BNW uhh. 10?

1. Why does the director feel that Unorthodoxy is worse than Murder? What does the Director want to do with Bernard Marx?

The director feels that unorthodoxy is worse than murder because it threatens social stability. He tells Bernard that he plans to Dismiss him in front of dozens of high-caste workers to make an example of him.

2. What surprise does Bernard bring to the Director?

Bernard Brings Linda and John to the Director.

Jared Diamond

1. Please describe the background of the dispute between Dr. Samuel Huntington and Dr. Serge Lang.

Both Dr. Samuel Hunting and Dr. Serge Lang are scientists. Dr. Huntington was an academic scholar that was attempting to become a member of the National Academy of Sciences, but Dr. Lang objected to hies request statistics opinion and not valid scientific data.

1. How did Lang respond to Huntington’s “pseudo mathematics?”

Lang responded to Huntingtons "pseudo mathematics" by sending out large packages of documents attempting to discredit Huntingtons data.

1. What aspects of the dispute between Lang and Huntington are “political?” How does the author, Jared Diamond, feel about “Academic Freedom?

"Huntington had done several things that are now anathema in U.S. academia: he received CIA support for some research; he did a study for the State Department in 1967 on political stability inSouth Vietnam; and he's said to have been an early supporter of the Vietnam war." The majority of Huntingtons debates have references to his political involvement. Jared feels that Academic Freedom is unfair, and that is it imposing Huntingtons ability to have free political liberty.

1. Why does the NAS exist? Why does this make that attacks against Huntington seem peculiar?

NAS exsists so that the US could have a purley scientifc group that discussed and could be consulted for various issues. This makes the attacks against Huntington seem very particular because he appeared to be doing exactly what NAS was meant to do, but was denied membership for what he was doing.

1. Why does Diamond find fault in the traditional perceptions of the hard sciences?

Diamond finds fault in the the traditional perceptions of the hard sciences because he thinks that: " the enterprise of explaining and predicting -- gaining knowledge of -- natural phenomena, by continually testing one's theories against empirical evidence." He believes that this can be done in any which way, with a test tube or not.

1. Why are soft sciences difficult to study?

He believes that soft sciences are difficult to study because social variables can not be controlled fully. Also there is the problem that it is impossible to control when social situations stop or arise.

1. How did the NAS need to change in the early 1970s?

In the early 1970s NAS needed to start allowing scholars of social sciences to be allowed membership so that the government would also have consultation for social issues.

1. What are the problems in “operationalizing” a concept?

Operationalizing has many problems because it is more difficult and less exact in the soft sciences since it has so many uncontrolled variables.

1. Briefly describe how Diamond illustrates operationalizing in:

· Mathematics

The amount of bannans in a tree are able to be counted, in order to prove which has more by people.

· Chemistry

The concentration of sugars are able to be measured by people

· Ecology

The foliage hieght diversity index is able to be found by people.

· Psychology

Things like questionnaires and surveys can be used to measure patterns and certain behaviors by people.

10. What were Huntington’s operationalized concepts that provoked the wrath of Lang?

Huntington's operationalized concepts 'provoked the wrath of lang' because Lang felt that Huntington's statistics of frustration and instability were not scientific.

10. Why is the task of operationalizing more difficult and less exact in the soft sciences? Why does it lead to the ridicule of the soft sciences?

The task of operationalizing is more difficult because there is a larger amount of variables that can not be controlled. It leads to the ridicule of the soft sciences because people assume that they must know everything about human nature, because they are human. This is why other sciences are less challenged, for example people don't challenge or ridicule physics because they do not think that they are well informed enough on the subject to have any say in the matter.

10. Why does Diamond believe that Lang might be ignorant of the measurements taken by social scientists like Huntington?

Diamond thinks that Lang might be ignorant of the measurements taken by social science because it is such a new concept that he questions it, without questioning the same methods that he has always been taught as right in other sciences.

10. Does Diamond believe the labels associated with the sciences be replaced? Explain.

Diamond does believe that the labels associated with the sciences should be replaced. He thinks that they convey the wrong idea about each group, and attach bias to them before one can actually inquire what they are about. He also feels that soft sciences are much more difficult than hard sciences and that those names help add to the bias attached to them.

10. Does Diamond believe the soft sciences to be more valuable than hard sciences? Do you agree? Explain.

Diamond thinks that the soft sciences are more valuable than the hard sciences. I personally do not agree with this statement. I do not think that the soft sciences are completly valid because of the large amount of variables that is connected with them

Essay Notes

Delieve/belief

order

glimpsed

chaos ->(perception)

relevent

to what extent

knowledge issues-strengths/weaknesses........how do they know

realitivist argument- NO

Able Notes

We make patterns in History, we create our own framework of what events took place.

theory -> embed in general law

premise that explains qqorld

sets

general idea

blueprint

framework

(positivistis)

we explain strange by familiar

pg 169?

1. How does Science explain a fact? Please use the entire explanation on. p. 91 and 92.

Science explains a fact by the examples following:

• Definition- Ex. What is photosynthesis?
• Paraphrase- restates the sense in similar or more formal words. ex what does the fire insurance plan mean?
• Rules- Ex will you explain chess to me?
• Analysis- what is logically entailed. ex Why is there no greatest prime number?
• Demonstration- showing how to do something. ex.How do you ski?
• Reasons- provides motives, beliefs, examples. ex. Why did Brutus stab Caesar?
• Universal- would require both refence to the metaphysical reasons in which both substances participate. ex. Why is snow and milk white

Science explains by "embedding it within a general law from which, along with the particular conditions involved, the fact to be explained may be logically deduced."

2. What are some common misconceptions about scientific explanations? How does Abel refute each one?

• Science describes, it doesn't explain: Able discusses how there is a very fine line between description and explanation since one leads to another. For example you can not explain something with out doing some type of describing.
• Science Explains the Strange Using the Familiar: Able disagrees with this idea, and finds it to be exactly the opposite. Things can be familiar, like baseball, but is explained using unfamiliar terms like gravity and friction.
• Scientific explanation is also not the same as understanding what is said. Understanding is more related to knowledge by acquaintance, or knowing how that science works.
• A scientific explanation doesnt have to be casual law, but it may be a law of simultaneous existence rather than order.

3. What does Abel mean when he says: "a law in turn may be explained by another law of wider scope; the greater the generality, the better the explanation." (p. 93)?

Able is basically stating that if generalizations are made then more laws cab be covered and explained by it.

4. What does Abel mean when he says: "Explanation is always relative to a given knowledge situation; you must stop somewhere." (p. 94)?

What he means is that logic can only be explained if you stopped at a certain point, you can ask for directions to a house, but not for directions to the universe.

5. Why are explanatory reductions "economical ways of describing phenomena." (p. 95)?

They take complex events and explain them much more simply by using less scientific vocab.

6. Why does scientific explanation require the concept of system?

It requires a concept of system because the concept must work together unlike a machine working indvidually.

7. Why is the theory of emergence used to explain how anything new came into the world? What counter-claim does Abel provide?

This theory is a remedy that explains how new things come into the world. Able believes that there is no way to predict things based on the points of origin.

8. Why is theory and observation interdependent in scientific explanations?

They are independent because even though a scientist can observe a certain experiment he can create a theory with things that are not directly seen. This means that a theory can existed with out observation.

9. Why is explanation in science theoretically identical to prediction? How does Abel feel about this?

An explanation is identical because you only have explained something only partial decent if you can predict the next step. Able doesn't agree with this because some theories cannot be predicted, but are still good explanations.

10. What does Abel mean when he says: 'The growth of science is not a clear-cut, straightforward progression toward a unique, all-inclusive final truth." (p. 100)?

Able means that there are many many factors that go into influencing the course of science. First there is the choice of what to study, the political and the social pressures, finical rewards, ethical incentives, expediency or state of the discipline, the urgency of the problem compared to its difficulty. Secondly there is the element of chance in the scientific progress. Third there is the element of mystery. Fourthly there are influences on the scientists conclusions, like religion, politics, philosophy.

11. According to Abel, what situations are seen by scientists as requiring explanation?

Able believes that scientist study situations that they find to be puzzling.

12. What is the role of the human element in the progress of scientific explanation?

The use of image is misleading, and we make up rules and patterns ourselves to fit into our ideas. These do not exist in nature and limits our true understandings of things.

13. Abel claims that: "Our perceptual knowledge is delimited by our characteristic biological capacities, and there are limits to the completeness of our theoretical structures. But our observations and our theories mutually reinforce each other....The structure of our science is pragmatically justified; it is the most reliable knowledge there is." (p. 105) Does this hold true in History as well?

This defiantly does hold true in history. When studyign history we place create order or events and what specific event lead to more of an influence to one event over another. We tend to place these patters to them that do not really exists, but it is the only way to make things seem logical.

14. In Bullet form, and using information from this chapter and Chapter 15 (you wrote Study Questions on November 9), please list the similarities and differences between Scientific and Historical explanations.

Similarites:

• both are tried to put into patterns
• Both have to analyze
• Both start off with little knowledge, and must go in depth research to obtain facts
• Both can have theories that can neither be proved or disproved

Differences:

• Scientist focuses more on the generalization of nature
• scientist can just record data and have it still be scientific
• Language plays a huge role in history, unlike science.

BNW chapter 9

1. What did Lenina do when she got back to the rest-house?
She swolledsix half-gramme tablets of somma

2. What does Bernard ask his Fordship, Mustapha Mond?
He asks to bring John and his mother back to civilization with him.

3. What does John say when he is by Lenina's bedside? Why is this significant?

John recites Shakesphere to Lenina, this is not only important because he is expressing feelings that she does not have for him, but also because Shakespeare is the only type of reading he has ever done.

Order Essay

"People need to believe that order can be glimpsed in the chaos of events" (adapted from John Gray, Heresies, 2004). In what ways and to what extent would you say this claim is relevant in at least two areas of knowledge?

This claim is very accurate, since society is created by order. Some type of order controls every moment in our lives, whether it is a schedule, rules, habits, or accepted societal behaviors. This claim is relevant in the areas of knowledge of Social Science and in history

Every moment in or lives have some type of order whether or not we tend to recognize it. Order can be defined in many ways, and all of those apply here. Order can be defined as a set of rules, accepted behaviors, or instructions handed down to us by some type of authoritative means. Or it can be defined as a sequential order of events in which things happen, comparable to fate. It says in the quote that people need to believe in this order. In order to believe anything we have to obtain knowledge about it, then we make the conscious decision on whether or not we believe in it. We obtain knowledge through different means such as authority, deduction and induction.

One thing that is extremely important about order is that we are always striving for it. It is what sets up or society, and how we decide how to act based off of it. With order we feel as though there will only be chaos, and the feeling of not knowing how to respond based off of excepted actions or even non-accepted actions scares us. We know that if we are to commit a crime we are to be punished. Authority has told us this, or we can deduce it from information we have found, or we can also learn this by empirical knowledge of seeing a criminal being condoned for his actions.

However when we are placed in a setting with ‘no order’ humans create it. An example of this is the Stanford Prison Experiment. This experiment took college student volunteers and placed them in an isolated area that resembled a prison. It put some students as guards, and the others as prisoners. There were no rules given, only to do what was necessary to keep the prisoners to behave. Automatically the guards came up with rules, and things like night checks. They placed order into a situation that did not previously have any, nor was it clear that any was needed yet. After the rebellion by the prisoners took place more rules and attempts to create order where placed down in hopes to squash any more chaos that may occur. The guard, as stated before, placed order into the situation from the beginning to make sure that there was no chaos from the prisoners. Their fear of having no order, and that it would lead to chaos is clearly shown here. People fear chaos because then there is no accepted form on how to act. If there is no order then there is no way to justify or devalue any action that has been done by anyone. There would ultimately be no way to judge anybody.

From birth we are filled with biases and our own views on the world that help to shade our perception on the world. When we meet someone, or even something, we make a conscious or unconscious judgment on them based on views that society has placed on us. If there is no order, then we would not know how to place these judgments. The inability to classify things and people in connection with ourselves scares us. If we cannot judge a person then we cannot decide whether or not this person will be harmful to us. It all boils down to human instinct, it is animalistic nature to judge if something is safe or not. The inability to be able to do so, which we feel as though would be created in chaos, scares us because that’s how we are wired as a species to work.

In the article “You’re Bored, but Your Brain Is Tuned In” from the New York Times physiologists ran tests researching boredom. It is stated in the article that boredom over time can ‘become a tool for sorting out information’. Here even in a state of daydreaming we are still trying to put order into our lives. We are ‘sorting out’ information, trying to make sense of it all and place patterns into these bits to create an order to them. In the article it is even stated that we may daydream for the reason being to solve a problem. Just like sorting something out, solving a problem involves evoking some type of order or reason to it.

This aspect of daydreaming is extremely realistic. I know for a fact if I am puzzled about something I try to place some type of order to it to try and make sense of it. If a friend of mine says something odd to me I will ponder over it. I will come up with reasons why this person must have said this: ‘oh he must have said it because of x, y, and z’. By doing this I am attaching some type or order to what this person has said. I am taking past experiences and applying them to the now, and applying some type of meaning to what I may find out about this statement in the future, or what this statement might actually mean in the future. In fact this statement could have had no meaning to it what so ever. It could have just been a statement. However since it was out of my norm, it was a but chaotic for me, so I instinctually reacted by placing order and meaning to it, in order to feel better about the situation.

In history leaders have used order in chaotic times to achieve their goals and objectives. For example during WWII Hitler was able to gain power during the chaos that the German people were going through. Germany had just lost WWI and was required to pay war debts to the other nations that fought in WWI. Germany did not have this money and only created inflation in its nation and larger amounts of debt. ‘Chaos’ arrived here because Germany was now in a state of depression, and became very vulnerable. Hitler came into play and used this chaos and vulnerability to create scapegoats, and create his own type of order. He created jobs with the SS and he created this new world full of ideals and laws and regulations in Germany that had not existed before his rule. The people looked to his plans and found order and structure in them, unlike what they had before. With all of the inflations that were taking place life felt chaotic for the Germans, and once Hitler gave them a glimpse of order and the chance to get back to the lives they once had they followed him. They did not bother to reject any ideas of the holocaust or any of the other monstrosities Hitler had planned, because they were to focus on the order that they felt would lead them from chaos. If Germany was not in debt and perfectly fine there would have been no need from the people to search for the ‘order’ that Hitler presented to them. They would have been content with life as it is.

People fear chaos. They feel that the only way to rid of chaos is to find order. When they are presented with any type of chaos they will find order to fill the chaotic void and make it go away, even if there really wasn’t any order to be found. If there wasn’t then the mind will create a ‘logical’ answer and accept it as truth until another form of order comes to prove it false.

BNW Chapter 8

1. How would you describe John's upbringing? Why do you think he says that he is "Alone, always alone." (p. 137). How does Bernard feel about John?
John's upbringing is extremely interesting. He is constantly hearing stories about the civilized world and how great of a place it is, and he longs to go see it and live there. Also because of his mother he is looked upon as an outsider by the other savages and isn't allowed to participate like the others are. He feels alone because his mother isn't really mother like, and is just constantly talking about her past life, and the savage society does not accept him. Bernard finds him extremely interesting and wants to bring him back to civilization with him.

2. Why does John say at the end of the chapter, "O brave new world!" (p. 139)?

John says this because he is going to enter civilization, which he sees as a new exciting idea that can only bring good.

BNW Chapter 7

1. How does Lenina feel about their appointed guide?
Lenina did not like thier guide, she found him 'hostile and slightly contemptuous' and she thought he smelled.

2. How does Lenina react to "naked Indian"(p. 110)? Does it remind you of anyone else we have studied?
She becomes very confused about him, because she has never seen an old person before, and she thought it was some type of disease. This is very similar to the story of the Buddha when he was still a prince ans saw old age for the same time.

3. How does Bernard react to the pueblo of Malpais?
Bernard states that he wished he had a mother of his own. He also seems excited but upset over this relationship at the same time. He is excited because he views it as a beautiful thing, however he is upset because he will never have that experience. He also tells Lenina that he wishes she had a child of her own.

4. Who is Linda? What is her relationship to Tomakin?
Linda is the women that the director had talked about before, she came from civilization and was lost there, and wanted out. Tomakin is her son.

5. Why does Linda believe that "everything they do is mad"(p. 121)? Please be specific.

Linda believes that everything they do is mad because the society that she has been placed in directly contradicts her own, and the ideas that have been placed into her head about what is right. She doesn't know how they live in such filth, but cannot clean because there is nothing for her to clean with. She also doesn't understand why she should mend clothes when they brake, she views it as anti-social, because she thinks she is doing someone else's job.