1- (A) Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most famous and influential German philosophers of all times. He was born in 1844 in Prussia and on the age of 24 became the youngest individual to ever hold the position of the Chair of Classical Philology at the prestigious University of Basel. He is known with his critical writings on religion, morality, philosophy and science and his notable influence on existentialism and later on postmodernism. Sigmund Freud said: “The degree of introspection achieved by Nietzsche had never been achieved by anyone, nor it is ever likely to be achieved again”. Some of the known philosophers influenced by him include Derrida, Heidegger, Camus, Sartre and Foucault.. He wrote the novel “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” , where he narrates the life of the “Persian Prophet” Zoroaster who descends to people to announce the “death of God”. Nietzsche clearly say: “God is dead”. After the death of god, he introduced the concept of “superman” or “overman” or the “will to power”. He also wrote: “Beyond Good and Evil” where he presented destructive critique of the moral systems.
1- (B) Before twelve years of his death, Nietzsche started writing weird letters to his friends. The letters showed signs of psychological and mental instability. In one incident, he was detained by policemen because of causing disturbance in the streets. His friends started taking him from one psychiatric clinic to another, until his sister Elisabeth came to take care of him. Georges Bataille and Rene Girard said that his breakdown may have been caused by a psychological maladjustment brought by his philosophy. Manic depression with periodic psychosis, vascular dementia, probably brain cancer, two strokes that partially paralyzed him leaving him unable to walk and speak, and finally died after a final stroke on August 25, 1900.
2- (A) Edwin Howard Armstrong, the famous American inventor was born on in New York in 1890. He studied his undergraduate studies at Columbia University where he patented his first invention “the regenerative circuit”. He later patented “the super-regenerative circuit” and the “super heterodyne receiver”. These patents made him the inventor of the widely used frequency modulation (FM) radio. He is the first recipient of the IEEE Medal of Honor
2- (B) Armstrong had many disputes regarding his inventions, as they were claimed by others. For about thirty years he was engaged in exhaustive “patent war”. On January 31, 1954, over the dispute over his FM patent, he wore his coat and hat and then jumped from his thirteenth floor apartment. His suicide note said to his wife: “May God help you and have mercy on my soul”.
3- (A)The father of computer science is the British mathematician Alan Turing. He was born in 1912 and spent most of his life in academia and code breaking. In the World War II, he succeeded in deciphering important German codes, contributing to the famous project of breaking the Enigma Machine. However, his most achievement was developing the “Turing Machine”; a very important concept for the development of computer algorithms. In 1999, the Time Magazine chose him as one of 100 most important people in the 20th century.
3- (B) Alan Turing was homosexual, which led him to be criminally prosecuted and hence put an end to his career. He was found dead by his cleaner on 1954 and beside him a half-eaten cyanide-laced apple was found. His death was ruled as cyanide poisoning suicide.
4- (A) “For Whom The Bell Tolls”, “A Farewell to Arms” and “The Old Man and the Sea” are part of the classic collection written by the talented American writer: Ernest Hemingway. He was born in Chicago on 1899, and started his writing career without going to college. He participated in the World War I as an ambulance driver for the American army, an experience that allowed him to witness the brutality of the war. He also worked as a reporter during the Spanish Civil War. He was awarded the “Pulitzer Prize” in 1953 and then the Noble prize in Literature in 1954. His writing style still has a great influence on the modern fiction writing, and his protagonists are memorable.
4- (B) Hemingway attempted suicide in 1961, but survived and received treatment. Not much after the first attempt, he tried again through a shotgun that he purchased for this purpose. He rested the gun butt of the double-barreled shotgun on the floor, leaned over it to put the twin muzzles to his forehead just above his eyes and pulled both triggers. It is also recorded that his father, his two siblings and his granddaughter all committed suicide.
5- (A) The Austrian physicist Ludgwig Boltzmann is one of the most important fathers of the atomic theory and one of the greatest physicists of all time. He was born in Vienna in 1844 and spent most of his career as an academician. His main contributions are in the field of kinetic and statistical mechanics. He developed the “Boltzmann equation” to describe the dynamics of an ideal gas, the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for molecular speeds and other contributions to the field of energetic.
5- (B) Boltzmann suffered from rapid alternation of depression moods with expansive irritable moods; symptoms similar to bipolar disorder. On September, 1906, during his summer vacation, he hanged himself after an attack of depression. His equation: [S= k . log W ] was inscribed on his tombstone.
6- (A) Japan had to wait until 1968 in order to receive its first Noble Prize in Literature. It was in credit of Yasunari Kawabata, the Osaka-born short story writer. He was born in 1899, orphaned at the age of four and lost all his close relatives at the age of fifteen. He published his first story while he was a university student, and soon after his graduation, he started with other keen Japanese writers a new literary journal “The Artistic Age” as a reform against the traditional Japanese school of literature. His Noble prize was due his three novels: Snow Country, Thousand Cranes and the Old Capital
6- (B) Kawabata committed suicide in 1972 by gassing himself. Theories behind his reason include: possible illicit affair, poor health and the suicide of his lover Mishima.
7- (A) The list of “Great Scientific Minds” who committed suicide include: Wallace Hume Carothers, the father of organic chemistry and inventor of Nylon; Hans Fischer, the chemist Noble prize winner in 1930; Paul Ehrensfest, the famous Austrian quantum physicist; Kurt Gödel, the legendary friend of Einstein and the author of the two incompleteness theories; George Eastman, the American inventor of the roll film which triggered the movie industry; Viktor Meyer, the German chemist who discovered thiophene and developed the Meyer apparatus for measuring vapor densities; Valeri Legasov; the USSR inorganic chemist and the chief of the investigation committee of the Chernobyl disaster and Hans Berger, the German physiologist who discovered the rhythmic Alpha brain waves.
7- (B) The above is only a small portion of a long list. It is worth mentioning that the “Great Artistic Minds” have the honor of outnumbering the Scientific Minds in the records of their suicide victims.
8- (A) Suicide is the climax of failure and peak of unhappiness
8- (B) The “intellect” failed many times to convince its holders of the simple fact that “suicide” is a bad choice.
9- (A) What is it the “thing” that the “intellectual” is searching for
9- (B) What is the “thing” that “science” and “art” fail to give?
10 - (A) “Higher Education” students have to reflect on what and why they are learning.
10 - (B) More important, “Higher Education” instructors have to reflect on what and why they are teaching.
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2 comments:
Interesting. I wonder why is it that it is being posted at this time of the year! (smile)
On another note; "Suicide is the climax of failure and peak of unhappiness."
"If failure is a contributor of suicide, then what were these "artists" searching for?" is a question that comes to thought. Was it that they wanted to achieve more, that they were dissatisfied by their popularity and acceptance by the society? Or was it that they wanted something else? If latter, then why would they, and more importantly, why did they pursue the subject of interest which eventually established their mark? If anything, "failure" should have resulted in a situation where the individual has had many attempts, but failed, and his/her work was eventually picked by someone else and subsequently completed.
In my understanding, suicide is just the end of a directionless-ness journey (if there is a word such). Someone who has done so much or nothing, but doesn't know where he/she is heading. And this comes a bit clear in your final remarks, but doesn't it fail to convey itself outstandingly? And now that I re-read through your point, I am keen to read about their life and I am bound to stumble upon the analysis that their life was without a “direction”. I must clarify that it is completely different from “objective”.
For those who can’t seem to distinguish between the two or who believe I have done a poor job in differentiating between the two; a direction is a constant approach towards something large and unified, and objective, in my understanding, is usually temporal and there are often pockets of them lying all around the life (of an individual).
Ergo, to merge your point and my remark, I do concur that we students should always question our direction when pursuing education and beyond, however, climax of failure and epitome of unhappiness will sure come and go. If we took both of them so seriously, by the merit of failure and unhappiness which we all come across ever so frequently, even more so during scholastic progress, we are bound to scribe such a blunder into our lives deliberately at point or another! On the other token, once we are off the direction, is when we experience these packets of “failure” and “unhappiness”, the kind of packets which might collectively lead to a catastrophe such as those mentioned in the post, but the mother and the grave of such an end is “directionless-ness”.
Adding to this briefly, is my support to my remark; this is why we were/are constantly being reminded of our direction towards One, irrespective of unhappiness and failure how much ever their magnitude be ; One Who neither fades nor diminishes. It is as Strong as before any creation was Made and will remain as Strong as after time ends.
Peace. Always heart warming to read your posts. alhumduliLlaah!
Asslamu alikum i.A.
Thanks for the good points you raised in your long comment :)
You are right, the "directionless-ness" is a major reason in this discussion. We may fail in achieving some of our "objectives" but that is not the end of the way.
However, not "knowing where to go and how" is a serious personal crisis. Unfortuantely, science/arts as this post argue does not answer this dilemma and the life of these great minds is a semi-proof.
If we want to reform in education, then more focus should be paid to the goals/directions, and we should loosen the grip of "science for the sake of science" or "arts for the sake of arts".
Ramadan Mubarak
Qutaiba
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