Epistemology. Wisdom, Knowledge, and Revelation (2021)

is a possible but non-standard interpretation of the Hebrew, ensured that the text would become critical. It seemed, to the Arians, to be a clear statement that Christ had been created by God. The orthodox solutions were initially varied, but the one that won the day hinged on seeing a difference between verse 22, which spoke of the human nature of Christ created by God for the sake of salvation, and the following verses, which spoke of the divine person of the Son, begotten from eternity. The voice of Wisdom in Proverbs eight 2 was thus resolved to be the voice of the divine Son, by whom the worlds were made. The attention this text received should not be regretted; it seems to have been the occasion of significant theological insight, allowing Athanasius, in particular, to clarify the absolute impossibility of a being somehow in-between Creator and creature. However, this singular focus has had certain consequences. One is that some distinctive aspects of the understanding of wisdom in Proverbs have been overlooked. Certain points needed to be largely brushed aside, such as the fact that Wisdom in Proverbs eight is personified as a woman. Furthermore, this attention has meant that Proverbs has been prevented from playing the role it might have played in Christian moral theology, which at consequential points has made use of the concept of wisdom. This paper aims to point out some of the ways in which Proverbs might play such a role. It first seeks to outline the distinctive concept of wisdom in Proverbs. This will be done from the vantage point of what we might call the animal texts in Proverbs. Secondly, it suggests some of the implications this might have for moral theology by considering the thought of Thomas Aquinas. 2 " Go to the ant, you sluggard. Consider its ways, and be wise " (Prov 6:6). One of the distinctive features of the book of Proverbs is the way it uses animal life to illustrate what it means to be wise and foolish. The ant 3 Abstract submitted: 1 At a number of significant points the Book of Proverbs draws attention to the ways in which various animals illustrate what it is to be wise. Reflection on these texts can provide a different perspective on a number of questions that have been important in the history of philosophy and Christian ethics, to do with the nature of practical reason and the virtues of prudence and wisdom. The animal texts in Proverbs point to a wider conception of wisdom in the book, which calls into question the idea that, as Aristotle and Thomas held, practical wisdom is an intellectual virtue. Practical wisdom, on the contrary, is first and foremost about particular, determinate forms of action. This paper would outline this argument, and begin to sketch its implications for our understanding of deliberation.

Adnan Oktar (Harun Yahya) In this book we are going to tell you about a creature that you know quite well, that you meet everywhere without actually giving it much attention, that is highly skillful, highly social and highly intelligent - "The Ant". Our aim is to review the lives full of miracles of these minute creatures that are never of any significance in our daily lives. Technology, collective work, military strategy, advanced communications network, an astute and rational hierarchy, discipline, perfect city planning… These are fields where human beings may not always be successful enough, but where the ants always are. When you look at these creatures, which are fully armed to defeat tough rivals and to endure the difficult conditions of nature, you may think that all of them are identical. However, each species of the ant genus – and there are thousands of them – has, in fact, different characteristics. We believe that these creatures that have the highest population in the world may open up new horizons for us within the framework of the characteristics referred to above. This book will reveal to us the special and marvelous world of ants. We shall witness the things these ant communities succeed with their tiny bodies and witness that there is absolutely no difference between their fossils, the oldest of which is about 80 million years old, and their counterparts living today, that run to approximately 8800 species. As we explore the special world of ants, this perfect system will earn our admiration and increase the need for thinking and investigating. At the same time, we shall see the mistakes in the theory of evolution and witness Allah's immaculate creation, which is a tremendously important work. In the Qur'an, the type of person who thinks about nature and thus recognizes the omnipotence of Allah is praised as a model for those who believe. The verses below explain this point fully: In the creation of the heavens and the earth, and the alternation of night and day, there are indeed signs for men of understanding: men who celebrate the praises of Allah, standing, sitting, and lying down on their sides, and contemplate the wonders of creation in the heavens and the earth, (saying): "Our Lord! You have not created all this in vain! Glory be to You! Give us salvation from the penalty of the Fire." (Surat Al'Imran, 190-191)

Although knowledge (also called "wisdom" and "understanding" 1 ) is at the center of Proverbs' concern, little is said about how knowledge is created, where it comes from, and how truths-claims are verified. 2 Still, there must have been an implicit epistemology-ideas about what knowledge is and what its sources are. Some propositions were considered true and others false, and the authors of Proverbs believed that they had the means to distinguish them. That is to say, they had an epistemology, albeit unreflective and unsystematic. The present essay tries to describe its main lines.

Old Testament Essays, 2015

Committed to the ethic of industry, also, possibly persuaded by the precarious context of the production of the text of Prov 1-9, the wisdom teacher persuades his (male) students to watch and learn from the ways of the ant (nemālâ). The nemālâ can be regarded as one of the lowest members of the created species. Apart from the optimistic wisdom mentality embedded within Prov 6:6-11, noteworthy is also the inter-connectedness between human beings and nature. The latter reveals the holistic outlook which typified biblical Israel, including the members of the post-exilic community in Yehud.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to contemporary debates about postdisciplinarity by exploring how and why research and reflection on the problematic of wisdom can open up a space for freedom, expression, and disobedience in the ways in which we get to know and hold on to what we know. As a starting point in this enquiry, I review existing conceptualizations of wisdom to highlight Alfred Norton Whitehead's undeservingly obscure definition of wisdom as the way in which we hold knowledge. Taking this definition as my working ground, I show how academic disciplines and postdisciplinarity can be discussed as distinct ways in which we can hold knowledge, whereby the former engender obedience to existing institutional imperatives, and the latter promotes disobedience to established protocols of enquiry and norms of " good " research. Contrary to common expectations, wisdom, I show, need not be associated with a conservative, cautious attitude, but instead can be thought of as an epistemic ideal that cultivates creativity, expression, and disobedient ways of thinking and gathering knowledge. I illustrate my theoretical points with biographical details of my own disobedient attempts to transcend my formal affiliation and training as a human geographer and to open up the narrow disciplinary understandings of wisdom emerging from philosophy and psychology.

I will first show why ants could teach us something about culture as a means of immortality. My view on culture is influenced by Ernst Cassirer and Susanne Langer (and Herder and Mendelssohn, to reach further back). My view on ants, limited as it is, is influenced by Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (1976), a book that my biology teacher back in high school recommended to me, and that has somewhat stuck with me for all those years. I am indeed taking up his ideas of memes, and will try to consider how a more ant-like way of understanding their function could help us expand our notion of individuals within culture.

Journal of Complementary Reflection: Studies in Asouzu. , 2011

Asouzu attacks Aristotle's vertical metaphysics which conceives being in hierarchy as the basis for the apparent misconception of knowledge, being and reality in general. He insists in his horizontal metaphysics that every being serves a missing link of reality and should derive joy from mutual complementation rather than being polarized and dichotomized. In this work, I have pointed out that Asouzu's rather than Aristotle's theory was problematic, in that the structural organisation of nature has not and ought not to be as Asouzu wrongly extrapolated a classless, non-hierarchical and non-dichotomized system. And I addressed this from realistic and logical points of view.

Nova et Vetera, 2020

Springer eBooks, 2012

This article summarizes The Ant Trap: Rebuilding the Foundations of the Social Sciences. The book develops a new model for social ontology, applies it to groups and collective intentionality, and criticizes various forms of individualism. Part One of the book presents two traditional approaches to social ontology and unifies them into the " grounding–anchoring model " for the building of the social world. Part Two shows that individualism is mistaken even for basic facts about groups of people, challenges prevailing views of group intention and action, and illustrates how to approach facts about groups in general.