The study of world history is very important to us as Americans because it is helps us understand who we are and what helped us to get where we are. Also it helps us understand who we are as a culture and where we come from. Many people are different and share their different point of views. People have different religions and different ways of living. With the different ways of living and different religions there is a lot of racism and ethnic violence in America today. I feel this a very important issue in the world today because we as Americans need to tie together and become as a team.
While I take this course I hope to learn more about the different cultures and where they were originated from. If I learn where different cultures originated from and how they live their everyday life this can help me learn on how their life is lived and give me a vision of what their lives are really like. For example the people in Somalia are starving for food and will work all day for a simple meal, while most Americans eat food as if it was an everyday thing. As you can see all people have something a little different in them.
I think it’s very important for people to know their own roots. It is also important for us to learn about our government as well as other countries. This is another important thing that I would like to learn and understand by taking this class. We must learn about the leaders of different countries because many leaders from the past have taken a significant influence on our world’s history. The biggest leader who sticks out in my head is Hitler who lead Germany to believe in the Aryan race. This lead to many deaths of Jewish people at concentration camps.
If we would have learned more abut Hitler and his views we might have been able to sway him from his ways, or maybe even taken him out before the large death tolls of Jewish people at the concentration camps. We must learn these government believes and know its powers. Government is a main way of communicating with other countries. In order to keep it this way we must keep accepting some of the things they do. Your religion is one of the most important thing in one’s life that can separate one person from another.
The differences can cause major conflicts and can lead to a Holy War. This is why today in America they call it the “melting pot” of cultures and religions. Many people from all over the globe migrate to America to express their religion and cultural backgrounds. This is one of the biggest reasons of how racism comes into factor. As you can see I feel it is very important for Americans to learn about other cultures and other backgrounds so we can know how different people are and we can adjust to other peoples beliefs.
This can help cut down on racism in the world but it will take more than this to get rid of the people who are ethnocentric. Another important factor in our nation is our economy which depends upon the world’s demand for goods and resources. In understanding world history we can get to know our consumers better, and in doing that it creates a much bigger market for our goods. In return it benefits us by creating more jobs and capital in the United States. Every day Americans consume millions of dollars in imports. Whether it is the oil in your car or the leather coat you are wearing.
We depend on other nations just as they depend on us. One of the most important things in world history is the Bill of Rights. This has changed everybody’s life since it has been applied. Without the Bill of Rights, Americans will not be governed by laws and we would not have the rights we have today. The Amendments help protect the people and give them the rights they need to feel like they are American citizen. Amendments also help people from incriminating themselves. It makes it possible to protect yourself by keeping a gun in your house.
It gives us freedom of speech which is a very important thing to have because you are allowed to say whatever you want; without freedom of speech you would not be able to stick up for yourself and say what you think is right. If Americans didn’t have the amendments the world would be a very curupt place to live in. I am very happy to be an American citizen, and feel it is one of the most important things to me. I learned how lucky I am from taking looks at other countries and comparing what I have for rights and living style in America.
Many Americans take their country for granted, after learning more about the Modern World I am positive that I won’t. The scientific revolution did not happen all at once, nor did it begin at any set date. You can push the date back to the work of Nicolaus Copernicus at the beginning of the sixteenth century, or Leonardo da Vinci in the middle of the fifteenth. Even then, you haven’t gone back far enough and you haven’t included all the factors that contributed to scientific revolution. It’s hard to pinpoint the shift in these attitudes.
The introduction of humanism in the fourteenth century was in a large part based on the idea that human intellect and creativity were trustworthy, and human experience was, to some extent, a reliable base on which to hang knowledge. But the humanist revolution didn’t happen all at once. The difference between experience and authority was the question throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. What should you believe? What your experience shows you? Or what authorities, including the church and the bible, tell you to believe?
While it’s hard to pinpoint the shift in European attitudes, the first, unambiguous statement of this shift in values come in Leonardo da Vinci’s treatise on painting. The Scientific Revolution has been given several dates from the mid to late 1600’s. I feel it occurred in the mid 1500’s to the mid 1700’s. Floris Cohen labels the late 1400’s and 1500’s as the Renaissance for science and the late 1500’s through the 1600’s. Any attempt to assign exact dates is impossible in my opinion. There are historical events that can be identified as useful reference points.
There was a scientific revolution of sorts in the high Middle Ages that in many ways rivaled the later scientific revolution in its sweeping changes, but all the cultural components were not in place. So the scientific revolution of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries did not produce a way of thinking about the world that closely resembles our own. You see, even in the high Middle Ages, Europeans believed that the center of all truth and experience was in God. The medieval’s deeply distrusted human perception. Not only has human perception variable and untrustworthy, the material world itself was deceptive.
Rather than a vehicle for truth, the material world was put in place to actively distract humans from the real task. Moreover, a revolution takes place over time while conditions are put in place which freeze in time the major identifiable events. Following this event, more changes are put into motion, continuing until somehow the activity of change becomes activity of stability. The Scientific Revolution is identified as the beginning of modern science in the early 17th century. The beginning and end points are still the subject of debate, but the events of the first few decades of the 17th century are identifiable and remarkable.
The impact of the Scientific Revolution has been profound. Its most direct influence was on European intellectuals who created a movement that they called the Enlightenment. These intellectuals saw that most human beings lived in ignorance and superstition. They believed that people could emerge from this darkness if they used their minds properly. Their inspiration was Issac Newton. But would the pioneers of the Scientific Revolution celebrate the way that it has triumphed? Today, most people accept scientific explanations as articles of faith rather than theories to be tested.
