"Education and Discipline" - Critical Summary

Introduction

The essay “Education and Discipline” by the Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell, was first published in his collection of essays titled, In Praise of Idleness, in 1935. Educational theories generally focus on how learning occurs, and they seek to understand, analyse, and prescribe educational practices. 

According to Bertrand Russell, the real purpose of education is civilisation, which includes both individual and social aspects. On the individual front, it consists of intellectual and moral qualities, and, on the moral front, it consists of the virtues of impartiality, kindliness, and self-control. Moreover, civilisation also demands respect for the law, and the intelligent adaptation of means to the ends. If this is the purpose of education, then psychologists should consider how to realise them, and analyse the degree of freedom that is essential to make it more effective.

Three Main Schools of Thought on Freedom

As far as the question of freedom in education is concerned, there are three main schools of thought. The first school of thought says that children should be completely free, however bad they may be. 

The second school of thought says that children should be completely subject to authority.

The third school of thought says that children should be free, but in spite of freedom, they should be always good. According to Russell, complete liberty to the child, ignores the importance of knowledge to the child, and also the positive purpose of education.

At the same time, he also believes that, authoritative education turns the students into timid tyrants, incapable of either claiming or tolerating originality in word or deed. Too much authoritarianism can also lead to over-submissive and timid children or it can also make them rebels. Thus there is danger in both the extremes of liberty and authority.

The Need of the Hour in Education

Hence, what is wanted is neither submissiveness nor rebellion, but good nature and general friendliness both to people and to new ideas. By developing children with “good nature” Russell stresses on the importance of raising students who can be well-adapted and self-content in their later life. This requires a balance between cultivating the child’s individuality and preparing him/her to be a social being.

Educationists all over the world rarely recognise this conflict. While the famous educationist John Dewey overemphasised socialisation, Montessori, overemphasised on individualisation. The more individualised you are, the less socialised you become, and vice versa. But, according to Russell, ideally, individuality and sociality can and should peacefully coexist in the same individual.

Individual and Social function of the Child

Educational theorists should strive to give an education that teaches children to be independent but also carry the wisdom to know how to do this as a social being. Hence, it is important to recognise that being a well-functioning adult requires individual authenticity and an ability to function in society.

Conclusion

To achieve this fine balance, as far as children’s education is concerned, we require teachers who develop spontaneous pleasure in the presence of children, without any ulterior purpose. Unfortunately, it is utterly impossible for over-worked teachers to preserve an instinctive liking for children. 

Hence, education should be undertaken for at most two hours a day by teachers, whose remaining hours should be spent away from children. Spontaneous love for children, produces the right impulse to treat naughty children, and the child feels easy to respond, if they feel that you like them. Hence, Russell concludes by saying that, no rule, however wise, can be a substitute for affection and tact, while dealing with children.

* Special thanks to Kevin Currie Knight, for his five thoughtful inputs on Russell.

"Mirror" – Sylvia Plath - Critical Summary

Introduction:

The Mirror was written by Sylvia Plath in 1961, but wasn’t published until 1971, eight years after her death by suicide. The poem is written from the perspective of a mirror and details what it sees and how it relates to the woman and other objects within its view. It symbolises the troubled self of the woman, especially the woman artist who has to reject the given masks imposed on her by the patriarchal society and see herself as an artist and an individual.  The mirror imagery in Plath’s poetry therefore, signifies the consciousness of the woman-speaker who verbalises the creative process of a woman artist in the domain of male-dominated literature. The woman artist has to resist the critical and judgemental male gaze to arrive at her own autonomous self-expression.

Mirror and Women’s Passivity:

Freedman believes that, “Plath uses mirror as a symbol of female passivity, subjection, and Plath’s own conflicted self-identity caused by social pressures to reconcile the competing obligations of artistic and domestic life”. The mirror represents the unfeeling male view of a woman and what is socially expected of her: possessing an idealised beauty and ever-lasting youth. As the persona ages over the years, the mirror cruelly reflects the changes in her appearance. Age becomes the persona’s defect and shortcoming and thus her source of anxiety and dismay. The mirror projects what is thought of as the woman as she grows older. It claims to reflect the truth, and by implication, the representation of the patriarchal perception of a woman’s existence, her worth only as a beautiful object,  and her worthlessness when she is no longer young and beautiful. Against the male’s definition of womanhood, which idealises beauty and youth, the persona looks inside to discover her true self, what she was as a person, and what she has become, maturing by age. The woman’s autonomous identity and perception of the self are, therefore in conflict with the stereotype of the dominant male society. The tension increases as the persona is perplexed by this identity crisis. If she chooses her inner self and her own independent definition of identity, when looking in the mirror, she no longer sees the beautiful girl, but the terrible fish.

Richard Wilbur's "The Writer": Critical Summary

Introduction:

PC: seedpodcraft.com

“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe in”, said Gustave Flaubert. Richard Wilbur, the second Poet Laureate of the United States of America, in the poem “The Writer” reflects on this art of writing, through his daughter’s act of writing.  The poem ruminates on a father watching over his daughter’s tryst with the writing process, even as she is seen typing out a story on her typewriter. The poem thereby, addresses the process of writing, as seen from the perspective of the father, and the emotions, memories and nostalgia that it triggers in him even as he sees his daughter typing out a story in her bedroom upstairs. Although parent-child relationships form a part of the poem’s fabric, the central theme of the poem, is, however, the difficulties and the responsibilities of being a writer.

Theme for English B – Critical Analysis

Theme for English B – Critical Analysis

Introduction:

Langston Hughes was a Harlem Renaissance poet and one of the most prominent voices in American poetry of the 20^th century. Through the poem “Theme for English B” Hughes communicates his intense paroxysm of pain and angst experienced by the black immigrants in the process of being ‘Americanised’ into the mainstream culture. By doing so, he not only challenges the concept of race and racism in America, but also the fluidity of the American identity, which is a malady, representative of the American experience in toto. He has been eulogised as a cultural icon, ‘a man lionized and venerated as the black poet laureate of the twentieth century’.

Synopsis of the Poem:

The poem discusses the predicament of the speaker, a young adult of 19 years, and the ‘only colored student’ in his English class. The teacher asks the class to “Go home and write a page that will come out of you – then it will be true’. As the only colored student in his class, he is in a double bind: he is not sure whether to write like an English student, by assuming a false persona, or to be true to his cultural heritage and ethnic affiliations, while writing the assignment. Truth for him, is a subject matter of consternation and contention, and by the end of the assignment, he has figured out for himself what is true in life!

Ethnicity and Identity:

Ethnicity refers to the identification of a particular group ‘based on a perceived cultural distinctiveness’ that makes the group into a people. This distinctiveness is believed to be

Poverty, Evil and Crime - Amartya Sen - Critical Summary

Introduction:

Amartya Sen, who is fondly known as the Mother Teresa of Indian Economics, was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1998, for his contributions to welfare economics and interest in the problems of the poorest people in society. This speech titled, “Poverty, Evil and Crime” was delivered to the United Nations Programme for Development, New York, on October 5, 2007.

According the George Bernard Shaw, “the greatest of evils and the worst of crimes is poverty”. Based on this premise, Amartya Sen divides his speech into two parts.  The first part of his speech deals with the relationship between poverty and evil, and the second part deals with the relationship between poverty and crime.

Relationship between Poverty and Evil:

Sen argues that poverty is the cause of all social evils. The world today is filled with millions of people who are unable to afford even the barest minimum necessities of life. It is this poverty that leads people to indulge in criminal activities like robbery, looting, arson, etc.

If poverty is an evil, then there must be some wickedness behind poverty that allows such wrong-doings to occur. This raises the immediate question: Who are the wrong-doers? But, identifying the wrong-doers is not our task. Our focus has to be on removing wrong-doing rather than going on the wild-goose chase of catching the wrong-doer.

The Indian Cinema - K.M. Munshi - Critical Summary

Introduction:

K. M. Munshi is the founder of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. In this essay, “Indian Cinema” he talks about the evils that have plagued Indian cinema, and expresses dissatisfaction at the growth of cinema in India. He choses the Hindi movie titled “Hunterwali”, a 1935 film featuring Nadia as the heroine, as representative of the malady of Indian cinema, and how Nadia makes a mockery of Indian womanhood in the film.

Sweet Sixteen without its Sweetness:

This wandering homeless orphan girl, though by appearance thirty, tries to play the pranks of ‘sweet sixteen’ but without its sweetness, charm or modesty. She rushes about on horse-back, and then goes around performing stunts like jumping over a moving carriage and then defeating 20 soldiers in one sweep with an irritating style.

Disgusting and Indecent:

A zamindar’s son, also looking about thirty, attracted by her, acts like a vagabond. They are shown as making love to each other, but without charm, grace or dignity. Their love-making takes the form of shameless freedom of bodily contact, difficult indeed to find in real life, except among the ill-bred. They both jostle each other, throw each other down, fling sand in each other’s eyes. In short, they do everything which would be enjoyable if they had been a boy and girl of eight; it is disgusting to adults, and unthinkable as a normal relation between men and women of decent upbringing.

Tackling the Question Paper [Semester III]

Tackling the Question Paper - Semester III - Part II English

The first three Essay questions carry 20x3=60 marks each, and so give your best time and effort to these three questions. You will have one question each from Poetry/Prose/Short Stories with internal choice too!  

Spend between twenty and thirty minutes on each ESSAY question, which totally takes 1 hr and 30 mts of your time.

Essay questions are meant to be at least three to four sides in length. Do not waste answer sheets by writing a mere five or six lines in it. Make sure you write at least a minimum of 14 lines per page.

Blueprint for Semester III - Part II English

                                      Semester III

Question Paper blueprint for the End of Semester Examination - November 2011

Time: 3 Hrs                                                      Marks: 100

I. Answer any ONE of the following in about 500 words: [1x20=20]

Three questions from poetry.

II. Answer any ONE of the following in about 500 words: [1x20=20]

Three questions from prose.

III. Answer any ONE of the following in about 500 words: [1x20=20]

Three questions from short stories.

IV. Story Completion: [1x10=10]

The electric train stopped at Saidapet Station. The Station Master announced that the Adyar river was flowing over the railway bridge...................

V.Note Making: [1x10=10]

One passage of about 300 words. No choice.

VI. Cloze Test: [1x10=10]

One passage of about 150 words with 10 missing words. The 10 missing words to be supplied in a jumbled order.

VII. Grammar: [5x2=10]

Fill in the blanks with the correct forms. Five sentences will be given.

Eg: 1. He is the ....... [tall] boy in the class.

                                                *****

"The Tower of Gabble" - P. Sainath - A Critical Take!

Introduction: Development Rhetoric

In 1946, the famous English author and journalist George Orwell wrote an impassioned essay, “Politics and the English Language”, criticizing the dangers of “ugly and inaccurate” contemporary written English. “The Tower of Gabble” by P. Sainath is likewise “a very deft parody of a dialect, called NGO-Speak.” Sainath is an Indian journalist who has extensively covered the horrible realities of poverty in India and the thousands of suicides of small farmers driven to self destruction by neo-liberal policies. His work has won praise from the likes of Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen who referred to him as “one of the world’s great experts on famine and hunger”.

A Satire on the Rhetoric of ‘Development’

The writer Sainath makes fun of all the verbal jugglery, of the lingua franca used by a majority of the grant applicants and conference planners to obtain a sustainable grant from some major foundation or organisation. This NGO argot or NGO slang, as it is known, is deeply confusing and so complicating to the extent that instead of serving the purpose,

Phrases like “Exploratory Sessions will be based on Interactive Communication” and “They could be roped in via a Plenary Session on Good Governance, Accountability and the importance of Networking” serve to sarcastically highlight the enormous complexity used by ‘Development’ activists, which are poorly understood by the local community most of the time, since they are conceptualised from the perspective of the NGOs.

Further, the use of unnecessary capital letters throughout the essay makes the prose style of these so-called Development activists, highly idiotic in appeal, to say the least. Readability and legibility, which are the key ingredients of good rhetoric, have been compromised for the sake of ‘impressive’ verbal diarrhoea. In short, NGO jargon is employed to give the impression of competence while actually achieving very little.

Favourite Words of NGO-Speak

All the favourite words of NGO-speak are now used vigorously by Development activists, especially in developing countries like India. Top of the list are “empowerment”, “capacity-building”, “Civil Society Organisations”, “stakeholder”, “Action Groups”, “Focus groups”, “Governance”, “facilitators”, “Advocacy Outreach”, “Issue-based development”, etc, to name a few.

Such terms are hard to define and still harder to contradict. As “The Economist” rightly points out, “NGO-speak is particularly cherished and fostered in the grant applications that smaller NGOs have to file to the bigger ones. Using the right word is everything. “If you don’t know the buzz words,” says an NGO director, “you hardly have a chance to apply for funds,” which makes the task more uphill for the Development activists.

Desire to Impress through Verbosity and Logorrhea

Verbosity, also called wordiness, prolixity and garrulousness, refers to speech or writing which is deemed to use an excess of words. Development activists resort to these excessive flow of words, which are highly abstract, and, consequently, contains little concrete language. The absence of concrete language means that it is hard to visualize, and hence seems as though it makes no sense to the reader.

Development activists concern themselves mainly with the lay populace, and hence, when interacting with them, it is out of place to use verbal grandiloquence while dealing with uneducated individuals. These concepts sound quite unnatural, and also smirk of a tendency to impress the possible donors. The art of rhetoric, lies in making even the most complex of contexts into a simple and easy to read structure. But, the ‘rhetoric of the NGOs is the other way round. Too much of complicated information is bombarded onto the reader at the risk of losing the main point. In such a situation, it becomes very difficult to identify the intended core message of the sender.

Sainath takes a dig at the resolutions adopted at these NGO meets, where they resolve to ‘examine Paradigm Shifts in the Development Debate while strengthening Conscientization, Advocacy Outreach and Institution-Building.’ Most of these words seem out of place or redundant to the point of being meaningless.

The Need to be Simple and Profound

Ideas need to be simple and profound in order to have the desired effect on the readers. The writer should work hard on making his ideas understandable to his readers. Since the case for Development focuses on the upliftment of the underprivileged, these ideas need to be explained to them in simple, concrete terms, rather than wallowing in pompous and over-elaborate writing.

As Sir Ernest Arthur Gowers, rightly opines,

“Writing is an instrument for conveying ideas from one mind to another; the writer's job is to make his reader apprehend his meaning readily and precisely.”

Conclusion

The article, by satirising the verbal pomposity of the Development activists, pleads for the use of plain English, an English that promotes clarity, brevity and the avoidance of technical language – particularly in relation to official communication. The intention of such Development writers should be to write in a manner that is easily understood by the target audience: appropriate to their reading skills and knowledge, clear and direct, free of cliché and unnecessary jargon.

*****

Our acknowledgements are due to-

The Economist.com for words related to NGO speak.

II Year Part II English - Lesson Summaries - Reg

Dear Students of III Sem (Part II English),

Please find the updated version of the lesson summaries for eight lesson modules, in the link HERE.

Wishing you all the best in your Semester exams, 

Rufus

"The City Planners" - Margaret Atwood - Critical Analysis

Introduction

Margaret Atwood, is a Canadian author, poet, critic, essayist, feminist and social campaigner. Best known as a novelist, she is also an award-winning poetess. As John Wilson Foster rightly comments, 'her verse is that of a psychic individual at sea in a materialist society'. "The City-Planners” is critical of the monotony and false beauty of modern cities, suburbs and its architecture. The poem views modern life as empty, artificial, and its inhabitants as robotic and lacking in spirit.

Land in the City vs Rural Land

The land in the city has a great contrast  with the rural land. The influx of people moving from rural to urban areas keeps on increasing to this day. This form of displacement is also known as internal migration. Rural land is often viewed as more fertile and vast, whereas land in the city is limited and so space is used to the maximum. As more and more people move to cities in search of work and better standards of living, land becomes scarcer.

 

Living in such an environment with only concrete, steel and buildings, man consequently becomes more mechanical, stressed and partially dehumanized. The absence of vast land in cities deprives the harmony that a huge area of empty land provides. This absence of land in cities is severely criticized by Margaret Atwood in this poem where "the houses in pedantic rows" shows lack of warmth.

The Victory of Science over Nature

The theme of this poem is perfection, uniformity, man’s attempts to control nature, and lust of power (the city planners). As the poet moves about in a residential area, she is offended by the "sanities" of the area. The word 'sanities' may possess a double meaning here. Firstly, it may allude to the unnatural 'sanitariness' of the place. Secondly, it may denote the saneness of minds, or soundness that render them sophisticated, uniform and therefore boring. The "dry

"The Doll's House" - Katherine Mansfield - Critical Analysis

Introduction:

“The Doll's House” is a short story by Katherine Mansfield, written in the year 1922. The story reveals the extent to which class consciousness has wreaked havoc in the social set up, so much so that the other children are discouraged from talking to the children from the lowest of the social classes. The story traces the problem of class consciousness through the character of Kezia, and her journey from innocence to the symbolic world of experience.

The Arrival of the Doll’s House in the Burnell family:

The Doll's House

The Burnell children receive a doll’s house from Mrs Hay, who had come to stay with them. The children were so excited about the doll’s house, and they decide to show it off to their school friends.  With the arrival of the doll's house, the Burnell children get so excited and greatly attracted to it. While the two older children admire the red carpet, the red chairs, and the gold frames of this richly decorated house, Kezia, the youngest of the girls, takes an interest in the rather simple lamp.

The Doll’s House – Cynosure of all Eyes:

In school, during playtime, Isabel, the eldest of the Burnell children, was surrounded. The girls of her class nearly fought to be her special friend. All the girls, giggling together, pressed up close to have a look at the doll’s house, which was the cynosure of all eyes now. The only two who stayed outside the ring were the little Kelveys. Many of the children, including the Burnells, were not allowed to speak to them. The Kelveys were shunned by everybody.  When Kezia asks her mother, "Can't I ask the Kelveys just once?" To which, the response is, "Certainly not, Kezia!”

The fact that even the teacher had a special voice for them, and a special smile for the other children speaks to the discreet (or rather distinct) ways in which class consciousness is practised even by teachers themselves, in maintaining the social hierarchy.

II Year Part II English - Lesson Summaries Link - Reg

Dear Students,

Notes for your II Year III Semester Part II English have been uploaded in an easy format HERE.

You can download or print them by clicking on the respective buttons found on top of the document.

Regards and all best wishes, 

Rufus

"The Dream" by Somerset Maugham - Lesson Summary

"The Dream" by Somerset Maugham

Introduction:

One of the most common yet feared dreams is the experience of falling in dreams or dreams of falling. The dream can be as simple as falling out of bed or as extreme as falling from top of a building, ladder, rooftop, mountain, cliff or even out of an airplane without a parachute, to name just a few. Yet, regardless of the height the dreamer is falling from in the dream, the experience is terrifying to the dreamer. As a result, the dreamer generally wakes up hyperventilated, afraid, filled with anxiety, sweating, struggling for each breath he takes, heart pounding in his chest as if it were about to explode. Somerset Maugham narrates one such experience of a dream that he heard from a Russian traveller in transit at Vladivostok, Russia’s largest port city.

Maugham meets a Russian at a Restaurant:

In August 1917, Somerset Maugham had to make a work-related trip from New York to Petrograd. As the trans-Siberian train started at nine in the evening, Maugham dined at the station restaurant. He shared table with a Russian man whose appearance seemed to entertain him. Soon, both got into conversation, and the author felt that the Russian was well-learned and that he was on his way back home after a long stint abroad.

"The Unknown Citizen" - W.H.Auden - Critical Summary

Introduction:

The Unknown Citizen

“The Unknown Citizen” is a poem by W. H. Auden. Auden wrote it in 1939, shortly after moving from England to the United States, and the poem gives evidence of his culture shock when suddenly confronted with American-style chaos and consumerism. It is an ironic poem and the poet intends his satire against a society which kills a person’s individuality.

Significance of the Sub-title:

The sub-title to the poem “To JS/07/M/378/ This Marble Monument Is Erected by the State” alludes to the concept enforced by the government that every human being must be classified by a alpha-numeric tag to distinguish who they are, rather than being able to have their own personal identity. The poet scoffs at humans being given alpha-numeric names when they’re already struggling for their own personal identity in a world clustered with the advancing technology.

His Office Life and Social Life – Analysed:

The Bureau of Statistics has found that "no official complaint" has been made against the unknown citizen. He is also described as a "modern" saint, which means that he always served the "Greater Community." He worked in a factory before the war and he never got fired, as he satisfied his employers always.

The Sporting Spirit - George Orwell - Lesson Summary

Players booing the referee

Introduction:

In the extremely competitive atmosphere in which sports is administered today, every player backed by every nation, would obviously have a strong temptation to take advantage of the gaps in the rule book, bending the rules to his favour, and conveniently interpreting the law to his advantage. Against this backdrop, George Orwell, pleads for the need to understand the importance of demonstrating sportsmanship and set a good example on the sporting field for the others to emulate.

Sports as an Unfailing Cause of ill-will:

In his remarkable essay “The Sporting Spirit”, Orwell grieves over the fact that sport is an unfailing cause of ill-will, and that the visit of the Russian football team Dynamos, has only worsened the Anglo-Soviet relations instead of strengthening it.

Two of the four matches played led to much bad feeling. At the Arsenal match the referee was booed at. At the match in Glasgow, it was a free-for-all right from the start. According to Orwell, football was capable of provoking the vicious passions of patriotism, resulting in fresh animosity on both sides.

"My Grandmother's House" - Kamala Das - Critical Summary

My Grandmother's House (representative)

Introduction:

Kamala Das is one of the three most significant Indian poets writing in English today, the other two being Nissim Ezekiel and Ramanujan. Her poetry is all about herself, about her intensely felt desire for love, for emotional involvement, and her failure to achieve such a relationship. In this poem, “My Grandmother’s House” Kamala Das, recalls her ancestral home and her dead grandmother. This poem takes the form of a confession comparing her present broken state with that of being unconditionally loved by her grandmother.

Themes in the Poetry of Kamala Das:

The poetry of Kamala Das is a search for the essential woman, and hence the woman persona of her poems plays the various roles of unhappy woman, unhappy wife, mistress to lusty men, reluctant nymphomaniac, silent Devdasi and love-lorn Radha. Kamala Das has also been called a poet in the confessional mode. The confessional poets deal with emotional experiences which are generally taboo. There is a ruthless self-analysis and a tone of utter sincerity. As E.V.Ramakrishnan rightly says, “In her poetry, Kamala has always dealt with private humiliations and sufferings which are the stock themes of confessional poetry.”

Reminiscent of the Poet’s Ancestral Home:

The poem is a reminiscence of the poetess’ grandmother and their ancestral home at Malabar in Kerala. Her memory of love she received from her grandmother is associated with the image of her ancestral home, where she had passed some of the happiest days of her life, and where her old grandmother had showered her love and affection. With the death of her grandmother the house withdrew into silence. When her grandmother died, even the house seemed to share her grief, which is poignantly expressed in the phrase “the House withdrew”. The house soon became desolate and snakes crawled among books. Her blood became cold like the moon because there was none to love her the way she wanted.

'She' - Lakshmi Kannan - Poem Summary

Introduction

The “She” of the poem has no name and no distinct identity, and yet she is such a common feature of every household in India that she comes through to us without any difficulty. In a patriarchal milieu woman is regarded as a nonentity and consequently no attempt is made to give her a distinct identity. Although on the surface she has a look of well-being, she experiences great distress deep within.

In each of the three sections of the poem, Lakshmi Kannan presents elaborate description of the external attributes/circumstances of the woman’s existence against the background of which a peep into her inner life is provided.

Woman’s Lack of Self-expression in a Patriarchal Society

In the opening section, the poet delineates a woman who is elegantly and tastefully dressed, creating a vision of a modern woman who wears tight-fitting clothes that smack of western culture. There is about her an aura of confidence as she glibly pronounces “value judgements.” But beneath this suave and self-assured appearance there lurks a person who is tense and insecure (“tight and spring-tense”). Both before and after marriage, in most upper and upper middle class families, girls enjoy the luxury of expensive clothes and the benefit of liberal education, but their inner, authentic voice remains unarticulated. Lack of self-expression leads to dissatisfaction and even depression.

II Year BA / BSc / BCom - Part II English Notes - Reg:

Dear Students,

Notes for your II Year III Semester Part II English have been uploaded in an easy format HERE.

You can download or print them by clicking on the respective buttons found on top of the document.

Regards,

Rufus

WHAT IS LIFE? - JBS Haldane

Introduction:

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane was a British-born geneticist and evolutionary biologist. He was one of the founders of population genetics. In this essay, Haldane attempts to analyze the essence of life and the composition of life by means of scientific logic and practical philosophy.

Where does ‘life’ belong?

In normal conditions, a thing must correspond to a noun. For example, bricks, water, coal-gas etc are things. At the same time, there are others like a wave, a tune etc which have less claim to be called a thing. In this kind of a classification, where does ‘life’ belong? Does death mean a loss of something, or merely a change of state like a disarrangement of patterns?

Early people thought that life was breath. But breath consists of gas, which can be made into a solid or liquid. Also, many living things do not breathe at all. Hence life is not a kind of matter. When a man or an animal dies, he does not lose or gain weight.

According to our ancestors, anything which moved was alive. That was a good definition before the age of machines. But a machine such as a motor-car moves itself, and so does a steam-ship. Now, people asked, “Is man a machine?”

According to the philosopher Descartes, both men and animals were machines, but that the human machine was controlled partly by the soul whereas animals had no soul. So some scientists think that life is just a very complicated mechanism.

Machines vs Individuals:

A machine is a system capable of performing some function, made up of replaceable parts. For example, if any part of a motor-car is broken, a new one can be got to take its place; and an engineer could tell a great deal about the car’s behaviour. The opposite to a machine is an individual – which cannot be taken to pieces and out together again. Each part depends on the other to keep it alive.

Animals: Perfect Self-regulating Machines:

An animal is only a very perfect self-regulating machine. Many of the bones act like levers. The eye is like a photographic camera. A good example of self-regulation is that of human temperature – which is so steady that a small rise or fall is a danger signal. The most obvious example of self-repair is the continual renewing of the skin, and the healing of wounds, and the most remarkable of all, is reproduction.

Machines vs Minds:

According to Haldane, the machine theory also fails when we consider our minds. The mind has a unity of its own. Somehow the most varied sensations and emotions are held together. Yet, the mind depends on the body. If you cut off the blood supply from parts of the brain, the most intelligent man becomes a hopeless idiot.

Life – A Synthesis of Opposites - Mechanism and Individuality:

Life then is a synthesis of opposites – of mechanism and individuality. A man is a machine and at the same time an individual. We find the same union of opposites everywhere. Wood is both hard and soft. If it were not hard, we could not use it for furniture. If it were not soft, we could not cut it. Thus we find that there is generally a progress from mechanism to individuality in the life of an individual.

Conclusion:

To conclude, life, according to Haldane, is essentially a pattern of chemical happenings, and so to say that life does not consist of chemical processes is, according to Haldane, as futile and untrue as to say that poetry does not consist of words. And life is something between mechanism and individuality – but seems to strive towards greater individuality or oneness.