The Clockwork Universe

To begin with this is part of Astronomy (not astrology) which is the study of the heavens.

• Above the moon - the celestial heavens - is close to God and things were perfect and unchanging.
• Sub lunar world - nothing was constant - elements mixed up and things changed.
• Ptolemy's system --> the earth was the centre - the sun moved - the stars were fixed and all revolved around the earth in an unchanging motion

NEO - PYTHAGOREAN --> the belief that mathematics was important.

Francis Bacon - 1561-1626 (scientific method)

1. Mixing religion and science (natural philosophy) = BIG MISTAKE and resulted in a load of confusion and obsession with word play. 

The New Organon --> a direct attack against Aristotle - 4 themes

1. Knowledge is human power - the ability to harness power, to navigate, to grow crops etc
2. Must be clear separation between science and religion
3. Induction - proceeding from the particular to general theories that are then tested through experiment
4. Science is dynamic (always correcting) cooperative (shared) cumulative (adding to it)

Bacon's methods - scientific and protected the people from the idols of the mind.

Locke - on human understanding

He believed understanding came from experience and was inevitably against the idea of 'innate ideas', our minds are a blank slate at birth. 

Heliocentric Modes

16th century philosopher --> Copernicus --> attempts to reform the calender with the sun as the centre

Kepler --> spent decades working on calculations and data which would prove the heliocentric model.

Galileo --> perfected the telescope and observed that Jupiter has moons.

Newton - 1642-1727

Principia - 1687 --> mathematical demonstration of what came after Copernican and Kepler.

Narrative Theory

Narrative - a communicative at which involves a 'teller' and a 'listener' - all narratives include a sequence of events (they are located in time) - all narratives are constructed.

Vladimir Propp - 1928

• looks at the formal properties of Russian folk tales
• breaks them down into 'narratemes' (basic narrative units)
• provides a typology of narrative structures
• character roles - hero (not necessarily heroic but protagonist) - villain - donor - helper - princess - her father - dispatcher - false hero.
• functions - overcoming an obstacle - defying a prohibition - punishment of villain - winning of princess

Todorov - Structuralism  

• supports Propp - stories have these same universal formal properties
• Todorov analyses classic realist texts
• he argues that there is an underlying structure in narratives
• EQUILIBRIUM - DISEQUILIBRIUM - EQUILIBRIUM
• the new equilibrium is restoring the status quo - what is 'normal' or 'appropriate'
• it is thought that we wish for an ideologically comforting solution - Want it to end in a certain way.
•  Non fiction modes - THE NEWS

Barthes - Structuralism

• stresses the complexity of narrative
• suggests narrative can have up to FIVE distinct codes

1. HERMENEUTIC CODE - activates viewer - gets them interested
2. ENIGMAS (puzzle) - introduced - resolved - reintroduced 
3. SYMBOLIC CODES - symbolically represented (signs, connotative)
4. CULTURAL CODES - 'authoritative knowledge'
5. ASSUMPTIONS - within science/history/law

Image Analysis

More elaborate words for relatively straightforward concepts and ideas...

Signs - are made up of signifier and signified
They generate meaning through their place in a system or a code ( words have meaning within the system of language - because everyone agrees on the system)
Signs are therefore relational.

--> Connotation

• sings operate on the level of denotation and the level of connotation.
• "coco cola" denotes a bottle of brown, fizzy drink
• but what does this sign connote?! 
• we can see from this coca cola advert  -  
• Basically they want to show an image of world peace, bringing everyone together through young and happy people... hmm alrighty then.
• Paradigm choices were made for this advert: age, nationality, expression.

Paradigms refer to the lists of possible signs from which particular signs are selected - these then make a syntagm. 

Myths - when codes are 'naturalised' myths are created. - Barthes. 

More HCJ!

This HCJ malarky is just non stop! I'm going to talk about the Philosophers Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke and their ideas on the state in relation to HWP and the lecture.

Why Should I Obey The Law?
Well, Socrates was imprisoned and sentenced to death for corrupting the youth, whilst he was in prison his friend (Crito) attempted to persuade Socrates to escape the prison but Socrates dismissed Crito's arguments. Socrates has a valid reason for this, he does not wish to break the covenant/contract between him and the state. Socrates says that because he has lived in the city and has benefited from the city itself, he should abide by the laws of the state and stay in prison like he is supposed to. Socrates develops this by saying that if he does break the law and escape from prison he is attempting to destroy the whole city completely. This is because he is a role model in society and people admire him and will follow his actions, so what would happen if everyone began to break all of the laws and follow Socrates? The state would not be functional.  Basically, Socrates is merely being good and doing as he is told.

The Social Construct
1651 - Leviathan
-Hobbes- was writing at a time when the King was executed and Cromwell was trying to establish himself after the war in the city.

• Civil War - 1641-1651
• Charles I executed - 1649
• Cromwell then rules - until Charles II - 1660
• James I - Catholic King
• Glorious Revolution - 1688 - William of Orange

State of Nature

• This is People's dominate passions, and are aggressive. 
• People acting on their own passions will produce a state of war. 
• Everyone will live in fear of everyone else.
• No one is safe from others.
• A constant war
• "Every man against every man".

In the state of nature there will be "no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, Brutish, short".

The power of Leviathan is limitless (Hobbes called him "Mortal God"). The people agree to be represented by a sovereign - they agree to hand all of the power over to him. So he promised to stop all of the madness and mayhem in exchange for all the power over everything. Fair deal? 

Locke - 1689 - Locke's Treatise of Government

It attacks the concept of the "Divine Right of Kings". 

The idea that God gave Adam the right to rule over everything - "Let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air" - Genesis
Locke had a completely different approach to the state compared to Hobbes, he believed it was more of a positive thing and was not pessimistic about it all! He said that there are 'natural laws' in which all people knew and they believe are from God, everyone knew not to break these laws because of the obviousness of them, people didn't go around killing each. These 'natural laws' created a sense of equality and natural freedom among the people. Locke then introduced the system of taxation and that the people should consent to it, which creates a certain equality between the people and the state.

Hobbes - The State of Nature
In the state of nature - there will be "no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, short". This is what Hobbes believed. He thought like this because his life was in constant war where "every man against every man" was how it went for a very long time.

Hobbes and Locke had different ideas when it came to the state. Hobbes was more pessimistic about the view of the state of nature, whilst Locke believed that the state of nature was good and civilised.. He believed that everyone agrees with what is right and wrong, there are natural laws that everyone knows, a ready made right and wrong.

"Interwoven in the constitution of the human mind".  

However, humans will have disputes which will mainly be about ownership of land and possessions so there is a need for law and state. Locke's idea led to the concept of GOVERNMENT.

Rosseau
He believes that our freedom is to be guided by our own will and he wishes for civil freedom. If everyone is involved in making the laws they will be following their own will. The people are part of the state.

so basically...
Hobbes - complete collapse of society.
Locke - collaborative state.
Rosseau - state of freedom.

Plato's Republic - Dreams of States
Plato believed in forms for a distinct and perfect world.
The soul is divided into three parts:
REASON - knows the forms and therefore reality.
SPIRIT - courage, ferocity, aggression wants honour, but does not know what honour is.
DESIRE - constant craving that is pushed hopelessly from one desire to another like a ruddless boat on the ocean. It will eventually be destroyed by this - this means that reason needs to control desire.

Chariot = the soul
Horses represent SPIRIT and DESIRE.

There are three types of soul, so there are three types of state.
REASON - this state is dominated by people who are guided by reason. They control the demands of spirit and desire. IDEAL STATE
SPIRIT - aggressive state which prizes military glory and power.
DESIRE - this state will be a democracy because everyone believes they have the ability to lead. This state will be characterised by an obsession with money - money is necessary to satisfy desire.

Machiavelli - 1467 - 1527

• From Florence
• The Prince (book) written in 1513 was a manual on how to acquire and to keep political power
• How to guide rulers
• How to get power and how to keep it
• Key work of Renaissance - key theme: "man is the measure of all things".
• What is interesting is that some (Rosseau, Leo Strauss, Harvey Mansfield) saw The Prince as a piece of deliberately comical and satirical work which was actually aimed at the common people. 

Machiavelli's views on the state were linked to realism as his 'rules' in The Prince were based on his own experiences with the Medici of Florence.

1. Armed prophets succeed, unarmed ones fail.
2. 'It is better to be feared than loved'. 

Semiotics

Semiotics seems to be cropping up everywhere at the moment, which is probably a good thing with the amount of fancy words used in it. This lecture was interesting in seeing how semiotics is within everyday life and why it has a certain significance as a tool for analysis.

Meaning is shared and is shown through particular signs.

Previously it was assumed that:

• There is an external 'objective' word 'out there'
• Language describes this external world
• The word 'table' refers to real tables 'out there'
• Externalism

FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE - 1857-1913 ( he challenged this) - his insights were developed by Levi Strauss, Barthes, Narratologists (Structuralism).

• Language is not just a way of classifying objects in an external world
• Language is more complicated than that
• Systems of shared meaning
• Meaning are not fixed
• Words only have meaning as part of systems eg: languages

'DOG' - 'Chien' (in French) & 'Kula' (in Urdu) --> each word works within its system and you have to know the system to understand the word.

--> Saussure asked the question - "why does a word mean what it means?" this is some deep stuff and it links to a shared meaning between everyone which allows us to understand what the word means, items have names so that people understand what is being spoken about or referred to. You must learn the meaning before being able to understand and use it yourself...

Semiology is the study of signs made up of the SIGNIFIER (sound, image or marks on the paper), the SIGNIFIED (the concept) and the REFERENT (the real item). 

More key terms...

LANGUE and PAROLE.

- langue refers to the system or language

- parole refers to the actual utterance of words (when we select words from langue and use them by speaking or writing.)

Signs are ARBITRARY - "The arbitrary nature of the sign" - Saussure.

• Signs only have meaning within a particular system of meaning
• The same symbols may have very different meanings within different systems
• The principle of semiology apply to all systems of meaning - not just written or spoken languages
• All signs are relationships. 

Did you know if a chimp is smiling, it is not good. The poor thing is absolutely bricking it, really really nervous.   This guy from the PG tips advert is in reality a very unhappy monkey :( 

This shows that different signs have different meanings in some situations - meanings are not fixed. 

Levels of meaning

• the level of denotation
• signs acquire new secondary meanings through cultural practice
• the level of connotation
• for example - a heart denotes a vital organ, but it now connotes a romantic love through secondary meanings (deeper level of connotation) 

C.S PIERCE - 1839 - 1914

• he was interested in signs and perception
• distinguishes three types of sign: 1. symbolic 2. iconic 3. indexical

Symbolic signs - are signs in which the relationship between the sign and its meaning are totally arbitrary. 

(red=stop - culturally known)

Iconic signs - are signs that resemble their meaning in some way.

(picture of the Queen on a coin)

Indexical signs - are signs that indicate what they stand for by some kind of casual link.

(smoke signifies fire & daffodils signify spring)

that is all for now. 

Time for Media..

I came out of the Monday afternoon lecture feeling pretty proud of myself for actually keeping up with what was being said and scribbled down 3 whole pages of notes on high, popular and mass culture.

The focus of the lecture was:

1. To explore what / how taste is constructed
2. What the distinctions between high art and popular culture is
3. Power within high art and popular culture

It is said that many believe that popular is not worth studying at a high level because it is seen as a 'soft' subject, but by studying it you can understand the world and your positioning within the world through popular culture. Also, as tuition fees for UK universities are increasing it is thought that a huge number of prospective students will reject media related subjects because they carry less value to some people..

Tastes are basically what people prefer and what people like and enjoy. Constructions of taste and quality constructed as a series of Binary Opposites, for example, good V bad, high V low, us V them etc..

One example of this is through the images of two celebrity women from two different eras yet in similar poses. - Audrey Hepburn and Katie Price AKA Jordan - together they represent the binary opposition of natural V unnatural and therefore, we make a judgement upon them which tells us about our tastes in relation to the naturalness of a women's image.

Or this?

This?

This linked in with the idea of taste or personal preference. Why are some tastes seen to be 'better' than others? Is there such a thing as 'Good taste'? Taste can also show a sense of individuality and/or a particular group identity, for example, many youth subcultures - 'emo'.
'Poor taste' - is usually associated with low culture and 'mass' appeal whereas 'good taste' is usually linked with high culture which have small and niche audiences.

PIERRE BOURDIEU - key theorist

• challenges notions of innate taste or 'authentic' sensibility 
• tastes and notions of quality are socially constructed and are used by different groups in order to gain status
• we learn taste - socially constructed
• cultural preference works as a form of cultural distinction 
• cultural knowledge and competence is displayed through consumer choice. 

CHOICES about who we are...

- cultural capital can be 'invested' into consumption practices

- producing symbolic capital or power

- cultural taste and notions of good quality organised as hierarchies of values

- characterised by different ways of perceiving and responding to culture

High culture can sometimes be referred to as being 'pure' with a distant appreciation of it from usually the highly educated.

Popular culture is described as something that is immediate with a close to proximity to the 'masses' along with a clear emotional response.

From these types of definitions I get a clear sense of stereotyping, people are instantly linked with a particular type of culture because of their education or their way of life. Is that fair? I, for one, like some forms of popular culture whilst enjoying and respecting forms of high culture as well.

The next part of the lecture focused on shocking pieces of art from two eras: Breakfast on Grass by Manet and Man in a Polyester Suit by Maplethorpe.

Whilst Manet's painting is not necessarily seen to be at all shocking in the 21st century, I can see why Man in a Polyester got some stick for being a bit out there... is it porn? is it art? or is it just a challenge?  

Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe is now considered a highly valued piece of art, but in its day a naked prostitute in a park with two gentlemen was considered a taboo subject for a painting and highly controversial. The modern Man in a Polyester Suit by Maplethorpe was seen to be controversial when it first came out, being banned in some American states, does this mean it will be a masterpiece in several hundred years? Do taboo subjects loose their shock factor after a long period and become high culture? or is it a form of high culture in the form of high art? This can be said for anything that is now high culture, the majority of which have 'stood the test of time' and have become highly valued after its creator has passed and/or it has been around for a very very long time... Will Tabloids and The Xfactor be high culture one day? hmm, just worth thinking about...

Stuart Hall suggested that cultural items can shift in meaning. Nessun Dorma is an example of high culture (opera) that has been recognised by many through a form of popular culture (football ads). It shifts the meaning when two cultures are mixed together. Another example is in The Beatles, who shifted from a very small teen band into cultural icons. But who is it that decides what is good culture and what is bad culture? Hall suggested that popular culture becomes the 'site of influence' basically through a power struggle of hierarchy on what is 'the best'. 

"CULTURE IS ORDINARY" - RAYMOND WILLIAMS

Philosophy - HCJ

So, after thinking I wouldn't remember ANY of what I read from Mr. Bertrand Russell's hench book about the History of Western Philosophy, I recognised (and mostly understood) what Chris was saying! Having never studied any kind of Philosophy before its all very new stuff... the focus was on European Civilisation.

• 700BC - Greek Alphabet, allowed writings from Homer, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle etc.
• People then thought differently about the universe
• "Classical Antiquity" - earth=globe, particles made up matter, evolution, political, economic and architectural skills - ALL OF WHICH WERE ESTABLISHED BY PHILOSOPHERS
• And all of which were assumed to be discovered in 18th and 19th centuries, but how/why did the knowledge disappear until later? 
• This resulted in the collapse of Rome - meant dominant ideology was now Christianity (which meant NO SCIENCE)
• 400AD onwards - complex teachings of the Greco-Roman period were replaced by Christianity - DARK AGES

Pre Socratic Philosophers

-Thales - beleived everything was made from water. (no gods)

-Anaximander - disagreed with Thales, everything comes from a single primal substance, there are many worlds and we are justs one of them.

-Pythagoras - used maths to explain the 'order' of the world and he emphasised FORM not MATTER.

Chris highlighted in the lecture the main points from The History of Western Philosophy, whilst referencing The Iliad, The Odyssey and the much later Beowulf. The Greeks were always way more advanced in most fields during early civilisation. I found it very interesting how the Greeks knew much more in terms of logic, atoms, geometry and astronomy through a philosophical outlook compared to the power hungry Romans who knew much less. I am now much more aware of the relationship between the Greeks and the Romans and how crazily advanced the Greeks were for their time.


I'd always heard that the Greeks had a huge influence in all aspects of life, but I really never knew how much! The Greeks were amazingly good thinkers and philosophy was definitely their strong point, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were obviously the main guys, so here we go...


Socrates - 469 BC–399 BC
Socrates is a main philosopher in terms of Greek civilisation but he didn't actually write anything himself, but he had students who made his ideas known - Plato and Xenophon who both wrote about Socrates.  


Plato- 427 BC-347 BC
Plato and Aristotle are seen to be the best philosophers of ancient and modern time, ever. So Utopia came from Plato, i always thought it was some kinda Disney film..:/ basically, noone knew who their parents were and they had to call everyone older than them 'mother' or 'father' and anyone the same sort of age 'brother' or 'sister'. There could not be marriages between a 'father' and 'daughter' or 'mother' and 'son' and 'brother'/'sister' marriages were to be prevented. hmm, so who married, exactly? 
Plato learnt from Socrates, being his student and all, including the subject of ethics. Ethics at this time were completely different to what we see as ethical today, naturally. What would you say is ethical if a baby was born with a disability? throw it in a 'deep pit of water' or take care of it? I hope everyone would take care of it, but not the Greeks...oh no. This was all influenced by Sparta.


Aristotle
Aristotle came after Plato, which makes his writings an follow on from Plato's. Aristotle was the guy who 'invented' logic, it was actually adopted by the Catholic church, and the the main idea pulled from HWP is:"All men are mortal, Socrates is a man, so he is mortal."


The reading from HWP is tricky, but, after great persistence, i am beginning to remember and understand what has been said by the main philosophers.