Pierre Teilhard De Chardin was one of the most distinguished thinkers and scientists of our time. He fits into no familiar category for he was at once a biologist and a paleontologist of world renown, and also a Jesuit priest. He applied his whole life, his tremendous intellect and his great spiritual faith to building a philosophy that would reconcile Christian theology with the scientific theory of evolution, to relate the facts of religious experience to those of natural science. The (...) Phenomenon of Man, the first of his writings to appear in America, Pierre Teilhard's most important book and contains the quintessence of his thought. When published in France it was the best-selling nonfiction book of the year. (shrink)

The article was first considered and proposed a three-component structure of modern global object: 1) the internationalization of social life, 2) global problems of mankind and 3) contemporary globalization, which took place two historical stages – the first stage in the first half of the twentieth century, classical imperialism that led to two World wars, and the second stage in the second half of the twentieth century, globalization itself, which led to the domination of the world economy of transnational corporations.

Edwina Taborsky moves semiotics away from being a descriptive tool within the humanities and uses its powers of analysis on the organic and social nature of cognition.

Mihhail Lotman. Metrical montage: On the theory of polymetrical compositions. The theory of polymetrical compositions was founded as late as in the 1970s by Pyotr Rudnev, a scholar of the University of Tartu. While Rudnev approached the problem from the paradigmatic aspect, in the present paper the priority of syntagmatics over paradigmatics is emphasized: the effect of polymetricity is based on the contrast of segments, which is, in its own way, a montage with means of verse technique. Just like in (...) the case of video montage, here as well we can distinguish between straight cut anddissolve . The given types of montage use different semiotic mechanisms and have different semantic effects. The theoretical standpoints are illustrated with examples from Alexander Pushkin’s poetry. (shrink)