academics-from-austria

"He ranks high among the professors of the University of Vienna in the fifteenth century. In the struggles which it had to sustain he championed the rights and interests of the university with zeal and energy."

"Both the peacock and the chicken passed through [Mesopotamia] on their way westward[;] the Sumerians called the chicken ‘ the bird from Meluhha’ and the Syrians called it the ‘Akkadian bird’."

"I think he would have made a great actor. His lectures were polished: He would finish at the right moment and march off the scene. A very lively individual with many interests: music, astronomy, chemistry, history.... He loved to teach. I had a feeling that he loved to teach anybody anything. Being his student was a wonderful experience; I couldn’t have had a better start to my mathematical career. It was a remarkable accident. My favorite theorem, which I had first learned from Bell’s book, was Gauss’s law of , and there, entirely by chance, I found myself at the same university as the man who had discovered the . It was just amazing."

"The essential point in the definition of an algebra is that it is a vector space of finite dimension over a field. This fact allows us to conclude that of subalgebras will terminate. After the great success that Emmy Noether had in her ideal theory in rings with ascending chain condition, it seemed reasonable to expect that in rings where the ascending and the descending chain condition holds for left ideals one should obtain results similar to those of . As one of the papers written from this point of view we mention E. Artin, Zur Theorie der hyperkomplexen Zahlen (Abh. Math. Sem. Hamburgischen Univ. vol. 5 (1926)). In 1939 showed (Rings with minimal condition f or left ideals, Ann. of Math. vol. 40) that the descending chain condition suffices."

"It was adorned with many fine temples and monuments; among others, with a pillar cut out of one stone, twenty four yards high, at the top of which stood the image of Garuda, half-man and half-eagle."

"The Surij Bagh is probably on the site of the once famous city of Parihasapur, of the marvels of which the native legends speak so highly. This city was built by the great conqueror Lalitaditya, who reigned from A.D. 714 to 750, and was adorned with many fine temples and monuments; among others, with a pillar cut out of one stone, twenty-four yards high, at the top of which stood the image of Garuda, half-man, half-eagle. Sikandar Budh Shikan probably destroyed it, but several fragments were seen in 1727 by Mohammed Azim. Immense images of gold, silver, and other metals, also adorned the interior, but all traces of this splendour have disappeared."

"The duality theorems for a manifold will be derived from the corresponding ones for nets and co-nets of group systems ... Of the two types of duality theorems — the and s — the first could be obtained more easily from the corresponding one for a group system and its character system ... But when applied to the Alexander type this method fails. Also in using the net and co-net theory for both types, the less complicated Poincaré theorem serves as an introduction for the Alexander theorem."

"... I think Walther Mayer got a designation that has never been used for anyone else. He was the only associate professor the Institute has ever had. He was called "associate professor." Yes, and the reason was: Einstein wanted him very much. Clearly the mathematicians did not feel that he really should be a full-fledged faculty member. This was at an early stage, so they took a designation that was used in American universities. Only later did it occur to them to create a new thing called "permanent member.""

"It seems to be the first duty of a historian to investigate the causes of great revolutions; for an event which happens at any other, but its due season, is a miracle : we should consider it as a wonder, if the sun should rise one second before, or after its appointed hour; or if any one were to accomplish, in his childhood, what is expected of him in his ripe age."

"I, for my part, do not understand why some Western scholars are so anxious to make the hymns of the Rgveda and the civilisation which is reflected in them so very much later than the Babylonian and Egyptian culture."

"“… The passage [Śat. Br. II.1,2,3. …] in which we read that the Pleiades “do not swerve from the East” should probably not be interpreted as meaning that they rose “due east” (which would have been the case in the third millenary B.C., and would point to a knowledge of the vernal equinox): the correct interpretation is more likely that they remain visible in the eastern region for a considerable time – during several hours – every night, which was the case about 1100 B.C. [I am indebted for this explanation to Professor A. Prey, the astronomer of our University, who informed me that, in about 1100 B.C. the Pleiades rose approximately 13º to the north of the east point, approaching nearer and nearer the east line, and crossing it as late as 2 h 11 m after their rise, at a height of 29º, when seen from a place situated at 25º North latitude. They thus remain almost due east long enough to serve as a convenient basis for orientation. This interpretation of the passage is proved to be the correct one, by Baudhāyana-Śrautasūtra 27,5 (cf. W. Caland, Uber das rituelle Sūtra des Baudhāyana, Leipzig 1903, pp. 37 ff.), where it is prescribed that the supporting beams of a hut on the place of sacrifice shall face east, and that this direction shall be fixed after the Pleiades appear, as the latter “do not depart from the eastern region.” It is true that, about 2100 B.C. or about 3100 B.C., the Pleiades touched the east line earlier, but they proceeded southwards so rapidly that they were not suitable for orientation.] …”."

"Oral tradition, too, presupposes longer intervals of time than would be necessary, had these texts been written down. Generations of pupils and teachers must have passed away before all the existing and the many lost texts had taken definite shape in the Vedic schools, On linguistic, literary and cultural grounds we must therefore assume that many centuries elapsed between the period of the earliest hymns and the final compilation of the hymns into a Samhita or “collection”, for the Rigveda-Samhita after denotes only the close of a period long, past, and again between the Rigveda-Samhita and the other Samhitas and Brahmanas, The Brahmanas themselves, with their numerous schools and branch schools, with their endless lists of teachers and the numerous references to teachers of antiquity, require a period of several centuries for their origin, This literature itself, as well as the spread of the brahmanical culture, theological knowledge, and not least, the priestly supremacy which went hand in hand with it, must have taken centuries, When we come to the Upanisads, we see that they too, belong to different periods of time, that they too pre-suppose generations of teachers and a long tradition."

"Winternitz (1907), too, hastened to note that "Max Muller himself did not really wish to say more than that such an interval at least must be assumed. . . . He always considered his date of 1200- 1000 B.C. only as a terminus ad quern" (293)."

"As Maurice Winternitz ... notes about the Vajrasûchî, a text attributed to the Brahmin-born monk Ashvaghosha: 'This work refutes the Brahmanical caste system very cuttingly. The author (...) seeks to prove from the Brahmanical texts themselves, by quotations from the Veda, the Mahâbhârata and the law book of Manu, how frail the claims of the Brahman caste are.'"

"Almost a century ago, Winternitz ([1907] 1962) was refreshingly forthright about the lack of agreement regarding even the approximate date of the Veda: "It is a fact, and a fact which it is truly painful to admit, that the opinions of the best scholars differ, not to the extent of centuries, but to the extent of thousands of years, with regard to the age of the Rg Veda. Some lay down the year 1000 B.C. as the earliest limit for the Rg Vedic hymns, while others consider them to have originated between 3000 and 2500 B.C." (253)."

"Wintemitz refers to A.C. Woolner as rightly commenting on Max Muller's supposition of 1200 B.C. for the Rigveda's beginning: " As far as any philological estimates go , 2000 B.C. remains quite as possible as 1200 B.C. for the earliest mantra.""

"“Since more than 2000 years the poem of Rama has remained alive in India, and it continues to live in all strata and classes of folk. High and low, princes and peasants, landlords and artisans, princesses and shepherdesses, are well versed with the characters and stories of the great epic.”"

"From the mystical doctrines of the Upanishads, one current of thought may be traced to the mysticism of Persian Sufism, to the mystic, theosophic logos doctrine of the Neo-Platonics and the Alexandrian Christian Mystics, Eckhart and Tauler, and finally to the philosophy of the great German mystic of the nineteenth century, Schopenhauer.""

"It became a habit already censured by W. D. Whitney, to say that Max Muller had proved 1200-1000 B.C. as the date of the Rg Veda. It was only timidly that a few scholars, like L. von Schroeder ventured to go as far back as 1500 or even 2000 B.C. And when all at once, H. Jacobi attempted to date Vedic literature back to the third millenary B.C. on the grounds of astrological calculations, scholars raised a great outcry at such heretical procedure... Strange to say it has been quite forgotten on what a precarious footing stood the "opinion prevailing hitherto," which was so zealously defended. Max Muller himself did not really wish to say more than that such an interval at least must be assumed. . . . He always considered his date of 1200- 1000 B.C. only as a terminus ad quern."

"Winternitz (1907), too, felt that since "all the external evidence fails, we are compelled to rely on the evidence out of the history of Indian literature itself, for the age of the Veda. . . . We cannot, however, explain the development of the whole of this great literature, if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 or 1500 B.C. as its starting point. We shall probably have to date the beginning of this development about 2000 or 2500 B.C." (310)."

"It is remarkable however how strong the power of suggestion is even in science. Max Muller's hypothetical and purely arbitrary determination of the Vedic epochs in the course of years, received more and more the dignity and the character of a scientifically proven fact, without any new arguments or actual proofs having been added."

"As regards the kinship of the languages, it is quite impossible to state definite chronological limits within which languages change. Some languages change very rapidly , others remain more or less unaltered for a long period. It is true that hieratic languages, like those of the Vedic hymns and the Avesta, can remain unaltered much longer than spoken languages."

"...We shall probably have to date the beginning of this development to about 2000 or 2500 BC"

"We cannot explain the development of the whole of this great literature if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 BC or 1500 BC as its starting-point."

"As Winternitz ([1907] 1962) points out, "it is at the fixing on these purely arbitrary dates that the untenable part of Max Muller's calculations begins" (255)."

"We cannot, however, explain the development of the whole of this great literature, if we assume as late a date as round about 1200 or 1500 B.C. as its starting point. We shall probably have to date the beginning of this development about 2000 or 2500 B.C... The more prudent course, however, is to steer clear of any fixed dates..."

"Clearly, the role of women in the church is not an isolated instance but is part of a larger set of interrelated issues that will continue to engage the church for years to come. While not a first-order, salvation issue—no one is saved based on their view regarding women’s roles in the church—it is a matter of considerable practical and doctrinal consequence."

"(...) we believe that we have enough buildings, enough construction, enough infrastructure. And it is now time to consolidate it and find the qualities within the built. This is not against future production, it is more about a consideration of what we really want in cities."

"The self in the psychoanalytic sense is variable and by no means coextensive with the limits of the personality as assessed by an observer of the social field."

"States the self may expand far beyond the borders of the individual, or it may shrink and become identical with a single one of his actions or aims."

"The creative individual, whether in art or science, is less psychologically separated from his surroundings than the non-creative one; the "I-you" barrier is not as clearly defined."

"The antithesis to narcissism is not the object relation but object love."

"“The most superficial scanning of the statements produced in connection with the Indo-Pakistan War of 1965 and the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 provides abundant evidence of the continuing power of the jihad concept in its original drastic and military intent. Fighting the unbeliever is a religious duty of the collectivity and secures religious merit; however ‘secular’ the issues, the simple fact of their involving a confrontation between Muslim and non-Muslim suffices for popular sentiment, and hence for governmental direction, to identify the armed dispute as religious warfare. Denials of this fact by the authorities when they address themselves to a Western audience have no meaning beyond constituting an attempt, inevitable in the present international situation, at making their point in a manner likely to be acceptable to a forum averse to the spirit of the religious crusade and altogether disposed to take for granted the separation between religious sentiment and political action.…What is truly and unqualifiedly reprehensible lies elsewhere. It is to be found in the projection of internal Western self-criticism on to the plane of comparative culture studies, in the reification of Western complexes, in the conferring of objective existence to what is little more than a stage setting for a Western cathartic monologue. Psychological and political needs, anguish kept alive by the weight of four dead centuries, pride and ambition supported by dependence on loaned weapons, they combine quaintly to sustain this deliberate illusionism sprung from history undigested and, almost typical of a faltering denial of reality, proclaimed as a new moral gospel. Transferred to the printed page this mood assumes various shapes of which perhaps the most objectionable—to those promoted to cultural donors as much as to those demoted to recipients, for it is the inadequate system of coordinates which inevitably oversimplifies historical process and works offensive injustice to both artificially constituted ‘parties’—is to be found in such Western writing as tries to buy friendship by self-debasement.…. Whatever the motivation, learning or stylistic skill, it is this kind of scholarship and parascholarship which is reducing the incentive of the societies most in need of them for self-comprehension and more than momentary self-esteem to identify with modern historical scholarship, regardless of the constellation of the hour of publication.…Self-criticism in the Anglo-Saxon and French style, itself a fairly recent phenomenon of great pedagogical value, must not be abused to mislead. Why accept anyone on his own terms unless there is reason for accepting the terms? This goes first of all for ourselves; but only arrogance would exempt the others.”"

"... I got to writing poetry out of revenge — self-pity and revenge."

"In the cover story of its 12 September 1999 issue, the London Sunday Times Magazine featured the Top Thirty persons of the present millennium. ..."

"The list was heavily skewed in favor of science and technology. ..."

"In the final analysis, in science, unlike art, the individual hardly matters."

"Well, hardly ever. Unless the individual happens to be oneself. The Sunday Timess list ends with one living relic. On the face of it, the appearance of the name Carl Djerassi is patently ridiculous by any criterion but one: as a surrogate for the Pill."

"How do we search for the causal structure of interpersonal events? According to Heider, we do so by reliance upon attributions to the environment (external factors) or to something about the other person (internal factors)."

"Heider began by assuming that just as objects have enduring qualities that determine their appearances, so people have stable psychological characteristics that determine their behavior."

"In the basic case, where the person is concerned with the dispositional properties of his surrounding environment, the choice is between external attribution and internal (self) attribution."

"Central to Heider’s entire theoretical position is the proposition that man perceives behavior as being caused, and that the causal locus can be either in the perceiver or in the environment."

"The past few years were filled with indicators that the is beginning to become established not only as a field of study and investigation, but also as an academic area of studies."

"Man is usually not content simply to register the observables that surround him; he needs to refer them as far as possible to the invariances of his environment.. The underlying causes of events, especially the motives of other persons, are the invariances of the environment that are relevant to him; they give meaning to what he experiences and it is these meanings that are recorded in his life space and are precipitated as the reality of the environment to which he then reacts."

"One might say psychological processes such as motives, intentions, sentiments, etc., are the core processes which manifest themselves in overt behavior and expression in many variable ways."

"The action outcome, x , may then be said to be dependent upon a combination of effective personal force and effective environmental force, thus:"

"Personal causality, refers to instances in which p causes x intentionally. That is to say, the action is purposive."

"[Unlike objects, people are] usually perceived as action centers and as such can do something to us. They can benefit or harm us intentionally, and we can benefit or harm them. Persons have abilities, wishes, and sentiments; they can act purposefully, and can perceive or watch us. They are systems having an awareness of their surroundings and their conduct refers to this environment, an environment that sometimes includes ourselves."

"The shrinking of church religion, however, is only one – and the sociologically less interesting – dimension of the problem of secularization. For the analysis of contemporary society another question is more important. What are the dominant values overarching contemporary culture? What is the socio-structural basis of these values and what is their function in the live of contemporary man?"

"Thomas Luckmann became one of the leading figures in what became to be called the “new” sociology of knowledge. His “Social Construction of Reality”, co-authored with Peter Berger in 1966, influenced many social scientific disciplines, the humanities and various academic movements, such as “social constructionism”, “social constructivism” or the “new institutionalism”. The “Invisible Religion”, published in 1967, became immediately a classic text in the Sociology of Religion. It formulated one of the most inclusive theories of religion as being based in human’s capacity to transcend the biological organism. After his “Structures of the Life-World”, co-authored with Alfred Schutz, he added a differentiated concept of transcendences which was included in the later versions of the “Invisible Religion”."