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When, nearly half a century ago, the Croall Trustees invited W.L.Davidson to deliver the twentieth series of Croall Lectures, they invited him to sum up, as far as this was possible ,the contribution made by Gifford Lecturers to the study of Theism. Davidson's book, Recent Theistic Discussion, was published in 1921. Since then no further attempt has been made to assess the total Gifford contribution to Natural Theology. of the renewed interest in the subject appropriate to attempt such a survey. There did not appear to be a complete list of published works in any form. The annotated bibliography In the light it seemed in Appendix 3 fills this gap and the thesis itself is an attempt to assess the contribution of Gifford lecturers to our understanding of Natural Theology and its present function. Since the work W3.S begun John MacQuarrie's Twentieth-Century Religious Thought has appeared (1963 ) and although its scope and intention are different the fact that Gifford lecturers and their lectures find such frequent mention is further evidence, if it were needed of our indebtedness to Lord Gifford and his lecturers.

This project considers the possibility of the truth of religion in late modernity by examining the difficulties in understanding the nature of both religious and bodily knowledge because of the continued primacy of intellectual knowledge in Western thought. It looks at the ways in which the body and its knowledge have been represented in the West in Christian thought and practice and in theory, and the models of the body and self which these ideas have produced. It concludes that models which acknowledge the malleability within limits of the human body and the lack of unity of the self more usefully represent the nature of our relationship with the world and our understanding of it than some of the stereotypes of social theory, and that this implies both the necessarily dangerous nature of human knowledge and that reality as a whole might include features which have been dismissed as superstitious by a purely intellectual model of reason.

This dissertation belongs within the field of the philosophy of religion. The thesis proposes three basic ideas. First, there is a kind of religious language and religious experience disregarded in philosophy: the kind of religious language that is philosophically examined is called "mundane-sacred judgment;" the mental state behind that language is called "religious appreciation." Second, these phenomena are relevant to the philosophy of religion and therefore should not be ignored. Third, the philosophical model by which these two linguistic and experiential facts of religion are explicated is aesthetics. Just as metaphysics often supplies the concepts and logical problems associated with, say, the philosophical study of mystical or prayer experience, so it will be shown that the philosophy of aesthetics provides the ideas and difficulties connected with the philosophical study of mundane-sacred judgment and religious appreciation. To show this, the dissertation draws analogies between, on the one hand, "mundane-sacred judgment" and "aesthetic judgment", and, on the other hand, "religious appreciation" and "aesthetic appreciation." It also shows that, like aesthetics, the goals of the philosophical study of mundane-sacred judgment and religious appreciation are (1) to elucidate the meaning of this language and (2) to characterize its associated experience. Because the primary aim of the thesis is to suggest the existence of a neglected religious language and experience, and how they are relevant to philosophy, no single interpretation of them is proffered. Accordingly, the thesis looks at a broad constellation of philosophical ideas - ranging from ancient philosophy, to phenomenology, to analytic philosophy - and how those differing ideas might apply to this subject. Throughout, then, the reader is encouraged and challenged to consider various philosophical interpretations of mundane-sacred judgment and religious appreciation. In this way, the field of philosophical debate underlying these religious issues is delineated.

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The purposes of this study are to understand and compare: the distributions of the particulate and dissolved 210Po and 210Pb in the northern South China Sea and in the east and west sides of the Luzon Strait; the associated biogeochemical processes, including their mechanisms and rates involved in the area; and the disequilibrium between 226Ra and the 210Pb as observed in profiles. Seawater samples were collected from three stations in the northern South China Sea (station I, J, and F) and one station to the east of the Luzon Strait (station S5) using a Rosette sampling system during three Ocean Researcher I cruises (ORI-688 in July, 2003, ORI-707 in February, 2004, and ORI-734 in October, 2004). The dissolved 210Pb in surface water generally displays higher activities (around 14-28 dpm/100kg) relative to deep water, reflecting atmospheric input. The dissolved 210Pb profile as seen at station F displays a maximum of 26 dpm/100kg at 200 m and lower values at about 10 dpm/100kg below 1500 m. Highest value at 28 dpm/100kg was observed at S5 surface water. It is probably due to being on the path of the Kuroshio which has accumulated atmospheric 210Pb continually from the northern Equatorial Current on its way. The mean residence time with respect to particle scavenging is about 0.62 years for total 210Po within a 50 m mixed layer, and ranges between 0.34 to 1.13 years for total 210Pb in the mixed layer. 210Po is deficient relative to 210Pb in most profiles, suggesting that 210Po is more readily scavenged. The mean scavenging residence time is about 87 years for total 210Pb in the deep water at station F, and 60 years at station J. This residence time is longer than that in both the Pacific and East China Sea deep waters, i.e. a lower scavenging rate in the South China Sea. As the upwelling rate is much higher in the South China Sea than in the Pacific, it may effectively reduce the sinking rate of the sinking particulates, resulting in higher 210Pb residence time in the water columns of the South China Sea.

Po-210 and Pb-210 are particle-reactive natural radionuclides which can be removed from seawater by their incorporation with various particulate materials, resulting in radioactive disequilibria with respect to their parent nuclides. Previous studies showed that Po-210/Pb-210 activity ratio in surface seawater ranges from about 0.2 to 1 due to atmospheric input of Pb-210 and effects of biological productivity and upwelling. In order to evaluate the effects of plankton on Po-210 and Pb-210 distributions, plankton samples were collected by surface-trawling of plankton net in Taiwanese water. These plankton samples were analyzed for Po-210 and Pb-210 in order to obtain their concentrations and activity ratio, which may indicate the enrichment or discrimination of these nuclides in the marine planktonic phase around Taiwan. The results show that the Po-210/Pb-210 activity ratio of planktonic samples ranges from 23.06 to 51.40 in northeastern Taiwan, whereas the activity ratio in southwest Taiwan varies within and outside of the sampleing locations: stations 1, 2, 3 and 4 yield range of 10.72-43.90, 16.40-47.87, 13.86-23.37 and 9.35-13.82, respectively. Two marine algae (Sargassum polycystum C.Agardh and Hypnea charoides Lamouroux) yield values of 2.24-8.57, and 3.72-5.96, respectively. These Po-210/Pb-210 activity ratios are much greater than unity, and their activities comparison to those of inorganic particulates support the contention that the plankton preferentially incorporates Po-210 but discriminates against Pb-210. However, the mechanism or process of Po-210 to be incorporated in the plankton remains unclear. In comparison of the activities between Po-210 and Pb-210 in organic particulates, one finds that Po-210 is effectively enriched while Pb-210 is clearly discriminatied by the organic particulates. These results are consistent with those reported in literatures.

Abstract This study belongs to one part of FATES research program, which studies the fate of terrestrial substances in Kaoping river-sea system. The task is to study the components and properties of sediments and spatial distribution of sedimentation rates off the southwest Taiwan by analyzing water content, TOC, CaCO3, grain size, P-wave velocity and radionuclides 210Pb and 137Cs in sediments. Thirty cores collected for this study were divided into three groups based on topography and they are Kaoping continental shelf, slope and canyon. The highest TOC content is 1.53 % in ORI732-ST31 and TOC content ranges from 0.20~0.93 % for the rest of sediments from other stations. The highest CaCO3 content is found in ORI732-ST18, 30, ORI779-ST1, and ST12. Most of the CaCO3 content is greater than 4% at these four stations. Probably because of the lower sedimentation rates that result in less terrestrial substances for diluting the CaCO3. In the shelf and slope regions, the distribution of grain size progressively decreases as the water depth increases. Grain size in the stations farther down the canyon, however, is coarser than those at upper canyon. It suggests that there is other sediment source for stations in the canyon in addition to the Kaoping river. The sedimentation rates derived from 210Pbex profiles range from 0.073~0.168 cm/yr in shelf, 0.033~0.670 and 0.094~0.411 cm/yr in continental slope and canyon, respectively. Sedimentation rates are all less than 0.2 cm/yr in the shelf area, but there are five stations with sedimentation rates higher than 0.2 cm/yr in the slope and canyon areas. Among the five stations, the sedimentation rate is up to 0.670 cm/yr (ORI779-ST9), suggesting that 302~822 m deep in the slope and 975~1156 m deep in the canyon are the deposition centers. In some stations, anomalously low 210Pbex activities exist in surface or sub-surface sediments, indicating that the low 210Pbex activity sediments may be typhoon-induced turbidite sediments. According to Central Weather Bureau¡¦s typhoon catalog, in the year of coring there were seven typhoons striking Taiwan. Among these typhoons, Hai-tang was the strongest one, suggesting that the turbidite sediments mentioned above were likely caused by typhoon Hai-tang. Besides, turbidite sediments appear at water depth of over 700 m, indicating episodic turbidite events are an important way to transport particles offshore.

Pb-210 and Po-210, a parent-daughter pair, are particle-reactive radionuclides. Pb-210 tends to be associated with inorganic particles but Po-210 prefers organic particles. In the context of these characteristics the purpose of this study is to determine Po-210 and Pb-210 in the surface water plankton of the northern South China Sea (SCS) and the Luzon Strait (LS) areas in order to understand their temporal and spatial distributions and the extent of their radioactive disequilibrium. As the LS has provided a pathway for the exchange between the Kuroshio and the SCS waters, the study area has the characteristics of an open ocean and a marginal sea. The plankton Po-210 activities in the study area are about 10~400 dpm/g, but may reach 1200dpm/g in an El Nino year, the effect of which on Po-210 is not clear at present. The Po-210 in the plankton is mainly affected by the surface water Po-210 , biomass concentration, and the Po-210 in the surface water as well as plankton transported from other area(s). If the biomass concentration (as indicated by Chlorophyll-a) increases, the Po-210 in the plankton decreases, i.e. they are inversely correlated. Based on the planktonic Po-210 distribution, the Kuroshio water which has both high Po-210 and high Po-210-bearing plankton has evidently intruded into the northern SCS. The Pb-210 activities of in the plankton vary from 5 to 25dpm/g; the variation trend is similar to that of Po-210 but with much lower activity, resulting in a Po-210/Pb-210 ratio much greater than unity. Compared to the suspended particles, the plankton is highly enriched in Po-210 but it strongly repels Pb-210. Based on earlier studies and this one, the extent of Po-210 enrichment (as indicated by the Po-210/Pb-210 activity ratio) in various organisms increases sequentially from plankton to mussel, large swimmer and then to marine fish, i.e. the higher the level of organism in the food chain, the higher the ratio becomes. However, the Po-210 and Pb-210 activities per unit mass of these organisms are generally lower than those of plankton. Organisms of higher food-chain level may accumulate Po-210 in the digestive system, but part of it may be excreted. Po-210 accumulation does not occur in other parts of these organisms. In terms of adsorption, the plankton with greater surface area to volume ratio, can adsorb more Po-210 resulting in a higher specific activity, whereas large organisms with smaller surface area to volume ratio can adsorb less Po-210 yielding a lower specific activity. The enrichment of Po-210 in various organisms must have been achieved by absorption and adsorption with unknown proportion. Based on a simple box model calculation for the northern SCS water within the upper 100m layer, the excess Po-210 in the planktonic biomass can account for about 70% of the total deficit in this layer. But in the LS area, the excess and the deficit are balanced. This suggests that the Po-210 deficit in this surface water is due to absorption and adsorption by organisms as evidenced by their large Po-210 enrichment.