Rousseau and Marx on Historical Progress

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This is an essay I wrote last semester for my Modern and Postmodern Philosophy class.  For Rousseau, historical progress only further removes man from his natural state of living. He argues that the cultivation of civilized studies weaken the natural virtues of men; in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, Rousseau writes, “our souls have become corrupted to the extent that our sciences and our arts have advanced towards perfection.” He cites Romans of old as saying, “Since the learned men began to appear among us, good people have slipped away.” Rousseau attributes this decline to the intentional pursuit…

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A Brief Explanation of the Scientific Method

This week my sister and I started taking an Intro to Chemistry MOOC from Duke University. We’re a little daunted by the math requirements, but I’m so far determined to figure it out! In one of the first lectures of the week we reviewed the scientific method. I won’t go through it in detail, but I’ll share what I learned about some of the terms used in science. Most everything in science starts with observations. From here you develop a hypothesis to explain what you’ve seen. At this point the hypothesis is just an educated guess, you still must conduct experiments…

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More Classical Conversations Lesson Ideas

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Part One: New Grammar Lesson Ideas  Science Experiments Science really varies for me, mostly based on if it is about something I’m familiar with. A lot of what we did last semester was fairly new to me, and I wasn’t able to devote a lot of extra time to research ahead of time. But I have been trying to utilize my resources, such as Khan Academy, and get a really solid understanding of the concepts ahead of time. This week was fantastic because I was able to explain water molecules, hydrogen bonds, and such. If I have a good grasp…

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Things We Lost in the Fire

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Things We Lost in the Fire is another favorite Bastille song, and this is why. There is no guarantee of anything in this life. We have this incessant desire to collect and amass. We forget that we are sojourners–we try to make our home here. Whether it is material possessions, memories, relationships, whatever we find valuable we store up and treasure. We hold on so tightly to this world. But what happens? It is “shattered into ash.” It won’t last. What we hold so carefully crumbles at our touch. How hard this lesson is to learn. There is so much that…

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Doctor Who?

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If you know me at all, you know that I’m a Doctor Who fan. I am quite sure it is impossible for me to talk for 5 minutes without making at least one reference to Doctor Who. I want to eventually write about the 50th Anniversary Special and the Christmas Special, but I thought it would make sense to first try to share with you what it is that I find so compelling about Doctor Who. I’m not obsessed with many TV shows or movies (currently it is just Doctor Who and Sherlock), so why Doctor Who? Just to give…

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The Future is Upon Us

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Over the past year or so I’ve become a huge fan of epic music. This is the kind of music you hear in movie trailers, epic movies (think Lord of the Rings) and video games, or so I’m told. Not having ever played video games, I wouldn’t actually know, haha. But, epic music is perfect study background music. Most of time I can’t listen to vocal music while studying because it is so distracting. I used to listen to classical music instead, but it is hard to find classical music intense enough to keep me awake. Epic is like classical music except far more intense and motivating than most classical songs. So at 11pm when  you’re desperately trying to stay focused, epic music makes you feel like with this essay assignment you are conquering the dread evil that threatens humanity’s existence. It makes you feel like you could truly just walk into Mordor. Anyways…I just discovered that one of my favorite epic groups, Audiomachine, released a new album this year, called Existence. So I listened to it several times last night while studying chemistry. This, I determined, is my favorite song from that album. Lest you think I listen to nothing but Bastille, I thought I’d share it with you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eHQvQeH4qg