Evolutionary aesthetics is a naturalistic perspective on the evolutionary explanation of art and beauty. Stephen Davies is one of the most influential figures in this field. He, as a philosopher, especially in his book, The Artful Species, introduces and criticizes the various theories presented in the evolutionary aesthetics research program. But finally, none of them meets his expectation while he believes that art and beauty are products of the process of biological evolution. Ultimately he concludes the skepticism is justified in this regard. At the end of the article, it will be shown that, contrary to Davies's view, adopting a pluralistic position is compatible with his critique, and also it eliminates the need for a skeptical position.

Although Stephen Davies, the author of Artful Species, like other evolutionary aestheticians believes that aesthetic response and art behavior are rooted in evolution, it seems there is a conflict between some of his claims and evolutionary approaches. Particularly, Davies insists on the uniqueness of aesthetic inclinations and objectivity of aesthetic properties. He also disregards the evolutionary epistemology. In this article, we are going to show incompatibility in Davies views based on cases mentioned before.

Thanks to the development of the concept of metadiscourse, it is now widely acknowledged that academic/scientific writing is not only concerned with communicating purely propositional meanings: what is communicated through academic/scientific communication is seen to be intertwined with the negotiation of social and interpersonal meanings. While a large number of so called metadiscoursal resources contribute to the simultaneous negotiation of propositional and interpersonal meanings, the present study aimed at investigating the functions self-mention forms can fulfill in academic/scientific communication. Two of Stephen Hawking's scientific books were selected as the corpus of the research, and based on Tang and John's (1999) model, the constructed corpus was analyzed in terms of the functions self-mention forms can fulfill in academic/scientific writing. The findings revealed that from among the different roles identified by Tang and John, the representative role constituted the most frequent self-mention function in the corpus. The remarkably heavy presence of representative role in Hawking's scientific prose was interpreted as a further evidence for the claim that scientists are more likely to persuade readers of their ideas if they frame their messages in ways which appeal to appropriate community-recognized relationships.

M-theory is a fundamental theory in modern physics. By presenting a new framework of this theory and inspired by some results of quantum mechanics, Stephen Hawking believes that the material world as a whole was created from "nothing" spontaneously and by physical laws. What we aim at in this article is to review and criticize Hawking's theological views, which are mainly related to M-theory; Views such as “denial of God”, “denial of human will”, “rejection of prayer, miracles and in general everything that has a metaphysical aspect, such as the existence of a spiritual dimension in man” and “denial of life after death”. For this purpose, after presenting Hawking's words, we will criticize the theological views of this physicist by relying on the foundations of Islamic philosophy. Some criticisms of Hawking's views include misperception of the concept and position of God, as well as the concept of time, his wrong image that humans are machines; failure to pay attention to the moral and social aspects of this view. Our method in this article will be descriptive-analytical.

Stephen Krashen (born 1941) is professor emeritus at the University of Southern California. Stephen Krashen received a PhD in Linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1972. Krashen’ s numerous papers and books have greatly contributed to the fields of secondlanguage acquisition, bilingual education, and reading. He is known for introducing various hypotheses related to second-language acquisition, including the acquisition-learning hypothesis, the input hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis, the affective filter, and the natural order hypothesis. Most recently, Krashen promotes the use of free voluntary reading during secondlanguage acquisition, which he says, "is the most powerful tool we have in language education” . What comes below is an interview with him by the editor of IJLTR. KS stands for Karim Sadeghi and SK for Stephen Krashen. . . .

Brian Davies is one of the contemporary philosophers of religion who has given serious critiques of the dominant approach in contemporary philosophy of religion. Based on the traditional theology of Aquinas, he has tried to offer a different answer to the problem of evil. By criticism of the notion of God as personal God in modern philosophy, he first examines some theodicies and defenses, and therefore, he calls into question both the design of the problem of evil and the provided answers for it in the contemporary philosophy of religion. Secondly, he attempts to analyze the concepts of “ being” , “ Creator” , and “ creation" in Aquinas's theological approach to the problem of evil which provides him with a basis for a different answer to the problem. Accordingly, he basically does not consider the problem of evil as a problem for theism, but also he knows it epistemological doubt that its answer will come in the traditional theology. In this article, we have tried to investigate how Davies uses the theological approach of Aquinas to cope with the contemporary formulation the problem of evil and if his attempt is successful.

Don Cupitt is a non-realist Christian. He does not believe in traditional realist God and declares that in the past people thought of God as an actual and concrete entity who existed in an invisible world but today we find that God is the very values which are important for us; therefore, we should not look for a concrete and actual God. For Cupitt there is no connection between religious propositions and actual world so the religious language is the language that expresses our moral views and feelings. Despite the non-realist’s viewpoint, the realists believe that the religious propositions such as God, Angels, Heaven and Hell independently exit in the actual world. Stephen Davies is one of those realists who strongly criticizes Cupitt’s viewpoint. Davies asserts that realists do not believe in what Cupitt ascribes to them and in fact he denies Cupitt’s allegations against realists.

Introduction: It is necessary for every organization to periodically study its structure. The aim of this study was to identify the organizational structures of libraries of university of medical sciences in Iran based on Stephen Robbins model.Methods: This was a descriptive survey. The study population included all the central library managers of medical university libraries in Iran in 2010-2011 (n=44). Fifteen managers were selected through simple random sampling method. Data were collected using the standard translated questionnaire of Robbins. The validity of this scale has been confirmed using seven library and management professionals and specialists. Its reliability was obtained 87% using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. Data were analyzed by SPSS software and descriptive statistics.Results: Libraries in universities of medical sciences in Iran lack efficient structures and are not in an acceptable rate, i.e. the complexity was less than the average level, and the formalization and centralization were greater than the standard level.Conclusion: The study results suggested that the organizational structures of universities of medical sciences in Iran are not efficient. Dimensions of the given structures need to be revised.

Skepticism about the external world is a philosophical view that claims we can’t know anything about the external world. Some kinds of philosophical skepticism use skeptical hypothesis to prove that we cannot know anything about the external world. This view has its roots in the fact that we don’t know skeptical hypothesis is wrong. Putnam hold that accepting the semantical externalism refutes this kind of skepticism about the external world. Davies has an important interpretation of Putnam’s argument against the external world skepticism. In this paper, we have logically analyzed and evaluated Davies’ semantical externalism argument against skepticism concerning the external world. The conclusion is that Davies’s argument refutes an important kind of skeptical hypothesis. By using the other kinds of skeptical hypothesis, however, the skeptics can’t conclude that it is impossible to know anything about the external world.