Critical Thinking Post #7 - Scientist's Life and Work

One of the most recent Scientists we look at in class was Robert Oppenheimer. Now Oppenheimer played a huge significant role in the way we live today. Thanks to him the United states has thousands of atomic weapons underground for special events. Oppenheimer faced many obstacles in the pursuit of science and I believe we can all learn from him. Internally he was stuck between a fine line, of morality and success. It wasn't easy, the decisions he had to make denoting the atomic bomb. He was a man of secrets which lead to his exclusion of job. His work shows us a sense of threat, as that single bomb took hundreds of thousands of lives in an instant. It left the area uninhabitable and scared the rest of the world by its destructive nature. By splitting a single atom the destructive force unleashed was unimaginable. This man was recognized, but by infamy. It shows us that science can always be taken to new heights, to an unimaginable extreme, but at a deadly cost. Its effects can be everlasting, shown to us by Oppenheimer, and the pursuit of science can sometimes go against a person morality.

Critical Thinking Post #6 - Altruism and Selfishness

So my topic is on altruism, and I will be arguing on how Ian McEwans short story of "Us or Me" argues for selfishness than altruism based on current ideas drawn from evolutionary theory and the Neo-Darwinism of Richard Dawkins. I will be using "Us or Me' and "The Selfish Gene" as both my main sources. Of course though i will use other sources, such as one being "Altruism: It Characteristics and Evolution" by P.J. Darlington. I found this source on JSTOR and thought it would be useful for my topic. Darlington goes into evolutionary traits of altruism saying that it is a slow, complex problem, opposed by competition,  evolves on individual selection and says that altruism in humans are based on a human's altruistic emotion. He believes there are four evolutionary traits of altruism that all living things abide by, with the exception of humans. He uses an example of a group of birds. Another source I will use is called "The Biology Of Human Altruism" by Mark N. Wexler. This source was also found on JSTOR and I figure it would be useful for my topic as well. Wexler analyzes the sociobiology of human altruism and argues that science cannot explain altruistic values such love and kindness. This paper would be a perfect example to go against the selfishness displayed in McEwans short story.