DOI: /EIC/XI Corpus ID: Distance and Point-of-View: An Essay in Classification @article{BoothDistanceAP, title={Distance and Point-of-View: An Essay in Classification}, author={W. Booth}, journal={Essays in Criticism}, year={}, pages={} } Do My Distance And Point Of View An Essay On Classification Assignment Fast And With Attention To Detail. All our writers are degreed experts in many fields of study, thus it Distance And Point Of View An Essay On Classification will be easy to handpick a professional who will provide the best homework assistance possible THE ART OF FICTION by Henry James [Published in Longman's Magazine 4 (September ), and reprinted in Partial Portraits (Macmillan, ); paragraphing and capitalization follow the Library of America edition.]. I SHOULD not have affixed so comprehensive a title to these few remarks, necessarily wanting in any completeness, upon a subject the full consideration of which would carry us far
John Locke (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Emile Durkheim: An Introduction to Four Major Works. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Durkheim's primary purpose in The Elementary Forms was to describe and explain the most primitive 1 religion known to man.
But if his interests thus bore some external similarity to those of the ethnographer or historian, his ultimate purpose went well beyond the reconstruction of an archaic culture for its own sake; on the contrary, as in The Division of Labor and SuicideDurkheim's concern was ultimately both present and practical: "If we have taken primitive religion as the subject of our research," he insisted, "it is because it has seemed to us better adapted than any other to lead to an understanding of the religious distance and point of view an essay on classification of man, that is to say, to show us an essential and permanent aspect of humanity.
But if Durkheim's goal was thus to understand modern man, why did he go to the very beginning of history? How can the crude cults of the Australian aborigines tell us anything about religions far more advanced in value, dignity, and distance and point of view an essay on classification And if he insisted that they can, wasn't he suggesting that Distance and point of view an essay on classification, for example, proceeds from the same primitive mentality as the Australian cults?
These questions were important, for Durkheim recognized that scholars frequently focused on primitive religions in distance and point of view an essay on classification to discredit their modern counterparts, and he rejected this "Voltairean" hostility distance and point of view an essay on classification religion for two reasons. First, alluding to the second chapter of The RulesDurkheim insisted that such hostility was unscientific; it prejudges the results of the investigation, and renders its outcome suspect.
Second, and more important, he considered it unsociological; for it is an essential postulate of sociology that no human institution can rest on an error or a lie. If an institution is not based on "the nature of things," Durkheim insisted, it encounters a resistance in nature which destroys it; the very existence of primitive religions, therefore, assures us that they "hold to reality and express it. The reasons with which the faithful justify them may be, and generally are, erroneous; but the true reasons," Durkheim concluded, "do not cease to exist" and it is the duty of science to discover them.
In this sense, all religions are "true"; but if all religions are thus equal with respect to the reality they express, why did Durkheim focus on primitive religions in particular?
Briefly, he did so for three "methodological" reasons. First, Durkheim argued that we cannot understand more advanced religions except by analyzing the way they have been progressively constituted throughout history; for only by placing each of the constituent elements of modern religions in the context within which it emerged can we hope to discover the cause which gave rise to it.
Just as biological evolution has been differently conceived since the empirical discovery of monocellular beings, therefore, religious evolution is differently conceived depending upon what concrete system of belief and action is placed at its origin. Second, Durkheim suggested that the scientific study of religion itself presupposed that the various religions we compare are all species of the same class, and thus possess certain elements in common: "At the foundation of all systems of belief and all cults," Durkheim thus argued.
there ought necessarily to be a certain number of fundamental representations or conceptions and of ritual attitudes which, in spite of the diversity of forms which they have taken, have the same objective significance and fulfill the same functions everywhere.
These are the permanent elements which constitute that which is permanent and human in religion; they form all the objective contents of the idea which is expressed when one speaks of religion in general. Again, therefore, Durkheim was trying to answer a time-honored philosophical question the "essential nature" distance and point of view an essay on classification religion by new, sociological means the ethnography of primitive societies ; and the special value of such ethnographies was that they captured religious ideas and practices before priests, prophets, theologians, or the popular imagination had had the opportunity to refine and transform them:.
That which is accessory or secondary has not yet come to hide the principal elements. All is reduced to that which is indispensable to that without which there could be no religion. But that which is indispensable is also that which is essential, distance and point of view an essay on classification, that is to say, that which we must know before all else. Primitive religions are privileged cases, Durkheim thus argued, because they are simple cases. But if this simplicity of primitive religions helps us to understand its nature, it also helps us to understand its causes.
In fact, as religious thought evolved through history, its initial causes became overlaid with a vast scheme of methodological and theological interpretation which made those origins virtually imperceptible. The study of primitive religion, Durkheim thus suggested, is a new way of taking up the old problem of the "origin of religion" itself -- not in the sense of some specific point in time and space when religion began to exist no such point existsbut in the sense of discovering "the ever-present causes upon which the most essential forms of religious thought and practice depend.
This description and explanation of the most primitive religion, however, was only the primary purpose of The Elementary Forms ; and its secondary purpose was by far the most ambitious of Durkheim's attempts to provide sociological answers to philosophical questions.
At the base of all our judgments, Durkheim began, there are a certain number of ideas which philosophers since Aristotle have called "the categories of the understanding" -- time, space, class, number, cause, substance, personality, and so on. They are like the solid frame which encloses all thought; this does not seem to be able to liberate itself from them without destroying itself, for it seems that we cannot think of objects that are not in time and space, which have no number, etc.
How are these ideas related to religion? When primitive religious beliefs are analyzed, Durkheim observed, these "categories" are found, suggesting that they are the product of religious thought; but religious thought itself is composed of collective representations, the products of real social groups.
These observations suggested to Durkheim that the "problem of knowledge" might be posed in new, sociological terms. Previous efforts to solve this problem, he began, represent one of two philosophical doctrines: the empiricist doctrine that the categories are constructed out of human experience, distance and point of view an essay on classification, and that the individual is the artisan of this construction, and the a priorist doctrine that the categories are logically prior to experience, and are inherent in the nature of the human intellect itself.
The difficulty for distance and point of view an essay on classification empirical thesis, Durkheim then observed, is that it deprives the categories of their most distinctive properties -- universality they are the most general concepts we have, are applicable to all that is real, and are independent of every particular object and necessity we literally cannot think without them ; for it is in the very nature of empirical data that they be both particular and contingent.
The a priorist thesis, by contrast, has more respect for these properties of universality and necessity; but by asserting that the categories simply "inhere" in the nature of the intellect, it begs what is surely the most interesting and important question of all: "It is necessary," Durkheim insisted, "to show whence we hold this surprising prerogative and how it comes that we can see certain relations in things which the examination of these things cannot reveal to us.
Having planted these allegedly formidable obstacles in the paths of his philosophical adversaries, Durkheim then offered his frustrated reader an attractive via media : " if the social origin of the categories is admitted," he suggested, "a new attitude becomes possible which we believe will enable us to escape bath of the opposed difficulties.
How, then, does the hypothesis of the social origin of the categories overcome these obstacles? First, the basic proposition of the a priorist thesis is that knowledge is composed of two elements -- perceptions mediated by our senses, and the categories of the understanding -- neither of which can be reduced to the other.
By viewing the first as individual representations and the second as their collective counterparts, Durkheim insisted, this proposition is left intact: for "between these two sorts of representations there is all the difference which exists between the individual and the social, and one can no more derive the second from the first than he can deduce society from the individual, the whole from the part, the complex from the simple.
In so far as we belong to society, therefore, we transcend our individual nature both when we act and when we think. Finally, this distinction explains both the universality and the necessity of the categories -- they are universal because man has always and everywhere lived in society, which is their origin; and they are necessary because, without them, all contact between individual minds would be impossible, and social life would be destroyed altogether: " society could not distance and point of view an essay on classification the categories to the free choice of the individual without abandoning itself, distance and point of view an essay on classification.
If it is to live," Durkheim concluded, "there is not merely need of a satisfactory moral conformity, but also there is a minimum of logical conformity beyond which it cannot safely go. But one might still object that, since the categories are mere representations of social realities, distance and point of view an essay on classification, there is no guarantee of their correspondence to any of the realities of nature; thus we would return, by a different route, to a more skeptical nominalism and empiricism.
in regard to that which is most essential. The fundamental relations between things -- just that which it is the function of the categories to express cannot be essentially dissimilar in the different realms. In order to describe and explain the most primitive religion known to man, Durkheim observed, we must first define the term "religion" itself: otherwise we risk drawing inferences from beliefs and practices which have nothing "religious" about them, or and this was the greater danger to Durkheim of leaving many religious facts to one side without understanding their true nature.
Following The Rules 21 and Suicide, 22 Durkheim's definition is reached by a two-step process. First, he insisted, we must free the mind of all preconceived ideas of religion, a liberation achieved in The Elementary Forms through a characteristic "argument by elimination": "it is fitting," Durkheim suggested, "to examine some of the most current of the definitions in which these prejudices are commonly expressed, before taking up the question on our own account.
The first of the prejudicial definitions of religion to be eliminated by this procedure was that governed by our ideas of those things which surpass the limits of our knowledge -- the "mysterious," the "unknowable," the "supernatural" -- whereby religion would be "a sort of speculation upon all that which evades science or distinct thought in general.
First, while he admitted that the sense of mystery has played a considerable role in the history of some religions, and especially Christianity, he added that, even in Christianity, there have been periods -- e.
Second, while Durkheim agreed that the forces put in operation by some primitive rite designed to assure the fertility of the soil or the fecundity of an animal species appear "different" from those of modern science, he denied that this distinction between religious and physical forces is perceived by those performing the rite; the abyss which separates the rational from the irrational, Durkheim emphasized, belongs to a much later period in history.
Third, and more specifically, the very idea of the "supernatural" logically presupposes its contrary -- the idea of a "natural order of things" or "natural law" -- to which the supernatural event or entity is presumably a dramatic exception; but the idea of natural law, Durkheim again suggested, is a still more recent conception than that of the distinction between religious and physical forces. It is far from being true," Durkheim concluded, "that the notion of the religious coincides with that of the extraordinary or the unforeseen.
The second prejudicial definition rejected by Durkheim was that based upon the idea of "gods" 28 or, more broadly, "spiritual beings.
The difficulty for this definition, Durkheim insisted, is that it fails to acknowledge two categories of undeniably religious facts. First, there are great religions e, distance and point of view an essay on classification. from which the idea of gods or spirits is almost absent, and in which the "conscious processes" indicated above play a minor role at best.
Second, even within those religions which do acknowledge such beings, there are many rites which are completely independent of that idea, and in some cases the idea is itself derived from the rite rather than the reverse. Religion is more than the idea of gods or spirits, and consequently cannot be defined exclusively in relation to these latter.
Definition by the ideas of "spiritual beings" and "the supernatural" thus eliminated, Durkheim turned to the construction of his own definition. Emphasizing that religion is less an indivisible whole than a complex system of parts, he began by dividing these parts into rites determined modes of action and beliefs collective representations ; and since rites can be distinguished from other actions only by their object, and the nature of that object is determined by the beliefs, Durkheim insisted on defining the latter first.
The seemingly insuperable obstacle to the immediate acceptance of this definition was its subsumption of a body of facts ordinarily distinguished from religion -- i. Indeed, magic is also composed of beliefs and rites, myths, dogmas, sacrifices, lustrations, prayers, chants, and dances as well; and the beings and forces invoked by the magician are not only similar to those addressed by religion, but are frequently the same.
Yet historically, magic and religion have frequently exhibited a marked repugnance for one another, 36 suggesting that any definition of the latter should find some means of excluding distance and point of view an essay on classification former, distance and point of view an essay on classification. For Durkheim, this means was Robertson Smith's insistence, in his Lectures on the Religion of the Semites37 that religion was a public, social, beneficent institution, while magic was private, selfish, and at least potentially maleficent.
The individuals which compose it feel themselves united to each other by the simple fact that they have a common faith. does not result in binding together those who adhere to it, nor in uniting them into a group leading a common life Between the magician and the individuals who consult him, as between these individuals themselves, there are no lasting bonds which make them members of the same moral community, comparable to that formed by the believers in the same god or the observers of the same cult.
Hence Durkheim's definition: " A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden -- beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. Armed with his "preliminary definition" of religion, Durkheim set out in search of its most primitive, elementary form.
Almost immediately, however, another difficulty arose -- even the crudest religions of which we have any historical or ethnographic knowledge appear to be the products of a long, rather complicated evolution, and thus exhibit a profusion of beliefs and rites based upon a variety of "essential" principles.
To discover the "truly original" form of the religious life, Durkheim observed, it is thus necessary "to descend by analysis beyond these observable religions, to resolve them into their common and fundamental elements, and then to seek among these latter some one from which the others were derived. This was a problem for which two contrary solutions had been proposed, based upon the two common elements found universally among the observable religions.
One set of beliefs and practices, for example, is addressed to the phenomena of nature, and is thus characterized as naturism ; while a second body of religious thought and action appeals to conscious spiritual beings, and is called animism. The problem of accounting for the confusing properties of the observable religions thus resolved itself into two mutually contradictory evolutionary hypotheses: either animism was the most primitive religion, and naturism its secondary, derivative form; or the cult of nature stood at the origin of religion, and the cult of spirits was but a peculiar, subsequent development.
According to the animistic theory, the idea of the human soul was first suggested by the contrast between the mental representations experienced while asleep dreams and those of normal experience. The primitive man grants equal status to both, and is thus led to postulate a "second self" within himself, one resembling the first, but made of an ethereal matter and capable of traveling great distances in short periods of time.
The transformation of this soul into a spirit is achieved with death, which, to the primitive mind, is not unlike a prolonged sleep; and with the destruction of the body comes the idea of spirits detached from any organism and wandering about freely in space. Henceforth, spirits are assumed to involve themselves, for good or ill, distance and point of view an essay on classification, in the affairs of men, and all human events varying slightly from the ordinary are attributed to their influence.
As their power grows, men increasingly consider it wise to conciliate their favor or appease them when they are irritated, whence come prayers, offerings, sacrifices -- in short, the entire apparatus of religious worship.
Reasoning wholly by analogy, the primitive mind also attributes "second selves" to all non-human objects -- plants, animals, rivers, trees, stars, etc. In the end, Durkheim concluded, "men find themselves the prisoners of this imaginary world of which they are, however, the authors and models.
If this animistic hypothesis is to be accepted as an account of the most primitive religion, Durkheim observed, three parts of the argument are of critical significance: its demonstration that the idea of the soul was formed without borrowing elements from any prior religion; its account of how souls become spirits, and thus the objects of a cult; and its derivation of the cult of nature from ancestor worship. Doubts concerning the first were already raised by the observation, to be discussed later, 44 that the soul, though independent of the body under certain conditions, is in fact considerably more intimately bound to the organism than distance and point of view an essay on classification animistic hypothesis would suggest.
Even if these doubts were overcome, moreover, the animistic theory presumes that dreams are liable to but one primitive interpretation -- that of a "second-self" -- when the interpretive possibilities are in fact innumerable; and even were this objection removed, defenders of the hypothesis must still explain why primitive men, otherwise so unreflective, were presumably driven to "explain" their dreams in the first place.
The "very heart of the animist doctrine," however, was its second part -- the explanation of how souls become spirits and objects of a cult; but here again Durkheim had serious doubts. Even if the analogy between sleep and death were sufficient to suggest that the soul survives the body, for example, this still fails to explain why the soul would thus become a "sacred" spirit, particularly in light of the tremendous gap which separates the sacred from the profane, and the fact that the approach of death is ordinarily assumed to weaken rather than strengthen the vital energies of the soul.
Most important, however, if the first sacred spirits were souls of the dead, then the lower the society under investigation, the greater should be the place given to the ancestor cult; but, on the contrary, the ancestor cult is clearly developed only in relatively advanced societies e.
But even if ancestor worship were primitive, Durkheim continued, the third part of the animist theory -- the transformation of the ancestor cult into the cult of nature -- is indefensible in itself.
Not only is there little evidence among primitives of the complicated analogical reasoning upon which the animist hypothesis depends; neither is there evidence among those practicing any form of nature worship of those characteristics -- anthropomorphic spirits, or spirits exhibiting at least some of the attributes of a human soul -- which their derivation from the ancestor cult would logically suggest. For Durkheim, however, the clearest refutation of the animistic hypothesis lay in one of its unstated, but implied, consequences; for, if it were true, not only would it mean as Durkheim himself believed that religious symbols provide only an inexact expression of the realities on which they are based; far more than this, it would imply that religious symbols are products of the vague, ill-conceived hallucinations of our dream-experience, and thus as Durkheim most certainly did not believe have no foundation in reality at all.
Law, morals, even scientific thought itself, Durkheim observed, were born of religion, long remained confounded with it, and are still somewhat imbued with its spirit; it is simply inconceivable, therefore, that "religions, which have held so considerable a place in history, and to which, in all times, men have to receive the energy which they must have to live, should be made up of a tissue of illusions.
What sort of science is it, Durkheim asked, whose principle discovery is that the subject of which it treats does not exist? In sharp contrast to animism, the naturistic theory 46 insisted that religion ultimately rests upon a real experience -- that of the principal phenomena of nature the infinity of time, space, force, etc. But religion itself begins only when these natural forces cease being represented in the mind in an abstract form, and are transformed into personal, conscious spirits or gods, to whom the cult of nature may be addressed; and this transformation is allegedly achieved by language.
ERDAS Imagine: Classification using Minimum Distance Classifier
, time: 7:13Measurement in Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Jan 01, · If the distance is more it takes more time and vice versa. The availability of B also plays an important role in sending the key. So as soon as the key is received by B then the decryption of the data takes place with the same key in order to retain its original form which is the plain text Specify when you would like to receive the paper from your writer. Make sure you leave a few more Distance And Point Of View An Essay On Classification days if you need the paper revised. You'll get 20 more warranty days to request any revisions, for free Jun 15, · Measurement is an integral part of modern science as well as of engineering, commerce, and daily life. Measurement is often considered a hallmark of the scientific enterprise and a privileged source of knowledge relative to qualitative modes of inquiry. [] Despite its ubiquity and importance, there is little consensus among philosophers as to how to define measurement, what sorts of things are
No comments:
Post a Comment