Jared diamond questions

1. The dispute between Huntington and Lang is over the topic of soft sciences and hard sciences. Lang believes that Soft sciences should not be considered sciences at all.

2. Langs response to Huntington was to send out folders filled with documents from three different writers. He then asked that the receiver pay for the cost of the shipment of these documents to them.

3. The dispute between the two seems political because Lang has a history of involvement with politics that influenced the NAS. With this he can influence the vote over Huntington. Jared Diamond feels that “academic freedom” is that only scholars can question other scholars about his/her politics, whereas outsiders cannot.

4. NAS exists to extract the best people from each field of science. These attacks are peculiar because diamond has been a member for 8 years.

5. He finds fault in these tradition perceptions of hard sciences because most stereotypes of a scientist is someone in a lab coat working complex test tubes and equations. Also, these hard sciences have a traditional perception of producing hard evidence from highly controlled experiments.

6. Soft sciences are difficult to study because they aren’t something that is tangible or concrete. These sciences depend on conditions and patterns.

7. NAS changed in the early 70's by allowing scientists from all fields to be admitted. This decision was influenced by the government which needs competent advice about social problems.

8. The problems with operationalizing a concept are that there would need to be a series of experiments that yield suitable results. Another problem with operationalizing a concept is that sometimes there is no experiment that can be done.

9. How Jared Diamond illustrates operationalizing different sciences:

• Mathematics: without a proper number system, the idea of “many” cannot be argued or comprehended
• Chemistry: cannot speculate about matter unless you know how many materials there are.
• Ecology: operationalizing different habits
• Psychology: cannot operationalize a doctor.

10. The book by Huntington that provoked Lang's wrath discussed such operationalized concepts as economic well-being, political instability, and social and economic modernization

11. operationalizing is more difficult and less exact in the soft sciences because of the variables. In these sciences, there are more variables that need to be controlled in order to create an experiment.

12. Diamond believes that Lang might be ignorant because he does not know how social sciences make measurements.

13.diamond believes that the labels of science be could be changed from hard to “difficult” and from soft to “easy.” This should be done because some sciences are harder to comprehend that others, regardless of them being soft vs. hard.

14. Diamond believes that soft sciences are more important than hard sciences. i do not agree with this because soft science experiments can be done over and yield different results, having to keep improving the test and changing the scope of the experiment.

brave new world chapter 7

1. How does Lenina feel about their appointed guide? Lenina does not like the indian guy because he smells.

2. How does Lenina react to "naked Indian"(p. 110)? Does it remind you of anyone else we have studied? lenina was frightened by the man because he was old, and had not taken any preventative measures on his age. this is similar to our study of Buddhism because prince Siddhartha too had never seen "old." but was not as shocked and appalled, but rather was intrigued by what he saw.

3. How does Bernard react to the pueblo of Malpais?

4. Who is Linda? What is her relationship to Tomakin? Linda was the woman that the director lost when he had visited the reservation twenty years before. linda's description of Tomakin is that of the director, Thomas

5. Why does Linda believe that "everything they do is mad"(p. 121)? Please be specific. linda believes that what the savages do is mad because it is nothing like the life she sees as normal. the indians, instead of getting new cloths when one piece has been riped or torn, they mend them anew.

brave new world chapter 6

Part I

1. Why does Lenina think Bernard Marx "odd" - please use specific references from this chapter in your answer. Lenina thinks that bernard is odd because, as henry explains, he didnt respond well to his conditioning. this lead to the lack of conformaity he has with the others in his caste group and in society in general. he doesn't enjoy the sports games they play like obstacle golf and would rather spend time going for a walk by the lake and talking with lenina. Bernard is also odd in that he likes natural scenery such as the sky, as well as peace and quiet time alone.

2. Please provide more lines from Lenina that she learned from hypnopedia (there are some great ones in this chapter!). Do any of them remind you of sayings that we may use - please don't use commercial jingles. i.e. "1-800-54-Giant!"

• a gram in time saves nine
• a gram is always better than a damn-(hugs are better than drugs)
• everyone works for everyone else

3. What is Fanny's explanation for Bernard's behavior? he had aalchol put into his surrogate which is used to "dumb down" the child when it grows.

Part II

4. What did the Director tell Bernard about his own trip to the Reservation? Why did it initially make Bernard feel uncomfortable? the director had visited the reservation twenty years before with a woman to view the savages. he got lost and was never found. it initially made Bernard uncomfortable because the director, a man who was known for being conventional, had been using very nonstandard language. he was also reminicing about the past, which was discouraged.

5. What does the Director threaten Bernard with if he doesn't change his behavior? Why does it elate Bernard? the director threatens to transfer bernard to a sub-center in iceland if he hears of his "off" behavior again. this elates bernard because he is acknowledged for being an individual agaisnt the social order.

Part III

6. How does the Warden describe the Reservation? the reservation is a sort of backward area that had beliefs and customs (such as natural birth) that are oppose to the culture of the world state. those who are in the reservation are born and die there. they are descibed as savages.

the Nacirema

After the Nacirema exercise, please answer the following:
1. What happened yesterday? Why couldn't we recognize our own culture? yesterday, i was tricked by the reading and the presentation into relating the "culture" to some barbaric tribe. i don't think that we could recognize our culture because of the way that it was presented to us. the association of words with pictures skewed our thinking
2. What does your answer say about the the strengths and weaknesses of the Social Sciences like Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology? the social science are weak in the respect that conclusions are based on the way that they are viewed. there can be very different results if the research is viewed in a different context and by different people. the fact that we tend to criticize cultures that we are unfamiliar with shows that we a a judging people.

brave new world chapter 5

2. Do you see any similarities with how the World State views death as compared to the Hindus? How does Lenina's remembrance of hypopedia compare with what is discussed in Plato's Republic? in both hinduism and the World state, the dead are burned because the bodies are not pure. Lenina's hypnopedia compares with plato's republic because in both instances, there is a mention that even though there are different levels of people, all are nessecary in the stability of society.

3. What do you think of Lenina's and Henry night out on the town? looking on it as i am today, i find that it is now way to spend an evening out. the image of dancing in a hall of over 400 people seems claustrophobic as well as the desription of the playing as if the instruments were near death. of course, its just me in that i do not like to spend time out around many other people, but i perfer solitude and quiet.

4. Why do you think Huxley uses the word "pneumatic" to refer to some female characters? the definition of pneumatic is: of or relating to air. Huxley uses this word to desribe women becuase in this society he created, sex is so free that it really has no distinct purpose like it does in our society. it is as meaningless as air

5. What is Solidarity Service and what are Bernard's feelings towards it? Solidarity service is essentially an orgy of 12 people who are under the influence of soma (just your average thursday night). bernard feels that these services tend to further his isolation.

man is the measure chapter 15

1. Abel believes that history is being constantly rewritten because it has always and will always

2. the factors that influence the process by which facts are chosen are

• personal interest: what the writer focuses on and disregards
• change in coneptual apparatus: after thoughts for events such as learning what Marx thought of the american civil war.
• change in basic historical segments:
• personal interest in history changes:
• the audience that it is being written for.

3. the baconian fallacy is that all historians do is amass a story from the facts. this fallacy would be in agreement with the positivists who believe that history is a science. however, Carr would most likely disagree with this statement because he believes that history is not just a mass of facts, but is biased to fit the writer.

4. Abel states that history differs from geology because the historian attributes meaning to the facts and data.

5.i would agree with this statement over the subject of history. for example, during our "checks" lab, my group had inferred a story through a limited amount of facts, even though those facts might not have been related at all.

6. i do not know how future historians will describe events happening today because the writing of history is dependent on the historian. i will never know how the future will view our time because i can never know what the majority belief is at that time.

7. historical pluralism denies the belief that every event is somehow related to every other historical event.

8. it really doesn't matter if there was ever a man who was named Trotsky, as long as historians recognize that there was a man who had done what he did.

9. A historian is like a physicist because neither person truly knows all there is to know about one specific topic, or everything for that matter.

10. the five frameworks of history:

• all history is cyclical: there have always been, and will always be dictators that rise in times of Crisis such as Hitler, Julius Caesar, and Stalin
• history is functional in that it certain causes will always have the same effects: racial tensions will always lead to segregation
• progress is only a new concept in the study of history: the term "golden age" came about after it had already passed
• according to the Christian view, history is just sin and redemption.
• society can be viewed as a living organism: civilization can be seen to grow from infancy to dying in senility such as the USSR that rose in the 1910's and died in 1991

TOK and history

similarities and differances between the checks-lab and how history is made.

similarities:

• speculation (fill-in-th-blanks)
• not all facts are given
• chronological reasoning
• ways of knowing (induction and deduction)
• time restraint to find a conclusion
• ignored and/or focused on certain pieces of information

differences:

• have a more variety of sources
• no eye witness accounts
• objective of the checks
• written by someone who is well educated in the field

brave new world chapter 4

1.lenina is puzzled about Bernard's embarrassment over her talking with him outright in front of everyone else.

2. Lenina's hypnopaedia comes into view when she says she is glad that she is not a gamma.

3. lenina and henry where off to play a game of obstacle golf.

part 2

1. Bernard Marx is distressed over how he was talked about among the Alphas over rumors that he was tampered with when he was still an embryo.
2. Hemholtz watson worked for the bureau of propaganda and was a writer and lecturer at a university
3. Watson and Marx both feel that they are out of place in there caste and in society. Watson believes that that he has done all there is and does not see it as fullfilling, whereas Marx sees himself out of place among the Alphas.
4. Hemholtz is troubled by something that he does not have. he feels that ther is something inside him that could be on the outside if things were different in the way people were run

essay notes

“We see and understand things not as they are, but as we are” discuss this claim in relation to at least two ways of knowing.

Ways of knowing

1. language
• Texts and literature: reaction to texts depends on beliefs of the topic; ex) the communist manifesto. I have conservative views of how a government should work, so I see this type of writing (communist manifesto) as cynical. Therefore, all texts that write like this I see as being terrible
• Religion: religious terms have a different meaning on those who do not understand them. Radical Islamists are seen as terrorists in today’s view because of the way they speak. Words such as “infidel” and “jihad” have a negative connotation in western society. When we hear these words now, we immediately associate them with Islamists. The same is true in Christianity. The image of the Crusades is perceived by Christians as a brave attempt to take back the Holy land. However, Arabs may see this as an assault to take what they see as holy.
2. perception
• Visualization: depictions of war and soldiers; ex) in the war in Iraq, the media is portraying the U.S. as being a terrible outside force through the aid of television. The people who film and depict these events had their own personal view of the war and how it should be handled. For instance, most of these media stations that portray the war as being wrong are run by people that are anti-war, and therefore integrate that image into their filming and broadcasts.
3. Emotion
• Images: Different people react to images differently depending on how they are raised. Ex) we visited the shepherd Fairey exibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art. His artwork was very political in a sense that it was portraying a Democrat idea. Because I was raised conservative, I was struck with confusion as to exactly why his reflected that idea and why he would believe.

brave new world chapter 3

A) Sex, Monogamy & Romance : the world state encourages sexual activity at early ages viewing at as a normal activity for all ages. the world state also looks down on monogomy and romance because it confines one person to another, which goes against the belief that everyone belongs to everyone else.
B) Sports: games and sports should be complicated so that it increases the consumption of the players
C) Entertainment: should not get in the way of a workers job.
D) Parenthood: frowned upon because it is seen as a selfish thing to keep one to themselves and from the state.
E) Materialism: it is good for the people to consume
F) Religion: religion is void and not a part if the world state.
G) Intoxicants: drugs such as soma are a regular part of daily activities