Literature as Knowledge for Living Essay Example for Free

Literature as Knowledge for Living Essay According to Vera M. Kutzinski in his introduction, Ottmar Ette was sent to the east of Germany after the reunification of Germany to strengthen academic institutions. There, universities were going to receive the so-called â€Å"Initiative for Excellence†, which would make German universities more competitive. But, when it came to application, a little percentage of humanities institutions were selected, because the focus was actually on science and technology. This fact was what fueled Ette to take a turn on his work and started to work on not trying to convince why literary studies were better or worth more attention or research, but to make skeptical see why society cannot do without literary studies. Ette’s official work on this matter is titled Lendemains, where he focuses on literary studies as something that society needs to survive and the relations established between human beings in literary terms. Below is presented a short review on his evaluation on this matter. Ette argues that literature and language do not seem to deal with language about life any longer. Instead, scientific and technological academic fields have taken over. So what has to be done for the humanities to deal with life again would be, according to him, reorientating the idea of life, which should be based on making society see how the humanities can improve how human beings live with one another, and this should be done together with the biosciences, creating an easily understandable language which allowed scientific and literary discourses to work together as equals. Ette also discusses how biotechnology and natural-scientific fields of study have become the â€Å"sciences of life† because it has been socially accepted, since their subjects of study have to do with life. And also how literary scholars do not pay attention to the humanities losing ground on this respect. So, according to the author, the concept of life should be changed from a bio-chemical, biophysical, and biotechnological and medical, to a cultural-literature-oriented one, as other scholars also maintained before (Leo Spitzer and his ideal of literature being the science that seeks to comprehend the human being to the extent to which he expresses himself in words and linguistic creations). Then, the author introduces the concept knowledge for living as the kind of knowledge inherent to literature, this is, literature having knowledge about or of life. But then, it comes the following question: how to acquire this knowledge for living? This could be answered (according also to Wolfgang Iser’s work) by the act of reading, this is: reading fictional literary pieces and having experiences through it that make the reader gain a kind of knowledge that he/she would not experience in their own life otherwise. This introduces the concepts of intratextuallity (the knowledge of living that characters of novels possess) and extratextuallity (the ways of acquiring certain cultural and sociohistorical knowledge for living), both of which influence the reader culturally, in their behavior, their life, etc. depending on what they read. These two dimensions of the knowledge for living constitute, at the same time, the knowledge for living together, which is acquired by the readers through literature as the conditions for people to live together which have been shaped all throughout history. In these terms, the author mentions Roland Basthers’ work Comment vivre ensemble, and how literary analysis could connect literature and life. This is, for example, how to live (in the novel), how certain people have lived (in biography), etc. In addition, these knowledges should take into account different contexts and cultures, gender and social differences, in order to be universal and valid. The conclusion of the author is that the humanities first need to realize the potential that they possess concerning knowledge for living which, in conjunction with the natural and social sciences, would give new perspectives for the exploration of art and literature as knowledge for living.

The Harleian Manuscripts :: Chaucer Canterbury Tales Essays

The Harleian Manuscripts, Ha2 and Ha3 My research on the Harley manuscript versions of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", Ha2 1758 and Ha3 7333 from the British Library led to the finding of little information except what was to be found in the footnotes of articles and books describing the Ha4 7334. The little information I did find might lead to reasons why the manuscripts, particularly the Ha3 7333, are difficult to research and why they are seldom mentioned. I spent most of my research time on the library's fifth floor and went through the stack of Chaucer books, particularly the publications by the Chaucer Society. I also searched the internet for articles and research pertaining to Chaucer and the many manuscript versions of "The Canterbury Tales", including the library's electronic resources, Infotrac and JSTOR. Most of the descriptions I found on the Ha2 and Ha3, however, came from the footnotes of articles on these electronic resources and from the footnotes of the books I found discussing the textual history of "The Canterbury Tales". One possible explanation as to why the Ha2 and Ha3 are rarely found or mentioned in comparison to the overwhelming supply of information on the Ha4 is that the Ha2 was "mostly used to supply Gg.S. or Cambridge". Similarly, the Ha3 "mostly supplies Lansdowne"(Koch 4). Therefore, maybe what is to be found of these manuscripts, the Ha2 and Ha3, is the combining of these manuscripts with the Cambridge and Lansdowne manuscripts, since it is described that the Harley versions supply these manuscripts. This theory is also supported by the fact that the Harley manuscripts contained many similarities to Shirley. I inferred from my readings that Shirley was a scribe of one of "The Canterbury Tales" manuscripts, since the Harley 7333 is often times mistaken to be his work(Pace 21). This presents another possible explanation that the Harley was combined with another manuscript and was therefore almost completely lost. This is only a possibility though, because the Harley is still referred to, no matter how seldom, as its own manuscript and is not combined in description with the Cambridge or Landsdowne. In lists of the available "The Canterbury Tales" manuscripts, provided by various books, the Harley is still referred to as its own manuscript and is not represented as part of another. The only information I found regarding the Ha2 1758 is that it lacks ten fols.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Computer

Advantages of computers: Increases speed of computing and processing information in any other way. People can use sophisticated statistical and mathematical tools for decision making and further purposes without learning in details the algorithms used for computing. This way people can use much more sophisticated analytical tools that would have been possible with only manual information processing. Computers can store large volumes of information without occupying too much space, as is in the case of information stored in form of books and paper documents.Computer processing eliminates the human errors of computing and information processing. Information once entered in computer system can be easily accessed by the same person or other persons at different times for different persons. This reduces the work load of capturing same information multiple times for different purposes. It also makes it possible for different person to work with same information, avoiding the possibility of different persons using different versions of the same information.The work of entering and editing information is made mush more easy and simple by software that offer many powerful user friendly features for performing these tasks. Computer now offer sophisticated and powerful software for representing information in rich formats with visual and video facilities. Computers combined with communication technology offer very fast speed and rich communication facility at low cost. Computers, with all these features are now used for automating all kinds of equipments and processes. Disadvantage of Computers The cost of computer and associated equipments is falling steadily.Still these equipments are and continue to be much more costly as compared to manual processing equipments like pen and pencil. Also technological complexity of these equipment makes it more difficult to learn and maintain these equipments as compared to equipments of manual information processing. Use of computers require additional infrastructure, such as power supply and software back up. This increases the chances of problems due to failure of infrastructure. For example, a computer will not work where there is no electric power supply. Even a laptop with a battery will work without power supply only for a limited period.Failures of computer system can be more serious and difficult to correct. For example, one scratch on a hard disk can make the complete data on the disk inaccessible. In comparison, manual system faults have comparatively limited impact. One page torn from a cabinet full of documents has no impact on other documents. Computers generally reduces the errors of processing. However if there is an error in input data, it can result in major blunders in the processing which the computer system is unable to detect. In manual systems the chances of such blunders passing undetected and corrected is much less.

The Physics Of Computer Science - 1314 Words

Introduction There has been vast and rapid development in the field of computer science since last couple of decades. From the abacus- early counting device, Napier’s Bones, Pascal’s Calculator, Leibnz Calculator, Analytical Engine, ENIAC, Transistors to Super Computer these has been a drastic sophistication in the field of computation. This pace can be seen and felt around us. Scientist has already developed and involved in the further advancement of quantum computers through different experiments which is believed to be the future of next generations top notch computation tools. The application of physical reality that quantum theory explains about the purpose of performing tasks that were before assumed to be impossible of infeasible outputted quantum information processing. The vast devices that are utilized to perform quantum information processing are known to be Quantum Computers. The word Quantum Computing itself means â€Å"study of theoretical computation systems (quantum computers) that make direct use of quantum- mechanical phenomena, such as superposition and entanglement to perform operations on data. Neil Gershenfeld (professor at MIT and director of MIT’s center for Bits and Atoms) said if this trend of making transistors smaller and smaller sustained with the pace as in recent years, then by 2020, the width of a wire in a computer chip will be no more than size of a single atom, where the rule of classical physics will no longer be pertained. (Manay, 1998,Show MoreRelatedPhysics : Quantum Computing And Computer Science859 Words   |  4 PagesQuantum Computing and Its Relation to Computer Science I have decided to write my paper on Quantum Computing. This is a difficult subject for me to wrap my head around, however I feel it is a very important field to look into more closely. 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