Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 June 27

Welcome to the Wikipedia Humanities Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

June 27

Devising property in a will

Devise says that one possible meaning for the word is "A disposition of real property in a will". I vaguely remember reading the idea of someone saying "I devise..." with the meaning of "I leave...to my heir". Why wouldn't the person making the will simply say "I bequeath..."? Nyttend (talk) 03:06, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

WAG here, but I had heard the usage before too, and I always thought it was divise, as in "to divide up my shit among my relatives". The process of dividing of something could be described, under usual English rules, as divising, perhaps under the same sort of construction as words like "divisor". --Jayron32 03:24, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

According to this and that, "devise" used to apply to the disposal of real estate, while "bequest" applied to a chattel or personal property, but over time, the distinction has fallen by the wayside. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:34, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

German Monarchies

It seems there is not a single German monarchy that survived World War I besides the Principality of Liechtenstein and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and only because they didn't fight on the Kaiser side during the war. But were there any German states after the war that wanted to stick with their dukes, princes, or kings and continue as a monarchy?--Queen Elizabeth II's Little Spy (talk) 05:43, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

There were many conservatives after WWI who sought a constitutional monarchy and wanted to restore the Wittelsbachs to Bavaria and the Hohenzollerns to Prussia. There was also Prince Max of Baden on the scene. Shirer explains all of this in his Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. According to Shirer, it was President Wilson who forced the Kaiser to abdicate.--Jeanne Boleyn (talk) 06:22, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Judaic question

Is it possible for someone of the Jewish persuasion to accept Allah as God, and Mohammed as His prophet, and began to follow the teachings of the Qu'ran, while remaining Jewish, and not stopping following the Torah and Talmud? 92.230.67.85 (talk) 06:33, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

No, that would be avoda zara AFAIU. Besides, being Jewish is not a persuasion; actually, it is traditionally forbidden to persuade anyone to convert to Judaism. I may be wrong, though; I am not a rabbi. --Dr Dima (talk) 06:41, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

There have been a few historical periods where Jews practiced conversion of others, but generally speaking Jews treat their faith as as much a matter of culture and heritage as religion, so conversion is not common. the term 'Jewish persuasion' is merely a somewhat archaic euphemism used by people who are worried that calling someone a Jew will be interpreted as an insult.

To answer the question, however, many mystical beliefs hold that there is an overarching spirituality that goes beyond religion, and thus someone who is Jewish and holds some mystical beliefs may come to accept Allah as another manifestation of the One God and the qu'ran as another holy book to be appreciated with all other holy books. In non-mysical traditions, however, I don't believe it is possible - non-mystical monotheistic faiths require dedication to a single god, and if Yahweh and Allah are conceived of as distinct then one can worship one or the other, but not both. trying to worship both would be considered a fairly major failure by both faiths. --Ludwigs2 07:07, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

The OP could just as easily ask about Jews also trying to be Christians. It doesn't really work, if you're devout. You either believe in the core principles of your religion, or you don't. A core belief of Christianity is that Jesus was the Messiah. Jewish teaching is that the Messiah has not come yet. Obviously, you can't have it both ways. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:55, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

It depends on what you mean by "really work". There are Messianic Jews, people who considered themselves as devout Jews and claim Jesus is Messiah. The 'not working out' part would rather refer to how they are received by other Jewish groups. --Soman (talk) 13:40, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

But regarding the OP query: No. The Qur'an states that messages sent through earlier prophets were corrupted (i.e. Torah and Bible). So while Muslims recognize that Torah and Bible are genuine prophesies, they say the are not fully authentic. So it would not be possible to follow the Qur'an and the Torah to the letter at the same time. --Soman (talk) 13:45, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

You are also misinterpreting the use of the word Allah. Under mainline, core beliefs of Judaism and Islam (and Christianity, FWIW), Allah is God. It is merely an Arabic word for God. The differnce is linguistic not religious. You might as well ask if Spanish christians, in worshiping Dios, are worshiping a different God than English Christians. Arabic-speaking Jews also use the word "Allah" for God, as do Arabic-speaking Christians. The difference between the three faiths is not the God they worship, it is the manner in which they worship God. --Jayron32 13:53, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Clearly not — Al-Ikhlas ayah 3 says "He does not beget, nor is He begotten", but John 3:16 speaks of Jesus as the "only begotten". The same being can't be both a begetter and someone who does not beget. Nyttend (talk) 14:48, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Again, these are statements on the nature of God not on his existance. The Islamic perception of who God is is different from the Judaic one, and both are different from the Christian one. However, that difference has nothing to do with the word Allah. The word Allah does not identify the Islamic "God"; non-Islamic Arabs use the word Allah to describe God, and non-Arabic Muslims will use words in other languages for the Divine. That there are core differences between what Islam has to say about God and what other religions do does not either a) mean they are speaking about different Gods, or b) much more important to this discussion, That the word Allah is exclusive to only one of these Gods. --Jayron32 15:19, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

And that is, after all, no bigger a deal than the disagreements between Christians as to whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, or just from the Father, which led to the still existing Great Schism. Or consider Jehovah's Witnesses, who reject the Nicene Creed: they usually call God Jehovah, but they are still referring to the same God as other Christians, despite their different views on the nature of that God, and there are plenty of non-Jehovah's Witness Christians who use the word Jehovah as a name for the same God. It's no more accurate to consider Allah separate from God, than it it to consider Jehovah separate from God, even though different religions differ over the nature of God and the way in which it is to be worshipped. 86.164.57.20 (talk) 17:05, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Well-stated. "Allah" is often used in English as if it were God's name in Arabic, but it's actually used the same way as "God" is used in English. "Allah" = "God", the one-and-only God of monotheistic religions. The characteristics of God are not equivalent, but those supposed characteristics are human interpretation. Within the Bible itself, God's apparent nature seems to vary quite a bit, and contradictingly at that. The word "Allah" appears to be etymologically related to "Elohim", one of the words for "God" in the Old Testament. The persistent use of "Allah" in the press is a subtle and misleading way of implying something about Islam. But "God" and "Allah" and "Elohim" and "YHWH" are all talking about the same entity. And I say again that if you fully embrace one religion, you can't embrace another fully, because you'll run into contradictions. You can't believe in both "A" and "not A". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:29, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Actually, you run into such apparent contradictions even if you fully embrace only a single religion. Read Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Now, after reading that, explain the chronology of creation. Simply: Did God create Man before the non-human animals or after the non-Human animals? Part of faith comes from dealing with such contradictions, which are inherant in any system. Some people come up with additional explainations (God created man twice, or God created the Animals twices). Some people will call it the "Mystery of" their religion, either meaning that God's perspective doesn't match ours or that there is something yet unrevealed by God which would fix the contradictions, but which He has not revealed. As a religious person myself, I accept that my understanding of God is going to be incomplete, as I am incapable of understanding even a small part of the mind of the creator. I also accept that all humans are in error, even if God is not, so what appears to be a contradiction is my problem, and not Gods. Being faithful means being OK with that. --Jayron32 21:55, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, yes. There are two different and contradictory creation stories right there in Genesis 1 and 2. The dead giveaway is that one uses "Elohim" for "God" and one uses "YHWH" for "God" (or actually "LORD God", i.e. YHWH + Adonai). A broader view of it all is that if there is such a thing as a supernatural entity which we call "God", then every religion is simply trying to get a handle on it. In short, there is no one "right" or "wrong" religion, as religions are man-made. One minister we had said, "God has never changed; it's only our interpretation or understanding of God that has changed." ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:06, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Oh, there are right and wrong religions. I also fully believe that. I just don't find it practical or useful to spend my time telling others when their religion is right or wrong. It doesn't really help to convert people to your point of view if the first interaction is to tell them they are going to hell. There is a key difference between my personal beliefs, and the way I interact with others. My belief that my own religion is the only path to heaven does not mean that I act in a way that discriminates against or insults others who do not follow my religion. --Jayron32 23:45, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I think the real lesson here is the buddhist lesson: get too attached to the details and you miss the big picture, and that will make you confused and unhappy. Before you can truly find God, first you must find peace; but once you've found peace, finding God isn't all that important.

Notwithstanding that in Buddhism there is no concept of the omniscient, omnipresent god; in removing attachment one gains understanding and insight into the nature of existence.

ALR (talk) 06:41, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

true, I let a bit of advaita hinduism creep in there. my bad... --Ludwigs2 15:59, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

I don't think this has been said yet - as I understand it, when you get right down to it, once you're Jewish, you're Jewish regardless of what you say, do or believe. Including converting to any other religion. --Dweller (talk) 15:02, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

The Donmeh, the followers of Sabbetai Zvi and Jacob Frank did that. They were Jews that converted to Islam (in the case of Frank also to Catholicism) and kept some Jewish rules and endogamy. They believed in an arrived Messiah (Frank, Zvi,...) who could reinterpret the Talmud and the Kabalah works and personal revelation to profess that there are sparks of Divinity in the different religions, the task of the converts being to reunite them in themselves. I find Frank and his ability for (self-?)delusion fascinating. --Error (talk) 23:52, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

Indeed, but Halachically, they were still Jews. Albeit bad ones. --Dweller (talk) 22:24, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

What are these men doing?

This photo on Wiki has a caption saying these scientists are displaying some sort of technical "toy". What it exactly is and what are they upto ?  Jon Ascton  (talk) 07:59, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

From what I can tell of the image and the pages using it, it's a Tippe top. From the article: "When a tippe top is spun at a high angular velocity, its handle slowly tilts downwards more and more until it lifts the body of the top off the ground with the stem pointing downward. As the top's spinning rate slows, it loses stability and eventually topples over. Explaining this phenomenon requires use of very sophisticated physics." Hope that helps. ^Avicenna_sis @ 08:30, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Actually it even mentions the tippe top toy on the commons description. It is simply a question of linking to the correct page. --Saddhiyama (talk) 11:10, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

South Africa

Is it true that South Africa is following the Zimbabwe experience by legislating to (a) empower black people regardless of their skills and (b) planning to wrest farms from white farmers? Kittybrewster ☎ 13:02, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

no. --Soman (talk) 13:37, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Relieved to hear it. My source was the Philadelphia Trumpet. Kittybrewster ☎ 15:59, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Specifically, the source would be [1]. The substantially less biased view can be glened from South_Africa#Agriculture, which explains both sides of the issue. Hipocrite (talk) 16:07, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

I'm just curious: what skills are needed for one to be empowered? (empower black people regardless of their skills) Medical? Musical? DOR (HK) (talk) 06:10, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Citizenship education can be delivered with a skills-based approach. Literacy is obviously useful for any kind of democratic participation. There are also self-confidence, willingness to be involved and all sorts of other things that you might think are attributes rather than skills. And the attributes and skills can be acquired as a result of empowerment, rather than having to be in place as a preliminary. I think the newspaper article was intending a) and b) to be linked, raising the prospect of land reform, breaking up farms and allotting them to people with no experience of running a farm. The skills you need to run a farm are multifarious, so a government contemplating a land reform programme would have to think seriously about how to offer a high level of business support, through chambers of commerce perhaps, or agricultural co-operatives, or business advice centres. This sounds like a scare story. Itsmejudith (talk) 07:02, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Buddhist Study Guide

I don't really know if this is the right place to ask this, but several years ago at Epcot center at Disney World, I purchased a buddhist study guide (Focusing on the Theravada perspective) that I have since lost, and would like to determine where I could buy a new one short of flying all the way down to florida. I hope the company that produces it has an online shop. These are the charactaristics of it. It was a single laminated sheet, printed on both sides. It had a yellow border on the edges with an orange background. On one side it detailed things such as the seven factors of awakening and on the other side it detailed things such as the eight Jhanas, and I also believe that the guide had a website listed on it. If anyone owns a copy of this study guide or knows someone who does, could you please post a link to the company's website? Rabuve (talk) 16:27, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

If you are looking for that particular study guide, the best approach would be to call the Epcot center and ask questions. Do they still stock it? If so, can they ship it to you? If not, can they find the publisher's details in their records? There are half a gadjillion such guides in the world, so trying to find that particular one by indirect means is a lost cause.

If you are just looking for any study guide, you can get one from a local temple, purchase them online, or find numerous electronic resources. it's all just a google search away. --Ludwigs2 16:41, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Treating this inquiry as a specific book-ish item search, and not as a general Buddhism query. To be sold in a Disney gift shop, it would surely need an ISBN and also be carried by a major distributor that gift shops routinely use, e.g., Ingram or Baker and Taylor. Thus, it was almost surely made by BarCharts, Inc., an "18-year old publishing company located in Boca Raton, Florida" which, as a former new bookseller, I can assure you is by far the leading vendor of such laminated study guides. Every US college bookstore carries them, and a good many of the chain bookstores, as well. Several religion titles under Social Science, but Buddhism title no longer in print -- and no trace on Amazon or used book sites. But see their 2003 ed. of Comparative Religions, a six-page laminated study guide, covering Buddhism, et al. I now sell used books and honestly don't think you'll find the original study guide: you might best settle for this one. Paulscrawl (talk) 19:37, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

The product you describe sounds similar to Access to Insight, and if you explore that site, you will find study guides and the ability to download the site for offline use.  They also make a free iPhone app which I think you might enjoy. Viriditas (talk) 21:13, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Thank you all very much! Actually, I have quite familiar with that website for several years, and now that I think of it, I only found the website after getting the study guide, so it probably was the listed website, Viriditas, so thank you for sparking my memmory. I will also look into the other studyguide at Barcharts.com. When I originally posted this question, I thought it would be a wild goose chase, but it turned out to be worthwile to ask anyways. Thanks! Rabuve (talk) 15:41, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

---shire

In Pride and Prejudice Austen gives the name of a place as ---shire. Similary in Les Miserables Hugo gives a placename as V---. Why do they do this? Would not it be easy to just look on a map or make up a placename? 76.230.224.203 (talk) 21:02, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

In books of the same time period, they would also often do this with dates... "April ---, 18----" or something like that. It was simply a convention to avoid naming a real place or time or person's name. Yes, the could have just made up a name, but they didn't. What they did was leave blanks in the place name, so as to leave the place "indeterminate". Austen obviously wants you to think of an English county. She's just being coy, and doesn't want to confine your imagination with any one English county. Other authors of the same time period did make stuff up, see Thomas Hardy's Wessex and Casterbridge, which were fictionalized versions of Devonshire and Dorchester respectively. But Austen and Hugo just chose to leave their place names blank. --Jayron32 21:26, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Hardy's Wessex was mainly Dorset, with most of the rest of South-West England thrown in for good measure. DuncanHill (talk) 06:14, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Hardy was at the opposite end of the 19th century to Austen. I wonder exactly when the convention of leaving dashes gave way to inventing placenames. In the 1870s George Eliot situated Middlemarch in "Loamshire". Itsmejudith (talk) 21:58, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Inventing a place name makes it clearly fictional. Putting dashes in there suggests it's real but they are not at liberty to say what it is. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:02, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Is it possible that excessive fans of Jane Austen would try to go to those places and annoy the locals, if she gave the full name, sort of a nineteenth-century Forks, Washington? (Were Austen fans as fanatic at the time as they are now?) Adam Bishop (talk) 02:53, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I remember reading that one of her books — not sure which one, although perhaps Northanger Abbey — was found by her brother in a second-hand book shop after her death, sitting there because nobody wanted to buy it. Look at the "Reception" section of her article: you'll see that her books were published anonymously, so nobody knew during her life that they were reading something written by Jane, George Austen's daughter. Nyttend (talk) 12:49, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

I think Dostoyevsky does this in Crime and Punishment. --Joe^Talk_Work 19:46, 1 July 2010 (UTC)

Tamilnadu or Tamil Nadu

There are many references to Tamilnadu on Wikipedia. However, the correct spelling seems to be Tamil Nadu. Anyone know why people are calling it that? --mboverload@ 23:54, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

There are often different variations on how to transliterate a word from a non-Latin script into English. In many cases, there is not a "correct" spelling. As long as an article is internally consistant, and the usage is one of the common spellings (it need not be the most common, especially where determining the "most" common would be an arduous and pointless task), then we don't worry about using the same spelling accross wikipedia. See WP:ENGVAR for a closely related issue. --Jayron32 00:01, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Hm, WP:RegExTypoFix (which I'm involved in) has Tamilnadu set to autocorrect to Tamil Nadu when using AutoWikiBrowser.--mboverload@ 00:22, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

The name Hong Kong is sometimes spelled Hongkong, as (it is spelled) in Hongkong Post.—Wavelength (talk) 00:30, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

'Tamil Nadu' seems to be the most common way to write the name in English, but in Tamil its தமிழ்நாடு, 'tamizhnadu'. --Soman (talk) 01:46, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

If anyone would like the influence the decision on if this should be autocorrected see Wikipedia_talk:AutoWikiBrowser/Typos#Tamil_Nadu. Looking for pro and con. Just want to make sure this is 100% right. --mboverload@ 00:53, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Tamil Nadu certainly is the more common spelling, but I wouldn't like to speak of "correct" or "incorrect". Even in Tamil there are no clear rules if compound words should be written in one or two words, so you can find both தமிழ்நாடு and தமிழ் நாடு. Note that there is also the romanization Tamilnad, though this spelling seems to be quite outdated nowadays. --BishkekRocks (talk) 07:55, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Tamil is also strange because (if I remember correctly) it uses Sanskrit letters that are not always pronounced the way they are transliterated, as Soman noted. I remember this being an issue when Velupillai Prabhakaran was killed; his name is not pronounced in Tamil the way it is transliterated based on the Sanskrit letters. Adam Bishop (talk) 20:48, 28 June 2010 (UTC)

Contemporary Tamil is written in Tamil script, which is derived from Brahmi scripts (which were used to write Sanskrit). Sanskrit today is written with Devanagari script. --Soman (talk) 20:56, 28 June 2010 (UTC)