Mature visual cortex shows a single, binocularly matched orientation map. This matching develops without visual experience. It persists despite early monocular deprivation that largely eliminates one eye's map, followed by reverse suture (deprivation of the previously open eye and opening of the previously deprived eye), even though the two eyes lack common visual experience in this case. These results have been interpreted to suggest that the structure of orientation maps either is innately predetermined or, if it arises through self-organization, is determined by external cues such as boundary conditions or a “scaffolding” of horizontal connections. We show, to the contrary, that these results are the expected outcomes if orientation maps develop through activity-instructed, correlation-based development of the geniculocortical connections without additional cues. A weak, binocularly correlated orientation map is known to exist before deprivation onset; we previously showed how this can arise through activity-instructed development. Now we show that this initial correlation between the two eyes' maps can persist or increase despite deprivation sufficient to cause massive loss of the deprived eye's geniculocortical synaptic strength, followed by reverse suture. Given sufficient early correlated map development, each map's fate is “dynamically committed”: the two eyes' maps will converge upon a common outcome, even if developing independently. This dynamic fate commitment is retained even after severe deprivation.

In an earlier article, ‘The Johannine Origins of the Johannine Logos’, I proposed that the prevailing explanations of the background and origin of the celebrated Logos concept/title of the Gospel of John are misguided in their attempts to trace the title to some extraneous source. I argued, rather, that the development of the christological title Logos had a beginning, middle, and end, and that this may be demonstrated from the Gospel and First Epistle themselves. Crucial to my argument was the chronological ordering of the three documents: the Gospel of John ‘proper’ (John 1.19–20.31), the First Epistle, and then the substance of the Prologue (John 1.1–18). The thesis itself, more specifically, was that (1) λóγoς and ρημα were employed in the Gospel ‘proper’ with a demonstrably ‘christological transparency’, (2) λóγoς was employed with a quasi-titular force in the first verses of 1 John, and (3) λóγoς reflects a full-fledged christological title in the Prologue material, which was composed still later. At the end of that article I suggested that a similar development could be traced in the case of the Johannine term αρχη´ – immediately related to λóγoς in the very first line of the Gospel – and that, if so, this would surely enhance my argument concerning λóγoς. Here I attempt to make the argument for a similar christological development of the Johannine αρχη´. Even aside from its relevance for my thesis about λóγoς, the prominent and recurring αρχη´ justifies the attention. And it does confront us, after all, with the majestic phrase with which the Gospel opens: ‘In the beginning’.

No one doubts that Kierkegaard's Concluding Unscientific Postscript is one of the most important, one of the most artistically contrived, and certainly one of the wittiest works in the history of philosophy. Further, the Postscript has often been accorded a kind of centrality in the Kierkegaardian corpus. Kierkegaard himself seems to have assigned it some such role. He informs the reader in the ‘First and Last Declaration’ that he originally intended the Postscript to be his last word before retiring from his authorship (hence part of the significance of the word ‘concluding’). In The Point of View for My Work as an Author he himself calls it both ‘the turning-point’ (repeatedly) and ‘the middle point’ in the sense that ‘this work concerns itself with and sets “the Problem”, which is the problem of the whole authorship: how to become a Christian’. Aside from the way in which Kierkegaard may have conceived the Postscript as being central or pivotal to his whole enterprise, certainly scholars have sometimes treated the Postscript as, at least in some ways, his magnum opus and summum verbum – as I would also. But our concern here is not with the centrality of the Postscript but with the centrality within the Postscript. Most everyone would, I think, acknowledge that a central section of the Postscript may be identified, though I would go farther and claim that within this a central, pivotal, solitary statement may be identified.

In 1952 there appeared a short article in Theological Studies entitled “Heraclitus' Alleged Logos Doctrine.” As one may guess from the title, the author, T. F. Glasson, reported to his largely theological audience that the conception of Heraclitus' Logos as a cosmicmetaphysical principle, far from being a possible source for the Logos of the Fourth Gospel, rests upon a gigantic mistake. The truth is, rather, that Glasson's report rests upon a gigantic mistake, as well as several lesser ones. At the very least it does not do justice to a quite different interpretation, an interpretation which, indeed, has become in the meantime the “accepted” one. Our task, also intended primarily for theologians and nonspecialists in pre-Socratic philosophy, is to provide a corrected and updated report, and to make a few observations of our own.