Even though nature is an exhibition of miracles, we prefer to call it a book, for we hear and read it like a book and watch it with admiration while walking through its colorful gilt embroideries.

Just as the elegant architectural details of a chalet whisper that there is more to the chalet than what we see, this marvelous book of nature directs our consciousness to the source of all beauty and order beyond itself–the source that creates and brings to light. With every formation, this source makes us feel the presence of a perfect organizer and displayer. However, it cannot be sensed because its greatness is beyond human comprehension and perception.

When we look at the skies (heavens), we notice that this architecture in nature appears to be concentric. The mountains seem to lean their heads majestically at the skies’ feet, and the skies’ self-surrender to the strong desire of togetherness are nice symbols of this architecture.

This excellent book and perfect exhibition, created by Eternal Mercy and offered for our observation and study, is now even less valued and cared about than a pile of garbage. It is being transformed into a desert and rubbish from all quarters. Today nature is shaken, ruined, and scattered. Air, the throne of Divine Command and Will, is full of malicious smoke, a whirlpool fluctuating with subjugation. Water, the symbol of Compassion, is no more than death canals of tar.

The land, although created as a symbol of God’s infinite Kindness and Benevolence, is now an infertile desert having very little to offer.

Like all other things entrusted to us, we have ruined this book and destroyed this wonderful exhibition. Actually, we have betrayed ourselves by transforming this beautiful world into a hell.

If humanity does not rebuild and cultivate this destroyed planet and return it to its original beauty, we will experience events like Noah’s Flood in the near future.

I argue against these claims, based upon strong empirical evidence indicating that war does not occur among democratic states, the so-called zone of peace. As democratic regimes replace authoritarian regimes, future generations will study wars as an obsolete part of history.

This article has three parts: tracing the roots of the democratic peace argument and providing supporting evidence, examining the three mechanisms offered to explain the absence of war among democratic states, and critically evaluating the democratic peace argument.

Does democratic peace exist?

One should define democracy before answering the above question. Democracy is a combination of two Greek words: demos (people) and kratos (rule)”rule by the people. In a direct democracy, citizens are directly engaged in the law-making process though a majority system. In a representative democracy, as we have today, citizens use their legislative powers through their elected representatives. Both types also require a constitutional framework through which the majority can exercise its power and through which the individual and collective rights of people are guaranteed.

The roots of democratic peace argument can be traced back to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) Perpetual Peace essay, published in 1795.(3) He argued that although state rulers decide to start a war, it is the people who suffer the consequences (e.g., the loss of money, property, and lives). Thus they are reluctant to engage in war. Since rulers of democratic states are accountable to the people, they are less inclined to initiate a war.

Kant also identified commerce as another reason for perpetual peace among democracies. Increasing trade leads states to realize that they have much to loose from conflict and thus reinforces their desire to avoid war. Finally, the existence of a pacific union prevents the outbreak of war between democracies. Such a union reinforces the idea that democracies have common goals and interests, and further mitigates the desire for armed conflict.

Michael Doyle, a former professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton and now assistant secretary general of the UN, revisited Kant’s perpetual peace argument.(4) He showed that, as Kant had predicted, there is no historical case of two democratic states fighting each other. Using the correlates of war data prepared by University of Michigan researchers, he listed all the democratic states and interstate wars occurring after 1815. He pointed out that although wars occurred between non-democratic states and between democratic and non-democratic states, there has been no war between democratic states since 1815.

Doyle listed three different factors to account for this: caution, respect, and interest. Democratic leaders are cautious when initiating military conflict, for otherwise their constituencies will punish them by removing them from power. Rulers of democratic states respect each other because they respect their populations. Democratic rulers may reason that military dictators will not respect the citizens of a democracy because military dictators do not respect their own people. Finally, the level of trade among democratic states is so high that they become dependent on each other. This interdependence decreases the utility of military force during disputes.

Supporters of the democratic peace argument have examined such long-term rivalries Argentina and Britain, Pakistan and India, Greece and Turkey to see whether being a democracy has had any impact on military hostilities between these pairs. Greece and Turkey provide an example of how dictatorships are more prone to war. They have fought three wars, but not when both of them were democratic. This also has been true with Ecuador and Peru, Argentina and Chile, and Brazil and Argentina, all of which have had bitter rivalries. The Falklands War between Argentina and Britain took place when Argentina was a dictatorship and resulted in the military rulers being replaced by a stable democratic regime.

Like inter-state conflicts, civil wars provide another set of empirical support for the democratic peace argument. Democratic states rarely experience civil wars. Why would any group launch a war to control a state when they could pursue their goals peacefully through electoral participation? Democratization is, then, a way to prevent civil wars. Dean Babst and William Eckhardt conducted a 42-year study of all independent countries from 1950 to 1991. Their study found that although 90 percent of dictatorships have experienced some form of civil war, no civil wars occurred in democratic states during that period.(5)

The end of the cold war

The end of the cold war popularized the idea of democratic peace. However, there were some differences about the new world order that was to replace the cold war. Robert Kaplan predicted a coming anarchy,(6) in which a state’s control over its population vanishes and different armed groups create an anarchic environment. Samuel Huntington saw a coming clash of civilizations,(7) in which states belonging to different civilizations would fight each other. John Mearsheimer defined the new world order as back to the future,(8) in which the superpowers’ departure from Europe would create a power vacuum that various European countries would seek to fill through conflict. The democratic peace argument offered an alternative model for the new world order.

American officials upheld the democratic peace argument. In 1992, Secretary of State James Baker said: The cold war has ended, and we now have a chance to forge a democratic peace, an enduring peace built on shared values”democracy and political and economic freedom. The strength of these values in Russia and the other new independent states will be the surest foundation for peace”and the strongest guarantee of our national security”for decades to come.(9) Similarly, President Clinton declared in his 1994 State of the Union Speech: Ultimately the best strategy to ensure our security and to build a durable peace is to support the advance of democracy elsewhere. Democracies don’t attack each other.(10) And at the height of the crisis in Haiti in 1994, he supported military intervention on the grounds that: Democracies here are more likely to keep the peace.(11)

The idea of democratic peace is not new to American foreign policy. Woodrow Wilson made a similar argument as early as 1917: A steadfast concert of peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith w/in [a concert]. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honor steady to a common end and prefer to the interest of mankind to any narrow interest of their own.(12)

Two explanations

There are two key issues here. First, democratic peace does not mean that democratic states are peace-lovers, for democratic states do initiate war with authoritarian states. In addition, pacifist public opinion cannot explain democratic peace, for such a situation would lead to democratic states having peaceful relations with all states, whether democratic or not. Therefore any explanation for democratic peace must account for the absence of war between democratic states and the persistence of war between democratic and non-democratic states.

Second, correlation does not mean causation. Correlations establish empirical and observable regularities between two variables (democratic states and war), but do not explain the underlying mechanisms causing the observed empirical regularity. For example, there has been no war between states having McDonald’s restaurants. This perfect correlation, however, does not mean that McDonald’s restaurants lead to peace (the so-called McDonald’s peace theory). Clarifying underlying mechanisms prevents explanations based on spurious correlations.

Researchers offer two mechanisms to explain peace among democratic states: normative and institutional.

Normative: Normative democratic peace researchers assume that decision-makers use conflict resolution tools developed in domestic politics when dealing with external problems and expect other decision-makers to follow a similar strategy. As a result democratic leaders, when dealing with a democratic state, try (and expect other democratic leaders) to establish consensus through nonviolent means to solve external problems. While dealing with non-democratic leaders, however, democratic leaders tend to resort to violence easily because they expect authoritarian leaders will use violent means.(13)

For example, when dealing with Hitler or Stalin, democratic leaders inferred that they would use negotiations to gain time for military preparations, for these leaders did not come from a culture where problems were solved through negotiations. Thus, democratic leaders do not expect to reach a negotiated agreement with authoritarian leaders.

Institutional: Institutional democratic peace researchers argue that democratic institutions cause peace among democratic states. In democracies, the presence of checks and balances and high levels of public involvement in the political process constrain state leaders and prevent hasty decisions. These constraints also slow down the decision-making process. As a result, third parties have time to intervene among democratic states and help them solve their problems peacefully.

Democratic leaders do not fear a surprise attack when they have a problem with other democratic states, because they are aware that those states have democratic institutional mechanisms. Since there is little, if any, constraint in an authoritarian state, authoritarian rulers can make quick decisions. Therefore democratic rulers fear a surprise attack by an authoritarian ruler. Furthermore, since authoritarian rulers know that democratic leaders are constrained, they tend to push democratic leaders for more concessions. Such a tactic might escalate a crisis into a war.

Lastly, democratic rulers are elected and are cautious about using violence, for they can be punished by their constituencies. Authoritarian rulers do not have to worry about elections.(14) For example, Saddam can start a war quite easily because he needs no one’s approval and is not affected by the outcome. So far, Saddam has launched and lost two wars, both of which inflicted enormous misery on Iraqi people”and yet he remains in power. In democratic countries, however, people punish rulers who start wars without their approval by not re-electing them.

Problems

The democratic peace argument is not immune from problems.(15) First, there is no one definition of democracy, for researchers use different data sets with different codifications to measure levels of democracy. Various definitions (e.g., free elections, at least one peaceful transfer of power, universal suffrage, free press, free expression, and human rights) make it harder to test democratic peace argument. It also can cause one researcher to codify a given country as democratic while another will classify it as authoritarian.

Second, there is no consensus on how to define war. This is important, for even though democratic states did not openly fight each other, they did conduct covert operations against other democratic regimes and brought less-democratic regimes to power. For example, the US and Britain overthrew the democratically elected Mossadegh government in Iran in 1953 and replaced him with the less-democratic Shah. Similarly, the CIA helped overthrow the democratically elected Allende government in Chile in 1973 and replace him with the authoritarian Pinochet.

Third, democracies have been quite rare in history. Therefore, chances for a war between them were low. The geographical distribution of democratic countries further weakens the importance of the democratic peace argument. For example what is chance of democratic New Zealand fighting democratic Spain?

Only after WWII did the number of democracies begin to increase. During this period, however, all democratic states were allies. Thus skeptics argue that security concerns rather than regime type explains democratic peace. Mearsheimer for example, argues that European democracies may experience another war after the end of the cold war.

From democratic peace to perpetual peace

Overwhelming evidence indicates that democracies are better in terms of providing internal peace for their citizens and can serve as the building blocks of a global and perpetual peace. Democratic norms and institutions provide a strong basis for peace among democratic countries. At the turn of the twentieth century, there was only a handful of democratic states; there were 22 by 1950. By 2000, according to Freedom House criteria, 85 counties had governments that came to power through free elections and respect basic human rights and the rule of law. As the number of democracies increases, the zone of peace will expand.

The end of the cold war provided the opportunity to design a new world order. After more than a decade, it seems we can claim that the US foreign policy establishment believes in the democratic peace argument and actively supports democratization throughout the world. Time will show the success of these efforts. 

Footnotes

1. The author can be reached at.
2. Charles Kagley and Eugene Wittkopf, World Politics: Trend and Transformation, 7th ed. (St. Martin’s Press: 1998), 347.
3. Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, (1975). Online at: http://home.freeuk.com/ethos/kantperpe.htm.
4. Michael Doyle, Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs, Philosophy & Public Affairs 12 (Summer 1983): 205-35
5. Dean V. Babst and William Eckhardt, How Peaceful Are Democracies Compared with Other Countries? Peace Research (1992).
6. Robert Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy (Vintage Books: 2000).
7. Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996).
8. John Mearsheimer, Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War, International Security 15, no. 1 (1990): 5-56.
9. Entire speech online at: http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/offdocs/ b920615.htm.
10. Entire speech online at: http://www.crisny.org/government/us/ us.sotu94.html.
11. The Economist (1 Apr. 1995).
12. Entire speech online at: http://www.lib.byu.edu/~rdh/wwi/1917/ wilswarm.html.
13. Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).
14. Ibid.
15. For critiques of the democratic peace argument, see David Spiro, The Insignificance of the Democratic Peace, International Security 19 (Fall 1994): 50-86; Joanna Gowa, Democratic States and International Disputes, International Organization 49 (Summer 1995): 511-22; and Mearsheimer, Back to the Future.

A: This is a very comprehensive subject. From one perspective it’s open to debate. It’s very difficult to summarize my thoughts on this kind of platform. In one sense we don’t separate men and women. In another sense there are physical and psychological differences. Women and men should be the two sides of truth, like the two faces of a coin. Man without woman, or woman without man, cannot exist; they were created together. Adam suffered in Heaven because he had no mate, and then Heaven became a real Heaven when he found Eve. Man and woman complement each other.

Q: If we approach the matter from an Islamic perspective?

A: Our Prophet, the Qur’an, and Qur’anic teachings don’t take men and women as separate creatures. I think the problem here is that people approach it from extremes and disturb the balance. There are differences on specific points. For example, men usually are physically stronger and apt to bear hardship, while women have deeper emotions; they are more compassionate, more delicate, more self-sacrificing. While looking for a place for each gender in society, we should consider these and other innate differences. God created everything, from sub-atomic particles to human beings, in pairs to form a unity.

Q: Are there examples for the female role?

A: In the social atmospheres of Muslim societies where Islam is not “contaminated” with customs or un-Islamic traditions, Muslim women are full participants in daily life. For example, during the Prophet’s time and in later centuries when the West gave women no place in society, when the West was debating whether or not women had spirits or were devils or human beings, A’isha (one of the Prophet’s wives) led an army. She also was a religious scholar whose views everyone respected. Women prayed in mosques together with men. An old woman could oppose the caliph in the mosque in a judicial matter.

Even in the Ottoman period during the eighteenth century, the wife of an English ambassador highly praised the women and mentioned their roles in Muslim families and society with admiration.

Q: Can women be administrators?

A: There’s no reason why a woman can’t be an administrator. In fact, Hanafi jurisprudence says that a woman can be a judge. Maybe some women could explain certain matters more comfortably to a judge of their own gender.

Q: How did the Prophet view children?

A: He treated his children and grandchildren with great compassion, and never neglected to direct them to the Hereafter and good deeds. He smiled at them, caressed and loved them, but did not allow them to neglect matters related to the afterlife. His ultimate goal was to prepare them for the Hereafter.

All of the Prophet’s sons had died. Ibrahim, his last son born to his Coptic wife Mary, also died in infancy. The Messenger often visited his son before the latter’s death, although he was very busy. Ibrahim was looked after by a nurse. The Prophet would embrace, kiss, and caress him before returning home. When Ibrahim died, the Prophet took him on his lap again, embraced him, and described his sorrow while on the brink of tears. Some were surprised. He gave them this answer: “Eyes may water and hearts may be broken, but we do not say anything except what God will be pleased with.” He pointed to his tongue and said: “God will ask us about this.”(1)

Whenever he returned to Madina, he would carry children on his mount. On such occasions, the Messenger embraced not only his grandchildren but also those in his house and those nearby. He conquered their hearts through his compassion. He loved all children.

Q: How should parents treat their children?

A: These who bring children into this world are responsible for raising them to realms beyond the heavens. Just as you take care of their bodily health, so take care of their spiritual life. For God’s sake, have pity and save the helpless innocents. Do not let their lives go to waste.

The future of every individual is closely related to the impressions and influences experienced during childhood and youth. If children and young people are brought up in a climate where their enthusiasm is stimulated with higher feelings, they will have vigorous minds and display good morals and virtues.

The first school for children, whose souls are as bright as mirrors and as quick to record as cameras, are their homes. Their first educators are their mothers. Thus it is fundamental for a nation’s existence and stability that mothers be brought up and educated to be good educators for their children.

If parents encourage their children to develop their abilities and be useful to themselves and the community, they give the nation a strong new pillar. If, on the contrary, they do not cultivate their children’s human feelings, they release scorpions into the community.

Improving a community is possible only by elevating the young generations to the rank of humanity, not by obliterating the bad ones. Unless a seed composed of religion, tradition, and historical consciousness is germinated throughout the country, new evil elements will appear and grow in the place of each eradicated bad one.

Children should respect and obey their parents as much as possible. Parents should give as much importance to their children’s moral and spiritual education as they do to their physical growth and health, and should entrust them to the care of the most honorable teachers and guides. How ignorant and careless are those parents who neglect their children’s moral and spiritual training, and how unfortunate are the children who experience such neglect and are so victimized.

Children who are inconsiderate of their parents’ rights and disobey them are “monsters derived from a deteriorated human being.” Parents who do not secure their children’s moral and spiritual welfare also are merciless and cruel. Most brutish and pitiless of all are parents who paralyze their children’s moral and spiritual development after their children have found their way to human perfection.

Q: What about young people?

A: Those who wish to predict a nation’s future can do so accurately by analyzing the education and upbringing its young people receive.

Desires resemble sweets, and virtues resemble food that is a little salty or sour. When young people are free to choose, what are they likely to prefer? Regardless of this, however, we must bring them up to be friends of virtue and enemies of indecency and immorality.

Until we help our young people through education, they are captives of their environment. They wander about aimlessly, moved by intense passions and far away from knowledge and reason. They can become truly valiant young representatives of the national thought and feeling only if their education integrates them with their past and prepares them intelligently for their future.

Think of society as a crystal vessel, and of its young people as the liquid poured into it. Notice that the liquid assumes the vessel’s shape and color. Evil-minded champions of regimentation tell young people to obey them instead of the truth. Do such people never question themselves? Should they not also obey the truth?

A nation’s progress or decline depends on the spirit and consciousness, the upbringing and education, given to its young people. Nations that have raised their young people correctly are always ready for progress, while those who have not done so find it impossible to take even a single step forward.

A young person is a sapling of power, strength, and intelligence. If trained and educated properly, he or she can become a “hero” who overcomes obstacles and acquires a mind that promises enlightenment to hearts and order to the world.

This fundamental teaching of brotherhood and sisterhood regardless of religious affiliation is being overshadowed by suspicion, anger, mistrust, and other negative trends and emotions that continue to arise from our pursuit of ever-more comfort and possessions and our refusal to realize that such things are finite. As we continue to gather them into our hands, others are deprived of what they regard as their fair share and become fertile ground for resentment and either passive or active resistance. Their negative worldview is only strengthened and expanded by the continued lack of modern education, meaningful employment, adequate health care, freedom from fear, and many other things that those of us who are more fortunate take for granted.

Underlying the above quotations is the need to understand others, for there can be no love among people without mutual respect and acceptance of one’s right to be different. Calls to celebrate diversity and accept multiculturalism abound, but many individuals and institutions have yet to go beyond mouthing the words while doing nothing to make them a reality. This is the true challenge of the new millennium.

In this issue, we present several articles on what we should expect from believers; certain similarities among the monotheistic religions; the roles of men and women, parents and children, and how they should work together to create a better society; the place of prayer in one’s life; and the need for joining scientific and spiritual knowledge to improve the quality of life for everyone. In addition, we present several short articles on the values of introspection and self-reflection, self-reliance and the need to stop blaming others for what happens to us, and how we should view other people.

We analyze one nation’s successful quest for development to see if its methods can be applied by other nations. Also discussed is the potential of e-learning to spread relevant knowledge in areas that previously had no access to it, and the hope that they will be able to benefit from it. Two of our authors explain how democratic governing institutions prevent wars between democratic nations and civil wars within those same nations, and how the formation of social capital increases society’s overall well-being.

Our scientific articles discuss the benefits of lightning on our health and even our moods, and how the existence of what scientists call ‘dark matter’ could signal a change in how we perceive ourselves and our place in the universe.

We hope that you enjoy this issue and, as always, look forward to your comments.

The twentieth century was marked by failed utopias: Maoist China, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, and various fascist and communist states. Except for its inter-war militaristic period, Japan has been conspicuous for its absence.

Japan continues to baffle the world. How did a largely peasant feudal nation forcibly opened to the world only in 1853 manage to defeat Russia on the battlefield in 1905? How did a nation that was largely destroyed during World War II rise to such economic heights that by 1962 everyone was aware of the Japanese miracle? What transformed one of the most feared and brutal militaristic nations into a nation that now refuses to bear arms and only recently agreed to involve its soldiers in peace-keeping forces?

The ability to adapt

Japan emerged from its more than 200-year self-imposed exile only when Commodore Perry entered Edo (Tokyo) Bay in 1853 and forced it to do so. The new Meiji dynasty immediately announced the aim of returning to the events of antiquity and origins.(1) However, it simultaneously said that it would search for new knowledge throughout the world eliminate old customs and abuses, as if to immediately announce its intention to inaugurate a genuinely new beginning rather than arepetition.(2)

Even before this epochal date, the ruling Tokugawa dynasty had laid the groundwork for significant social change. For example, they had tamed the samurai, Japan’s traditional warrior ruling elite, into non-landed town dwellers who received government stipends. In short, they became bureaucrats whose loyalty was guaranteed only if the person in charge was efficient. The tradition of absolute loyalty to one’s clan lord was ended.

The four social classes of warrior, peasant, artisan, and merchant also were abolished, giving people freedom to find their own way in life. The former warrior elite was not threatened by this, for only it had the necessary knowledge to assume the high positions. But not all of them chose that path, for many participated enthusiastically in commerce, from which they had been excluded, and education. The increased social mobility and expanded horizons that this change ushered in was welcomed by all, especially the former elite.

Thus when the Meiji dynasty came to power in the newly opened Japan, it was able to abolish the last vestiges of feudalism quickly and without protest. More importantly, the former elite gave its loyalty to the Emperor willingly.

A few years after this, Japanese students were being sent to Europe and America to learn foreign languages and acquire modern knowledge and skills. Businessmen went abroad to visit factories and companies and buy products that they thought had potential back home. Japan’s reputation as a nation of intensely curious people was not long in coming. Within the space of almost 50 years, Japan went from being an isolated xenophobic warrior-dominated nation to one that was curious about everything non-Japanese, even to the point of being ridiculed by other nations.

Education and experience-based knowledge

Even before schools began to proliferate during the Meiji era, people known as technologists actively traveled the country to locate home-grown improved agricultural implements to make farmers more efficient. Such information was published and distributed widely. Local people would show how to use the new tools or methods, and the results convinced people to abandon traditional ways in favor of the new ones, which were more effective.

This represented a disguised challenge to the ruling order, for: Not only were the technologists saying, by implication, that men with enough intelligence and enterprise to alter their status and style of life might ignore the limitations placed on them by birth; they were also saying in effect that the pursuit of private interest by enough people would change society for the better by adding to the sum of human welfare and therefore that the good of society was not uniquely determined by the moral quality of the ruler but might in part well up from the selfish strivings of the masses.(3)

Entrepreneurship

In 1880, the government encouraged entrepreneurship in the national interest by selling its pilot plants to entrepreneurs, giving them exclusive licenses and other privileges, and often providing some portion of their capital funds.(4) These relations were unofficial and personal, as well as based on clan origins, marriages, and bribery. In 1881, the government attempted to manage such activities by creating the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce.

After WWI, rural Japanese flooded into the urban centers looking for salaried jobs. Working conditions were often hazardous and pay was low, but still they came, driven by the desire to have a better life than their parents. In addition, they wanted to experience first hand what they were reading in the books and magazines promoting the American way of life. They saved their money, got educated, and opened their own businesses.

Realistic planning based on accurate data

Another concern was advance planning and record keeping so people would know how long a certain task should take. Authors were discussing such matters in the field of agriculture as early as the seventeenth century. By the early nineteenth century, technologists were exhorting farmers to keep detailed records of what they did and what was the result, so that they could be compared with past and future results.

In 1930, the Temporary Industrial Rationality Bureau drew up plans for the control of enterprises, implementation of scientific management principles, improvements in industrial financing, standardization of products, simplification of production processes, and subsidies to support the production and consumption of domestically manufactured goods.(5) Basing themselves on the German version, Japan used cooperation and cartels, instead of competition to lower costs. The main goal was not profit, but to cooperate and develop in a way that made Japan able to compete with the developed countries.

One deciding factor was that of historical continuity. For example, the people who had first formulated the relevant policies during the 1920s and 1930s were still there and hard at work in the 1950s. According to Johnson: This theme of historical continuity also draws attention to the fact that industrial policy is rooted in Japanese political rationality and conscious institutional innovation, and not primarily or exclusively in Japanese culture, vestiges of feudalism, insularity, frugality, the primacy of the social group over the individual, or any other special characteristic of Japanese society. Economic crisis gave birth to industrial policy.(6)

Women and government

Women were a critical factor in Japan’s early development. According to Koji Taira, Japan’s economic modernization, which meant the implementation of the factory system after the war [WWI], was ˜manned by women.’ (7)

The government also was an active player, for it designed policies to create a predominantly American lifestyle based on rationality, efficiency, and economies in the conduct of social life.(8) The consumption of everything new was encouraged: toys, food, clothing, attitudes, identities, and so on. This policy was directed at women, for It not only announced the end of the seclusion and isolation women had experienced as virtual prisoners of the household, it had consequences for their status outside family life, as larger numbers began pouring into the labor force, especially in those areas like learning, education, and sports that had been male

preserves.(9)

This challenge to Japan’s patriarchal culture and traditional gender roles was noted but subsumed by the government’s attempt to present, at least on the surface, a society marked neither by social divisions nor by gender difference and sexual differentiation.(10) Concern was raised about the harmful effects of such materialism, self-indulgence, loss of spiritual values, and traditional roles. In fact, even though some blamed the 1923 earthquake on such departures from tradition, the new trends continued with full official encouragement and support.

Adaptation of foreign concepts and methods

After its defeat and occupation in 1945, Japan did not blame its fate on non-fidelity to tradition, straying from Buddhist or Shinto principles, or other such abstract ideas. Instead, the Emperor, who until then had been worshipped, went on national radio and told the Japanese to unite your total strength to be devoted to the construction for the future to keep pace with the progress of the world.(11) And the Japanese listened.

When the American occupation force began to use Japan as a supplier for its efforts during the Korean War and began to give it technological knowledge and help, Japan set off with a vengeance to benefit from them. Its efforts paid off so well that by 1962 the world for the first time heard the phrase the Japanese miracle. Its wholesale invasion of the electronic and auto industries was a spectacular success.

From the ashes of WWII came a new policy: administrative guidance. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) established many informal rules that sought to restrict foreign access to the Japanese market until its nascent industries could compete. Its main proponent and representative, Sahashi Shigeru, went up against Singer Sewing Company and IBM-and won. He even told the IBM representative that we do not have an inferiority complex toward you; we only need time and money to compete effectively.(12) Calls by internal and foreign interests for economic liberalization were resisted, despite the distortions caused by administrative guidance (e.g., excessive investment in production facilities and overproduction of products), so that the new home-grown industries would not be swamped.

In the 1960s, MITI developed a policy of administration by inducement to deal with the dangers of economic liberalization that both internal and foreign sectors were demanding. The goal was flexibility to adapt to fast-changing situations and new challenges confronting the national economy. Thus, laws were intentionally vague so that a suitable interpretation could be found. In short, this meant committees of cooperating bureaucrats, industrialists, and financiers that would set investment rates, promote mergers, discourage new firms from entering given industries, and in general try to build an industrial structure on a par with those of the United Sates and West Germany, the two prime external reference economies.(13)

This policy, along with certain understandings when it came to banking and investing, was open to abuse and caused its own share of difficulties, but it succeeded brilliantly. Furthermore, a large share of the profits was reinvested in heavy industry and new technology so that Japan could keep up with the industrialized world.

Time management

Time management is fundamental to a modern industrialized society, for any industrial undertaking depends upon performing a set of specific steps in a predetermined chronological order. For the process to succeed, everything must be in place so that it can be used at the correct time. But for the process to be efficient, people must know how long each step should take.

Traditional Japanese society considered time to be communal, for that was the way the people organized their lives. Like any other crop, rice has to be planted and harvested at the appropriate times to be sold and feed the family. As mentioned above, technologists who sought to replace ineffective methods with new ones, often not from the same area, had been active for centuries. The value of time was recognized and linked to the family and the village as a whole. If it were neglected, the family farm could easily fail in this highly competitive environment, which was viewed as dishonoring one’s ancestors and often resulted in the family’s self-banishment from the village.

This attitude is still a feature of Japanese life. After WWI, working days of 18 hours were common and welcomed, provided that the workers were paid adequately. Often, there were complaints that the company was not letting the people work more hours. This has been ascribed to the traditional Japanese preference for income over leisure, which corporate Japan has harnessed it its benefit.(14)

Also, the fact that Japan is community-oriented enables practices that cannot be reduplicated in other countries: government and business working as partners instead of adversaries, businesses and unions agreeing on acceptable contracts instead of one side trying to lay down the law to others, increased production through willing teamwork and mutual cooperation instead of everyone looking out for himself or herself alone.

Conclusion

Japan, having almost no natural resources, never had the option of depending upon one or more natural resources or products to fuel its development. After its self-imposed isolation ended, Japan’s rulers realized just how weak the country was vis A vis the industrialized powers and so began to devise a strategy to equal and then surpass them. China lost its role as Japan’s source of inspiration practically overnight. But these strategies were always regarded as subject to change if the situation so warranted. Moreover, these strategies and any subsequent changes were enacted only after conducting a thorough and realistic analysis of what they had to work with and what challenges they had to face. In short, the Japanese were not afraid to try and learn from their mistakes or to change.

Other major factors in Japan’s successful development were the ability to see when traditions needed to be modified or reinterpreted, the desire to reach a broad social consensus on what should be done and how it should be done, and the constant appeal to rationalize each task so it could be done faster and more efficiently. Since failure was not an option, bureaucrats and businessmen did not appeal to tradition, what should be, a past golden age, and others heard from various quarters today.

What Japan had to work with was a government that had a realistic vision of what the nation could be, an already established foundation for an industrialized and modern society, and people who were anxious to see their country become a major power due to their skills, education, competitiveness, concern for quality, adapting existing technology for new uses, and will to succeed. Unfortunately, this cannot be said of many countries today.

In the 1960s, when one saw Made in Japan on a product, it was a source of laughter. No one laughs any more, for this phrase has become synonymous with quality and state-of-the-art technology and efficiency.

Footnotes

1. Harry Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity: History, Culture, and Community in Interwar Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 300.
2. Ibid., 301.
3. Thomas C. Smith, Native Sources of Japanese Industrialization: 1750-1920 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989), 197.
4. Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1982), 85.
5. Ibid., 104.
6. Ibid., 114.
7. Harootunian, Overcome by Modernity, 12.
8. Ibid., 15.
9. Ibid., 17.
10. Ibid., 18.
11. Akio Morito, Made in Japan (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1986), 35.
12. Johnson, MITI, 246-47.
13. Ibid., 256.
14. Smith, Native Sources, 222.

Cosmology is the study of the universe’s beginning, formation, and evolution. Humanity has devised many cosmological theories. For example, ancient Greeks thought the universe was composed of four elements: earth, wind, fire, and water. Now, despite several millennia of effort, modern cosmologists are even worse off.

About 60 years ago, Fritz Zwicky realized that clusters of galaxies consist mainly of matter in some non-luminous form, defined as matter that we cannot see with our telescopes. Now, after decades of accumulated observations, most astronomers believe that as much as 90 percent of this material may consist of objects or particles that cannot be seen. That is, most of the matter in the universe does not radiate light. Previously, people called this phenomenon missing matter. Contemporary researchers prefer dark matter, for it is the light, not the matter, that is missing.

In this article, I discuss evidence that proves the existence of dark matter, possible candidates for dark matter, and the importance of dark matter in understanding the universe’s beginning and end according to the Big Bang theory.

Obsering the invisible

As dark matter emits no electromagnetic radiation (e.g., light, radio waves, and X-rays), it cannot be seen by a telescope. However, we can infer its existence through its gravitational effects on luminous matter. The most obvious example of this is observed when looking at the rotation rates of galaxies. Using the resulting information, scientists can calculate the speeds of stars as they rotate around a galaxy’s center (orbital speeds) in two different ways. The first way is to look at the light coming from stars in different parts of a galaxy. Through a close study of that light’s properties, they can deduce how fast and in what direction (whether toward or away from us) that star is rotating. The second way is based upon gravitational physics. Given that we know how much matter the galaxy contains, we can calculate how fast stars must be orbiting around its center. By accounting for all of the galaxy’s luminous matter (e.g., stars, gas, and dust), astronomers can calculate the star’s orbital speeds.

But there is a problem here: The two results do not agree. The only way to account for this difference is to posit the existence of a large quantity of dark matter in the galaxies. To explain the astronomical observations, this dark matter must surround the galaxy in a large spherical distribution (known as a galactic halo).

Is the gravity of the galaxies seen in this image strong enough to contain the glowing hot gas? Superposed on an optical picture of a group of galaxies is an image taken in X-ray light. The X-ray picture shows confined hot gas highlighted in false red color and provides clear evidence that the gravity exerted in groups and clusters of galaxies exceeds all of the individual component galaxies combined. The extra gravity is attributed to dark matter, the nature and abundance of which is one of the biggest mysteries in astrophysics today. Credit: Richard Mushotzky (*)

Another effect, known as gravitational lensing, gives evidence for dark matter’s existence. This effect occurs when a massive object’s gravity bends the light that is passing by. For instance, when a cluster of galaxies blocks our view of another galaxy behind it, the cluster’s gravity warps the more distant galaxy’s light into rings or arcs, depending on the geometry involved. By observing these rings, one can calculate how much mass should be present inside the galaxy to produce this pattern. Such calculations confirm that clusters contain far more mass than the luminous matter suggests.

Image of the rich galaxy cluster Abell 2218, taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. This cluster shows evidence of multiple lensing images, as well as numerous strong and weak arcs. Using information about the arcs and multiple images allows astronomers to reconstruct the mass distribution, which then gives us knowledge about the distribution of dark matter. (*)

Dark matter defined

Understanding dark matter is a key to other important issues in cosmology, such as how much mass the universe contains, how galaxies formed, and whether or not the universe will expand forever.

The posited explanations for dark matter can be grouped into three main categories:

– Dark matter could be some kind of ordinary matter that emits or reflects too little radiation for our instruments to detect. Such objects are known as massive astrophysical compact halo objects (MACHOs) and may be ultrafaint stars, large or small black holes, cold gas, or dust scattered around the universe.

– Dark matter could consist of exotic, unfamiliar particles (i.e., different from such known particles as electrons, protons, and neutrons) that we have not figured out how to observe. These are known as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPS). Despite the many theories about them, their existence remains unconfirmed. These exotic particles are thought to have very small masses (smaller than atoms), meaning that there would have to be a huge number of them to make up the missing matter. Thus, millions of WIMPs are passing through Earth and us. They interact with ordinary matter only by means of gravity. Since the interaction is very weak, it is difficult to detect them.

Our understanding of gravity needs a major revision–but most physicists do not consider this option seriously.

Dark matter and the universe

The search for dark matter is more than trying to explain discrepancies in galactic mass calculations, for it is closely related to how the universe was formed and will end.

The Big Bang theory, which tries to explain how the universe was formed, maintains that in the beginning, everything was compressed into a single point. Then, a great explosion resulted in the universe being formed. It is still expanding. This theory is based on the fact that all galaxies, when observed with telescopes, are moving away from each other. After this explosion, matter started clumping together to form the stars and galaxies we see today.

The picture shows mankind’s deepest, most detailed visible view of the universe provided by Hubble telescope. Representing a narrow keyhole view stretching to the visible horizon of the universe, the Hubble Deep Field image covers a speck of the sky only about the width of a dime 75 feet away. Though the field is a very small sample of the, it is considered representative of the typical distribution of galaxies in space, because the universe, statistically, looks largely the same in all directions. In this picture, Hubble uncovered a bewildering assortment of at least 1,500 galaxies at various stages of evolution. (*)

One problem with this theory is explaining how the stars and galaxies were formed. If matter initially was distributed evenly in all directions, what caused it to clump together in some regions and form stars and galaxies? Gravity alone cannot cause this in a smooth universe, and so something had to supply the initial gravity that allowed galaxies to form. Physicists suggest that dark matter WIMPs accomplished this task. Since WIMPs only affect ordinary matter gravitationally, physicists say this dark matter could be the seed of galactic formation.

According to the Big Bang theory, there are three possibilities for the universe’s future. In a closed universe, gravity is strong enough to stop the expansion eventually and pull everything back to a single point. In an open universe, gravity cannot stop the expansion and so it will continue forever. In a flat universe, there is just the right amount of mass so that gravity can stop the expansion but not pull it back into one point.

The amount of dark matter that exists is crucial to determining the universe’s fate, because the Big Bang theory posits that the amount of mass in the universe determines gravity’s strength and, by extension, whether the universe will be closed, open, or flat. To quantify this, scientists define a constant, called Omega, as the ratio of the universe’s density to some critical density. A flat universe is said to have an Omega of 1, meaning that its density is equal to that of the critical density. If the density is greater than 1, the universe is closed; if it is less than 1, is be open. Without dark matter, the universe’s observed density is between 0.01 and 0.1. Therefore we live in an open universe. If a lot of dark matter were present, the universe would be closed. If there were just the right amount present, it would be flat.

Conclusion

The discovery of dark matter could affect our view of our place in the universe. If its existence were proven, our world and its inhabitants would be made of something comprising an insignificant portion of the physical universe. This probably would not affect our daily life, but would create a new scientific paradigm. In this sense, the discovery of dark matter would be as revolutionary as finding of extraterrestrial life.

Footnotes

1. Herman, R. and S. L. Larson. Is Dark Matter Theory or Fact? Scientific American (15 June 1998).
2. Rubin, V. Dark Matter in the Universe. Scientific American (March 1998).

* http://www.nasa.gov

Social capital has a long intellectual history in the social sciences. In this paper, social capital refers to the institutions, relationships, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of a society’s social interactions. Social capital is not just the sum of the institutions underpinning a society; rather, it is the glue that holds them together.

Lyda Hanifan, a West Virginia school reformer (1916), was the first to use the term social capital. Jane Jacobs reinvented it during the late 1960s, Glenn Loury elaborated upon it during the late 1970s, and James Coleman used it to examine Chicago schools in the 1980s. Coleman and Loury prefer to view social capital as a bottom-up phenomenon that is not directly amenable to public policy intervention. French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu developed a contemporary approach, though Anglo-American scholars remained unaware of it until the late 1980s.

The major momentum for scholarship on social capital, however, came with Robert Putnam’s seminal work on democratic governance in contemporary Italy (1993) and his subsequent challenging thesis that late twentieth-century Americans were bowling alone, by which he meant that they were becoming increasingly disengaged from active participation in public life, a trend with disconcerting implications for active democratic participation. He developed his thesis with his bowling alone article (1995), which led to scores of active research projects around the world on social capital.

Organizational-level social capital cannot be measured merely as an aggregation of individual networks, for attention has to be given to inter-organizational networks as well as to the study of this network’s nature. Community-level social capital resides in groups and in the networks among these organizations/groups. Strong society-/community-level social capital creates a civic infrastructure that supports formal and informal processes of decision-making and public involvement. The idea of social capital has coalesced around several fields: families and youth behavior problems, schooling and education, community life, work and organizations, democratic governance, collective action problems, and economic development. Building and maintaining networks is not a natural given; rather, it requires investments that yield a return.

Since Putnam’s identification of the social capital in regional governance and economic development in Italy (1993) and his latest suggestion in the U.S. (1995, 2000), a virtual industry of interest and action has been created around the implications of his findings for the development of low-income communities. Putnam attributes a significant portion of differences in government effectiveness, economic health, and community well-being to the presence (versus absence) of social capital. Stated simply, he considers the main elements of social capital to be trust and cooperation. Social capital consists of networks and norms that enable participants to act together effectively to pursue shared objectives. There is a strong collective aspect of social capital, as the social and economic system as a whole functions better because of the ties among the actors that make it up.

State-Nonprofit Partnerships

Government partnership includes partnering with for-profit corporations and nonprofit organizations, such as social service agencies, cultural groups, neighborhood organizations, hospitals, and health organizations. Alexis de Tocqueville, while touring America in 1831-32, noticed how different Americans were from Europeans in their enthusiasm for banding together to support a good cause. We see the result of this cultural characteristic today, for America did not follow the model of a European welfare state. American policymakers used taxes and direct subsidies to deliver services. America has created a welfare state through nonprofit organizations, the vast majority created since 1959.

State-nonprofit collaborations involve nonprofit organizations addressing local, state, and national problems through negotiated efforts or partnerships with business, government, colleges and universities, or other public or social institutions. Public organizations should look for opportunities to work with other nonprofit organizations-even with their competitors-in solving growing public problems in a timely and efficient manner. These efforts encompass several categories: governments often seek to execute their efforts via structures of interagency collaboration; the role of not-for-profit organizations is large and growing; and the frequency and variety of links with for-profit firms is impressive and government contracting remains a growth industry.

Generating social capital

Putnam (2000) states that civic engagement and social connectedness are practical preconditions for better schools, safer streets, faster economic growth, more effective government, and even healthier and longer lives. Without an adequate supply of social capital, meaning civic engagement, healthy community institutions, norms of mutual reciprocity, and trust, social institutions falter.

The value creation process of public and nonprofit partnerships generates incremental social capital to the partners, members, and to society as a whole. Benefits generated by an effective partnership often exceed the partnership’s purpose and enable the social mission to be accomplished more effectively. Public-nonprofit partnerships focused on social problems can also serve as motivating informative models for others to follow. As a partnership evolves, the value of the benefits can erode. Skills acquired by one partner from another, for example, may no longer be a transferable benefit. Relationships are dynamic and subject to alteration due to changes in the external environment. Also, partners’ need and priorities can change.

Public-nonprofit partnerships can be seen as vehicles for generating social capital by creating and strengthen organizations and collaborations within the community. For example, they enable community members to participate in those aspects of community life that concern them by setting priorities, developing programs, and participating in them. Creative action by public organizations can foster social capital, and linking mobilized nonprofit organizations and citizens can enhance governmental efficacy.

The role of nonprofits

According to Putnam: By almost every measure, Americans’ direct engagement in politics and government has fallen steadily and sharply over the last generation, despite the fact that average levels of education-the best individual-level predictor of political participation-have risen sharply throughout this period. At the same time, membership in and the number of nonprofits has increased (although there has been increased competition among nonprofits for this membership). This would seem to contradict de Tocqueville’s thesis. But, as Putnam points out, contributing to a nonprofit organization or joining an association and reading its newsletter does not necessarily translate into greater civic participation.

Nonprofit organizations play a vital role in creating and sustaining social capital, namely, those bonds of trust and reciprocity that seem to be pivotal for a democratic society and market economy to function effectively. But one would expect American individualism to make it difficult to sustain such organizations. De Tocqueville understood this point well when he wrote in Democracy in America in 1835: Feelings and opinions are recruited, the heart is enlarged, and the human mind is developed, only by the reciprocal influence of men upon one another these influences are almost null in democratic countries; they must therefore be artificially created and this can only be accomplished by associations.

Thus the perpetuation of a vital nonprofit sector is essential to developing and sustaining a sense of community, which is required to uphold contracts and enable both a market system and a democratic policy to operate.

Investing in social capital by attempting to increase civic participation therefore will strengthen democracy. Since nonprofits reach so many people, and because some nonprofits are powerful secondary associations, we are targeting nonprofits. They are an important source, if not the main source, for discussing critical public policy issues. Thus, nonprofits may play a unique intermediary role in helping to stimulate civic participation through a series of actions aimed at public education, research, advocacy, mobilizing, and so on. Public-nonprofit partnerships have emerged as an important institutional arrangement for addressing important societal concerns through the collaborative efforts and, as a result, the combined strengths of organizations from the public, private, and non-profit sectors.

Education is a very important field in which states can have a direct influence upon the generation of social capital. Educational institutions do not simply contribute human capital; they also contribute to social capital in the form of social rules and norms. States can foster the formation and creation of social capital directly or indirectly by providing public goods and public safety. They also can hinder its formation and creation by undertaking activities that are better left to nonprofits. If the state organizes everything, people will become dependent and lose their interest in and ability to work together. If states cannot contribute directly to the creation of social capital, they should create an environment in which nonprofits can do so.

References

• Briggs, S. Brown Kids in White Suburbs: Housing Mobility and the Many Faces of Social Capital. Housing Policy Debate. volume 9, no. 1 (1998): 177-221.
• Coleman, James. Foundations of Social Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990.
• De Tocqueville, A. Democracy in America. Edited by J. P. Mater. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1994.
• Evans, P. Government Action, Social Capital and Development: Reviewing the Evidence on Synergy. World Development 24, no. 6 (1996): 1119-32.
• Hall, P. Historical Perspective on Nonprofit Organizations. In The Jossey-Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management, edited by Robert D. Herman. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1994.
• Huntoon, L. Government Use of Nonprofit Organizations To Build Social Capital. Journal of Socio-Economics 30 (2001).
• Kanter, R. Collaborative Advantage: The Art of Alliances. Harvard Business Review (Jul.-Aug. 1994): 96-108.
• Light, P. Making Nonprofits Work: A Report on the Tides of Nonprofit Management Reform. Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute, Brookings Institution Press, 2000.
• Putnam, R. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.
• Salamon, L. America’s Nonprofit Sector: A Primer. New York: The Foundation Center, 1999.
• Young, D. Complementary, Supplementary, or Adversarial? A Theoretical and Historical Examination of Nonprofit-Government Relations in the United States. In Nonprofits and Government: Collaboration and Conflict, edited by Elisabeth T Boris and C. Eugene Steuerle. Washington, DC: The Urban Institute Press, 1999.

Some mothers are silent, indistinct, and unknown but nevertheless undertake the highly sensitive and difficult task of raising children, who resemble roses and fine plants; others sacrifice so much that even their portrayals in legends and main characters is novels cannot do them justice.

Earth is a mother to seeds and a spring to a waterfall, just as Eve is mother to humanity, the Virgin Mary to a Spirit, and Amina is a mother to reality, creation’s secret, and the essence of secrets (Prophet Muhammad).

There are mothers who are good and those who are not so good. People gladly sacrifice their lives for good mothers, and stay silent for those who could not make their children happy or were not made happy by their children.

Mothers and their children are two spirits in one body. Children are a piece of their mother’s body, a heartbreaking lover in their laps, a crawling baby at the beginning, and later on a brazier that burns the bosom, a spear in the heart with endless separations.Each developmental period and educational experience makes a mother’s hearts jump with fear. She weeps when her precious one starts school, goes to college, joins the service, and gets married. Yes, she always cries and extends her love like an incense burner extends its scent throughout one’s house. Sometimes she is consoled; sometimes she bursts into tears.

Don’t cry anymore, Mother, for the clouds formed by your tears are coming to give you peace of mind, and all of us are trying to ease your sorrow and pain.

Yusuf Ali, in his translation of the Qur’an, asks several questions about lightning: Why look to evil rather than to good? To punishment rather than to mercy?”To the fear in the force and fire of the lightning rather than to hope of good and abundant crops in the rain which will come behind the lightning clouds (note 1818); Nay, thunder itself which may frighten you, is but a tame and beneficent force before Him, declaring His praises, like the rest of creation. Thunder thus aptly give the name to this surah of contrasts, where what we may think is terrible is shown to be really a submissive instrument of good in God’s hands (note 1819); and: To cowards, lightning and thunder appear as terrible forces of nature. Lightning seems to kill and destroy where its irresistible progress is not assisted by proper lightning”conductors. But lightning is also a herald of rain-bearing clouds and showers that bring fertility and prosperity in their train (3530).

Journals publish articles on injuries and death caused by lightning. However, the Qur’an specifically mentions the hope of lightning as a good or beneficent force. This article addresses this issue.

What are ions?

After a storm, the air feels clean and fresh filled with negative ions. People often report feelings of pleasantness and well-being following an electrical storm. Electrical storms are generally preceded by higher levels of positive ions and followed by higher levels of negative ions.

Air is made of individual molecules. When the outer electrons of two or more atoms join together, the resulting particle is a molecule. Each molecule, in turn, contains smaller particles of positive and negative charges (protons and electrons). Under normal circumstances, the number of protons and electrons are equal, and so their charges cancel out and leave the molecule electrically neutral. However, negatively charged electrons are lighter and more mobile. If they happen to absorb energy from intense sunlight, they tend to jump from one molecule to another. When a negative charge jumps from a molecule, it upsets the equilibrium and leaves behind more positive than negative charges. Thus the molecule becomes a positive ion. The electron arriving at the new molecule brings with it an extra negative charge. This molecule now becomes a negative ion. When the energy supply is removed, the electrons return toward the vacated spaces, and everything becomes balanced and has a zero charge.

Oxygen, a prime example of small gaseous molecules, remains neutral as long as the proton“electron balance is maintained. Since atoms have equal numbers of protons and electrons, they have no charge. However, if an electron is lost or gained, the molecule becomes positively or negatively charged, respectively, and an ion is created.

The simplest way to visualize an air ion is to consider it a tiny charge of static electricity carried by the air. This charge can be either positive or negative. The charged particles, or ions, are not merely suspended in the atmosphere; rather, they are part of the air’s very fabric. The air we breathe contains billions of tiny, invisible, electrically charged energy packets called ions, each of which have either positive or negative charges. Every time we take a breath, ions fill up our lungs and are carried by our blood into every cell in our body. Without ions in the air, our body could not process oxygen properly.

A lack or imbalance of ions affects the environment in which we live and breathe. Research shows that most of us who live, work, and travel in closed spaces suffer some degree of negative ion starvation or positive ion overabundance. This has become extremely evident to NASA in its space travel program.

People are spending their lives submerged in an atmospheric ocean of nitrogen, oxygen, and a small percentage of other elements, plus the toxins and pollution of our industrial world. In cities like New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Mexico City, Karachi, Delhi, Bangalore, Mumbai, Calcutta, and many other densely populated cities, there may be few or no detectable negative ions at all during heavy traffic and high pollution periods.

In nature, abundant ions are generated wherever energy is transferred into the air by the friction within wind, rain, and surf. Certain events occurring in nature, such as lightning discharges, falling water, and air friction can cause electrons to be torn loose from a molecule. These orphan electrons are then adopted by other nearby molecules, which transforms them into negative ions. The parent particles become positive ions.

Negative ions carry the air’s electrical energy. Some examples of nature’s ion generators are solar (ultraviolet) and cosmic radiation, air friction, lightning, falling water (the splitting of water into droplets by waterfalls), ocean surf and waves, evergreens and Earth’s radioactivity (from natural radiation in rocks and soil).

The ion effect: Serotonin hypothesis

An excess of positive ions and a lack of negative ions can produce uncomfortable effects. Scientists have demonstrated that small air ions are biologically active. Moreover, they can stimulate the over-production of serotonin, a powerful neurotransmitter and very active neurohormone that causes profound nerve, glandular, and digestive effects throughout the body. Tests show that positive ions increase the production of serotonin and that negative ions decrease the hormone level.

High serotonin concentrations are associated with migraines. Negative ions accelerate the oxidative degradation of serotonin, whereas positive ions deactivate the enzymes that break it down. Thus more negative ions should reduce migraines. A higher serotonin level also produces tachycardia, higher blood pressure, bronchial spasms and even asthma attacks, increased intestinal peristalsis (intestinal contractions and dilations to push the contents through), increased sensitivity to pain, and increased aggression. Reduced serotonin levels result in a mentally relaxed state and reduce feelings of depression. Negative ions appear to reduce serotonin by enhancing monoamine oxidizing activity. Paradoxically, mental illness is often treated successfully with drugs that inhibit this activity and raise serotonin levels in the brain.

The three major effects of positive ion excess are irritation and tension, exhaustion, and a hyperthyroid response. The common symptoms of dizziness, headaches, depression, anxiety, and a generally lower level of physical and mental functioning were shown to be alleviated and, in most cases, reversed by increasing the negative ions in the air.

Positive ions

Many people find a pre-storm atmosphere heavy and oppressive. This has been attributed to the high levels of positive ions building up in the air, which are also believed to trigger storm-sensitivity in asthmatics and many other people. In the hours before a certain storm arrived, hundreds of people reported to hospital with severe asthma attacks. Was this due to positive ions?

Scientists have found that if the air is charged with too few negative and too many positive ions, we become anxious,tired, and tense. This positive-ion poisoning results from weather disturbances, central air conditioning, smog, and driving too long. It even has been linked to heart attacks, aggravated asthma, migraines, insomnia, rheumatism, arthritis, hay fever, and most allergies. However, a negative electrical charge imparts positive feelings of health and vitality.

Negative ions

Refreshing places, usually located in the mountains and near waterfalls and seashores, where health resorts are traditionally situated, have high negative ion concentrations. Areas with high levels of positive ions often make us feel uncomfortable and irritable.

In addition to providing a rewarding visual experience, waterfalls may be beneficial to our health. Those wishing to enhance their body and mind through breathing exercises should do so by a waterfall. Nearly everyone agrees that visiting a waterfall is a stimulating, refreshing, and energizing experience.

The energy produced by falling water causes negative ions, for as the falling water breaks into droplets, electrons (negatively charged parts of an atom) are separated from water atoms. These electrons combine with oxygen atoms in the air to create negative ions, which then are inhaled and absorbed into the bloodstream. Negative ions are not known to permanently cure anything. However, experts believe that they help our bodies by accelerating the delivery of oxygen to our cells. Some researchers believe that they may stimulate cells that regulate the body’s resistance to disease.

Plants grown in an ion-enhanced atmosphere show a marked increase in size and growth rate. Air-borne bacteria greatly diminish in number when there is a high negative ion count in the air. Synthetic materials, forced air circulation, improper humidity levels, excess static electricity, and a lack of fresh air all contribute to an ion imbalance. Natural negative ion levels should be maintained through full-spectrum lighting; natural materials on walls, floors, and furniture; windows that open to the outside; and living plants. These should be kept in mind when designing a place in which to live.

On average, 1,500 ions are found in a cubic centimeter (roughly the size of a sugar cube) of fresh air. Of these, about 45% are negative ions and the rest are positive ions. At Yosemite Falls in California, a reading of 100,000 negative air ions per cubic centimeter was recorded.

The fresh air after a thunderstorm, on a mountain top, or by the seaside are due to high negative ion concentrations. The reduced well-being often felt in highly polluted areas, cars, smog-enclosed areas, artificially air conditioned offices, or in hot dry weather conditions are usually due to an unduly low negative ion balance. Negative ions can be found in the billions on mountain tops, waterfalls, and by the sea. Radioactive substances in Earth’s crust and cosmic rays cause most ionization. But fire, crashing water, and plants during photosynthesis also produce negative ions. They give the air its invigorating freshness, which is so good for us.

Physiologically, the presence of negative ions in a sweat bath is as important as the heat. The discovery of negative ions in certain types of saunas a few years ago became headline news in Finland. Until then, the sauna’s healing power was attributed to relaxation and increased circulation. Now, negative ions add startling new possibilities.

Ions and our modern lifestyle

We now live in an environment that virtually eliminates negative ions. Rural areas have a higher concentration of ions, but many of us live in towns and cities that have very low levels due to dirt and pollution. Pollution from car exhaust, smoking, overcrowding, and even breathing all contribute to this.

Modern vehicles have many problems. For example, opening a window lets in polluted city air. Many drivers, especially long-distance ones, keep an ionizer in their vehicle to help them maintain a high level of alertness and concentration. In addition, this can relieve car sickness and remove pollen and smoke. In cities, closed rooms, cars and elsewhere, the proportion of negative ions is markedly reduced compared to what it is in undisturbed nature. According to experts, positive ions rob us of our good senses and dispositions, while negative ions enhance them, stimulating everything from plant growth to overall bodily well-being. In general, people who are sensitive to air-borne allergens will benefit far more and quicker from the cleansing action of negative ions.

A second potentially important factor is the person’s body voltage, for a high body voltage could alter considerably the ion ingestion rate. Perhaps the same effect as positive ion enhancement could be produced by a high negative body potential, even if the ambient air ion concentrations are balanced. Control and reduction of bodily voltage to a near-zero condition should reduce any such effects and restore ion ingestion due to the ambient air ion balance condition. For Muslims, body voltage to a near-zero condition is achieved when they prostrate during prayer.

Ironically, even today’s air-conditioned buildings, vehicles, and airplanes frequently become supercharged with harmful positive ions because the plastic and metal fans, filters, and air-conditioning duct systems strip the air of negative ions even before it reaches its destination. In addition, fluorescent lighting, electrical and electronic equipment, television screens, and static-producing as well as artificial fibers in carpets, clothes, and upholstery, all reduce the level of negative ions and increase the level of positive ions.

Desktop PCs have a cathode ray tube monitor that produces a positive static charge during normal operation. It also sweeps the nearby air of negative charges, depleting the negative-ion concentration in the immediate vicinity. Apparently when ion concentration is lowered by this or any other means, such as air conditioning, workers complain of headaches, lethargy, dizziness, and nausea. Tests conducted in England indicate that the more complex the task a person tries, the more he or she is affected by negative ion levels. Also, women are more responsive than men to negative ion depletion or enrichment.

The graph below provides some average sample readings of negative air ions taken in various locations. Note that the body responds to levels above 1,000 ions per cc.

Effects on our health

Besides cleaning the air, negative ions aid in mood elevation and increased oxygen intake, both of which make us feel more alert and energetic. Negative ions can provide major benefits for suffers of asthma, chronic fatigue syndrome, nervous energy, hay fever, allergies, sleep disorders and snoring, depression, emphysema, sinus, migraines, colds and flu, nausea, chemical sensitivity, fibromyalgia, cigarette smoke and other odors, and computers and office pollution.

Scientific studies

Research shows that negative ions can reduce histamine, which triggers hay fever; affect levels of serotonin, a neurotransmitter or a neurohormone associated with anxiety, stress, and migraines; help suffers of bronchitis, asthma, catarrh, the common cold, insomnia, migraines, emphysema, eczema, headaches, tiredness, and general feelings of malaise; speed the healing time of burns and surgical incisions with less cross-infection and reduced pain (including post-operative pain); enhance the body’s absorption and utilization of oxygen, thus assisting concentration and alertness; reduce the effects of passive smoking and allergies to pollen, dust, and pets; remove and destroy air-borne bacteria and viruses; and lower serotonin levels, which leads to greater calmness and strengthens defenses against infection, as proven with the flu.

Negative ions also increase hemoglobin/oxygen affinity so that the partial oxygen pressure in the blood rises while the partial dioxide pressure decreases. This results in a lowered respiratory rate and enhances the metabolism of water-soluble vitamins. In addition, negative ions increase one’s pH level, which makes bodily fluids more alkaline.

The effect of negative ion depletion varies from person to person. Negative ions in the bloodstream accelerate the delivery of oxygen to our cells and tissues, whereas positive ions slow this down and produce symptoms markedly like those in anoxia (oxygen starvation). Negative ions may stimulate the reticulo-endothelial system, a group of defense cells that marshal our resistance to disease. Treatment with negative ions has produced dramatic improvement in healing severe burns and reducing pain. Children, in particular, seem to respond quickly, for tests have shown that children breathing negatively ionized air were superior in incidental memory and had many difficulties in dichotic listening offset.

Offices and organizations having negative air ionization equipment have found that their employees are less likely to get colds or be absent, and generally are more cheerful and alert. Negative air ionizers are used in the closed and artificial atmospheres of submarines and spacecraft.

Conclusions

The Qur’an’s verses inspire people to make new scientific discoveries, as seen in 13:12, quoted above. Nature contains many sources of the negative ions that are so beneficial to people.

Reading and acquiring a deeper understanding of the Qur’an lead to many life-enhancing discoveries. Given the right conditions, healthy food and pure water, our bodies will usually right themselves and develop properly. But so often we neglect the air we breathe. Most of us live in environments full of invisible pollution and devoid of negative ions.

References

• Buckalew, L. W. and Rizzuto, A. Subjective Response to Negative Air Ion Exposure. Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine 53, no. 8 (Aug. 1982): 822-23.
• Negative Air Ion Effects on Human Performance and Physiological Condition. Aviation, Space, and Environmental Medicine 55, part 8 (Aug. 1984): 731-34.
• Fornof, K. T. and Gilbert, G. O. Stress and Physiological, Behavioral, and Performance Patterns of Children under Varied Air Ion Levels. International Journal of Biometeorology, no. 32 (1988): 260-70.
• Hawkins, L. H. Biological Significance of Air Ions. Proceedings of IEE Colloquium on Ions in the Atmosphere, Natural and Man-Made. BLL Conf Ind.
• Inbar, O. et al. The Effect of Negative Air Ions on Various Physiological Functions during Work in a Hot Environment. International Journal of Biometeorology 26, no. 2 (1982): 153-63.
• Kreuger, A. P. and Reed, E. J. Biological Impact of Small Air Ions. Science, no. 193 (1976): 1209-13.
• Kellogg, E.W. Air Ions: Their Possible Biological Significance and Effects. Journal of Bioelectricity 3, nos. 1 and 2 (1984): 119-36.
• Kornblueh, I. H., Piersol, G. M., and Speicher, F. P. Relief from Pollinosis in Negatively Ionized Rooms. American Journal of Physical Medicine, no. 37 (1958): 18-27.
• Kornblueh, I. H. Aeroionotherapy of Burns. In Bioclimatology, Biometeorology and Aeroionotherapy. Gualtierotti et. al., eds. Milan: Carlo Erba Foundation, 1968.
• Soyka, Fred (with Alan Edmonds). The Ion Effect. E. P. Dutton & Co, 1977.
• Sulman, F. G. The Effect of Air Ionization, Electric Fields, Atmospheric and Other Electric Phenomena on Man and Animal. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1980.
• www.aranizer.com/ions.htm. Negative Ions.
• www.consultces.com/ions.htm. (information on ions)
• www.odatus.com/ions.html. (negative ions)
• www.pentax.com/ion_explain.htm. (negative ions)
• Yaglou C. P., Brandt, A. D., Benjamin, L. K. C. Physiological Changes during Exposure to Ionized Air. Heating, Piping, Air Conditioning 5 (1933): 423.
• Yaglou C. P. and Benjamin, L. K. C. Diurnal and Seasonal Variations in Small Ion Content in Outdoor and Indoor Air. Heating, Piping, Air Conditioning 6 (1934): 25.

The increasing use of e-learning methods and virtual university environments have focused researchers attention on the Socratic method: Playing students with questions and then demanding that they discover, organize, and structure their own responses to the problems posed in an attempt to overcome the constraints of traditional methods.(1) Socrates also believed that students could be successful only if they accepted responsibility and took the initiative.

The Web’s 1992 advent represents a watershed in the development of online education. Its user-friendly nature made the Internet accessible to the general public, and its powerful graphic capabilities expanded the range of disciplines that could be offered online by enabling virtual labs, studios, animations, and so on.(2) Currently, e-learning allows people to learn anywhere and usually at any time, as long as the computer being used is configured properly. With its available text, video, audio, animation, and virtual environments, its self-paced, hands-on nature has the potential to offer a more enriching level of training than students might experience in a crowded classroom.

E-learning methods

Contemporary e-learning methods contain elements of the Socratic model. Students select, organize, and structure the information in order to accomplish selected tasks. They see the functional value of what they are learning while they are learning, and benefit from working directly with the content.

The virtual university (VU) concept enables the application of e-learning methods in a wide range of fields. VU is a customized Web-based learning environment that delivers online education and seeks to support active, collaborative learning and cross-disciplinary knowledge-building.(3) Knowledge-building is the intentional process of solving problems progressively and developing and acquiring expertise.(4)

In a traditional instruction system, only the instructor is the active learner, for teaching someone else is a powerful way to learn. By selecting, organizing, and structuring the information for a group of students, instructors benefit by working with and mastering the content for themselves.(5) Students are only passive consumers of the content.

E-learning, a revised and updated form of discovery learning, is a student-centered learning approach based on knowledge-building. In this active learning environment, students encounter experiences that enable them to construct personal knowledge through problem-solving and experimentation.(6) These knowledge-building principles work particularly well in an e-learning setting, because e-learning provides memorable events. It is more likely that these events will come to mind as learners are challenged by on-the-job or real-life problems.

Intuitively, e-learning falls into four categories, as follows:

-Knowledge databases: These databases, the most basic forms of e-learning, offer indexed explanations, guidance, and step-by-step instructions for performing specific tasks.

-Online support: This comes in the form of forums, chat rooms, online bulletin boards, e-mail, or live instant-messaging support. It is slightly more interactive than knowledge databases.

-Asynchronous training (time independent): Such self-paced learning may include access to instructors through online bulletin boards and discussion groups, as well as e-mail.

-Synchronous training (time dependent): This consists of real-time training with a live instructor facilitating the training. Everyone logs in at a set time and can communicate directly with the instructor and with each other.

The VU must attain a high level of quality if it is to succeed in meeting local needs and competing internationally. Today, any VU is, by default, global. Hence, issues of quality are a key competitive advantage. The keys to successful e-learning are as follows:

-Vary content type: Images, sounds, and text work together to build memory in several areas of the brain and result in better retention. Mix images with words, or sounds (e.g., voices or music) with images.

-Create attention-grabbing interaction: Games, quizzes, and even required manipulation of something on the screen creates more interest, which in turn builds better retention by using multiple types of media.

-Provide immediate feedback: E-learning courses can build in immediate feedback to correct misunderstood material.

-Encourage interaction with other e-learners and an e-instructor: Chat rooms, discussion boards, instant messaging, and e-mail all offer effective interaction for e-learners, and do a good job of replacing classroom discussion.(7) Building an online community significantly influences the success of online programs.

E-learning benefits

E-learning has definite benefits over traditional classroom training. (8) While the most obvious are the flexibility and the cost savings from not having to travel or spend excess time away from work, there are also others that might not be so obvious. For example:

-Less expensive to produce: E-learning is virtually free after reaching the break-even point.

-Self-paced: Most e-learning programs can be taken when needed. Going through it at one’s own pace helps avoid missing information if, for example, the student has to leave the class or does not understand exactly what the teacher is saying. This is one reason why e-learning is so effective.

-Faster paced: This individualized approach allows learners to skip material they already know and understand and move on to new material.

-Consistent message: E-learning eliminates problems associated with different instructors teaching slightly different material on the same subject.

-Availability at any location and time: E-learners can work training sessions into their schedules, now that they are freed from traveling to and sitting in classrooms.

-Interactivity: This can assume the form of simply clicking on appropriate responses to questions, clicking to animate an object or start a process, or dragging and dropping items to practice a skill. Training-related interactive games are a very effective way of improving learning.

-Updated easily and quickly: This is especially easy, since all one has to do is upload the updated materials to a server.

-Increased retention and a stronger grasp of the material: Many elements, such as video, audio, quizzes, and interaction, are combined in e-learning to reinforce the message. Being motivated to learn is half the battle. Knowing that the course contains some fun elements like video, audio, animation, and gaming scenarios increases interest and curiosity. This, too, leads to better retention and faster learning.

-Easily managed: This is especially true in the case of large student groups.

Conclusion

Learning is both a social and an intensely personal activity. E-learning can enhance both elements, for unlike tell-and-test learning, e-learning builds a cognitive network of understanding. Electronic media-supported discovery learning provides a safe, private, and non-embarrassing environment for learning about hazardous systems, conditions, and operations. Such an environment encourages simulated experimentation and underscores the importance of proper procedures in the real world.

Footnotes

1. Michael Allen, How To Make Learning Active and Student-centered, e-Learning Magazine (Jan. 2002).
2. Linda Harasim, The Future of E(Learning) (keynote address at University of Warwick [UK], CAL 2001 Conference).
3. M. Bakardjieva and Linda Harasim. Collaborative Meaning-making in Computer Conferences: A Socio-cultural Perspective, in Proceedings from the Ed-Media Ed-Telecom conference in Freiburg, Germany (Charlottesville, VA: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education, 1998).
4. Linda Harasim, What Are We Learning about Teaching and Learning Online-and so what? : Lessons from the Virtual-U Field Trial, (keynote speech presented at the Third Annual TeleLearning Conference, Vancouver, Canada, November 1998).
5. A. Feenberg, Distance Learning: Promise or Threat (1999). Online at:www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/feenberg/TELE3.HTM.
6. Milton Campos and Linda Harasim, Virtual-U: Results and Challenges of Unique Field Trials: Technical Report (2001).
7. Milton Campos, Conditional Reasoning: A Key to Assessing Computer-based Knowledge-building Communication Processes, Journal of Universal Computer Science 4, no. 4 (1998): 404-28.
8. A. Breuleux, T. Laferrière, and R. Bracewell, Networked Learning Communities in Teacher Education, (1998). Online at: www.coe.uh.edu/insite/elec_pub/HTML1998/ts_breu.htm.