Author
An author is the creator or originator of any written work such as a book or play, is thus a writer. More broadly defined, an author is "the person who originated or gave existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility for what was created; the first owner of a copyright is the person who created the work i.e. the author. If more than one person created the work a case of joint authorship can be made provided some criteria are met. In the copyright laws of various jurisdictions, there is a necessity for little flexibility regarding what constitutes authorship; the United States Copyright Office, for example, defines copyright as "a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States to authors of "original works of authorship". Holding the title of "author" over any "literary, musical, certain other intellectual works" gives rights to this person, the owner of the copyright the exclusive right to engage in or authorize any production or distribution of their work.
Any person or entity wishing to use intellectual property held under copyright must receive permission from the copyright holder to use this work, will be asked to pay for the use of copyrighted material. After a fixed amount of time, the copyright expires on intellectual work and it enters the public domain, where it can be used without limit. Copyright laws in many jurisdictions – following the lead of the United States, in which the entertainment and publishing industries have strong lobbying power – have been amended since their inception, to extend the length of this fixed period where the work is controlled by the copyright holder. However, copyright is the legal reassurance that one owns his/her work. Technically, someone owns their work from the time. An interesting aspect of authorship emerges with copyright in that, in many jurisdictions, it can be passed down to another upon one's death; the person who inherits the copyright enjoys the same legal benefits. Questions arise as to the application of copyright law.
How does it, for example, apply to the complex issue of fan fiction? If the media agency responsible for the authorized production allows material from fans, what is the limit before legal constraints from actors and other considerations, come into play? Additionally, how does copyright apply to fan-generated stories for books? What powers do the original authors, as well as the publishers, have in regulating or stopping the fan fiction? This particular sort of case illustrates how complex intellectual property law can be, since such fiction may involved trademark law, likeness rights, fair use rights held by the public, many other interacting complications. Authors may portion out different rights they hold to different parties, at different times, for different purposes or uses, such as the right to adapt a plot into a film, but only with different character names, because the characters have been optioned by another company for a television series or a video game. An author may not have rights when working under contract that they would otherwise have, such as when creating a work for hire, or when writing material using intellectual property owned by others.
In literary theory, critics find complications in the term author beyond what constitutes authorship in a legal setting. In the wake of postmodern literature, critics such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault have examined the role and relevance of authorship to the meaning or interpretation of a text. Barthes challenges the idea, he writes, in his essay "Death of the Author", that "it is language which speaks, not the author". The words and language of a text itself determine and expose meaning for Barthes, not someone possessing legal responsibility for the process of its production; every line of written text is a mere reflection of references from any of a multitude of traditions, or, as Barthes puts it, "the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture". With this, the perspective of the author is removed from the text, the limits imposed by the idea of one authorial voice, one ultimate and universal meaning, are destroyed; the explanation and meaning of a work does not have to be sought in the one who produced it, "as if it were always in the end, through the more or less transparent allegory of the fiction, the voice of a single person, the author'confiding' in us".
The psyche, fanaticism of an author can be disregarded when interpreting a text, because the words are rich enough themselves with all of the traditions of language. To expose meanings in a written work without appealing to the celebrity of an author, their tastes, vices, is, to Barthes, to allow language to speak, rather than author. Michel Foucault argues in his essay "What is an author?" that all authors are writers, but not all writers are authors. He states that "a private letter may have a signatory—it does not have an author". For a reader to assign the title of author upon any written work is to attribute certain standards upon the text which, for Foucault, are working in conjunction with the idea of "the author function". Foucault's author function is the idea that an author exists only as a fun
Americans
Americans are nationals and citizens of the United States of America. Although nationals and citizens make up the majority of Americans, some dual citizens and permanent residents may claim American nationality; the United States is home to people of many different ethnic origins. As a result, American culture and law does not equate nationality with race or ethnicity, but with citizenship and permanent allegiance. English-speakers, speakers of many other languages use the term "American" to mean people of the United States; the word "American" can refer to people from the Americas in general. The majority of Americans or their ancestors immigrated to America or are descended from people who were brought as slaves within the past five centuries, with the exception of the Native American population and people from Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands, who became American through expansion of the country in the 19th century, additionally America expanded into American Samoa, the U. S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands in the 20th century.
Despite its multi-ethnic composition, the culture of the United States held in common by most Americans can be referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture derived from the traditions of Northern and Western European colonists and immigrants. It includes influences of African-American culture. Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced a variety of elements. Immigration from Asia and Latin America has had impact. A cultural melting pot, or pluralistic salad bowl, describes the way in which generations of Americans have celebrated and exchanged distinctive cultural characteristics. In addition to the United States and people of American descent can be found internationally; as many as seven million Americans are estimated to be living abroad, make up the American diaspora.
The United States of America is a diverse country and ethnically. Six races are recognized by the U. S. Census Bureau for statistical purposes: White, American Indian and Alaska Native, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, people of two or more races. "Some other race" is an option in the census and other surveys. The United States Census Bureau classifies Americans as "Hispanic or Latino" and "Not Hispanic or Latino", which identifies Hispanic and Latino Americans as a racially diverse ethnicity that comprises the largest minority group in the nation. People of European descent, or White Americans, constitute the majority of the 308 million people living in the United States, with 72.4% of the population in the 2010 United States Census. They are considered people who trace their ancestry to the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa. Of those reporting to be White American, 7,487,133 reported to be Multiracial. Additionally, there are Latinos.
Non-Hispanic Whites are the majority in 46 states. There are four minority-majority states: California, New Mexico, Hawaii. In addition, the District of Columbia has a non-white majority; the state with the highest percentage of non-Hispanic White Americans is Maine. The largest continental ancestral group of Americans are that of Europeans who have origins in any of the original peoples of Europe; this includes people via African, North American, Central American or South American and Oceanian nations that have a large European descended population. The Spanish were some of the first Europeans to establish a continuous presence in what is now the United States in 1565. Martín de Argüelles born 1566, San Agustín, La Florida a part of New Spain, was the first person of European descent born in what is now the United States. Twenty-one years Virginia Dare born 1587 Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina, was the first child born in the original Thirteen Colonies to English parents. In the 2017 American Community Survey, German Americans, Irish Americans, English Americans and Italian Americans were the four largest self-reported European ancestry groups in the United States forming 35.1% of the total population.
However, the English Americans and British Americans demography is considered a serious under-count as they tend to self-report and identify as "Americans" due to the length of time they have inhabited America. This is over-represented in the Upland South, a region, settled by the British. Overall, as the largest group, European Americans have the lowest poverty rate and the second highest educational attainment levels, median household income, median personal income of any racial demographic in the nation. According to the American Jewish Archives and the Arab American National Museum, some of the first Middle Easterners and North Africans arrived in the Americas between the late 15th and mid-16th centuries. Many were fleeing ethnic or ethnoreligious persecution during the Spanish Inquisition, a few were taken to the Americas as slaves. In 2014, The United States Census Bureau began finalizing the ethnic classification of MENA populations. According to the Arab American Institute, Arab
Philip Nitschke
Philip Haig Nitschke is an Australian humanist, former physician and founder and director of the pro-euthanasia group Exit International. He campaigned to have a legal euthanasia law passed in Australia's Northern Territory and assisted four people in ending their lives before the law was overturned by the Government of Australia. Nitschke was the first doctor in the world to administer a legal, lethal injection, after which the patient activated the syringe using a computer. Nitschke states that he and his group are subject to harassment by authorities. In 2015 Nitschke burned his medical practising certificate in response to what he saw as onerous conditions that violated his right to free speech, imposed on him by the Medical Board of Australia. Nitschke is variously referred to in the media as "Dr Death" or "the Elon Musk of assisted suicide". Nitschke was born in 1947 in rural South Australia, the son of school teachers Harold and Gweneth Nitschke. Nitschke studied physics at the University of Adelaide, gaining a PhD from Flinders University in laser physics in 1972.
Rejecting a career in the sciences, he instead travelled to the Northern Territory to take up work with the Aboriginal land rights activist Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji at Wave Hill. After the hand-back of land by the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, Nitschke became a Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife ranger. However, after badly injuring his subtalar joint, which finished his career as a ranger, he began studying for a medical degree. In addition to having long been interested in studying medicine he has suffered from hypochondria most of his adult life and futilely hoped with his medical studies to educate himself out of the problem, he graduated from the University of Sydney Medical School in 1989. After graduating Nitschke worked as an intern at Royal Darwin Hospital, as an after hours general practitioner; when the Northern Territory branch of the Australian Medical Association publicly opposed the proposed Northern Territory legislation to provide for legal euthanasia, Nitschke and a small group of dissenting Territory doctors published a contrary opinion in the NT News under the banner Doctors for change.
This put him in a position of an informal spokesperson for the proposed legislation. After the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act came into force on 1 July 1996, Nitschke assisted four terminally ill people to end their lives using the Deliverance Machine he developed; this practice was ceased when the ROTI Act was nullified by the Australian Parliament's Euthanasia Laws Act 1997. After the ROTI Act was nullified Nitschke began providing advice to others about how they can end their lives, leading to the formation of Exit International in 1997. A notable case of Nitschke's was that of Nancy Crick, aged 69. On 22 May 2002, Crick, in the presence of over 20 friends and family, took a lethal dose of barbiturates, went to sleep and died within 20 minutes. Nitschke had encouraged Crick to enter palliative care, which she did for a number of days before returning home again, she had undergone multiple surgeries to treat bowel cancer and was left with multiple dense and inoperable bowel adhesions that left her in constant pain and in the toilet with diarrhoea.
She was not, terminally ill at the time of her death. Nitschke said. "She didn't want to die when she had cancer. She wanted to die after she had cancer treatment," he said. Nitschke made headlines in New Zealand when he announced plans to accompany eight New Zealanders to Mexico where the drug Nembutal, capable of producing a fatal overdose, can be purchased legally, he made headlines angering some fellow right-to-die advocates, when he presented his plan to launch a "death ship" that would have allowed him to circumvent local laws by euthanising people from around the world in international waters. In the 2007 Australian federal election Nitschke ran against the Australian politician Kevin Andrews in the Victorian seat of Menzies but was unsuccessful. In 2009 Nitschke helped to promote Dignified Departure, a 13-hour, pay-television program on doctor-assisted suicide in Hong Kong and mainland China; the program aired in October in China on the Family Health channel, run by the official China National Radio.
Organisations opposed to euthanasia, as well as some supporting euthanasia, are critical of Nitschke and his methods. In February 2014 Nitschke was approached after a workshop by Nigel Brayley, 45. Brayley was facing ongoing questions about the death of his wife, which police were treating as suspected murder. Two other female friends of his had died, one of whom is still missing. Nitschke recounts that Brayley rebuffed suggestions to seek counselling, had obtained the drug Nembutal. Brayley committed suicide in May 2014. Although Nitschke was unaware of the investigation at the time, he now believes that Brayley, whom he described as a "serial killer", had made a rational decision to commit suicide rather than face long imprisonment. Nitschke stated that he does not believe he could have changed Brayley's mind, that Brayley was not his patient, that Brayley was not depressed and did not seek or want Nitschke's advice; the Medical Board of Australia and Beyondblue said Nitschke had an obligation to refer the man to a psychologist or psychiatrist.
On 23 July 2014, as a consequence of the Brayley case, the MBA voted to use emergency powers to suspend his practitioner's licence on the grounds that he presented "a serious risk to public health and safety". Nitschke said he would appeal the suspension, which he claimed was po
Final Exit
Final Exit is a 1991 book written by Derek Humphry, a British-born American journalist and assisted suicide advocate who co-founded the now-defunct Hemlock Society in 1980 and co-founded the Final Exit Network in 2004. The book was first published in 1991 by Dell Publishing under the name Dell Trade; the current edition was published in 2010. The book described as a "suicide manual", describes the means that the terminally ill may use to end their lives; the book further outlines relevant laws and living wills. Final Exit was perceived as controversial, the book drove debate regarding the right to die. Another concern was that people who were mentally ill could use the information found in the book to end their lives. Despite the controversy, Final Exit reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller list in August. Final Exit Network claims that 750,000 copies have been sold in the United States and Canada and 500,000 elsewhere; the book is banned in France. Final Exit is Derek Humphry’s third book on the subject of self-euthanasia.
It has been translated into 12 languages. The original English language version is in its third edition. In 2000, Derek Humphry recorded a VHS video version of the information in the book; the ethicist Peter Singer included it on a list of his top ten books in The Guardian. Industrial metal band Fear Factory uses quotes from Humphry's video in the last track, "Final Exit", of their seventh studio album Mechanize. In a Christmas episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 Dr. Forrester gives TV's Frank a copy of the book as a gift after he reveals that he stole Frank's blood to pay for it. In episode 11 of the sixth season of Married... with Children, Al Bundy can be seen reading this book while in bed. In episode 6 of the first season of The Powers That Be, Theodore Van Horne reads this book in bed ticking off the methods he's tried. Bill Hicks incorporated this book in several of his bootleg shows as a build-up to one of his controversial sketches on how euthanasia can make movies more interesting and believable, quoting a phrase "Put'em in the movies...
In episode 10 of season one of the Showtime TV show Huff, Beth Huffstodt finds a copy of the book in her mother-in-law's closet and worries that her mother-in-law is planning to kill herself. In the novel All My Puny Sorrows, suicidal Elfrieda orders a copy of this book and her husband and sister debate whether or not to dispose of it; the book is mentioned in the novel The Treatment Humphry summarizes the world reaction to'Final Exit' in his memoir "Good Life, Good Death" On episode 14 of the final season of Golden Girls, Rose is reading the personals column of their local newspaper for Sophia. One of the ads makes a reference to the "Final Exit" as one of the hobbies of an individual seeking a date partner; the book is in the bathroom in the 2016 movie Sister Cities in which the mother, suffering from ALS planned her own exit. Final Exit Network The Complete Manual of Suicide by Wataru Tsurumi The Peaceful Pill Handbook by Philip Nitschke Five Last Acts II and The Exit Path, by Chris Docker Suicide Suicide methods Euthanasia device Curiosities of Literature by John Sutherland.
Arrow Books 2008. Humphry, Derek. Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying. ISBN 0-9606030-3-4. Humphry, Derek. Supplement to Final Exit. ISBN 978-0-9637280-3-6 Humphry, Derek. Final Exit: The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying, 3rd edition. ISBN 0-385-33653-5. Delta Trade Paperback. Revised and updated. Humphry, Derek. Let Me Die Before I Wake & Supplement to Final Exit. ISBN 978-1-4011-0286-9 Humphry, Derek Good Life, Good Death: Memoir of an investigative reporter and pro-choice advocate. Hardcopy and eBook. ISBN 978-0-9768283-3-4 Smith, Dinitia; the Happy Hawker: Tyro Publisher Steven Schragis's Genius for Promoting Schlock. New York Magazine. 25. Pp. 40–46. ISSN 0028-7369. Official website
The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times is the largest-selling British national newspaper in the "quality press" market category. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, in turn owned by News Corp. Times Newspapers publishes The Times; the two papers were founded independently and have been under common ownership only since 1966. They were bought by News International in 1981; the Sunday Times occupies a dominant position in the quality Sunday market. While some other national newspapers moved to a tabloid format in the early 2000s, The Sunday Times has retained the larger broadsheet format and has said that it will continue to do so, it sells more than twice as many copies as its sister paper, The Times, published Monday to Saturday. The Sunday Times has acquired a reputation for the strength of its investigative reporting – much of it by its award-winning Insight team – and for its wide-ranging foreign coverage, it has a number of popular writers and commentators including Jeremy Clarkson and Bryan Appleyard.
A. A. Gill was a prominent columnist for many years, it was Britain's first multi-section newspaper and remains larger than its rivals. A typical edition contains the equivalent of 450 to 500 tabloid pages. Besides the main news section, it has standalone News Review, Sport and Appointments sections – all broadsheet. There are two tabloid supplements, it has a website and separate digital editions configured for both the iOS operating system for the Apple iPad and the Android operating system for such devices as the Google Nexus, all of which offer video clips, extra features and multimedia and other material not found in the printed version of the newspaper. The paper publishes The Sunday Times Rich List, an annual survey of the wealthiest people in Britain and Ireland, equivalent to the Forbes 400 list in the United States, a series of league tables with reviews of private British companies, in particular The Sunday Times Fast Track 100; the paper produces an annual league table of the best-performing state and independent schools at both junior and senior level across the United Kingdom, entitled Parent Power, an annual league table of British universities and a similar one for Irish universities.
It publishes The Sunday Times Bestseller List of books in Britain, a list of the "100 Best Companies to Work For", focusing on UK companies. It organises The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival, held annually, The Sunday Times Festival of Education, which takes place every year at Wellington College; the paper began publication on 18 February 1821 as The New Observer, but from 21 April its title was changed to the Independent Observer. Its founder, Henry White, chose the name in an apparent attempt to take advantage of the success of The Observer, founded in 1791, although there was no connection between the two papers. On 20 October 1822 it was reborn as The Sunday Times, although it had no relationship with The Times. In January 1823, White sold the paper to a radical politician. Under its new owner, The Sunday Times notched up several firsts: a wood engraving it published of the coronation of Queen Victoria in 1838 was the largest illustration to have appeared in a British newspaper; the paper was bought in 1887 by Alice Anne Cornwell who had made a fortune in mining in Australia and floating the Midas Mine Company of the London Stock Exchange.
She bought the paper to promote her new company, The British and Australasian Mining Investment Company, as a gift to her lover Frederick Stannard Robinson. Robinson was installed as editor and she married him in 1894, she sold it in 1893 to Frederick Beer, who owned Observer. Beer appointed Rachel Sassoon Beer, as editor, she was editor of Observer – the first woman to run a national newspaper – and continued to edit both titles until 1901. There was a further change of ownership in 1903, in 1915 the paper was bought by William Berry and his brother, Gomer Berry ennobled as Lord Camrose and Viscount Kemsley respectively. Under their ownership, The Sunday Times continued its reputation for innovation: on 23 November 1930, it became the first Sunday newspaper to publish a 40-page issue and on 21 January 1940, news replaced advertising on the front page. In 1943, the Kemsley Newspapers Group was established, with The Sunday Times becoming its flagship paper. At this time, Kemsley was the largest newspaper group in Britain.
On 12 November 1945, Ian Fleming, who created James Bond, joined the paper as foreign manager and special writer. The following month, circulation reached 500,000. On 28 September 1958 the paper launched a separate Review section, becoming the first newspaper to publish two sections regularly. In 1959 the Kemsley group was bought by Lord Thomson, in October 1960 circulation reached one million for the first time. In another first, on 4 February 1962 the editor, Denis Hamilton, launched The Sunday Times Magazine; the cover picture of the first issue was of Jean Shrimpton wearing a Mary Quant outfit and was taken by David Bailey. The magazine got off to a slow start, but the advertising soon began to pick up, over time, other newspapers laun
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper, published in Los Angeles, since 1881. It has the fourth-largest circulation among United States newspapers, is the largest U. S. newspaper not headquartered on the East Coast. The paper is known for its coverage of issues salient to the U. S. West Coast, such as immigration trends and natural disasters, it has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes for its coverage of other issues. As of June 18, 2018, ownership of the paper is controlled by Patrick Soon-Shiong, the executive editor is Norman Pearlstine. In the nineteenth century, the paper was known for its civic boosterism and opposition to unions, the latter of which led to the bombing of its headquarters in 1910; the paper's profile grew in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. In recent decades, the paper's readership has declined and it has been beset by a series of ownership changes, staff reductions, other controversies. In January 2018, the paper's staff voted to unionize, in July 2018 the paper moved out of its historic downtown headquarters to a facility near Los Angeles International Airport.
The Times was first published on December 4, 1881, as the Los Angeles Daily Times under the direction of Nathan Cole Jr. and Thomas Gardiner. It was first printed at the Mirror printing plant, owned by Jesse Yarnell and T. J. Caystile. Unable to pay the printing bill and Gardiner turned the paper over to the Mirror Company. In the meantime, S. J. Mathes had joined the firm, it was at his insistence that the Times continued publication. In July 1882, Harrison Gray Otis moved from Santa Barbara to become the paper's editor. Otis made the Times a financial success. Historian Kevin Starr wrote that Otis was a businessman "capable of manipulating the entire apparatus of politics and public opinion for his own enrichment". Otis's editorial policy was based on civic boosterism, extolling the virtues of Los Angeles and promoting its growth. Toward those ends, the paper supported efforts to expand the city's water supply by acquiring the rights to the water supply of the distant Owens Valley; the efforts of the Times to fight local unions led to the October 1, 1910 bombing of its headquarters, killing twenty-one people.
Two union leaders and Joseph McNamara, were charged. The American Federation of Labor hired noted trial attorney Clarence Darrow to represent the brothers, who pleaded guilty. Otis fastened a bronze eagle on top of a high frieze of the new Times headquarters building designed by Gordon Kaufmann, proclaiming anew the credo written by his wife, Eliza: "Stand Fast, Stand Firm, Stand Sure, Stand True." Upon Otis's death in 1917, his son-in-law, Harry Chandler, took control as publisher of the Times. Harry Chandler was succeeded in 1944 by his son, Norman Chandler, who ran the paper during the rapid growth of post-war Los Angeles. Norman's wife, Dorothy Buffum Chandler, became active in civic affairs and led the effort to build the Los Angeles Music Center, whose main concert hall was named the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in her honor. Family members are buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery near Paramount Studios; the site includes a memorial to the Times Building bombing victims. The fourth generation of family publishers, Otis Chandler, held that position from 1960 to 1980.
Otis Chandler sought legitimacy and recognition for his family's paper forgotten in the power centers of the Northeastern United States due to its geographic and cultural distance. He sought to remake the paper in the model of the nation's most respected newspapers, notably The New York Times and The Washington Post. Believing that the newsroom was "the heartbeat of the business", Otis Chandler increased the size and pay of the reporting staff and expanded its national and international reporting. In 1962, the paper joined with The Washington Post to form the Los Angeles Times–Washington Post News Service to syndicate articles from both papers for other news organizations, he toned down the unyielding conservatism that had characterized the paper over the years, adopting a much more centrist editorial stance. During the 1960s, the paper won four Pulitzer Prizes, more than its previous nine decades combined. Writing in 2013 about the pattern of newspaper ownership by founding families, Times reporter Michael Hiltzik said that: The first generations bought or founded their local paper for profits and social and political influence.
Their children enjoyed both profits and influence, but as the families grew larger, the generations found that only one or two branches got the power, everyone else got a share of the money. The coupon-clipping branches realized that they could make more money investing in something other than newspapers. Under their pressure the companies split apart, or disappeared. That's the pattern followed over more than a century by the Los Angeles Times under the Chandler family; the paper's early history and subsequent transformation was chronicled in an unauthorized history Thinking Big, was one of four organizations profiled by David Halberstam in The Powers That Be. It has been the whole or partial subject of nearly thirty dissertations in communications or social science in the past four decades; the Los Angeles Times began a decline with Los Angeles itself with the decline in military production at the end of the Cold War. It faced hiring freezes in 1991-1992. Another major decision at the same time was to cut the range of circulation.
They cut circulation in California's Central Valley, Nevada and the San Diego ed
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental questions about existence, values, reason and language. Such questions are posed as problems to be studied or resolved; the term was coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument, systematic presentation. Classic philosophical questions include: Is it possible to know anything and to prove it? What is most real? Philosophers pose more practical and concrete questions such as: Is there a best way to live? Is it better to be just or unjust? Do humans have free will? "philosophy" encompassed any body of knowledge. From the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, "natural philosophy" encompassed astronomy and physics. For example, Newton's 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy became classified as a book of physics. In the 19th century, the growth of modern research universities led academic philosophy and other disciplines to professionalize and specialize.
In the modern era, some investigations that were traditionally part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology and economics. Other investigations related to art, politics, or other pursuits remained part of philosophy. For example, is beauty objective or subjective? Are there many scientific methods or just one? Is political utopia a hopeful dream or hopeless fantasy? Major sub-fields of academic philosophy include metaphysics, ethics, political philosophy and philosophy of science. Traditionally, the term "philosophy" referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is related to religion, natural science and politics. Newton's 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy is classified in the 2000s as a book of physics. In the first part of the first book of his Academics, Cicero introduced the division of philosophy into logic and ethics. Metaphysical philosophy was the study of existence, God, logic and other abstract objects; this division has changed.
Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences astronomy, chemistry and cosmology. Moral philosophy still includes value theory. Metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology and others. Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today. Colin McGinn and others claim. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, while Talbot Brewer argued that "progress" is the wrong standard by which to judge philosophical activity. In one general sense, philosophy is associated with wisdom, intellectual culture and a search for knowledge. In that sense, all cultures and literate societies ask philosophical questions such as "how are we to live" and "what is the nature of reality". A broad and impartial conception of philosophy finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality and life in all world civilizations. Western philosophy is the philosophical tradition of the Western world and dates to Pre-Socratic thinkers who were active in Ancient Greece in the 6th century BCE such as Thales and Pythagoras who practiced a "love of wisdom" and were termed physiologoi.
Socrates was a influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom. Western philosophy can be divided into three eras: Ancient, Medieval philosophy, Modern philosophy; the Ancient era was dominated by Greek philosophical schools which arose out of the various pupils of Socrates, such as Plato, who founded the Platonic Academy and his student Aristotle, founding the Peripatetic school, who were both influential in Western tradition. Other traditions include Cynicism, Greek Skepticism and Epicureanism. Important topics covered by the Greeks included metaphysics, the nature of the well-lived life, the possibility of knowledge and the nature of reason. With the rise of the Roman empire, Greek philosophy was increasingly discussed in Latin by Romans such as Cicero and Seneca. Medieval philosophy is the period following the fall of the Western Roman Empire and was dominated by the ris
Literature portal
