Unit 6 HolocaustThere has been much debate among historians as to why the Nazis set out to exterminate the Jews. Some have stated that it had always been Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews, while others have perceived the mass murders as a result of a long and curved process, where the Nazi Jewish policy was gradually radicalized.The Jews' presence in the German-occupied parts of Europe was seen as a problem and a great annoyance. At best, they were to disappear from the face of the earth, so that the Nazis could reach their goal: a Greater Germany free from Jews. Different solutions were tried: voluntary immigration, forced immigration, and several different plans for deportation. Plans surfaced to deport all the Jews to the east, first to eastern Poland, then to Siberia. Serious plans were also developed that included deporting all European Jews to the east African island of Madagascar.All these plans had to be dropped, however, because of the war that started in Europe in 1939. At the same time, the Nazis had gained experience with systematic mass murder in the form of the Euthanasia Programme, where physically and psychologically disabled were killed by the state. This constituted the crossing of an important psychological barrier. Another such barrier was crossed with the beginning of the Germans' cruel war of extermination the Soviet Union, which commenced in June 1941. All usual conventions for warfare were dropped at the beginning of this "the final battle against Judeo-Bolshevism".Unit 7 DiplomacyIf diplomacy, as former Secretary of State George P. Shultz suggests, can be likened to gardening — "You get the weeds out when they are small. You also build confidence and understanding. Then, when a crisis arises, you have a solid base from which to work" — then the role of cultural diplomacy is to plant seeds — ideas and ideals; aesthetic strategies and devices; philosophical and political arguments; spiritual perceptions; ways of looking at the world —which may flourish in foreign soils. Cultural diplomacy reveals the soul of a nation, which may explain its complicated history in American political life: when our nation is at war, every tool in the diplomatic kit bag is employed, including the promotion of cultural activities. But whenpeace returns, culture gets short shrift, because of our traditional lack of public support for the arts. Now that we are at war again, interest in cultural diplomacy is on the rise. Perhaps this time we can create enduring structures within which to practice effective cultural diplomacy and articulate a sustaining vision of the role that culture can play in enhancing the security of this country.Unit 8 ChristianityThe one person most associated with the development of the Presbyterian Church is John Calvin (1509–1564). His major work, Institutes of the Christian Religion, is a systematic treatise of 16th-century protestant thought, the cornerstone of Presbyterian doctrine, and one of the most influential books in Western thought.Dutch, French, English, Scots, and Irish brought the Presbyterian faith to America. One man, Francis Makemie, holds the distinctions of being called the Father of American Presbyterianism. This Scottish minister came to America in 1683 with a zeal for preaching and a genius for organization. He soon recruited other clergy in his tireless efforts to organize Presbyterians in the English colonies of America.The Presbyterian Church took root and grew in American soil, but not without difficulties. Presbyterians, along with Baptists and Methodists, divided at the question of slavery prior to the Civil War. The northern group, called the United Presbyterian Church in the USA, became the largest Presbyterian body in this country and in the world. The southern group was called the Presbyterian Church in the United States. In 1983 these two groups merged to form the Presbyterian Church (USA), the fourth largest Protestant denomination in the United States.Unit 9 PoliticsThe term "government" brings to many minds the notion of interference with the activities of individuals, and their organization for national purposes. The experience of war has aided this conception. War demands much interference with the lives and work of individuals, and required the control and direction of man power, of national resources and national morale. Thesefunctions of government have also their expression in time of peace. Such matters as the liberty of the subject, national defense, free trade and tariff reform, imports and exports, the relationship of husband and wife, and parent and child are all subjects which modern national governments regard as their proper concern.With these great matters local authorities have little to do. Their chief concern is for what may be called the domestic work of a civilized community. The central government will decide whether there is to be war or peace, whether agriculture or other industries to be subsidized, or taxed, or merely let alone. What authorities local have to do is to keep the place tidy and fit to live in, to see that the streets are swept, that the houses are properly built, to provide parks and gardens for the recreation of young and old, to educate the children, to tend the sick, and to care for the helpless and the aged. This is the job of local government. It is a fine job, necessary, and one well worth doing. Without it, no civilized country can carry on, or call itself civilized.Unit 10 ArtThe use of perspective posed a fundamental problem for Renaissance painters: how to reconcile perspective with composition and the search for harmony. A chief interest of later fifteenth-century Italian painting lay in the various ways in which artists tackled this problem.Among the Florentine artists of the second half of the fifteenth century who strove for a solution of this question was the painter Sandro Botticelli (1444-1510 ). One of his most famous pictures depicts not a Christian legend, but a classical myth — The Birth of Venus. Representing as, it does, the way that beauty came into the world, this painting is another expression of the Renaissance desire to recover the lost wisdom of the ancients. Botticelli has succeeded in rendering a perfectly harmonious pattern — but as the cost of sacrificing solidity and anatomical correctness. In The Birth of Venus, what the viewer notices are the graceful, flowing lines that unify and vivify the painting. Even the liberties that Botticelli took with nature — for example, the unnatural proportion of Venus's neck and shoulders — enhance the aesthetic outcome.New approaches to this problem of perspective and composition were developed by the three greatest artists of the Renaissance — Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Michelangelo Buonarroti(1475–1564), and Raphael Santi (1483–1520). All of them were closely associated with Florence and all of them were contemporaries.Unit 10 GeneticsMendel, an Augustinian monk, had some training in mathematics and the natural sciences. moreover, he was the son of a farmer, knew the soil, and had a green thumb. Plant hybridization interested him, and he began to read the professional literature. There were many puzzling problems. Crosses between certain species regularly yielded many hybrids with identical traits, for instance; but look what happened when you crossed the hybrids — all kinds of strange new combinations of traits cropped up. The principle of inheritance, if there was one, was elusive.Mendel's basic idea was that there might be simple mathematical relationships among the characteristic forms of plants in different generations of hybrids. He decided, therefore, to establish some experimental plots in the monastery garden at Brunn, and there raise a number of varieties of peas, hybridize them, count and classify the offspring of each generation, and see whether any mathematical ratios were involved.He began in 1854 with seed that other growers had certified as "pure"(that is, plants grown from it, if self-fertilized faithfully, duplicated the traits of the parental stock) — but just to make sure, he raised plants from it and harvested a crop. Then, by artificial pollination, he crossed varieties in different combinations. The result, for each of the seven paired traits he had chosen to study, was the same: all individuals in the first generation took after one parent. It was as if the other parent had had no influence whatever on the result.Unit 12 Society and ValuesThe positive image of individualism has emphasized the American as pioneer, moving out into wilderness and among savages, and making his way alone, with rifle and axe. It emphasized his indifference as pioneer to governmental controls, which on occasion meant taking the law into his own hands to impose a minimal order on frontier society. It emphasized his insistence on his rights as an American—his right to challenge government in the courts, through organizationand electoral activity. Much of American society and landscape is marked by this individualism: the pattern of agricultural settlement, with its farm dwelling set alone in the midst of extensive acreage, the nearest neighbor a mile away, the nearest town a day's journey back and forth, so strikingly different from the agricultural villages of Europe. Individualism, too, marked the cities, created with checkerboard patterns so that each individual could select a standard plot, and do with it what he wished. Or, in more recent decades, it has been seen in a pattern of disorderly growth, in which each entrepreneur, as individual, managed to acquire some land and, laid out, indifferent to any larger image of urban design, his own development, and sold to anyone who could afford the houses.Unit 13 EconomicsMost people have a good idea of what is meant by inflation. They know that it causes a sack full of groceries to cost more money. They know that buying Christmas presents costs more. They know that it is more expensive to eat out, to go to a movie, to take a vacation, or to buy a car. They know they will be generally worse off in the future unless their pay can keep up with inflationInflation means that the general level of prices is rising. That is, enough commodity prices are rising so that, on the average, prices in general are rising. During inflation some commodities may be falling in price and some may be rising, but the commodities rising in price are dominant, and they exert an upward force on the general price level.Inflation has dynamic and self- sustaining properties. Increases in the price level induce economic groups to react to rising prices, causing further increases in prices. For example, consumers expecting increases in prices may increase current consumer spending, causing current market prices to rise. During periods of rising prices, producers are not inclined to resist increases in wages and other costs, since higher production costs may be shifted forward to consumers in the form of higher prices. These increases in prices, however, become the basis for further increases in production costs and still higher prices.Unit 14 TechnologyHow and why did technology become such a powerful force in human life?Before there were human beings there was technology. Fossil remains of our predecessors dated from more than a million years ago show that our remote ancestors made tools out of pebbles and animal bones. And that's what technology is: tool-making. The intelligent animal doesn't have the speed of a horse, the fighting teeth of a chimpanzee, the wings of an eagle, the claws of a tiger, or the protective fleece of a sheep. But we have discovered (or invented) technology. We make tools, where other species make physiological adaptations. We have fire and all the energy- producing engines stemming from it. We travel faster than the horse, fly higher than the eagle, fight much more devastatingly than any predator, and protect our bodies with not only sheep's wool but artificial fabrics as well.One man alone can't kill a mammoth. But a handful of men, armed with something more sophisticated than stone-tipped spears and fire, apparently drove the mammoths into extinction. By the time the last glaciation dwindled, humankind was the supreme ruler of every land mass on Earth. And we ruled with fire, spear, awl, scrapers: technology.Unit 15 PhilosophyPlato (427?-347 BC) is one of the immortal geniuses of philosophy. Born in Athens to a wealthy and politically influential, aristocratic family, he was closely associated as a young man with Socrates, who died when Plato was in his late twenties. When the democracy was restored, Plato's family fell out of favor, and his hostility to democratic government is reflected in a number of his works. At some time after Socrates' death, perhaps as much as fifteen years or more, Plato started to write Dialogues in which moral, political, religious, cosmological, logical and other subjects were explored. In the early dialogues, Socrates is always the principal speaker, and there is some reason to suppose that Plato's picture of Socrates' personality and doctrines bears a close resemblance to the actual historical man who was his teacher. Later on, however, the dialogues clearly come more and more to reflect Plato's (9) philosophical investigations, and in the works composed last, Socrates disappears altogether as a character.Retreating from public life, Plato founded a school at his home in Athens. The home was called the "Academy", and the word has since then meant a school or university. Many of the most gifted philosophers of the day worked or studied at the Academy, including the other great genius of ancient thought, Aristotle. Eventually, the Academy became an independent institution, and it continued for almost 900 years before it was finally closed by the Roman emperor Justinian in 529 AD.Plato's greatest work was the Republic, a dialogue on the nature of justice, but much of his work in later life was devoted to mathematics and cosmology, and members of the Academy made significant contributions to formal logic and to such mathematical fields as solid geometry.。
