PREPRINT .
The following review of the purchased book "The Cerebral Cortex and Thalamus" (Oxfor... more PREPRINT .
The following review of the purchased book "The Cerebral Cortex and Thalamus" (Oxford 2024) was posted on Amazon on Oct 8, 2024 (not a bad day for Boole). Here is the promised in the promised place.
The time for a Thalamus Manifesto has come (building on the Boole Manifesto)
Why would a humanities scholar like the present writer be interested in the book cited above? Because human thinking resides (mostly?) in the thalamus and the cortex. So what does the book state about the nature of human thinking and about the function of the thalamus generally in the brain and in relation to the brain's OS? Nothing at all. In the case of human thinking, the negative conclusion is obvious from the mere absence of any statements on the matter anywhere in the book. In the case of the thalamus, the negative conclusion is obvious from the fact that the "much larger question" formulated as "Why do we have a thalamus?" is presented as a question without an answer (p. 779). There is no doubt that the above book is all first-rate science reporting scores of new developments and discoveries. 800 pages of it. All the countless credentials speak for themselves. As a counterpoint, in an 11-page "Thalamus Manifesto" (10/8/2024) made available on said date (not a bad day for Boole) as a preprint on the sites researchgate and academia, it is suggested that a complete theory of the brain's OS has already been proposed in an entirely Boolean perspective. The Boolean theory is described in a "Boolean Manifesto" also available as a preprint on the same sites and featuring bibliographical references to many hundreds of pages of published clarifications available in Open Access on the Internet. It was the recent confrontation with drawings of maps of the neurons in the brain's thalamus and cortex, such as S. Cajal's celebrated ones, that made it obvious that the Boolean theory begins in the same place as the brain's OS in the physical thalamus plus cortex. In that same perspective, the brain's OS (how we think rationally) without the thalamus would be like France without Paris or England without London. The thalamus is the mother board. Hence the proposed Thalamus Manifesto (to be developed as articles). The thalamus is now also universally regarded as a relay of some kind. It is not a relay at all.
The aim of this paper is to propose and describe a new approach to teaching and learning the pron... more The aim of this paper is to propose and describe a new approach to teaching and learning the pronunciation of Modern Standard Chinese. It may be called the 有无道 yǒu wú dào “The Way of What’s-There and What’s-Not-There.” Both name and method are inspired by, 1) a verse in the Dao De Jing, a seminal work traditionally attributed to the sage Laozi, and 2) the dawning digital age initiated by G. Boole in which the Zeros are as important as the Ones, the absences as important as the presences. The method does not aim to replace tried and true methods. It is meant as a possible supplement. It is also designed to be 100% practical and accessible to anyone. Anyone of whatever age might use it as a guide to pronounce Chinese more accurately. The method involves learning and teaching the pronunciation of a sound by comparing what it is (有 yǒu ) with what it is not (无 wú), what it is not being the pronunciation of (an)other sound(s). Part of this paper was read in October 2021, half in Chinese and half in English, at the 10th International Conference of the New England Chinese Language Teachers Association (NECLTA), organized by Tufts University in Boston and held remotely due to Covid. The title was: 努力准确发音普通话: 西方初学者的一些观察 “Struggling to Pronounce Mandarin Accurately: Observations by a Beginner from the West.”1 The content has evolved and expanded considerably while producing this written paper. With the rise of China and the internet in the past twenty to thirty years, there are plenty of handbooks and videos teaching the pronunciation of Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin, which is strictly speaking the language spoken by officials in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Instead of 准确发音 zhǔnquè fāyīn “pronounce accurately,” the title originally had 正确发音 zhèngquè fāyīn “pronounce correctly.” But 正确 zhèngquè “correctly” may have moral overtones. Moreover, it is possible, I believe, to pronounce Mandarin “accurately” with a (slight) accent. Getting rid of an accent entirely is not easy, if not impossible. Then again, pronouncing a language accurately with an accent may have its charms.
Can one more discussion add anything new? I believe it can. Ideally, an oral presentation and teaching probes would have complemented the present paper. Being restricted to writing, this presentation therefore comes with unfortunate limitations. In contemplating all the proposals presented in this paper, it may be useful for a teacher to guide students through all the steps.
The aim of this paper is to propose and describe a new approach to teaching and learning the pron... more The aim of this paper is to propose and describe a new approach to teaching and learning the pronunciation of Modern Standard Chinese. It may be called the 有无道 yǒu wú dào "The Way of What's-There and What's-Not-There." Both name and method are inspired by, 1) a verse in the Dao De Jing, a seminal work traditionally attributed to the sage Laozi, and 2) the dawning digital age initiated by G. Boole in which the Zeros are as important as the Ones, the absences as important as the presences. The method does not aim to replace tried and true methods. It is meant as a possible supplement. It is also designed to be 100% practical and accessible to anyone. Anyone of whatever age might use it as a guide to pronounce Chinese more accurately. The method involves learning and teaching the pronunciation of a sound by comparing what it is (有 yǒu) with what it is not (无 wú), what it is not being How to cite this paper: Depuydt, L. (2024). Teaching and Learning the Pronunciation of Mandarin: The 有无道 yǒu wú dào "The Way of yǒu wú", Part I (Perspective; Method; The 12i).
This article presents four (4) additions to a book on the brain's OS published by SciRP in 2015 [... more This article presents four (4) additions to a book on the brain's OS published by SciRP in 2015 [1]. It is a kind of appendix to the book. Some familiarity with the earlier book is presupposed. The book itself proposes a complete physical and mathematical blueprint of the brain's OS. A first addition to the book (see Chapters 5 to 10 below) concerns the relation between the afore-mentioned blueprint and the more than 2000-year-old so-called fundamental laws of thought of logic and philosophy, which came to be viewed as being three (3) in number, namely the laws of 1) Identity, 2) Contradiction, and 3) the Excluded Middle. The blueprint and the laws cannot both be the final foundation of the brain's OS. The design of the present paper is to interpret the laws in strictly mathematical terms in light of the blueprint. This addition constitutes the bulk of the present article. Chapters 5 to 8 set the stage. Chapters 9 and 10 present a detailed mathematical analysis of the laws. A second addition to the book (Chapter 11) concerns the distinction between the laws and the axioms of the brain's OS. Laws are part of physics. Axioms are part of mathematics. Since the theory of the brain's OS involves both physics and mathematics, it exhibits both laws and axioms. A third addition (Chapter 12) to the book involves an additional flavor of digitality in the brain's OS. In the book, there are five (5). But brain chemistry requires a sixth. It will be called Existence Digitality. A fourth addition (Chapter 13) concerns reflections on the role of imagination in theories of physics in light of the ignorance of deeper causes. Chapters 1 to 4 present preliminary matter, for the most part a brief survey of general concepts derived from what is in the book [1]. Some historical notes are gathered at the end in Chapter 14.
This is a survey of the history of a singular time-unit, the Hebrew calendar’s H.eleq “part.” The... more This is a survey of the history of a singular time-unit, the Hebrew calendar’s H.eleq “part.” The h.eleq has now been in use for about a millennium, perhaps a little longer. Its history reaches back to the eighth century b.c.e. The h.eleq is 3⅓ seconds long. No natural event lasts exactly 3⅓ seconds. Rather, 3⅓ seconds are a subdivision of a time-period that does relate to a natural event. 3⅓ seconds fit exactly 765 433 times into 2 551 443⅓ seconds or into 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes 3⅓ seconds. This latter time-period is a value for the average synodic lunar month used in Babylonian and Greek astronomy.
“In the Diaspora an extra day . . . is added to each of the biblical festival days, except for h.... more “In the Diaspora an extra day . . . is added to each of the biblical festival days, except for h.ol ha–moaed and the Day of Atonement. The practice originated because of the uncertainty in the Diaspora of the day on which the Sanhedrin announced the New Moon. Later, when astronomical calculations were relied upon, the sages declared that the custom should nevertheless be accepted as permanent.” Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 6 (Jerusalem 1972) 1244.
This article presents four (4) additions to a book on the brain's OS published by SciRP in 2015 [... more This article presents four (4) additions to a book on the brain's OS published by SciRP in 2015 [1]. It is a kind of appendix to the book. Some familiarity with the earlier book is presupposed. The book itself proposes a complete physical and mathematical blueprint of the brain's OS. A first addition to the book (see Chapters 5 to 10 below) concerns the relation between the afore-mentioned blueprint and the more than 2000-year-old so-called fundamental laws of thought of logic and philosophy, which came to be viewed as being three (3) in number, namely the laws of 1) Identity, 2) Contradiction, and 3) the Excluded Middle. The blueprint and the laws cannot both be the final foundation of the brain's OS. The design of the present paper is to interpret the laws in strictly mathematical terms in light of the blueprint. This addition constitutes the bulk of the present article. Chapters 5 to 8 set the stage. Chapters 9 and 10 present a detailed mathematical analysis of the laws. A second addition to the book (Chapter 11) concerns the distinction between the laws and the axioms of the brain's OS. Laws are part of physics. Axioms are part of mathematics. Since the theory of the brain's OS involves both physics and mathematics, it exhibits both laws and axioms. A third addition (Chapter 12) to the book involves an additional flavor of digitality in the brain's OS. In the book, there are five (5). But brain chemistry requires a sixth. It will be called Existence Digitality. A fourth addition (Chapter 13) concerns reflections on the role of imagination in theories of physics in light of the ignorance of deeper causes. Chapters 1 to 4 present preliminary matter, for the most part a brief survey of general concepts derived from what is in the book [1]. Some historical notes are gathered at the end in Chapter 14.
Rational human intelligence has preoccupied the author since the late 1990s, when he became acqua... more Rational human intelligence has preoccupied the author since the late 1990s, when he became acquainted with G. Boole's Laws of Thought. The resulting publications are listed in the present book. But for a long while, it was not clear to the author what he was doing: Cognitive Science? Logic? Mathematics? Philosophy? G. Boole seemed to think that he was doing mathematics. Then, in late 2012, it became evident to the present author that the theory of rational human intelligence is a theory of physics with its own mathematics. Much is owed to J. C. Maxwell in reaching this conclusion. The long road to J. C. Maxwell is described in the front matter. Later, in the summer of 2014, it became apparent that all of rational human intelligence developed in the brain through the exploitation of a single physical principle. J.-L. Lagrange likewise derives all of the physics of mass and motion from a single principle. Meanwhile, the present author's study of rational human intelligence had branched out into mathematics. When SCIRP proposed to publish the resulting mathematical articles together as a book, it seemed opportune to take stock of where the whole effort is at by describing the developments of 2012 and 2014 in the front matter of the book and describe the five digitalities that make up rational human intelligence in outline:
The script of ancient Egypt is hieroglyphic. Hieroglyphs are stylized and fairly realistic pictur... more The script of ancient Egypt is hieroglyphic. Hieroglyphs are stylized and fairly realistic pictures of beings and objects. In some cursive types of hieroglyphic writing, the pictorial quality has become partly or wholly obscured. In this article, a brief sketch of the historical setting is followed by a description of the various ways in which hieroglyphs put language into writing as ideograms, phonograms, and determinatives. After imperfect attempts dating from approximately 3000 b.c.e. onward, full-fledged hieroglyphic writing emerged at approximately 2500 b.c.e. The hieroglyphic tradition strongly declines from the 2nd century c.e. onward and reaches extinction in the 6th or 7th century c.e. Hieroglyphic writing is one of only a handful of scripts that denote both the signifieds and the signifiers of the signs of which language is composed. A curious asymmetry between ideograms and phonograms is also highlighted.
Dans les annees cinquante, un des grand debats de l'egyptologie eut lieu dans les pages de la... more Dans les annees cinquante, un des grand debats de l'egyptologie eut lieu dans les pages de la RdE. Dans la RdE 10, A.H. Gardiner y a contribue avec un article intitule The Problem of the Month-names. Dans la RdE 11, R.A. Parker a replique avec l'article The Problem of the Month-names : A Reply. Le present travail reprend la these centrale d'un ouvrage anterieur ecrit par l'auteur de ces lignes, Civil Calendar and Lunar Calendar (1997), notamment sur le fait qu'il y a deux problemes concernant les noms de mois egyptiens. Les evenements qui ont mene a ces deux problemes sont presentes comme des actions et des decisions des fabricants anonymes de calendriers. L'identification de ces actions comme si elles etaient les notres peut aider a mieux comprendre le probleme des calendriers egyptiens et aussi pourquoi celui-ci est en relation avec les noms de mois.
... Papers from, the Conference on Egyptian Grammar, Helsing0r 28-30 May 1986, The Carsten Niebuh... more ... Papers from, the Conference on Egyptian Grammar, Helsing0r 28-30 May 1986, The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Studies Publications 1 (Copenhagen: CNI, 1986), and in Lingua Aegyptia: Journal of Egyptian Language Studies 1 (1991); see also Mark ...
This album of photographic plates is a companion volume to the descriptive Catalogue of Coptic Ma... more This album of photographic plates is a companion volume to the descriptive Catalogue of Coptic Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library. It presents a visual record of the Morgan Coptic collection. The Morgan Coptic collection is unrivaled in wealth of Coptic manuscript illumination dating to before AD 1000, including a near monopoly on early Coptic frontispieces. Following a brief introduction and a few images of the desert location near the town of al-Hamuli, where the bulk of the Library's Coptic manuscripts were unearthed in 1910, the body of the album presents the collection for codicologists, art historians, and paleographers under the two categories of Decoration and Script. The album contains a comprehensive record of frontispieces, headpieces, tailpieces (including what may be the oldest Christian illumination), a sampling of marginal ornaments and ornamental initials, specimens of the scripts of most literary manuscripts, and selected documentary texts and bindings. Full concordances between call numbers, plate numbers, and catalogue numbers are also provided.
Journal of the American Oriental Society, Dec 16, 2021
Literature, understood here in the narrow sense as belles lettres-hence excluding, for example, r... more Literature, understood here in the narrow sense as belles lettres-hence excluding, for example, religious literature-first emerges on the world scene in Egypt and Mesopotamia, many centuries before appearing anywhere else. The present focus is on Egypt. One often reads that Egyptian literature took off in the early second millennium B.c.e., in Dynasty 12 (roughly 2000 B.c.e.-1800 B.c.e.), perhaps a little earlier. There is much to be said for this assumption and it has for some time been, and will probably remain, dominant. But in the end, there is no incontrovertible evidence in favor of it, only a rather sizeable set of plausible arguments. Nor is there definite evidence in favor of the existence of Egyptian literature before about 2000 B.c.e. The two main branches of Egyptian literature are narrative texts and wisdom texts. In addition, there are a number of significant works that belong to neither. The Egyptians viewed their earliest literature-composed in the so-called Middle Egyptian stage of the Egyptian language, which dates to the early second millennium B.c.e.-as a kind of classical literature for several centuries. The main evidence is as follows: Long after Middle Egyptian ceased being spoken and the Egyptian language had evolved into its so-called Late Egyptian stage of the later second millennium B.c.e., scribes kept copying Middle Egyptian literature. The overwhelming share of the evidence comes from the desert village of Deir el-Medina, where the artists who worked on the rock tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived. Then, around 1000 B.c.e., Middle Egyptian literature dropped completely off the map. It is not fully clear why. In any event, when an entirely new literary corpus emerged from about 650 B.c.e. onward, it was written in Demotic, the stage of Egyptian following Late Egyptian. There is also literature written in Late Egyptian. Most of it seems to have been composed in Dynasties 19-21, that is, roughly from 1300 B.c.e. to 950 B.c.e.-though some of it, not much, is a little earlier. Late Egyptian literature too ceased being copied after about roughly 950 B.c.e. The substantial Wisdom of Amenenope is a peculiar exception. The extant manuscripts all date to after 1000 B.c.e. Sections of Amenemope are cited in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Proverbs. The late dates of the manuscripts of Amenemope make it easier to account historically for the transmission of some of its sections into Hebrew. Nothing certain is known about the modality of this transmission. The focus of the two volumes under review is on pre-Demotic literature-and especially, though not exclusively, on Middle Egyptian literature. Accordingly, the time frame under investigation is for the most part the thousand-year period of the second millennium B.c.e., from its very beginning to its very end. In terms of subject matter, the volumes' main focus is on dating literary texts. The editors made the unusual decision of publishing two works belonging to different genres under a shared title, Dating Egyptian Literary Texts, namely: 1) the acts of a conference held at Göttingen on June 9-12, 2010 on dating Egyptian literary texts, styled as Volume 1; 2) the published version of A. Stauder's habilitation thesis, styled as Volume 2. It so happened that the conference and the habilitation thesis deal with the same topic and materialized around the same time. The more narrow subject-matter focus of much if not most of both volumes is described in the letter of invitation sent to potential participants to the conference and reprinted at the outset of the acts. It is as follows: "There are a number of literary works written in Middle Egyptian that are preserved only in New Kingdom manuscripts of the later second millennium B.c.e., when Late Egyptian was the spoken
PREPRINT .
The following review of the purchased book "The Cerebral Cortex and Thalamus" (Oxfor... more PREPRINT .
The following review of the purchased book "The Cerebral Cortex and Thalamus" (Oxford 2024) was posted on Amazon on Oct 8, 2024 (not a bad day for Boole). Here is the promised in the promised place.
The time for a Thalamus Manifesto has come (building on the Boole Manifesto)
Why would a humanities scholar like the present writer be interested in the book cited above? Because human thinking resides (mostly?) in the thalamus and the cortex. So what does the book state about the nature of human thinking and about the function of the thalamus generally in the brain and in relation to the brain's OS? Nothing at all. In the case of human thinking, the negative conclusion is obvious from the mere absence of any statements on the matter anywhere in the book. In the case of the thalamus, the negative conclusion is obvious from the fact that the "much larger question" formulated as "Why do we have a thalamus?" is presented as a question without an answer (p. 779). There is no doubt that the above book is all first-rate science reporting scores of new developments and discoveries. 800 pages of it. All the countless credentials speak for themselves. As a counterpoint, in an 11-page "Thalamus Manifesto" (10/8/2024) made available on said date (not a bad day for Boole) as a preprint on the sites researchgate and academia, it is suggested that a complete theory of the brain's OS has already been proposed in an entirely Boolean perspective. The Boolean theory is described in a "Boolean Manifesto" also available as a preprint on the same sites and featuring bibliographical references to many hundreds of pages of published clarifications available in Open Access on the Internet. It was the recent confrontation with drawings of maps of the neurons in the brain's thalamus and cortex, such as S. Cajal's celebrated ones, that made it obvious that the Boolean theory begins in the same place as the brain's OS in the physical thalamus plus cortex. In that same perspective, the brain's OS (how we think rationally) without the thalamus would be like France without Paris or England without London. The thalamus is the mother board. Hence the proposed Thalamus Manifesto (to be developed as articles). The thalamus is now also universally regarded as a relay of some kind. It is not a relay at all.
The aim of this paper is to propose and describe a new approach to teaching and learning the pron... more The aim of this paper is to propose and describe a new approach to teaching and learning the pronunciation of Modern Standard Chinese. It may be called the 有无道 yǒu wú dào “The Way of What’s-There and What’s-Not-There.” Both name and method are inspired by, 1) a verse in the Dao De Jing, a seminal work traditionally attributed to the sage Laozi, and 2) the dawning digital age initiated by G. Boole in which the Zeros are as important as the Ones, the absences as important as the presences. The method does not aim to replace tried and true methods. It is meant as a possible supplement. It is also designed to be 100% practical and accessible to anyone. Anyone of whatever age might use it as a guide to pronounce Chinese more accurately. The method involves learning and teaching the pronunciation of a sound by comparing what it is (有 yǒu ) with what it is not (无 wú), what it is not being the pronunciation of (an)other sound(s). Part of this paper was read in October 2021, half in Chinese and half in English, at the 10th International Conference of the New England Chinese Language Teachers Association (NECLTA), organized by Tufts University in Boston and held remotely due to Covid. The title was: 努力准确发音普通话: 西方初学者的一些观察 “Struggling to Pronounce Mandarin Accurately: Observations by a Beginner from the West.”1 The content has evolved and expanded considerably while producing this written paper. With the rise of China and the internet in the past twenty to thirty years, there are plenty of handbooks and videos teaching the pronunciation of Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin, which is strictly speaking the language spoken by officials in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Instead of 准确发音 zhǔnquè fāyīn “pronounce accurately,” the title originally had 正确发音 zhèngquè fāyīn “pronounce correctly.” But 正确 zhèngquè “correctly” may have moral overtones. Moreover, it is possible, I believe, to pronounce Mandarin “accurately” with a (slight) accent. Getting rid of an accent entirely is not easy, if not impossible. Then again, pronouncing a language accurately with an accent may have its charms.
Can one more discussion add anything new? I believe it can. Ideally, an oral presentation and teaching probes would have complemented the present paper. Being restricted to writing, this presentation therefore comes with unfortunate limitations. In contemplating all the proposals presented in this paper, it may be useful for a teacher to guide students through all the steps.
The aim of this paper is to propose and describe a new approach to teaching and learning the pron... more The aim of this paper is to propose and describe a new approach to teaching and learning the pronunciation of Modern Standard Chinese. It may be called the 有无道 yǒu wú dào "The Way of What's-There and What's-Not-There." Both name and method are inspired by, 1) a verse in the Dao De Jing, a seminal work traditionally attributed to the sage Laozi, and 2) the dawning digital age initiated by G. Boole in which the Zeros are as important as the Ones, the absences as important as the presences. The method does not aim to replace tried and true methods. It is meant as a possible supplement. It is also designed to be 100% practical and accessible to anyone. Anyone of whatever age might use it as a guide to pronounce Chinese more accurately. The method involves learning and teaching the pronunciation of a sound by comparing what it is (有 yǒu) with what it is not (无 wú), what it is not being How to cite this paper: Depuydt, L. (2024). Teaching and Learning the Pronunciation of Mandarin: The 有无道 yǒu wú dào "The Way of yǒu wú", Part I (Perspective; Method; The 12i).
This article presents four (4) additions to a book on the brain's OS published by SciRP in 2015 [... more This article presents four (4) additions to a book on the brain's OS published by SciRP in 2015 [1]. It is a kind of appendix to the book. Some familiarity with the earlier book is presupposed. The book itself proposes a complete physical and mathematical blueprint of the brain's OS. A first addition to the book (see Chapters 5 to 10 below) concerns the relation between the afore-mentioned blueprint and the more than 2000-year-old so-called fundamental laws of thought of logic and philosophy, which came to be viewed as being three (3) in number, namely the laws of 1) Identity, 2) Contradiction, and 3) the Excluded Middle. The blueprint and the laws cannot both be the final foundation of the brain's OS. The design of the present paper is to interpret the laws in strictly mathematical terms in light of the blueprint. This addition constitutes the bulk of the present article. Chapters 5 to 8 set the stage. Chapters 9 and 10 present a detailed mathematical analysis of the laws. A second addition to the book (Chapter 11) concerns the distinction between the laws and the axioms of the brain's OS. Laws are part of physics. Axioms are part of mathematics. Since the theory of the brain's OS involves both physics and mathematics, it exhibits both laws and axioms. A third addition (Chapter 12) to the book involves an additional flavor of digitality in the brain's OS. In the book, there are five (5). But brain chemistry requires a sixth. It will be called Existence Digitality. A fourth addition (Chapter 13) concerns reflections on the role of imagination in theories of physics in light of the ignorance of deeper causes. Chapters 1 to 4 present preliminary matter, for the most part a brief survey of general concepts derived from what is in the book [1]. Some historical notes are gathered at the end in Chapter 14.
This is a survey of the history of a singular time-unit, the Hebrew calendar’s H.eleq “part.” The... more This is a survey of the history of a singular time-unit, the Hebrew calendar’s H.eleq “part.” The h.eleq has now been in use for about a millennium, perhaps a little longer. Its history reaches back to the eighth century b.c.e. The h.eleq is 3⅓ seconds long. No natural event lasts exactly 3⅓ seconds. Rather, 3⅓ seconds are a subdivision of a time-period that does relate to a natural event. 3⅓ seconds fit exactly 765 433 times into 2 551 443⅓ seconds or into 29 days 12 hours 44 minutes 3⅓ seconds. This latter time-period is a value for the average synodic lunar month used in Babylonian and Greek astronomy.
“In the Diaspora an extra day . . . is added to each of the biblical festival days, except for h.... more “In the Diaspora an extra day . . . is added to each of the biblical festival days, except for h.ol ha–moaed and the Day of Atonement. The practice originated because of the uncertainty in the Diaspora of the day on which the Sanhedrin announced the New Moon. Later, when astronomical calculations were relied upon, the sages declared that the custom should nevertheless be accepted as permanent.” Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 6 (Jerusalem 1972) 1244.
This article presents four (4) additions to a book on the brain's OS published by SciRP in 2015 [... more This article presents four (4) additions to a book on the brain's OS published by SciRP in 2015 [1]. It is a kind of appendix to the book. Some familiarity with the earlier book is presupposed. The book itself proposes a complete physical and mathematical blueprint of the brain's OS. A first addition to the book (see Chapters 5 to 10 below) concerns the relation between the afore-mentioned blueprint and the more than 2000-year-old so-called fundamental laws of thought of logic and philosophy, which came to be viewed as being three (3) in number, namely the laws of 1) Identity, 2) Contradiction, and 3) the Excluded Middle. The blueprint and the laws cannot both be the final foundation of the brain's OS. The design of the present paper is to interpret the laws in strictly mathematical terms in light of the blueprint. This addition constitutes the bulk of the present article. Chapters 5 to 8 set the stage. Chapters 9 and 10 present a detailed mathematical analysis of the laws. A second addition to the book (Chapter 11) concerns the distinction between the laws and the axioms of the brain's OS. Laws are part of physics. Axioms are part of mathematics. Since the theory of the brain's OS involves both physics and mathematics, it exhibits both laws and axioms. A third addition (Chapter 12) to the book involves an additional flavor of digitality in the brain's OS. In the book, there are five (5). But brain chemistry requires a sixth. It will be called Existence Digitality. A fourth addition (Chapter 13) concerns reflections on the role of imagination in theories of physics in light of the ignorance of deeper causes. Chapters 1 to 4 present preliminary matter, for the most part a brief survey of general concepts derived from what is in the book [1]. Some historical notes are gathered at the end in Chapter 14.
Rational human intelligence has preoccupied the author since the late 1990s, when he became acqua... more Rational human intelligence has preoccupied the author since the late 1990s, when he became acquainted with G. Boole's Laws of Thought. The resulting publications are listed in the present book. But for a long while, it was not clear to the author what he was doing: Cognitive Science? Logic? Mathematics? Philosophy? G. Boole seemed to think that he was doing mathematics. Then, in late 2012, it became evident to the present author that the theory of rational human intelligence is a theory of physics with its own mathematics. Much is owed to J. C. Maxwell in reaching this conclusion. The long road to J. C. Maxwell is described in the front matter. Later, in the summer of 2014, it became apparent that all of rational human intelligence developed in the brain through the exploitation of a single physical principle. J.-L. Lagrange likewise derives all of the physics of mass and motion from a single principle. Meanwhile, the present author's study of rational human intelligence had branched out into mathematics. When SCIRP proposed to publish the resulting mathematical articles together as a book, it seemed opportune to take stock of where the whole effort is at by describing the developments of 2012 and 2014 in the front matter of the book and describe the five digitalities that make up rational human intelligence in outline:
The script of ancient Egypt is hieroglyphic. Hieroglyphs are stylized and fairly realistic pictur... more The script of ancient Egypt is hieroglyphic. Hieroglyphs are stylized and fairly realistic pictures of beings and objects. In some cursive types of hieroglyphic writing, the pictorial quality has become partly or wholly obscured. In this article, a brief sketch of the historical setting is followed by a description of the various ways in which hieroglyphs put language into writing as ideograms, phonograms, and determinatives. After imperfect attempts dating from approximately 3000 b.c.e. onward, full-fledged hieroglyphic writing emerged at approximately 2500 b.c.e. The hieroglyphic tradition strongly declines from the 2nd century c.e. onward and reaches extinction in the 6th or 7th century c.e. Hieroglyphic writing is one of only a handful of scripts that denote both the signifieds and the signifiers of the signs of which language is composed. A curious asymmetry between ideograms and phonograms is also highlighted.
Dans les annees cinquante, un des grand debats de l'egyptologie eut lieu dans les pages de la... more Dans les annees cinquante, un des grand debats de l'egyptologie eut lieu dans les pages de la RdE. Dans la RdE 10, A.H. Gardiner y a contribue avec un article intitule The Problem of the Month-names. Dans la RdE 11, R.A. Parker a replique avec l'article The Problem of the Month-names : A Reply. Le present travail reprend la these centrale d'un ouvrage anterieur ecrit par l'auteur de ces lignes, Civil Calendar and Lunar Calendar (1997), notamment sur le fait qu'il y a deux problemes concernant les noms de mois egyptiens. Les evenements qui ont mene a ces deux problemes sont presentes comme des actions et des decisions des fabricants anonymes de calendriers. L'identification de ces actions comme si elles etaient les notres peut aider a mieux comprendre le probleme des calendriers egyptiens et aussi pourquoi celui-ci est en relation avec les noms de mois.
... Papers from, the Conference on Egyptian Grammar, Helsing0r 28-30 May 1986, The Carsten Niebuh... more ... Papers from, the Conference on Egyptian Grammar, Helsing0r 28-30 May 1986, The Carsten Niebuhr Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Studies Publications 1 (Copenhagen: CNI, 1986), and in Lingua Aegyptia: Journal of Egyptian Language Studies 1 (1991); see also Mark ...
This album of photographic plates is a companion volume to the descriptive Catalogue of Coptic Ma... more This album of photographic plates is a companion volume to the descriptive Catalogue of Coptic Manuscripts in the Pierpont Morgan Library. It presents a visual record of the Morgan Coptic collection. The Morgan Coptic collection is unrivaled in wealth of Coptic manuscript illumination dating to before AD 1000, including a near monopoly on early Coptic frontispieces. Following a brief introduction and a few images of the desert location near the town of al-Hamuli, where the bulk of the Library's Coptic manuscripts were unearthed in 1910, the body of the album presents the collection for codicologists, art historians, and paleographers under the two categories of Decoration and Script. The album contains a comprehensive record of frontispieces, headpieces, tailpieces (including what may be the oldest Christian illumination), a sampling of marginal ornaments and ornamental initials, specimens of the scripts of most literary manuscripts, and selected documentary texts and bindings. Full concordances between call numbers, plate numbers, and catalogue numbers are also provided.
Journal of the American Oriental Society, Dec 16, 2021
Literature, understood here in the narrow sense as belles lettres-hence excluding, for example, r... more Literature, understood here in the narrow sense as belles lettres-hence excluding, for example, religious literature-first emerges on the world scene in Egypt and Mesopotamia, many centuries before appearing anywhere else. The present focus is on Egypt. One often reads that Egyptian literature took off in the early second millennium B.c.e., in Dynasty 12 (roughly 2000 B.c.e.-1800 B.c.e.), perhaps a little earlier. There is much to be said for this assumption and it has for some time been, and will probably remain, dominant. But in the end, there is no incontrovertible evidence in favor of it, only a rather sizeable set of plausible arguments. Nor is there definite evidence in favor of the existence of Egyptian literature before about 2000 B.c.e. The two main branches of Egyptian literature are narrative texts and wisdom texts. In addition, there are a number of significant works that belong to neither. The Egyptians viewed their earliest literature-composed in the so-called Middle Egyptian stage of the Egyptian language, which dates to the early second millennium B.c.e.-as a kind of classical literature for several centuries. The main evidence is as follows: Long after Middle Egyptian ceased being spoken and the Egyptian language had evolved into its so-called Late Egyptian stage of the later second millennium B.c.e., scribes kept copying Middle Egyptian literature. The overwhelming share of the evidence comes from the desert village of Deir el-Medina, where the artists who worked on the rock tombs in the Valley of the Kings lived. Then, around 1000 B.c.e., Middle Egyptian literature dropped completely off the map. It is not fully clear why. In any event, when an entirely new literary corpus emerged from about 650 B.c.e. onward, it was written in Demotic, the stage of Egyptian following Late Egyptian. There is also literature written in Late Egyptian. Most of it seems to have been composed in Dynasties 19-21, that is, roughly from 1300 B.c.e. to 950 B.c.e.-though some of it, not much, is a little earlier. Late Egyptian literature too ceased being copied after about roughly 950 B.c.e. The substantial Wisdom of Amenenope is a peculiar exception. The extant manuscripts all date to after 1000 B.c.e. Sections of Amenemope are cited in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Proverbs. The late dates of the manuscripts of Amenemope make it easier to account historically for the transmission of some of its sections into Hebrew. Nothing certain is known about the modality of this transmission. The focus of the two volumes under review is on pre-Demotic literature-and especially, though not exclusively, on Middle Egyptian literature. Accordingly, the time frame under investigation is for the most part the thousand-year period of the second millennium B.c.e., from its very beginning to its very end. In terms of subject matter, the volumes' main focus is on dating literary texts. The editors made the unusual decision of publishing two works belonging to different genres under a shared title, Dating Egyptian Literary Texts, namely: 1) the acts of a conference held at Göttingen on June 9-12, 2010 on dating Egyptian literary texts, styled as Volume 1; 2) the published version of A. Stauder's habilitation thesis, styled as Volume 2. It so happened that the conference and the habilitation thesis deal with the same topic and materialized around the same time. The more narrow subject-matter focus of much if not most of both volumes is described in the letter of invitation sent to potential participants to the conference and reprinted at the outset of the acts. It is as follows: "There are a number of literary works written in Middle Egyptian that are preserved only in New Kingdom manuscripts of the later second millennium B.c.e., when Late Egyptian was the spoken
What an unusual find, just a preprint here for now. A little irreverent, I think, I have my reser... more What an unusual find, just a preprint here for now. A little irreverent, I think, I have my reservations about part of it. My question to Molière would be: "Jean-Baptiste, are you sure you want to put it this way? I know you like stepping on people's toes. But people might be annoyed" (in which case I will be pointing my finger at you).
The theory presented in the book entitled Prolegomena to the Complete Physical-Mathematical Theor... more The theory presented in the book entitled Prolegomena to the Complete Physical-Mathematical Theory of Rational Human Intelligence published by Scientific Research Publishing (2015) and in the more recent article "The Physical Laws and Mathematical Axioms of the Brain's OS and the Traditional Fundamental Laws of Thought of Logic and Philosophy" for Advances in Pure Mathematics 2021, 11, 988-1039, which ties up a loose end to the book (both Open Access and downloadable on www.researchgate.net), is a blueprint. The blueprint is complete. And there can only be one. As a blueprint of a physical and mathematical theory, it plays the same role in the physical and mathematical theory of the brain's OS, or of rational human intelligence, as Newton's laws do in the physical and mathematical theory of mass and motion. There is no way to construct an artificial intelligence that thinks exactly like us other than by starting from the blueprint. The blueprint rests squarely on Boole's work. The general assumption presently is that Boole tried to explain how we think rationally and failed. Quite the opposite is true. And John Venn also thought so. The blueprint is that of Boole's cathedral. The blueprint is ready but the cathedral still needs to be built. It took a while before rockets were sent to Mars following the blueprint of Newton's laws, F = ma and such. How long will it take until we build an electromechanical intelligence that thinks exactly like us based on the proposed blueprint? Difficult to say. But at least, we know where to begin and it is the only possible beginning. Just as there cannot be two different sets of the laws of gravity, yours and mine, his and hers, there cannot be two blueprints of the basic laws of the rational operations of the brain. So if the present blueprint does not do it for you, what is your exclusive alternative? The laws based on Boole's work are of the same level as Newton's. Just as Newton's concern the physical universe, Boole's formulated the laws of the OS of the brain, the most complex structure in the universe.
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Papers by Leo Depuydt
The following review of the purchased book "The Cerebral Cortex and Thalamus" (Oxford 2024) was posted on Amazon on Oct 8, 2024 (not a bad day for Boole). Here is the promised in the promised place.
The time for a Thalamus Manifesto has come (building on the Boole Manifesto)
Why would a humanities scholar like the present writer be interested in the book cited above? Because human thinking resides (mostly?) in the thalamus and the cortex. So what does the book state about the nature of human thinking and about the function of the thalamus generally in the brain and in relation to the brain's OS? Nothing at all. In the case of human thinking, the negative conclusion is obvious from the mere absence of any statements on the matter anywhere in the book. In the case of the thalamus, the negative conclusion is obvious from the fact that the "much larger question" formulated as "Why do we have a thalamus?" is presented as a question without an answer (p. 779). There is no doubt that the above book is all first-rate science reporting scores of new developments and discoveries. 800 pages of it. All the countless credentials speak for themselves. As a counterpoint, in an 11-page "Thalamus Manifesto" (10/8/2024) made available on said date (not a bad day for Boole) as a preprint on the sites researchgate and academia, it is suggested that a complete theory of the brain's OS has already been proposed in an entirely Boolean perspective. The Boolean theory is described in a "Boolean Manifesto" also available as a preprint on the same sites and featuring bibliographical references to many hundreds of pages of published clarifications available in Open Access on the Internet. It was the recent confrontation with drawings of maps of the neurons in the brain's thalamus and cortex, such as S. Cajal's celebrated ones, that made it obvious that the Boolean theory begins in the same place as the brain's OS in the physical thalamus plus cortex. In that same perspective, the brain's OS (how we think rationally) without the thalamus would be like France without Paris or England without London. The thalamus is the mother board. Hence the proposed Thalamus Manifesto (to be developed as articles). The thalamus is now also universally regarded as a relay of some kind. It is not a relay at all.
of the New England Chinese Language Teachers Association
(NECLTA), organized by Tufts University in Boston and held remotely due to Covid. The title was: 努力准确发音普通话: 西方初学者的一些观察 “Struggling to Pronounce Mandarin Accurately: Observations by a Beginner from the West.”1 The content has evolved and expanded considerably while producing this written paper. With the rise of China and the internet in the past twenty to thirty years, there are plenty of handbooks and videos teaching the pronunciation of Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin, which is strictly speaking the language spoken by officials in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Instead of 准确发音 zhǔnquè fāyīn “pronounce accurately,” the title originally had 正确发音
zhèngquè fāyīn “pronounce correctly.” But 正确 zhèngquè “correctly” may have moral overtones. Moreover, it is possible, I believe, to pronounce Mandarin “accurately” with a (slight) accent. Getting rid of an accent entirely is not easy, if not impossible. Then again, pronouncing a language accurately with an accent may have its charms.
How to cite this paper: Depuydt, L. (2024). Teaching and Learning the Pronunciation of Mandarin: The 有无道 yǒu wú dào “The Way of yǒu wú”, Part I (Perspective; Method; The 12i). Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 14, 521-542. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2024.143027 Received: April 30, 2024. Accepted: June 25, 2024. Published: June 28, 2024. Copyright © 2024 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access
L. Depuydt
DOI: 10.4236/ojml.2024.143027 522 Open Journal of Modern Linguistics
Can one more discussion add anything new? I believe it can. Ideally, an oral presentation and teaching probes would have complemented the present paper. Being restricted to writing, this presentation therefore comes with unfortunate limitations. In contemplating all the proposals presented in this paper, it may be useful for a teacher to guide students through all the steps.
Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 6 (Jerusalem 1972) 1244.
The following review of the purchased book "The Cerebral Cortex and Thalamus" (Oxford 2024) was posted on Amazon on Oct 8, 2024 (not a bad day for Boole). Here is the promised in the promised place.
The time for a Thalamus Manifesto has come (building on the Boole Manifesto)
Why would a humanities scholar like the present writer be interested in the book cited above? Because human thinking resides (mostly?) in the thalamus and the cortex. So what does the book state about the nature of human thinking and about the function of the thalamus generally in the brain and in relation to the brain's OS? Nothing at all. In the case of human thinking, the negative conclusion is obvious from the mere absence of any statements on the matter anywhere in the book. In the case of the thalamus, the negative conclusion is obvious from the fact that the "much larger question" formulated as "Why do we have a thalamus?" is presented as a question without an answer (p. 779). There is no doubt that the above book is all first-rate science reporting scores of new developments and discoveries. 800 pages of it. All the countless credentials speak for themselves. As a counterpoint, in an 11-page "Thalamus Manifesto" (10/8/2024) made available on said date (not a bad day for Boole) as a preprint on the sites researchgate and academia, it is suggested that a complete theory of the brain's OS has already been proposed in an entirely Boolean perspective. The Boolean theory is described in a "Boolean Manifesto" also available as a preprint on the same sites and featuring bibliographical references to many hundreds of pages of published clarifications available in Open Access on the Internet. It was the recent confrontation with drawings of maps of the neurons in the brain's thalamus and cortex, such as S. Cajal's celebrated ones, that made it obvious that the Boolean theory begins in the same place as the brain's OS in the physical thalamus plus cortex. In that same perspective, the brain's OS (how we think rationally) without the thalamus would be like France without Paris or England without London. The thalamus is the mother board. Hence the proposed Thalamus Manifesto (to be developed as articles). The thalamus is now also universally regarded as a relay of some kind. It is not a relay at all.
of the New England Chinese Language Teachers Association
(NECLTA), organized by Tufts University in Boston and held remotely due to Covid. The title was: 努力准确发音普通话: 西方初学者的一些观察 “Struggling to Pronounce Mandarin Accurately: Observations by a Beginner from the West.”1 The content has evolved and expanded considerably while producing this written paper. With the rise of China and the internet in the past twenty to thirty years, there are plenty of handbooks and videos teaching the pronunciation of Modern Standard Chinese, also known as Mandarin, which is strictly speaking the language spoken by officials in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Instead of 准确发音 zhǔnquè fāyīn “pronounce accurately,” the title originally had 正确发音
zhèngquè fāyīn “pronounce correctly.” But 正确 zhèngquè “correctly” may have moral overtones. Moreover, it is possible, I believe, to pronounce Mandarin “accurately” with a (slight) accent. Getting rid of an accent entirely is not easy, if not impossible. Then again, pronouncing a language accurately with an accent may have its charms.
How to cite this paper: Depuydt, L. (2024). Teaching and Learning the Pronunciation of Mandarin: The 有无道 yǒu wú dào “The Way of yǒu wú”, Part I (Perspective; Method; The 12i). Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 14, 521-542. https://doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2024.143027 Received: April 30, 2024. Accepted: June 25, 2024. Published: June 28, 2024. Copyright © 2024 by author(s) and Scientific Research Publishing Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access
L. Depuydt
DOI: 10.4236/ojml.2024.143027 522 Open Journal of Modern Linguistics
Can one more discussion add anything new? I believe it can. Ideally, an oral presentation and teaching probes would have complemented the present paper. Being restricted to writing, this presentation therefore comes with unfortunate limitations. In contemplating all the proposals presented in this paper, it may be useful for a teacher to guide students through all the steps.
Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 6 (Jerusalem 1972) 1244.