Please join the Committee on Social Theory on Tuesday, October 13th in welcoming Professor David Hunter (Interim Chair, MCLLC and Cottrill-Rolfes Chair of Catholic Studies) in a lunchtime discussion of his essay, "Sacred Space, Virginal Consecration, and Symbolic Power: A Liturgical Innovation and its Implications in Late Ancient Christianity," with Professors Leon Price and Jacqueline Couti as respondents.

This represents the first of our 2015 Working Paper sessions.  It occurs Tuesday, October 13th from 12:30 to 1:45 in POT 1643.

Sponsored by the Imaginarium of the Bluegrass, the event will feature a poetry reading and photography by more than 20 local artists (including our very own English major, Jiv Johnson), as well as a dramatic reading of Walt Whitman poems. The admission is $10 or pay by poem (original or otherwise!) and tickets can be purchased in advance at http://www.lexingtonky.gov/index.aspx?page=3503.

The discovery of over 1000 planets orbiting stars other than the Sun (i.e. exoplanets) in the past 20 years has revolutionized our theories of planetary system formation and evolution. Although a large number of planets are now known, only ~25 transit stars bright enough to enable detailed characterization of the planetary system. As part of my graduate research at the University of Louisville, I conducted five years of photometric observations from Moore observatory, located just outside Louisville, Kentucky, resulting in the high-precision characterization of known and newly discovered bright exoplanetary systems. I will discuss the instrumentation and methods used to optimize the precision of the collected data, and present a software package, AstroImageJ, that was developed to streamline and optimize the data reduction process. The results of two long-term transit timing variation (TTV) studies will be presented, along with the results of a measurement of sodium in the atmosphere of a well known exoplanet. Finally, I will describe the Kilo-degree Extremely Little Telescope (KELT) transit survey, present an overview of the KELT discovered planets, and highlight the importance of these discoveries on exoplanet science.

Several prominent interpreters have argued that Kant's political philosophy is not grounded upon the fundamental principle of his moral philosophy.  Some of the arguments used to defend this counterintuitive position were advanced by Fichte before Kant had even published the final form of his political philosophy.  I argue that they are wrong.  Iti s true that Kant's conception of juridical law (Recht) allows for the enforcement of duties falling in its domain through incentives other than respect for the moral law itself, as Fichte emphasized, but this does not mean such duties are not moral: morality itself requires that its subjects fulfill its duties, in particular its prohibitions, however they get themselves to do it.  Thus morality not only specifies the basic obligations of Recht but also requires their coercive enforcement when other incentives do not suffice.

See http://www.ms.uky.edu/~topology/