Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table
Primo Levi’s personal relationship to his profession as a chemist shows that philosophically and psychologically, he is deeply invested in it. His book THe PeriOdic TaBLe shows that his methodology cannot be classified as either purely objective or purely subjective. He fits into the definition of dynamic objectivity given by Evelyn Fox Keller in her book Reflections on Gender and Science.
Primo Levi’s methodology cannot be called purely objective. Being purely objective would mean being not influenced by personal beliefs or feelings. Levi’s relationship to being a chemist is very much involved in how he feels. On page 33, Levi refers to zinc as “boring… tender and delicate” and says he felt “curious, shy, and vaguely annoyed…” (Levi 33). His feelings are very much involved. He always relates personally to everything he does with chemistry. The book itself shows how different parts of his life relate to the elements in the chapter titles. Each time he finds a way to relate his anecdotes or stories to a certain, elusive quality of the chapter title. Thus he cannot be said to be completely objective, because he is influenced by personal beliefs or feelings. In fact his feelings sometime dominate his scientific method.
Sometimes Levi completely ignores the facts and established methods and goes on his own feelings. On page 39 “I preferred to invent each time a new road, with swift, extemporaneous forays, as in a war of movement… here the relationship with Matter changed, became dialectical: it was fencing, a face-to-face match” (Levi 39). He finds new ways to relate to the matter, to investigate and explore it, to know it. This is his biggest interest and inspiration as a che...
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...as a chemist. His stories of chemistry always had a reference to the human condition. He was neither dominated by his feelings nor exclusively regulated to the facts. His methods were the personification of dynamic objectivity, the strange and unique mix of objectivity and subjectivity and then objectivity again. This made his story so unique and meaningful, for it was not a lecture in scientific principles and it was not a purely heartfelt history of his life. The parts that would be expected to be cold and heartless were oddly compassionate, and the parts that were expected to be soaked in emotion were strangely told from a factual point of view.
Bibliography
Keller, Evelyn Fox. Reflections on Gender and Science: 10th Anniversary Edition. New Haven and London: Yale University, 1995.
Levi, Primo. THe PeriOdic TaBLe. New York: Schocken Books, 1984.
World War II was a war that took many lives from civilians that deserved to have a life of their own. They were ordinary people who were victims from a horrible and lengthy war that brought out the worst in some people. In Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz, Levi gives a detailed account of his life in a concentration camp. Primo Levi was a young Italian chemist who was only twenty-four years old when he was captured by the Nazis in 1943. He spent two long and torturous years at Auschwitz before the Russian army freed the remaining prisoners of the camp. He tells about life inside the camp and how tough it was to be held like an animal for so long. He says they were treated as inhumanly as possible while many others in the camp would end up dying from either starvation or being killed. They had to do work that was very strenuous while they had no energy and had to sleep in quarters that resembled packed rat cages. With all of this, Levi describes the complex social system that develops and what it takes to survive. The soc...
...he experience of the author has allowed him to create an impressive and historical autobiography. My favorite part of this book was when Levi was selected for laboratory detail. He was finally doing something better than the hard labor endured before. Levi was also happy that he did not have to be cold that winter. My least favorite part of the book was during chapter 14, “Kraus.” I felt horrible when the crying men had to endure the cold rain. I disliked that the only way to end the suffering was to “touch the electric wire-fence, or throw yourself under the shunting trains” as stated by Levi (131). I would highly recommend this book to others to enjoy. It gives a great educational experience on life as a prisoner in Auschwitz. I felt like I learned a lot more about life inside the fences as oppose to many written accounts from free men or nazi’s outside the fences.
Concentration camps, such as the one in which Levi lived, were tools of national socialist ideology. It further empowered the Nazi?s to treat the Jews as subhuman (an ?inferior race?). Within in a short time after arriving at the camp, men were stripped of everything they had known throughout life. Families were immediately separated after the transport trains were unloaded, dividing the ?healthy? from the ?ill?. Levi learns that he is now called a ?Haftling? and is given a number (174517), which is tattooed on his forearm, replacing his actual name. ?The whole process of introduction to what was f...
What was Levis Moral adaptation during his experience In Auschwitz? In ¨Survival in Auschwitz¨ Levi shows that in order to keep one's mental sanity. One has to focus on small distractions and never hope or show any desire. Showing any desire or hope would result as a mental death sentence in the lager, because no desire would be fulfilled. Therefore hoping for food in Auschwitz would lead to mental torture. So to survive one has to set unrealistic goals for example surviving until winter. “ Even in this place one can survive, and therefore one must want to survive, to tell the story, to bear witness; we must force ourselves to save at least a
At the beginning of Levi’s stay, he is unsure as to where he actually is and what is going to take place while he is in this “Rubber facility” producing Buna. Upon further de-humanizing events like being stripped of all his clothes, and being given a number permanently on his body with a “slightly painful tool with a very short needle” (Levi, 27) and “only by showing one’s number’ can one get bread and soup” (Levi, 28) Levi begins to realize that where he is, is not going to be good. Levi’s new friend, Steinhauf, tells him that no matter what, he must hang on to his humanity in any way he can.
Through all of his courage, he found what he was looking for. He dug deep and went to the extremes that were not normal to himself. All of his work leads to his dynamic characteristics.
From the first sentence of the Preface to Survival in Auschwitz, we learn that Primo Levi attributes his survival in the concentration camp to luck, or his “good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944” (9). It was because of luck that Levi had a chemistry background, qualifying him to spend portions of the day during the most brutal months of his last winter in Auschwitz in the chemistry laboratory, and because of luck that he formed and sustained relationships with Alberto and Lorenzo. Levi perhaps considered himself lucky most for having withstood “selection”—the method the camp guards used to choose prisoners to die instantly in the gas chambers. Levi writes, “[t]he fact that I was not selected depended above all on chance” (125).
The initial downward spiral of Heathcliff’s life was predominantly caused by harsh influences in the environment in which he was raised. Heathcliff, an adopted child, grew up in Wuthering Heights, a desolate and dystopian estate when compared to the beauty of the neighboring Thrushcross Grange. In childhood, Heathcliff displayed evidence of a sympathetic personality through his emotional attachment to Catherine and kind attitude towards Nelly. At the time of Mr. Earnshaw’s death, Nelly describes a scene where, “Miss Cathy had been sick, and that made her still; she
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Pollack, Eileen. “Why Are There Still So Few Women in Science?” The New York Times. The New York Times, 05 Oct. 2013. Web. 05 Mar. 2014.
Primo Levi’s If This is a Man recounts with scientific and horrifying accuracy, Levi’s ten-month incarceration in Auschwitz. He encounters various individuals, who’s actions enabled him to survive and grow through the ordeal, in particular Charles, a 32-year-old French political prisoner who stayed with him in the camp hospital’s, the Ka-Be, room 13. In the final chapter of the memoir, Chapter 17: The Story of Ten Days, Charles, a teacher who had entered the camp the week before, is introduced. Although his memoir is structured like a novel, Levi does not dwell on the atrocities committed by the Nazis, but rather describes, with clinical detachment, the effects that actions have on the people around him, hence his keen observation of Charles, who’s actions had far reaching effects in the Ka-Be. With freedom in sight, chapter 17 not only signifies
Zuckerman, Harriet, Jonathan Cole and John Bruer (eds.)” The Outer Circle: Women in the Scientific Community” New York: Norton, Print. 1991
In America, Truth in Advertising (TINA.org) exists to support honest advertising as well as eliminating deceptive marketing practices. Consumers in America lost billions of dollars due to false advertising and marketing every year. (https://www.truthinadvertising.org/about/)
[2] Chipman, Susan F. Women and Mathematics: Balancing the Equation. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers, 1985