What are the Chances of That?

What are the Chances of That? discusses chance and the importance of understanding how it affects our lives in its various guises such as risk, luck, and coincidence. The book goes beyond a mathematical approach to the subject, showing how our thinking about chance and uncertainty has been shaped by history and culture, and only relatively recently by the mathematical theory of probability. In considering how we think about uncertainty, five ‘dualities’ are proposed that encapsulate many of the ambiguities that arise. The book starts by tackling probability (‘Pure Chance’) and in successive sections (‘Life Chances’, ‘Happy Accidents’, ‘Taking Charge of Chance’) addresses respectively the role of chance in life, the positive face of uncertainty, and the ways in which we are able to act to mitigate and exploit chance. This is not primarily a mathematical book, but it does introduce basic concepts from the theory of probability, and some statistics. Although this book tackles serious subjects, it is written in an accessible way and is aimed at an educated and curious lay reader, to be read for pleasure and general interest. It includes graphical representations of the effects of chance, brain teasers, anecdotes, and discussion of the words we use to talk about uncertainty.

The Greek Text of Revelation

This chapter offers a comprehensive assessment of the most significant developments related to the reconstruction of the Greek text of Revelation and its textual history. The various installments of Revelation’s reconstructed Greek text, as well as the multiple material, methodological, and theoretical advances that facilitated its reconstruction over the last five hundred years, are explored in detail. Major trends, major players, and seminal discoveries related to the manuscript tradition and use—from the Textus Receptus of the sixteenth century to the Text und Textwert study of the twenty-first—are carefully examined and explained for both the lay reader and specialist. The chapter also offers the most up-to-date treatment of the historical development, use, and disuse of text type/text form categories to define Revelation’s manuscript tradition and reconstruct its Greek text and textual history.”

Building Enthusiasm and Overcoming ‘Fear’: Engaging with Christian Leaders in an Age of Science

In popular culture the relationship between science and religion has often been portrayed as one of conflict. The impact of the conflict thesis can be observed in church leaders’ hesitancy in talking about science and religion in the public domain. It was this finding that led Revd Professor David Wilkinson (cosmologist and theologian) and Professor Tom McLeish (physicist and Anglican lay reader) to form the project ‘Equipping Christian Leadership in an Age of Science’ funded by The Templeton World Charity Foundation. The data presented in this article (collected during 2015-2018) is derived from two discreet pieces of research. The first consisting of a survey of over 1,000 church leaders and interviews with 20 senior church leaders and, the second, with a strategic focus on ministerial training comprised of 12 interviews with church educationalists. This paper reflects on the findings from both pieces of research – covering topics such as church leaders’ enthusiasm towards science, how church leaders view the relationship between science and religion and the role of compartmentalisation in ministerial training. The article is unique in providing sociological analysis on the relevant data and including a personal reflection by David Wilkinson – the project’s director – on the implications of the research for ministerial training and science.

Theological and Intellectual Roots in Deobandi Thoughts

This article focuses on one of the important books of Muḥammad Qāsim Nānawtawī—Ḥujjat al-Islām. Many of his 32 books, epistles and letters are written in response to Christian and Hindu missionaries. From the perspective of neo-ʿilm al-kalām (Islamic scholastic theology) they have great importance. These are the works through which a lay reader can understand Nānawtawī’s methodology in polemics and his various dialectical aspects, which are based on propositional logic and pragmatic philosophy and differ from the early discourses of ʿilm al-kalām. Most of his works include his critiques and strong refutation of both Christian theological anthropology and Hindu mythology. This article examines a limited part of Nānawtawī’s dialectic discussions which include the existence of God, His essence, meaning of the monotheism, including evidence in support of monotheism and his refutation of the Trinity.

THEOLOGICAL AND INTELLECTUAL ROOTS IN DEOBANDI THOUGHTS: A PARADIGM FROM MUḤAMMAD QĀSIM NĀNAWTAWĪ’S DISCOURSES WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO HIS ḤUJJAT AL-ISLĀM

This article focuses on one of the important books of Muḥammad Qāsim Nānawtawī—Ḥujjat al-Islām. Many of his 32 books, epistles and letters are written in response to Christian and Hindu missionaries. From the perspective of neo-ʿilm al-kalām (Islamic scholastic theology) they have great importance. These are the works through which a lay reader can understand Nānawtawī’s methodology in polemics and his various dialectical aspects, which are based on propositional logic and pragmatic philosophy and differ from the early discourses of ʿilm al-kalām. Most of his works include his critiques and strong refutation of both Christian theological anthropology and Hindu mythology. This article examines a limited part of Nānawtawī’s dialectic discussions which include the existence of God, His essence, meaning of the monotheism, including evidence in support of monotheism and his refutation of the Trinity.

The Quantum Matrix

“Meet Henry Bar, a physicist and … quantum superhero.” The title The Quantum Matrix refers to a central concept in quantum physics, but also (allegorically) to our enigmatic world. In this book, Henry Bar, physicist and the first quantum superhero, guides the reader through the amazing quantum world. Henry’s hair-raising adventures in his perilous struggle for quantum coherence are graphically depicted by comics and thoroughly explained to the lay reader. Behind each adventure lies a key concept in quantum physics. These concepts range from the basic quantum coherence and entanglement through tunneling and the recently discovered quantum decoherence control, to the principles of the emerging technologies of quantum communication and computing. The explanations of the concepts are popular, but nonetheless rigorous and detailed, and are followed by their broader context, their historic perspective, up-to-date status and forthcoming developments. Finally, thought-provoking philosophical and cultural implications of these concepts are discussed. The mathematical appendices of all chapters cover, in a straightforward manner, the core aspects of quantum physics at the level of a university introductory course. The Quantum Matrix presents an entertaining, popular yet comprehensive picture of quantum physics. It can be read as a light-hearted illustrated tale, a philosophical treatise or a textbook. Either way, the book lets the reader delve deeply into the wondrous quantum world from diverse perspectives and obtain glimpses into the quantum technologies that are about to reshape our lives. May the reader’s voyage through the quantum world charted by this book be both pleasant and rewarding.

Chaitanya in His Times and in Ours

This is a highly critical chapter that joins the twin issues of how Chaitanya was perceived in his own life time and thereafter. Of particular interest here is how Chaitanya was invoked in post-Chaitanya Bengal for a wide variety of reasons and purposes. Dissenting and non-conformist religious cults in post-Chaitanya Bengal cited his life and work to register their protest against Brahmanical and upper-caste excesses; the educated and upper-caste followers, on the other hand, converted him into a symbol of political resistance in a manner that strengthened their own political ambitions under a colonial regime. This chapter brings back the issue of just how the lay reader and the scholar alike need to be clearer about the use of nomenclatures such as ‘Bengal Vaishnavism’ or Gaudiya Vaishnavism. The author argues how in modern Bengal, there were major cultural figures who were Vaishnava by persuasion and yet not affiliated to the Chaitanya camp. This chapter also includes interesting and original studies of Chaitanya’s religion, his approach to the question of women and sexuality, and also how Chaitanya was perceived by the most prominent religious groups in colonial Bengal such as the Brahmos.

Variable scope for popularization of specialized terminology

This paper responds to the call often voiced in today's knowledge society for popularization of specialized knowledge within a field relevant to us all, viz. medicine. Specifically, the aim of the paper is to explore the popularization potential of specialized terminology within this field. Whereas many previous studies of popularization within different LSP fields have been preoccupied with the actual linguistic strategies employed in the mediation of specialized knowledge to non-expert audiences, the present study explores whether subcategories of terms associated with medicinal products exhibit different degrees of popularization potential, i.e. whether there are differences in the degree to which terminological subcategories in this field lend themselves to popularization. Empirically, the investigation is based on a corpus of two derivationally related text types: The specialized pharmaceutical genre named Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC) and the patient-oriented counterpart, the so-called Patient Information Leaflet (PIL), which contains user-relevant information, recontextualized from the SmPC, about the medicinal product in question. The PILs are legally required to be written in a lay-friendly register. We identified four categories of specialized terms from the SmPCs that are recontextualized in the PILs: a) terms for medical disorders, b) biochemical and microbiological terms, c) terms for medicinal products or the active substances of these, and d) terms for so-called excipients (carrier substances in the drug). Using the so-called ‘coupled-pairs’ methodology known from Translation Studies, whereby lexical items with a medico-pharmaceutical content in the PILs were traced back to their origin in a specialized SmPC term, we identified patterns of popularization strategies that differed markedly between the four categories of terms: Terms for medical disorders are either replaced with established core-vocabulary equivalents, or their constituent Greek/Latin morphemes or words are translated more or less directly into English. Biochemical/microbiological terms and terms for medicinal products/active substances, on the other hand, are not actually replaced by such reformulations, but are in virtually all cases retained in the PILs and accompanied by a definition. Excipients, it turned out, are in effect not popularized at all, but transferred directly from the SmPC without any kind of reformulation or explanation. We argue that these different types of strategy, i.e. a) replacement by a core-vocabulary equivalent or translation, b) definition and c) direct transfer, represent a scale of popularization, with replacement strategies representing the top degree and direct transfer the lowest degree. Since the findings show a very clear correspondence between the different types/degrees of popularization and the terminological subcategories, we conclude that this overlap indicates clear differences in popularization potential: When a given category of terms is consistently popularized by means of one type of strategy rather than others, this must be taken as indicative of what the category in question allows. We also venture explanations for the observed divergences in popularization potential. Thus, in the medical-disorder category of terms, etymology turned out to a key factor, since the Greek/Latin origin of most of these terms makes for easy translatability (in the ordinary, i.e. interlingual, sense of the word). This is because the original Greek/Latin constituent morphemes/words of these terms represent a wholly non-specialized vocabulary that is easily translated into core English lexis. In the biochemical/microbiological category and the medicinal-products/active-substances category, this etymologically based translatability is absent, and so the only other popularization strategy available appears to be definition. Definitions using terms understandable to the lay reader are, however, possible in these two categories, since the salient parts of the definitions turned out to consist in references to bodily functions or diseases for which lay terms exist, or for which the medical term is typically known to the average lay reader. The absence of explanatory definitions in the excipients category, on the other hand, is in all likelihood due, not to the impossibility of defining such terms (since any specialized term is definable), but to the impossibility of providing definitions based on concepts known to the lay reader. Excipient terms denote substances that are only definable by reference to their chemical composition and to their location within a specialized taxonomy of chemical substances and compounds – a taxonomy, in other words, which is bound to be beyond the chemical knowledge of most lay readers. With medico-pharmaceutical terminology as a case in point, the implications of the paper’s findings are that popularization is not equally possible across terminological categories. Hence popularization may at best be able to only partially bridge the knowledge divide, or asymmetry, between experts and non-experts. The investigation is here limited to a particular field of LSP terminology, i.e. medicine, and a particular language, i.e. English. Even so, theoretically, the paper may be seen as representing a first step towards creating a taxonomy of popularization strategies that may be further explored and refined in future studies encompassing other specialized domains and other languages than English.

Hyperlinkkien funktiot ja kirjoittaja- ja lukijapositiot

Artikkelissa tarkastellaan hyperlinkkien funktioita yleistajuisissa ja tutkittuun tietoon perustuvissa terveys- ja ravitsemusaiheisissa blogiteksteissä sekä blogiteksteihin linkkien kautta kirjoittuvia kirjoittaja- ja lukijapositioita. Ydinaineistona on 30 suomenkielistä ja yleistajuista blogitekstiä. Ydinaineistosta tehtyjä havaintoja tuetaan vertailuaineistolla, toisten vastaavien asiantuntijoiden kirjoittamilla blogiteksteillä. Teoreettisena tausta-ajatuksena analyysissa on käsitys kielen dialogisuudesta: kielenkäyttö on aina osa vuorovaikutuksen jatkumoa, ja kielelliset valinnat ohjaavat sitä, minkälainen kirjoittaja ja lukija vuorovaikutuksessa rakentuu. Hyperlinkkien funktioita lähestytään sen kielellisen toiminnan kautta, jonka osaksi linkit tekstissä asettuvat. Artikkelissa havainnollistetaan, miten hyperlinkin perusfunktion, viittaamisen, lisäksi linkit saavat muitakin funktioita, kuten lisätiedon tai lähdeviitteiden tarjoaminen, argumentin tukeminen sekä tekstin puheenaiheen kontekstualisoiminen. Linkkien avulla kirjoittaja voi myös osoittaa kuulumistaan muiden asiantuntijoiden kanssa samaan yhteisöön ja vahvistaa omaa asiantuntija-asemaansa. Blogiteksteihin kirjoittuvia lukijapositioita puolestaan tarkastellaan yhtäältä linkkien kohdetekstien kautta: kun linkeillä viitataan tutkimusartikkeliin, lukijapositioon voi hahmottua asiantuntija, ja kun viitataan yleistajuiseen tekstiin, lukijaksi voi hahmottua maallikko. Toisaalta pelkästään linkin kohdeteksti ei määrittele lukijapositioita, sillä myös linkkiä ympäröivä kielellinen toiminta ja linkin ankkuriteksti rakentavat kirjoittaja–lukija-suhdetta: missä määrin kirjoittaja ohjaa lukijaa hyperlinkin avaamiseen ja auttaa kohdetekstin relevanssin tulkinnassa. Lisäksi blogitekstien kynnystekstit, kuten blogin tarkoitusta esittelevä teksti, avaavat blogille tietynlaisia lukijapositioita. Siten tieteellisiinkin teksteihin viittaavien linkkien voi tulkita vahvistavan kirjoittajan asiantuntijuutta myös maallikkolukijan silmissä. Hyperlinks: Functions, writers-in-the-text and readers-in-the-text The article studies what kinds of functions hyperlinks have in popular health and nutrition blog posts and what kinds of writers-in-the-text and readers-in-the-text are created through the hyperlinks. The main data consists of 30 Finnish popular blog posts written by a health and nutrition expert. Results from the main data are supported with posts written by other experts from the same field. The theoretical framework of the article is that of dialogism: language is always part of interaction, and the writer-in-the-text and the reader-in-the-text are constructed through linguistic choices within that interaction. The article presents the types of patterned sequence of actions in which hyperlinks interact in the blog posts and what kinds of functions – besides merely referential – they fulfil: they are used to provide additional information, as references to studies, to back up arguments, and to contextualise discourse topics. With the help of hyperlinks, the writer can also demonstrate belonging to a group of other experts and establish her/his position as an expert. When analysing the readers-in-the-text of the blog posts, the focus is on the target texts behind the links: academic articles can be seen as constructing an expert reader, and popular texts a lay reader. However, the target text is not the only factor determining the reader-in-the-text, but the sequential actions surrounding the link and the anchor text construct the reader–writer relationship: to what extent does the writer guide the reader to open the hyperlink and help her/him to interpret the relevance of the target text? In addition, the paratexts of blog posts, i.e. the texts introducing the blog’s aims, also create certain kinds of readers. Thus, hyperlinks that refer to academic texts can be seen to construct the authority of the writer also in the eyes of a lay reader.

The Science of Computing

Over the last 50 years computing technologies have forever changed the way we learn, work, and most recently, how we live. This book provides a conceptual overview of the scientific concepts and ideas underlying computing. Written for the lay reader, the book begins with the monoliths of Stonehenge, calculators like the abacus and the Pascaline, The Babbage Analytical and Difference Engines, the pioneering tube-based computers, the personal computer, and finally cell phones and tablets. Topics covered include algorithms, programming languages, operating systems, processors, computer architecture, and many others. The entire third section of the book concerns future directions of many of these topics. Throughout, the emphasis of the exposition is on the science and mathematics on which modern computing technologies are based