Plato's Academy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Plato's Academy - Essay Example Although Plato did deliver his lectures there, "the metaphysical theories of the director [Plato] were not in any way 'official' and the formal instruction in the Academy was restricted to mathematics" (Chermiss 1980, p.18). In other words, the Academy was an association of highly educated people engaged in independent research and studies. As the founding father of the Academy, Plato became its first Head (scholarch) and remained at this position for forty years. Plato's immediate successor as the Head of the Academy was his 40-year old nephew Speusippus (347-339 BC) who, after his uncle's death in 347BC, remained scholarch for the next eight years. According to his contemporaries, Speusippus was a proliferate writer who produced many works written in the form of treatise and dialogues. Unfortunately, we have only few of the texts attributed to him: the information on Speusippus ideas and doctrines is primarily retrieved from third party sources (Dilon 2003). The scarce information available these days makes it clear that despite his familial connection with Plato, Speusippus could barely be named as the continuator of his uncle's major ideas. In particular, Speusippus rejected the famous Theory of Forms developed by Plato during his years at the Academy. Besides, Speusippus believed that the Good was secondary while Plato maintained the Good was ultimately primary. Also, Speusippus claimed it was not possible to have comprehensive knowledge of any thing without understanding of the properties that distinguish this thing from other things. These views differed substantially from the principles argued by Plato in his broad philosophic doctrine. And only in his works dedicated to ethics, Speusippus abided by the views similar to those of Plato: he further elaborated Plato's ideas of citizenship, justice and legislation as well as opposed the hedonistic theory of the value of life proposed by Aristippus of Cyrene, founder of the Cyrenaic sc hool. Speusippus also studied the science of numbers and, contrary to Plato, rejected the theory of ideal numbers (the Platonic Forms of numbers) which further led him to rejection of the Platonic concept of ideas in general (Smith 2007, III, pp. 893-894). In 339BC, Xenocrates of Chalcedon, a renowned philosopher and mathematician, became the next scholarch of the Academy. Xenocrates did abide by the views of Plato and further elaborated the ideas and theories of his famous predecessor often using mathematical instruments and elements in doing so. In particular, Xenocrates contributed significantly to the studies of demonology (Platonic theology). The scholar believed that duality and unity were gods which ruled the world and pervaded all things while the human soul was a self-moving number and that the demonical powers that also existed in the universe acted as an intermediate link or channel between the divine and the soul: "Xenocrates distinguishes three cosmological causes: the Forms as original patterns, the demiurge, and matter. Via allegories he combines the philosophical worldview with mythical religion" (Ricken 1991 pp. 119-120). Xenocrates' interpretations of Plato's principles (particularly his attempt to order philosophic p rinciples into logic and mathematics) seriously supplemented the foundations of Platonist philosophy. Polemon of Athens became the Head of the Academy in 314

Buddhism Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Buddhism - Research Paper Example Buddha taught people that awakening and enlightenment comes through self realization and it has nothing to do with one’s beliefs and ideals. After Buddha’s death, his followers spread his teachings to distant places and Buddhism appeared as a new religion in Asia; today it is the fourth largest religion of the world (Fisher ). Siddhartha Gautama was born to King Suddhodana of Shakya near Nepal in 583 B.C. His mother died soon after giving birth to Siddhartha. It was predicted by one of the holy men of Suddhodana’s court that Siddhartha will be a great conqueror or a great spiritual leader in future; his father was delighted to hear this because he wanted his son to be a great conqueror. Siddhartha spent his early life in his palaces in great luxuries; he was being trained to become a great prince and conqueror, therefore, his father kept him away from the realities of life and the disturbing thoughts of any religion. Siddhartha Gautama went out of his palace for the first time at the age of 29. He was amazed to see the life of people living outside the palace as he observed an aged man, a sick man and a corpse during his journey. The bitter realities of life greatly aggrieved him and the prince started to think about the truth behind this life. Siddhartha started to take journeys out of his palace; during one of such experiences he saw an ascetic. He was told that ascetics are people who leave the worldly life in search of the divine truth. Impressed by the life of ascetics, Gautama decided that he would start searching for the realities of life on his own (Armstrong). Gautama along with his five disciples started off their journey in pursuit of truth of life by visiting the renowned religious scholars of that time (Serinity). After months of learning of almost every known religion of the time in that area of the world, Gautama was not satisfied as a lot of questions remained unanswered in his mind. Therefore, he and his five disciples deci ded that they will search for enlightenment themselves through physical suffering and meditation. A series of physical sufferings which included extreme fasting, holding of breath and enduring great pain taught Gautama about the suffering and pain in the life of human beings. Gautama has already experienced a life of great pleasures at his palace; therefore, at this stage he had personally experienced both extremes of life. However, he wanted to find out a middle way, a life to end the sufferings of people. During one of his rounds of meditation, Gautama recalled his childhood experience when his mind achieved a state of deep peace and satisfaction. This made him realize that the reality of life can be found out by achieving peace of mind. At this point he decided to end fasting because he felt the need of energy in his quest for reality of life. But when Gautama ended his fast, his companions thought he has ended the quest to find the truth of life and abandoned him. After this, he continued his pursuit of enlightenment through long meditations and soon achieved the peace of mind he wanted and, thus, he believed himself to be enlightened because he found out the reality of life (Serinity). During the immediate period which followed his enlightenment, Gautama did not want to teach whatever he had learned about life because he thought that the

Health Care Recruitment Paper Research Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Health Care Recruitment - Research Paper Example Over the years, the hospital has expanded rapidly and the management board has been approving necessary resources and providing moral support to help the hospital personnel handle ever increasing number of patients. On December 3, 2010, the board approved recruitment of fifteen surgical unit nurses to address acute shortage of surgical nurses in ABC-Hospital. It is a move that is aimed at increasing the number of patients attended and fast tracking surgical procedures. Surgical nurses are charge with critical responsibility of ensuring that emotional and physical wellbeing of pre- operative and post-operative patients are well cared for and managed professionally. Failure to recruit nurses will weaken the ability of the surgery nursing unit to provide care and treatment as required. In addition, the number of people to undergo surgery will continue to decline causing a lot of backlog and suffering to the patients who need urgent surgical procedures. Following is a recruitment plan th at will enable ABC-Hospital to recruit fifteen surgical nurses. 2.0 Recruitment plan 2.1 SWOT analysis Strengths of the Surgical Unit at ABC-Hospital ABC-Hospital surgical unit is usually allocated sufficient finances to run its day to day activities. This has enabled the department to acquire state- of art surgical equipment and personnel to ensure that patients receive best health care services. The surgical unit has a fully fledged counseling unit to help surgical personnel especially the nurses to handle emotional challenges and fatigues that is caused by their work. When surgical nurses reached twenty five, the doctors will be able to increase the number of patients undergoing operation from four to over eight per day. Weaknesses of the Surgical Unit at ABC-Hospital The number of surgical nurses is ten. This is barely sufficient to meet increasing workload and high staff turnover in the surgical department. Shortage of surgical nurses is attributed to high staff turnover as a r esult of the stressful nature of the job that leave many nurses drained of energy and some decide to quit their jobs or transfer to general wards. The few available nurses are overwhelmed and cases of burnout, increasing number of absenteeism and lower staff morale has also been witnessed. This impact negatively health care delivery services to the patients. Acute shortage of surgical nurses led to reduced number of new surgical cases from an average of eight patients daily to three cases each day. Threats of the Surgical Unit at ABC-Hospital Stressful working conditions may result to increased surgical staff turnover in future. Most staff work more than forty hours stipulated in the job contract. This denies them adequate time to interact with other staff members as well as their family and friends. Globally, there is acute shortage of competent nurses. This means that it will be difficult to recruit and retain competent surgical nurses because demand for them is very high. Opportu nities of the Surgical Unit at ABC-Hospital ABC-Hospital has decided to increase the number of surgical nurses from ten to twenty five by April 31, 2011. ABC-Hospital considers its surgical unit extremely important and the board has approved staff development budget. A staff member who has worked in the hospital for more than twelve months is eligible for study leave. In addition, surgical staff members attend professional meetings at least once

Project Management Network diagram Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Project Management Network diagram - Essay Example An event is defined as the starting or ending point for a group of activities and an activity is the work required to proceed from one event or point of time to another.(Kerzner, 1992). The numbers over the arrow specifies the time needed. To know the relationships between activities what job precedes a particular job, what job immediately follows this job and what jobs can run concurrently have to be listed and the time required for the completion is estimated. Based on the chronological order in which they have to be completed, the following network diagram is constructed: From the above diagram we can understand the sequence of activities and their relative importance in the completion of the project. From the information provided we can tabulate and determine the critical path of the project. The Critical path is the sequence of activities which are crucial because delays to them will delay the completion of the project as a whole(Needham, 1997). The late finish and the late finish of the activities are calculated first. The early finish is the optimistic estimate of the completion time of the specific activity and the late finish is the pessimistic estimate of the duration of the activity. The slack time is the difference between the early finish and the late finish. In other words, the slack time denotes the time duration which can be delayed without delaying the entire project. But there are some activities which have the slack time zero, which means that these activities cannot be delayed. These activities are critical for the successful complet ion of the project because they cannot be delayed. The Appendix - 1 shows the calculation slack time of the activities. The calculation shows that the critical path consists of activities, A, D, H, I, J which are crucial for the completion of the project because they do not have any slack time. b) Normal distribution curves are very useful to analyze the frequency of data. When we construct a standard normal probability distribution table, the relationship between the mean of the distribution and the random variable is established. The formula used is: Z = x - / , Where, Z = number of standard deviations from x to the mean of this distribution X = value of the random variable with which we are concerned = mean of the distribution of this random variable = standard deviation of this distribution The value obtained from using the above mentioned formula is

Women Rising From the Ashes of War Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Women Rising From the Ashes of War - Essay Example Women Rising From the Ashes of War When World War Two broke out, it was a signal that turbulent times were ahead. Men were recruited to fight for their countries. Women had no choice but to let go of their men. It was unknown to everyone what the future will bring, but when the war broke out, it seemed that a bleak tomorrow threatened the world. Women, in particular, assailed by a series of unending attacks to their humanity and had to claw at what appears to be a hint of hope for survival. Class distinctions broke down and the formerly rich women adjusted to life’s painful realities that they had to live like the rest of the commoners. â€Å"Mass observation surveys conducted during 1941 found that many who advocated conscription believed it would force ‘idle rich girls’ to work.† (Smith: 215) The war demanded enormous manpower, not just in the armed forces, but also in industry. Millions of men joined the forces, which left many industries without a satisfactory workforce. The government realised that this shortfall had to be filled, approximately one and a half million workers were needed in munitions alone and it was vital to keep up the production of essential wartime machinery and equipment. The government therefore, took the decision to draft women into ‘men’s’ jobs, just as they had done during the First World War, in an attempt to keep production at a steady level. The new realities faced by the women necessitated that they likewise take part in the war effort in any capacity they can. Most women had to leave their homes to work in a variety of occupations.

Intervention Article Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Intervention - Article Example The study was conducted in Sydney, Australia. The participants in the study were 172 and they were individuals with non-specific low back pain. They received 14 sessions of individualized supervised exercise therapy and they were randomly assigned to receive either motor control exercises or graded activity as a way of establishing the advantage and applicability of the motor control exercises in reducing back pain (Gazzi Macedo et al., 2012). These two studies were aimed at establishing whether the exercise program could be used as an intervention into reducing PGD and LBP. However, the researchers in the first study found no effect of the treatment program on the prevalence of self-reported LBP and PGD during the time of pregnancy not exceeding 20 weeks. This cannot rule out the program though it cannot be used widely due to the failed positive results. The results of the second study however shoed that motor control exercises and graded activity have similar effects for patients with chronic nonspecific low back pain (Gazzi Macedo et al., 2012). These can be used well as an intervention in the reduction of back pain, LBP and PGD in pregnant women. Article one shows the details of the study done to establish whether the introduction of a group-based exercise program can be applied as an intervention for reducing Lower Back Pain and Pelvic Girdle Pain in pregnant women before the 20th week of gestation. The results however shows little difference in the two groups which consist of the controlled group and the non-controlled group. The sample size is 257 which consists of pregnant women before the 20th week of gestation. The Second is a parallel study done on a suburban area in Sydney, Australia. The participants in the study were 172 and they were individuals with non-specific low back pain. They undergo individualized supervised exercise therapy and they were randomly assigned to receive either motor

The Responses to the Humanitarian Erisis in Darfur Essay

The Responses to the Humanitarian Erisis in Darfur - Essay Example This low incidence of intervention seems at odds with the agreement entered into by most countries in the Genocide Convention of 1948 wherein they committed, under Art 1, â€Å"to prevent and to punish†2 the crime of genocide. Could this failure to intervene in the genocidal activities of sovereign states be rooted in the inability of the human rights movement to propel international action? The case of Darfur provides a timely opportunity to examine the truth of that theory. It is imperative that a definition of genocide be explored and established first since much of the controversy surrounding international inaction today are in many ways related to the very definition and application of the term â€Å"genocide†. As is best exemplified by Shelly’s wordplay above, the definition and use of the term genocide has been muddled by political stratagems which seem to follow an unspoken rule to never use the term at all costs. Instead of the term â€Å"genocide†, terms such as â€Å"ethnic violence†, â€Å"ethnic cleansing†, â€Å"acts of genocide†, and â€Å"civil war† have become the trademark of the politically-savvy. It would be as though by avoiding the term genocide, a humanitarian crisis such as Rwanda or Darfur would cease to be genocide and transform into something more palatable to the taste. We must thus resort back to the definition of genocide agreed upon by the same international community before t hey actually found themselves bound to make good on such definition. In the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the following definition is clearly detailed.