Pricing Strategy and Distribution Essay Example for Free

Pricing Strategy and Distribution Essay Nature Beauty Price strategy will be the penetration theory for my product. Penetration is pricing low to stimulate the sales, encourage trail, and trigger by word of mouth. Nature Beauty’s mineral powder foundation will not be a new product that no company has similar to. We will need to start by gaining the trust of the consumers by word of mouth and different marketing strategies to the targeted customers. This way once the product has some buzz and customers appreciate the products value, we can price the mineral powder foundation at higher price do to the demand of the product. The competing cosmetic company has a similar product that claims help the skin improve. This company will be established in the cosmetic industry and customers will have trust in them. We at Nature Beauty are striving to become a powerhouse cosmetic line so we can price according the value we believe we hold. Penetration strategy is the best the company because there are a lot of other producst that compliments the mineral powder foundation and other general everyday hygiene use type of products that want to bring out. With this strategy we can price the other products low as well and hopefully with the trust of Nature Beauty mineral powder foundation gains it will help us introduce them. Even though Nature Beauty can be considered a luxury cosmetic, we also want it to become a necessity to the consumers as well. We want the demand for it increases by making the consumers feel like this product is a need and want them to live by this Brand. Penetration strategy will also work with medium pricing range. Medium is a competitive approach. Pricing the mineral powder foundation could be slightly price above or slightly price below. Nature Beauty picks slightly below. This goes into the theory for starting off low in and gaining value to price higher. We want the customers to perceive this product as safe and efficient and more valuable compared to the leading cosmetic competitor. I believe we will have to start out as an alternative cosmetic and show that we are just as good or a better brand. Also with the feedback from the customer’s feedback and response to our product, can determine the value of its offering. The leading competitor pricing strategy are mostly medium or high leaning towards the Skimming theory. You have companies like Revlon, Cover Girl who are well known, easy, and are very accessible to the consumer at your local drug store or even supermarkets. They put off a new product and it is the priced high and after a while you will see the product come down then maintain at lower price. Nature Beauty is pricing tactics is Value pricing. According to EZine articles. com, Value pricing is a strategy that businesses with a high value product or service use. The strategy is to sell the high value product or service at a low, value price. Note: this price is not to be below cost but at what the customer would perceive to be a low price. Nature Beauty believes this a good fit for its product because all of the products are really good, safe, and highly effective. Also Ezine articles mentioned that â€Å"Customers perceptions are influenced by the value they perceive in the relationship between the attributes of the product or service and the price they will have to pay for that product or service. Customers also are influenced by price comparison amongst similar products or services†. Nature Beauty provides a product that conceals the unwanted blemishes, scars, tattoos, and gives you a even flawless skin tone while with the alone extracts, and organic ingredients helps improve your skin for a softer and clearer skin. We believe if the consumers see the attributes that this product have and also trust the other product that compliments the mineral powder foundation, we will price higher to the true value of the product. Even though we are using the Value pricing tactic, Nature Beauty believes we are a good brand and want the consumers to believe that we are high quality with a good price. In the psychology of pricing the â€Å"price is a clear, tangible cue, higher the price set the highest expectation. However, even though it’s easier to start high and lower prices later down the line, depending on sales of the products, we don’t want to jump the broom on the price set. We believe that we meet the expectation for a higher price and will strive to become a brand that can set a premium price like it leading competitors. Nature Beauty does want to use the theory framing on the products that compliments the mineral powder foundation. Framing is pricing higher prices and then discount to make the consumers feel better. There will be promotions that will give consumers the chance to try these products such lotion, facial cleanser, beauty bar soap, make-up remover wipes, and future idea products for free or at a discounted price. But they will not always be on sale. Nature beauty will push these products out individually starting out high then discounting them after we introduced the new and latest product.

The Limitations Of RDBMS Systems

The Limitations Of RDBMS Systems To combat the limitations of RDBMS and meet the challenge of the increasing rise of the Internet and the Web, programmers developed object-oriented databases in the 1980s. The main objective of Object-Oriented Database Management Systems, commonly known as OODBMS, is to provide consistent, data independent, secure, controlled and extensible data management services to support the object-oriented model. They were created to handle big and complex data that relational databases could not. There are important characteristics involved with object-oriented databases. The most important characteristic is the joining of object-oriented programming with database technology, which provides an integrated application development system. Object-oriented programming results in 4 main characteristics: inheritances, data encapsulation, object identity, and polymorphism. Inheritance allows one to develop solutions to complex problems incrementally by defining new objects in terms of previously defined objects. Data encapsulation or simply encapsulation allows the hiding of the internal state of the objects. Encapsulated objects are those objects that can only be assessed by their methods instead of their internal states. There are three types of encapsulated objects users and developers should recognize. The first is full encapsulation, in which all the operations on objects are done through message sending and method execution. The second is write encapsulation, which is where the internal state of the object is visible only for reading operations. The third is partial encapsulation, which involves allowing direct access for reading and writing for only a part of the internal state. Object identity allows objects of the database to be independent of each other. Polymorphism and dynamic binding allow one to define operations for one object and then to share the specification of the operation with other objects. This allows users and/or programmers to compose objects to provide solutions without having to write code that is specific to each object. The language important to OODBMS is data definition and manipulation language (DDML). The use of this language allows persistent data to be created, updated, deleted, or retrieved. An OODBMS needs a computational versus a relational language because it can be used to avoid impedance mismatch. DDML allows users to define a database, including creating, altering, and dropping tables and establishing constraints. DDMLs are used to maintain and query a database, including updating, inserting, modifying, and querying data. The OODBMS has many advantages and benefits. First, object-oriented is a more natural way of thinking. Second, the defined operations of these types of systems are not dependent on the particular database application running at a given moment. Third, the data types of object-oriented databases can be extended to support complex data such as images, digital and audio/video, along with other multi-media operations. Different benefits of OODBMS are its reusability, stability, and reliability. Another benefit of OODBMS is that relationships are represented explicitly, often supporting both navigational and associative access to information. This translates to improvement in data access performance versus the relational model. Another important benefit is that users are allowed to define their own methods of access to data and how it will be represented or manipulated. The most significant benefit of the OODBMS is that these databases have extended into areas not known by the RDBMS. Medicine, multimedia, and high-energy physics are just a few of the new industries relying on object-oriented databases. As with the relational database method, object-oriented databases also have disadvantages or limitations. One disadvantage of OODBMS is that it lacks a common data model. There is also no current standard, since it is still considered to be in the development stages. Who is currently using an OODBMS to handle mission critical data? The following information was gleaned from the ODBMS Facts website. The Chicago Stock Exchange manages stock trades via a Versant ODBMS. Radio Computing Services is the worlds largest radio software company. Its product, Selector, automates the needs of the entire radio station from the music library, to the newsroom, to the sales department. RCS uses the POET ODBMS because it enabled RCS to integrate and organize various elements, regardless of data types, in a single program environment. The Objectivity/DB ODBMS is used as a data repository for system component naming, satellite mission planning data, and orbital management data deployed by Motorola in The Iridium System. The Object Store ODBMS is used in Southwest Airlines Home Gate to provide self service to travellers through the Internet. Ajou University Medical Center in South Korea uses Intersystems Cachà ¨ ODBMS to support all hospital functions including mission-critical departments such as pathology, laboratory, blood bank, pharmacy, and X-ray. The Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland uses an Objectivity DB. The database is currently being tested in the hundreds of terabytes at data rates up to 35 MB/second. As of November, 2000, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) stored 169 terabytes of production data using Objectivity/DB. The production data is distributed across several hundred processing nodes and over 30 on-line servers. Below is a list of advantages and disadvantages of using an OODBMS over an RDBMS with an object oriented programming language. Advantages Composite Objects and Relationships: Objects in an OODBMS can store an arbitrary number of atomic types as well as other objects. It is thus possible to have a large class which holds many medium sized classes which themselves hold many smaller classes, ad infinitum. In a relational database this has to be done either by having one huge table with lots of null fields or via a number of smaller, normalized tables which are linked via foreign keys. Having lots of smaller tables is still a problem since a join has to be performed every time one wants to query data based on the Has-a relationship between the entities. Also an object is a better model of the real world entity than the relational tuples (attributes) with regards to complex objects. The fact that an OODBMS is better suited to handling complex, interrelated data than an RDBMS means that an OODBMS can outperform an RDBMS by ten to a thousand times depending on the complexity of the data being handled. Class Hierarchy: Data in the real world is usually having hierarchical characteristics. The ever popular Employee example used in most RDBMS texts is easier to describe in an OODBMS than in an RDBMS. An Employee can be a Manager or not, this is usually done in an RDBMS by having a type identifier field or creating another table which uses foreign keys to indicate the relationship between Managers and Employees. In an OODBMS, the Employee class is simply a parent class of the Manager class. Circumventing the Need for a Query Language: A query language is not necessary for accessing data from an OODBMS unlike an RDBMS since interaction with the database is done by transparently accessing objects. It is still possible to use queries in an OODBMS however. No Impedence Mismatch: In a typical application that uses an object oriented programming language and an RDBMS, a signifcant amount of time is usually spent mapping tables to objects and back. There are also various problems that can occur when the atomic types in the database do not map cleanly to the atomic types in the programming language and vice versa. This impedance mismatch is completely avoided when using an OODBMS. No Primary Keys: The user of an RDBMS has to worry about uniquely identifying tuples by their values and making sure that no two tuples have the same primary key values to avoid error conditions. In an OODBMS, the unique identification of objects is done behind the scenes via OIDs and is completely invisible to the user. Thus there is no limitation on the values that can be stored in an object. One Data Model: A data model typically should model entities and their relationships, constraints and operations that change the states of the data in the system. With an RDBMS it is not possible to model the dynamic operations or rules that change the state of the data in the system because this is beyond the scope of the database. Thus applications that use RDBMS systems usually have an Entity Relationship diagram to model the static parts of the system and a separate model for the operations and behaviours of entities in the application. With an OODBMS there is no disconnect between the database model and the application model because the entities are just other objects in the system. An entire application can thus be comprehensively modelled in one UML diagram.

My Educational Philosophy Essay -- Philosophy of Education Teachers Te

My Educational Philosophy Plato/Socrates and Rousseau have become major philosophical approaches. All these opinions are different compared to mine. Some are the same and some are different. I do agree with some of the philosophers’ points, but some I disagree with. My philosophical view relates to some of the philosophers views. First, Socrates (469-399 B.C.) view is on asking students repeatedly questions to make them rethink what they believe. He wanted to help others find the truths that lie within their minds. His questions dealt with the nature of love or the good. He wanted to help his students develop guides to a virtuous life. I agree with this to a certain degree. Helping students develop a guide to a virtuous life is good. Repeatedly asking students questions about "love" or the "good" is not a good approach. I think students have learned as they live. You have to learn through what you go through. Live and learn is a good philosophy. You have to think and learn before you react to something. Pushing a human to learn is not going to make them learn. Experience contributes to learning. It is a big part of learning. Thinking is also a big part. Plato is a philosopher whose view I partly agree with also. Plato believed that the human soul has three parts: intellect (reason), spirit (passion), and appetite (basic animal desires). This was his philosophy on life. He is right. We have reason to figure it out. There is a reason for everything. There is a reason why everything happens the way it does. If there was no reason, what is the purpose for anything? Spirit (passion) is also a true philosophy. Every human has the desire for passion. A hobby is a passion. A lover is a passion. Appetite (basic animal desires) ... ...em through it. The rules in the classroom are very important. There should be few and strict rules. If there were no rules, the teachers would get ran over by the students. The children need to know their limits in the classroom. They need to know who is in control. Although I have disagreed with some of Rousseau's views, I agree with most of them. Rousseau's philosophies are mainly what I agree with most. He was a great philosopher and he will follow me through my teaching career. I hope someday my ways of teaching, how I go about it, and what I teach, will reflect someone's life. I hope the student's look at me as a great teacher and someday they will look back on me and say "she taught me something I need to know for the rest of my life." I want to be one of the teacher's who are looked back on. I plan to peruse my teaching career. I am very excited about it.

Re-viewing Summer: the Way to Highland Park, A Selection From A Walker In the City :: Kazin Summer Highland Park

Kazin's Summer: The Way to Highland Park Sitting on the marble steps of the old, traditional American church, I began to feel cold. Two oriental lions, carved out of old white marble, surrounded me. Their faces were mean, and they seemed to be staring at something. As the beasts remained perfectly still, tiny creatures – black ants and brown bugs –very busily walked on their backs. As I looked around from my cold spot on the step, I could see an old, brick house. This house was like none other on the block. With a large American flag hanging on the door, this house – a symbol of the American dream – stood taller than all the other houses. My attention then shifted to two great big evergreen trees on each facade, and the beautiful bed of flowers, of all shapes, sizes, and colors, wrapped tightly around the base of the house – the tracings of an American summer. There was a light through the upstairs’ window of the house. I could see a mother sitting with her baby son. Although all I could hear were the many crickets singing softly in the night, I knew that the loving mother was telling a bedtime story to her sweet and sleepy child. My America is a very beautiful place, not only because of the big cities, tall buildings, stone statues, and pretty flowers, but also because of the people who make America what it is today. Knowing within every blue, black, brown, green, and gray eye you see on the streets of America – and like me, every window you look through – there are stories, hopes and even dreams, this thought brings me the greatest pleasure, as it did Alfred Kazin. Kazin’s greatest pleasure came looking at the many historical landmarks that New York had to offer and thinking of the many people who struggled to make those astonishing contributions. In â€Å"Summer: The Way to Highland Park† (1951), Kazin takes us into his childhood in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, describing his America with such tactile distinction that we too can â€Å"taste the damp sweetness of Italian cheese† and â€Å"see the clumps of red and brown meat dripping off [the] sausage rings† (Kazin 332). â€Å"You cannot grow up in that kind of environment, without absorbing and re-expressing a fantastically physical world,† states Kazin in an National Public Radio news recording.

Horror of War in Dulce et Decorum Est :: Dulce et Decorum Est Essays

Horror of War in Dulce et Decorum Est Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est" is a magnificent, and terrible, description of a gas attack suffered by a group of soldiers in World War 1. One of this group is unable to get on his helmet, and suffers horribly. Through his shifting rhythms, dramatic description, and rich, raw images, Owen seeks to convince us that the horror of war far outweighs the patriotic cliches of those who glamorize war. In the first of four stanzas, Owen presents the death-like calm before the storm of the gas attack. Alliteration and onomatopoeia join with powerful figurative and literal images of war to produce a pitiful sense of despair. "Bent beggars", "knock-kneed", cough and "curse" like "hags" through "sludge." All of this compressed into just two lines! The third line places the speaker of the poem with this trudging group. In the simple "Men marched asleep" sentence, the three beats imitate the falling rhythm of these exhausted men. The pun "blood-shod" makes its grim effect on us slowly. We guess, too, that "blind" and "lame" suggest several levels of debilitation. The stanza ends with the ironic-quiet sounds of the "shells" dropping "softly behind." In contrast to the first stanza, the second stanza is full of action. The oxymoron,"ecstasy of fumbling", seems at first odd, but then perfect, as a way to describe the controlled panic -instantly awakened with heightened sensibility- of men with just seconds to find a gas mask. "But..." tells all. One man is too late and is seen only through the "green sea" of mustard gas, "yelling... stumbling...drowning...guttering...choking." The third stanza's brief two lines emphasize the nightmare these events continue to be for our speaker. In the last stanza, Owen becomes more insistent as he drives atus with the steady rhythmic beat of iambic pentameter. We feel the "jolt" of the wagon, see the "white eyes writhing" in this "hanging face," and, most horribly, hear the "gargling "of the blood choked lungs. The amazing sound-filled simile, "like a devil's sick of sin," testifies, along with all the rest, to the overwhelming truth of this experience. It is not "if" we could see the horror of this scene.

Philosophy 101 Study Guide

* Socrates: Philosopher who believed in an absolute right or wrong; asked students pointed questions to make them use their reason, later became Socratic Method. Charged with introducing strange gods and corrupting the young, he committed suicide. * Rhetoric: Saying things in a convincing matter * Skepticism: The idea that nothing can ever be known for certain. * Sophists: A wise and informed person, critical of traditional mythology, rejected â€Å"fruitless† philosophical speculations.A member of a school of ancient Greek professional philosophers who were expert in and taught the skills of rhetoric, argument, and debate, but were criticized for specious reasoning. * Socratic Irony: Feign Ignorance, or pretend to be dumber than really are to expose the weaknesses of people's thinking * â€Å"One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing† * â€Å"He knows what good is will do good† * Plato (428-347 B. C. Athens, Greece): Student of Socrates. Established ‘The Academy'. Wrote Dialogues. He was a Dualist. * Two parts to a human: Body ; Soul Plato regarded the body and soul as separate entities * A person may crave or have an appetite for something, yet resist the craving with willpower. A correctly operating soul requires the highest part, reason, to control the lowest part, appetite, with assistance from the will. * Plato believed that though the body dies and disintegrates, the soul continues to live forever. After the death of the body, the soul migrates to what Plato called the realm of the pure forms. There, it exists without a body, contemplating the forms.After a time, the soul is reincarnated in another body and returns to the world. But the reincarnated soul retains a dim recollection of the realm of forms and yearns for it * Theory of ideas/forms: the reality behind the material world, which contains the eternal and immutable â€Å"patterns† behind the various phenomena, we come across in nature. * Plato believ ed that everything tangible in nature flows. There are no substances that do not dissolve, and so everything is made of a timeless â€Å"mold† or â€Å"form† that is eternal and immutable. * Eternal: Lasting or existing orever; without end or beginning. * Immutable: Unable to be changed * Form (Ideas): A form is an abstract property or quality. Take any property of an object; separate it from that object and consider it by itself, and you are contemplating a form. For example, if you separate the roundness of a basketball from its color, its weight, etc. and consider just roundness by itself, you are thinking of the from of roundness. * The forms are transcendent. This means that they do not exist in space and time. A material object, a basketball, exists at a particular place at a particular time.A form, roundness, does not exist at any place or time. * Pure – the forms only exemplify one property. Material objects are impure; they combine a number of propertie s such as blackness, circularity, and hardness into one object. * Archetypes – The forms are archetypes; that is, they are perfect examples of the property that they exemplify. The forms are the perfect models upon which all material objects are based. The form of redness, for example, is red, and all red objects are simply imperfect * Ultimately Real – The forms are the ultimately real entities, not material objects.All material objects are copies or images of some collection of forms; their reality comes only from the forms. * Causes – The forms are the causes of all things. * They provide the explanation of why any thing is the way it is * They are the source or origin of the being of all things * Systematically Interconnected – The forms comprise a system leading down from the form of the Good moving from more general to more particular, from more objective to more subjective.This systematic structure is reflected in the structure of the dialectic pro cess by which we come to knowledge of the forms. * Realm of Forms (World of Ideas): The world that we perceive through the mind, using our concepts, seems to be permanent and unchanging. Humans have access to the realm of forms through the mind, through reason, given Plato's theory of the subdivisions of the human soul. This gives them access to an unchanging world, invulnerable to the pains and changes of the material world.By detaching ourselves from the material world and our bodies and developing our ability to concern ourselves with the forms, we find a value which is not open to change or disintegration. * Realm of the Illusory (World of the Senses): The world we perceive through the senses seems to be always changing. It seems that all the objects we perceive with the senses are simply images or experiences in our mind. They are only subjective points of views on the real objects. For example, the world appears radically differently to a color blind person than it does to us. The objects that we perceive as colored, then, must not be the real objects, but just our experience of these objects that is determined by my particular subjective point of view and perceptual apparatus. * True Knowledge * He believed that as result of the constant change within the material world we could never really have true knowledge. * Eros: Greek god of love; son of Aphrodite; often shown blindfolded * Rationalism: the belief that human reason is the primary source of our knowledge of the world * Three parts of the Soul Reason (Intellect) * In the Head * Provide Wisdom * Where our individual/ unique talents lie * If reason functions excellently (arete) then we are wise to that extent * If we exercise wisdom to the extent then that part of the soul is excellent * Responsible for love of learning, spirited, & animated * Passion [Appetite/Desire] * From Greek word â€Å"Pathe† meaning the irrational movements of the soul * In gut * Provides temperance If passion function s excellently then we are temperate * If we exercise temperance to the extent then that part of the soul is excellent * Responsible for Desire * Thymos * Means Spirit/Will * In Heart * Provides Courage * Can help reason master passion * If we exercise courage to the extent then that part of the soul is excellent * Responsible for anger * Views on Women: Plato believed that women had a right, or you might even call it a role to play in society. Their role was to be a significant part of society, different from men, but still play a part.Plato believed that women were necessary for society to run smoothly. * Women were not equals of men * Women lacked strength * Women are naturally maternal * In Plato’s time it was unheard of to view women as more than a piece of property. * Dualist: a sharp division between the reality of thought and extended reality. * Aristotle (384-322 B. C; Macedonia, Athens): Pupil of Plato's. Believed Plato's world of ideas did not exist but that the ete rnal idea was really a concept- the idea of a horse that we have after seeing many of them. Learn know through the senses. â€Å"20 questions†. Causes * What type of material it is made of? * Wood * What type of thing it is? * Table * What caused it to come into being? * How it was built; the task needed to be done to create the table * Purpose or Final Cause (Telos): The purpose, end, aim, or goal of something. The final cause is the cause why a thing exists. * Meant to be a dinner table or desk * Views on Women: Viewed them as â€Å"unfinished men†. * Golden Mean: One cannot be too much of one thing or too less, need to be balanced * Empiricism: Derive all knowledge from what the senses tell us.There are no innate ideas and cannot prove the existence of God, eternity or substance * Hellenism: The period of time and the Greek-dominated culture that prevailed in the three Hellenistic Kingdoms of Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt. The diffusion of Greek Culture throughout the Mediterranean world after the conquest of Alexander the Great. * The Cynics: True happiness doesn't come from external advantages, like power/good health. Once you have true happiness, it can't be lost. Their own/others health shouldn't disturb them. * The Stoics * Stoicism was founded by a man named Zeno, who lived from 335-263 BC. He used to lecture not in a classroom but outside, on the porch of a public building * The word for porch in Greek is STOA, and so people called his students Stoics * People should try to reach inner peacefulness * Moderate in everything * Be happy with what they had. This would lead to a happy life * The best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how he behaved * Destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment * Sage: person of â€Å"moral and intellectual perfection† * Would not suffer from such emotions The Epicureans: They believed pleasure is the greatest good, but to attain pleasure was to live modest ly, gain knowledge of the workings of the world, and limit to one's desires. * Neo-Platonism: Belief of two poles on Earth, one end is the dive light called the One (God). Other end is absolute darkness, no existence, the absence of light. * Syncretism: The combining of different beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. * Mysticism: One with God, merging with him. â€Å"I am God. † or â€Å"I am You. † * Two Cultures The Indo-Europeans: Related languages of Europe, India, and Iran, which are believed to have descended from a common tongue spoken roughly in the third millennium B. C. by an agricultural peoples originating in SE Europe * The Semites: A member of any of the peoples who speak or spoke a Semitic language, including in particular the Jews and Arabs- mostly Middle Easterners, they saw history as an on going line, world will end on judgment day * The Middle Ages: Period of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century * St. Augustine: Latin-speaking philosopher and theologian who lived in the Roman Africa Province. Influence of the Arabs: The Arabic-Latin translation movements in the Middle Ages, which paralleled that from Greek into Latin, led to the transformation of almost all philosophical disciplines in the medieval Latin world. * St. Thomas Aquinas: Tried to make Aristotle’s philosophy compatible with Christianity. Believed Christendom and philosophy were the same thing. Used bible as a source of reason. Created a synthesis between faith and knowledge. Said there are natural theological truths—truths that can be reached through both Christian faith and innate reason.Tried to prove god's existence of Aristotle’s philosophy. Everything has a formal cause. God has revealed himself to mankind through both reason and the bible. * The Renaissance: period of European history at the close of the Middle Ages and the rise of the modern world; a cultural rebirth from the 14th throu gh the middle of the 17th centuries * Reformation: religious movement of 16th century that began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church and resulted in the creation of Protestant churches * Three Major Discoveries: The compass, Firearms, and printing press. The Baroque: Historic period from about 1600 until 1750 when the baroque style of art, architecture, and music flourished in Europe * Carpe Diem: Seize the day. * Memento Mori: â€Å"Remember your mortality†- meaning ‘Remember, you will die'. * Idealism: the philosophical theory that ideas are the only reality. * Materialism: the belief of material things (atoms and the void). All real things derive from concrete substances. Determinism: Laplace (french mathematician) said that everything that happens is predetermined- contradicting the belief of free will and suggests that the outcome of everything is written in the stars * Descartes: French philosopher and mathematician; developed dualistic theory of min d and matter. Father of modern Philosophy. * His main concern was what we can know – certain knowledge * â€Å"Je pense donc je suis†: â€Å"I think, therefore I am† * â€Å"Cogito ergo sum†: â€Å"I think, therefore I am† said by Rene Descartes. * Two Forms of Reality: Thought & Extention Agnostic: Unsure/Undecided/Needs more information. Unable to say categorically whether or not the gods/God exists; brought about by Sophist Protagoras * Atheist: Does not believe in God. * Spinoza: Baruch Spinoza-Jewish-Dutch rationalist (one of the great rationalists in 17th century); opposed Descartes' mind-body dualism; he laid groundwork for Enlightenment. Also wrote the book of Ethics * Historico-Critical Interpretation of the Bible: Spinoza applied the scientific method to the reading of Scripture, and this became what is now known as the â€Å"historical-critical method. His view was that religious conflict in Europe was a result of differing interpretati on on key biblical passages. He developed this method of reading Scripture in order to bring about universal agreement on its meaning. * Pantheist: God is infinite, he is present in everything. * Universal Law of Nature: the laws and rules of nature, according to which all things happen, and change from one form to another, are always and everywhere the same.So the way of understanding the nature of anything, of whatever kind, must also be the same, * One Substance: The claim that there is one and only one substance. This substance he identifies as God. * â€Å"Substance†: Does not need the conception of any other thing in order to be conceived * substance is its own cause * that it is infinite * that it is the only substance; for if there were two substances, they would limit each other and cease to be independent * Monist: reduces nature and the condition of all things to one single substance. Inner-Cause: Humans come to understand that their struggle follows by necessity f rom the struggle of Nature, and that it has an inner link with other parts of the environment through a common inner cause, Nature. * Determinist: Laplace (french mathematician) said that everything that happens is predetermined- contradicting the belief of free will and suggests that the outcome of everything is written in the stars * Free Will: Doctrine that conduct of the individual is the result of personal choice. not divine forces of fate) * Locke: English empiricist philosopher who believed that all knowledge is derived from sensory experience. * Empiricism: Derive all knowledge from what the senses tell us- came from Aristotle. There are no innate ideas and cannot prove the existence of God, eternity or substance) * Two questions about ideas? * Where do we get all of these ideas which are the content of our knowedge? * Whether things in the world fit our ideas, and not whether our ideas correspond to the nature of things in the world * Tabula Rasa: Clean slate. Primary Quali ties: Extension, weight, senses reproduce them objectively. * Secondary Qualities: Color, smell; reproduce the things that are inherent in the things themselves. * Natural Rights: Locke's political philosophy is his theory of natural rights privileges or claims to which an individual was entitled * Hume (1711-1776; English): Scottish philosopher whose sceptical philosophy restricted human knowledge to that which can be perceived by the senses. He was an Empiricist. * Two types of Perception * Impression: how we experience the world Ideas: what we recall of our impressions * Faith v. Knowledge: Knowledge is divided into three Categories * Knowledge * Belief * Faith (this is of lower grade than belief and knowledge) * Laws of Nature or Cause & Effect: Emphasized that the expectation of one thing following another does not lie in the things themselves, but in our mind. Sophist Teaching compared to Socrates Teachings: Sophist's desired money in return for teaching young men various thin gs about political and social life, such as rhetoric. ? Socrates was a philosopher, whom spent his days wandering around the gym and the agora, talking to people. He developed a following of young Greeks, such as Plato and Xenephon. Socrates did not charge for his teachings. He also made a habit of proving just how little Sophist's actually knew. Many people did believe Socrates was a Sophist and this is a reasonable claim, because Sophist were know to be knowledgeable people that taught the same skills Socrates was.Although Socrates would not consider himself a Sophist and would be known to talk down about them about how little they actually knew. Plato’s Myth of the Cave: A few people were sitting underground in a cave, facing the wall. They cannot turn around, and all they have ever seen are shadows of objects projected onto the wall. One manages to turn around, and he sees the actual items that he has only ever seen shadows of. It is completely dazzling. Plato is trying t o demonstrate the relationship of the material world and the world of ideas.Compared to the world of ideas, the material world is dreary. When Aristotle disagreed with Plato’s Theory of Forms; What did Aristotle offer up as an alternative explanation for Reality? Aristotle argued that the theory of forms is seriously flawed: it is not supported by good arguments; it requires a form for each thing; and it is too mathematical. Worst of all, on Aristotle's view, the theory of forms cannot adequately explain the occurrence of change. By identifying the thing with its essence, the theory cannot account for the generation of new substances.Aristotle was the first philosopher to formalize the subject of Metaphysics. As Aristotle explains, Metaphysics is the study of the One Substance (and its Properties) which exists and causes / connects all things, and is therefore the necessary foundation for all human knowledge. Aristotle was correct to realize that One Substance must have Prope rties that cause matter's interconnected activity and motion. Hellenistic Period in Mediterranean World (300 BCE 0 400 BCE): Common themes that pervaded multiple cultures at this time? The time between the death of King Alexander the Great and the emergence of Ancient Greece * the term Hellenistic to define the period when Greek culture spread in the non-Greek world after Alexander’s conquest * The Greek language being established as the official language of the Hellenistic world * The art and literature of the era were transformed accordingly to more Greek styles * The Greek were the majority over the Mediterranean world, but they often outnumbered by natives in the land; sometime there would be little interaction in some places between the Greek and the natives * The development of the Alexander Romance (mainly in Egypt) owes much to Greek theater as well as other styles of story. * The spread of Greek culture throughout the Near East and Asia owed much to the development o f cities. * The identification of local gods with similar Greek deities facilitated the building of Greek-style temples, and the Greek culture in the cities also meant that buildings. How is Christianity a blending between the Indo-European & Semitic World views? The Greeks and Romans are a part of Indo-European culture, while the Jews belong to Semitic culture. He describes how Indo-European culture was characterized by a belief in many gods—pantheism.Similar ideas popped up in many different Indo-European languages, and were expressed by words that resembled each other greatly. The Semites, on the other hand, are characterized by monotheism, the belief in one god. Judaism, Islam, and Christianity are all Semitic religions. But Christianity complicates things, because it spread throughout Indo-European cultures and incorporated many features of those cultures. Semitic religions believe in one like Christianity, but also Indo-European culture believes in a messiah just like J esus in the Christianity religion; so technically both cultures played a part in shaping Christianity. What is Descartes first movement of what is referred to as modern philosophy?What was his main â€Å"project† & what type of conclusions did he arrive at? Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the Natural Sciences. It can be said his main goal was to find out truth to God's existence then human existence, as these were the main two subjects. Descartes was the first philosopher in a long time to attempt to bring all knowledge into a coherent philosophy. His concerns were with certain knowledge—that which we can know for sure—and the mind/body relationship. Because philosophers believed in a mechanistic view of nature, it was critical to figure out how the mind's thoughts became translated into actions of the body.Descartes doubted everything that was not certain and then realized that the very fact of his doub ting meant he must be thinking. From there, he decided that the existence of God is also certain, and went on to define the world in terms of thought and matter, which he called extension. The mind and body interact, but the goal is to get the mind to operate solely according to reason. What did Spinoza propose as a way for understanding the world? How does this compare to Descartes conclusions? How are they similar? How are they different? He rejected Descartes's dualism and believed that thought and extensions are simply two of God's features that we can perceive. He had a deterministic view of the world, believing that God controlled all through natural laws.Spinoza felt that only God was truly free but that people could attain happiness through seeing things â€Å"from the perspective of eternity. † They are similar, because they both believe in God, but they are very different from Descartes relying mostly on reason, and Spinoza thinking that God controls everything thro ugh Natural Laws. Hume’s ideas on morality & the source of morality: David Hume, an 18th century philosopher, stated that morality is based on sentiments rather than reason. He concluded this after he developed his â€Å"theory† of knowledge which stated that everything we could know was observable by the senses — he was a naturalistic philosopher. He then looked at situations in which he thought that there was an obvious â€Å"wrong† and he

Culture Art and Technology Essay

Among figures of religion, Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammed, and Siddhartha Gautama are some of the prominent individuals who have shared before the world their religious experiences with respect to their own religion. Hinduism, Islam, and Buddhism have all received a great amount of fundamental advancement from the ideas and actions of these important individuals. Not only did they help shape the very religion they are attached to—they established it like no other. Yet even though their beliefs and characters are particularly unique from one another being human examples of the tradition in which they are a part of, they still hold one common strand—they all had religious experiences that were influenced by their family ties, geographical location and cultural background to name a few. Through the course of the years, history tells us that the raids later evolved into a struggle motivated by religious grounding— believers against non-believers. This indicates the idea that the spiritual experiences and conquests of Mohammed hold a central position in defining the religious practices of Muslims. While Gandhi espouses peaceful and non-violent methods in attaining the causes of Hinduism, Mohammed and Islam’s concept of jihad adopts the idea that religion itself can be the primary reason for engaging in violent measures in order to further the goal of Islam. Nevertheless, the fact remains that Mohammed’s role in the development of Islam as an established religion in many countries separated by geographical boundaries is crucial inasmuch as it cannot be denied. The same holds true for Siddhartha Gautama whose reputation in the religion of Buddhism is greatly acknowledged as essential both by believers and academic scholars. As Herman Hesse suggests, Siddhartha espouses the idea that, for one to know one’s quest in life, it is imperative to find the source from within and not from without, like a â€Å"flowing river† that attracts â€Å"a deep love for this flowing water† (Hesse 100). Introspection, or an inner contemplation, is one of the main precepts being pushed forward by Siddhartha which further suggests the idea that each individual must take time to isolate one’s self from others in order to be able to focus and to introspect. This idea can be rooted from one of Siddhartha’s life-transforming moments. The religious experience of Siddhartha began after his encounter with a sick man, a poor man, a beggar and a corpse that revealed unto him the idea that humanity is filled with sorrow brought about by the sufferings in life . Being isolated away from the outside world after being confined within his home for almost the entire duration of his early years, Siddhartha began to realize the deeper side of life after the experience. He decided to leave behind his previous lifestyle and pursued, instead, a life of intense asceticism. However, Siddhartha realized that to live one’s life is to neither live in excessive abundance of wealth and material possessions nor in extreme plainness after overhearing a teacher discussing music. In the end, he pursed the Middle Way, or the way of life that takes the middle path instead of the extremes . These aspects hold the key to understanding the Buddhists’ primary religious experience which is significantly felt, at least in modern times, in the social context of teaching others the way of living life in the Middle Path through a life of internal contemplation or personal reflection. As Siddhartha dedicated his life to pursuing the Middle Path after his yogic meditations, followers of the Buddhist religion later on adopted this method as one of the cornerstones or identities of their group. This suggests the idea that the religious experience of Buddhists in general is strongly tied to a personal level as its most basic foundation. Manifested through yogic meditations, Buddhist monks of today incorporate in their daily lives these principles . Moreover, it can be observed that Islam calls for a life that is centered on Allah while Hinduism, as exemplified by the life of Gandhi, calls for a life that should be dedicated towards the lives of others . It is religious imperative in Islam that Muslims should direct their lives towards revering Allah in every thought and action and that, correspondingly, the religious experience of every Muslim should all the more reflect their strong attachment to Allah (Boyd 69). As Mohammed himself is the foremost Muslim who has been able to fully actualize this thought, it remained an integral part in the lives of the millions of Muslims all around the world. This incorporates the idea that the religious experience of a single individual—the prophet Mohammed—has greatly affected the succeeding generations that came to follow the same path. While Islam essentially requires the primordial importance of Allah, Hinduism has been closely attached to the sense that it is a religion that is centered on others. The same holds true for Buddhism although the religion reflects reverence to â€Å"the Awakened One† or Buddha and that Hinduism itself has its own versions of celestial entities or â€Å"Devas† as well as the concept of â€Å"Brahman† which refers to the greater Self or God. These things constitute the belief that, although Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam have parallel ideas of higher beings or divine entities, it appears that Islamic treatment for a higher being supersedes those of the other two. This can be rooted out from the fact that the scriptures of Islam and its religious followers and believers put Allah above everything else while Hinduism and Buddhism, through their yogic meditations, allow or give due importance to the self as well. This is not to say that Islam as a religion does not give due importance to its believers. It only entails the idea that Islam treats man as a being that should be placed under Allah and that Hinduism and Buddhism illustrate a rather more salient consideration for the welfare of man. Mahatma Gandhi, for example, showed his concern for others by teaching the poor exploited peasants in the region of Champaran in Bihar about the satyagraha, inquiring about their sufferings, educating them to fight for their rights and at the same time to carry out their obligations to the nation as a whole . Siddhartha, on the other hand, lived his forty-five years traveling along the country, finding sustenance on the alms given by other people after teaching the people the means that will liberate humanity from worldly sufferings . Moreover, one of the notable religious experiences of both Gandhi and Siddhartha is pegged on the idea that they both waged a â€Å"battle† in terms of forwarding their beliefs in the context of their religion. While Gandhi strived for peaceful measures—passive resistance, for example—in order to achieve his aim for a peaceful world with equality among religions and Siddhartha pushed his ideologies of liberating humanity from the worldly sufferings they experience through teaching them the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path, Mohammed took a rather different approach. The fact that Mohammed engaged in jihad or in battles through the â€Å"sword† reveals the idea that Mohammed will take up arms in defending the religion against aggressors or in forwarding Islamic tenets. Thus, it can be argued that the religious experience of Mohammed, or at least the part in which he waged battles in his religious life, is distinctively different from those of Gandhi and Siddhartha. The differences in the religious experiences among the three can be largely seen on their corresponding actions and exploits during their existence and the resulting consequences it created on their religions. This also affects these religions view on disasters. Jihad is indubitably a central part of Islam; Yogic meditations play a significant role in Buddhism and Hinduism with former embracing the Middle Path and the latter guiding the lives of its believers through its sacred texts. The Qur’an greatly emphasizes the idea that Allah should be above everything else; Hinduism seeks to treat everyone and every other religion their due recognition in the sense that to each is his own truth or, at the most, God; and Buddhism’s goal is to free human beings from suffering and the cycle of rebirth and make them know the â€Å"truth†. Conclusion The religious experiences of Mahatma Gandhi, Siddhartha Gautama, and Mohammed all have a great bearing on the religions they belong to. These individuals have a large sum of contributions not only to the expansion of the reaches of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam but on the very central precepts of these religions. Although each of them has their own specific religious experiences and beliefs, and that while it may be true that each of them forwards distinctive approaches in meeting their religious goals, they all nevertheless share the parallel idea that religion is a significant section of their lives. In essence, however, their respective cultural background, geographical location, and family ties among many others have strongly shaped their religious experiences which, as a consequence, influenced their religion. Above all these, by comparing and contrasting the lives of Mohammed, Siddhartha and Gandhi, one is able to better understand some of the main—and oftentimes subtle—differences between these religions view on disasters in life. References: Aly, A. â€Å"The Life of the Prophet Muhammad†. 1999. (October 3, 1999): AT&T Knowledge Ventures. April 2008. . Borman, William. â€Å"Life, the Chief Value: Wrong Aims and Methods, and False Views. † Boyd, Stephen Blake. â€Å"Malcolm X’s Religious Pilgrimage: From Black Separatism to a Universal Way. † Redeeming Men: Religion and Masculinities. Ed. Stephen Blake Boyd. Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. 69. Gandhi and Non-Violence. Albany, N. Y. : State University of New York Press, 1986. 200. Gandhi, Mahatma. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth. Long Island, N. Y. : Buccaneer Books Inc, 2007. Hesse, Hermann. Siddhartha. New York: Bantam Classics, 1981. Levine, Marvin. â€Å"The Story of Siddhartha. † The Positive Psychology of Buddhism and Yoga: Paths to a Mature Happiness: With a Special Application to Handling Anger. Mahwah, N. J. : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. , 2000. 12. â€Å"Life of Siddhartha Gautama†. 2002. Human Ecology. April 2008. . Mahatma Gandhi: His Life in Pictures. New Delhi: The Central Electric Press, 1954. Neusner, Jacob, and Tamara Sonn. â€Å"Jihad (Islam). † Comparing Religions through Law: Judaism and Islam. New York: Routledge, 2002. 203. â€Å"Some Thoughts on the Power of Focused, Principled Hatred. † Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror. Washington, D. C. : Brassey’s Books, 2004. 6. Swenson, Don. â€Å"The Dilemma of Delimitation: The Study of Ethos. † Society, Spirituality, and the Sacred: A Social Scientific Introduction. Peterborough, Ont. , Canada: New York Broadview Press, 1999. 255. Yob, Iris M. â€Å"Growing up Buddhist. † Keys to Interfaith Parenting. Hauppauge, N. Y. : Barron’s, 1998. 79.