Spanning a variety of disciplines, this 1995 enquiry focuses on one particular Pauline characteristic: the apostle's habit of making matters of faith the object of logical appraisal. A tracing of the elliptical patterns of argument in Romans 1-8 illustrates this habit and, at the same time, displays how Paul's vigorous persistence in it seems often not to be matched by the solidity, or at any rate the lucidity, of his logic. By viewing Paul against the background of semiology, more especially the semiological theory of Umberto Eco, new light is shed on the genesis of Paul's reasoning. The discussion which ensues is marked by an interesting and productive combination of modern linguistics and classical logic. Moreover, the singular potential of today's techniques of 'fuzzy' logical analysis for measuring the intellectual muscle of Paul's argumentation is brought out dramatically by the uniqueness of his semiological situation. His rationality takes on a new face.

Spanning a variety of disciplines, this 1995 enquiry focuses on one particular Pauline characteristic: the apostle's habit of making matters of faith the object of logical appraisal. A tracing of the elliptical patterns of argument in Romans 1-8 illustrates this habit and, at the same time, displays how Paul's vigorous persistence in it seems often not to be matched by the solidity, or at any rate the lucidity, of his logic. By viewing Paul against the background of semiology, more especially the semiological theory of Umberto Eco, new light is shed on the genesis of Paul's reasoning. The discussion which ensues is marked by an interesting and productive combination of modern linguistics and classical logic. Moreover, the singular potential of today's techniques of 'fuzzy' logical analysis for measuring the intellectual muscle of Paul's argumentation is brought out dramatically by the uniqueness of his semiological situation. His rationality takes on a new face.

This book gives a streamlined introduction to the theory of Seiberg-Witten invariants suitable for second-year graduate students. These invariants can be used to prove that there are many compact topological four-manifolds which have more than one smooth structure, and that others have no smooth structure at all. This topic provides an excellent example of how global analysis techniques, which have been developed to study nonlinear partial differential equations, can be applied to the solution of interesting geometrical problems. In the second edition, some material has been expanded for better comprehension.

Quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts.