This re-evaluation of the work of Karlheinz Stockhausen is presented as a dialogue between its authors, conducted by email between July and October 2024. The dialogue takes as its starting point a consideration of the continuing relevance of Stockhausen’s music to music today, but begins by tracing the authors’ engagement with this music over the last five decades. The dialogue moves on to the discussion of a series of key aspects of Stockhausen’s work across his creative life, from Kreuzspiel to KLANG: the relationship between his electronic music and his compositional practice for acoustic instruments; form-schemes in his music and, in particular, the development of moment form; and his use of synthesisers. In conclusion, the authors assess Stockhausen’s influence on their own work and the extent of his significance for younger generations of musicians.

Scholars studying cosmic conflict in the book of Revelation primarily focus on chapters 12–14, while the letters to the seven churches are often overlooked. In this article I demonstrate the presence of key elements of cosmic conflict in the letters to the seven churches, with a particular focus on the letter to the church in Smyrna (Rev 2:8–11). I identify the main facets of spiritual warfare, such as Jesus Christ versus the devil; Christians versus Jews/Romans; and victory/life versus defeat/death. I conclude that this passage contributes to the military narrative of cosmic conflict in the Apocalypse.

In this short piece, I invite readers to think about whether expertise is something as real as trees and mountains, or whether it is our own creation as a society. I discuss the challenges that a purely social view of expertise raises: inconsistent relativism, contradictions, frauds, epistemic and social anarchy. As a way out of these difficulties, I suggest that we must opt for an objective take on expertise. Of course, possessing expertise is relative in the sense that it is a consistent relational property between various levels of expertise. However, this relation is ‘objective’. It is an ‘objective relational property’. Taking this realist view on expertise can shed light on some difficulties, such as the expertise status of Newton in comparison to contemporary physicists and the English proficiency of native English speakers compared to monolingual non-English speakers.

A common and unfortunate error in statistical analysis is the failure to account for dependencies in the data. In many studies, there is a set of individual participants or experimental objects where two observations are made on each individual or object. This leads to a natural pairing of data. This editorial discusses common situations where paired data arises and gives guidance on selecting the correct analysis plan to avoid statistical errors.

The widespread deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools has created a shift in knowledge culture. The marginalisation of slower, more traditional modes of engagement for quantifiable data easily parsed by mathematical algorithms has resulted in prioritising proprietary or opaque datasets (knowledge) explicitly constructed with measurable parameters. Well-documented concerns persist regarding the narrow range of human data used by algorithmic tools, data that arguably encapsulates the many failures of human society. The inevitable result of the use and priority of this data, alongside very particular notions of value and what is valuable, is a replication of many of the foibles of our history as a species.

Cultural practice in general necessitates the communication of what drives our hopes and underlies our experiences. In algorithmic times we can see that this kind of communication supports some of the many critiques of AI and machine learning already extant in activist circles. Through investigating some of the theoretical backgrounds of this resistance, this article uses the first iteration of HEXORCISMOS’S SEMILLA AI project and the resulting album release as one of the many possible ways in which we might use machine learning and AI tools alongside very deliberate and uplifting models of community and community building.

Philosophical writing always already entails poetics and rhetoric, even if the convention has been to try to reduce these dimensions in the effort to enhance the logic and clarity of an argument. Humans rely on aesthetics and narrative, to make themselves understood and to persuade and influence. A heightened awareness and more extensive use of these dimensions in philosophical and scientific writing could help facilitate deeper and more experiential ways for readers to engage with theoretical ideas, including the reductive theory of personal identity, as represented by Derek Parfit (which may have little psychological traction when presented in conventional scientific and philosophical discourses, which strive to be purely rational), and help release their emancipatory and consolatory potential.

Kerala, a state in southern India, represents a success story for women in terms of both education and social justice. What lessons can we learn from Kerala? It seems the distinctive local culture may have played an important role. This chapter explores the lessons of Kerala from a philosophical perspective, drawing on philosophers Sen, Nussbaum, Chen, and others.

The tropologion is considered the earliest known extant chant book that has preserved layers of Jerusalem hymnography and liturgy from the fifth or sixth century and was in use until about the twelfth century. Recent study has shown its very wide dissemination: in Byzantium it was known as a tropologion, in Syria as a tropligin and in Armenia as a šaraknoc. Arguments are given that the book was probably known in Bulgaria in the Glagolitic alphabet. Three issues are studied for the purpose of revealing the entire history of this book: the content of the repertory, its arrangement and the liturgical calendar. Their study unquestionably confirms the earlier stage of the compilation of the book, possibly in Jerusalem or its outlying region, and it outlines its uninterrupted development of the book from Jerusalem to the Studios monastery and beyond in different languages. In all probability, John of Damascus rearranged this book, editing the yearly and weekly cycles for the liturgical purposes of his time and arranging the Resurrection repertory for eight consecutive Sundays and for the Common Offices in a consecutive modal order. This rearranged book might be the tropologion we know from its version in the Georgian iadgari, the Syriac tropligin and the Armenian šaraknoc: it contains chants presented in a single succession for the fixed and movable feasts and, at the end of the book, the cycles arranged in the eight modes. The latter cycles constitute the earliest known oktoechos as a chapter of a book.