university-of-oxford-faculty

"A beare as black as darknesse, and as fell As tyger, vast as the black dog of hell."

"Sing thy armes (Bellona) and the man's Whose mighty deeds out-did great Tamberlan's."

"Here's no place to fly, Come friends, let's bravely live or bravely die."

"Nor waves nor winds could fright him with the motion Who thought he could containe and pisse an ocean."

"Thou drank'st but what thou pist for thrice seven dayes."

"Hearts of oak."

"Wild mares' milk nurst him on the mountaines' gorse, Which gave him strength and stomach like a horse; Goats' flesh matur'd him, kill'd on craggy tops, Which taught him to mount rampiers like those rocks."

"Thy immortality Neptune thou must resigne, if I come thither: One sea may not containe us both together."

"Since the normal tendency is to simplify, to trivialize, to eliminate the unfamiliar word or construction, the rule is praestat difficilior lectio...When we choose the 'more difficult' reading, however, we must be sure that it is in itself a plausible reading. The principle should not be used in support of dubious syntax, or phrasing that it would not have been natural for the author to use. There is an important difference between a more difficult reading and a more unlikely reading."

"My father's evangelicalism was deepened and darkened by his bereavement. He seemed to lose interest in everything except religion, and under the influence of some Plymouth Brethren...his religion degenerated into bigotry. He never joined the sect, but he read their literature, shared many of their opinions and grew into their narrow intolerance."

"The failure of utilitarianism to address a will in which it does not altogether believe stands in sharp contrast to the mainstream of liberal thought represented by the great German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. For Kant, liberalism was first and last about the will....Like Christianity, Kantian liberalism identifies the greatest need of humans, as self-conscious beings, as the need for a rule of conduct, the means of governing oneself as a free and responsible agent.Modern economism's failure is that it does not face up to this question of self-government or address the issue of what is required to make the empire of the will legitimate. For the utilitarian maxim that pleasure or happiness should be maximized fails to acknowledge the need to govern the empire of the will. It provides instead an aggregative criterion for public decision-making, a criterion which is defective because it does not provide for the claims of justice. But that failure over justice reflects, in turn, utilitarianism's failure to distinguish between persons as separate and autonomous agents, as rational agents who need a rule by which to regulate their own wills. Utilitarianism merely aggregates satisfactions, looking upon society as a kind of collective self."

"Liberalism, the dominant ideology of our time, has been dangerously distorted by the impact of economism. It is that impact which has knocked the citizen off his pedestal and replaced him with the consumer."

"The Jewish sense of time was...unilinear rather than cyclical. Even the repeated lapses of Israel into idolatry did not dispel belief in God’s overall control and direction of events."

"The institutions of the European Union are at present incomplete. A European Senate is badly needed to complete them. By creating an upper chamber in the European parliament, a new bridge could be built between national political classes, which retain democratic legitimacy, and the decision-making process in Brussels. Such a Senate should be recruited by indirect election from existing national parliaments. Indirectly elected Senators would retain their national parliamentary careers, while acquiring closer knowledge of European institutions and the habit of co-operating with each other. Such Senators ought to be leading national politicians, politicians with an experience and stature not typical of European MPs today."

"Only the pride of the intellect could suppose that the human will can be completely self-determining. The incarnation revealed that something more is needed. ‘My mind, questioning itself upon its own powers, feels that it cannot rightly trust its own report.’ Augustine’s conception of the self became a subtle mixture of autonomy and dependence."

"As swift to scent the sophist as to praise The honest worker or the well turned phrase."

"What is the crux of secularism? It is that belief in an underlying or moral equality of humans implies that there is a sphere in which each should be free to make his or her own decisions, a sphere of conscience and free action. That belief is summarized in the central value of classical liberalism: the commitment to ‘equal liberty’. Is this indifference or non-belief? Not at all. It rests on the firm belief that to be human means being a rational and moral agent, a free chooser with responsibility for one’s actions. It puts a premium on conscience rather than the ‘blind’ following of rules. It joins rights with duties to others.This is also the central egalitarian moral insight of Christianity. It stands out from St Paul’s contrast between ‘Christian liberty’ and observance of the Jewish law. Enforced belief was, for Paul and many early Christians, a contradiction in terms. Strikingly, in its first centuries Christianity spread by persuasion, not by force of arms — a contrast to the early spread of Islam."

"Paul and Augustine transformed Jewish belief in a divine will directed at a ‘chosen’ people. They universalized the claims of that will and internalized it, making it available to all of humanity. In doing so, they created the potential for ‘Christian liberty’, a rightful power for individuals. By combining the assumption of human equality with the need to discover the divine will, a new relationship with deity became possible, one that was personal rather than tribal. Yet if Paul and Augustine conjured up a vision of moral freedom, it was the twelfth-century canonists who converted that vision into a formal legal system founded on natural rights."

"Christianity changed the ground of human identity. It was able to do that because of the way it combined Jewish monotheism with an abstract universalism that had roots in later Greek philosophy. By emphasizing the moral equality of humans, quite apart from any social roles they might occupy, Christianity changed ‘the name of the game’. Social rules became secondary. They followed and, in a crucial sense, had to be understood as subordinate to a God-given human identity, something all humans share equally. Thus, humans were to live in ‘two cities’ at the same time."

"If we want to understand the distinctive constitution of Europe, we must go back to its religious foundations. For the moral beliefs which Christianity fostered still underpin civil society in Europe, the institutions that surround us."

"We have become victims of our own success. For we are in danger of taking this primacy of the individual as something ‘obvious’ or ‘inevitable’, something guaranteed by things outside ourselves rather than by historical convictions and struggles. Of course, every human has his or her own body and mind. But does this establish that human equality is decreed by nature rather than culture?Nature, in the form of genetic endowment, is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition. A legal foundation for equality, in the form of fundamental rights for every person, is also required....Widespread complacency about the victory of an individualized model of society reflects a worrying decline in historical understanding."

"In the twelfth century, reason began to lose the ontologically privileged position it had been accorded by an aristocratic society. Its propositions were open, at least in principle, to equal scrutiny, grounded in a shared faith. (Did not St Bernard complain that under Abelard’s influence matters of the faith were being discussed at the crossroads?) The role of reason was being democratized. Reason ceased to be something that used people, and became something people used."

"The Russian Empire was deeply fissured between the government and the tsar’s subjects; between the capital and the provinces; between the educated and the uneducated; between Western and Russian ideas; between the rich and the poor; between privilege and oppression; between contemporary fashion and centuries-old custom."

"Parvus denied that universal suffrage was an end in itself since the middle class would always had ways to manipulate the electoral system. Freedom could not be begged for: it had to be won. The bureaucracy and officer corps had to be eliminated. What was needed, in fact, was not just an uprising as demanded by the Bolsheviks but a commitment to a struggle to 'make the revolution permanent'."

"The Soviet communist leadership may have magnified the prospects of 'European revolution' but it did not invent them out of nothing. Country after country to the west of Russia was experiencing disorder and discontent. Russia itself emerged under Bolshevik rule from years of civil war and foreign armed intervention. The victor powers in the Great War had irresistible force at their disposal if only they could muster the will to deploy it. But they increasingly lacked that will. The Western Allies had not had properly agreed strategic aims since at least 1917, when America joined them."

"Defeat goes deeper into the human soul than victory. To be in someone else’s power is a conscious experience which induces doubts about the ordering of the universe, while those who have power can forget it, or can assume that it is part of the natural order of things and invent or adopt ideas which justify their possession of it."

"In the seventh century the Arabs created a new world into which other peoples were drawn. In the nineteenth and twentieth, they were themselves drawn into a new world created in western Europe. This of course is too simple a way of describing a very complicated process, and the explanations of it can be too simple too."

"Harrison is no nostalgic reactionary. He acknowledges modernity’s gifts. But he warns against monochrome narratives of progress. One of his most provocative claims is that science, too, relies on “ implicita.” …As a scholar of new religious movements, I find Harrison’s thesis electrifying. He doesn’t mention my field, but I’ll extend his argument: many new religions are a renaissance of “fides implicita.” Converts don’t join because they’ve dissected theological treatises (although some may read them later). They join because they trust a guru, a prophet, a community. Just like early Christians and Muslims. The intellectual scaffolding may come later—or not at all. So, is “fides implicita” obsolete? Has secular science vanquished religion? Harrison—and I—say: not so fast. Belief, in its ancient form as trust, is alive and well. It’s just wearing new clothes."

"There are a lot of ethical issues in computing and AI: AI has also become an ever-present feature of computer programs – deciding who is called for interviews, who is granted a loan and who is seen at risk of reoffending when considered for parole."

"[After taking her degree] I spotted in a newspaper this conversion course, where you learned about computers and artificial intelligence. I enrolled. I was one of only three women on the course...It was the first AI really"

"I’m more and more interested in Responsible Innovation…the trouble is, the industry is all about running fast and breaking things, it’s the mind-set. People often don’t think about negative or unintended consequences"

"People may not know what they want from a system. But I was interested in watching what people did and working out from that what they needed. It’s very interesting"

"We are a long way, she says from robots taking over the world...[but she] is championing the installation of ‘black box’ recorders for responsible robotics...[to] provide some accountability and information, in the event that something goes wrong."

"We didn’t see my mother much during that time, she remained in Scotland, In my teenage years, I was desperate to get away from Westgate."

"I was very interested in why people did what they did [and so took a degree in Social Anthropology and Psychology]. I found it really rewarding. It opened my eyes"

"‎There is this narrative out there, and it's a very popular narrative and it's very compelling which is that at some point machines are going to become as intelligent as human beings and then they can apply their intelligence to making themselves even smarter."

"I am delighted to be joining the Turing at such an exciting time", ."

"I will be working with the Turing team to build up the Institute's portfolio in AI - not just in my own area, multi-agent systems, but AI more generally. We have a really exciting portfolio of activities in the pipeline, which will confirm the UK's place at the heart of the 21st century AI revolution."

"We know of no path that will take us from where we are now, in terms of computing and AI technology, to the singularity."

"we have some components of intelligence but no idea how to build a system that integrates them"

"The story is that it all spirals out of our control. And of course this is the plot of quite a lot of science fiction movies, notably Terminator. I love those movies just as much as anybody does. But it's deeply implausible, and I became frustrated with that narrative for all sorts of reasons, one of which is that that narrative, whenever it comes up in serious debate about where AI is going and what the risks are, there are real risks associated with AI. It tends to suck all the oxygen out of the room in the phrase that my colleague used. And it tends to dominate the conversation and distract us from things that we should really be talking about."

"I have worked in the development of vaccines against infectious pathogens for many years and in the last 2 years have been able to draw on all that I have learned in order to respond to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. I have been so fortunate to work with a very talented and dedicated team who made it possible to develop a vaccine in less time than anyone thought possible."

"try to avoid the boom and bust that afflicts the development of renewables. I’m not a hair-shirted environmentalist, I’m not anti-nuclear, I’m not even anti-fossil fuels – but I do believe in the reality of global warming"

"Onshore wind power to me is clean and green, although some people dislike it. It’s the cheapest form of energy, so these things will take their place"

"“It sounds extraordinary, but it’s a fact that balance sheets can make fascinating reading.”"

"I found there was a field called photoelectrochemistry, invented by the American military in its attempts to build a solar rechargeable battery"

"Its thesis, that success for a woman is perhaps more broadly based than for a man, is absolutely true."

"The first thing I’d do would be to try to curtail population growth, because that puts a strain on so many resources as well as energy – food, land, housing. And that appears to be a question of economic development"

"I’ve always loved my work"

"I looked around and I thought, ‘there aren’t many women here’, and then I thought, and this is a very female thing to think, ‘I’m never going to keep up with this lot’, and it was one of my larger surprises when I discovered I was well up with that lot!"