Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī's letters provide a terse and sometimes contradictory description of a controversy that erupted after he returned to teaching in Nishapur in 499/1106. This account refers to an unnamed Maghribi Māliki who played a role in the controversy by denouncing al-Ghazālī to men of the state at the urging of the latter's Nishapuri enemies. This article proposes an identity for the Maghribi: a Sicilian religious scholar named Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad Ibn Abī al-Faraj al-Māzarī, known as al-Dhakī (d. (...) 510/1116). An examination of seven of his biographies corroborates some charges against al-Ghazālī mentioned in the letters, gives a year for the controversy, and reveals some of the strategies used by al-Ghazālī's enemies to try to cause his downfall. An appendix considers and dismisses the possibility that a surviving critique of Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn entitled al-Kashf wa-l-anbāʾ ʿan kitāb al- Iḥyāʾ was authored by the same al-Māzarī. (shrink)

This report examines the history and significance of indigenous companion animals within traditional Aboriginal society and in early Euro-Australian settlements. Working from historical photographic and anthropological records, the project constructs a visual and written record of these often-transient human-animal relationships, including cockatoos who spoke in Aboriginal language; companion brolgas; and the traditions of raising the young of cassowary, emu, and dingo. It explores different pathways towards shared human and nonhuman animal spaces and how they found common ground outside of a (...) contemporary model of domestication. (shrink)

This introduction provides an overview to a special issue on Critical Healing, which draws on queer theory, disability studies, postcolonial theory, and literary studies to theorize productive engagements between the clinical and cultural aspects of biomedical knowledge and practice. The essays in this issue historicize and theorize diagnosis, particularly diagnosis that impacts trans health and sexuality, homosexuality, and HIV/AIDS transmission. The essays also address racialization, disability, and colonialism through discussions of fiction, film, theoretical memoir, and comics, as well as biomedical (...) discourse and knowledge. (shrink)

The notion that it is possible to construct intelligent machines out of nonorganic material is as old as Greek mythology. Vulcan, the lame god of fire, fabricated young women out of gold to assist him in his labours. He also made the bronze giant Talus, who guarded the island of Crete by running around it three times a day and heaving huge rocks at enemy ships. A single vein of ichor ran from Talus's neck to his heels. He bled to (...) death when he was wounded in the ankle or, according to another myth, when a brass pin in his heel was removed. (shrink)

By acquiring an understanding of the cultural meaning of deafness and acting as a bridge to resources and opportunities, clinicians.

The Andalusi Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī, one of the great figures of the Mālikī tradition, gained his scholarly credentials through a journey to seek knowledge in the East. He commemorated his journey in a travelogue so widely admired that it initiated a new genre of Arabic travel writing. This article examines both the journey and the travelogue as strategies Abū Bakr employed to regain his family’s elite status and property, both lost when the Almoravids overthrew the ṭāʾifa of Seville that (...) his father served as a vizier. (shrink)

This essay discusses critical approaches to culture, difference, and empathy in health care education through a reading of Junot Diaz’s “Wildwood” chapter from the 2007 novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I begin with an analysis of the way that Diaz’s narrative invites readers to imagine and explore the experiences of others with subtlety and complexity. My reading of “Wildwood” illuminates its double-edged injunction to try to imagine another’s perspective while recognizing the limits to—or even the impossibility of—that (...) exercise. I draw on post-colonial theory and feminist science studies to illuminate a text that is created and interpreted in a post-colonial context—the Dominican diaspora in the United States. The essay offers a model of historical and critical analysis that health care educators can use to frame the concept of empathy in the classroom and the clinic. (shrink)

The nursing profession’s emphasis on empathy as essential to nursing care may undermine nurses’ power as a collective and detract from perceptions of nurses’ analytical skills and expertise. The practice of empathy may also obscure and even compound patients’ suffering when it does not fully account for their subjectivity. This essay examines the relation of empathy to women’s agency and explores the role empathy plays in obscuring rather than empowering the suffering other, particularly people who are disabled, through a close (...) reading of Edith Wharton’s 1907 novel, The Fruit of the Tree, and through discussions of empathy and sympathy from literary and disability studies. (shrink)

While organ transplantation has been established in the medical imagination since the 1960s, this technology is currently undergoing a popular re-imagination in the era of global capitalism. As transplantation procedures have become routine in medical centers in non-Western and developing nations and as organ sales and transplant tourism become increasingly common, organs that function as a material resource increasingly derive from subaltern bodies. This essay explores this development as represented in Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook’s 2002 Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, focusing (...) on the ethnic and class characteristics of the global market in organs and possible modes of counter-logic to transplant technologies and related ethical discourses. (shrink)

People with disabilities (PWD) comprise a significant part of the population yet experience some of the most profound health disparities. Among the greatest barriers to quality care are inadequate health professions education related to caring for PWD. Drawing upon the expertise of health professions educators in medicine, public health, nursing, social work, and physician assistant programs, this forum showcases innovative methods for teaching core disability skills and concepts grounded in disability studies and the health humanities. Each of the essays offers (...) practical guidance for developing curricular interventions appropriate for students at various levels of training and familiarity with disability to be implemented in classroom discussions, case-based learning, lectures, panels, and clinical simulations across the full spectrum of pre-health and health professions education. (shrink)

This paper introduces an innovative curricular approach—the Health Humanities Portrait Approach —and its pedagogical tool—the Health Humanities Portrait. Both enable health professions learners to examine pressing social issues that shape, and are shaped by, experiences of health and illness. The Portrait Approach is grounded in a set of “critical portraiture” principles that foster humanities-driven analytical skills. The HHP’s architecture is distinctively framed around a pressing social theme and utilizes a first-person narrative and scholarship to explore how the dimensions of the (...) personal and the structural are mutually constituted. We argue that when creator-educators adopt the Portrait Approach and its critical portraiture principles to design and teach the HHP, they enable learners to become proficient in synthesizing and analyzing—with both depth and breadth—the human and social dimensions of patients’ lives. This inventive curricular intervention provides a needed contribution to health professions education in that it utilizes health humanities methodologies to elucidate the multiple aspects of health, illness, disability, and healthcare. (shrink)

BackgroundDespite rapid growth of the scientific literature, no consensus guidelines have emerged to define the optimal criteria for editors to grade submitted manuscripts. The purpose of this project was to assess the peer reviewer metrics currently used in the surgical literature to evaluate original manuscript submissions.MethodsManuscript grading forms for 14 of the highest circulation general surgery-related journals were evaluated for content, including the type and number of quantitative and qualitative questions asked of peer reviewers. Reviewer grading forms for the seven (...) surgical journals with the higher impact factors were compared to the seven surgical journals with lower impact factors using Fisher’s exact tests.ResultsImpact factors of the studied journals ranged from 1.73 to 8.57, with a median impact factor of 4.26 in the higher group and 2.81 in the lower group. The content of the grading forms was found to vary considerably. Relatively few journals asked reviewers to grade specific components of a manuscript. Higher impact factor journal manuscript grading forms more frequently addressed statistical analysis, ethical considerations, and conflict of interest. In contrast, lower impact factor journals more commonly requested reviewers to make qualitative assessments of novelty/originality, scientific validity, and scientific importance.ConclusionSubstantial variation exists in the grading criteria used to evaluate original manuscripts submitted to the surgical literature for peer review, with differential emphasis placed on certain criteria correlated to journal impact factors. (shrink)

The phenomenology of Japanese dry landscape gardens: Aesthetic and Contemplative “Ways of Seeing”“Phenomenology,” says Lisa Guenther, “begins with a description of lived experience and reflects on the structures that make this experience possible and meaningful.” Taking our lead from this simple yet instructive description of the phenomenological approach, this paper will explore the phenomenology of Japanese dry landscape gardens through some key characteristics of Japanese aesthetics and the non-dual philosophical underpinnings of Zen Buddhist thought. In doing this, we (...) will look at how contemplative engagement with these types of gardens generates meaning(s) in the lived experience of viewers. In other words, the aesthetic and contemplative principles that inform dry landscape garden design will provide us with a framework for the objective, given aspects of the experience while phenomenological analysis will grant us a window into the subjective, felt aspects of the experience. Our discussion will focus on what is called the “quintessential” Zen garden; the dry stone garden at Ryōan-ji Zen temple in Kyoto.After an overview of the “art of garden making” in Japan, our discussion will outline the aesthetic and contemplative sensibility that informs the Zen tradition of dry landscape garden design. In particular, the discussion will focus on the non-dual emphasis that underlies Zen thought and practice and explore how experiential reports of viewing Ryōan-ji echo this non-dual sensibility. The discussion will explore this experience as a “two-way” understanding or dialogue that constitutes an aesthetic and contemplative “literacy” resulting in the felt experience of a new or different “way of seeing”. (shrink)

This essay examines the relationship between slavery and plant knowledge for cultivational activities and medicinal purposes on Isle de France (Mauritius) in the second half of the eighteenth century. It builds on recent scholarship to argue for the significance of slaves in the acquisition of plant material and related knowledge in pharmaceutical, acclimatization, and private gardens on the French colonial island. I highlight the degree to which French colonial officials relied on slaves’ ethnobotanical knowledge but neglected to include such (...) information in their published works. Rather than seeking to explore the status of such knowledge within European frameworks of natural history as an endpoint of knowledge production, this essay calls upon us to think about the plant knowledge that slaves possessed for its practical implementations in the local island context. Both female and male slaves’ plant-based knowledge enriched – even initiated – practices of cultivation and preparation techniques of plants for nourishment and medicinal uses. Here, cultivational knowledge and skills determined a slave’s hierarchical rank. As the case of the slave gardener Rama and his family reveals, plant knowledge sometimes offered slaves opportunities for social mobility and, even though on extremely rare occasions, enabled them to become legally free. (shrink)

With increased urbanization, ecological challenges such as climate change and loss of biodiversity, and stress-related disorders globally posing a major threat to public health and wellbeing, the development of efficient multiple-use strategies for urban green spaces and infrastructures is of great importance. In addition to benefits such as climate and water regulation, food production, and biodiversity conservation, green spaces and features have been associated with various health and wellbeing outcomes from a psychological perspective. Research suggests links between exposure to green (...) environmental qualities and restoration from psycho-physiological stress and attention fatigue, promotion of physical activity, increased neighborhood satisfaction and even reduced mortality. Especially strong associations have been observed in urban and socio-economically challenged areas. Usually such salutogenic, i.e. health-promoting, effects are explained through theories related to the notion of biophilia, i.e. the idea that humans share innate tendencies to attend to natural environments and features that have been beneficial during evolution. This paper assumes an ecological approach to perception and behavior to be fruitful in order to analyze the salutogenic potential of environments such as urban green spaces and to step beyond the “green vs. gray” dichotomy that has been prevalent through much of the research on health-promoting environments. Through an analysis of environmental affordances for certain perceived qualities such an approach is explored through a proposed concept for urban green space use and management, the edible forest garden. Such gardens, based on agroecological principles, have emerged as one of the most promising models regarding ecologically sustainable food production. In addition to potential contributions of importance for urban sustainability and biodiversity, we argue that the inclusion of edible forest gardens in urban green spaces – today globally dominated by lawns – also potentially could reinforce several affordances of salutogenic importance, both in terms of e.g. social cohesion but also in regard to restoration from psycho-physiological stress and attention fatigue. Increased opportunities for contact with nature and processes of food production may also reinforce pro-environmental behaviors in the population and thus also affect long-term sustainability. (shrink)

This examination of gardens--particulary English gardens of the eighteenth century--offers possible links between garden design and the arts.

The concept of geometry may evoke a world of pure platonic shapes, such as spheres and cubes, but a deeper understanding of visual experience demands insight into the perceptual organization of naturalistic form. Japanese gardens excel as designed environments where the complex fractal geometry of nature has been simplified to a structural core that retains the essential properties of the natural landscape, thereby presenting an ideal opportunity for investigating the geometry and perceptual significance of such naturalistic characteristics. Here, fronto-parallel (...) perspective, asymmetrical structuring of the ground plane, spatial arrangement of garden elements, tuning of textural qualities and choice of naturalistic form, are presented as a set of physical features that facilitate a systematic analysis of Japanese garden design per se, as well as the geometry of the particular naturalistic features that it aims to enhance. Comparison with Western landscape design before and after contact between Western and Eastern hemispheres illustrates the degree of naturalness achieved in the Japanese garden, and suggests how classical Western landscape design generally differs in this regard. It further reveals how modern Western gardens culminate in a different naturalistic geometry, thus also a distinctly different vision of the natural landscape, even if these designs were greatly influenced by the gardens of China and Japan. (shrink)

The thesis explores the adequacy of five well-known conceptions of art to the case of gardens. It concludes that, of those conceptions, the cluster theory is best suited to the case of gardens.

In this book Miller challenges contemporary aesthetic theory to include gardens in an expanded definition of art.

Gardens have long been spaces of spiritual reflection, philosophical contemplation, and religious symbolism, serving as sacred sites that connect humanity with nature, transcendence, and cosmic harmony. This study examines the spiritual and metaphysical dimensions of the _New Su Style Garden_, focusing on the application of artistic conception techniques and symbolic vocabulary in the expression of sacred space. By exploring the ways in which these gardens integrate classical Su-style principles with modern innovation, this research highlights how spatial aesthetics and (...) symbolic meaning contribute to a deeper engagement with religious and philosophical thought. While rooted in the heritage of classical Chinese gardens, the _New Su Style Garden_ extends beyond mere architectural form to embody Daoist, Confucian, and Buddhist cosmological principles. Through qualitative research methods, including field investigation and literature analysis, this study takes the _spirit of place_ as a central theme in examining how garden spaces evoke transcendental experiences. The research investigates the artistic techniques used to shape spiritual atmospheres in contemporary garden design, illustrating how pathways, water elements, and symbolic structures align with notions of balance, impermanence, and meditative harmony. Furthermore, by analyzing the role of symbolic interpretation in these gardens, this paper explores how visual metaphors—such as bridges representing spiritual transition or rocks symbolizing permanence and change—serve as conduits for religious and philosophical reflection. This study argues that the _New Su Style Garden_ is not merely an aesthetic innovation but also a contemporary manifestation of sacred space, blending artistic tradition with spiritual symbolism to foster a renewed connection between humanity and the metaphysical order. By examining the intersection of religious philosophy, artistic conception, and cultural inheritance, this paper provides insights into the role of garden spaces as places of spiritual retreat and existential contemplation. Future research should further explore how contemporary garden design continues to serve as a medium for theological and philosophical engagement, shaping the way individuals experience sacredness and transcendence in modern landscapes. (shrink)

Although gardens are typically appreciated as peaceful spaces of apolitical serenity, this essay highlights how they can provide new sites and sensibilities that complicate our understanding of politics. First it compares imperial gardens in China, Thailand, and Russia to examine how they heterotopically construct social order and world order. Here heterotopia not only integrates a diverse assemblage of materials from Europe and Asia, but also plays with different ideologies, experiences, and concepts. The paper then considers how these aesthetic (...) conventions and practical techniques explain ideology and excite affect at two national war memorials: the Nanjing Massacre Memorial in China and the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan. Here garden-building is theory-building: by producing new sites and sensibilities, it creatively shapes our understanding of politics, social order, and world order. (shrink)

A rhetoric of refuge and escape is a consistent feature of the world’s great garden traditions. The connections between a desire for escape, need for refuge and disquieting sense that life is no longer what it ought to be gestures to a complex conception of garden appreciation. I explore these connections using Christian, Islamic, and Chinese garden traditions. In them one finds a conception of certain gardens as places of moral refuge from the corruption and failings of the mainstream (...) world. (shrink)

To determine the role Latino community gardens play in community development, open space, and civic agriculture, we conducted interviews with 32 community gardeners from 20 gardens, and with staff from 11 community gardening support non-profit organizations and government agencies. We also conducted observations in the gardens, and reviewed documents written by the gardeners and staff from 13 support organizations and agencies. In addition to being sites for production of conventional and ethnic vegetables and herbs, the gardens (...) host numerous social, educational, and cultural events, including neighborhood and church gatherings, holiday parties, children’s activities, school tours, concerts, health fairs, and voter registration drives. In some cases, the gardens also serve to promote community activism. The primary concern of gardeners is to secure land tenure in the face of pressures to develop the garden sites for housing. The support organizations and agencies provide help with land tenure, as well as with advocacy, organization, and horticultural practices. Although the role of the Latino gardens in community development appears to be more important than their role in open space or agricultural production, the gardens can also be viewed as unique “participatory landscapes” that combine aspects of all three movements, as well as provide a connection between immigrants and their cultural heritage. (shrink)

Creating and caring for a garden is a long-term project whose success requires commitment and devotion and love and proper performance of a range of activities that involve virtues and sensibilities like attentiveness, carefulness, humility, imaginativeness, and sensitivity to the natures and needs of plants and animals. In this chapter, I elaborate this conception of gardens and explore its relationship to artistic activities, like composing poetry or performing music. My focus are Confucianism and Daosim and their accounts of the (...) relationships between cultured practices, ethics and the arts, and garden-practices. (shrink)

Read as an inclusio, a ‘growing up’ story, the Phaedrus illustrates the risks and benefits of writing. Accepting writing’s mere semblance of wisdom and knowledge threatens de-skilling, our failing to cultivate the wisdom and ethical judgment—phronēsis—required for self-knowledge and contentment (eudaimonia): writing can also remind. Young Phaedrus grows up by learning the strengths and limits of both literacy and orality in order to use these tools properly. These lessons are vitally central to our own efforts to grow up in our (...) AI-saturated age. Reviewing the origins and machineries of both classic and generative AI illustrates their strengths and limits, teaching us their proper use as complements to human judgment as computationally intractable. A concrete example of using LLMs in research and writing exploits their strengths while sustaining the cultivation of judgment and contentment. Socrates’s indirect pedagogy is exemplary for contemporary teachers guiding students learning to grow up with AI. (shrink)

Garden of Wisdom: Timeless Teachings in an AI Era is a transformative exploration of the intersection between ancient wisdom and modern technology. This book offers a comprehensive framework for the ethical evolution of artificial intelligence, integrating timeless principles from biblical narratives, ecological systems, and quantum consciousness. The book introduces groundbreaking concepts like Angelic Intelligence (AI), Nature Intelligence (NI), and regenerative design, urging readers to harmonize technological advancements with sustainability and human dignity. It addresses the challenges of the AI era with (...) actionable strategies such as the Kosmic Tree of Life and Circadian AI, fostering a vision of a future guided by ethics and interconnectedness. Garden of Wisdom is not just a guide for AI professionals but a call to humanity to co-create a flourishing, sustainable world. (shrink)

In the cities of industrialized countries, the sudden keen interest in urban agriculture has resulted, inter alia, in the growth of the number and diversity of urban collective gardens. While the multifunctionality of collective gardens is well known, individual gardeners’ motivations have still not been thoroughly investigated. The aim of this article is to explore the role, for the gardeners, of the food function as one of the functions of gardens, and to establish whether and how this (...) function is a motivating factor for them. We draw on a set of data from semi-structured interviews with 39 gardeners in 12 collective gardens in Paris and Montreal, as well as from a survey on 98 gardeners and from field observations of the gardeners’ practices. In the first part we present the nature and diversity of garden produce, and the gardeners’ assessment thereof. In the second part we describe the seven other functions mentioned by the gardeners, which enables us to situate the food function in relation to them. We conclude that the food function is the most significant function of the gardens, and discuss the implications for practitioners and policy makers. (shrink)

Western art gardens have enjoyed a chequered relationship with philosophical aesthetics. At different times, they have been both lauded and rejected as exemplars of art, and, for most of the last 150 or so years, they have been largely ignored. However, during the last 25 years, there has been a welcome resurgence of philosophical interest in such gardens. This study situates the work stemming from this revival of interest in its historical context and assesses its adequacy in accounting (...) for gardens in accordance with a range of pan-art criteria. The study argues that contemporary philosophical accounts of gardens are inadequate in some important ways, particularly with respect to gardens’ temporality, ontology, and arthood, and the ways in which gardens are experienced. In response to the arguments of Amie Thomasson, Dominic McIver Lopes, and some other contemporary philosophers, which advocate philosophical accounts of individual arts rather than pan-art accounts, the study develops a partial, new account of gardens that aims to remedy the perceived inadequacies in existing accounts. The new account claims that gardens are singular, not multiple, artworks and that they have an identity not unlike that possessed by humans and other animals; that, metaphorically speaking, our garden experiences may be helpfully illuminated by the application of theories developed in the context of contemporary, improvisatory dance; and that the “ordinariness” of many of gardens materials may be better understood in terms of Arthur Danto’s claim that esse est interpretari, that is, that meaning and value derive from the interpretative process. The new account also proposes personhood as a potentially useful heuristic for understanding how gardens are experienced and understood. The concept of “garden,” and the related constitutive garden aspects, features, and issues are established at the opening of the study with reference to an actual garden. Thereafter, the sources on which the study draws, and which it critiques, are all archival. They include recent philosophical monographs by Mara Miller (The Garden as Art), Stephanie Ross (What Gardens Mean), and David Cooper (A Philosophy of Gardens), and a range of historical and other contemporary monographs and papers written by philosophers, garden historians, and landscape architects and theorists. (shrink)

An introduction to slow gardening -- Garden psychology -- Carving out your space -- Plants: the real deal -- Nuts and bolts: universal garden practices -- Getting slow in the garden.

Ideally, all residences are supposed to have a “garden” to fulfill the human need for outdoor activities; however, practically, many dwellings are not suited for such a luxury due to limiting conditions, though buildings or walls are often arranged to form enclosed external space used for outdoor life.

This chapter contains sections titled: Education as Gardening: An Image of Natural Growth Do We All Possess Fertile Souls? The Gardener: What is His Contribution to the Growth of the Seeds? Gardening: Labor and Reward Plato as Gardener Dialogue Between Text and Reader: Cultivating the Seeds Teaching Us to Become Gardeners of Our Souls Plato's Literary Garden: A Corpus of Works Gardeners of Souls Notes.