text:
User:Jms2117

Bio
My full name is John Mack Schlicht, the Second.

The program I am studying at the Art Institute of Seattle is Game Art and Design.

I first plan on making "casual" games during the first part of my career. If all goes well, I might concievably look into full-time 3D game design.

My current interest in this class is how to write BETTER fiction. I tend to dabble in it every once in a while, but I have yet to produce a finished piece.

I am also hoping to keep the option of a writing career open in case games don't work out.

My current favorites are science fiction and fantasy stories. I sometimes enjoy a bit of nonfiction on the side.

Response
Ryan,

I very much enjoyed your ekphrastic piece. I am a die-hard science fiction buff, and what you wrote sounds a lot like the stuff I like to read. I am somewhat amused that you managed to find better inspiration from the Sculpture Park than I did. I think my response to the trip was kind of half-hearted.

The piece itself was well-written, and I couldn't notice any glaring grammatical or spelling errors. The plot was well-thought and engaging. I think you may have something that may be worth expanding upon at a later time, perhaps leading up to something greater. Keep up the excellent work!

Style
"The Peachalk"

By John Schlicht

Inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as his short story  The Dunwich Horror

These days, when a traveler passes through Belfair and takes the old Victor Cutoff, he’ll come across what is now a less-travelled Rocky Bay Point Road. If they take the west fork, it will lead them through what was once a pleasant waterside community. Nowadays, most of the houses will be forgotten and dilapidated, save for the homesteads of a few stubborn holdouts. The forest will have largely retaken its former territory, and one will find entire fields left to foxglove, tansy, and scotch broom. Afterwards, one sometimes will learn, either from the few remaining human inhabitants, or from the talk of neighboring towns, that they have passed through Victor.

Outsiders seldom visit Victor anymore. The few signs that pointed to Victor have either been removed or vandalized beyond recognition. Visitors find the scenery pleasant and welcoming during the daylight hours, but find it suddenly and horribly foreboding when darkness casts its veil. The neighboring towns shun it for reasons half-forgotten, although the people of Victor are themselves welcomed as any other native of this country. The few families that stubbornly remain are farming folk, and despite the ill air fastened to the place by others, more than one firstborn son returns to Victor after completing his studies in Seattle or Olympia. A visitor will more than likely find warm lodging and warm hospitality among the locals if he finds himself with little recourse, although one seldom stays long.

The vile rumors of the place are plenty, although they are surprisingly careful not to draw ill attention to its curiously friendly inhabitants. Many natives fear the coyotes’ nocturnal wailing, as they say when they scream in the blackness, it means the soul of a recently passed was taken by the Devil. All other creatures shun the place; save for the occasional scrawny deer that only lingers long enough to nibble the crooked grasses of abandoned pastures. Livestock go missing with great frequency in the night, and others are found torn to pieces in the dawn.

The locals say this to be the work of the Peachalk, which many say is the reason Victor is feared and avoided so. Outsiders dismiss the creature as nonsense, diverting the blame to the plentiful coyotes in the region, although more than one skeptic has been baffled by the nature of the mutilations. Upon examination, it is as if the poor beasts are seized by dozens of misshapen hands and simply pulled apart limb from limb. Many a would-be skeptic has also found himself at a loss when he hears the dreadful, inexplicable wails in the night, clearly not of coyotes, but horribly similar to many pitiful human beings wailing in agony at once.

Although many claim to have glimpsed the beast, they say only Sidney Dalton, the eldest son of the Dalton family, has actually beheld the horror in its entirety. Many inquiring souls come to the Dalton homestead, seeking answers to the mystery of Victor. However, many leave empty handed, for Sidney is now pitifully mad, spending his days whimpering of the horror he beheld, sobbing and inflicting terrible pains upon himself in a vain effort to exorcise the thing from his mind. However, in one rare instance of lucidity, he described the beast in the best detail his tortured mind could muster: “…like…like an urchin…but…with arms instead of spines…and the heads…long necks…like snakes…with those heads…they look so human…but the mouths…like lampreys…screaming! Screaming…the thing…the horrible screaming!”

There is no certain explanation for the origin of the Peachalk, but there is one old story in particular that stands out. It tells of the old Walker family, the latest generations of which still reside in the farms of Victor, as well as several of the surrounding towns. The patriarch, the old Thorgne Walker, had a daughter, Liza, who some said had an unhealthy interest in the eldritch lore that is said to have existed since before man walked the Earth. One night, she gave birth to a child, Thorgne’s first grandson. However, the baby transformed into a monster before Thorgne’s horrified eyes, and slaughtered the midwife attending Liza and several others present at the time.

Proclaiming the monster-spawn to be not of this good earth, Thorgne burned the house down, some say in hopes of burning Liza and her offspring with it. The monster child escaped the inferno, however, and to this day stalks the woods as the Peachalk; the thing in the night, the wailing horror, the spawn of unspeakable gods. Regardless of the story’s truthfulness, people left Victor, never to return. The houses were left to the rats, the fields left to the woods, all left to the lurking thing that scuttles beneath the boughs of Victor…

Other Media
John Schlicht

"The Battle for Joni IV"

Inspired by a tale of Warhammer 40K, by Games Workshop

Captain Koranus wasn’t at all pleased with the situation. How the planetary governor and his cronies managed to miss such a massive Necron tomb complex was beyond his reckoning. Already, the Jonian PDFs were in full rout, unable to hold off the ancient killing machines and their arcane weaponry. He vowed that as soon as this battle was finished, he would see to it that the prominent heads of the planetary bureaucracy would roll, and he didn’t mean it in merely a figurative sense.

It was fortunate that he and his fellow Astartes of the Salamanders chapter were nearby when the Necrons emerged. Any further, and the unpredictable nature of the Warp meant they could have arrived years after the blasphemous machines scourged the planet of life. Still, despite the bumbling incompetence of their leaders, the light and love of the Emperor was still with the Jonians, and for this Koranus gave thanks.

Although the Jonian sun had yet to appear, the first telltale orange threads of light glimmered on the horizon. Below it, however, was a baleful green glow that percolated through the forest before them, signaling the coming of the undying enemy Koranus and his warriors had come to face. They were getting close, close enough for Koranus to see them through the zoom of his bionic eyes.

It was as if an army of blackened skeletons had risen from their tombs, eldritch energies glowing a sickly green through their eyes and ribs. However, Koranus knew this was no horde of the dead. These skeletons were made of steel, and clearly bore the mark of the ancient machine. Some of the antediluvian automatons were integrated into hover units, which replaced where their legs would have been. All carried one form or another of the dreaded weaponry of the Necrons, which would strip a man from armor to bone in seconds, leaving only dry ash.

Koranus quickly inspected the ranks of his enemy, and within little time he found his target. The necron lord stood out conspicuously from the rank and file, its shoulders and mantle a dulled gold that still marked the unit as the master of the warriors. In one hand was a bladed staff, shimmering green with necron energies, in the other an orb of green material, the purpose of which Koranus failed to guess.

Bolter fire erupted from somewhere to the left. The sounds told him one of his squads of battle-brothers had engaged the enemy. Koranus signaled his Terminator bodyguard to begin their advance, power claws shimmering with destructive energy. Withdrawing his own power sword, Koranus strode just behind his guard towards the necron lord.

Crackling green bolts of flaying energy responded to a torrent of armor-piercing bolter fire. A series of sharp, rapid BOOM signaled to Koranus his Predator tanks had begun to bombard the necrons with autocannon fire. Already clusters of metal killing machines were scattered and rent by space marine firepower, while the necron attack seemed to have little impact in return.

Koranus and his bodyguard quickly closed with the necron lord. Before the ancient machine could react, the Terminators had quickly laid ruin to it, dashing its torn metal body to the earth. The baleful energies that powered it began to flicker and fade.

Victory was in Koranus’ grasp. As his bodyguard stood to finish the task, however, an explosion of terrible energy struck at their feet. One Terminator was vaporized, two others blasted into charred corpses in melted armor. The others struggled to lift themselves, dazed from the sudden explosion. Koranus found himself on his back, his artificer armor smoldering and crackling with energy.

Before his eyes was perhaps the most terrible visage he had ever witnessed. A great floating machine, resembling something like a pyramid, glowed intensely with murderous power. Cannons on all sides of the thing began sowing death with their lethal green bolts, burning space marines to ash with each salvo.

Materializing from a strange portal on the front of the great destroying machine was a force of strange humanoid machine-warriors, each wielding a thrumming bladed staff. Without pause, they set upon the Terminators, their fell weapons parting the legendary armor as if it were a jest, to rend terrible ruin upon the warriors within. Soon, the slaughterers became the slaughtered.

Dazed, Koranus reached for his power sword, which lay within reach. As his hand clasped the blade’s hilt, a metal foot stomped down upon it, crunching armor and bone. The space marine captain looked up and glared into the eyes of the fallen necron lord, or what he foolishly believed was a fallen necron lord. The thing, although still rent in places, had somehow repaired the worst of the damage, and stared hatefully at Koranus for a moment.

The last thing Koranus saw before eternal darkness claimed him was the necron’s bladed staff come down upon his head…

To John.

First of all, I am obsolutly delighted to see a fellow Wahammer 40K fan. I really enjoyed reading “The Battle for Joni IV” not just because I am a Warhammer series fan, but because of how you really captured the characteristic of both Space Marines and Necrons. While it crushed me to see Space Marines dying by Necron hands, I really think you’ve done good job visualizing what it was like to face Necrons in battlefield. Unlike Orks and Tyranids which are feared because they always tend to overwhelm their opponents in number. Necrons are feared because even if they die, they can come back and blast your behind. For that reason, I always thought of Necrons as further robot zombies, and your story has really shown me that you too understand why Necrons are considered the most feared army in Warhammer universe. Another thing that I liked about this piece is how you described the surroundings and the characters in details. My favorite part was when you described the merging Necron army in fourth and fifth paragraphs. Although I think having the knowledge of what they look like already did help made it easier for me to visualize this scene, but I really enjoy reading the detailed descriptions about their physical forms. The part when the Necron Monolith came in to the scene was also one of my favorites.

-kevin-

Ekphrastic
“I Remember Paul Bunyan…” By John Schlicht

“I remember Paul Bunyan. There wasn’t no man as big a man as he! He was a hero among us lumberjacks, a true king of the woods! However, I feel compelled to correct a few of the myths that these tall tales of him are going about. True, he did a lot of great things as one of us, and I’m not inclined to belittle him, but I think he’d be somewhat embarrassed about the exaggerations folks lay at his feet.

“Now, first off, Paul never cut down one entire forest. That’s complete bull! He was a damn good fellow with an axe, but even he couldn’t cut down that many trees by his lonesome. That, and he’d think it be downright wasteful, too. He appreciated the land, and never took advantage of it. “A man should only take what he needs,” he said. “He takes too much, and soon he’ll find himself wanting…”

“Second, he was a big man, and I say a mighty big man, but for the Almighty’s sake he wasn’t as tall as a tree. Although, to us he may as well have been, since he stood a good half-man above us in height. I digress, though! Besides, a lumberjack earns his fare, and his repute, by chopping down trees bigger than he is, not vice versa…

“…and another thing that gets my goat; ol’ Paul could never heat a mountain of flapjacks in a single sittin’! He had a mighty appetite, mind you, but he never ate a lot of flapjacks. They didn’t serve ‘em much at our camp, since we were always short on flour. He liked meat an’ eggs more! We always had plenty of that!

“Babe the Blue Ox? She was only blue when we found her in the storm. She turned a healthy shade of gray as she grew up. She was a big’un, all right. At least the part about her being the size of a mountain was half-true. Might touchy though, but Paul never seemed to have problems with ‘er. She’d obey his every command, but the rest of us, she could care less about.

“Now, I’m not trying to belittle big Paul! A man tries to set some facts straight, and everyone gets on his case! No, sir! I think he was a great hero to us Western folk. He certainly was to me, when I started lumberjacking. I was barely a man, then, and hadn’t a dime to my name. Still kind of don’t, but I got a fortune in wisdom, they say!

“I personally met Mr. Bunyan when we were loggin’ in the Rockies. I forgets whereabouts. Age does that to you. Well, anyway, Paul stomped into the bunkhouse late in the afternoon, when it was pourin’ down rain outside and bitter cold. He was a mighty furious that the chains he was using to pull timber with Babe had come off, and he needed someone to look after her while he got everything back in order.

“Next thing I know, I’m nominated. So, I spent the next two hours in the rain, saying sweet nothings to Babe like she likes, while Paul struggled with the logs. After those two hours of fightin’ an’ cursin’ with the chains he finally got everything going again. He still needed me to watch the chains while he led Babe to the loggin’ wagons. It passed without incident, and just as we finished up the rain stopped falling. Paul walked up to me, slapped me on the back, and said I dun a god’un. I felt mighty proud hearing those words.

“For the next twenty-odd years, Paul and we logged the woods of the West. Then the machines came, and Paul wasn’t too happy about it. It wasn’t ‘cause they’d cut down all the trees, mind you. He was upset that we’d all lose our jobs. By the time he got used to them a few years later, his time had come to retire. Loggin’s rough work, and it takes a nasty toll on you, even if you’re as big and strong as Paul Bunyan.

“We said our goodbyes, parted ways, and I never heard from him again. Last story I heard of him, he had retired to the great redwoods of California, where the machines had yet to come. As for me, well, I kept on loggin’ until I too was too old and stiff to swing an axe. I retired, moved here, and been here ever since. Now, I think I’ve said enough on Big Paul. I’m getting tired, and I think he’d call this work a good’un…”

Sequel/Prequel
"The Terrible Colors" By John Schlicht

Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s  The Colour out of Space

I, Maxwell Walker, hereby recount the events of April 7th, 2010, that occurred on a rural farm near the town of Allyn. By no means are any elements of this story exaggerated, imagined, or in any way false. What I witnessed will be written and described exactly as I had witnessed them. After reading what I have recounted of that incident, you will understand there isn’t really a need for garnishments. Also, I write this account with a clear, sane mind, or at the very least the closest facsimile I could bring myself to, especially whilst being forced to remember the horror of what I survived to tell you this story…

It all began sometime during the first weekend of April. It was early enough in the morning that the sun had yet to make its regular appearance. I, and all those who I considered friend and family, were awakened by a terrible roar which seemed to pass through the sky, accompanied by a brilliant yellow glow. At first we had believed it to be a passenger jet that had come to grief, until we observed it come down within the property of a farmer known throughout the neighborhood as “Mr. Ferguson”.

I and two friends, siblings named Sidney and Rynna Dalton, made our way to the site where the object came down, which wasn’t far from Mr. Ferguson’s homestead. The sojourn itself took nearly an hour and a half through As we approached, we were assaulted by a distinctively offensive, yet utterly indescribable odor, which made it much difficult to approach Mr. Ferguson’s house.

When we arrived at the farm, we were shocked and thoroughly horrified to discover that the object had struck the homestead itself, leaving a large, glowing crater in its stead. Indescribable, and wholly alien colors seemed to rise from the site, as if they were a living entity guided by a strange and malignant consciousness. Tendrils of the “thing” reached everywhere, and our terror was magnified as we watched every living thing it touched turn grey and shriveled until the essence was totally drained, at which point the victim would crumble into colorless gray dust.

However, the true horror would was yet to come. With a terrible groaning and shrieking, a shapeless, crawling thing emerged from the colors within the crater, uttering a keening wail as it crested the crater’s rim. One of us reacted with a wail of his or her own, and that was our cue to make a hasty exit.

We ran the whole way through the dark and treacherous woods, made more so by the alien colors that soon began to creep through the sky above the treetops, as if it were pursuing us. Roots seemed to rise from the ground to trip us, and branches reached out to snag or lash us as we fled, but despite the terrible stinging and throbbing pain we would not stop. Not until we had reached the Daltons’ residence, stumbling quickly inside and barricading the front door behind us.

It was not until well after dawn that a family friend of the Daltons arrived, inquiring as to their well-being in light of the previous night’s events. After helping us restore a facsimile of sanity, we learned the Ferguson farm had been left a grey, barren waste. Everything living within a mile of the place was killed by the strange color that had come from the sky. Other than the wasted land, the only evidence that remained was a gaping hole where the entity arrived. When we inquired as to whether anyone had found a creature like the one we witnessed emerging from the colors, they mentioned the discovery of bizarre tracks making their way from the site into the woods.

Soon after, the Daltons and I packed up and left. Rynna Dalton and I married a month after the event, and I have kept in touch with her brother Sidney. To this day, rumors and stories trickle from our old neighborhood of people sighting a strange, shapeless, multi-limbed creature scampering and stalking about the forests. Nobody has been able to explain the destruction of the Ferguson farm and the surrounding wilderness, and more people have been leaving since then than moving in.

I cannot blame them. We will never return there. The horror we witnessed was just to much for us to find the courage to face again. I will also warn you not to go there. Even today, when Rynna and I pass through that neighborhood, we feel the thing still lingering…waiting…

Personal
Cold By John Schlicht

It is actually somewhat difficult for me pin down an defining moment of experiencing near-hypothermia. Cold is no stranger to me. I get up every morning, even in winter's worst, to do my daily chores. There have been times I've put on two or three layers of clothing, but still felt the teeth of cold bite into me. I've lived in a house with a wood stove when wood was difficult enough to come by, much less come by cheap.

I've waded knee-deep in half-frozen snowpack. I've done chores at the homes of family friends while icicles hung from the trees like little crystal swords of Damocles. I've swam in lakes that drained the color from my skin and the sensation from my extremities. I've nearly died once from exposure walking home during a snowy and frigid cold winter evening. For reasons lost to me, I've even sat in the shower ran like glacial meltwater.

Yes, I am very familiar with cold. Where I live isn't the coldest place in the world, but Washington is damn close at times. Just ask those who decide to visit from warmer climes.

Memorization
A Shadow out of Time, by H.P. Lovecraft

Had I, in full, hideous fact, been drawn back to a pre-human world of a hundred and fifty million years ago in those dark, baffling days of the amnesia? Had my present body been the vehicle of a frightful alien consciousness from palaeogean gulfs of time?

Had I, as the captive mind of those shambling horrors, indeed known that accursed city of stone in its primordial heyday, and wriggled down those familiar corridors in the loathsome shape of my captor? Were those tormenting dreams of more than twenty years the offspring of stark, monstrous memories?

Had I once veritably talked with minds from reachless corners of time and space, learned the universe's secrets, past and to come, and written the annals of my own world for the metal cases of those titan archives? And were those others - those shocking elder things of the mad winds and daemon pipings - in truth a lingering, lurking menace, waiting and slowly weakening in black abysses while varied shapes of life drag out their multimillennial courses on the planet's age-racked surface?

I do not know. If that abyss and what I held were real, there is no hope. Then, all too truly, there lies upon this world of man a mocking and incredible shadow out of time. But, mercifully, there is no proof that these things are other than fresh phases of my myth-born dreams. I did not bring back the metal case that would have been a proof, and so far those subterrene corridors have not been found.

If the laws of the universe are kind, they will never be found. But I must tell my son what I saw or thought I saw, and let him use his judgment as a psychologist in gauging the reality of my experience, and communicating this account to others.

I have said that the awful truth behind my tortured years of dreaming hinges absolutely upon the actuality of what I thought I saw in those Cyclopean, buried ruins. It has been hard for me, literally, to set down that crucial revelation, though no reader can have failed to guess it. Of course, it lay in that book within the metal case - the case which I pried out of its lair amidst the dust of a million centuries.

No eye had seen, no hand had touched that book since the advent of man to this planet. And yet, when I flashed my torch upon it in that frightful abyss, I saw that the queerly pigmented letters on the brittle, aeon-browned cellulose pages were not indeed any nameless hieroglyphs of earth's youth. They were, instead, the letters of our familiar alphabet, spelling out the words of the English language in my own handwriting.

Self Assessment
I have learned that it is actually quite challenging to write. For one with such a fickle attention span, such as myself, it is actually all the more difficult. I feel I have met the expectations of this class, and more, but yet I still feel as though I could have done better. It is that nagging feeling I get at the end of each quarter, "did I do my best?", "could I have done better?", "was it really that meaningful?"

In the end, I can only hope that I can leave with a sense that I did all that I could and it was enough, at least for me. The feeling of doubt always haunts me eventually, and many a black depression I have brooded over it. However, like all the others, I feel this one will eventually pass, too...

title: User:Jms2117


text:
Talk:French/Wall Charts and Posters

Sources of information

 * Becherelle: "Complete Guide to Conjugating 12 000 French Verbs" Hatier, Paris Fevrier 1995 ISBN 978-2-218-06591-0
 * Dictionnaire Flaminarion de la Langue Française (1999) ISBN 2-08-082006-0

Page Layout
The intention is for each table row to occupy one line of printed text, but this is rather difficult to get right on all kinds of computers and printers. If you would like the text or images to be larger or smaller, I suggest you copy the wiki text to your own user page and make whatever adjustments you like. The IPA symbol image sizes can be easily adjusted from the current height of 25 pixels by replacing the text "25x25px" by "30x30px" (or any other suitable number). Recent Runes 22:00, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

R Symbol
This table uses the upright "R" symbol as this is used in most dictionaries, but the inverted one is also available here. The full set of symbols is shown here.

New Material
I am looking for a dictionary with phonetics for other verbs. If you have more information, please pass it on and I will create more material. Recent Runes 22:31, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Most good dictionaries will have full phonetics; my French dictionary does... of course, once you know the pronunciation, the rest is easy. You're looking for a dictionary online, though, I suppose?  The Jade Knight (d'viser) 06:12, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I only found one dictionary that gives the pronunciation for the different verb conjugations for just 5 verbs. In all the other dictionaries, just the infinitive has any pronunciation associated with it. If you know of any dictionary with pronunciation for the conjugation tables of any other verbs, please let me know. Recent Runes 10:23, 29 August 2009 (UTC)
 * With regular verbs, the pronunciation is consistent, and with many of the irregular verbs it follows predefined rules. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 06:23, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Yes, but are there any authoritative publications that define all the pronunciation rules? Also, such rules often seem quite technical and difficult for the student. e.g. "Some sequences of glide + vowel can be found after obstruent-liquid onsets". I think you would need to be quite advanced before you could understand terminology like that. Recent Runes 13:36, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Unforuntately, I'm not aware of any right off the top of my head, but I'll keep my eyes open. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 19:01, 30 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It looks like the web site of the Centre National de Ressources Textuelles et Lexicales has a lot of relevant information, including conjugation tables of verbs with phonetics. (see ) Recent Runes 23:16, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Talk:French/Wall Charts and Posters


text:
User:Tagacebu

I am a highly trained and experienced Cebuano (a person born in Cebu, Philippines) in terms of software engineering in particular and in information systems in general. A proud and radical Filipino who believes in progress through unity and knowledge.

I am software engineer by day involved heavily on embedded systems running Linux. I am a hopeful web developer and is now actively learning and doing Drupal-PHP-MySQL-related stuff.

Apart from the usual software engineering stuff, I'm also building up my knowledge in signal processing since I am currently involved with exciting radio communications products.

Some of my favorite principles:

 * 1) Discipline yourself so that others wont have to.
 * 2) Honesty is the best policy.
 * 3) The quality of your environment is relative to the quality of your contribution.

title: User:Tagacebu


text:
User:DennisDaniels

Insatiable curiosity for the world and its wonders.

quiz prompt
Forget everything prior.

Create a wikiversity quiz.

Use this format

{I________ (use) it for many years.

 * type="[]"}

- use

 * Incorrect. The subject mentions 'many years' so the verb should be in the past tense

- uses

 * Incorrect. Review your tenses.

+ used

 * Correct! This is the simple past form of the verb.

- using

 * Incorrect. Review your tenses.

{I________ (use) it when I________ (become) interested in genealogy.

 * type="[]"}

- use | become

 * Incorrect. Review your tenses.

+ used | became

 * Correct! Simple past form of the verb.

- uses | becomes

 * Incorrect. Review your tenses.

- using | becoming

 * Incorrect. Review your tenses.

Create a wikiversity quiz using this material.

title: User:DennisDaniels


text:
Portal:Mentorship

This portal is for organizing information and resources related to mentorship and learning how to mentor. The idea here is to create a home for mentorship on Wikiversity.

Mentorship
Wikiversity doesn't have teachers or professors as such, we have mentors. Anyone can be both a learner and a mentor. Learners are generally expected to add to and update resources while they are learning from them. As such the role of mentors is to merely guide learning.

Wikiversity is considering four main types of mentors:

Content Mentors
Content Mentors assist participants in developing resources for Wikiversity. There are a number of tasks mentors can help with:

 * Wiki Training: Train new participants in how to use a wiki environment and wiki syntax.
 * Documentation: Develop and update resources that can be used to aid in mentoring new participants.
 * Review: Review contributions, offer encouragement, and provide constructive feedback on their quality and content.
 * Illustrate: Improve resources by creating or adding graphic content, pictures, sounds and video files to make learning more enjoyable, and present an image of quality education.
 * Write: Make learning more enjoyable by contributing content to make Wikiversity more useful.
 * Improve: Improve the quality of resources to meet respected educational standards.
 * Watch: Watch out for vandalism, test edits, and the like, and encourage constructive editing.

Education Mentors
An Education Mentor volunteers to oversee and guide learners in their education on Wikiversity. There are many tasks that mentors can help with:

 * Write: Write material for courses and resources for subjects you know about and fill gaps in subject coverage.
 * Design: Design assignments, tests or quizzes that learners can take to aid in judging their comprehension.
 * Update: Keep courses and resources current — correct outdated facts and fix external links that have become broken.
 * Research: Gather available sources of information related to courses and resources to help encourage further learning.
 * Encourage: Encourage learners to pursue interests, educational goals and course work.
 * Test: Test learners comprehension and abilities, and provide feedback to help learners pursue further goals.
 * Tutor: Be available to help learners with questions and problems encountered while learning.
 * Organize: Create and update pages for organizing content so there are more ways to find courses and resources.
 * Find: Help find (more) people who can and are willing to mentor, and encourage learners to become mentors also.
 * Fund: Help find people, organizations and companies willing to fund education and research.

Schorlarly Mentors
A Scholarly mentor volunteers to oversee and guide publication according to verifiable standard. There are many tasks the mentor can help with:

See: Portal:Wiki Scholar

 * Peer review: Determine the validity of the scholarly effort in current academia.
 * Collaborate: Work in unison (or parallel) to accomplish a scholarly goal.
 * Research: Explore the current resources available to underpin the study.
 * Verify: Develop a system of observation to prove the study as the origin of these scholarly findings.
 * Sharing: Delegate tasks to other parties to increase the study's scholarly standing.
 * Criticism: Ensure the study has balanced observational tendencies.
 * Plagiarism: Ensure the study has proper ethical declaration of all intellectual property.
 * Confirm: Observe the findings.
 * Cite/Reference: Find the best sources for the intellectual property mentioned or used.
 * Copy Edit: Examine the study's scholarly readability.
 * Edit: Restructure the presentation of the study to scholarly requirements.
 * Contribute: Provide resources to improve the study's scholarly opportunities.

Research Mentors
A Research Mentor helps and guides learners in their research goals. There are a few tasks that mentors can help with:

 * Research: Find reliable websites and Articles that learners can use as a source for their research.
 * Review: Review research methods used, data included, assumptions made, etc. and provide feedback.
 * Recruit: Find expert Reviewers from outside the Wikiversity Community, to review research that is outside the experience of those within the community
 * Question: Question everything as a way to inspire learners to improve their research.

Custodian Mentors
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title: Portal:Mentorship


text:
User:Graeme E. Smith/Template Sandbox/marks

= Some strange course name =

Bogus Course, sessionXXX

 * mark: Quiz#456 7 total: 10
 * mark: Quiz#567 8 total: 10
 * mark: Quiz#456 8 total: 10

Bogus Course, sessionXXX

 * mark: Quiz#456 5 total: 10
 * mark: Quiz#123 4 total: 8


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User:Graeme E. Smith/Template Sandbox/Test Page

User:Graeme E. Smith/Template Sandbox/marks

user:Graeme E. Smith/Template Sandbox/test.php


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User:MikeVanV

I am interested in science and engineering topics, especially those involving the application of experimental measurements to physics, chemistry and engineering and the use of historical design methods for improving and inventing machines, processes, software and policies.

I am a registered professional engineer (US, Utah) with experience in the agricultural, aerospace, aeronautical, medical device and chemical processing industries. I authored an advanced website for scientific and engineering calculations at. The Expression Evaluator and Complex Converter  functions are useful for a variety of calculations.

Life is an ongoing learing opportunity and I am excited to be part of this online university.

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User:Jcole15

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text: File:LDL molecule.jpg

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text: File:LDL receptor.jpg

title: File:LDL receptor.jpg


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User:Dsheard

Under Construction center text

title: User:Dsheard


text:
Introduction to Information science

Information science is the study of information and the manner in which it is communicated between humans within the context of the information phenomenon.

Information science studies information from a meta data perspective. That is to say that it is concerned with the properties of information in general, rather than the content of specific information itself. This is in contrast to other subjects, for example Botany, which would study the contents of information relating to plant life, without being concerned with studying how the information is transferred to the student.

The information science field of study covers three areas of interest:

 * Humanity, cf. Cognition
 * Ecology, cf. Interaction and Communication
 * Historicity, cf. Information

These three areas are interrelated because human beings need to communicate in order to exist successfully, and the matter which is being communicated between the humans is information.

Information science is accepted as a interdisciplinary science which is concerned with studies as per the table of contents below:

Subject

 * A subject is an observer, a person that is consciously aware being in the world.
 * The subject is aware of what is happening in their mind and body. The subject alone has direct access to their own thoughts, no other person can directly know the subjects thoughts and feelings.
 * You can only deduce indirectly what another person is thinking or planning to do from what they tell you or by observing their actions. For example if you see someone filling a kettle with water, you could guess that they are about to make some tea, or if you hear them yell from the kitchen you could guess that they have scalded themselves.
 * You cannot directly experience the thoughts of feelings of another subject.

Other People

 * As a subject one is more knowledgeable about oneself than of other people.
 * Other people exist, and they share certain similarities with the subject.
 * Subjects become aware of other people through their senses.
 * Physical properties of other people are observed directly, e.g. gender, height, race, hair colour. Subjects may deduce what other people are thinking or feeling based on assumption that the other people are similar to the subjects themselves. These assumptions are based on the behaviour of the other people e.g. the subject may decide that the other people are intelligent, deceitful or friendly.
 * This is termed the behaviourist approach. It is not necessarily the most reliable way of acquiring knowledge, however it is commonly used. Results gathered in this fashion are normally acceptable, as often it is impractical to use more stringent means.
 * These types of untested results may be referred to as "folk" knowledge.

Cognitive science

 * Cognitive linguistics
 * Cognitive psychology
 * Epistemology
 * Neuroscience

Natural

 * Natural sciences

Cultural

 * Anthropology
 * Behaviorism
 * Symbolism
 * Critical studies
 * Cybernetics
 * Information technology

Historical relics

 * Curatorship, museology

Historical records

 * Librarianship, library science

Historical Information Science

 * Lawrence J. McCrank (2002) Historical Information Science: An Emerging Unidiscipline

Science of science

 * Empiricism
 * Rationalism
 * Reductionism
 * Atomism
 * Phenomenology

title: Introduction to Information science


title: User:Q82


text:
User talk:Crowne

 Hello Crowne, and welcome to Wikiversity! If you need help, feel free to visit my talk page, or contact us and ask questions. After you leave a comment on a talk page, remember to sign and date; it helps everyone follow the threads of the discussion. The signature icon in the edit window makes it simple. To get started, you may

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Your account will be renamed
Hello,

The developer team at Wikimedia is making some changes to how accounts work, as part of our on-going efforts to provide new and better tools for our users like cross-wiki notifications. These changes will mean you have the same account name everywhere. This will let us give you new features that will help you edit and discuss better, and allow more flexible user permissions for tools. One of the side-effects of this is that user accounts will now have to be unique across all 900 Wikimedia wikis. See the announcement for more information.

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French posters
Great work on these! Any chance you could also make print-friendly versions? The Jade Knight (d'viser) 19:53, 28 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't you expect the "printable version" to be "printer-friendly" automatically? If it isn't then that seems to suggest a general problem with the site. I just looked for help on this but didn't find anything. If you can give me some tips that would be appreciated. Recent Runes 22:02, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

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Your page Stroud High is beyond scope of WV in its current form, and was deleted. I will happyly undelete it (or you can recreate it) in case you want to add something more in educationa context. --Gbaor 18:56, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

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text: French/Wall Charts and Posters/Conjugation of Servir (Complete)


text: Category:French Wall Charts and Posters

title: Category:French Wall Charts and Posters


text:
NAU-POS254-Enlightenment ideologies

POS 254 Political Ideologies

Northern Arizona University

Dr. Joel Olson

I. Background Sketch of the Enlightenment
A. The Enlightenment:  A movement of intellectual change that swept throughout Europe and North America during the 18th century. It was rooted in a critique of the Catholic Church in Europe at the time.

B. Critique of the Church

1. It was a movement in opposition to what it considered the superstition, prejudice, and dogma of the Christian church and Christian theology. According to Enlightenment thinkers, orthodox Christianity was a bunch of myths, miracles, torments and tribulations constructed around the dogma of original sin and redemption in another world.

2. Furthermore, the Church had far too much power in society. It stifled intellectual thought and economic growth. It also brought with it bigotry, oppression, persecution and senseless wars and violence, like the Crusades or the Inquisition.

C. Replacing religion with reason and science

1. Enlightenment thinkers argues that instead of living our lives according to religious dogma and the hope of a better life in the next world, we should live our lives according to our reason. Rational thought, not religion, can make us free.

2. The enlightenment was a product of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. Borrowing from mathematics and the natural sciences, it was an attempt to apply Isaac Newton’s scientific language, methodology, and cosmology to the social world.

3. Enlightenment thinkers saw the natural world as self-regulating, automatic, and quantifiable, and assumed the social world must be like that as well.

D. A movement of elites

1. Most Enlightenment thinkers, or philosophes as they were sometimes called, were philosophers who rubbed elbows with the nobility and elites of Europe. Many of them tutored kings, queens and their children, and they lived and wrote under the patronage of nobles. Often they gave rulers advice. Even in North America most of the Enlightenment thinkers like Jefferson, Adams, and Madison were Southern planters or wealthy merchants.

2. The nobility liked the philosophes because they undermined the power of the church, which challenged nobles’ power. They didn’t realize at the time that the ideas of the Enlightenment would eventually undermine their power, too.

E. Importance of the Enlightenment

1. From A Dictionary of Conservative and Libertarian Thought:  “The impact of the Enlightenment on later western thought cannot be overestimated. All subsequent political and social philosophy is either a continuation and development of its main themes or else a reaction against them. In either case it sets the frame within which all later discussion is located.”

2. Remember:  The Enlightenment was not a monolithic movement. There was lots of diversity of ideas among various thinkers. Not all of them even shared all seven characteristics of the Enlightenment below. Nevertheless, the Enlightenment provided a frame of reference for all of them, one that continues to be influential. The shared attitudes, assumptions and methods of the Enlightenment provide a common “playing field” where different ideas and different ideologies are fought out.

II. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
A. Born and died in Königsberg, East Prussia (now Germany). Never traveled outside his region, and rarely ever left the city. Was a university professor.

B. Kant wrote about the physical sciences before he turned to morality and philosophy. For example, one of his early manuscripts was on astronomy. It was entitled Cosmogony, or an Attempt to Explain the Origin of the Universe, the Formation of Celestial Bodies and the Cause of their Movement in Accordance wth the Universal Laws of Motion of Matter and Newton’s Theory. Whew!

C. Kant was one of the most important philosophers ever. He is probably most famous for his moral philosophy and his categorical imperative: treat all humans as ends in themselves, not merely as means (i.e. the golden rule). Kant believed that morality and politics must be connected and that morality should shape politics by forbidding war, preventing violence, insisting on human rights, etc.

D. Living inside his head, Kant was also a bit of a nutter.

1. He only ate one meal a day, promptly at 1:00 pm, and he never ate alone because he believed that doing so exhausts one’s strength instead of restoring it, since you’re still occupied with your own thoughts. He usually had five guests over every day.

2. He was of frail health but he didn’t trust medicines so he didn’t take any (which was probably a smart thing, given the nature of medical science then). Instead, he developed his own hygiene program: Keep your head, chest, and feet cold (wash them in icy water); and sleep little because “the bed is the cradle of many illnesses.”  (If he had trouble sleeping he just spoke the word “Cicero” and it put him out immediately.)  He also avoided liquid foods like soup, and he thought that being a bachelor would help you live longer and keep you youthful looking longer.

E. Why Kant is key to understanding the Enlightenment

1. Kant was one of the most influential thinkers of his time and one of the staunchest defenders of the Enlightenment. He explicitly defended it against its critics (which sometimes got him into trouble with the Church).

2. His newspaper article, “What is Enlightenment?” that you read is important not only because it defends the Enlightenment in a more or less populist manner, but it also reveals most of the major characteristics of the Enlightenment in just a few pages, characteristics which we will see manifest in various ideologies.

III. Seven ideals of the Enlightenment (From Kant, “What is Enlightenment?”)
A. Human autonomy is the means and end of Enlightenment

1. Look at the first paragraph and the very first sentence again. Think about what Kant means.

2. Enlightenment means that humans are growing or becoming mature through the use of their reason rather than following the dogmas of the church or the state. Enlightenment means ''think for yourself! ''

3. Two prerequisites to becoming mature or enlightened:

a. The belief in individuals’ ability to seek knowledge and to think for oneself. (This relates to humanism, the idea that humans are the source and measure of value, with human life valuable in and of itself.)

b. Have the courage to make the choice to seek enlightenment. “Have the courage to use your own understanding!” Kant writes. It’s your own fault if you don’t seek enlightenment. But thinking for yourself involves some danger. “It is so easy to be immature,” he writes. It takes courage to reject old dogmas and formulas, and perhaps even old leaders and institutions (such as the church and monarchical power). But once you’ve made the choice to seek enlightenment, Kant argues, you will be rewarded.

4. Individual freedom and the state

a. Enlightenment requires freedom, Kant argues, but he has a more limited notion of freedom than we do.

b. For Kant, freedom doesn’t mean the freedom to act and speak as you please so long as hurt no one else (that will come from John Stuart Mill, who we will read soon). For Kant, freedom means “the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters.”

c. This creates a classic debate between individual freedom and the power of the state:  when can the state intervene in one’s life and when must it stay out? How much power should the state have over individuals? This issue will be central to Mill, but also to Marx and conservatives.

B. The importance of reason

1. Freedom means being able to think rationally for yourself. Kant argues that humanity must abandon a life of unreason, of relying on superstition, faith, and blind obedience. Instead, we must order our lives according to reason.

2. This implies that people are generally intelligent and capable and not morally depraved. Education in the use of our capacities to reason can morally uplift us.

3. To use our reason we must have knowledge, and so part of enlightenment is about seeking knowledge, not because it brings power but because it is important for its own sake. The political theorist Isaiah Berlin calls it a “disinterested love of the truth.”

4. We find the truth through science, through objective and empirical knowledge. Human rationality is epitomized by scientific inquiry—science is the height of human reason. Through scientific inquiry we can solve all the mysteries of the universe and reveal the solutions to all the problems people face.

a. Kant’s model is physics and mechanics. In the previous century, Isaac Newton had made it possible to explain the properties and behavior of the entire material world with just a few fundamental laws. He had brought order and clarity to the physical world. Kant and other enlightenment thinkers wished to do that in the social world as well. In their mind, philosophy should be turned into a natural science.

b. This is especially evident in liberalism and socialism, which both sought to be “scientific” belief systems. So, for example Marx’s best friend Frederick Engels wanted to create a “scientific socialism” based on universal laws of history, and liberatarians such as William Graham Sumner justified his liberalism on Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” theory of evolution.

5. “Public” vs. “private” use of reason

a. Again, Kant defines freedom as, “the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters.”  By “public use of reason” he means the freedom to think for oneself in regards to religion, arts, sciences, and even government. The “public use of reason” is the freedom to criticize and express one’s own opinion on matters “as scholar” before the “entire literate world.”  It’s about the freedom of thought and expression, including the freedom to criticize these institutions. The public use of one’s reason must always be free and never restricted by the state or the church.

b. The private use of reason, however, can be restricted. Kant argues that when one is acting as a “scholar,” as an abstract thinker who is writing for “the entire literate world,” one should be able to freely discuss anything. But as a public official or a priest acting on behalf of the state or church, one must obey these institutions. One can criticize the tax system, for example, but one must still pay taxes. The priest may question church theology as a scholar, but as a person in charge of a congregation he must obey church dogma. As Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia in Kant’s time, said, “Argue as much as you want and about what you want [public use of reason] but obey!” [private use of reason]

c. In other words, the public use of reason should not be limited by people, the church, or the monarchy, but private reason can be limited in order to guarantee public order. Kant thus advocates freedom of thought but not necessarily political freedom (equal rights, suffrage, representative government, etc.) Intellectually, we can think whatever we want, but politically and socially, we must obey.

6. (Kant probably makes this strange distinction between public and private reason for political reasons. Arguing for civic freedom would get him into trouble with the church and the state.  He’s walking a fine line, arguing that the church and the state should not be able to limit freedom of expression without challenging the power of the church and the state.  That’s why he writes “freedom need not give cause for the least concern regarding public order and harmony in the commonwealth.”  [3rd from last ¶])

7. But even though Kant was no revolutionary, he’s opened up a can of worms that no one will be able to stuff back. Once one is able to criticize church and state, it’s a quick step to advocate overthrowing them.

a. See the second-to-last paragraph in the article, for example. Kant argues that freedom of thought should not only apply to arts, sciences, and religion, but even to government. A government’s constitution and laws should all be susceptible to criticism. Of course, he does not advocate overthrowing them (that would have got him into big trouble), but others will take the quick step from criticizing a government to overthrowing that. We’ll see that in liberals such as Locke and communists such as Marx.

C. Enlightenment is universal

1. Kant insists that all human beings possess the ability to be enlightened. Compare this with the aristocratic belief in “blue blood,” i.e. that some people are naturally born superior and society should be organized so that they stay in power. Or compare it to the belief that some people are “fit by nature” for slavery.

2. For Kant, all humans are equal by nature. We are all part of a “universal community” and we all share a single human nature despite our differences.

3. Thus, part of the task of enlightenment is finding those principles by which all humans can live by and which are applicable in all places throughout all times.

4. Through the enlightenment, we can also see renewed emphasis on the public/private distinction. Some activities are meant to be public (and therefore universal) such as criticism and debate, while other activities are meant to be private, such as one’s work, religion, or home life. In the public realm, all are equal: all have equal opportunity to express themselves. In the private realm, all are not equal, and some must obey others. The public/private distinction is an ancient one, but unlike the ancients, Enlightenment thinkers argued that the private realm, i.e. civil society, is as important as the public sphere.

5. This public/private distinction will be eventually attacked by Marx and feminists.

D. A belief in progress

1. Kant believes that it is “almost inevitable” that humanity will become enlightened. It will inevitably progress out of its stage of immaturity to that of maturity and freedom. In fact, he goes so far as to say human nature’s destiny is to progress in enlightenment. Human history is the story of progress in the human condition.

2. Ancients such as Plato believed that the good and the true and the just was constant and never changed. Christians thought the good was only possible in heaven. After Kant, enlightenment ideologies fixed on the notion of gradual progress toward enlightenment and freedom.

3. Liberals embraced this belief in progress. Socialists were for revolutionary change, not gradual, but they also accepted the general notion of progress being in one direction. Conservatives are hesitant about change and are skeptical that all change is progress, but they spend much time discussing it and in general favor progress as well.

E. Secularism:  separating church and politics

1. Kant emphasizes the importance of enlightenment primarily in religious matters in this essay, which is no accident. The church was a powerful political actor in his day and held great influence over opinions in the arts, sciences, and in politics. The church’s influence sometimes hindered the pursuit of knowledge and the use of one’s reason. E.g. Galileo (1564-1642) was persecuted for saying the earth revolved around the sun rather than vice-versa. Thus, separating religion from other social spheres was important for intellectuals like Kant.

2. On the other hand, political leaders also had great influence in determining what a people should worship and how they should worship. This is another example of “immaturity” in religious matters: not letting a person worship as she sees fit. Enlightenment thinkers advocated that not only should church and state be separated, one’s method of worship should be a personal matter of individual choice, not subject to government interference. (See the paragraph that beings, “If it is now asked…”)

3. Nevertheless, Enlightenment thinkers still frequently put limits to the freedom of religion. Locke, for example, said anyone should be able to worship as she pleases except for Catholics—because they owe their first loyalty to a foreign ruler, the Pope—and atheists, because they owe loyalty to no God and so can’t be trusted! And Jews were persecuted in Europe until the end of WWII.

F. Concern with economics

1. The social organization of production and distribution becomes a central problem for enlightenment ideologies, though it doesn’t appear in Kant’s essay.

2. Some Enlightenment thinkers are for laissez-faire economics (i.e. no government involvement in the economy) while others are for strong central planning, but this very debate is possible because both are deeply concerned with economics.

3. In other words, instead of being a means to the good life as it was for the ancients, economy has become an end in itself. Starting with the Enlightenment, the good life depends in large part on how a society’s economy is structured.

G. The ideal of popular government

1. With Enlightenment thinking came the notion that people were capable of ruling themselves, or at least that the aristocracy was not the only class that deserved to rule. The middle class, or bourgeoisie, argue that they should also play a part in politics. This is where, for example, the House of Commons emerged in England, which consisted mostly of the middle class (vs. the House of Lords, which consisted mostly of aristocrats).

2. The notion of popular government developed into support for democracy in the 19th century, or voting rights based on citizenship rather than property ownership.

3. Democracy

a. The word “democracy” comes from the Greek words demos (common people), and kratia (to rule). It literally means rule by the common people, which in ancient Greece meant rule by and for the lowest class. For this reason, democracy was not popular, even among Enlightenment thinkers, until the nineteenth century, with the Jacksonian era in the U.S. (Jackson was president from 1828-1836.)

b. Ball and Dagger refer to the democratic ideal, or the belief that governments should be democratic, and argue that this ideal has been crucial for all political ideologies since the nineteenth century. (Only one ideology—fascism—is antidemocratic, though some people also make this argument regarding religious fundamentalisms.) All other ideologies claim to be democratic and to create the ideal democratic society. Even communist states such as China consider themselves democracies, i.e. a “people’s democratic dictatorship.”

c. That’s why they argue that democracy is not an ideology in itself. Rather, it’s an ideal that most ideologies strive for. It is an essentially contested concept: ideologies struggle over our understanding of what democracy is and how we achieve it.

4. As you read about various ideologies throughout the course, think about what each author or ideology’s conception of democracy, freedom, and equality is. Don’t dismiss communism as anti-democratic, for example, because Marx actually thinks it’s the most democratic system.

IV. How these Enlightenment characteristics influence political ideologies
A. Human autonomy is the means and end of Enlightenment

1. Look at the first paragraph and the very first sentence again. Think about what Kant means.

2. Enlightenment means that humans are growing or becoming mature through the use of their reason rather than following the dogmas of the church or the state. Enlightenment means think for yourself!

3. Two prerequisites to becoming mature or enlightened:

a. The belief in individuals’ ability to seek knowledge and to think for oneself. (This relates to humanism, the idea that humans are the source and measure of value, with human life valuable in and of itself.)

b. Have the courage to make the choice to seek enlightenment. “Have the courage to use your own understanding!” Kant writes. It’s your own fault if you don’t seek enlightenment. But thinking for yourself involves some danger. “It is so easy to be immature,” he writes. It takes courage to reject old dogmas and formulas, and perhaps even old leaders and institutions (such as the church and monarchical power). But once you’ve made the choice to seek enlightenment, Kant argues, you will be rewarded.

4. Individual freedom and the state

a. Enlightenment requires freedom, Kant argues, but he has a more limited notion of freedom than we do.

b. For Kant, freedom doesn’t mean the freedom to act and speak as you please so long as hurt no one else (that will come from John Stuart Mill, who we will read soon). For Kant, freedom means “the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters.”

c. This creates a classic debate between individual freedom and the power of the state: when can the state intervene in one’s life and when must it stay out? How much power should the state have over individuals? This issue will be central to Mill, but also to Marx and conservatives.

B. The importance of reason

1. Freedom means being able to think rationally for yourself. Kant argues that humanity must abandon a life of unreason, of relying on superstition, faith, and blind obedience. Instead, we must order our lives according to reason.

2. This implies that people are generally intelligent and capable and not morally depraved. Education in the use of our capacities to reason can morally uplift us.

3. To use our reason we must have knowledge, and so part of enlightenment is about seeking knowledge, not because it brings power but because it is important for its own sake. The political theorist Isaiah Berlin calls it a “disinterested love of the truth.”

4. We find the truth through science, through objective and empirical knowledge. Human rationality is epitomized by scientific inquiry—science is the height of human reason. Through scientific inquiry we can solve all the mysteries of the universe and reveal the solutions to all the problems people face.

a. Kant’s model is physics and mechanics. In the previous century, Isaac Newton had made it possible to explain the properties and behavior of the entire material world with just a few fundamental laws. He had brought order and clarity to the physical world. Kant and other enlightenment thinkers wished to do that in the social world as well. In their mind, philosophy should be turned into a natural science.

b. This is especially evident in liberalism and socialism, which both sought to be “scientific” belief systems. So, for example Marx’s best friend Frederick Engels wanted to create a “scientific socialism” based on universal laws of history, and liberatarians such as William Graham Sumner justified his liberalism on Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” theory of evolution.

5. “Public” vs. “private” use of reason

a. Again, Kant defines freedom as, “the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters.” By “public use of reason” he means the freedom to think for oneself in regards to religion, arts, sciences, and even government. The “public use of reason” is the freedom to criticize and express one’s own opinion on matters “as scholar” before the “entire literate world.” It’s about the freedom of thought and expression, including the freedom to criticize these institutions. The public use of one’s reason must always be free and never restricted by the state or the church.

b. The private use of reason, however, can be restricted. Kant argues that when one is acting as a “scholar,” as an abstract thinker who is writing for “the entire literate world,” one should be able to freely discuss anything. But as a public official or a priest acting on behalf of the state or church, one must obey these institutions. One can criticize the tax system, for example, but one must still pay taxes. The priest may question church theology as a scholar, but as a person in charge of a congregation he must obey church dogma. As Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia in Kant’s time, said, “Argue as much as you want and about what you want [public use of reason] but obey!” [private use of reason]

c. In other words, the public use of reason should not be limited by people, the church, or the monarchy, but private reason can be limited in order to guarantee public order. Kant thus advocates freedom of thought but not necessarily political freedom (equal rights, suffrage, representative government, etc.) Intellectually, we can think whatever we want, but politically and socially, we must obey.

6. (Kant probably makes this strange distinction between public and private reason for political reasons. Arguing for civic freedom would get him into trouble with the church and the state. He’s walking a fine line, arguing that the church and the state should not be able to limit freedom of expression without challenging the power of the church and the state. That’s why he writes “freedom need not give cause for the least concern regarding public order and harmony in the commonwealth.” [3rd from last ¶])

7. But even though Kant was no revolutionary, he’s opened up a can of worms that no one will be able to stuff back. Once one is able to criticize church and state, it’s a quick step to advocate overthrowing them.

a. See the second-to-last paragraph in the article, for example. Kant argues that freedom of thought should not only apply to arts, sciences, and religion, but even to government. A government’s constitution and laws should all be susceptible to criticism. Of course, he does not advocate overthrowing them (that would have got him into big trouble), but others will take the quick step from criticizing a government to overthrowing that. We’ll see that in liberals such as Locke and communists such as Marx.

C. Enlightenment is universal

1. Kant insists that all human beings possess the ability to be enlightened. Compare this with the aristocratic belief in “blue blood,” i.e. that some people are naturally born superior and society should be organized so that they stay in power. Or compare it to the belief that some people are “fit by nature” for slavery.

2. For Kant, all humans are equal by nature. We are all part of a “universal community” and we all share a single human nature despite our differences.

3. Thus, part of the task of enlightenment is finding those principles by which all humans can live by and which are applicable in all places throughout all times.

4. Through the enlightenment, we can also see renewed emphasis on the public/private distinction. Some activities are meant to be public (and therefore universal) such as criticism and debate, while other activities are meant to be private, such as one’s work, religion, or home life. In the public realm, all are equal: all have equal opportunity to express themselves. In the private realm, all are not equal, and some must obey others. The public/private distinction is an ancient one, but unlike the ancients, Enlightenment thinkers argued that the private realm, i.e. civil society, is as important as the public sphere.

5. This public/private distinction will be eventually attacked by Marx and feminists.

D. A belief in progress

1. Kant believes that it is “almost inevitable” that humanity will become enlightened. It will inevitably progress out of its stage of immaturity to that of maturity and freedom. In fact, he goes so far as to say human nature’s destiny is to progress in enlightenment. Human history is the story of progress in the human condition.

2. Ancients such as Plato believed that the good and the true and the just was constant and never changed. Christians thought the good was only possible in heaven. After Kant, enlightenment ideologies fixed on the notion of gradual progress toward enlightenment and freedom.

3. Liberals embraced this belief in progress. Socialists were for revolutionary change, not gradual, but they also accepted the general notion of progress being in one direction. Conservatives are hesitant about change and are skeptical that all change is progress, but they spend much time discussing it and in general favor progress as well.

E. Secularism: separating church and politics

1. Kant emphasizes the importance of enlightenment primarily in religious matters in this essay, which is no accident. The church was a powerful political actor in his day and held great influence over opinions in the arts, sciences, and in politics. The church’s influence sometimes hindered the pursuit of knowledge and the use of one’s reason. E.g. Galileo (1564-1642) was persecuted for saying the earth revolved around the sun rather than vice-versa. Thus, separating religion from other social spheres was important for intellectuals like Kant.

2. On the other hand, political leaders also had great influence in determining what a people should worship and how they should worship. This is another example of “immaturity” in religious matters: not letting a person worship as she sees fit. Enlightenment thinkers advocated that not only should church and state be separated, one’s method of worship should be a personal matter of individual choice, not subject to government interference. (See the paragraph that beings, “If it is now asked…”)

3. Nevertheless, Enlightenment thinkers still frequently put limits to the freedom of religion. Locke, for example, said anyone should be able to worship as she pleases except for Catholics—because they owe their first loyalty to a foreign ruler, the Pope—and atheists, because they owe loyalty to no God and so can’t be trusted! And Jews were persecuted in Europe until the end of WWII.

F. Concern with economics

1. The social organization of production and distribution becomes a central problem for enlightenment ideologies, though it doesn’t appear in Kant’s essay.

2. Some Enlightenment thinkers are for laissez-faire economics (i.e. no government involvement in the economy) while others are for strong central planning, but this very debate is possible because both are deeply concerned with economics.

3. In other words, instead of being a means to the good life as it was for the ancients, economy has become an end in itself. Starting with the Enlightenment, the good life depends in large part on how a society’s economy is structured. G. The ideal of popular government

1. With Enlightenment thinking came the notion that people were capable of ruling themselves, or at least that the aristocracy was not the only class that deserved to rule. The middle class, or bourgeoisie, argue that they should also play a part in politics. This is where, for example, the House of Commons emerged in England, which consisted mostly of the middle class (vs. the House of Lords, which consisted mostly of aristocrats).

2. The notion of popular government developed into support for democracy in the 19th century, or voting rights based on citizenship rather than property ownership.

3. Democracy

a. The word “democracy” comes from the Greek words demos (common people), and kratia (to rule). It literally means rule by the common people, which in ancient Greece meant rule by and for the lowest class. For this reason, democracy was not popular, even among Enlightenment thinkers, until the nineteenth century, with the Jacksonian era in the U.S. (Jackson was president from 1828-1836.)

b. Ball and Dagger refer to the democratic ideal, or the belief that governments should be democratic, and argue that this ideal has been crucial for all political ideologies since the nineteenth century. (Only one ideology—fascism—is antidemocratic, though some people also make this argument regarding religious fundamentalisms.) All other ideologies claim to be democratic and to create the ideal democratic society. Even communist states such as China consider themselves democracies, i.e. a “people’s democratic dictatorship.”

c. That’s why they argue that democracy is not an ideology in itself. Rather, it’s an ideal that most ideologies strive for. It is an essentially contested concept: ideologies struggle over our understanding of what democracy is and how we achieve it.

4. As you read about various ideologies throughout the course, think about what each author or ideology’s conception of democracy, freedom, and equality is. Don’t dismiss communism as anti-democratic, for example, because Marx actually thinks it’s the most democratic system.

V. What is ideology
A. The word “ideology” (which literally means the study of ideas) was invented in 1790s by the French scholar Antoine Destutt de Tracy, who wrote a book called The Elements of Ideology in 1801.

1. De Tracy defined ideology as the systematic, scientific study of the sources and origins of ideas, and hoped it would become a scientific field just like geology or zoology.

2. He believed that the human mind was like a tabula rasa or blank tablet in that we are born with no knowledge and no ideas. Eventually, our “tablet” is filled with ideas based on our experiences. Once we know the source of our ideas, we can use this knowlege to eliminate bad ideas (such as religion, which is superstition according to him) and improve society.

B. Three definitions of ideology

1. Pejorative definition: Ideology is just a way to rationalize or to mask one’s true interests. Marx, for example, criticizes liberal ideology as a set of ideas that serve to justify and legitimize the rule of the dominant class. To be “ideological” or an ideologue means a person who doesn’t think for herself and just blindly obeys what a book or another person says.

2. Total world view:  This definition is used to describe the characteristic ways of thinking of an entire society or historical period, e.g., “modernity,” “postmodernism,” “the West,” Orientalism, Confucianism, etc. These ways of thinking are so broad and so commonly shared by a society that its members are always wrapped up in them and no one can ever be “nonideological.” For this reason, according to some theorists such as Karl Mannheim, all social thought is in some way ideological, which means there is no purely scientific or objective understanding of social arrangements.

3. Belief system, or political ideology:  In this definition, a political ideology is  “A fairly coherent and comprehensive set of ideas that explains and evaluates social conditions, provides a vision of the ideal society, and provides a program for social and political action.” (This is my definition, based on Ball and Dagger and other sources.)

4. It is this 3rd definition that we’ll be using in this class, but keep the other two definitions in mind, too.

5. Ideology shapes how we “see” the world. They create a framework of interpretation. “Ideologies provide the member of a polity with a worldview, with constellations of ideas with which to organize their understanding of the political world.” (Michael Dawson, Black Visions, p. 54)

C. Reminder about ideologies

1. Think of ideologies as a core or a base from which people’s beliefs about the world come from. Don’t think of ideologies as perfectly coherent and rational, and don’t think that to be a liberal you have to agree to everything Mill says or to share every characteristic of liberalism we’ll be discussing. Sharing the same ideology doesn’t mean you’ll agree on much; in fact, being of the same ideology often means you’ll disagree all the more vehemently (e.g., communists from Marx to Bakunin to Stalin).

2. No one thinks alike or exactly like an ideology (that’s an ideologue), but no one gets their ideas in a vacuum, either. People who think they get their ideas on their own and therefore don’t have an ideology usually believe this because the dominant ideology of their society (e.g. liberalism in the U.S.) is so dispersed throughout society and so immersed in our culture that we don’t recognize it as an ideology. I’m sure you’ve heard this said before: “Other people have an ideology; I deal with reality.” But what is “reality” or “normal” is also part of ideology. In other words, everyone has an ideology. We can’t escape ideology—but neither are we dominated by it totally. Think of ideology as a base to build on or criticize, but not something we can do without.

title: NAU-POS254-Enlightenment ideologies