date August 29, 2013, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Gentlemen Bankers’ by Susie J. Pak; In the age of J.P. Morgan, the sons of Jewish bankers attended Ivy League colleges, but were excluded from the myriad social and athletic organizations.”)

The book under review, is:
Pak, Susie J. Gentlemen Bankers: The World of J.P. Morgan, Harvard Studies in Business History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Margaret Thatcher Funeral: “Suddenly from the Crowd a Great Roar”

“A supporter of Margaret Thatcher holds a banner outside St. Clement Danes church in London.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A15) The funeral of Margaret Thatcher was beautiful, moving, just right. It had dignity and spirit, and in that respect was just like her. It also contained a surprise that shouldn’t have been a surprise. It was a metaphor for where she stood in the pantheon of successful leaders of the 20th century.
. . .
At the end of the funeral they all marched down the aisle in great procession–the family, the queen, the military pallbearers carrying the casket bearing the Union Jack. The great doors flung open, the pallbearers marched forward, and suddenly from the crowd a great roar. We looked at each other. Demonstrators? No. Listen. They were cheering. They were calling out three great hurrahs as the pallbearers went down the steps. Then long cheers and applause. It was electric.
England came. The people came. Later we would learn they’d stood 30 deep on the sidewalk, that quiet crowds had massed on the Strand and Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill. A man had held up a sign: “But We Loved Her.”
. . . When they died, Ronald Reagan, John Paul II, and Margaret Thatcher were old and long past their height of power. Everyone was surprised when Reagan died that crowds engulfed the Capitol; people slept on sidewalks to view him in state. When John Paul died the Vatican was astonished to see millions converge. “Santo Subito.”
And now at the end some came for Thatcher, too.
What all three had in common: No one was with them but the people.
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, rest in peace.

For the full commentary, see:
PEGGY NOONAN. “DECLARATIONS; Britain Remembers a Great Briton; Margaret Thatcher’s coffin stood over he crypts that hold the tombs of Nelson and Wellington. It mattered.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., April 20, 2013): A15.
(Note: the online version of the story was updated April 22, 2013 (I did not see any update in the part I quoted above), and has the title “DECLARATIONS; Noonan: Britain Remembers a Great Briton; Mrs. Thatcher is with Wellington and Nelson now.”)

Amish Break the Golden Rule

(p. 237) If we apply the ubiquity test–what happens if everyone does it?–to the Amish way, the optimization of choice collapses. By constraining the suite of acceptable occupations and narrowing education, the Amish are holding back possibilities not just for their children but indirectly for all.
If you are a web designer today, it is only because many tens of thousands of other people around you and before you have been expanding the realm of possibilities. They have gone beyond farms and home shops to invent a complex ecology of electronic devices that require new expertise and new ways of thinking. If you are an accountant, untold numbers of creative people in the past devised the logic and tools of accounting for you. If you do science, your instruments and field of study have been created by others. If you are a photographer, or an extreme sports athlete, or a baker, or an auto mechanic, or a nurse–then your potential has been given an opportunity by the work of others. You are being expanded as others expand themselves.
. . .
. . . as you embrace new technologies, you are indirectly working for future generations of Amish, and for the minimite homesteaders, even though they are not doing as much for you. Most of what you adopt they will ignore. But every once in a while your adoption of “something that doesn’t quite work yet” (Danny Hillis’s definition of technology) will evolve into an appropriate tool they can use. It might be a solar grain dyer; it might be a cure for cancer.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.
(Note: ellipses added.)

“Self-Reliant” Amish Depend on the Technologies of the Outside World

(p. 230) The Amish are a little sensitive about this, but their self-reliant lifestyle as it is currently practiced is heavily dependent on the greater technium that surrounds their enclaves. They do not mine the metal they build their mowers from. They do not drill or process the kerosene they use. They don’t manufacture the solar panels on their roofs. They don’t grow or weave the cotton in their clothes. They don’t educate or train their own doctors. They also famously do not enroll in armed forces of any kind. (But in compensation for that, the Amish are world-class volunteers in the outside world. Few people volunteer more often, or with (p. 231) more expertise and passion, than the Amish/Mennonites. They travel by bus or boat to distant lands to build homes and schools for the needy.) If the Amish had to generate all their own energy, grow all their clothing fibers, mine all metal, harvest and mill all lumber, they would not be Amish at all because they would be running large machines, dangerous factories, and other types of industry that would not sit well in their backyards (one of the criteria they use to decide whether a craft is appropriate for them). But without someone manufacturing this stuff, they could not maintain their lifestyle or prosperity. In short, the Amish depend on the outside world for the way they currently live. Their choice of minimal technology adoption is a choice–but a choice enabled by the technium. Their lifestyle is within the technium, not outside it.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.