6. “It Is More Important to Discover New Ways of Thinking Essay Example for Free

6. â€Å"It Is More Important to Discover New Ways of Thinking Essay Developing new ways of thinking about what we already know is very important as it helps us to develop a better understanding of that which we already know so to some extent the above statement is true. However it is as significant to discover new data or facts. In fact these two concepts go hand in hand; it is because of some discoveries that we knew when they first came to light that we have something we call existing knowledge to think about and sometimes it is through trying to develop new ways of thinking about a certain issue without a solution that we finally decide it is best to find a new explanation or concept of looking at it. A student who goes from lower to higher school both learns new and advanced ways of thinking about the information they have gathered in previous grades as well as some new data they have never come across before which further stresses that both concepts are important. We cannot learn everything at once nor can we know all sbout those things we know, which is why both developing what we already know and leaarning some new things are equally important. In some cases one may find that discussing and thinking about what we already know but in a new clearer way can help us reach a conclusion whereas if we had chosen to discover new facts about it instead, our horizon of confusion would have been broadened and we find ourselves with yet another mystery to solve. A good example of a case like this is death. Unless someone dies and comes back and tells us exactly what happens after death, no one can ever really know what happens. Any information we all have of life after death is based on assumptions that is if there is even life after death. Discovering new facts about the so called life after death isn’t but going to cause even more confusion, so really in my view I would say it is rather best that one sticks to the knowledge and believe they have over this issue, and if anything, find new ways of thinking about instead of creating yet another confusing phenomena based on assumptions. But such fields as Science motivate constant discovery of new knowledge because this is one area of knowledge where falsification is the only method used to prove the theories because we cannot verify, in other words prove a Scientific theory to be true in any way but we can pfove it fo be wrong. In this case it is clear then that in Science it is more important to discover new facts or data than to think about that which we already have as we need new discoveries to falsify old theories. However sometimes it may be thinking hard and deep into a scientific theory that makes one see fault in it as a result make new discoveries in which case both thinking of something in a new way and making new discoveries would have been equally important. We can for instance look into the famous example of the falsification of Newton’s theory of gravitation by Einstein’s theory of relativity. Einstein like all other Scientists of that time saw nothing wrong with Newton’s model until a crisis came when Newton’s theory of gravity failed to account for the behavior of light. Obviously this had to be a result of scientists thinking of new ways of applying Newton’s model. No one expected the negative outcome they came out with but it was negative and the Scientists were faced with a dilemma they had to solve. That it is when Einstein invented his theory of relativity, a whole new theory, which could work even for those discoveries that Newton’s model failed to. In any case, the point is to show that finding new ways to think of something can actually lead to the discovery of new information which in turn gives us something new to think about and in new ways if we please. Living only by developing things we already know would be depriving ourselves off so much knowledge. Had the people who lived before our generation decided they wanted to live only on what they knew, there would be so much we do not know. Generations like that of Newton or Einstein, generations like that of Priestley or Lavoisier who made discoveries about oxygen and those of people who learned the word of God and passed it on from generation to generation till the bible was written we would not have the knowledge we have today. And the knowledge does not end there and like the paradigm shifts suggest, there will always be new information, new theories and new ways of thinking as the world revolves that will override the current theories but should we decide to live only by the data that already exists, we may find that we are making experiments with 90% errors all the time.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury :: Free Essay Writer

Fahrenheit 451 Imagine a culture where books are prohibited, where the basic rights illustrated in the First Amendment hold no weight and society is merely a brainwashed, mechanical population. According to Ray Bradbury, the author of Fahrenheit 451, this depiction is actually an exaggerated forecast for the American future – and in effect is happening around us every day. Simply reading his words can excite theories and arguments pertaining not only to the banning of books but to our government structure itself. Age-old debates about Communism and equality are stirred by the trials of characters in Bradbury’s unique world. By studying the protagonist, Guy Montag, and his personal challenges we can, in a sense, evaluate our own lives to see that we don’t make similar mistakes. While the book is definitely a critique of society and of the government, readers are given many dominant themes to follow, and to find all of them requires several readings. The main plot, following Montag, illustrates the importance of making mistakes in order to grow. For example, at the very end of the book Granger (an outspoken rebel to the book-banning laws) compares mankind to a phoenix that burns itself up and then rises out of its ashes over and over again. Man's advantage is his ability to recognize when he has made an error, so that eventually he will learn not to make that mistake anymore. Remembering the faults of the past is the task Granger and his group have set for themselves. They believe that individuals are not as important as the collective mass of culture and history. The symbol of the phoenix's rebirth refers not only to the cyclical nature of history and the collective rebirth of humankind but also to Montag's own spiritual resurrection. Appropriately named, Guy is just a regular person who started out as a drone, following the dictations of his superficial leaders (his last name, Montag, is also ironic in that it is the name of a paper-manufacturing company). Eventually, however, he begins to realize that while reflecting the morals of equality in that no one was above the law, his society also takes away the power of an individual to make a difference. He starts out rash, inarticulate, self-obsessed, and too easily swayed. At times he is not even aware of why he does things, feeling that his hands are acting by themselves. These subconscious actions can be quite horrific, such as when he finds himself setting his supervisor on fire, but they also represent his deepest desires to rebel against the status quo and find a meaningful way to live.

A social psychology final paper Essay

The movie I chose was Easy A because there are many psychological concepts this movie that relate to real-life events and it covers many theories we learned about in this class. Easy A was released in 2010 and directed by Will Gluck. It’s about a teenage girl named Olive who accidentally admits to her friend Rhi that she was having sexual relations with boys. She felt pressured into lying since her friend had already engaged in sexual acts with her boyfriend. A rumor then spread and many people in the school then ignored Olive because they thought what she did was an immoral act, but the guys started giving her more attention. I feel that this applies to many people in the world today and it is not just in this movie. Many social psychological concepts come up in this movie like: conformity, looking glass self, self-presentation/impression management, cognitive dissonance, situational constraint, majority influence, self discrepancy, and social comparison theory to name a few. In the beginning of the movie, Olive lies while talking to her best friend, Rhi and accidentally said that she had slept with someone when in fact she was still a virgin. Rhi was not a virgin anymore so Olive felt that she had to lie to conform to the norms of her friend. The Social Comparison Theory says that to interpret whether our performances are successes or failures, we must often compare them with our own goals and expectations or with the performances of others. (DeLamater, 85) This theory helps us have conformity with others just as Olive compared her views to her friend’s views and then ended up lying to receive positive reinforcement from her friend. Olive was using this theory when she looked at one of her peer’s actions and saw her own behavior as in opposition to the norm. Then because she probably felt inferior to Rhi, she changed her behavior. Had she not gone along and followed what her friend did and changed her behavior and looks she would have been violating this theory. The Asch Conformity Paradigm shows that within limits groups can pressure their members to change their judgments and conform with majority’s position  even when the position is obviously incorrect. (DeLamater, 287) This is shown in the movie when at first she is pressured and says she had sex with someone because her friend did and once she got that reputation the guys persuaded her to act like she was being promiscuous and having sexual relations with them. Even though she knew this was wrong she still decided to do it because the majority influence put more pressure on her to go with â€Å"having sexual relations† to help some of her friends (who were guys) become more popular. This resulted in cognitive dissonance, which is a theory, that deals with consistency between behaviors and attitudes and it occurs after a decision and when one acts inconsistent with their beliefs. (DeLamater, 153) This is shown when she makes the decision to lie to her friend and say she has had sex and afterwards she has second thoughts and starts to regret it because it went against her values that she held. Another outstanding concept in this movie was self-presentation/tactical impression management. Self- presentation and impression management are petty similar because they are both processes by which individuals attempt to control the impressions that other form of them during interaction. (DeLamater, 89-90). Throughout his movie Olive presents herself to everyone at her school as someone she was not. She was viewed as the new school slut and at first she had cognitive dissonance about this but she then started to embrace it. Olive began to look the part by wearing risquà © clothes like corsets and tight revealing shirts. She even sewed an â€Å"A† on her clothes as a reference that she was being portrayed as Hester Prynne, the main character from The Scarlett Letter who was deemed to be adulterous and that was very inappropriate at the time. By presenting herself this way she is going with Cooley’s Looking Glass Self that says we acquire our view of ourselves from the views of others. (DeLamater, 69) By all of her classmates viewing her as promiscuous she started to view herself as that and changed the way she usually dressed to be more racy. This change in style and behavior lead to self-discrepancy which is when a component of the actual self is the opposite of a component of the ideal self or the ought self. (DeLamater, 82) This is seen when Olive goes out in public and portrays herself in a different way than what she believes her actual self as because she is more concerned with social interactions than what her actual self believes. This whole change of self was to boost her self-esteem because she knew if she  didn’t change the way she looked to fit the part she would be embarrassed and humiliated and her self-esteem would be lowered. Throughout this movie you can she the deviant behavior and how she violates the social norms of people her age. She dressed scandalously, she acted promiscuous, she acted out and got a rebellious attitude. These rebellious things Olive was doing changed her behavior and labeled her as deviant. Deviance is not considered deviant until it is labeled as that. So in her case, Olive really considered bad until a group of people at her school started going against what she was doing and even her friend, Rhi joined in. they started protesting what she was doing. This created a lot of aggression and hate for one another and eventually lead to intergroup conflict. In intergroup conflict there is a situation in which groups take antagonistic actions toward one another in order to control some outcome important to them. (DeLamater, 326) The outcome this group sought was to get Olive and other girls to stop acting in this way and being immoral. They went around and held signs around the school protesting what they thought of her behavior. After this, Olive finally realized that she was doing wrong and she made a video telling the truth to everyone and saying that it was all just an act. Everyone then viewed her as a liar for what she did, but she didn’t care because she saw what she did was wrong and it was a better reputation than being called easy. The whole reason Olive took on the role of being the school slut was to keep the type of self-presentation and tactical impression management. I think a lot of people feel the same way today in our world because if because I agree in the looking-glass self because I agree that you think of yourself the same way your peers and significant others see you. So if someone sees you as fat, ugly, promiscuous, or something else I agree that you would start to internalize what they say and take on that role. By the end of the movie, Olive’s beliefs about herself had changed significantly. She knew throughout the movie that the person she was portraying was not truly herself and it did not go along with her values but she kept the role to keep up with the rumor that she had started. In this movie we could see how social rejection affects the way you view yourself and how you carry yourself. In Easy A there are issues that we discussed in Social Psychology and many of them can be applied to everyday experiences, you just have to be  aware of them because they are truly all around especially in movies today. References DeLamater, John D., and Daniel J. Meyers. Social Psychology. 7th ed. N.p.: Cengage Learning, May 20, 2010. Print. Devine, Z., Gluck, W., Emmrich, A., Johnson, M.B. (producers) & Gluck, W. (director). (2010). Easy A [motion picture]. United States: Sony Pictures.

Hayden’s Way Essay - 1033 Words

Hayden’s Way Robert Hayden was a man who worked with what he had instead of dreaming of what he does not have. Pursuing what he loves to do even when people would put him down or not acknowledge him. Being an African American poet was not easy during Hayden’s lifetime, being born in 1913, integration was not something people were excited about. After some hard times and hard work, he was able to prove himself to the poetic community, Robert Hayden is now generally accepted as the most outstanding craftsman of Afro-American poetry (Glaysher). It wasn’t an easy task for him to accomplish, with his work being quite rare of having a common topic of African American history and hardships. But Hayden wasn’t looking to be known as an†¦show more content†¦Hayden wrote about black historical figures such as Frederick Douglass, Malcolm X, and Harriet Tubman. He also wrote about the Underground Railroad, the American slave trade, and the Civil War. Ed ward Hirsch called Hayden an American poet, deeply engaged by the topography of American myth in his efforts to illuminate the American black experience (Hirsch). Hayden always wanted his work to be judged just like every other poets work, and many people believed he earned that with his distinctive work that he composed. Using Modernism in his works he was able to incorporate his influences into all of his work that made him write the way he did. Robert Hayden’s biological parents, Asa Sheffey and Ruth Sheffey had an unsuccessful marriage and they parted before his birth. Ruth gave him over to be raised by another couple, William and Sue Ellen Hayden. But he did keep in contact with her and always loved and enjoyed their times they spent together. In Haydens relations with his foster father, William Hayden, there was a bit of tension between them. His foster mother, Sue Ellen Hayden, was still spellbound by her memories of a more glamorous earlier marriage, and occasionally took out her frustrations she had on Robert Hayden as a young boy, as written in â€Å"The Whipping†; The old woman across theShow MoreRelated`` Those Winter Sundays `` By Robert Hayden1408 Words   |  6 Pagesreveal an insider’s view on the issues of his time. Robert Hayden was born in a poor suburb outside Detroit on August 4, 1913. His name at birth was Asa Bundy Sheffey. He was raised, however, as Robert Hayden, the name given by his foster parents. Hayden’s foster parents happened to live across the street from where Hayden was born. Hayden did not discover the story until later in life. Realizing this story helped shape his life as a poet. He established a lasting legacy of both postmodernism and African-AmericanRead MoreAnalysis Of The Poem My Papa s Waltz By Theodore Roethke1020 Words   |  5 Pagespoem is more subjective, while the tone of Hayden’s poem is more objective. This tone difference is probably influenced by the relationship the author had with their father. Objective being a respectful relationship while subjective an emotionally charged one. Another difference is that the father in Roethke’s poem behaves somewhat irresponsibly, since he is drunk and he does not come to the realization that he is hurting his son. The father in Hayden’s poem is extremely responsible and does everythingRead MoreThe Creation Of A New Medium : The String Quartet882 Words   |  4 Pagesforms or procedures prior to Hayden’s involvement. Hayden chose to structure and to incorporate the string quartet into his movement. Hayden broke down the material into notes that developed the usage of the string quartet. 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By improper I mean, sonnetsRead MoreThe Many Ways to Love Essay1116 Words   |  5 PagesThe two poems Robert Pack’s â€Å"The Frog Prince†, and Robert Hayden’s â€Å"Those Winter Sundays†, are poems about love and the way it impacts those involved. There is no constant in love because it is forever changing; instead love is inconsistent bringing forth various outcomes. Love is young, then matures, and sometimes withers. The only constant in love is that it varies from person to person. Robert Pack’s â€Å"The Frog Prince†, and Robert Hayden’s â€Å"Those Winter Sundays† are a perfect example of the distinctionsRead MoreEssay882 Words   |  4 Pagesman. Or some old squaw. But a doctor comes around and they think its some evil spirit or something.† This sort of lack of respect shown towards the Indian minority contributes to the catastrophe that overtakes the Hayden family. When Marie, the Hayden’s beloved house keeper, fell sick she refused to see Frank for medical support mainly because she knew a dark secret about him. Word around Bentrock was that Frank Hayden has been abusing the trust of being a qualified doctor by exploiting Indian womenRead MoreAnalysis Of Theodore Roethke s My Papa s Waltz, And Robert Hayden s Those Winter Sundays925 Words   |  4 PagesIn the analysis of Theodore Roethke’s â€Å"My Papa’s Waltz,† and Robert Hayden’s â€Å"Those Winter Sundays,† both modernistic and highly respected poets similarly write with a sense of reminiscence of childhood experiences. Similarly, both poems are about a memory as a boy looking back at a specific time in their lives and the love they have for their respected fathers. A similar implication is expressed in the way of their lives not being perfect, but still remaining a humble family. This is shown withinRead MoreSt. Judes Research Hospital - Persuas ive Speech Essay1715 Words   |  7 PagesIntroduction: â€Å"Shortly after Hayden’s fifth birthday, he began having headaches and nausea. At first, the doctor thought he had migraines and asked his mother to keep a record of when his head hurt. After only a short period of time, Hayden’s headaches grew more frequent. Then, he began having trouble with the vision in his right eye causing him to see double. It was at this point, his mother knew there was a bigger issue at hand. Hayden was referred to an ophthalmologist for further testingRead MoreAnalysis Of My Papa s Waltz 1500 Words   |  6 Pages Theodore Roethke’s â€Å"My Papa’s Waltz†, Robert Hayden’s â€Å"The Whipping†, and Sylvia Plath’s â€Å"Daddy† are all poems written about children getting beaten but have differing narrators and varying times. Although these poems may be about the same topic, they are presented in different points of view by the narrators. â€Å"My Papa’s Waltz† is in the first person point of view as it’s happening, â€Å"The Whipping† is also presented as it is happening, but is presented third person, however; â€Å"Daddy† is written asRead MoreThose Winter Sondays And My Papas Waltz Analysis924 Words   |  4 PagesThe relationship between a father and his son is a sacred bond that is evident in all cultures. Although most fathers typically share a special kind of love for their sons, this affection can be displayed in many different ways. This theme of father and son love is expressed in the poems Those Winter Sundays, by Robert Hayden, and My Papa’s Waltz, by Theodore Roethke. Both of these authors use imagery and an extended metaphor to depict two different relationships between father and son. In My Papa’s