1.
Province of Silesia
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As a Prussian province, Silesia became part of the German Empire during the Prussian-led unification of Germany in 1871. The territory on both sides of the Oder river formed the part of the Prussian kingdom. It furthermore included the part of Upper Lusatia around Görlitz and Lauban. In the northeast, Upper Silesia bordered on remaining Congress Poland, the incorporated Upper Lusatian strip of land in the west touched the remaining territory of the Saxon kingdom. Immediately after the coronation of Maria Theresa as Bohemian queen regnant, King Frederick the Great of Prussia had invaded Silesia, attempts by Maria Theresa to regain the crown land in the Second Silesian War failed and she ultimately had to relinquish her claims by the Treaty of Dresden. As the lands had been part of the Holy Roman Empire until 1806, the character of the provinces eastern third, Upper Silesia, had been much lesser shaped by the medieval German Ostsiedlung. According to the census of 1905, about three-quarters of the Silesian inhabitants were German–speaking, the Upper Silesian Industrial Region was the second largest industrial agglomeration of the German Empire after the Ruhr area. Ethnic tensions rose on the eve of World War I, with politicians like Wojciech Korfanty separating from the Centre Party, after the war, the parts remaining in Weimar Germany were re-organized into the two provinces of Lower Silesia and Upper Silesia in 1919. Further, in 1920 the Hlučín Region was ceded to Czechoslovakia according to the Treaty of Versailles, after the Nazi Germany conquest of Poland in late 1939, the Province of Silesia was extended when a part of Poland was merged into that province. In 1941, the Province was divided again, the German-speaking population left or was expelled following World War II, though a minority remains. A smaller western part of the former Silesia Province lies within modern German states of Saxony, coats of arms of Upper Silesian towns while part of the Province of Silesia Administrative subdivision and population breakdown of the Province of Silesia in 1900/1900
2.
Kingdom of Prussia
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It was the driving force behind the unification of Germany in 1871 and was the leading state of the German Empire until its dissolution in 1918. Although it took its name from the region called Prussia, it was based in the Margraviate of Brandenburg, the kings of Prussia were from the House of Hohenzollern. Prussia was a power from the time it became a kingdom, through its predecessor, Brandenburg-Prussia. Prussia continued its rise to power under the guidance of Frederick II, more known as Frederick the Great. After the might of Prussia was revealed it was considered as a power among the German states. Throughout the next hundred years Prussia went on to win many battles and it was because of its power that Prussia continuously tried to unify all the German states under its rule. Attempts at creation of a federation remained unsuccessful and the German Confederation collapsed in 1866 when war ensued between its two most powerful states, Prussia and Austria. The North German Confederation which lasted from 1867–1871, created a union between the Prussian-aligned states while Austria and most of Southern Germany remained independent. The North German Confederation was seen as more of an alliance of military strength in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War, the German Empire lasted from 1871–1918 with the successful unification of all the German states under Prussian hegemony. This was due to the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, in 1871, Germany unified into a single country, minus Austria and Switzerland, with Prussia the dominant power. Prussia is considered the predecessor of the unified German Reich. The Kingdom left a significant cultural legacy, today notably promoted by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, in 1415 a Hohenzollern Burgrave came from the south to the March of Brandenburg and took control of the area as elector. In 1417 the Hohenzollern was made an elector of the Holy Roman Empire, after the Polish wars, the newly established Baltic towns of the German states including Prussia, suffered many economic setbacks. Many of the Prussian towns could not even afford to attend political meetings outside of Prussia, the towns were poverty stricken, with even the largest town, Danzig, having to borrow money from elsewhere to pay for trade. Poverty in these towns was partly caused by Prussias neighbors, who had established and developed such a monopoly on trading that these new towns simply could not compete and these issues led to feuds, wars, trade competition and invasions. However, the fall of these gave rise to the nobility, separated the east and the west. It was clear in 1440 how different Brandenburg was from the other German territories, not only did it face partition from within but also the threat of its neighbors. It prevented the issue of partition by enacting the Dispositio Achillea which instilled the principle of primogeniture to both the Brandenburg and Franconian territories, the second issue was solved through expansion
3.
German Empire
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The German Empire was the historical German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 to the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918, when Germany became a federal republic. The German Empire consisted of 26 constituent territories, with most being ruled by royal families and this included four kingdoms, six grand duchies, five duchies, seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although Prussia became one of kingdoms in the new realm, it contained most of its population and territory. Its influence also helped define modern German culture, after 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron, chemicals, and railways. In 1871, it had a population of 41 million people, and by 1913, a heavily rural collection of states in 1815, now united Germany became predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire operated as an industrial, technological, Germany became a great power, boasting a rapidly growing rail network, the worlds strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britains Royal Navy, after the removal of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II, the Empire embarked on a bellicose new course that ultimately led to World War I. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, the German Empire had two allies, Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Italy, however, left the once the First World War started in August 1914. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in autumn 1914 failed, the Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. Germany was repeatedly forced to send troops to bolster Austria and Turkey on other fronts, however, Germany had great success on the Eastern Front, it occupied large Eastern territories following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 was designed to strangle the British, it failed, but the declaration—along with the Zimmermann Telegram—did bring the United States into the war. Meanwhile, German civilians and soldiers had become war-weary and radicalised by the Russian Revolution and this failed, and by October the armies were in retreat, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, Bulgaria had surrendered and the German people had lost faith in their political system. The Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution as the Emperor and all the ruling monarchs abdicated, and a republic took over. The German Confederation had been created by an act of the Congress of Vienna on 8 June 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called Pan-Germanism, to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarcks pragmatic Realpolitik. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany, the war resulted in the Confederation being partially replaced by a North German Confederation in 1867, comprising the 22 states north of the Main. The new constitution and the title Emperor came into effect on 1 January 1871, during the Siege of Paris on 18 January 1871, William accepted to be proclaimed Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles. The second German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on 14 April 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on 16 April, the political system remained the same. The empire had a parliament called the Reichstag, which was elected by universal male suffrage, however, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas
4.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
5.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
6.
New York (state)
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New York is a state in the northeastern United States, and is the 27th-most extensive, fourth-most populous, and seventh-most densely populated U. S. state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south and Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont to the east. With an estimated population of 8.55 million in 2015, New York City is the most populous city in the United States, the New York Metropolitan Area is one of the most populous urban agglomerations in the world. New York City makes up over 40% of the population of New York State, two-thirds of the states population lives in the New York City Metropolitan Area, and nearly 40% lives on Long Island. Both the state and New York City were named for the 17th-century Duke of York, the next four most populous cities in the state are Buffalo, Rochester, Yonkers, and Syracuse, while the state capital is Albany. New York has a diverse geography and these more mountainous regions are bisected by two major river valleys—the north-south Hudson River Valley and the east-west Mohawk River Valley, which forms the core of the Erie Canal. Western New York is considered part of the Great Lakes Region and straddles Lake Ontario, between the two lakes lies Niagara Falls. The central part of the state is dominated by the Finger Lakes, New York had been inhabited by tribes of Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking Native Americans for several hundred years by the time the earliest Europeans came to New York. The first Europeans to arrive were French colonists and Jesuit missionaries who arrived southward from settlements at Montreal for trade, the British annexed the colony from the Dutch in 1664. The borders of the British colony, the Province of New York, were similar to those of the present-day state, New York is home to the Statue of Liberty, a symbol of the United States and its ideals of freedom, democracy, and opportunity. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. On April 17,1524 Verrazanno entered New York Bay, by way of the now called the Narrows into the northern bay which he named Santa Margherita. Verrazzano described it as a vast coastline with a delta in which every kind of ship could pass and he adds. This vast sheet of water swarmed with native boats and he landed on the tip of Manhattan and possibly on the furthest point of Long Island. Verrazannos stay was interrupted by a storm which pushed him north towards Marthas Vineyard, in 1540 French traders from New France built a chateau on Castle Island, within present-day Albany, due to flooding, it was abandoned the next year. In 1614, the Dutch under the command of Hendrick Corstiaensen, rebuilt the French chateau, Fort Nassau was the first Dutch settlement in North America, and was located along the Hudson River, also within present-day Albany. The small fort served as a trading post and warehouse, located on the Hudson River flood plain, the rudimentary fort was washed away by flooding in 1617, and abandoned for good after Fort Orange was built nearby in 1623. Henry Hudsons 1609 voyage marked the beginning of European involvement with the area, sailing for the Dutch East India Company and looking for a passage to Asia, he entered the Upper New York Bay on September 11 of that year
7.
University of Marburg
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The Philipp University of Marburg, was founded in 1527 by Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse as one of Germanys oldest universities, dating back to a Protestant foundation. As a state university it no longer has any religious affiliation and it was the main university of the principality of Hesse and remains a public university of that state. It now has about 25,000 students and 7,500 employees, making Marburg, a town of 72,000 inhabitants, though most subjects are grouped, the University of Marburg is not a campus university in the broader sense. About 12% of the students are international, the highest percentage in Hesse and it offers an International summer university programme every summer and has an awarded ERASMUS programme. Marburg is home to one of Germanys most traditional medical faculties, the German physicians union is called Marburger Bund. In 1609, the University of Marburg established the worlds first professorship in chemistry, in 2012 it opened the first German participative chemistry museum, called Chemicum. Its experimental course programme is aimed at encouraging people to pursue careers in science. 20 professors were expelled in 1933, among them Wilhelm Röpke who emigrated, the university is most famous for its life sciences research, but is also home to one of the few centers that conduct research on the middle east, the CNMS. The departments of psychology and geography enjoy a reputation and reached Excellence Group status in the Europe-wide CHE Excellence Ranking 2009. According to the 2012 QS Ranking, the university ranked among the top 30 German universities, the ARWU ranking which is more focused on research, ranks the university around 200, with its life sciences and social sciences department in the 151-200 range worldwide. The strong research is illustrated by its participation in several SFBs. These collaborative research centres are financed by the German Science Foundation DFG and they encourage researchers to cross the boundaries of disciplines, institutes, departments and faculties within the participating university. It retained that strength, especially in Philosophy and Theology for a time after World War II. S. S. Eliot Wilhelm Viëtor Historical detention room
8.
Humboldt University of Berlin
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The Humboldt university model has strongly influenced other European and Western universities. In 1949, it changed its name to Humboldt-Universität in honour of both its founder Wilhelm and his brother, geographer Alexander von Humboldt. The first semester at the newly founded Berlin university occurred in 1810 with 256 students and 52 lecturers in faculties of law, medicine, theology, du Bois and European unifier Robert Schuman, as well as the influential surgeon Johann Friedrich Dieffenbach in the early half of the 1800s. The structure of German research-intensive universities, such as Humboldt, served as a model for institutions like Johns Hopkins University, Alexander von Humboldt, brother of the founder William, promoted the new learning. With the construction of research facilities in the second half of the 19th Century teaching of the natural sciences began. During this period of enlargement, Berlin University gradually expanded to other previously separate colleges in Berlin. An example would be the Charité, the Pépinière and the Collegium Medico-chirurgicum, in 1717, King Friedrich I had built a quarantine house for Plague at the city gates, which in 1727 was rechristened by the soldier king Friedrich Wilhelm, Es soll das Haus die Charité heißen. By 1829 the site became Berlin Universitys medical campus and remained so until 1927 when the more modern University Hospital was constructed, Berlin University started a natural history collection in 1810, which, by 1889 required a separate building and became the Museum für Naturkunde. The preexisting Tierarznei School, founded in 1790 and absorbed by the university, also the Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule Berlin, founded in 1881 was affiliated with the Agricultural Faculties of the University. After 1933, like all German universities, it was affected by the Nazi regime, the rector during this period was Eugen Fischer. The Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service resulted in 250 Jewish professors and employees being fired during 1933/1934, students and scholars and political opponents of Nazis were ejected from the university and often deported. During this time one third of all of the staff were fired by the Nazis. The Soviet Military Administration in Germany ordered the opening of the university in January 1946, the SMAD wanted a redesigned Berlin University based on the Soviet model, however they insisted on the phrasing newly opened and not re-opened for political reasons. The University of Berlin must effectively start again in almost every way and you have before you this image of the old university. What remains of that is nought but ruins, the teaching was limited to seven departments working in reopened, war-damaged buildings, with many of the teachers dead or missing. However, by the semester of 1946, the Economic. This program existed at Berlin University until 1962, the East-West conflict in post-war Germany led to a growing communist influence in the university. This was controversial, and incited strong protests within the student body, Soviet NKVD secret police arrested a number of students in March 1947 as a response
9.
20th-century philosophy
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20th-century philosophy saw the development of a number of new philosophical schools— including logical positivism, analytic philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, and poststructuralism. In terms of the eras of philosophy, it is labelled as contemporary philosophy. However, there have been disputes regarding both the terminology and the reasons behind the divide, as well as philosophers who see themselves as bridging the divide, in addition, philosophy in the twentieth century became increasingly technical and harder for lay people to read. Analytic philosophy is a term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century. In the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Scandinavia, Australia, and New Zealand, epistemology in the Anglo-American tradition was radically shaken up by the publication of Edmund Gettiers 1963 paper Is Justified True Belief Knowledge. This paper provided counter-examples to the formulation of knowledge going back to Plato. Neopragmatism, sometimes called linguistic pragmatism is a recent philosophical term for philosophy that reintroduces many concepts from pragmatism. V. O and it repudiates the notion of universal truth, epistemological foundationalism, representationalism, and the notion of epistemic objectivity. It is a nominalist approach that denies that natural kinds and linguistic entities have substantive ontological implications and this approach typically involves eschewing philosophical theories in favour of close attention to the details of the use of everyday, ordinary language. The later Ludwig Wittgenstein is ordinary language philosophys most celebrated proponent outside the Oxford circle, second generation figures include Stanley Cavell and John Searle. Continental philosophy, in usage, refers to a set of traditions of 19th and 20th century philosophy from mainland Europe. This sense of the term originated among English-speaking philosophers in the half of the 20th century. Existentialism is generally considered a philosophical and cultural movement that holds that the point of philosophical thinking must be the individual. Common themes are the primacy of experience, Angst, the absurd, while György Lukácss History and Class Consciousness and Karl Korschs Marxism and Philosophy, first published in 1923, are often seen as the works that inaugurated this current. Maurice Merleau-Ponty coined the phrase Western Marxism much later, phenomenology is the study of the phenomena of experience. It is a philosophical movement founded in the early years of the 20th century by Edmund Husserl. Phenomenology, in Husserls conception, is concerned with the systematic reflection on, and study of, the structures of consciousness. This phenomenological ontology can be differentiated from the Cartesian method of analysis, which sees the world as objects, sets of objects. Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to prominence in the 1960s and 70s
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Western philosophy
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Western philosophy is the philosophical thought and work of the Western world. The word philosophy itself originated from the Hellenic, philosophia, literally, the scope of philosophy in the ancient understanding, and the writings of the ancient philosophers, were all intellectual endeavors. Western Philosophy is generally said to begin in the Greek cities of western Asia Minor with Thales of Miletus and his most noted students were respectively Anaximander and Anaximenes of Miletus. Pythagoras, from the island of Samos off the coast of Ionia, pythagoreans hold that all is number, giving formal accounts in contrast to the previous material of the Ionians. They also believe in metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls, or reincarnation, Socrates The key figure in Greek philosophy is Socrates. Socrates studied under several Sophists but transformed Greek philosophy into a unified, Socrates used a critical approach called the elenchus or Socratic method to examine peoples views. He aimed to study human things, the life, justice, beauty. Although Socrates wrote nothing himself, some of his many disciples wrote down his conversations and he was tried for corrupting the youth and impiety by the Greek democracy. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, although his friends offered to help him escape from prison, he chose to remain in Athens and abide by his principles. His execution consisting in drinking the poison hemlock and he died in 399 B. C, Plato Socrates most important student was Plato. Plato founded the Academy of Athens and wrote a number of dialogues, some central ideas of Platos dialogues are the immortality of the soul, the benefits of being just, that evil is ignorance, and the Theory of Forms. Forms are universal properties that constitute reality and contrast with the changeable material things he called becoming. Aristotle Platos most outstanding student was Aristotle, Aristotle was perhaps the first truly systematic philosopher and scientist. He wrote books on physics, biology, zoology, metaphysics, aesthetics, poetry, theater, music, rhetoric, politics, Aristotelian logic was the first type of logic to attempt to categorize every valid syllogism. Aristotelian philosophy exercised considerable influence on almost all western philosophers, including Greek, Roman, Christian, Jewish, the Neoplatonic and Christian philosophers of Late Antiquity. Early medieval philosophy was influenced by the likes of Stoicism, neo-Platonism, but, above all, the prominent figure of this period was St. Augustinianism was the preferred starting point for most philosophers up until the 13th century. The foundations of many northern European universities were built in the Middle Ages by waves of Irish, Scottish & English monks from the Celtic Church begun by Columba, see Celtic Christianity. Erigena is said to have been stabbed to death by his students with their pens and his theology would today be called pantheistic, in keeping with Celtic resolutions of pagan and Christian philosophy
11.
Immanuel Kant
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Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher who is considered a central figure in modern philosophy. Kant took himself to have effected a Copernican revolution in philosophy and his beliefs continue to have a major influence on contemporary philosophy, especially the fields of metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, political theory, and aesthetics. Politically, Kant was one of the earliest exponents of the idea that peace could be secured through universal democracy. He believed that this will be the outcome of universal history. Kant wanted to put an end to an era of futile and speculative theories of human experience, Kant argued that our experiences are structured by necessary features of our minds. In his view, the shapes and structures experience so that, on an abstract level. Among other things, Kant believed that the concepts of space and time are integral to all human experience, as are our concepts of cause, Kant published other important works on ethics, religion, law, aesthetics, astronomy, and history. These included the Critique of Practical Reason, the Metaphysics of Morals, which dealt with ethics, and the Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant was born in 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia. His mother, Anna Regina Reuter, was born in Königsberg to a father from Nuremberg. His father, Johann Georg Kant, was a German harness maker from Memel, Immanuel Kant believed that his paternal grandfather Hans Kant was of Scottish origin. Kant was the fourth of nine children, baptized Emanuel, he changed his name to Immanuel after learning Hebrew. Young Kant was a solid, albeit unspectacular, student and he was brought up in a Pietist household that stressed religious devotion, humility, and a literal interpretation of the Bible. His education was strict, punitive and disciplinary, and focused on Latin and religious instruction over mathematics, despite his religious upbringing and maintaining a belief in God, Kant was skeptical of religion in later life, various commentators have labelled him agnostic. Common myths about Kants personal mannerisms are listed, explained, and refuted in Goldthwaits introduction to his translation of Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. It is often held that Kant lived a strict and disciplined life. He never married, but seemed to have a social life — he was a popular teacher. He had a circle of friends whom he met, among them Joseph Green. A common myth is that Kant never traveled more than 16 kilometres from Königsberg his whole life, in fact, between 1750 and 1754 he worked as a tutor in Judtschen and in Groß-Arnsdorf
12.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
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Leibnizs notation has been widely used ever since it was published. It was only in the 20th century that his Law of Continuity and he became one of the most prolific inventors in the field of mechanical calculators. He also refined the number system, which is the foundation of virtually all digital computers. Leibniz, along with René Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, was one of the three great 17th-century advocates of rationalism and he wrote works on philosophy, politics, law, ethics, theology, history, and philology. Leibnizs contributions to this vast array of subjects were scattered in various learned journals, in tens of thousands of letters and he wrote in several languages, but primarily in Latin, French, and German. There is no complete gathering of the writings of Leibniz in English, Gottfried Leibniz was born on July 1,1646, toward the end of the Thirty Years War, in Leipzig, Saxony, to Friedrich Leibniz and Catharina Schmuck. Friedrich noted in his journal,21. Juny am Sontag 1646 Ist mein Sohn Gottfried Wilhelm, post sextam vespertinam 1/4 uff 7 uhr abents zur welt gebohren, in English, On Sunday 21 June 1646, my son Gottfried Wilhelm is born into the world a quarter after six in the evening, in Aquarius. Leibniz was baptized on July 3 of that year at St. Nicholas Church, Leipzig and his father died when he was six and a half years old, and from that point on he was raised by his mother. Her teachings influenced Leibnizs philosophical thoughts in his later life, Leibnizs father had been a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Leipzig, and the boy later inherited his fathers personal library. He was given access to it from the age of seven. Access to his fathers library, largely written in Latin, also led to his proficiency in the Latin language and he also composed 300 hexameters of Latin verse, in a single morning, for a special event at school at the age of 13. In April 1661 he enrolled in his fathers former university at age 15 and he defended his Disputatio Metaphysica de Principio Individui, which addressed the principle of individuation, on June 9,1663. Leibniz earned his masters degree in Philosophy on February 7,1664, after one year of legal studies, he was awarded his bachelors degree in Law on September 28,1665. His dissertation was titled De conditionibus, in early 1666, at age 19, Leibniz wrote his first book, De Arte Combinatoria, the first part of which was also his habilitation thesis in Philosophy, which he defended in March 1666. His next goal was to earn his license and Doctorate in Law, in 1666, the University of Leipzig turned down Leibnizs doctoral application and refused to grant him a Doctorate in Law, most likely due to his relative youth. Leibniz then enrolled in the University of Altdorf and quickly submitted a thesis, the title of his thesis was Disputatio Inauguralis de Casibus Perplexis in Jure. Leibniz earned his license to practice law and his Doctorate in Law in November 1666 and he next declined the offer of an academic appointment at Altdorf, saying that my thoughts were turned in an entirely different direction
13.
Hermann Cohen
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Cohen was born in Coswig, Anhalt. He early began to study philosophy, and soon known as a profound student of Kant. He was educated at the Gymnasium at Dessau, at the Jewish Theological Seminary of Breslau, and at the universities of Breslau, Berlin, Cohen was elected Professor extraordinarius at Marburg in 1875, and Professor ordinarius in the following year. He was one of the founders of the Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaft des Judenthums, Cohen edited and published Friedrich Albert Langes final philosophical work. Cohen edited and wrote versions of a long introduction and critical supplement to Langes Geschichte des Materialismus. The planned fourth volume on psychology was never written, pp. 385–400, 433–449, Liebe und Gerechtigkeit in den Begriffen Gott und Mensch. in Jahrbuch für Jüdische Geschichte und Litteratur, III. Pp. 75–132, Autonomie und Freiheit, in the Gedenkbuch für David Kaufmann,1900, Cohens most famous Jewish works include, Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, Deutschtum und Judentum, Die Naechstenliebe im Talmud, and Die Ethik des Maimonides. His essay Die Nächstenliebe im Talmud was written at the request of the Marburg Königliches Landgericht, Cohens Jewish writings are collected in his Jüdische Schriften. There is a new academic edition of Cohens works, edited by Helmut Holzhey. An English translation of some of his Jewish writings is available in Reason and Hope, Selections from the Jewish Writings of Hermann Cohen, translated by Eva Jospe, Cohen was outspokenly opposed to Zionism and its aspiration to create a Jewish state and thus return the Jews to History. In his view, Judaism was inherently a-historical, with a spiritual and moral mission far transcending the nationalist aims of Zionism, despite the above attitude to Zionism, Tel Aviv has a Hermann Cohen Street. Cohen is buried at the Weißensee Cemetery in Berlin, leopold Schmidt, in Neue Jahrbücher für Philologie und Pädagogik,1896, cliv. Reiner Munk, Hermann Cohens Critical Idealism, irene Abigail Piccinini, Una guida fedele. Linfluenza di Hermann Cohen sul pensiero di Leo Strauss, Bienenstock, Myriam Cohen face à Rosenzweig. Débat sur la pensée allemande Hermann Cohen, lidéalisme critique aux prises avec le matérialisme, edited by Myriam Bienenstock, Paris, liisa Steinby, Hermann Cohen and Bakhtins early aesthetics, Studies in East European Thought,63,3, 227–249. Kohler, Finding Gods Purpose - Hermann Cohens Use of Maimonides to Establish the Authority of Mosaic Law, in, Journal for Jewish Thought, stéphane Moses Hermann Cohens Philosophy of Religion, International Conference in Jerusalem 1996, Hildesheim 1997. Steven Schwarzschild The Democratic Socialism of Hermann Cohen, HUCA27, steven Schwarzschild Germanism and Judaism - Hermann Cohens Normative Paradigm of the German-Jewish Symbiosis, in, Jews and Germans from 1860 to 1933, ed. David Bronsen, Heidelberg 1979. Andrea Poma, The Critical Philosophy of Hermann Cohen, Albany 1997, andrea Poma Hermann Cohen, Judaism and Critical Idealism, in, Michael L. Morgan and Peter Eli Gordon The Cambridge Companion to Modern Jewish Philosophy, Cambridge 2007
14.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German writer and statesman. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, more than 10,000 letters and he was an early participant in the Sturm und Drang literary movement. He also contributed to the planning of Weimars botanical park and the rebuilding of its Ducal Palace and his first major scientific work, the Metamorphosis of Plants, was published after he returned from a 1788 tour of Italy. During this period, Goethe published his novel, Wilhelm Meisters Apprenticeship, the verse epic Hermann and Dorothea, and, in 1808. Goethes comments and observations form the basis of several biographical works, Goethes father, Johann Caspar Goethe, lived with his family in a large house in Frankfurt, then an Imperial Free City of the Holy Roman Empire. Though he had studied law in Leipzig and had been appointed Imperial Councillor, Johann Caspar married Goethes mother, Catharina Elizabeth Textor at Frankfurt on 20 August 1748, when he was 38 and she was 17. All their children, with the exception of Johann Wolfgang and his sister, Cornelia Friederica Christiana and his father and private tutors gave Goethe lessons in all the common subjects of their time, especially languages. Goethe also received lessons in dancing, riding and fencing, Johann Caspar, feeling frustrated in his own ambitions, was determined that his children should have all those advantages that he had not. Although Goethes great passion was drawing, he became interested in literature, Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock. He also took pleasure in reading works on history and religion. He writes about this period, Goethe became also acquainted with Frankfurt actors, among early literary attempts, he was infatuated with Gretchen, who would later reappear in his Faust and the adventures with whom he would concisely describe in Dichtung und Wahrheit. He adored Caritas Meixner, a wealthy Worms traders daughter and friend of his sister, Goethe studied law at Leipzig University from 1765 to 1768. He detested learning age-old judicial rules by heart, preferring instead to attend the lessons of Christian Fürchtegott Gellert. In Leipzig, Goethe fell in love with Anna Katharina Schönkopf, in 1770, he anonymously released Annette, his first collection of poems. His uncritical admiration for many contemporary poets vanished as he became interested in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, already at this time, Goethe wrote a good deal, but he threw away nearly all of these works, except for the comedy Die Mitschuldigen. The restaurant Auerbachs Keller and its legend of Fausts 1525 barrel ride impressed him so much that Auerbachs Keller became the real place in his closet drama Faust Part One. As his studies did not progress, Goethe was forced to return to Frankfurt at the close of August 1768, Goethe became severely ill in Frankfurt. During the year and a half that followed, because of several relapses, during convalescence, Goethe was nursed by his mother and sister
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Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
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Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Interpreting Schellings philosophy is regarded as difficult because of its apparently ever-changing nature, Schellings thought in the large has been neglected, especially in the English-speaking world, as has been his later work on mythology and revelation, much of which remains untranslated. An important factor was the ascendancy of Hegel, whose works portray Schelling as a mere footnote in the development of idealism. Schellings Naturphilosophie also has been attacked by scientists for its analogizing tendency, however, some later philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Slavoj Žižek have shown interest in re-examining Schellings body of work. Schelling was born in the town of Leonberg in the Duchy of Württemberg and he attended the monastic school at Bebenhausen, near Tübingen, where his father was chaplain and an Orientalist professor. From 1783 to 1784 Schelling attended a Latin school in Nürtingen and knew Friedrich Hölderlin, on 18 October 1790, at the age of 15, he then was granted permission to enroll at the Tübinger Stift, despite not having yet reached the normal enrollment age of 20. At the Stift, he shared a room with Hegel as well as Hölderlin, Schelling studied the Church fathers and ancient Greek philosophers. His interest gradually shifted from Lutheran theology to philosophy, in 1792 he graduated with his masters thesis, titled Antiquissimi de prima malorum humanorum origine philosophematis Genes. Explicandi tentamen criticum et philosophicum, and in 1795 he finished his doctoral thesis, meanwhile, he had begun to study Kant and Fichte, who greatly influenced him. At this time he also visited Dresden, where he saw collections of the Elector of Saxony, to which he referred later in his thinking on art. On a personal level, this Dresden visit of six weeks from August 1797 saw Schelling meet the brothers August Wilhelm Schlegel and Karl Friedrich Schlegel and his future wife Caroline, and Novalis. After two years tutoring, in October 1798, at the age of only 23, Schelling was called to University of Jena as a professor of philosophy. His time at Jena put Schelling at the center of the ferment of Romanticism. He was on terms with Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who appreciated the poetic quality of the Naturphilosophie. As the prime minister of the Duchy of Saxe-Weimar, Goethe invited Schelling to Jena, on the other hand, Schelling was unsympathetic to the ethical idealism that animated the work of Friedrich Schiller, the other pillar of Weimar Classicism. Later, in Schellings Vorlesung über die Philosophie der Kunst, Schillers theory on the sublime was closely reviewed, in Jena, Schelling was on good terms with Fichte at first, but their different conceptions, about nature in particular, led to increasing divergence in their thought. Fichte advised him to focus on philosophy in its original meaning, but Schelling, who was becoming the acknowledged leader of the Romantic school, had begun to reject Fichtes thought as cold and abstract. Schelling was especially close to August Wilhelm Schlegel and his wife, a marriage between Schelling and Carolines young daughter, Auguste Böhmer, was contemplated by both
16.
Leo Strauss
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Leo Strauss was a German-American political philosopher and classicist who specialized in classical political philosophy. He was born in Germany to Jewish parents and later emigrated from Germany to the United States and he spent most of his career as a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he taught several generations of students and published fifteen books. Leo Strauss was born in the town of Kirchhain in Hessen-Nassau. According to Allan Blooms 1974 obituary in Political Theory, Strauss was raised as an Orthodox Jew, Strauss himself noted that he came from a conservative, even orthodox Jewish home, but one which knew little about Judaism except strict adherence to ceremonial laws. His father and uncle operated a supply and livestock business that they inherited from their father, Meyer. After attending the Kirchhain Volksschule and the Protestant Rektoratsschule, Leo Strauss was enrolled at the Gymnasium Philippinum in nearby Marburg in 1912 and he boarded with the Marburg cantor Strauss, the Cantors residence served as a meeting place for followers of the neo-Kantian philosopher Hermann Cohen. Strauss served in the German army during World War I from July 5,1917 to December 1918 and he also attended courses at the Universities of Freiburg and Marburg, including some taught by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. Walter Benjamin was and remained an admirer of Strauss and of his throughout his life. With several of these friends, Strauss carried on vigorous epistolary exchanges later in life, many of which are published in the Gesammelte Schriften, Strauss had also been engaged in a discourse with Carl Schmitt. However, after Strauss left Germany, he broke off the discourse when Schmitt failed to respond to his letters, in 1931, Strauss sought his post-doctoral habilitation with the theologian Paul Tillich, but was turned down. After receiving a Rockefeller Fellowship in 1932, Strauss left his position at the Academy of Jewish Research in Berlin for Paris and he returned to Germany only once, for a few short days twenty years later. In Paris he married Marie Bernsohn, a widow with a young child and he adopted his wifes son, Thomas, and later his sisters child, he and Miriam had no biological children of their own. At his death he was survived by Thomas, daughter Jenny Strauss Clay, Strauss became a lifelong friend of Alexandre Kojève and was on friendly terms with Raymond Aron, Alexandre Koyré, and Étienne Gilson. Because of the Nazis rise to power, he not to return to his native country. While in England, he became a friend of R. H. Tawney. Unable to find permanent employment in England, Strauss moved in 1937 to the United States, under the patronage of Harold Laski, in 1939, he served for a short term as a visiting professor at Hamilton College. In 1951, Strauss apparently coined the phrase Reductio ad Hitlerum, in 1954 he met Löwith and Gadamer in Heidelberg and delivered a public speech on Socrates. For Strauss, politics and philosophy were necessarily intertwined and he regarded the trial and death of Socrates as the moment when political philosophy came into existence
17.
Susanne Langer
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Susanne Katherina Langer was an American philosopher, writer, and educator and was well known for her theories on the influences of art on the mind. She was one of the first women in American history to achieve a career in philosophy. Langer is best known for her 1942 book entitled, Philosophy in a New Key, in 1960, Langer was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Born Susanne Katherina Knauth, Langer was raised in Manhattans West Side in New York and she was the daughter of Antonio Knauth, an attorney, and Else Uhlich, both emigrants of Germany. Though she was American born, Langers primary language was German, as it was spoken in her household throughout her youth. She was exposed thoroughly to creativity and art, most specifically through music and she was taught to play the cello and the piano, and she continued with the cello for the remainder her life. As a girl, Langer enjoyed reciting the works of poets as well as traditional childrens rhymes and tales. This sparked her love for reading and writing, and she would write her own poems. Her love of nature began during the summers her family spent in their cottage on Lake George and she married William Leonard Langer, a fellow student at Harvard in 1921, and in the same year they took their studies to Vienna, Austria. They had two sons and moved back to Cambridge, Massachusetts before the couple divorced in 1942 and her early education included attendance at Veltin School for Girls, a private school as well as being tutored from home. In 1916, Langer enrolled at Radcliffe College and she earned the bachelors degree in 1920 and continued with graduate studies in philosophy at Harvard, where she received the masters diploma in 1924 and the doctorate in 1926. She was a tutor in philosophy at Radcliffe from 1927 to 1942 and she lectured in philosophy for one year at the University of Delaware and for five years at Columbia University. However, it led her to explore the complexity and nature of human consciousness. Langers philosophy explored the process of meaning-making in the human mind through the power of “seeing” one thing in terms of another. Langers first major work is entitled, Philosophy in a New Key and it put forth an idea that has become commonplace today, that there is a basic and pervasive human need to symbolize, to invent meanings, and to invest meanings in one’s world. Beginning with a critique of positivism, the work is a study of human thought progressing from semantic theory through philosophy of music, Susanne Langers distinction between discursive versus presentational symbols is one of her better known concepts. Discursive symbolization arranges elements with stable and context invariant meanings into a new meaning, presentation symbolization operates independently of elements with fixed and stable meanings. The presentation cannot be comprehended by progressively building up an understanding of its parts in isolation and it must be understood as a whole
18.
Philosopher
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A philosopher is someone who practices philosophy, which involves rational inquiry into areas that are outside of either theology or science. The term philosopher comes from the Ancient Greek φιλόσοφος meaning lover of wisdom, the coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek thinker Pythagoras. Typically, these brands of philosophy are Hellenistic ones and those who most arduously commit themselves to this lifestyle may be considered philosophers. The separation of philosophy and science from theology began in Greece during the 6th century BC, thales, an astronomer and mathematician, was considered by Aristotle to be the first philosopher of the Greek tradition. While Pythagoras coined the word, the first known elaboration on the topic was conducted by Plato, in his Symposium, he concludes that Love is that which lacks the object it seeks. Therefore, the philosopher is one who seeks wisdom, if he attains wisdom, therefore, the philosopher in antiquity was one who lives in the constant pursuit of wisdom, and living in accordance to that wisdom. Disagreements arose as to what living philosophically entailed and these disagreements gave rise to different Hellenistic schools of philosophy. In consequence, the ancient philosopher thought in a tradition, as the ancient world became schism by philosophical debate, the competition lay in living in manner that would transform his whole way of living in the world. Philosophy is a discipline which can easily carry away the individual in analyzing the universe. The second is the change through the Medieval era. With the rise of Christianity, the way of life was adopted by its theology. Thus, philosophy was divided between a way of life and the conceptual, logical, physical and metaphysical materials to justify that way of life, philosophy was then the servant to theology. The third is the sociological need with the development of the university, the modern university requires professionals to teach. Maintaining itself requires teaching future professionals to replace the current faculty, therefore, the discipline degrades into a technical language reserved for specialists, completely eschewing its original conception as a way of life. In the fourth century, the word began to designate a man or woman who led a monastic life. Gregory of Nyssa, for example, describes how his sister Macrina persuaded their mother to forsake the distractions of life for a life of philosophy. Later during the Middle Ages, persons who engaged with alchemy was called a philosopher - thus, many philosophers still emerged from the Classical tradition, as saw their philosophy as a way of life. Among the most notable are René Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, with the rise of the university, the modern conception of philosophy became more prominent
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Philosophy of science
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Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of theories. This discipline overlaps with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology, for example, in addition to these general questions about science as a whole, philosophers of science consider problems that apply to particular sciences. Some philosophers of science also use contemporary results in science to reach conclusions about philosophy itself, Karl Popper and Charles Sanders Pierce moved on from positivism to establish a modern set of standards for scientific methodology. Subsequently, the coherentist approach to science, in which a theory is validated if it makes sense of observations as part of a coherent whole, became prominent due to W. V. Quine and others. Some thinkers such as Stephen Jay Gould seek to ground science in axiomatic assumptions, another approach to thinking about science involves studying how knowledge is created from a sociological perspective, an approach represented by scholars like David Bloor and Barry Barnes. Finally, a tradition in continental philosophy approaches science from the perspective of an analysis of human experience. Philosophies of the particular sciences range from questions about the nature of time raised by Einsteins general relativity, a central theme is whether one scientific discipline can be reduced to the terms of another. That is, can chemistry be reduced to physics, or can sociology be reduced to individual psychology, the general questions of philosophy of science also arise with greater specificity in some particular sciences. For instance, the question of the validity of scientific reasoning is seen in a different guise in the foundations of statistics, the question of what counts as science and what should be excluded arises as a life-or-death matter in the philosophy of medicine. Distinguishing between science and non-science is referred to as the demarcation problem, for example, should psychoanalysis be considered science. How about so-called creation science, the multiverse hypothesis, or macroeconomics. Karl Popper called this the question in the philosophy of science. However, no unified account of the problem has won acceptance among philosophers, Martin Gardner has argued for the use of a Potter Stewart standard for recognizing pseudoscience. Early attempts by the logical positivists grounded science in observation while non-science was non-observational, Popper argued that the central property of science is falsifiability. That is, every genuinely scientific claim is capable of being proven false, a closely related question is what counts as a good scientific explanation. In addition to providing predictions about events, society often takes scientific theories to provide explanations for events that occur regularly or have already occurred. One early and influential theory of scientific explanation is the deductive-nomological model and it says that a successful scientific explanation must deduce the occurrence of the phenomena in question from a scientific law
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Epistemology
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Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge. Epistemology studies the nature of knowledge, justification, and the rationality of belief, the term Epistemology was first used by Scottish philosopher James Frederick Ferrier in 1854. However, according to Brett Warren, King James VI of Scotland had previously personified this philosophical concept as the character Epistemon in 1591 and this philosophical approach signified a Philomath seeking to obtain greater knowledge through epistemology with the use of theology. The dialogue was used by King James to educate society on various concepts including the history, the word epistemology is derived from the ancient Greek epistēmē meaning knowledge and the suffix -logy, meaning a logical discourse to. J. F. Ferrier coined epistemology on the model of ontology, to designate that branch of philosophy which aims to discover the meaning of knowledge, and called it the true beginning of philosophy. The word is equivalent to the concept Wissenschaftslehre, which was used by German philosophers Johann Fichte, French philosophers then gave the term épistémologie a narrower meaning as theory of knowledge. Émile Meyerson opened his Identity and Reality, written in 1908, in mathematics, it is known that 2 +2 =4, but there is also knowing how to add two numbers, and knowing a person, place, thing, or activity. Some philosophers think there is an important distinction between knowing that, knowing how, and acquaintance-knowledge, with epistemology being primarily concerned with the first of these, while these distinctions are not explicit in English, they are defined explicitly in other languages. In French, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch to know is translated using connaître, conhecer, conocer, modern Greek has the verbs γνωρίζω and ξέρω. Italian has the verbs conoscere and sapere and the nouns for knowledge are conoscenza and sapienza, German has the verbs wissen and kennen. The verb itself implies a process, you have to go from one state to another and this verb seems to be the most appropriate in terms of describing the episteme in one of the modern European languages, hence the German name Erkenntnistheorie. The theoretical interpretation and significance of linguistic issues remains controversial. In his paper On Denoting and his later book Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell stressed the distinction between knowledge by description and knowledge by acquaintance, gilbert Ryle is also credited with stressing the distinction between knowing how and knowing that in The Concept of Mind. This position is essentially Ryles, who argued that a failure to acknowledge the distinction between knowledge that and knowledge how leads to infinite regress and this includes the truth, and everything else we accept as true for ourselves from a cognitive point of view. Whether someones belief is true is not a prerequisite for belief, on the other hand, if something is actually known, then it categorically cannot be false. It would not be accurate to say that he knew that the bridge was safe, because plainly it was not. By contrast, if the bridge actually supported his weight, then he might say that he had believed that the bridge was safe, whereas now, after proving it to himself, epistemologists argue over whether belief is the proper truth-bearer. Some would rather describe knowledge as a system of justified true propositions, plato, in his Gorgias, argues that belief is the most commonly invoked truth-bearer
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Philosophy of culture
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Philosophy of culture is a branch of philosophy that examines the essence and meaning of culture. The German philosopher Immanuel Kant has formulated an individualist definition of enlightenment similar to the concept of bildung and he argued that this immaturity comes not from a lack of understanding, but from a lack of courage to think independently. Against this intellectual cowardice, Kant urged, Sapere aude, Dare to be wise, moreover, Herder proposed a collective form of bildung, For Herder, Bildung was the totality of experiences that provide a coherent identity, and sense of common destiny, to a people. In 1795, the great linguist and philosopher Wilhelm von Humboldt called for an anthropology that would synthesize Kants, according to this school of thought, each ethnic group has a distinct worldview that is incommensurable with the worldviews of other groups. Although more inclusive than earlier views, this approach to culture still allowed for distinctions between civilized and primitive or tribal cultures, in 1860, Adolf Bastian argued for the psychic unity of mankind. He proposed that a comparison of all human societies would reveal that distinct worldviews consisted of the same basic elements. According to Bastian, all human societies share a set of ideas, different cultures. This view paved the way for the understanding of culture. Franz Boas was trained in this tradition, and he brought it with him when he left Germany for the United States, in practice, culture referred to an élite ideal and was associated with such activities as art, classical music, and haute cuisine. As these forms were associated with life, culture was identified with civilization. Another facet of the Romantic movement was an interest in folklore and this distinction is often characterized as that between high culture, namely that of the ruling social group, and low culture. In other words, the idea of culture that developed in Europe during the 18th, matthew Arnold contrasted culture with anarchy, other Europeans, following philosophers Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, contrasted culture with the state of nature. According to this way of thinking, one could classify some countries and nations as more civilized than others and this contrast led to Herbert Spencers theory of Social Darwinism and Lewis Henry Morgans theory of cultural evolution. These critics considered folk music to express a natural way of life, while classical music seemed superficial. Equally, this view often portrayed indigenous peoples as noble savages living authentic and unblemished lives, in 1870 the anthropologist Edward Tylor applied these ideas of higher versus lower culture to propose a theory of the evolution of religion. According to this theory, religion evolves from more polytheistic to more monotheistic forms, in the process, he redefined culture as a diverse set of activities characteristic of all human societies. This view paved the way for the understanding of culture. A Philosophy of Culture, The Scope of Holistic Pragmatism by Morton White Cultura
22.
Idealism
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In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing, in a sociological sense, idealism emphasizes how human ideas—especially beliefs and values—shape society. As an ontological doctrine, idealism goes further, asserting that all entities are composed of mind or spirit, Idealism thus rejects physicalist and dualist theories that fail to ascribe priority to the mind. The earliest extant arguments that the world of experience is grounded in the mental derive from India, the Hindu idealists in India and the Greek Neoplatonists gave panentheistic arguments for an all-pervading consciousness as the ground or true nature of reality. This turn toward the subjective anticipated empiricists such as George Berkeley, beginning with Immanuel Kant, German idealists such as G. W. F. Hegel, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, and Arthur Schopenhauer dominated 19th-century philosophy. This tradition, which emphasized the mental or ideal character of all phenomena, gave birth to idealistic, the historical influence of this branch of idealism remains central even to the schools that rejected its metaphysical assumptions, such as Marxism, pragmatism and positivism. Idealism is a term with related meanings. It comes via idea from the Greek idein, meaning to see, the term entered the English language by 1743. In ordinary use, as speaking of Woodrow Wilsons political idealism, it generally suggests the priority of ideals, principles, values. Idealists are understood to represent the world as it might or should be, unlike pragmatists, in the arts, similarly, idealism affirms imagination and attempts to realize a mental conception of beauty, a standard of perfection, juxtaposed to aesthetic naturalism and realism. Any philosophy that assigns crucial importance to the ideal or spiritual realm in its account of human existence may be termed idealist, metaphysical idealism is an ontological doctrine that holds that reality itself is incorporeal or experiential at its core. Beyond this, idealists disagree on which aspects of the mental are more basic, epistemological idealism is the view that reality can only be known through ideas, that only psychological experience can be apprehended by the mind. Thus Kant defines idealism as the assertion that we can never be certain all of our putative outer experience is not mere imagining. He claimed that, according to idealism, the reality of external objects does not admit of strict proof, on the contrary, however, the reality of the object of our internal sense is clear immediately through consciousness. However, not all idealists restrict the real or the knowable to our subjective experience. Objective idealists make claims about a world, but simply deny that this world is essentially divorced from or ontologically prior to the mental. Nor do all metaphysical idealists agree on the nature of the ideal, for Plato, monistic idealism holds that consciousness, not matter, is the ground of all being. It is monist because it holds that there is one type of thing in the universe
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Jews
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The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
24.
Philosophy
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Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. The term was coined by Pythagoras. Philosophical methods include questioning, critical discussion, rational argument and systematic presentation, classic philosophical questions include, Is it possible to know anything and to prove it. However, philosophers might also pose more practical and concrete questions such as, is it better to be just or unjust. Historically, philosophy encompassed any body of knowledge, from the time of Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle to the 19th century, natural philosophy encompassed astronomy, medicine and physics. For example, Newtons 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later 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 part of philosophy became separate academic disciplines, including psychology, sociology. Other investigations closely related to art, science, 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, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, political philosophy, logic, philosophy of science, since the 20th century, professional philosophers contribute to society primarily as professors, researchers and writers. Traditionally, the term referred to any body of knowledge. In this sense, philosophy is related to religion, mathematics, natural science, education. This division is not obsolete but has changed, Natural philosophy has split into the various natural sciences, especially astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and cosmology. Moral philosophy has birthed the social sciences, but still includes value theory, metaphysical philosophy has birthed formal sciences such as logic, mathematics and philosophy of science, but still includes epistemology, cosmology and others. Many philosophical debates that began in ancient times are still debated today, colin McGinn and others claim that no philosophical progress has occurred during that interval. Chalmers and others, by contrast, see progress in philosophy similar to that in science, 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, a broad and impartial conception of philosophy then, finds a reasoned inquiry into such matters as reality, morality and life in all world civilizations. Socrates was an influential philosopher, who insisted that he possessed no wisdom but was a pursuer of wisdom
25.
University of Hamburg
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The University of Hamburg is a comprehensive university in Hamburg, Germany. It was founded on 28 March 1919, having grown out of the previous General lecture system, in spite of its relatively short history, six Nobel Prize Winners and serials of scholars are affiliated to the university. University of Hamburg is the biggest research and education institution in Northern Germany, the main campus is located in the central district of Rotherbaum, with affiliated institutes and research centres spread around the city state. On a national scale, U. S. News & World Report ranks UHH 7th, progress was made however, since proponents of a university founded the Hamburg Science Foundation in 1907 and the Hamburg Colonial Institute in 1908. In the same year, the citizenry approved a site on the Moorweide for the establishment of a lecture building. However, the plans for the foundation of the university itself had to be shelved, after the war, the first freely elected senate choose von Melle as mayor. He and Rudolf Ross made a push for reform in Hamburg, and their law establishing the university. On March 28,1919 the University of Hamburg opened its gates, the number of full professorships in Hamburg was increased from 19 to 39. Both the Colonial Institute and the General Lecture system were absorbed into the university, the first faculties created by the university were Law and Political Science, Medicine, Philosophy and Natural Sciences. During the Weimar Republic, the university grew into importance. Several thousand students were enrolled, and it drew scholars like Albrecht Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Aby Warburg. The number of professors had by 1931 grown to 75. Because many students were suffering due to the bad situation that prevailed in the early republic. Ernst Cassirer became principal of the university in 1929, one of the first Jewish scholars with that role in Germany, the academic situation shifted quickly after the general election in March 1933. Already on May 1 of that year – the university held a ceremony to honor Adolf Hitler as its leader, massive political influence by the Nazis followed, including the removal of books from the libraries and harassment against alleged enemies of the people. About fifty scientists, including Ernst Cassirer and William Stern, had to leave the university, at least ten students working with the White Rose in Hamburg were suspected and arrested, four of them died in custody or were executed. In the foyer of the hall a design by Fritz Fleer commemorative plate was taken in 1971 in memory of the four resistance fighters. After the Second World War, the university was reopened in the winter of 1945 with 17,800 employees, the smallest number joined the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences with 506 students in total
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Nazism
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National Socialism, more commonly known as Nazism, is the ideology and practice associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and Nazi Germany, as well as other far-right groups. Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism, identifying Germans as part of what Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race and it aimed to overcome social divisions and create a homogeneous society, unified on the basis of racial purity. The term National Socialism arose out of attempts to create a nationalist redefinition of socialism, the Nazi Partys precursor, the Pan-German nationalist and anti-Semitic German Workers Party, was founded on 5 January 1919. By the early 1920s, Adolf Hitler assumed control of the organisation, following the Holocaust and German defeat in World War II, only a few fringe racist groups, usually referred to as neo-Nazis, still describe themselves as following National Socialism. The full name of Adolf Hitlers party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the shorthand Nazi was formed from the first two syllables of the German pronunciation of the word national. The term was in use before the rise of the NSDAP as a colloquial and derogatory word for a peasant, characterizing an awkward. It derived from Ignaz, being a version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria. Opponents seized on this and shortened the first word of the name, Nationalsozialistische. The NSDAP briefly adopted the Nazi designation, attempting to reappropriate the term, the use of Nazi Germany, Nazi regime, and so on was popularised by German exiles abroad. From them, the spread into other languages and was eventually brought back to Germany after World War II. In English, Nazism is a name for the ideology the party advocated. The majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as a form of far-right politics, far-right themes in Nazism include the argument that superior people have a right to dominate over other people and purge society of supposed inferior elements. Adolf Hitler and other proponents officially portrayed Nazism as being neither left- nor right-wing, but the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms, a major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist Freikorps, paramilitary organisations that engaged in political violence after World War I. The Nazis stated the alliance was purely tactical and there remained substantial differences with the DNVP, the Nazis described the DNVP as a bourgeois party and called themselves an anti-bourgeois party. After the elections in 1932, the alliance broke after the DNVP lost many of its seats in the Reichstag, the Nazis denounced them as an insignificant heap of reactionaries. The DNVP responded by denouncing the Nazis for their socialism, their violence. Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was pressured to abdicate the throne and flee into exile amidst an attempted communist revolution in Germany, there were factions in the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical
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Oxford
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Oxford is a city in the South East region of England and the county town of Oxfordshire. With an estimated 2015 population of 168,270, it is the 52nd largest city in the United Kingdom, the city is situated 57 miles from London,69 miles from Bristol,65 miles from both Southampton and Birmingham and 25 miles from Reading. The city is known worldwide as the home of the University of Oxford, buildings in Oxford demonstrate notable examples of every English architectural period since the late Saxon period. Oxford is known as the city of dreaming spires, a term coined by poet Matthew Arnold, Oxford has a broad economic base. Its industries include motor manufacturing, education, publishing and a number of information technology and science-based businesses. Oxford was first settled in Saxon times and was known as Oxenaforda, meaning Ford of the Oxen. It began with the establishment of a crossing for oxen around AD900. In the 10th century, Oxford became an important military frontier town between the kingdoms of Mercia and Wessex and was on several occasions raided by Danes, Oxford was heavily damaged during the Norman Invasion of 1066. Following the conquest, the town was assigned to a governor, Robert DOyly, the castle has never been used for military purposes and its remains survive to this day. DOyly set up a community in the castle consisting of a chapel. The community never grew large but it earned its place in history as one of Britains oldest places of formal education and it was there that in 1139 Geoffrey of Monmouth wrote his History of the Kings of Britain, a compilation of Arthurian legends. Mary at Oseney and to the canons serving God in that place and we have made this concession and confirmation in the Common council of the City and we have confirmed it with our common seal. These are those who have made this concession and confirmation, a grandson of King John established Rewley Abbey for the Cistercian Order, and friars of various orders all had houses of varying importance at Oxford. Parliaments were often held in the city during the 13th century, the Provisions of Oxford were instigated by a group of barons led by Simon de Montfort, these documents are often regarded as Englands first written constitution. Richard I of England and John, King of England the sons of Henry II of England, were born at Beaumont Palace in Oxford, on 8 September 1157 and 24 December 1166 respectively. A plaque in Beaumont Street commemorates these events, the University of Oxford is first mentioned in 12th century records. Of the hundreds of Aularian houses that sprang up across the city, what put an end to the halls was the emergence of colleges. Oxfords earliest colleges were University College, Balliol and Merton and these colleges were established at a time when Europeans were starting to translate the writings of Greek philosophers
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University of Gothenburg
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The University of Gothenburg is a university in Swedens second largest city, Gothenburg. The University is the third-oldest of the current Swedish universities and with 37,000 students and 6000 staff members it is one of the largest universities in the Nordic countries. With its eight faculties and 38 departments, the University of Gothenburg is one of the most wide-ranging and its eight faculties offer training in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, Natural Sciences, Humanities, Education, Information Technology, Business, Economics and Law, and Health Sciences. The University of Gothenburg has the highest number of applicants per place in many of its subjects and courses. Gothenburg University places well in global rankings and is usually positioned among the worlds best 200 institutions, in 1907 it was granted the same status as Uppsala University and Lund University by the Swedish government, thus creating Swedens third university. Over the course of time, it has merged with a number of independent higher education institutions in the city and has continuously expanded its study profile. It was granted the rights of a university by the Swedish Government in 1954. In 1971, the originally separate Gothenburg School of Economics and Commercial Law became part of the University of Gothenburg, Sahlgrenska University Hospital is associated with the university as a teaching hospital. In the 1990s the School of Economics and the Academy of Music, Drama, a new campus for the Faculty of Education was opened in central Gothenburg in 2006. The University of Gothenburg is a city university, that is most of its facilities are within the city centre of Gothenburg. The main building as well as most faculties are located in the part of Gothenburg. Together with Uppsala, Lund, and Stockholm universities, it is one of four large research universities in Sweden. The University of Gothenburg is one of Sweden’s largest universities and it is a comprehensive university, organised into eight faculties and 38 departments. The University is an authority as well as a confederation of Faculty Boards. Each faculty/school has significant autonomy based on its powers. The University Board is the University’s highest decision-making body, the board consists of 15 members and has supervision over all the University’s affairs, and is responsible that its duties are fulfilled. The Swedish Government appoints seven of the members externally, based on their experience in activities that have significance for the university’s teaching. In addition, the Vice-Chancellor, three faculty members and three students, as well as union representatives are included as ordinary members, the day-to-day management is headed by the Vice-Chancellor, who is responsible for implementing the decisions of the board
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Harvard University
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Although never formally affiliated with any denomination, the early College primarily trained Congregationalist and Unitarian clergy. Its curriculum and student body were gradually secularized during the 18th century, james Bryant Conant led the university through the Great Depression and World War II and began to reform the curriculum and liberalize admissions after the war. The undergraduate college became coeducational after its 1977 merger with Radcliffe College, Harvards $34.5 billion financial endowment is the largest of any academic institution. Harvard is a large, highly residential research university, the nominal cost of attendance is high, but the Universitys large endowment allows it to offer generous financial aid packages. Harvards alumni include eight U. S. presidents, several heads of state,62 living billionaires,359 Rhodes Scholars. To date, some 130 Nobel laureates,18 Fields Medalists, Harvard was formed in 1636 by vote of the Great and General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. In 1638, it obtained British North Americas first known printing press, in 1639 it was named Harvard College after deceased clergyman John Harvard an alumnus of the University of Cambridge who had left the school £779 and his scholars library of some 400 volumes. The charter creating the Harvard Corporation was granted in 1650 and it offered a classic curriculum on the English university model—many leaders in the colony had attended the University of Cambridge—but conformed to the tenets of Puritanism. It was never affiliated with any denomination, but many of its earliest graduates went on to become clergymen in Congregational. The leading Boston divine Increase Mather served as president from 1685 to 1701, in 1708, John Leverett became the first president who was not also a clergyman, which marked a turning of the college toward intellectual independence from Puritanism. When the Hollis Professor of Divinity David Tappan died in 1803 and the president of Harvard Joseph Willard died a year later, in 1804, in 1846, the natural history lectures of Louis Agassiz were acclaimed both in New York and on the campus at Harvard College. Agassizs approach was distinctly idealist and posited Americans participation in the Divine Nature, agassizs perspective on science combined observation with intuition and the assumption that a person can grasp the divine plan in all phenomena. When it came to explaining life-forms, Agassiz resorted to matters of shape based on an archetype for his evidence. Charles W. Eliot, president 1869–1909, eliminated the position of Christianity from the curriculum while opening it to student self-direction. While Eliot was the most crucial figure in the secularization of American higher education, he was motivated not by a desire to secularize education, during the 20th century, Harvards international reputation grew as a burgeoning endowment and prominent professors expanded the universitys scope. Rapid enrollment growth continued as new schools were begun and the undergraduate College expanded. Radcliffe College, established in 1879 as sister school of Harvard College, Harvard became a founding member of the Association of American Universities in 1900. In the early 20th century, the student body was predominately old-stock, high-status Protestants, especially Episcopalians, Congregationalists, by the 1970s it was much more diversified
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Yale University
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Yale University is an American private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Founded in 1701 in Saybrook Colony to train Congregationalist ministers, it is the third-oldest institution of education in the United States. The Collegiate School moved to New Haven in 1716, and shortly after was renamed Yale College in recognition of a gift from British East India Company governor Elihu Yale. Originally restricted to theology and sacred languages, the curriculum began to incorporate humanities and sciences by the time of the American Revolution. In the 19th century the school introduced graduate and professional instruction, awarding the first Ph. D. in the United States in 1861 and organizing as a university in 1887. Yale is organized into fourteen constituent schools, the undergraduate college, the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. While the university is governed by the Yale Corporation, each schools faculty oversees its curriculum, the universitys assets include an endowment valued at $25.4 billion as of June 2016, the second largest of any U. S. educational institution. The Yale University Library, serving all constituent schools, holds more than 15 million volumes and is the third-largest academic library in the United States, Yale College undergraduates follow a liberal arts curriculum with departmental majors and are organized into a social system of residential colleges. Almost all faculty teach courses, more than 2,000 of which are offered annually. Students compete intercollegiately as the Yale Bulldogs in the NCAA Division I – Ivy League, Yale has graduated many notable alumni, including five U. S. Presidents,19 U. S. Supreme Court Justices,20 living billionaires, and many heads of state. In addition, Yale has graduated hundreds of members of Congress,57 Nobel laureates,5 Fields Medalists,247 Rhodes Scholars, and 119 Marshall Scholars have been affiliated with the University. Yale traces its beginnings to An Act for Liberty to Erect a Collegiate School, passed by the General Court of the Colony of Connecticut on October 9,1701, the Act was an effort to create an institution to train ministers and lay leadership for Connecticut. Soon thereafter, a group of ten Congregationalist ministers, Samuel Andrew, Thomas Buckingham, Israel Chauncy, Samuel Mather, the group, led by James Pierpont, is now known as The Founders. Originally known as the Collegiate School, the institution opened in the home of its first rector, Abraham Pierson, the school moved to Saybrook, and then Wethersfield. In 1716 the college moved to New Haven, Connecticut, the feud caused the Mathers to champion the success of the Collegiate School in the hope that it would maintain the Puritan religious orthodoxy in a way that Harvard had not. Cotton Mather suggested that the school change its name to Yale College, meanwhile, a Harvard graduate working in England convinced some 180 prominent intellectuals that they should donate books to Yale. The 1714 shipment of 500 books represented the best of modern English literature, science, philosophy and it had a profound effect on intellectuals at Yale. Undergraduate Jonathan Edwards discovered John Lockes works and developed his original theology known as the new divinity
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Columbia University
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Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1754 as Kings College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, after the American Revolutionary War, Kings College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the M. D. degree. The university also has global research outposts in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Asunción, Columbia administers annually the Pulitzer Prize. Additionally,100 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Columbia as students, researchers, faculty, Columbia is second only to Harvard University in the number of Nobel Prize-winning affiliates, with over 100 recipients of the award as of 2016. In 1746 an act was passed by the assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. Classes were initially held in July 1754 and were presided over by the colleges first president, Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the colleges first class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan, in 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queens College, Oxford, and an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of the American Revolution, his opponent in discussions at the college was an undergraduate of the class of 1777. The suspension continued through the occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783. The colleges library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a hospital first by American. Loyalists were forced to abandon their Kings College in New York, the Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they founded Kings Collegiate School. After the Revolution, the college turned to the State of New York in order to restore its vitality, the Legislature agreed to assist the college, and on May 1,1784, it passed an Act for granting certain privileges to the College heretofore called Kings College. The Regents finally became aware of the colleges defective constitution in February 1787 and appointed a revision committee, in April of that same year, a new charter was adopted for the college, still in use today, granting power to a private board of 24 Trustees. On May 21,1787, William Samuel Johnson, the son of Dr. Samuel Johnson, was unanimously elected President of Columbia College, prior to serving at the university, Johnson had participated in the First Continental Congress and been chosen as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. The colleges enrollment, structure, and academics stagnated for the majority of the 19th century, with many of the college presidents doing little to change the way that the college functioned. In 1857, the college moved from the Kings College campus at Park Place to a primarily Gothic Revival campus on 49th Street and Madison Avenue, during the last half of the 19th century, under the leadership of President F. A. P. Barnard, the institution assumed the shape of a modern university
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Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis
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Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis was a Dutch historian of science. He studied mathematics at the University of Groningen from 1911 to 1918, from 1916 to 1953 he was a professor and taught mathematics, physics and cosmography. He wrote about Archimedes in the late 1930s and early 1940s and he advocated changes in the way mathematics was taught to reinforce the formal characteristics of the discipline. In 1950, he was appointed as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts, in 1953, he was appointed to teach the history of mathematics and the nature of science at Utrecht University and in 1955 at Leiden University. In 1962 he was awarded the Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society
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Relativity theory
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The theory of relativity usually encompasses two interrelated theories by Albert Einstein, special relativity and general relativity. Special relativity applies to particles and their interactions, describing all their physical phenomena except gravity. General relativity explains the law of gravitation and its relation to other forces of nature and it applies to the cosmological and astrophysical realm, including astronomy. The theory transformed theoretical physics and astronomy during the 20th century and it introduced concepts including spacetime as a unified entity of space and time, relativity of simultaneity, kinematic and gravitational time dilation, and length contraction. In the field of physics, relativity improved the science of elementary particles and their fundamental interactions, with relativity, cosmology and astrophysics predicted extraordinary astronomical phenomena such as neutron stars, black holes, and gravitational waves. Max Planck, Hermann Minkowski and others did subsequent work, Einstein developed general relativity between 1907 and 1915, with contributions by many others after 1915. The final form of general relativity was published in 1916, the term theory of relativity was based on the expression relative theory used in 1906 by Planck, who emphasized how the theory uses the principle of relativity. In the discussion section of the paper, Alfred Bucherer used for the first time the expression theory of relativity. By the 1920s, the community understood and accepted special relativity. It rapidly became a significant and necessary tool for theorists and experimentalists in the new fields of physics, nuclear physics. By comparison, general relativity did not appear to be as useful and it seemed to offer little potential for experimental test, as most of its assertions were on an astronomical scale. Its mathematics of general relativity seemed difficult and fully understandable only by a number of people. Around 1960, general relativity became central to physics and astronomy, new mathematical techniques to apply to general relativity streamlined calculations and made its concepts more easily visualized. Special relativity is a theory of the structure of spacetime and it was introduced in Einsteins 1905 paper On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies. Special relativity is based on two postulates which are contradictory in classical mechanics, The laws of physics are the same for all observers in motion relative to one another. The speed of light in a vacuum is the same for all observers, the resultant theory copes with experiment better than classical mechanics. For instance, postulate 2 explains the results of the Michelson–Morley experiment, moreover, the theory has many surprising and counterintuitive consequences. Some of these are, Relativity of simultaneity, Two events, simultaneous for one observer, time dilation, Moving clocks are measured to tick more slowly than an observers stationary clock
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Quantum mechanics
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Quantum mechanics, including quantum field theory, is a branch of physics which is the fundamental theory of nature at small scales and low energies of atoms and subatomic particles. Classical physics, the physics existing before quantum mechanics, derives from quantum mechanics as an approximation valid only at large scales, early quantum theory was profoundly reconceived in the mid-1920s. The reconceived theory is formulated in various specially developed mathematical formalisms, in one of them, a mathematical function, the wave function, provides information about the probability amplitude of position, momentum, and other physical properties of a particle. In 1803, Thomas Young, an English polymath, performed the famous experiment that he later described in a paper titled On the nature of light. This experiment played a role in the general acceptance of the wave theory of light. In 1838, Michael Faraday discovered cathode rays, Plancks hypothesis that energy is radiated and absorbed in discrete quanta precisely matched the observed patterns of black-body radiation. In 1896, Wilhelm Wien empirically determined a distribution law of black-body radiation, ludwig Boltzmann independently arrived at this result by considerations of Maxwells equations. However, it was only at high frequencies and underestimated the radiance at low frequencies. Later, Planck corrected this model using Boltzmanns statistical interpretation of thermodynamics and proposed what is now called Plancks law, following Max Plancks solution in 1900 to the black-body radiation problem, Albert Einstein offered a quantum-based theory to explain the photoelectric effect. Among the first to study quantum phenomena in nature were Arthur Compton, C. V. Raman, robert Andrews Millikan studied the photoelectric effect experimentally, and Albert Einstein developed a theory for it. In 1913, Peter Debye extended Niels Bohrs theory of structure, introducing elliptical orbits. This phase is known as old quantum theory, according to Planck, each energy element is proportional to its frequency, E = h ν, where h is Plancks constant. Planck cautiously insisted that this was simply an aspect of the processes of absorption and emission of radiation and had nothing to do with the reality of the radiation itself. In fact, he considered his quantum hypothesis a mathematical trick to get the right rather than a sizable discovery. He won the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work, lower energy/frequency means increased time and vice versa, photons of differing frequencies all deliver the same amount of action, but do so in varying time intervals. High frequency waves are damaging to human tissue because they deliver their action packets concentrated in time, the Copenhagen interpretation of Niels Bohr became widely accepted. In the mid-1920s, developments in mechanics led to its becoming the standard formulation for atomic physics. In the summer of 1925, Bohr and Heisenberg published results that closed the old quantum theory, out of deference to their particle-like behavior in certain processes and measurements, light quanta came to be called photons
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Aby Warburg
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At the heart of his research was the legacy of the Classical World, and the transmission of classical representation, in the most varied areas of western culture through to the Renaissance. Warburg described himself as, Amburghese di cuore, ebreo di sangue and his ancestors had come to Germany from Italy in the 17th century and settled in the town of Warburg in Westphalia, taking on the town’s name as their family name. In the 18th century the Warburgs moved to Altona near Hamburg, two brothers Warburg founded the banking firm M. M. Warburg & Co in Hamburg, which today again has an office there. Aby Warburg was the first of seven born to Moritz Warburg, director of the Hamburg bank. Aby Warburg showed an early interest in literature and history and the second eldest son, Max Warburg went into the Hamburg bank, younger brothers Paul, Max Warburg established the Warburg family bank as a global player. Warburg grew up in a conservative Jewish home environment, early on he demonstrated an unstable, unpredictable and volatile temperament. Warburg as a child reacted against the rituals which were punctiliously observed in his family. He did not want to be a rabbi, as his grandmother wished, against the resistance he met with from his relatives, he forced through his plans to study art history. He continued his studies in Munich and with Hubert Janitschek in Strasbourg, completing under him his dissertation on Botticelli’s paintings The Birth of Venus, from 1888 to 1889 he studied the sources of these pictures at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. He was now interested in applying the methods of science to the human sciences. The dissertation was completed in 1892 and printed in 1893, warburg’s study introduced into art history a new method, that of iconography or iconology, later developed by Erwin Panofsky. After receiving his doctorate Warburg studied for two semesters at the Medical Faculty of the University of Berlin, where he attended lectures on psychology, during this period he undertook a further trip to Florence. Paul Warburg married Nina Loeb, daughter of Solomon Loeb in New York late in 1895 and his long American journey took him to Colorado in winter, to New Mexico and then to Pasadena and Mount Lowe. He met the San Francisco boheme Les Jeunes around Gelett Burgess and then went back to the Pueblos in spring, to the Hopi, before going west, he had met veteran anthropologists James Mooney and Frank Hamilton Cushing at the Smithsonian Institution. Cushing had lived for years with the Zuni in New Mexico, first stop in the west was Mesa Verde to see the Anasazi cliff dwellings. Then he went from Pueblo town to Spanish town, to Cochiti and the Palace Hotel in Santa Fe, to Albuquerque and Acoma, Laguna and San Ildefonso, in Cochiti Warburg spoke to a priest and his son and received a cosmological drawing with a snake at its center. Warburg was fascinated with their still secluded culture, their architecture, ritual, their masks, mennonite missionary Heinrich R. Voth shared his knowledge of Hopi religion. Voth and Warburg saw a Hemis Kachina dance complete with obscene clowning, thanks to Voth he could also observe the preparations for this end-of-winter ceremony
