Transformation of Throught: Part 1 Flashcards
1859-1914 (27 cards)
How were Darwin’s ideas about natural selection used in social and political spheres of thinking?
- people used Darwinism as a way to put down other races and people with low income
- implyied to be “genetically inferior” and that this was bound to happen through natural selection.
- Through Social Darwinism, politicians justified racism and removed support from the poor with reasoning like cutting off the weak link.
What was Thomas Malthus’s Essay on Population (1798) about? Summarize the key points.
- Optimistic vision of the future
- Nature was not benign and progress was not inevitable because increase in population would always outrun people’s limited resources
- Food supply, increased arithmetically (1,2,3,4)
- Population would increase geometrically (1, 2, 4, 8)
- Suffering would increase despite social improvements
how this statement is true: “Social Darwinism was also used to support racial theories that had preceded the development of evolutionary biology.”
- Some individuals thought that certain groups of peoples were naturally superior to others because of what they had accomplished, and that technological and scientific progress was an indication of a higher species.
- Some believed that imperialism was intended to civilize and Christianize so-called “backward peoples”
- Others believed that struggle and conquest would eliminate the weak and add to the benefit of humankind.
What is philology? Give an example of how it was used.
Philology is the analysis of texts and language.
ex. used to analyse the Bible of the Old and New Testament, and it was argued that the otherworldly events that happened around Jesus’ life were made up.
How did Darwin’s ideas challenge religion?
Darwin’s theory on evolution challenged the idea of god, as the world seemed to move through changes in natural selection, rather than an all-powerful being making every decision.
How do you think Darwin has shaped society as a whole today? Consider his influence on science fiction
Mutiple anwsers
What is realism all about? Give an example.
Who is Emma Bovary? And why is she so controversial?
Emma Bovary is a fictional heroine character in French Novelist, Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary
Rejected traditional gender roles
- lives a big life
- exploration
- adultery/ searching for more than one love
How do you think Madame Bovary has influenced how women are depicted in literature, music, TV and movies today?
- Madame Bovary left an impact on our media to depict women as independent capable people of their own dreams.
- Pushed for media to show women different possibilities outside of the normalized societal expectations of women
Explain Auguste Comte’s ideas about the “three stages of knowledge” (p. 255).
- To explain the world people had first used the notion of supernatural forces (the theological stage)
- Abstract ideas (the metaphysical stage), e.g. the idea of “nature”
- Explained things on the basis of scientific laws (the positive stage)
Explain positivism
- The aim of positivism was to achieve a scientific synthesis of all knowledge.
Comte’s ultimate goal was was to restructure society on the basis of the scientific principles he discovered
What is sociology about?
The term that Comte coined.
Sociology was to be the study of both “social statics” and “social dynamics”.
academic discipline devoted to the study of social conditions and the development of human society, using methodology borrowed from natural sciences.
What is Statics and Dynamics in Sociology?
- Statics was a study of the workings of society, that is the co-existence of customs, institutions, legal codes, and other elements that make up a society.
- “Dynamics” was a study of social change for the purpose of formulating scientific laws of how society developed.
How did Wilhelm Dilthey challenge Comte’s positivist model of the natural sciences?
- Rejected the positivist model of the natural sciences as the appropriate means of studying humanity
- To reconstruct the reality of any past age it was necessary to use imagination
- proposed to seek out “spontaneous expressions” of past societies:
In ways in which people related to one another and expressed their beliefs and values, instead of basing research on formal political and diplomatic documents
What was impressionist art all about?
- They were not interested in painting traditional subjects
- Became recorders and interpreters of their own middle-class world
- Capturing fleeting moments and subjective impressions of light and colour.
Who developed the method of psychoanalysis?
Sigmud Freud (Austrian neurologist and weirdo)
What is psychoanalysis about?
- Unlocking the unconsious mind and unconsious desires
What is the “Ego”?
The face one presents to the world. The personality or the self which is constantly caught between the desires if the id the repression of the super-ego.
What is the “Super Ego”?
the conscience acquired by people living in a society
What is the “ID”?
One’s basic desires, held in check by the super-ego
Explain the theory of what will happen if there is tesion between the Ego, Id and Super-Ego?
an individual may cease to be able to function effectively.
What did some critics say were problems with or limitations of psychoanalysis?
- Not a science: Critics argue psychoanalysis is based on beliefs, not variable scientific evidence
- Generalizations from weak evidence: Freud accused of making broad claims from limited or imaginary data
- Overemphasis on childhood sexual abuse: Critics link psychoanalysis to questionable practices like “recovered memory therapy.”
- Gender bias: The field seen as male-dominated and based on flawed assumptions about women
- Lack of diversity in understanding: Accused of ignoring differences in gender needs and societal roles.
- Blaming women: Some claim Freudians blamed women for their own psychological issues.
- Harmful assumptions: Psychoanalytic theories believed to have produced dangerous ideas about human behavior.
- Outdated methods: Some criticisms highlight that Freud’s conclusions are often confused with his methods, making it hard to separate outdated ideas from valuable insights
What important ideas did Friedrich Nietzsche bring to the world?
- The will to power
- The Übermensch
- The death of God
What was Einstein’s theory of relativity about?
- States that the same laws of physics hold true in all inertial reference frames and that the speed of light is the same for all observers, even those moving with respect to one another.
- how speed affects mass, time, and space
