A Brief History of Time Summary Essay

“The End of History” is an article by Francis Fukuyama in which he argues that the beginning of Western Liberal democracy could be interpreted as the “end of history”. In essence he is arguing that democratic liberalism is the final product of human politics. Once this is achieved there will be a few remain issues, however all minimal. In addition to analyzing Fukuyama’s argument I will also be analyzing John Gaddis’ “The Long Peace” which addresses the structural elements of stability.

Francis Fukuyama; political scientist, economist, and author, in his article “The End of History?” discusses he rise and fall of major ideologies such as absolutism, fascism and communism, and suggests that human history should be viewed in terms of a battle of ideologies which has reached its end in the universalization of Western liberal democracy. Fukuyama concludes that the idea of Western liberal democracy has triumphed in the world through a variety of different ways and is a thriving piece of world order today. However, there are certain flaws to his argument including a US- centric view on the events of the twentieth century.

The article ‘On the Recentness of What We Know,’ written by Verlyn Klinkenborg, is a pleasant read about the author’s fondness of astronomy and his insight regarding the science of it and knowledge gleaned from it. Klinkenborg recounts a few of his star-gazing memories and then proceeds to analyze the effects cosmological discoveries have on him personally and humanity in general. The author shares bits of theoretical history of the universe and information on the early astronomers whose hypotheses have developed that history. He goes on to reference various well known discoveries throughout the years and marvels at how drastically information in recent years has changed the stories of our universe.

Few minds of this century have had an impact like that of Stephen Hawking. His discoveries and work have expanded the forefront of knowledge with a likeness to that of Einstein and Newton. Despite the clear adversity Hawking has faced, his achievements have been nothing shore of extraordinary. His work on the understanding of space, time, and the origins of the universe has set the golden standard for theories on the universes beginnings and mysteries, proving a staple teaching of modern education which we may take for granted.

This week’s reading assignment was The End of History by Francis Fukuyama. I thought that it was a great essay that displayed the concerns on ideologies that rise and collapse such as autocracy, fascism and communism, and he proposes that history should be observed in terms of a conflict of beliefs that has reached its end in the universalization of Western liberal democracy. Fukuyama does argue that the western liberalism has triumphed even though it is still in process of materializing in the world. He mentions that it is evident that we are all moving to a more western liberal society due to the growth of western consumerism and the gradual movement that we see in countries that were not a democracy and now are transitioning to a more democratic

The moments when I write these words are history, so we could say history deals with the past. However, the past has not passed completely. The future will also be history. History is a very dynamic notion and concept. What is history is really hard to define. Change is central to history. Yet, history is not only about details. There are certain things that demonstrate true history. These events have varied in time and space. Among them are the Agricultural Revolution, the founding of Greek Philosophy, the first Sumerian city-state, the scientific revolution, Renaissance, and the Industrial Revolution. It would be extremely hard to select one of these events as the most influential. Yet, there is always a choice to make. I would say that the Scientific Revolution is the most important event in history. There are a number of reasons that pertain to this conclusion. The first reason is that it gave the humans a new outlook towards their place in the universe. Another reason lies in the fact that the Scientific Revolution destroyed the older social structures. One more aspect pertaining to this conclusion is that the Scientific Revolution opened the way for females to raise their voices and challenge patriarchy.

In this paper I will be discussing the concept of the paradox, examples from Zeno and McTaggart, and how modern science has potential solved the paradox put forth by McTaggart. Both of these paradoxes have a enormous repercussion on how objective fact about the world can be understood. I claim that McTaggart’s theory of time can be solved by modern physics as Einstein’s theory of relativity makes time a relative factor in how time is understood.

The concept of time travel is one that often twists the minds of many. The hope is well alive in the hearts of many to go back in time and roam with the dinosaurs, or travel forward to the year of 3404. The following research paper is about time travel, and contains a collection of information on wormholes, the ideas and possibilities of travelling backwards and forwards in time, the concept of the speed of time, and black holes.

Light, a concept that has been worked with for many years dating back to 500 B.C. Pythagoras hypothesized that humans perceive light due to the human eyes ability to emit rays upon the environment and the emittance gives a human his or her sight (Sekuler). Afterward, human intellectuals started making it more concise to present day knowledge of light. This development of light came from two intellectuals named Christian Huygens and Isaac Newton. Newton exclaimed during the 1700s that light was a stream of particles carrying energy but Huygens, Newton’s contemporary, thought that light needed this invisible “ether” in order for these streams to make light travel. Then, a couple hundred years later, modern scientists such as Albert Einstein, Thomas Young, and Augustin Fresnel proved Isaac’s and Huygens’ hypotheses of light (Rossing, 23-24). This is how the basis of light was created.

“According to the traditional conception of the universe, objects move on well-defined paths and have definite histories,” Hawking writes, “We can specify their precise position at each moment in time.”

The struggle inherent in putting forward what is hailed as the “great law of motion of history” (The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte 14) rests in ensuring that one’s purported application of that law is consistent with its abstract detailing. For example, in Karl Marx’s theoretical works and historical writing - specifically The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte - the philosopher and revolutionary consistently describes the conditions under which men must operate for them to have a chance at restructuring their society and achieving emancipation. Marx illustrates across theory and practice how mankind, though limited in its autonomy by the existing societal order, has an opportunity to emancipate itself from the legal and political superstructure constructed independently of its will when sufficiently focused, energized and united. Hence how Marx pays enough heed to a particular, the ascent of Louis Napoleon, such that he can present it as reflective of a greater universal principle: historical materialism. After all, “we [must] not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness...this consciousness must be explained rather from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production.” (Marx on the History of His Opinions 5). Marx set out to detail, display and prove a “universal law.” Insofar as his consideration of emancipation and the conditions necessary for it constitute that law, he got at least two-thirds of the

The Special Theory of relativity is an acknowledged physical theory that revolutionized advancements in the relationship between space, and time. The theory is one of the most interesting discoveries that are still used today in science fiction movies such as Star Wars, and Star Trek through the use of black holes, and time travel due to it’s astonishing results, and it occurrence at speeds close to the speed light, which can be appealing to a wide range of audience. This was a harvest from six years of extremely handwork by Albert Einstein. Einstein used resources that were widely available to the public due to his economic constraints. It wasn’t until 1905, when Einstein finally had finished and published his discoveries, and gatherings

To understand the heady topic of this paper, I have to simplify some very speculative scientific topics, especially the idea of the multiverse. The multiverse is a concept that has become

He concluded that the ether must be a solid and be an extremely tenuous gas. The most famous experiment to prove the existence of the ether was Michelson-Morley Experiment. They wanted to measure the motion of the ether relative to us since they assumed the ether must move around the earth. “The velocity of light (c) traveling through this either would change for angles that ranged from light was traveling in the same direction as the ether (c+v) to light traveling in the reverse direction of the ether (c-v). The key instrument in their experiment was an interferometer which allows one to see light interference fringes. The role of the interferometer was to detect whether a beam of light, split into paths at right angles to each other and then recombined, has a difference in velocities over the two paths. The interferometer was set with one path parallel to the motion of the earth in its orbit, and then rotated to put the other path parallel to the motion of the earth.” (Ether: What is it?, Amara Graps) They found no shift in the light interference fringes. This led to several contradictions and only 2 possible resolutions could be explained: either the experiment failed and couldn 't effectively prove the ether, or the ether never existed.

Before Einstein, Scientists believed that light waves travelled through a medium called ether. Einstein proved that ether was irrelevant and that light doesn’t travel through a medium. Einstein proved this by figuring out that the speed of light was constant, and in order for ether to be the medium light waves travel through, the speed of light would change depending on the observer. This discovery was one piece of the Specific Theory of Relativity.