Platos View On The Soul Philosophy Essay

Platos View On The Soul Philosophy Essay Plato was a Greek philosopher. He had many views on life and existence. Platos views on the mind body distinction have been the target of many criticisms since his time. In the republic, he formulated ideas on the allegory of the cave and the theory of the forms. He believed that our existence on earth was merely a shadow of a higher spiritual plane, our bodies just a vessel, or even looked upon as a cage trapping the soul and restricting it from this higher plain. Plato was a dualist and so believed that when the material body dies the soul lives on. Platos views, are best described in his analogy of the cave in which it depicts a prisoner that escapes the cave metaphorical for this life- and goes on to discover everything he once believed in was only a fraction of the truth: Platos main philosophy stemmed from the cave and was about knowing the theory of the forms. Here, he thought that the soul is a substance and is immortal, however the body- being physical- could be doubted as it was part of the empirical world. On the one hand, Platos ideas about the soul were revolutionary and extremely advanced for his time, as with most of Platos philosophies, yet on the other hand they appear to be both self-conflicting and flawed. Platos idea of the soul is his dualist position, believing that body and soul are fundamentally distinct. His theory on the soul was produced in his book Phaedrus. In it Plato was most concerned with demonstrating the immortality of the soul and its ability to survive bodily death. He proposed the idea that, like Aristotles idea of motion, whatever is the source of its own motion or animation must be immortal. Plato was writing at a time in Greek philosophy where popular opinion believed that the soul did not survive death, and that it dispersed into nothing, like breath or smoke. Plato believed that the soul must be immortal by the very nature of being the source of its own animation, for it is only through a psyche that things can be living rather than dead. The souls are both animated and at the same time the source of its own animation. Plato also states that the soul is an intelligible and non-tangible article that cannot be destroyed or dispersed, much like his ideas about form s of non-tangible realities; such as beauty or courage. The argument from affinity, as Plato posited in Phaedrus, states that because the soul is an invisible and intangible entity, as opposed to a complex and tangible body; the two must be distinct and separate. Plato believed that which is composite must be divisible, sensible and transient; and that which is simple must be invisible, indivisible and immutable. Forms bear a resemblance to the simple, immutable entities, such as beauty; however a beautiful painting is transient and palpable. The body shows an affinity to the composite by nature of its mortality and mutability; just as the soul shows a similar affinity to immortality and indivisibleness. To further emphasise the point, Plato writes when the soul investigates by itself it passes into the realm of what is pure, ever existing, immortal and unchanging. He argues that just as the bodys prime function is to understand the material and transient world, the functioning of the soul as an entity of rational and self-reflective thou ght demonstrates its affiliation with a simple and immutable world; showing that the two are distinct. However Plato does not explore the criticisms of this argument that just because an entity portrays an affiliation, does not necessarily require it to be as that which it affiliates. Plato believed that the soul, if it were to be the animator of all living things, must be responsible for a person s mental or psychological activities and responses. For the soul cannot be the reason for life, yet at the same time limited in its influence over the bodies in which it animates. However this provides one of the most serious and potentially defeating criticisms of Platos views on the soul. He fails to address the issue of the interrelationship between body and soul, if they are indeed distinct. He doesnà ¢Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¡Ã‚ ¬Ãƒ ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚ ¢t mention if the soul act as controller of a lifeless body, or is there more to the body than simply the material. Moreover the argument from affiliation would suggest that the body is concerned with the material, composite world whilst the soul is concerned with the invisible and simple world. If this is the case then the soul cannot, following from Platos argument, have any interaction with the material, bodily world; for then it ceases to be simple and immutable. An argument from recollection, which Plato first put forward when discussing his theory of the world of the forms, also serves his theory of the soul. Perfect forms, such as equality, are knowable a priori; we have no need for experience to tell us whether two lines are equal length. We must, therefore, know these things through recollection of these perfect forms. Therefore, the soul must have pre-existed the body to know these facts a priori. Platos argument from opposites was based on his idea that everything in the observable world has an opposite effect. As Plato writes in his work Phaedo; If something smaller comes to be it will come from something larger before, which became smaller. In other words everything we can know has an opposite; asleep and awake; hot and cold. Similarly they are reversible, just as one goes from a state of sleep to a state of being awake, one can do the opposite. Plato argued that if this were the case, then the same should apply to life and death. Just as one can go from life to death, one must be able to go from death to life; and if this statement is correct, then the soul must survive this transition and as a consequence possess immortality and separation from the body. He believed that animation and life was integral to the very notion of the soul, just like heat is a part of fire; thus it cannot be destroyed and is eternal. A separate argument from his theory of opposites was that of a similar theory of the forms and their opposites. He stated that no entity can consist of contradictory forms, and thus one form must necessarily exist and the other not in any particular entity. The number five cannot possess both the form of even and odd; by adding or subtracting one; the form of odd is displaced by even. Plato wrote: so fire as the cold approaches will either go away or be destroyed; it will never venture to admit coldness and remain what it was, fire and cold The soul must share in the form of life, for we know that those living have a soul. Therefore, it cannot contain the form of death also, for this would be in direct conflict of life. The soul must ontologically necessarily exist, and must therefore be immortal. Contemporary analysis of Platos views on the soul produces many criticisms; there is a clear chronological confusion as his work progresses; with the soul starting as an unintelligible and non-tangible item, yet progressing to where the soul becomes a complex tripartite entity that is trapped in the material body, yet still longing to enter the world of the forms. Plato demonstrates a contradictory and muddled thought process that attempts to find resolutions for flaws in his thinking. The idea of an imperfect entity entering the perfect realm of the forms is one such logical fallacy in his argument; and he does this by seeking to find reason and justification for his conclusion, rather than seeking a conclusion based on all of his own logic.

The Arts That Shaped America: Arts of the 1920s :: essays research papers

Art by definition is the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium. Whether it was shown visually or musically, the arts of the twenties were reflective of the time period. Even in books, the extravagance that people lived in was evident. The music of the twenties was on the opposite end of the spectrum from the music that had been its predecessor. With a quicker tempo, dynamics different then anything before it, dances that were of the youth and viewed as taboo, and powered by brass and rhythm instruments , jazz had become a mainstream for the youth of the twenties (Handley). In stark contrast of the Beethoven and the â€Å"usual† waltzes that people danced to, jazz was in your face and frowned down upon. According to the older generation, and quoted in the New York American, â€Å"Moral disaster is coming to hundreds of young American girls through the pathological, nerve-irritating, sex-exciting music of jazz orchestras" (Ward, Burns). In the 1920s, Jazz and Blues became very popular. Singers and musicians like Fat Waller, "Jelly Roll' Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Lucille Bogan could be heard world wide. Bing Crosby, Annette Hanshaw, Al Jolson, Maria Anderson and George Gershw in were also making in big in the music world. George Gershwin composed some of the most noticeable blues pieces of the nineteen twenties. Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, and Piano Concerto in F, Rhapsody No. 2. Louis Armstrong, by far the king of the trumpet is the poster boy for pure jazz. With his revolutionary playing, he was able to break the trend of the typical â€Å"Dixieland† jazz music with his solos alone. During the nineteen twenties films were becoming more popular, creating five major studios and three minor studios (â€Å"Films History of The 1920s.†) The five major studios, some of which are still around today, were: Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures (originally named Famous players), Mutual Film Corporation, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Fox Film Corporation. Warner Bros. Pictures, incorporated in 1923 by the brothers (Jack, Harry, Albert, and Sam); the studio's first principal asset was Rin Tin Tin. MGM, first named Metro-Goldwyn Pictures - in 1924 formed from the merger of Metro Pictures (1915), Samuel Goldwyn Picture Corporation (1917), and the Louis B. Mayer Pictures Company (1918).

Analysis of Wilfred Owen’s Poetry

Hieroglyphs of an unappreciated inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they Inspire; the Influence which Is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. † (Percy Abysses Shelley) It seems that even though Wilfred Owen was not alive until many years after this quote that he embodied this quote about poets and their poetry.Poetry throughout the ages has been one literary device that has neither changed nor conformed to the whims of society. Poetry has been a device to recount history, express emotion and bring about change; thus poets being agents of change. Wilfred Owen, a brilliant poet was amongst those who initiated anti-war writing amidst a country being fed propaganda. Owen brought attention to the harsh realities of war, rather than perpetuating societies' ignorant delusions that war was hero ic and adventurous. Owen was resolved to edify England on the actualities of war.By writing poetry that denied England's teachings of noble warfare, Owen set an unprecedented example of exposing repressed truth to the public. Two of his most distinguished works, â€Å"Dulcet et Decorum est.† and â€Å"Anthem for Doomed Youth† will be analyses alongside Owens Life to prove the validity of this statement. The way In which Wilfred Owen was brought up was integral to his phenomenal poetry. He was birthed in the year 1893 in England and was a devout Christian throughout his years of boyhood. On October 21st 191 5, Owen enlisted into the army and nearly a year later was commissioned as a second lieutenant.Owen had been born into England at a time where war was what men did for adventure, it was honorable, a transition room boyhood to manhood some might have called it. What Owen witnessed was anything but what was advertised by his country and felt deeply betrayed and deceive d. Owen suffered through a series of traumatic events such as falling Into a shell-hole and sustaining concussion and also blown Into the air by a trench mortar that left him Incapacitated on an embankment beside the remains of another officer. This led to Owen being diagnosed with shell shock and post- traumatic stress disorder.To overcome the PATS Owen suffered, he was encouraged by Siegfried Swanson to write about the horrors of war. Owen, haunted by his own memories dedicated his writing on the pure physical, moral and psychological horrors of war, not to commemorate the subject but to educate and warn those that were full with propaganda influenced beliefs. Owen bravely defied the socio-cultural context he was brought up in and stood in contrast to the public perception of what war was in order to stop the travail of future soldiers.Owens Christian beliefs and what he witnessed during the war lent to the brilliance of one of his poems that sought to change society view on war. â€Å"Anthem for Doomed Youth,† solemnly discusses the death of a young soldier and contrasts a normal funeral to the send -off that people who died fighting receive. Owen shows his Dallas for the treatment of soldiers Immediately through the title. The word Anthem suggests a celebratory song, In relation to the words Doomed Youth it is evident that Owen believes the deaths of amortized by commemoration.Owen structures his poem very similar to a sonnet with iambic pentameter; having 14 lines and mostly abides by the 10 syllable per line. In order to create effect, Owen occasionally strays from the 10 syllable line by ongoing over at some points and under at others. In combination with the unusual rhyming scheme the poem contains, the reader is set on edge and made to feel uncomfortable. Owen incorporates language that identifies the time period in which he lived, words such as â€Å"orisons,† â€Å"shires,† and â€Å"pallor† are indicative of this.A sense of instability is constructed through Owens use of alliteration and vivid aesthetics; the lines â€Å"rifles' rapid rattle† and â€Å"demented choirs of wailing shells† give the reader insight into the chaos of war. By initiating slowly, Owen has allowed the poem to lid Just like war, but begins to end the poem with a slower pace with the line â€Å"And each slow dusk, a drawing down of blinds,† this being significant to the death of the soldier and his last heartbeats. Owen constructs images of religion and contrasts them with descriptions of war and death.Juxtaposing the tolling of bells with gunshots and death, Owen has effectively placed the reader in divine warfare. The overarching message is that Owen believed that soldiers did not receive a proper and respectful burial. Owen was wholly unsatisfied with how the deaths of young oldie's were celebrated in public, rather than mourned. â€Å"Dulcet et decorum est. pro patria mort,† it is sweet and fitt ing to die for one's country, the final line of possibly the most significant of Owens works. Dulcet et Decorum est.,† allied itself with anti- war thinking and promoters, thus becoming extremely popular and influential on society. â€Å"Dulcet et Decorum est.† describes the story of an English soldier whose squadron was attacked by the enemy and the soldier watches a fellow veteran die violently. Through Owens creative genius the reader of â€Å"Dulcet et Decorum est.† is blew to witness how the soldier is endlessly haunted by the death and bombarded by nightmares. Towards the end of the poem, the soldier queries how his country can support and promote such despair and anguish.Owen portrays his belief that his country should stop endorsing war, he was of the opinion that no one should ever have to undergo the horrors he had witnessed. Owen promotes this idea through the last stanza of his poem. The narrator speaks to the reader and tells them that had they witne ssed what he had, they would not be willing to die for their country in what was called an honorable way. To place the reader into a context of war, Owen uses intense imagery such as the line, â€Å"Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues† and also incorporates the use of similes, â€Å"as under a green sea I saw him drowning. Owen has effectively created a feeling of discomfort and angst by incorporating techniques such as simile, metaphor and extremely vivid aesthetics. Owen sets the scene and describes the soldiers as being â€Å"bent double, like old beggars under sacks,† this depicts the dissatisfaction Owen had with war. The famous poet highlights one of society's main faults: the glorification of war. He does this by combining elements of poetry in a frightening manner, such as the combination of slow lines, followed by â€Å"Gas! GAS! Quick boys! By straying from the structure of the iambic pentameter occasionally, Owen puts emphasis on particular lines pertaining to the nightmares of the soldier, â€Å"In all my dreams, before me helpless sight/ He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. † Owen adds authority to his text by Latin phrase Dulcet et decorum est. pro patria moor from an ancient text, Owen has effectively shown that society continues to perpetuate the idea that war is honorable. As a soldier and as a poet, Owen had the authority to comment on the atrocities of war.By using the literary device of poetry, Owen was able to speak that which was not to be spoken and voiced the thoughts of fallen soldier. His establishment of anti – war ideas allowed society to break free from the constrains of propaganda and come to the realization that war was not glorious, honorable nor adventurous. Regardless of the fact that world – wide change did not come about immediately, Owen was able to set precedent for other authors and organizations. He lit a fire in the depths of passionate hearts and inspired other a nti – war poets such s Mimics Radiation.

The Atanasoff-Berry Computer

John Atanasoff once said to reporters, I have always taken the position that there is enough credit for everyone in the invention and development of the electronic computer.   Professor Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry certainly deserve some credit for building the worlds first ​electronic digital computer at Iowa State University between 1939 and 1942.  The Atanasoff-Berry Computer represented several innovations in computing, including a binary system of arithmetic, parallel processing, regenerative memory, and a separation of memory and computing functions. Atanasoff’s Early Years   Atanasoff was born in October 1903, a few miles west of Hamilton, New York. His father, Ivan Atanasov, was a Bulgarian immigrant whose last name was changed to Atanasoff by immigration officials at Ellis Island in 1889.   After John’s birth, his father accepted an electrical engineering position in Florida where  Atanasoff completed grade school and began  understanding the concepts of electricity—he found and corrected faulty electric wiring in a back porch light at the age of nine—but other than that event, his grade school years were uneventful. He was a good student and had a youthful interest in sports, especially baseball, but his  interest in baseball faded when his father purchased a new Dietzgen slide rule to help him at his job. The young  Atanasoff became totally fascinated with it. His father soon discovered that he didnt have an immediate need for the slide rule and it was forgotten by everyone—except young John. Atanasoff soon became interested in the study of logarithms and the mathematical principles behind the operation of the slide rule. This led to studies in trigonometric functions. With the help of his mother, he read A College Algebra by J.M. Taylor, a book that  included a beginning study on differential calculus and  a chapter on infinite series and how to calculate logarithms.   Atanasoff completed high school in two years, excelling in science and mathematics. He had decided that he wanted to be a theoretic physicist and he entered the University of Florida in 1921. The university did not offer a degree in theoretic physics so he began taking electrical engineering courses. While taking these courses, he became interested in electronics and continued on  to higher mathematics. He  graduated in 1925 with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering. He accepted a teaching fellowship from Iowa State College because of the institutions fine reputation in engineering and sciences.  Atanasoff received his masters degree in mathematics from Iowa State College in 1926. After marrying and having a child, Atanasoff moved his  family moved to Madison, Wisconsin where he had been accepted as a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin. The work on his doctoral thesis, The Dielectric Constant of Helium, gave him  his first experience in serious computing. He spent hours on a Monroe calculator, one of the most advanced calculating machines of the time. During the hard weeks of calculations to complete his thesis, he acquired an interest in developing a better and faster computing machine. After receiving his Ph.D. in theoretical physics in July 1930, he returned to Iowa State College with a determination to try to create a faster, better computing machine. The First â€Å"Computing Machine† Atanasoff became a member of the Iowa State College faculty as assistant professor in mathematics and physics in 1930. He felt he was well equipped to try to figure out how to develop a way of doing the complicated math problems he had encountered during his doctoral thesis in a faster, more efficient way. He did experiments with vacuum tubes and radio and with examining the field of electronics. Then he was promoted to associate professor of both mathematics and physics and moved to the school’s Physics Building. After examining many mathematical devices available at the time, Atanasoff concluded that they fell into two classes: analog and digital. The term digital was not used until much later, so he  contrasted analog devices to what he called computing machines proper. In 1936, he engaged in his last effort to construct a small analog calculator. With Glen Murphy, then an atomic physicist at Iowa State College, he built the Laplaciometer, a small analog calculator. It was used for analyzing the geometry of surfaces.   Atanasoff regarded this machine as having the same flaws as other analog devices—accuracy was dependent upon the performance of other parts of the machine. His obsession with finding a solution to the computer problem built to a frenzy in the winter months of 1937. One night, frustrated after many discouraging events, he got in his car and started driving without a destination. Two hundred miles later, he pulled into a roadhouse. He had a drink of bourbon and continued thinking about the creation of the machine. No longer nervous and tense, he realized that ​his thoughts were coming together clearly. He began generating ideas on how to build this computer. The Atanasoff-Berry Computer After receiving a $650 grant from Iowa State College in March 1939, Atanasoff was ready to build his computer. He hired a particularly bright electrical engineering student, Clifford E. Berry, to help him accomplish his goal. With his background in electronics and mechanical construction skills, the brilliant and inventive Berry was the ideal partner for Atanasoff.  They worked at developing and improving the ABC or Atanasoff-Berry Computer, as it was later named, from 1939 until 1941.   The final product was the size of a desk, weighed 700 pounds, had over 300 vacuum tubes, and contained a mile of wire. It could calculate about one operation every  15 seconds. Today, computers can calculate 150 billion operations in 15 seconds. Too large to go anywhere, the computer remained in the basement of the physics department.   World War II   World War II started in December 1941 and work on the computer came to a halt. Although Iowa State College had hired a Chicago patent lawyer, Richard R. Trexler, the patenting of the ABC was never completed. The war effort prevented John Atanasoff from finishing the patent process and from doing any further work on the computer. Atanasoff left Iowa State on leave for a defense-related position at the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Clifford Berry accepted a defense-related job in California. On one of his return visits to Iowa State in 1948, Atanasoff was surprised and disappointed to learn that the ABC had been removed from the Physics Building and dismantled. Neither he nor Clifford Berry had been notified that the computer was going to be destroyed. Only a few parts of the computer were saved. The ENIAC Computer   Presper Eckert and John Mauchly were the first to receive a  patent for a digital computing device, the ENIAC computer. A 1973 patent infringement case, ​Sperry Rand vs. Honeywell, voided the ENIAC patent as a derivative of Atanasoffs invention. This was the source for Atanasoff’s comment that there is enough credit for everyone in the field. Although Eckert and Mauchly received most of the credit for inventing the first electronic-digital computer, historians now say that the Atanasoff-Berry Computer was the first. It was at an evening of scotch and 100 mph car rides, John Atanasoff also told reporters, when the concept came ​for an electronically operated machine that would use base-two binary numbers instead of the traditional base-10 numbers, condensers for memory, and a regenerative process to preclude loss of memory from electrical failure. Atanasoff wrote most of the concepts of the first modern computer on the back of a cocktail napkin. He was very fond of fast cars and scotch. He died of a stroke in June 1995 at his home in Maryland.