Galileo's Daughter

Galileo's daughter, Maria Celeste, was not only essential to his writings but more importantly, for his survival. She was a dutiful Italian daughter who did all the chores such as cooking and laundry for Galileo. Not only did she supply her ill father with his medication but she hand-made it herself. Without her, Galileo would probably have passed on much earlier and begin to rot within his working quarters. And the amazing part is, she managed to care for her elderly father in addition to fulfilling all her duties to the Church. She lived in poor conditions yet her main concern was the well-being of Galileo. In addition to this, she was the editor of Galileo's manuscript. She took the time to edit it in order to make it publishable. Galileo would send her portions of his manuscript and once she had edited them she went send them back. She continued to spend her spare time working on this manuscript until it was finally completed. And during this time she continued to send Galileo food/medication and do his laundry and such.

Once Galileo had published his book, it did not receive good feedback. It actually angered the Church since it conflicted with their beliefs of the Sun and the Earth. Even his good friend Pope Urban VIII was angered and discontinued to support Galileo's discovery. Therefore, Galileo was brought before the inquisition. If Maria had not given her father advice to just accept what the church says for the time being, he may possibly have been sentenced to death. She was the reason why Galileo managed to change science and physics for the better.

Five Ways~

Looking at Thomas Aquina's Five Ways, his First Way: the arguement from motion is the worse. I believe this is the wort of the five not only because it could be easily disproved but because all the other ways are based on this first one. If the first way proved to be wrong, that would prove that the remaining four are wrong as well by default. His way states that nothing can move itself. Like a set of dominoes set up, there must be a force that moved it in the first place and then the dominoes will fall in order. It also states that if every object in motion ha da mover, then the first object in motion needs a mover or a force. According to Aquinas, the first mover was God. In his arguement, he titles God as the Unmoved Mover. However, the components of this arguement contradict each other. I mean, how could you say, "Oh everything has a mover EXCEPT God." So God is the only exception from this set of rules that applies to the entire universe? This arguement is begging the question, he is assuming that God is unmoved without the proper evidence.



OTL....

Gothic Architecture & St. Augustine

St. Augustine was no "Saint" during his early life. He was sinful and did rather idiotic things just for the pure pleasure and the thrill of it. Then during his quest for answers such as "Why do we sin if we know we should not do it?", he came across the Manicheans. The Manicheans believed that all humans have a pure soul composed of light that is trapped within our bodies composed of darkness. Therefore, in order to achieve happiness and salvation, one must look deep within their bodies to view their divine souls. This concept was applied to the design and construction of Gothic Architecture. Gothic churches all have an immense contrast of light and darkness. The exterior was gloomy and obscure whereas the interior was illuminated with the gothic trademark, glass windows. These glass windows had illustrations of biblical stories and once the Sun shined its rays at the right angle of the window, the church was illuminated with different colors and Bible stories. Once you entered the church, it was like you could actually feel God's immense power and that you were going through a divine experience. This use of imagery also allowed for the illiterate to experience this. Through St. Augustines philosophy with the combination of architecture, everyone could achieve happiness and salvation.

Be Mein

Well to start off...Happy belated Valentines Day~

Today we read a small portion of Chapter 11 of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kamf. Hitler writes, "Every animal mates only with a member of the same species". Most people would assume he's referring to animals, like actual animals in the wild. However, he's actually talking about races and how one should not marry or mate outside of their own race. He even goes to the extent of refering to us as "animals" and races as different species. Not very surprising. This claim is an example of false analogy, which is when an analogy is descriptive but does not offer proof of a connection between the two things being compared. He compares species to humans but the fault of this claim is that there are no subspecies of humans. Human is just one species and Hitler is trying to prove to us that there are inferior and superior "species" of humans without even supplying any evidence. Racial categories are NOT species, that's a given. Hitler assumes that the crossbreeding of races may mess up the gene pool; he's basically just attempting to form boundaries between races.

Intelligent Design vs. Evolution

Intelligent Design vs. Evolution

According to my religion, ideas like evolution and natural selection is a bunch of bologna. I've even heard of old school religious fanatics actually believe that dinosaur fossils is just a test of faith set up by God. Personally, I'm fed up with this irrational thinking style. I'm not saying that science is always right, it's actually quite the opposite most of the time. There's always new information being dug up that makes the older information automatically obsolete. I do somewhat believe in the idea of intelligent design but evolution also makes a good point. I'm at the half/half mark for both.

And i don't entirely disagree with the idea of discontinuing the study of evolution at school. I mean we learn about religion and such in our spare time at places like Church or w/e. If people really desire to learn about education, they should do it on their own time...like a church for studying evolution. This sounds better than studying evolution at school, it's one less subject to study :)

Obama and Affirmative Action

Did the election of Barack Obama make affirmative action irrelevant?

The purpose of affirmative action is to basically even the playing field for the minorities and in this case blacks. According to affirmative action, these minorities(blacks) are born with a disadvantage socio-economically because they live in areas that are poverty-stricken and violent, which leads to bad quality schools. The course of action they take is to admit blacks into colleges to give them the opportunity of things white people have had for generations. In my opinion, the election of Obama as president does not make affirmative action irrelevant. Just because Obama is president doesn't make affirmative action irrelevant because he is just one black man while there are millions of blacks still living under poverty-stricken conditions. Furthermore, Obama is not even really the typical black man that affirmative action focuses on because was raised in Hawaii by a white mother. He didn't have the black experience that the majority of the average blacks go through. Affirmative action does not apply to him in the first place.

Syllogisms vs. Modus Ponens vs. Modus Tollens

Syllogisms
Syllogisms is deductive reasoning to derive a conclusion from two premises. Each premise is composed of two terms. One of these terms are repeated in each premise so there is basically three terms in a syllogism. Each premise has one term in common with the conclusion; in a major premise, this is the predicate of the conclusion and in a minor premise, it is the subject of the conclusion.

Example) Filipinos are dark skinned
Hanseul is dark skinned
Hanseul is Filipino

Modus Ponens
If premise "p" is true, then premise "q" is true.

Example) If you are Asian, you have chinky eyes
I am Asian
Therefore, I have chinky eyes

Modus Tollens
Modus Tollens is basically the negative of modus ponens.
If premise "p" is true, then premise "q" is true..."q" is false, therefore "p" is false as well

Example) If you are Asian, you have chinky eyes
You do not have chinky eyes
Therefore, you are not Asian

First Assignment

Collect as much information as possible about the Ghiberti Doors before the end of the period

Include:

How he was chosen to create the doors:

In 1401, a competition was announced by the Arte di Calimala(Wool Merchants' Guild) to design the baptistry North Doors. The existing north doors had been a votive offering to spare Florence from a new scourge such as the Black Death in 1348. Seven sculptors competed, including Lorenzo Ghiberti, Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello and Jacopo della Quercia, with Ghiberti winning the commission. At the time of judging, only Ghiberti and Brunelleschi were finalists, and when the judges could not decide, they were assigned to work together on them. Brunelleschi's pride got in the way, and he went to Rome to study architecture leaving Ghiberti to work on the doors himself.

What is the style of Cathedral in which they reside?

The architecture is in Florentine Romanesque style

What story is on each panel?

On the left portion of the door, the depicted stories are of Adam and Eve, Noah, Isaac with Esau and Jacob, Moses, and David; in descending order. On the right portion of the door are the stories of Cain and Abel, Abraham, Joseph, Joshua, and Solomon and the Queen of Sheba; in descending order.

How are they paired?

The ten panels are paired to remind us of the pages of a book and a chronological reading of them begins at the top left (the Genesis story), moving to the right, then down nad left again, and so on to the last panel in the lower right corner (the Queen of Sheba's visit to Solomon).