Everything For Nothing

Nature in Modern Science
Francis Bacon was apparently influenced by Machiavelli in arguing that knowledge should avoid building up hypotheses based upon anything which could not be directly observed in the light of day. (Both authors wrote extensively about history and politics.) He was clearly also influenced by the debates in Europe caused by recent speculation about astronomy - for example that of Gallileo and Copernicus, which in turn seems to have looked back to classical atomists such as Democritus and Lucretius. What is new in modern times is the will to argue the case for such science in a political and public debate.

In his Novum Organum Bacon argued that the only forms or natures we should hypothesize are the “simple” (as opposed to compound) ones such as the ways in which heat, movement, etc. work. For example in aphorism 51 he writes:

51. The human understanding is, by its own nature, prone to abstraction, and supposes that which is fluctuating to be fixed. But it is better to dissect than abstract nature; such was the method employed by the school of Democritus, which made greater progress in penetrating nature than the rest. It is best to consider matter, its conformation, and the changes of that conformation, its own action, and the law of this action or motion, for forms are a mere fiction of the human mind, unless you will call the laws of action by that name.

Following Bacon’s advice, forms are now replaced by “laws of nature” or “laws of physics” in all scientific thinking. To use Aristotle’s well-known terminology concerning types of cause, these laws are descriptions of efficient cause, and not formal cause or final cause. It means modern science limits its hypothesizing about non-physical things to the assumption that there are regularities to the ways of things which do not change. Modern scientists often even argue that they have in this way avoided any sort of metaphysics. Some find this claim debatable, because by definition modern science can never prove this assumption to be true.

The result is that modern Baconian science normally sees nature, even human beings, as “matter in motion”, obeying certain “laws of nature” which science seeks to understand. For this reason the most fundamental science is generally understood to be “physics” - the name for which is still recognizable as meaning that it is the study of nature.

Matter is itself commonly defined as the substance of which physical objects are composed. It constitutes the observable Universe. According to the theory of relativity there is no distinction between matter and energy, because matter can be converted to energy (see annihilation), and vice versa (see matter creation). Philosophically, matter constitutes the formless substratum of all things, which exists only potentially and from which reality is produced. In the sense of content, matter is also used in contrast to form.
Idealism and the survival of Metaphysics
Modern science has also not ended Idealism, or more generally it has not ended speculation about metaphysics beyond just “laws of nature”. Apart from the position of the world’s main religions, philosophers such as Immanuel Kant have continued to argue the case for positions in conflict with that of modern science.
Beauty in nature
The writer Stephen Fry has commented that if we look around us, anything ugly that we see will have been created by human hands; this exemplifies a widely held view that nature is intrinsically beautiful. That the beauty of nature has been celebrated by so large a proportion of our art is further proof of the strength of this association between nature and beauty. Many scientists also share the conviction that nature is beautiful; the French mathematician, Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) said:

“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.
If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. Of course I do not here speak of that beauty that strikes the senses, the beauty of quality and appearances; not that I undervalue such beauty, far from it, but it has nothing to do with science; I mean that profounder beauty which comes from the harmonious order of the parts, and which a pure intelligence can grasp.”

A common classical idea of beautiful art involves the word mimesis, which can be defined as the perfection and imitation of nature. It is in nature that the perfect is implied through symmetry, equal division, and other perfect mathematical forms and notions. Plato wrote about Socrates and his ideas about how the perfect forms of things exist, and in nature we see the copy of this eternally existing form.

The Art of Bonsai- What is the art of Bonsai?

Bonsai (literally “potted plant”) is the art of aesthetic miniaturization of trees by growing them in containers.

Originating in China, Bonsai is a Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese word Penzai. The word Bonsai has been used by the West as an umbrella term for all miniature trees.

History

The history of bonsai is cloaked in the mist of the past, but it is now widely believed to have started during the Han Dynasty in China. It was the Chinese who first created the miniature landscapes and trees that we now know as bonsai or Penzai. Since originating in China many centuries ago, it has developed into many new forms in various parts of China, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.

At first, the Japanese used miniaturized container-grown trees for decorating their homes and gardens.

During the Tokugawa period, landscape gardening attained new importance. Cultivation of plants such as azalea and maples became a pastime of the wealthy. Growing dwarf plants in containers was also popular, but by modern bonsai standards the container plants of this period were inappropriately large.[citation needed] The then-term for dwarf potted trees was “a tree in a pot”.

The c.1300 rhymeprose essay, Rhymeprose on a Miniature Landscape Garden, by the Japanese Zen monk Kokan Shiren, outlines the aesthetic principles for bonsai, bonseki and garden architecture itself.
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The Biography of Howard Gardner
Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A.
Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the
Harvard Graduate School of Education. Among
numerous honors, Gardner received a MacArthur
Prize Fellowship in 1981. In 1990, he was the first
American to receive the University of Louisville’s
Grawemeyer Award in Education and in 2000 he
received a Fellowship from the John S. Guggenheim
Memorial Foundation. He has received honorary
degrees from twenty-two colleges and universities,
including institutions in Chile, Ireland, Israel, and
Italy. In 2004 he was named an Honorary Professor
at East China Normal University in Shanghai. In
2005 he was selected by Foreign Policy and
Prospect magazines as one of 100 most influential
public intellectuals in the world. He has been
elected a member of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical
Society, the National Academy of Education, and
most recently (2007) the London-based Royal
Society for the Encouragement of Arts,
Manufactures, and Commerce. He serves on a
number of boards, including the Spencer
Foundation and New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
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English literature-What is English literature?
The term English literature refers to literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; Joseph Conrad was Polish, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, Salman Rushdie is Indian, V.S. Naipaul is Trinidadian. In other words, English literature is as diverse as the varieties and dialects of English spoken around the world.

The first works in English, written in the Anglo-Saxon dialect now called Old English, appeared in the early Middle Ages. In the late medieval period (1200-1500), the ideals of courtly love entered England and authors began to write romances, either in verse or prose. Especially popular were tales of King Arthur and his court. England’s first great author, Geoffrey Chaucer (1340 -1400), wrote in Middle English. His most famous work is The Canterbury Tales, a collection of stories in a variety of genres.
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The biography of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright widely regarded as the greatest writer of the English language, and as the world’s preeminent dramatist. He wrote approximately 38 plays and 154 sonnets, as well as a variety of other poems. Already popular in his own lifetime, Shakespeare became more famous after his death and his work was adulated by many prominent cultural figures through the centuries. He is often considered to be England’s national poet and is sometimes referred to as the “Bard of Avon” (or simply “The Bard”) or the “Swan of Avon”.

Shakespeare’s works have been translated into every major living language, and his plays are continually performed all around the world. Shakespeare is the most quoted writer in the literature and history of the English-speaking world, and many of his quotations and neologisms have passed into everyday usage in English and other languages. Many have speculated about Shakespeare’s life, including his sexuality and religious affiliation.

Many of Shakespeare’s plays have the reputation of being among the greatest in the English language and in Western literature. Shakespeare wrote tragedies, histories, comedies and romances, all of which have been translated into every major living language.

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