مطالب

In the annals of the Greek myth, there has been a lacuna surrounding Menelaus and Helen’s relationship following the sack of Troy. What distinguishes Barth’s retelling of the Greek myth is filling this void through constructing a posthistory to the relationship the couple bear to each other and his giving voice to the concerns of Menelaus, a character who has always been in the recess of the canon. While a large body of research has approached Barth’s “Menelaiad” in light of literature of the absurd, this study, through adopting the stance of quantum mechanics on the nature of reality, will demonstrate that Barth’s work is anything but absurd. Establishing the framework of the article based on the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics, the present study argues how the adoption of the subatomic reality, implied in Proteus’ advice, allows Menelaus to jettison his festering obsession with the causality behind Helen’s choice and re-embrace her.

English language teaching policies have recently become a growing concern in several countries, including Iran. Whereas several studies have noted the role of explicit policy documents and texts, fewer studies have explored the role of implicit ELT policies. This research investigates the implicit ELT policies embedded in professional practices of selected private English language publishers and institutes in Iran. The study’s qualitative data comprised documents and archival information taken from sources such as official websites, social networking accounts, catalogs, and brochures of eight prominent publishers and eight leading English language institutes. Thematic analysis of the data revealed three aspects of the publishers' activities (Nominal features, Supplementary materials, and Practical features) and four main aspects of professional practices of the language institutes (Overcategorizations, Tests, Teachers, and Coursebooks). The findings suggest that the practices of the leading publishers and institutes might act as implicit policies which would most likely provide directions for other publishers and institutes in the country to pursue and adopt. Thereby, it is suggested that instead of following pre-set accepted agendas, the leading publishers and institutes work creatively to analyze local requirements and respond to the needs of Iranian learners to enhance the status of ELT in the country.

Avicenna has aimed to establisha harmonized philosophical system that incorporates logic, epistemology, metaphysics, natural philosophy, and other types of knowledge. Although he has not directly written anything about the metaphysical foundations of science, we believe that there are some implications in his philosophy that could be considered astruthmakers of scientific propositions. As natural law is significantly correlated to “experiment”, we will first discuss the epistemological aspect of experiments in Avicennian philosophy. He believes that the observation of a repeated event could lead us to a causal relationship due to the fact that accidental events are neither permanent nor frequent. Following that, the logical approach which corresponds to this epistemology will be introduced. As Avicenna’s logic does not directly consider such an approach, we are to derive it from apparently disconnected chapters and then formulate them. It will be indicated that Avicenna has been aware of the differences between propositions that merely refer to existent instances and ones that consider the nature of instances. The latter obviously could refer to both existent instances and hypothetical instances. Finally, we present some points in his metaphysics that could establisha metaphysical basis for propositions concerning natural law. In addition, we will indicate that Avicenna’s system is able to justify the counterfactual conditionals that relate to laws of nature.