工学部紀要人文・社会編 抄録（Vol.22 No.2）

To develop the students' thinking faculty is one of the focuses in education of our country. However, the contents and methods of education of thinking faculty is not definite yet. So in a preceding paper, I attempted to examine these factors, by analyzing the "Achievement Test" (in mathematics) by Ministry of Education.
And I explained that the thinking faculty is composed of experiences (which are knowledges and techniques/ skills) on one side, and of the techniques to observe and analyze situations and to transform the experiences on another. Consequently, to develop the thinking faculty, we have to impart lots of knowledge and technique / skill on one side and to foster thinking techniques on the other.
In this paper, I have further examined the contents and methods of education of thinking faculty, by analyzing the "Achievement Test" (in social studies and science) by Ministry of Education.
In a preceding paper, I stated that to develop the thinking faculty, we have to impart lots of knowledge and technique / skill. In this paper, I have concluded that the knowlege to be impart are altogether "knowlege of facts". It is believed that there are two sorts of knowlege, "knowlege of facts" and "knowlege of the abstractions (which describe the processes and interrelations among spesific facts and events)". However, the interrelation merely means a spacial position, and the process merely a time-order. And both of them are the fact. Thus, "Knowlege of facts" means merely "knowlege of specifics" and "knowlege of the abstractions" merely "knowlege of a large number of specific facts".

This is one of the series of research for address terms which I have worked on. The aim of this tentative analysis is to compare the use of address terms in Japanese and in English regarding their function for conversational management. Address terms has been a popular topic among sociolinguists. The address terms serves to regulate the turn-taking of the participants. We have seen the employment of address terms and compared their functions in conversation in English and Japanese. We have found that in both language, address terms work likewise. It is found that the frequency of address terms are influenced by the turn-taking system of the language. Talking as possible as one can is important for participants in English conversation. They try to hold the floor and try to take their turn. Consequently, conflict is a common phenomenon. In order to regulate such competition, address terms function. On the contrary, Japanese conversations are designed according to the participants' social factor. According to his or her role and position, the participants control how to participate in the conversation by themselves.

The descriptions of impressions about English courses by science major students at a university are analyzed for the purpose of identifying motivational factors in English learning courses. A kind of the Humanistic Approach was taken to provide a writing task. This particular approach was found to be a basis for the evaluation of English teaching courses. As the research findings, 58 items were identified as motivational factors under 10 headings.

The results of the survey showed that among three most commonly used readability formulas (formulas to calculate difficulty level of a certain piece of reading), Dale and Chall formula indicated the understanding level of 210 Japanese university students most accurately. This formula is composed of the average number of words in a sentence and the percentage of unfamiliar words (words which do not appear on the "Dale list of 3000 familiar words") in the text. Therefore, it is assumed that these two factors, i. e. the length of the sentences and the percentage of the words out of basic vocabulary list made by Dale, are influential factors which affect the difficulty level of reading materials. Supported theoretically by this evidence, instructors of English could use this objective index in coordinating reading materials in their classrooms more precisely and confidently.

The ambiguity of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter has allowed scholars to produce a large number of different interpretations. Still, the possibility exists for new readings of this work to provide us with further interpretations.
This paper first analyzes Arthur Dimmesdale's sickness from a medical point of view and concludes that he can indeed be thought of a very seriously ill patient, with symptoms ranging from those of a psychosomatic disorder, depression, and a personality disorder.
The cause of such a disease cannot be found by merely examining his physical symptoms. It is absolutely necessary that one takes into consideration his mental symptoms as well.
One very clear fact that emerges is that Dimmesdale has been tormented by a unique conflict that exists between his biological nature and the spiritual and religious values of the New World. Although at one point he tries to escape from Boston with Hester, at the very end of the story he chooses instead to die on the scaffold after giving a final confession to the people. Hester has returned to Boston after living in England with her daughter, Pearl. Dimmesdale and Hester are taken to be tragic victims of the colonial values of Puritanism. However, in contrast to the fate that befalls Dimmesdale, Pearl lives on happily, not in Boston but in England; a fact which suggests Nathaniel Hawthorne's longing for his British heritage.
In conclusion, although nobody can deny that this work is a descriptive account of sin and the effect it has on the characters' lives, my new reading suggests that the work can be read in an entirely different way; a way which describes the experience of immigrants in two different cultures, namely, the values of a colonial Boston in contrast to those of Elizabethan Britain.

Deism, a philosophical, theological, and, religious idea of deity in modern age, is much included and connected in the traditional old ones. In this paper, I treat of deism itself and other ideas of gods surrounding it.
The content of this report is divided into three parts; firstly, the essence of deism and the connection with theism, secondly, in relation to atheism, naturalism, and free-thinking, thirdly, from some aspects of pantheism.
Through these reasonings, I intend to clarify a fine resemblance and difference, and to make a comparison and contrast with deism and the others. As a result of these investigations, I seek to connect many-sided objects of deism-study with important points of other deities.
I hope, afterwards, to improve a further study for real meanings of the broad deism.

Erasistratus is one of the most eminent anatomists and physiologists in the Hellenistic Age. The feature of his physiological theories is his mechanistic explanations, and their common basic principle is suction of matter. His principle of suction is regarded as so-called "horror vacui". Especially, it has been generally considered that the theory of the void stated in the preface of Hero's Pneumatica is the same as Erasistratus'theory and they both derive from the early Peripatetics. In this paper I would reconsider this common interpretation. From the result of my examination of Galen's texts and Anonymus Londinensis, it is concluded that Erasistratus'theory is fundamentally different from Hero's. Briefly stated, Hero explained that the generation of the large void causes suction, but Erasistratus, on the contrary, thought that the void cannot be generated and therefore suction occurs.

So far, I have reported five papers about time theory, in which I examined the definitions of philosophers, western and eastern, ancient and modern. But my point of consideration doesn't consists so much in the definitions themselves as in the fact that so many philosophers and scientists defined time in their own ways. In other words, time is possibly defined so variously from different points of view that one who examines time theory feels like regarding time as non-being. Then what should be asked about time isn't what it is but rather what it presupposes about the understanding of a human being, for it goes without saying that time is never considered independently of a human being. The subject of this paper is time theories of scientists, especially the arrow of time. Natural science just needs to measure their objects, which necessarily leads to the mathematisation of nature or the idealisation of nature. Edmund Husserl looks on it as the crisis of European reason. This paper aims at making it clear that the idealisation of nature is now getting out of control and that it means the new crisis different from what Husserl thinks as by examining the general lecture of S. Hawking "The arrow of time" at Kyoto University.

The recent revolution in boards of directors and supervisory boards is making steady progress in Japanese business, resembling similar trends in corporate governance in the United States.
In 1997, Sony was the first among Japanese firms to introduce the executive officer system. In addition, in June of 1997 Professor Iwao Nakatani, who was until then professor at a national university, was engaged as an outside director of Sony Corporation, a move which caused a sensation in Japanese business circles at that time.
Jurists and economists have different view of corporate governance. While jurists think in a narrow sense about checks and controls of illegal acts of corporations as the essence of governance, economists think in a broad sense about the distribution of profit to shareholders as a result of success in the marketplace. Between these two views there is a definite difference.
In the recent changes in boards of directors and supervisory boards in Japan, it seems that the theory of economists corresponds to the board of directors and that of jurists corresponds to the supervisory board.
In this paper I will confirm that the shareholders of joint-stock companies are the true owners and I will sketch the system of independent directors and executive officers, concepts which form the main revolution in recent Japanese business culture. I will also examine the part that auditing by supervisory boards and certified public accountants should play in maintaining credit and assuring the international competitive power of Japanese firms.