Time and the Clocks Essay Example for Free

Time and the Clocks Essay Introduction It is well known that technology is very important aspect in human life and Critical Engagement with Technology class held lot of concepts and theories with regard to how to look at and understand technology that helped in changing some of the previous understandings. The class helped in developing the skills to be able to evaluate different approaches and ways of thinking in regards to understanding technology. Also to know the issues that impact the management of technology and how the technology influenced managers’ abilities to provide better management of both resources and people. The class also examined the drivers and factors that impacted technology implementation such as social, political, economic, among others. The new way of thinking about the technology and how it is driven was presented in class through several topics that was introduced such as: â€Å"Nothing New Under the Sun†, Historical Perspective on Technology The Industrial Revolution Technology as the Context for and Product of Human Endeavour Technological Determinism Social Shaping of Technology Management, Power and Technology The course further gave us the opportunity to pick a technology and ably what we learned in the class. Our case study that we picked talked about the clocks and how the society shaped the way of measuring time throughout history. The clock nowadays are technology that has been taken for granted. The focus of this case study is to show the importance of time measurement and how our life nowadays revolves around it. By going through history all the way from using the sun and stars to the development of clocks that neither lose nor gain one second in 200 million years to show how humanity searches for more accuracy by developing the tools to measure the time. Literature Review As mentioned earlier, the course provided us with lot of concepts and theories with regards to technology that in turns helped in understanding and facilitating of our case study. Concepts such as Technological Determinism and Social Shaping of Technology helped in carrying out our research and that is why it is important to define them. The idea of that technology development affect and shape the society is called Technological Determinism and it implies that the technology changes by following its own logic and come from outside society. Hard technological determinism which lays on simple cause-and-effect and not considering other factors such as economic, political, cultural, among others is considered as an oversimplified theory for the technological change. This was the common way of thinking that encourage the passive attitude toward technology change. It is worth mentioning that new technology are developed from an existing technology or a combinations of several existing technologies through a gradual change. Therefore, the social shaping of technology theory critique the technological determinism theory and suggests that society has more active attitude toward technology development in the since that society decides what and how to use it. Also the social shaping of technology theory consider other factors mentioned previously that affect the technology wheel of development (Mackenzie and Wajcman, 1999). Having said that, the distinguish between the two theories among the other topics learned in this course open our minds as well as provided us with better understanding of technology development. The Beginnings of the Clocks The movement of earth and its moon gave the indications for the year, month, and day. Human invented the hours, minutes and seconds as smaller units for the time. Middle East ancient civilization divided the day into 24 hours with 60 minutes an hour and 60 seconds a minutes. At the beginning there were the sundials and the water clocks that didn’t give exact time but rather represent the flow of time (Franz, 1978) (Dale, 1992). Before the mechanical clocks, people had many attempts to find a tool to measure time more accurately. The candle clock which was basically a candle with the hours marked on it was one device. Another device was the hourglass or sandglass that was used at sea and it required someone to stay next to it to flip it because each flip was counted as half an hour or an hour. Although both devices were used at night and that helped in solving the problem of the sundial that depends on the sun, another problem came to realization which was that these devices didn’t give the time of the day rather they only measured periods of time (Dale, 1992). People of ancient China, Babylon, and Egypt discovered the link between timekeeping and the positions of stars due to the fact that stars changes position in a regular pattern. This link motivated people to find new ways to measure time more accurately especially at sea (Dale, 1992). Pope Sylvester II invented the first mechanical clock in year 1000 and they spread among European cathedrals by 1300. They were used to inform people about the time they should go to church and that was the early use for them. Some of these clocks gave astronomical information and others had bells to call people (Sherman, 2005). It is interesting that an old mechanical clock that was built in 1386 is still working in England in Salisbury Cathedral. The small clocks didn’t come along until after the invention of mainspring and those clocks were built for wealthy people where they were considered as valuable possessions that they show off with. Marine Navigation When the magnetic compass were invented, it was used by sailors to steer the ships in an accurate direction, but compasses weren’t steady enough in rough weather and hence deciding the direction based on them was difficult. The Sextant was the next invention and it was the instrument used to measure the heights of the sun in order to calculate the ship’s latitude (May, 1973) (Cotter, 1977). All these instruments solve part of the problem because there were no means to measure the longitude and the position of the ships on the latitude was purely based on the sailors’ guess (Cotter, 1977). The speed of ships is measured by knots and it is based on an old method called the ‘Dead Reckoning’. After plotting the course using the compass, a rope with several knots on it with a log at the end of that rope were thrown overboard. Then a sandglass was used to measure the period. When it was time the rope was pulled and the knots were counted. Using this method sailors were able to calculate the distance they sailed (May, 1973) (Gould and Dyson, 1976). The compass, astrolabe and the dead reckoning were the only methods used by the great explorers like Ferdinand Magellan and Christopher Columbus and what is more interesting is that they didn’t have a particular destination when they discovered the new lands. These discoveries provided the opportunity of trading but another problem of navigation came up. No one was able to know how long the trip going to take or how much food they should take with them to feed the crew of the ship. Fresh food rotted before they reach their destination along with other problems caused by the poor navigation at that time. Knowing the longitude and better timekeeping was the answer. Cotter (1977) stated that the difference between the time readings in two different places will help in calculating the longitude. For this calculation to be possible a standard time was needed. Since Britain was the leading seafaring nation in the 17th century it decided to take the Royal Observatory at Greenwich as the standard time and the longitude passing through Greenwich became 0 degrees. At that time other countries took different places as mark 0 degrees. When the radio were used as the mean of communication between ships, Greenwich system was used internationally in 1884. Mechanical clocks provided more accurate measurement of time than candles or sandglasses, but still they were not accurate enough because the swinging of the pendulum was upset by the motion of the ships. The early mechanical clocks needed to be checked against other clocks or against the sun on a frequent bases. Sailors knew that they needed a clock that keep the accurate standard time even under that challenging conditions of the sea. According to Gould and Dyson (1976) the British government was alarmed by the fact that lots of ships both merchant and naval were lost due to the hazardous conditions of the Atlantic Ocean. And that is why the government announced a competition in 1714 with a prize of ? 20,000 for a chronometer with specific criteria. The British government wanted an accurate chronometer that gives the correct longitude reading within 55 kilometres after six weeks of sailing. In order to be that precise, the new chronometer must not loss nor gain more than three seconds per day also it should be able to cope with the conditions of the sea such as the salty sea air and the temperature and humidity changes. At that time no clock was able to achieve that accuracy and it was a big technical challenge. In 1759, John Harrison, who was a clockmaker, succeeded after three previous attempts in inventing the perfect chronometer. The chronometer was tested by Harrison’s son William when he sailed to Jamaica two years after the invention came to light. Harrison’s chronometer passed the test. It only lost an average of 2. 7 second a day and it was able to give an accurate longitude reading within 30 kilometres. It is worth mentioning that chronometers were not used generally until 1800 and this is because it was very expensive to build one. Navigation problems were solved by using the clocks and the seas became busy highways at that time (Gould and Dyson, 1976). Railways Time The industrial revolution was powered by the steam power as well as the revolution in transport where the railways spread quickly at that time. The main purpose of the railways was to transport coal although it was used to transport passengers too. By making the transport easier people’s lives has changed. In the early days of railways public clocks weren’t synchronized and there wasn’t a single standard time. The trains were separated and spread along the tracks using time intervals system and that caused problems for travellers as well as posed a safety hazard. With the introduction of railways time that used Greenwich Mean Time the public timekeeping has changed and that solved the problems of railways. Moreover, the demand for more accuracy in daily tasks were influenced by railway time. It is worth mentioning that it took the government 40 years since the introduction of railways time to legislate the standard time for Great Britain and that was in 1880 (Schivelbusch, 1986). The Industrial Revolution Commodities and industries were made in a different way in Europe after 1780 and that is why historians gave the name the industrial revolution. In this revolution, cheaper and faster machines replaced the costly and slow manual crafts. For example, cotton industry changed a lot, at first cotton was woven manually and it was considered as luxury but with the industrial revolution and the introduction of the new cotton mills, the production become faster and that caused the price to drop drastically for the product. Moreover, this movement puts lot of people out of work and the only thing that they could do at that time is to work in the mills. This movement also introduced many people to the important of time. Factories’ machines were kept running for long time during the day for the investors to gain the best return and it was important that workers arrive on time. Workers who came late were usually punished with a fine deducted from their weekly payments. At that time only few people had clocks to tell them the time other used the ‘knocker-up’ who was someone walking around and waking people to go to work (Cardwell and Cardwell, 2001). The method of workers payments changed due to this movement too. Before works used to earn fixed payments for a day of work but when the factories started to use the shift system workers started to be paid using hourly rate. This was possible with the invention of a machine that kept record of how many hours the worker actually worked. The worker had to stamp a card using that machine that showed the time of start and end. That process was called ‘clocking on-clocking off’ (Cardwell and Cardwell, 2001). Time Control Reeves and Duncan et al. (2001), Webster and Davies et al. (2011), and Borst (1993) agreed upon that ‘Time and motion study’ which was developed by Frederick Taylor in 1880 helped in studying different factories operations to speed them up by identifying what is really needed and that in return helped manufacturers to use their workers and machinery more efficiently. The concept of saving the time became an important one when the awareness of time increased. That concept pushed lot of technologies to be invented especially after the invention of electricity to replace the boring and routine tasks such as cleaning, washing clothes, among others. Another form of time control was the use of time switches which were basically a clock combined with a switch that enabled automatic turning on and off for the devices. More accurate clocks Wagner (2008) said that the work of most specialists such as engineers, physicists, among others depends heavily on precise time measurements. Nowadays, 300 atomic clocks at different laboratories are used to calculate global time. But researchers are pursuing more accuracy in time measurement and the results will replace the process of averaging the data from the atomic clocks. Researchers developed optical clocks that capture and measure the frequencies of strontium atoms (a chemical element with atomic number 38) by using the lasers. With the ability of the new clocks to measure the oscillation at higher frequency ranges, the results are clocks that measure time more accurately. Also these new clocks are expected to measure time in intervals much smaller than what the atomic clock that will help in giving the clock that ability to neither lose nor gain one second in a period of 200 million years (Wagner, 2008). Methodology Before us as a group decided on the topic in hand we had lot of discussions with lot of topics to talk about. After we reached an agreement we distributed the work and each of the members had to research a specific period in time to find out more about time and clocks. It was an interesting task that expanded my knowledge about the subject. After each member focused on the topic assigned our group met to share the findings. Comments were exchanged to further address the subject from different angles. The researches were done using books, online articles, and journals. The group met for the second time with the new findings and slides for the presentation. The presentation was put together and rehearsed. We didn’t have to meet as much because we used methods such as blogs and dropbox to share our work and discuss further. I was assigned with the topic regarding the marine navigation and the early problems and I found out that different resources agreed and have the same facts about the subject. Also I was able to dig deeper and find interesting facts with regards to other topics in this document that in turn helped me gain immense knowledge about the theories proposed as well as provided me with the comprehensive understanding I was seeking. Findings and Discussion I was able to carry out this case study and research with most open mind and with referring to the theories and topics learned in class. I found out that the clocks is considered as one of the oldest inventions in history and also how humanity is continuously seeking for more accuracy in regards to time measurement even nowadays. Also I found out how the concept of time measurement affect and pushed other technologies to emerge and how it was used in the industrial revolution era. It is clear that throughout history human had the same idea which was the important of measuring time. What differs was the development of the devices that measure the time in a more accurate manner. It is also observed that the development of the device depends on the same concepts of the previous ones but with better ways of doing it. Early sailors used land marks and stayed close to the land in order to find their way and to know their position. Then sailors become more adventurist over time and started to find new ways to help them navigate in the open sea. Methods such as astronomy observation helped in calculating the ships’ locations to work out the directions and set the course of the ship by using an instrument called the astrolabe. The astrolabe was the tool used by the ancient Greeks, but the biggest default was it needed a clear sky and it was only used at night. With the invention of the chronometer that solved the marine problems I felt that it was one of the breakthroughs in the world of clocks that help in measuring the time more precisely. It showed that the need of the accuracy in the time measurement was a social need to solve the problems rather than resulting from technological determinism. It is hard nowadays to find someone who doesn’t care about time. This is showed by the fact that everything in the modern life had something to do with time and clocks. For example, the personal computers where the clock is installed as a ship in the heart of the device to regulate the electrical signals (Borst, 1993), the use of the timer in the microwave, setting the alarm to go to work or school, transportation timetable, among other examples. Clocks is everywhere but as mentioned before, it is a technology taken for granted. Conclusion. The clocks development throughout history showed a true evident of the society shaping the technology changes with the need of finding ways to measure time more accurately. Also the history showed that the clocks came a long way and the development and researches for more accurate clocks is still going on. The clocks began with using the sun and the stars. Then they were used to count periods using water clocks, candle clocks, and sandglass clocks. After that mechanical clocks came to light with the use of gears and motion. And with the need for a clock to per the sea conditions and to give accurate longitude readings, the chronometer came about. Finally, reaching to the atomic clocks that we use nowadays to measure time and for the future the use of optical clocks that measure time with smaller intervals than ever. With the development of the clocks we can observe how people lives changed. Not forgetting about the disadvantages where some people suffer from something called ‘time stress’ and this is because we want to do lots of things and the clashes among them caused by the time constrains lead to stress. References Borst, A. 1993. The ordering of time. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cardwell, D. and Cardwell, D. 2001. Wheels, clocks, and rockets. New York: W. W. Norton. Cotter, C. 1977. The elements of navigation and nautical astronomy. Glasgow: Brown and Ferguson. Dale, R. 1992. Timekeeping. New York: Oxford University Press. Franz, M. 1978. Time. New York: Thames and Hudson. Gould, R. and Dyson, F. 1976. The marine chronometer. London: The Holland Press. Mackenzie, D. and Wajcman, J. 1999. Introductory essay: the social shaping of technology. The social shaping of technology, pp. 327. May, W. 1973. A history of marine navigation. New York: Norton. Reeves, T. C. , Duncan, W. J. Ginter, P.M. 2001, Motion study in management and the arts: A historical example, Journal of Management Inquiry, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 137-149. Schivelbusch, W. 1986. Railway journey. Berkeley: University presses of California. Top of Form Bottom of Form Sherman, J. 2005. How do we know the nature of time. New York: Rosen Pub. Group. Wagner, C. G. 2008, New Clocks: Its About Time, The Futurist, vol. 42, no. 3, pp. 10. Webster, J. , Davies, H. , Stankiewicz, M. Fleming, L. C. 2011, Estimating the Time Involved in Managing the Unoccupied Bed: A Time and Motion Study, Nursing Economics, vol. 29, no. 6, pp. 317-22.

The Olympic Games :: Olympics History Greek Olympia Essays

The Olympic Games The Olympic Games are an international sports festival that began in ancient Greece. The original Greek games were staged every fourth year for several hundred years, until they were abolished in the early Christian era. The revival of the Olympic Games took place in 1896, and since then they have been staged every fourth year, except during World War I and World War II. Perhaps the basic difference between the ancient and modern Olympics is that the former was the ancient Greeks' way of saluting their gods, whereas the modern Games are a manner of saluting the athletic talents of citizens of all nations. The original Olympics featured competition in music, oratory, and theater performances as well. The modern Games have a more expansive athletic agenda, and for two and one-half weeks they are supposed to replace the rancor of international conflict with friendly competition. In recent times, however, that lofty ideal has not always been attained. The earliest reliable date that recorded history gives for the first Olympics is 776 BC, although virtually all historians presume that the Games began well before then. It is certain that during the midsummer of 776 BC a festival was held at Olympia on the highly civilized eastern coast of the Peloponnesian peninsula. That festival remained a regularly scheduled event, taking place during the pre- Christian golden age of Greece. As a testimony to the religious nature of the Games, which were held in honor of Zeus, the most important god in the ancient Greek pantheon, all wars would cease during the contests. According to the earliest records, only one athletic event was held in the ancient Olympics--a foot race of about 183 m (200 yd), or the length of the stadium. A cook, Coroibus of Elis, was the first recorded winner. The first few Olympics had only local appeal and were limited to one race on one day; only men were allowed to compete or attend. A second race--twice the length of the stadium-- was added in the 14th Olympics, and a still longer race was added to the next competition, four years later. When the powerful, warlike Spartans began to compete, they influenced the agenda. The 18th Olympics included wrestling and a pentathlon consisting of running, jumping, spear throwing, discus throwing, and wrestling. Boxing was added at the 23rd Olympiad, and the games continued to expand, with the addition of chariot racing and other sports. In the 37th Olympiad the format was extended to five days of competition. The growth of the Games fostered "professionalism" among the competitors, and the Olympic ideals waned as royalty began to compete for personal gain,

God’s Foreknowledge and the Problem of Evil Essay

In his essay[1] on the possibility of God’s having middle knowledge of the actions of free agents and the relationship of that knowledge, if it exists, to the problem of evil,[2] RM Adams discusses two questions: firstly, whether middle knowledge is possible, even for God, and secondly, whether God could have made free creatures who would always freely do right. These questions highlight the importance of trying to understand how much God knows about the future and the relationship of the answer to that question with the problem of evil. In the present essay I review four major possible views of God’s foreknowledge and highlight their strengths and weaknesses, paying particular attention to Adams’ arguments on Middle Knowledge which lead to his conclusion that there is reason to doubt its possibility. I then review Adams’ arguments about its impact on the problem of evil and, having concluded, as he does, that, middle knowledge being available or not, permitting some evil in order to allow creatures to have free will may contribute to a theodicy but not complete it, I consider how this situation might be improved by accepting that the future is at least partly open. The problem The problem of evil has been the subject of theological dispute for centuries. If God is, as the traditional Christian view would have it, omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good, how come there is evil in the world? Such a God, the argument goes, would not only wish to dispel evil from the world, but, since he can do anything, he would have done so. Since he clearly has not, either he is not able to do so or he does not care, or perhaps he doesn’t exist. While arguments such as the above call into doubt the possibility of God’s being at once omnipotent and perfectly good, the problem of evil is also closely related to the issue of his omniscience, in particular to his foreknowledge. If God knows everything about the future, including what choices between good and evil I will make, am I really free to make those choices? But does God actually know everything, particularly about contingent future events? There are many views of the God’s foreknowledge; I will consider four principal ones. The Simple Foreknowledge View. This view holds that God knows all truths and believes no falsehoods, or as Hunt puts it ‘God has complete and infallible knowledge of the future’[3], a simple statement and one which is subject to some serious objections. In the context of this essay the most important objection is that it would appear to negate the possibility of human freedom. As Augustine’s interlocutor, Evodius, says, ‘since God foreknew that he [Adam] was going to sin, his sin necessarily had to happen. How then is the will free when such inescapable necessity is found in it? ’[4] Augustine then argues that ‘God’s foreknowledge does not force the future to happen†¦. God foreknows everything that he causes but does not cause everything that he foreknows†¦ sin is committed by the will not coerced by God’s foreknowledge. ’[5] If God did cause or coerce Adam to sin he would be exempt from blame but, Hunt maintains, following Augustine, the simple fact of God’s knowing in advance what Adam (and more generally, we) will do does not constitute coercion. It is true that God’s foreknowing†¦ leaves Adam with no alternatives†¦ But the mere absence of alternatives is irrelevant†¦ simply knowing what the person will do is not an interference of any sort, and its implications for free agency are benign. ’[6] Hunt’s view is that we should ‘trust our intuition’ that Adam is deprived of alternatives but not free will. For me however, this is not my intuition. This and similar arguments elsewhere appear to be doing little more than restating the problem, and do not provide a satisfactory escape route. The problem is one of logic not theology. If it is inevitable, foreknown infallibly, that I will do A then it is not in reality an option for me not to do A. I might think that I am choosing between A and not-A, but if God knows which I will choose then in reality I am deluded: there is no possibility of my choosing not-A and if I don’t have any choice this also seems to remove any possibility of blame or responsibility for my actions. How can I be held responsible for an action which I could not avoid doing? Worse, since I do things which patently are evil and could have been avoided if I really had free will, it is arguable that God himself is responsible for, or at least knows in advance and allows to happen, the evil that I do. In addition to the free-will problem, proponents of the simple foreknowledge view have to explain what we are doing when we pray. Are we asking God to change the future? And if he does graciously agree to change it, would that not mean that he was wrong when he earlier knew, supposedly infallibly, what the future was to include before he changed it? It is an important part of this view of God that he believes no falsehoods, but if our prayers have any effect, that would seem to entail the falsehood of God’s earlier beliefs about that particular aspect of the future. It should be noted at this point that the simple foreknowledge view is fully compatible with the Christian understanding of God’s being outside time. I will return to this later, but sacrificing or compromising this understanding would be a heavy price to pay for many Christian theologians. These objections taken together seem to me to make simple foreknowledge, without some considerable modification, incompatible with an understanding of humans as responsible agents. The other views I discuss below attempt in different ways to make sufficient modifications to deal with this problem while remaining true to scripture. I should of course consider the possibility that, in coming to this conclusion about the difficulties of the simple foreknowledge view, I have not understood the question. Could it be that what I mean by either ‘free ill’ or ‘knowledge’ is somehow different to what generations of theologians have meant? For myself, I maintain that my action is free if I could do otherwise than what I actually decide to do and, crucially, no-one else knows in advance what I will decide to do, not even God. And knowledge in this context can be taken as ‘justified true belief’ which is just the sort of knowledge that God is supposed to have infallibly. It seems that simple foreknowledge is not to be rescued by recourse to a dictionary. The Augustinian-Calvinist View This view, as expounded by Helm,[7] does indeed depend on a careful compatibilist definition of ‘free will’ which enables him to argue that it is not necessary to accept either a modified, reduced account of omniscience, or that human agents are not responsible for their actions. Here ‘compatibilism’ is the view that free will is compatible with causal determinism, a view that Helm maintains was explicitly held by the later Augustine (probably as a result of further thought compared with his earlier writings) and implicitly by Calvin. The latter is evidenced firstly by the distinction he drew between necessity and compulsion, and secondly by his successors’ taking a similar view of free will, calling it the liberty of rational spontaneity while denying the liberty of indifference. [8] Helm distinguishes three concepts of God’s foreknowledge. One is causal in the sense used by Aquinas: God’s knowledge is the cause of things and on this view there is no distinction between what God causes and permits since God foreknows all events and therefore must cause them all. There is an inference from this that God causes future evil but Aquinas is said to have allowed the concept of divine permission whereby God is said to know of it but not cause it. More on that later. The second sense has God’s foreknowledge logically subsequent to his decree and is simply the knowledge of that decree before it takes effect in time, and the third is the reverse of this, with the foreknowledge logically prior to his decree. His arguments entail one or other of the first two senses, but not the third. Based on these starting points Helm raises three arguments in support of the Augustinian position. First there is the role of God’s grace. The argument between those who believe and those who do not believe that God’s foreknowledge is compatible with human incompatibilism, Helm says, is not about the nature of God or of human freedom but about the relationship between God and humankind. Divine grace and free, incompatibilist choice can only be causally necessary for a person’s coming to faith, but not causally sufficient since, given our libertarian will, we could resist such grace and it would not therefore ensure its intended effect. However, scripture tells us that saving grace is irresistible and, when received, liberating: it alone, according to Augustine, ensures true human freedom,[9] and the inference is that such grace is therefore sufficient. The obvious objection here is that some people clearly do resist God’s saving grace, an objection that Helm does not deal with effectively. Secondly there is an argument based on divine perfection as reflected in his omnipotence and omniscience. Helm asks rhetorically how God knows of the causes of evil actions if he is not the cause of them, and quotes Augustine’s answer that God, for the highest reasons (which are at present unknown to us) knowingly permits particular evil actions. 10] In a rather obscure passage, Helm appears to argue as follows: (1) it is theologically desirable that God’s foreknowledge should be as complete as may reasonably be assumed and we should therefore assume that he does foreknow his free creatures freely willed actions; (2) If compatibilism is true then God can foreknow these actions and therefore (3) compatibilism is true. [11] However, as Hunt points out, this is fallacious and Helm should have argued for (2’) If compatibil ism is not true then God cannot foreknow†¦ but he has not done so. Finally Helm argues that God’s omniscience is logically inconsistent with human incompatibilist freedom. He supposes as an example that God foreknew yesterday the truth of the proposition ‘Jones will freely eat a tuna sandwich tomorrow. ’ That foreknowledge is now in the past and is therefore necessary, not logically but accidentally or historically, and therefore it entails the necessity that Jones will eat the tuna sandwich; that putatively free act cannot therefore be free. In that case divine omniscience is inconsistent with incompatibilist freedom. 12] Helm admits that this argument really only works with the assumption that God is in some fashion inside time for ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’ to have any force. [13] In summary, Helm believes his arguments have made the broadly Augustinian case that divine foreknowledge and human freedom are consistent, but I am hard-pressed to see that any of my objections to the simple foreknowledge argument are any less forceful in response to Helm. My logical worry and the problem of prayer remain, but these are supplemented by the acknowledged need for God to be temporal, at least for part of the argument to be successful. The Middle-Knowledge View This view is that espoused by Luis de Molina, a 16th century Spanish Jesuit theologian, who drew a distinction between three kinds of knowledge that, in his view, God possesses[14]. Firstly, Molina said, God possesses ‘natural knowledge’, that is a knowledge of all necessarily true propositions, such as ‘two plus two equals four’. Since such truths are necessary, nobody, not even God, can make them false. Secondly, God possesses ‘free knowledge’, that is knowledge of all contingent truths that are within his control, but which could have been false under different conditions,. For example ‘I am interested in philosophy’ is a contingently true proposition but God could have brought it about that it was false. Finally, Molina proposes that God possesses ‘middle knowledge’ (so called because it is in-between God’s natural and free knowledge), that is, knowledge of contingent propositions which are true but beyond his control. The most important items of middle knowledge for the purpose of this discussion are the ‘counterfactuals of freedom’ which describe what people would freely do if placed in various possible situations. This is relevant to the problem of evil because ‘it might seem that if God has middle knowledge, He could have secured creatures sinless but free by just creating those that he knew would not sin if allowed to act freely. ’[15] In his discussion of middle knowledge[16] Craig indicates its power and why it is so attractive in the discussion of free will and the problem of evil. If it is true that God has middle knowledge as described above, this not only makes room for human freedom but it gives God scope to choose which free creatures to create and bring about his ultimate purposes through free creaturely decisions. He adduces three lines of argument in support of it – biblical, theological and philosophical. [17] Biblical arguments: Craig uses the example of David and Saul: [18] David is in the Jewish city of Keilah and asks God through an ephod[19] if Saul will attack him there and whether the men of Keilah would give him up to Saul to save their lives. God answers affirmatively to both questions, whereupon Saul heads for the hills, with the result that Saul does not need to besiege the city and the men of Keilah do not need to betray him to Saul. It is clear, says Craig, that the bible passage shows that God has counterfactual knowledge, although he admits that this does not show conclusively that he has middle knowledge. He goes on to accept that biblical exegesis is not enough to settle the matter. [20] Theological arguments: Craig says that ‘the strongest arguments in support of the Molinist perspective are theological’[21] but gives no direct support for this other than to wax lyrical on the power of middle knowledge in theological argument on a range of issues. This may be correct, given the existence of middle knowledge, but that is what we wish to test. Philosophical arguments: Craig asserts that divine foreknowledge and future contingents are compatible ‘for the simple reason that Scripture teaches both’[23] (a theological rather than philosophical statement of course) and goes on to discuss the basis of such foreknowledge. He builds an argument about freedom of action, concluding that ‘from God’s knowledge that I shall do x, it does not follow that I must do x, only that I shall do x. That is in no way incompatible with my doing x freely. ’[24] This is really just a restatement of the problem of free will and Craig does little more here than reassert its truth. Craig’s final conclusion is that ‘philosophically, omniscience†¦ entails knowledge of all truth and, since counterfactuals of creaturely freedom are true logically prior to god’s creative decree, they must therefore be known by God at that logical moment. Therefore we should affirm that God has middle knowledge. ’

The Relationship Between Social Class and Educational...

The Relationship Between Social Class and Educational Achievement Many sociologists have tried to explore the link between social class and educational achievement, measuring the effects of one element upon the other. In order to maintain a definite correlation between the two, there are a number of views, explanations, social statistics and perspectives which must be taken into account. The initial idea would be to define the key terms which are associated with how social class affects educational achievement. Social class is the identity of people, according to the work they do and the community in which they live in.Educational achievement is the tendency for some groups to do better†¦show more content†¦There is general agreement that intelligence is due to both genetic and environmental factors. Genetically based intelligence accounts for a large part of the difference in social class and educational attainment. Eysenck argues that there is better evidence for the influence of genes on educational attainment than there is on environme ntal factors. So, there is a relationship between the two factors, however the contexts of these are unclear. Halsey et al. conducted one of the most thorough studies of class inequalities in education of males who had studied in England and Wales. Clear class differences were established which enabled the sample to be divided into three groups according to the fathers occupation. The samples included service class (professionals, administrators and managers), the intermediate class (Clerical, sales workers, self employed) and the working class (manual workers in industry and agriculture). Halsey at al. found that there was a correlation between social classes and educational achievement, in that a boy from the service class compared to a boy from the working class had four times as great a chance of being at school at sixteen; eight times the chance at seventeen; and ten times the chance at eighteen. Hence, his chance of going to university was eleven times greater. By examining different cohorts contrasts with comparing the socialShow MoreRelatedThe Relationship Of Education And Social Class1234 Words   |  5 PagesThe Relationship of education and social class Education is a vital aspect of society and future the understanding of how education should be implemented is a serious question. Social Class plays a major role in the implementation of education which affects the outcome of the students. Social class affects education in various ways each author brings good information to be able to understand the relationship between the two. 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