El valor estructural de la magia en el universo pastoril de Lope de Vega

The different aspects of magic became an essential ingredient of bucolic universe since the origin of pastoral genre. Within an idealized and utopic frame, magic built a bridge towards transcendence, and balanced the disharmony created by human love emotions within Arcadian microcosm. This concept of magic became infused to Sixteenth century pastoral novel through Neoplatonism and Hermetic tradition. From a narratological point of view, magic episodes became indispensable to complete the philosophical meaning of the works. Lope de Vega, in La Arcadia, published in 1598, fully participated from this tradition, though he will approach the convention from a particular dramatic-like perspective. And it was precisely in pastoral comedias where the Fénix ends up deconstructing bucolic code to remodel it as a mere vestige of the tradition and treat magic as a humorous ingredient.

Value Priorities and Content of Religiosity - New Research Perspectives

In this study the relationship of religiosity and value priorities is differentiated, based on a multidimensional measurement of different contents of religiosity. The structure of values is conceptualized using Schwartz’ (1992) two orthogonal dimensions of Self-transcendence vs. Self-enhancement and Openness to change vs. Conservation. The relations between these two dimensions and eight religious contents, ranging from open-minded to more close-minded forms of religiosity, were tested in a sample of church attenders (N = 685), gathered in Germany. The results show, that depending on the content of religiosity, different values are preferred (self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition and security values). The results indicate the importance of the content of religiosity for predicting value-loaded behaviors.

Systemic evaluation - a contribution to Swiss development research

Systemic thinking may be traced hack to several roots. Some of them can he found in Taoism, the basic concepts of which are the achievement of cosmic harmony and a well-balanced social order. Others can be found in Greek philosophy. Similarly, modern physics in its most advanced branches is now recognizing basic aspects of these same roots in a scientific guise. The more the process of research and theory building advances, the more phenomena are recognized as complex and interdependent with other phenomena. Interdisciplinary research and the constitution of new disciplines are contributing to a scientific approximation of integral reality, which is becoming more and more like the one everyone knows as prescientific. The transcendence of the narrow boundaries of positivist sciences seems to be becoming a necessity for scientific evolution. The ecological crisis of the twentieth century may itself lead to increased systemic thinking, and it is in full awareness of the fact that there are no simple solutions that the systemic evaluator tries to cope with the problems of the dynamics of social and political interventions in the Third World as a means of development co-operation..