Monday, October 15, 2007

Simon Bolivar and Latin American Revolutions




Simon Bolivar was born in Caracas on July 24, 1783. He was a south america revolutionary, a millitary leader and a politician.
His parents died when simon was just a child and he inherited all their fortune. Simon bolivar was liberated much of South America from Spanish rule in the 19th century and became one of Latin America's greatest heroes. And i think that he began to travel to Europe as a young man and he get married the daughter of a Caracas-born nobleman. And after they got married his wife died within a year. After his wife's died, Bolivar returned to Europe and vowed to free Venezuela. When simon bolivar returned to Venezuela he joined a group of patriots that seized Caracas in 1810 and they proclaimed Venezuela as an independent government. He then attempted to get the support of the United Kingdom but was only able to secure the neutrality between both countries. He then was able to take control of the patriot army. After taking control of the patriot army simon bolivar recaptured Caracas in 1813 from the Spaniards, making him the dictator of Venezuela.
After his conquest in Venezuela, simon bolivar marched south to Colombia. Then, he was able to liberate it from the Spaniards.

Friday, October 12, 2007

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: SOCIAL CAUSES


The French Revolution is clearly one of the central events in Western civilization - a period of history whose characters and events have always fascinated me. The more moderate American Revolution, in comparison, was much less influential upon the world of its time - even if it was more successful and less bloody. I would argue it was more successful precisely because it was more moderate and less murderous than the French Revolution.
But the French Revolution ironically was a failed revolution: Liberté, Egalité, and Fraternité quickly descended to the towering figure of Robespierre and his Reign of Terror as the revolution spun out control and began to murder itself. First the royalists were beheaded, next the moderate girondists, and by then the violence and suspicion was totally out of hand as the revolution devoured itself. In my opinion, after they started beheading the moderate Girondists it was only a matter of time before everyone else went to the guillotine. 26 years after the "Declaration of the Rights of Man" was written up, a Bourbon once more sat on the throne as the King of France - that is what I mean by "failed" Revolution. Since 1793, France has had no less than 11 subsequent constitutions (while the United States still uses their first). This is what I mean about moderation and political stability. It is the legacy of those revolutions so different in style, substance, and in legacy.

COPERNICUS AND THE TRIAL OF GALILEO


Galileo was born in 1564--the same year that Shakespeare was born and Michelangelo died. From an early age, Galileo showed his scientific skills. At age nineteen, he discovered the isochronism of the pendulum. By age twenty-two, he had invented the hydrostatic balance. By age twenty-five, Galileo assumed his first lectureship, at the University of Pisa. Within a few more years, Galileo earned a reputation throughout Europe as a scientist and superb lecturer. Eventually, he would be recognized as the father of experimental physics. Galileo's motto might have been "follow knowledge wherever it leads us."
At the University of Padua, where Galileo accepted a position after three years in Pisa, he began to develop a strong interest in Copernican theory. In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus published Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs, a treatise that put forth his revolutionary idea that the Sun was at the center of the universe and that the Earth--rotating on an axis--orbited around the sun once a year. Copernicus' theory was a challenge to the accepted notion contained in the natural philosophy of Aristotle, the astronomy of Ptolemy and the teachings of the Church that the sun and all the stars revolved around a stationary Earth. In the half-century since its publication, however, Copernicus' theory met mostly with skepticism. Skeptics countered with the "common sense" notion that the earth they stood on appeared not to move at all--much less at the speed required to fully rotate every twenty-four hours while spinning around the sun.
Sometime in the mid-1590s, Galileo concluded that Copernicus got it right. He admitted as much in a 1597 letter to Johannes Kepler, a German mathematician who had written about planetary systems: "Like you, I accepted the Copernican position several years ago and discovered from thence the cause of many natural effects which are doubtless inexplicable by the current theories." Galileo, however, continued to keep his thoughts to a few trusted friends, as he explained to Kepler: "I have not dared until now to bring my reasons and refutations into the open, being warned by the fortunes of Copernicus himself, our master, who procured for himself immortal fame among a few but stepped down among the great crowd.

SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION: SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Scientific revolution is the event which most historians of science call the scientific revolution can be dated roughly as having begun in 1543, the year in which Nicolaus Copernicus published his De revolutionibus orbium coelestium On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres and Andreas Vesalius published his De humani corpari (On the Fabric of the Human body). As with many historical demarcations, historians of science disagree about its boundaries. The period is often dated to the 16th and 17th centuries, though some see elements contributing to the revolution as early as the 11th and 14th century, and finding its last stages in chemistry and biology in the 18th and 19th centuries. There is general agreement, however, that the intervening period saw a fundamental transformation in scientific ideas in physics, astronomy, and biology in institutions supporting scientific investigation, and in the more widely held picture of the universe. As a result, the scientific revolution is viewed as the foundation of modern science. The continuity thesis is the opposing hypothesis that there was no radical discontinuity between intellectual development over this period.