World History Homework Ten Answers - Student 2
1. Describe the Industrial Revolution ... including your view of it. The Industrial Revolution was basically a period of time characterized by new technology and factory labor. The revolution produced a large array of ideologies from the classical economics which supported the revolution, to those such as Charles Dickens, who wrote about the unfairness of the times, to philosophers who believed the system could be remedied by making all property publicly owned. Basically all these new philosophies having been created was a result of the social change that was entailed by the industrial revolution. The period of revolution was when new technologies were being created, but society did not understand how to ethically use and produce them. Examples include the Civil War's reliance on the newly-invented rifle to fight at close range and incur massive casualties rather than use their rifles at their full range and strike at strategic points. Another example in the laborers' inability to unite and negotiate with their employers and so they were forced to settle for lower wages. As modern warfare developed and unions formed the large wars became decided by a few strategic battles and employers were forced to give their employees fair wages and reasonable hours.
4. Write an essay about any issue related to the lecture. I chose to write about a scientist, perhaps the greatest of this era, namely Gregor Mendel. Mendel is famous for his experimenting with peas to create universal genetic principles. Living in an Augustinian monastery, Mendel chose to devote his time to the study of Genetics. He made a fortunate choice of species when he experimented with peas as they reproduce quickly, he can control which plants mate with others easily, and finally they have many separate traits which he could experiment with such as flower color, size, seed color, or many others. The result of his experiments require a certain amount of biological "lingo" to explain but basically he created two revolutionary concepts: first his "law of segregation" which said phenotypes (expressed traits) are not the result of mixing of genes, but rather specific alleles dictate the traits for an organism. With this the concepts developed of dominant and recessive alleles which, as their names imply, are dominant and recessive to each other. An example is flower color; if we represent the dominant allele, purple with a P, and the recessive white allele with a "p", then the flower color will be purple, except when an organism's genotype contains two "p" alleles. Mendel's other law was that of independent assortment, namely that the allele for every phenotype is inherited independently of the alleles for other phenotypes. Mathematical results of pea traits confirmed his hypotheses of inheritance, but he was neglected until the early 1900s. Mendel remains through today one of the greatest biologists of all time.
5. Pick and describe 3 terms (5 for credit for two questions) and describe them in the World History Study Guide from 1648. I added Gregor Mendel, Sigmund Freud, and Classical Economics
6. Discuss the work of Karl Marx or Charles Darwin, or both. I chose to write about Karl Marx. Marx wrote about a utopian world community where all shared equally their wealth. He, however, disregarded the French Revolution which was based on a similar ideology with extreme mass hatred of the rich and "bourgeoisie". The revolution ended with unnecessary bloodshed and with the people having been ruled by a failed, weak, corrupted government. Marx still thought the bourgeoisie should be overthrown and in his work he advocated destruction of the family and religion, which he called the "opiate of the masses". Marx's work remained tremendously influential throughout history from the Russian revolution (although Marx thought Russia was not the ideal place for a communist revolution), to Che Guevara, to Castro, to today's "Occupy" protests. Up through the Occupy protests Marx's Communist Manifesto hasn't produced one utopian society. Maybe if these people just took World History class....
7. Discuss classical economics or utilitarianism. Before reading this section in World History about Utilitarianism, I have frequently thought about utilitarian ethics. For instance, if one person has the capacity to save two others is it right for us to kill the one person? On the face of the issue it seems right, after all if all men are created equal, then all human lives are equal, and so in theory the value of two lives would outweigh the value of the one life. But from here it becomes confusing because if there are others that can perform the function of saving the two lives when why are we singling out only one man to kill? We are thus judging this man less worthy of life than others who could perform the same function as him, and thus we undermine our beginning premise that "All men are created equal". This paradox demonstrates that utilitarianism is, at best, a paradoxical ideology, and at worst has been used throughout history by oppressors to support genocide.
8. Explain what nationalism is, providing an example. Nationalism is a concept best demonstrated by Otto von Bismarck, where a common enemy can articulate a common identity among various separated countries or people which unite to create a stronger "Nation". Throughout history nationalism has forged many different friendships and alliances. Beginning in Ancient Greece, the Greco-Persian Wars fought as its name would imply, between Greece and Persia. These wars brought rivaling city-states Athens and Sparta together. In the Crusades, the various separated feudal countries would unite to fight the Muslims and embrace their common European identity. Even in the American Revolution, vastly different American colonies united to throw off the British yoke of tyranny. Bismarck drew on these examples and many more to determine that Germany could be united by pitting Prussia against Napoleon while gaining assistance from other German states. Bismarck's strategy worked and he can be said to be the first one to have consciously used nationalism to his advantage, although it is debatable whether the Italian unification is a prior example of people consciously using nationalism to their advantage.
-Paul R.
