In a world where everyone has experienced "the same poignant life experiences, such as birth, helplessness, illness, old age, and death," it is incredible to think of the number of ways that peoples can go through these events in life. It is most common that their attitudes and responses are influenced by their environment and society. As Clyde Kluckhohn had explained in "Mirror for Man", the best explanation for any human action is the "concept of culture." One cannot clearly define this idea, but through the comparison of two different groups of people hopefully one can better understand the meaning of culture. By comparing Vietnam and the United States, two very contrasting nations, one can see the force behind the concept of culture in shaping people's lives.
In terms of education, the similarities between the two countries are few. Both aim at improving their people's lives, and yet the method in which this is achieved differs greatly. Vietnam, a small country with a large population, has to make do with the lack of technology. It stresses hard work rather than the use of machines. Children are encouraged to do math mentally rather than depend on calculators. As a result, the Vietnamese people do not consider it a sacrifice that they should lead a hard life. Also, their education emphasizes morality rather than independent thinking. Therefore, most Vietnamese children would never think of leaving their families before marriage, unlike the Americans, who would leave for college right after high school or move out of their parents' house to live with friends. The Americans would also prefer to make their lives as easy as possible, which means that rather than adding mentally, they would turn to an adding machine or a computer. Their two ways of thinking differ as a result of different education methods.
One can also see how culture causes people to be different in their dress styles. In Vietnam, it is acceptable to wear clothes similar to pyjamas out in the street. Yet in America, one cannot do this. One has to dress properly, which means that pyjamas is worn at night and to bed only. However, it is incomprehensible to the Vietnamese why the Americans have to dress so well to go to sleep, why they have to wear nightgowns or pyjamas with fancy designs. They do not understand why it is important to put on a robe when one eats breakfast.
Culture often means an appreciation of the finer things in life; however, culture brings members of a society together. We have a sense of belonging because we share similar beliefs, values, and attitudes about what’s right and wrong. As a result, culture changes as people adapt to their surroundings. According to Bishop Donald, “let it begin with me and my children and grandchildren” (211). Among other things, culture influences what you eat; how you were raised and will raise your own children? If, when, and whom you will marry; how you make and spend money. Truth is culture is adaptive and always changing over time because
Any hypothesis, Gould says, begins with the collection of facts. In this early stage of a theory development bad science leads nowhere, since it contains either little or contradicting evidence. On the other hand, Gould suggests, testable proposals are accepted temporarily, furthermore, new collected facts confirm a hypothesis. That is how good science works. It is self-correcting and self-developing with the flow of time: new information improves a good theory and makes it more precise. Finally, good hypotheses create logical relations to other subjects and contribute to their expansion.
Vietnam was a highly debated war among citizens of the United States. This war was like no other with regards to how it affected people on the home front. In past war’s, the population of the United States mainly supported the war and admired soldiers for their courage. During the Vietnam War, citizens of the U.S. had a contradictory view than in the past. This dilemma of not having the support of the people originates from the culture and the time period.
In Lord of the Flies, Golding proves that fear draws out man’s inner evil and barbarism. Within the novel, Golding uses characterization of the boys and symbolism of the beast to show the gradual change from their initial civility to savagery and inhumanity. Learned civility, order and humanity become ultimately futile in the face of fear. The author teaches that without logic, fear consumes endlessly. He shows that fear clouds the mind, thus making it absolutely imperative to maintain reason and logic throughout life. Fear will always end in a fate worse than death for those who survive it.
The unificationist account of explanation and the notion of ad hoc-ness as posited by Popper are very similar concepts, but there is a nuance between the two that is worth explaining. Although both notions seem to show why we choose certain explanatory theories over others, they differ in that the model of unification shows us what type of theory we should accept, while Popper’s notion of ad hoc-ness shows us what type of theory to reject. Together, these concepts help us better understand the explanatory model of unification which leads us to a better understanding of why we are inclined to accept certain scientific theories over others. In this paper, I will attempt to show that falsifying theories based on Popper’s ad hoc-ness criteria strengthens the idea of unification by giving people a more specific way of eliminating competing scientific theories in search of the most unified one. First, I will briefly describe the unificationist account of explanation, then I will explain the idea of ad hoc-ness as laid out by Popper, and finally I will show how ad hoc-ness can be used to strengthen the account of unification by means of increasing its objectivity and by providing simpler explanations.
Since the mid-20th century, a central debate in the philosophy of science is the role of epistemic values when evaluating its bearing in scientific reasoning and method. In 1953, Richard Rudner published an influential article whose principal argument and title were “The Scientist Qua Scientist Makes Value Judgments” (Rudner 1-6). Rudner proposed that non-epistemic values are characteristically required when making inductive assertions on the rationalization of scientific hypotheses. This paper aims to explore Rudner’s arguments and Isaac Levi’s critique on his claims. Through objections to Levi’s dispute for value free ideal and highlighting the importance of non-epistemic values within the tenets and model development and in science and engineering,
Ultimate, glaucoma can be a very serious and a chronic disorder that needs to be taken care of right away as soon as something is unusual about the a person’s vision because once vision loss there’s no way to regain eye sight. The best way to do this is to get the eyes checked every so often before something goes wrong. Without eye sight, life itself will be unrealistic and people will struggle trying to explore new opportunities. Over 2.2 million Americans have glaucoma and only half of those know it. In the United States itself, more than 120,000 people are blind from glaucoma. This eye disorder is nothing to sit around and wait for the condition to improve on it’s on because in the end a person will end up blind.
I was born and raised in Vietnam, so I naturally observed my culture from my family and my previous schools. I learned most of my culture by watching and coping the ways my family do things. My family and my friends all spoke Vietnamese, so I eventually knew how to speak and understand deeply about my language as I grew up. At home, my mom cooked many Vietnamese foods, and she also taught me to cook Vietnamese food. So I became accustom Vietnamese food. I also learned that grandparents and parents in my culture are taken care of until they die. At school, I learned to address people formally and greet higher-ranking people first. In Vietnamese culture, ranking and status are not related to wealth, so they are concerned with age and education.
In Clyde Kluckhohn's passage, adapted from his book, Mirror for Man, we are given an illumination of anthropology on the concept of culture. He explains that culture is not only derived by "the way we are brought up," but also personal past experiences and the biological properties of the people concerned. As humans we have learned to adapt to our own personal surroundings and have conditioned ourselves and our life styles to revolve around such surroundings by the most comfortable means possible.
The United States is a country with a diverse existing population today; this country is known as a melting pot of different cultures, each one unique in its own respect. Culture; differentiate one societal group from another by identification beliefs, behaviors, language, traditions, Art, fashion styles, food, religion, politics, and economic systems. Through lifelong, ever changing processes of learning, creativity, and sharing culture shapes our patterns of behavior as well thinking. The Culture’s significance is so intense that it touches almost every aspect of who and what we are. Culture becomes the telescope through which we perceive and evaluate what is going on around us. Trying to define the perplexing term of culture with varying component of distinguishable characteristics is difficult to restrict. Presenly, culture is viewed as consisting primarily of the symbolic, untouched and conception aspects of human societies.
Each person has its own point of view on how culture is develop and which aspect is beneficial and enjoy the history behind the culture. On the other hand, we make assumption about cultural identify without analyzing the factual data. Additionally, individual experiences does reflex the life the person has lived and the achievement embody a sense resiliency and failure for a certain period. “A study reveals culture as potentially ephemeral beliefs, beliefs, feelings, and behavior, unique in their details to each individual. No two people can live precisely identical life histories” (Handwerkker, 2002,
Popper states that the decision to accept a basic statement is connected to experiences in that they can motivate a decision, but a basic statement cannot be justified by experiences. The problem seems to be that he sees theories as statements about the world, similar to basic statements, therefore theory can be motivated by experience but not justified by it; or, the motivation to accept a theory can be experience, but we cannot justify theory with that motivation. It may help to consider how Popper feels about theory. He believes that “theories are nets cast to catch what we call ‘the world’: to rationalize, to explain, and to master it … [and that] we endeavor to make the mesh ever finer and finer” (“Logic of Scientific Discovery,” 59). It is difficult to find where justification fits into this; Popper is not clear on where the justification can come from, and even seems to imply that scientific theories cannot truly be justified. In “Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge,” Popper goes as far as to say “what we should do … is to give up the idea of ultimate sources of knowledge, and admit that all knowledge is human; that it is mixed with our errors, our prejudices, our dreams, and our hopes; that all we can do is to grope for truth even though it be beyond our reach”
He urged that scientific theories could not be validated by confirming experiments, but rather could only be disproved by falsifying hypotheses. For example, if one were to hypothesize that it does not rain in Atlanta, and then if it were then to rain in Atlanta, the hypothesis would be deductively proved false. Conversely, a complete year or two without rain would not validate the hypothesis. Doctor Popper was strongly against a non-falsifiable deductive way of thinking (or what Simkin refers to as justificationism in his book Popper’s Views on Natural and Social Science) because of the aforementioned flaw with deductive reasoning: it is premised on validity, not truth. For Popper, as well as many other philosophers and scientists, the advancement of knowledge is dependent on the suggestion of new, probable ideas, not on bastardized ones derived from trite combinations of truth. According to Simkin, “Popper is against all forms of justificationism. They all involve a logical regress, as each justifying statement can be challenged, and the challenge has to be met by providing a justification for that statement itself” (Simkin 34). The reason that Popper was so against the practice of justificationism was that a scientist could exploit his data to confirm the hypothesis he
"Culture", as a word, fits with a group of words that do not have just one definition or meaning, but multiple. With a diverse population prevailing in the United States today, our country is a melting pot of diverse cultures, every distinctive in its own respect. Culture is distinguishing one social group from another, including beliefs, language, traditions, art, food, religion and economic systems. Through lifelong and ever altering processes of learning, and sharing, culture shapes our patterns of behavior and thinking. A culture’s significance is so philosophical that it touches almost every aspect of who and what we are. As Henslin once said “Culture becomes the lens through which we perceive and evaluate what is going on around us.” It becomes who we are and how we see things differently from the people of a different nationality. In Warren St. John’s Outcasts United, culture is an important aspect that plays a significant role throughout the book and challenges the refugees in their daily lives. Having a pluralistic society can influence the behavioral and thinking styles of the people living around them. Some of these people may learn from the diverse range of cultures to find faults in their own living styles and try to better improve them. The Liberian’s, the Middle Easterner’s and the African’s are some of the examples of how one’s culture can impact lives of the people living around them.
In the end, what we learn from this article is very realistic and logical. Furthermore, it is supported with real-life examples. Culture is ordinary, each individual has it, and it is both individual and common. It’s a result of both traditional values and an individual effort. Therefore, trying to fit it into certain sharp-edged models would be wrong.