Philo of Alexandria lists several examples of things that human beings will never know, one of which is whether the moon shines of its own light or merely reflects the light of the sun. Subsequent history has proven conclusively that he was mistaken. The lesson that I draw from this is that both a certainty of knowledge and a certainty of ignorance are equally precarious. We have seen how the meaning of “God is one” is fundamentally implicated with the question of knowledge of God, but I will not here hazard a conclusion regarding whether knowledge of God is easy, difficult, possible, impossible, or impious as our various Jewish thinkers have argued. And yet our history ought to be able to provide some conclusion about what “God is one” means in a Jewish context.

Istradefylline (8-[(1E)-2-(3,4-dimethoxyphenyl)ethenyl]-1,3-dethyl-7-methyl-3,7-dihydro-1H-purine-2,6-dione) is a xanthine derivative with a molecular weight of 384.4 and an empirical formula of C20H24N4O4.

Apomorphine hydrochloride (6aβ-aporphine-10,11-diol hydrochloride hemihydrate; (R)-10,11-dihydroxy-6a-aporphine hydrochloride hemihydrate; (6aR)-5,6,6a,7-tetrahydro-6-methyl-4H-dibenzo[de,g]quinoline-10,11-diol hydrochloride hemihydrate) has a molecular weight of 303.8 and a molecular formula of C17H18ClNO2.

Chapter 6 explores the light cast on cities and their administration by the collection of administrative papyri from Italy from the fifth to seventh centuries. Frequently revolving round the sale or donation of property, they show the crucial role of local councils in registering such property transactions, and their relevance to the raising of local taxes. The same world emerges from the official correspondence of Pope Gregory at the turn of the sixth and seventh centuries in which a network of links with cities emerges as the means of holding together the church. A collection of documents from French cities similar to the Ravenna papyri imply that city administrations remained essential to property transactions in Merovingian Gaul. Rather than seeing the city administrations that were an instrument of imperial rule as now irrelevant, the conscious retention of old structures suggests a process of adaptation to new conditions.

This chapter of the handbook discusses the complex, multifaceted connection between morality and religion from an evolutionary perspective. After providing some much-needed conceptual ground clearing, the authors focus on accounts of the linkage between morality and religion in terms of evolved psychological mechanisms that promote cooperation and inhibit competition. One of the better known of these accounts is the supernatural punishment hypothesis. On this view, the morality–religion link is sustained by the fact that belief in an all-knowing, all-powerful god who monitors people’s behavior and punishes their moral transgressions motivates people to behave less selfishly and more cooperatively. Another account emphasizes religious behavior and posits that participation in religious ritual is a form of costly signaling, indicating to others that the participant can be trusted to observe the moral norms of the community. While there is considerable support for the idea that aspects of religion function to curb selfishness, however, the authors caution that the psychological and sociological mechanisms underlying this function are not yet well understood.

This chapter explores the political significance of experience. Imperial authorities and political writers deemed experience as one of the major attributes of a good ruler, and imperial officials acquired it thanks to their mobility and by serving in different places across the world. By integrating the study of the political theory with the actual practices of the officials, the chapter reveals how officials’ expertise was gained, valued, and transferred across the different imperial locations – not only from Europe to America but also the other way around. Officials’ experience, which was logged in their informaciones de méritos y servicios, spawned a new epistemological milieu that privileged direct knowledge and sensorial experimentation.

This chapter evinces that the engagement of Spanish imperial officials with distant societies utterly foreign to them was only possible thanks to the clever use of their networks of patronage. Patrons, clients, and brokers played a vital role in shaping the officials’ activities. By looking at some of these networks from an imperial perspective, new light is shed on how the culture of bounty and clientelism, which was based on personal and local linkages, adapted to the global dynamics and new geographies, thus facilitating the government of the empire, even in regions thousands of miles away from the core of those networks. Furthermore, the chapter shows that royal service was a familial endeavor, including, of course, the wives. Although often contradictory, the networks, goals, and means of the officials’ kin and those of the monarchy were interwoven and became almost indistinguishable.