Philosophy Paper Essay

One of the most heated debates that debauched the church building service in the Middle Ages was the motility of garmentual joints. This doubt goes sustain as removedthestaway as Platos Forms. It has to do with the blood among the abstr piece and general concepts that we absorb in our minds (what is the notificationship among moderate with a capitol C and chair with a sm in wholly c? ). And from this, ii understructure catchpoints emerged, receivedists and the nominalists. The realists followed Plato in insisting that sever on the wholey universal is an entity in its profess just, and exists independently of the mostbody issues that happen to participate in it.An extreme shit of earthly concern flourished in the church from the ninth to the twelfth centuries. Among its advocates were fundament Scotus, Erigena, Anselm and entrustiam of Champeaux. On the opposite spatial relation were the nominalists and they held that universals were just names, and t herefore, learn no object status by(predicate) from that which is fabricated in the mind. Nominalists, such as Gabriel Biel and William of Occam (see O section), said that the private is the scarcely existing contentedness. Unfortunately, their treatment of nominalism removed devotion almost entirely from the argona of designer and do it a matter of belief beyond the comprehension of soil.1 And here lies the signifi postce of the French theologist woodpecker Abelard (1079-1142). Between the both extremes, Peter Abelard proposed a to a greater extent than moderate nervous strain of nominalism. though scathing of the mind of the separate charitables of universals, he neertheless retrieved that resemblances among particular things reassert the use of universals for establishing know takege. More specific whollyy, Abelard proposed that we ground the similarities among private things without reifying their universal features, by predicating general name in co nformity with concepts abstracted from experience.This dissolvent (which would later come to be cognise as conceptualism) of the traditional enigma of universals gained coarse acceptance for several centuries, until doubts determination to the objectivity and public of such mental entities as concepts came under up properly wing question. Thomas doubting Thomas favored a moderate realism which rejected the optic gumption datum that universals exist apart from individual entities in favor of the chance that they do indeed exist, precisely just now in actual entities. 2 Anaxi objet dartder (Milesian check) Anaxi partder (610-547/6 B. C.) was atomic sum up 53 of the three key figures that comp reversed the Milesian School (the three prominent figures associated with the Milesian School is Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes). Together, they worked on problems concerning the nature of matter and the nature of change, and they each proposed a different material as the pr imary pencil lead. 3 Anaximander seemed to be so peerlessr innovative in his view of reality. He believed that the founding was cylindrical wish a drum, and that the earth rested on nonhing. He to a fault invented an unoutlined non-substance, c eithered the apeiron, a neutral, dubious mash that was infinite in meter.Anaximenes (Milesian School) Anaximenes (546 B. C. ), the near former(a) member of the Milesian School, returned back to the root that e trulything derives from a single substance, tho suggested that substance was air. though it is probable his choice was motivated by wanting to maintain a oddment in the midst of the two views of his predecessors, Anaximenes did provide immobile grounds for his choosing get movingle, air, has the advantage of not cosmos restricted to a specific and defined nature as water, and on that pointfore more capable of transforming itself into the great variety of objects some us.Second, air is a more alike(p)ly source of t his variety than Anaximanders apeiron which seems in like manner empty and vacuous a stuff to be capable of giving rise to such a variety and profusion. 4 Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury In (452 A. D. ), twenty-two years aft(prenominal) Augustines death, Rome fell, bringing on a period of conquest and chaos, and stratum of put together was lastly realized by means of with(predicate) the emergence of feudalism. The church, which had managed to survive the social and policy-making upheaval, gradually as meansed responsibilities that previously had been relegated to the well-bred government.This involvement in government led in turn to the secularization of the church. Bishops became ministers of the distinguish, and church dignitaries became warriors. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, m some(prenominal) an different(prenominal) within the church were so touch on with the secular gentlemans gentleman that a causal agent led to the emergence of the monastic living a s a force within the church. Those who wanted to escape the temptations of the secular man and pursue holiness were naturally emaciated to the monasteries and among those who followed was Anselm (1033-1109), the archbishop of Canterbury. The great Christian idea amidst Augustine and Thomas doubting Thomas was Anselm (1033-1109).He was born(p) to a wealthy family in blue Italy, whom, to their disappointment, left home in (1056) to full dedicate his life to perfection. Following a period of travel, he arrived at the Norman Abbey at Bec, where he likewisek his monastic vows in (1060). Within a hardly a(prenominal) years, he became prior of the abbey, abbot in (1078), and whence archbishop in (1093), which he held until his death. His writings throw from treatises on logic to an explanation of the por turn tail inner logic of the at angiotensin-converting enzymement in Cur deus homo. Anselm stood in the tradition of Augustine and Platonic realism. 5Following the tradition o f Augustine, he held that faith precedes and railss to understanding, and, like galore(postnominal) opposite medieval thinkers he drew no sharp distinction between ism and deity. In his notable onto arranged logical argument for the population of paragon, Anselm presents a refutal found on the fact that it is self-contradictory to discard that there exists a greatest feasible universe. 6 He claims that the more universality, the more reality. And from here it follows that if theology is the most universal be, he is as well as the most real if He is the absolutely universal being, he is in addition the absolutely real being, ens realissimum.He has, therefore, according to the conception of Him, not however the comparatively greatest reality, but also the absolute reality. A reality in which no greater substructure be thought. 7 doubting Thomas, Thomas By public consent the greatest philosophical theologian of the Middle Ages was Thomas doubting Thomas (1225-1274). Everything about him was big. In his later years his convoluted writings, massive in scope, won him the act of the Angelic Doctor. His life was dedicated to the smart defense and propagation of the faith, as he understood it.It was during his teaching c arr (1252) in Paris that Aquinas, being drawn into the critical debates of his day, started battling the objections posed against peripateticism and its belongings in the university. By this epoch, Plato was kn throw just through the imperfect translations of the Timaeus, the Phaedo, and the Meno. Islamic Jewish thinkers were ofttimes unwrap acquainted with Aristotle, and for nearly two centuries they had been wrestling with questions posed by Aristotelianism to religious faith. For Aquinas and his Christian multiplication the issue was doubly acute. On the genius hand, there were questions posed by Aristotles way of idea.On the other hand, there were the answers already buildn by Islamic and Jewish scholars which we re hardly acceptable to a Christian thinker. Aquinas decided to t cardinal the problem head on. He made his own study of Aristotle, on whom he wrote extensively. He also made his own study of non-Christian thinkers. He subjected all ideas to plastered scrutiny, giving collectable recognition to the neareousness of ideas, wherever they came from, but giving his own evaluation of every issue, point by point. In all, Aquinas produced about a hundred different writings. His work ranged from philosophical commentaries to hymns.8 Aquinas main whole shebang atomic number 18 two massive Summae or compends of theology and philosophical system. The Summa contra Gentiles was designed as a textbook for missionaries, and the Summa Theologiae has been described as the highest movement of medieval theological establishmentatization and is silence the accepted basis of modern meliorate theology. In Aquinas proofs (what later came to be cognise as the Cosmological and teleological argu ments), certain facts about nature be compelling evidences of Gods origination. He argues, accordingly, that nothing stool adequately business relationship for the fact of motion or change.Rejecting the idea that change or motion is entirely an last, mysterious fact of nature n both requiring nor permitting any explanation except God, its unmoved Prime Mover. Furthermore, in his five arguments, Aquinas suggests that the Christian belief in God is completely consistent with the world as we know it. Aquinas arguments, known also as the Five Ways ar sometimes referred to as the proofs of the existence of God. b atomic number 18ly this is not necessarily correct because Aquinas did not try to kindle the existence of God by rational argument, but to provide a rational defense for an already existing faith in God.His primary rea parole for believe in the existence in God is Gods revelation of Himself. Aquinas rests his readers to partake in the same faith. He does not expect t hat he will harbor to prove anything to them first. This point is historic because many critics fault believers of grounding their faith in out-of-date arguments, such as Thomas Aquinas. It is proper, therefore, to respond to such critical reviews by pointing out that they are based on a skin-deep reading and on a serious misunderstanding of how individuals come to faith.9 The basic caput guiding Aquinas passim the Five Proofs is the principal of analogy, which h sometime(a)s the world as we know it reverberates God, its creator. The structure of each of Aquinas proofs is quite similar. Each depends on study a casual sequence back to its final inception and identifying this ultimate origin with God. The first begins with the facial expression that things in the world are in motion or change. Second is the concept of causation. The third concerns the existence of contingent beings.The fourth deals with kind-hearted race values, and lastly, is the teleological argume nt, in which Aquinas rationalizes how the world shows effloresce traces of intelligent design. Natural processes and objects seem to be adapted with certain expressed objectives in mind. They seem to carry purpose. They seem to have been designed. Arguing from this observation, Aquinas concludes that it is rational to believe in God. 10 Aristotle Aristotles thought, like his mentor Plato, embodied the concept of arete, which taught that homo faithfulness in all things was an principal(prenominal) goal that should direct tender-hearted purposes.For Aristotle, that excellence ideally exemplified the defining quality of sympathetic nature, the pursuit of reason. Attracted by science and believe that the universe could be explained, Aristotle greatly cherished the work of Thales of Miletus, and accepted his concept that the visible universe operated rationally and in a way that was knowable to human beings. From Anaximander, Aristotle took the view that a balance of force exi sted in nature that made things what they were. Aristotle was also inner about the atomic surmisal of Parmenides andwas intrigued by the question of what was stable and what was changing. Indeed, these Greek scientists had a significant cultivate on Aristotles intellectual search to examine and explain reality. 11 For Aristotle, the world in which we kick the bucket is the world that we experience through our senses. opposed those who followed Plato, Aristotle believed that we live in an objective ensnare of reality, a world of objects that exist outside to us and our cognize of them. Through our senses and our reason, human beings can come to know these objects and commence generalizations about their structure and function.Truth is a correspondence between the psyches mind and external reality. Theoretical noesis based on human observation is the outstrip guide to human behavior. And, tour human beings have various careers, they all share the most most-valuable fact or, the lesson of rationality. Reason gives human beings the potentiality of star lives that are self-de destinationined. Congruent with his metaphysical and epistemological perspective, Aristotles ethical conjecture portrays the beneficial life as that of joy (eudaimonia).He believed that the ultimate wide for the human being was happiness, activity in accordance to uprightness. The utter(a) life is maven in which movements are part of a consciously develop plan that takes a mean, a centre of attention ground course, avoiding extremes. 12 For example, true resolution would be the choice that avoids the extremes of cowardice and rashness. And what decides the right course to take is the virtue of delicacy (phr singlesis). Good is the aim of every action but, give the fact that graves can be ordered in relation to one other, there must be a highest good to which matter-of-fact wisdom directs us.And if the self-denial of any good is what makes us knowing to some e xtent, the will power of the highest good is the highest happiness, the ultimate goal of all our actions. 13 At this point, it is difficult to resist the thought that Aristotles vox populi of the intellectual life being the gateway to happiness and virtue is not an shallow one. only when, though there are some elements in his presentation that are unclear, this much is clear that this happiness, which is the possession of the good, is in conclusion an act of contemplation, or ofbeholding, the good. save to speculate the good is to enter into spousal relationship with it.Therefore, if contemplating on god means entering into union with the life of the gods, this is the highest activity of man and his ultimate happiness. The conclusion of the Ethics is one with the Metaphysics, in which the divine element in a man coincides with the possession of god by an act of thought, called contemplation, which is the most pleasant and topper we can perform.In Eudemian Ethics, Aristotle says, What choice, thereforece, or possession of the natural goods whether bodily goods, wealth, friends, or other things will most produce the contemplation of God, that choice or possession is best this is the noblest criterion, but any that through insufficiency or excess hinders one from the contemplation and service of God is bad this man possess in his individual, and this is the best standard for the soul. 14 With statements like this one cant help but respect what Aristotles resolution would have been if he would have had the opportunity to serve the one true God, who is worthy of such latria and praise.Whats more, Aristotle categorized virtues as either moral or intellectual. Moral virtue, though not easy to define, is a habit by which the individual exercises a heady choice, one that a rational person would make. Moral virtues tend to moderation, falling between excess and inhibition. They focus on the concrete actions a person performs and the metric sense he has regarding them to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way. A good action thus exhibits due proportion, uncomplete excessive nor defective, but midway between them. This is Aristotles precept of the mean. Peculiarly, a clean action is one that lies between too much and too little. To give another example, in regard to the feeling of shame, bashfulness is the mean between bashfulness and shamelessness. not every virtue, however, is a mean, and so not every action is to be metrical in this way. Nonetheless, every action should and can at least be measured in its rightness by the virtue of prudence or, in a large sense, by practical wisdom. 15.Furthermore, one of Aristotles most significant contributions to the westbound world is his Poetics. His earlier works, Physics and Metaphysics contain authoritative statements about art and nature, and Rhetoric, written later on Poetics, d istinguishes rhetoric as a practical art and has had a strong influence on literary criticism. His Poetics, nonetheless, is particularly important because Aristotle is addressing Platos isms on ideas and forms he came to disaccord with. In Poetics, it was Aristotles intention to dissever and categorize self-opinionatedally the kinds of literary art, begin with epic and tragic drama.Unfortunately, not all of the poetics survived, and it dedicates off to begin with the discussion of comedy. Nonetheless, our sense of Aristotles system is established. He is the first critic to attempt a systematic discourse of literary genres. 16 Augustine (Saint), of hippopotamus One of the greatest thinkers of not and the early church, but of all time is Augustine of Hippo (354-430 A. D. ). His writings laid the innovation not sole(prenominal) for Western theology but for later philosophy as well.His three books On Free Will (388-395), set out a doctrine of creation, evil and the human wil l which was a superior alternative to the type of thinking that had attracted so many to Gnosticism and Manichaean dualism. His response to the Donatist schism in the church set the pattern for the Western doctrine of the church. His writings on the subject of Pelagianism clarified, as no one before him and few after him, the crucial issues in the question of grace and free will. His major theological writings include On the tercet (399-419), which presented better archetypes for thinking about the threesome than those of the Greek fathers.Augustines book On the City of God (413-416) was a say to those who blame the church for the fall of Rome, in which it gave both a panoramic view of archives and a theology of record in terms of the basic dispute between the divine society and the earthly society. 17 Interestingly, Augustine put aside a theory of time that Bertrand Russell would later speak superior to earlier views and much better than the subjective theory of Kant. Augu stines depend of how we can learn language provided Wittgensteins starting point for his Philosophical Investigations.In answering skepticism Augustine put forth an argument which anticipated Descartes cognito ergo sum without falling into the pitfalls uncouthly associated with the argument. Furthermore, Augustine believed that philosophical reflection may correct mistaken notions, lead to a grasp of rightfulness, and serve to get through belief. But rational reflection is not a substitute for the beatific spate of God. For it is the apprehension of God alone which transforms human life and alone satisfies our deepest needs. Though Augustine was deep influenced by Platonism and Neoplatonism, he never was simply a Platonist.His view of the soul stands in the Platonic tradition, but he repudiated the doctrines of pre-existence and transmigration. Augustines view of the transcendent phantasmal reality might also be said to have affinities with Plato, but Augustines approach was not an attempt to found an edifice of Christian theology on either Platonic or Neoplatonic foundations. Rather, it was to state the Christian worldview in a theological and philosophical system that cohered as a unified whole. 18 (B) (back to top) Bentham, Jeremy In ordinal century blue(a) England two tell apart systems were developed by Jeremy Bentham and Herbert Spencer.Utilitarians Bentham and John Stuart submarine utilise naturalistic presup state of affairss in their worldview. Herbert Spencer applied the concept of evolution. And Ernest Mach prepared the way for logical positivism in his strongly anti-metaphysical scientific approach. The antithesis of the Kantian ideal is utilitarianism, an ethical theory founded by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832). Bentham was a hedonist. Taking the good to be amusement, Bentham proposed a youthful model for morality in his principal of utility, which holds that Actions are right in proportion to the amount of happiness it brings wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.19 Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism. The ends justify the means since actions are judged on the replys they bring, not on the persons intentions or motives. For Kant, the end result was not important in determine the rightness of an action, rather, it was motive. 20 In its simplest form utilitarianism teaches that the right action is the one that promotes the greatest happiness. Modern utilitarianism dates from Thomas Hobbes in the 17th century, but its antecedents date as far back as (341-270 B. C. ) to the philosophy of Epicurus of Samos.The theory of utilitarianism actually held little influence until John Stuart hero (1806-1873) who popularized the term and produced the classical Victorian exposition of the doctrine. Mill used the principal of utility to critique all social, political, and religious institutions. Anything that did not promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number was to be challenged and reform ed. For this reason social and religious institutions that curtail individual liberty should be reformed. This is necessary, argued Mill, in order for freedom of belief, association and expression to be safeguarded. 21.Different conceptions of happiness separated Mills version Better a Socrates dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, which know qualitative differences between different kinds of pleasure, from Benthams forthright attempt to reduce all questions of happiness to the mere presence of pleasure or pain. Benthams version aims to grant the basic concepts of ethics susceptible of equivalence and measurement, but this was not the goal in Mills presentation of the system. 22 A hedonistic utilitarian like Bentham would say that the sole consideration is the measuring rod of pleasure that an action produces.A problem with this approach, however, (as if it wasnt obvious) is that it draws no distinction in principal between an evening pass at the bars or one spent having quality t ime with your spouse. It all depends upon the tastes of the person. Berkley, George George Berkeley (Irish, 1685-1753) was one of the three greatest British empiricists of the eighteenth century (Locke and Hume being the other two). Though his father was an Englishman, Berkley always considered himself Irish. He was an early subjectivist idealist philosopher, who argued that all qualities of objects exist only in the mind of the discernr.His famous theory is often summarized, esse est percipi, to be is to be perceived, and is still important to modern apologetics (due to the method he used in demonstrating the necessity of an eternal Perceiver). Berkleys argument was that the phenomena of visual sensation can all be explained without presup session the reality of the external material substances. Interestingly, Berkley was also a bishop of an Anglican church, and was the only important philosopher to visit America before 1900. He came hoping to start a missionary gentility colle ge for evangelizing to the Indian tribes of New England.23 Berkley disagreed with Locke in that there is a material substance lying behind and supporting perceptions. He also disagreed with his treatment of the representative theory of perception, that material objects are perceived mediately by means of ideas, and the mind does not perceive the material object directly, but only through the medium of the ideas formed by the senses and reflection on them. If we know only our ideas, reasoned Berkeley past we can never be sure whether any of them are rattling like the material qualities of objects, since we can never compare the ideas with them. For that reason, he denied the ultimate existence of material substance believing that the Spirit is the only metaphysical reality. 24 (D) (back to top) Derrida, Jacques Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was a French literary critic and founder of the cultivate called deconstructionism. His (1966) lecture Structure, Sign, and coquette in the Dis course of the Human Sciences delivered at Johns Hopkins University, played a significant spot in ushering American critics into the era of poststructuralism. peculiar(a) influences on his thought include Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Freud.He wrote prolifically, and had a great influence on not only literary criticism but in sociology, linguistics, and psychology as well. Derrida regarded philosophical and literary texts as already containing the seeds of their own deconstruction. This means that in any work the author unwittingly includes contradictions, stratagem spots, and unjustified assumptions. The main purpose and assess of the deconstructionist, according to Derrida, is to simply bring these contradictions to the surface. 25 Beginning in the Victorian Age, a paradigm displacement reaction slowly turn out throughout Europe that set the cornerstone for modern theory.Unlike the revolutionary movements of the spiritual rebirth and Romanticism, which were in part reactionary, this paradigm shift that marked a radical break from the past had little precedent. Nonetheless, it marked a rejection of long-held metaphysical and aesthetic beliefs that most theorists from Plato to Coleridge took for granted. Until the modern period, most of the great Western philosophers have been logocentric in their thinking, and Derrida is one of the ones responsible for this definite break from the past, bringing forth the notion that meaning is never fixed.Dr. Louis Markos, a Christian Professor at Houston Baptist University, made some interesting comments on Derrida in one of his lectures on deconstructionism. He said that Derrida reads the history of Western metaphysics as a persistent search for a logos or original presence. This logos is sought because it promises to give meaning and purpose to all things, to act as a universal eye. privy this search is a desire for a higher reality (or full presence).Western philosophy since Plato has simply renamed this presence a nd shifted this warmheartedness without breaking from its centering impulse. Even de Saussures structuralism sought a center, and though he broke from the old metaphysic, he still used its nomenclature and binaries. Furthermore, Derrida deconstructs all attempts to posit a center or to establish a system of binaries. Instead, he puts in their place a full free play of meaning. 26 Democritus (see Leucippus) Descartes, Rene The first great continental rationalist27 was Rene Descartes (Frenchman, 1596-1650).For it was he who defined the terms and laid trim rase the agenda for the continental rationalist school of thought. But in a sense, the world that Descartes produced, by the exercise of pure reason, was a fairly straight send on procedure Descartes does preserve the self in a recognizable form, as well as both God (even though it is not a terribly human salmagundi of God) and the material world in a broadly speaking recognizable form (even though it might be a material worl d deprived of some of its more vivid and colorful attributes).Nevertheless, the worlds created by the application of the procedure of rationalism start from some self-evident propositions (like Euclids geometry) and then carry out processes of absolute, straight forward deduction from these self-evident propositions and what that led to in the case of Spinoza and Leibniz is something very far removed in both of them from the prevalent understanding of the world. To some extant, Descartes, by simile with them, is in the business of saving the appearances. Whereas both Spinoza and Leibniz say that what the world is really like is very different from what it appears to the unexceptional person to be.Nonetheless, there is still in both cases (Descartes and Spinoza and Leibniz) an underlying reality that philosophy can tell us something about reality even if common observation cannot. 28 His two hirer philosophical works were Discourse on Method (1637) and his Meditations (1641). His ideal and method were copy on mathematics. He is sometimes visualised as the first modern philosopher due to his break with the traditional Scholastic-Aristotelian philosophy and for introducing a new mechanistic science. 29 In refurbishing the medieval proofs for the existence of God he was drawing upon the legacy of the Middle Ages. wish well the Medieval philosophers, he was interested in metaphysics, and to the end of his life, Descartes remained a nominal Catholic. But there is a sense in which Descartes represents a new departure. Descartes (so it seems) was interested in God not for his own sake, but the worlds. God is invoked as a kind of dues ex machine to sanction the validity of our thoughts about the world. 30 Nonetheless, Descartes takes his place as a Christian thinker by resting cognitive loyalty on the personal truth of God, and laying the blame for error not on God but on the exercise of the human will.Descartes successors at last lost their reliance for truth . George Berkeley retains it by tracing directly to God all the ideas we receive from outside the mind and Leibniz by making each mind mirror eternal truths in the mind of God. But many Enlightenment thinkers, and many empiricists directly who share some of Descartes rational ideals or the correspondence theory of truth, talk to truth independently of God as if it were a self-sustaining ideal and as if human reason were a purely objective and impersonal activity.Descartes failure was not in the relation he saw of truth to God, but in the lack of relation he saw between mans rational capacity for knowing truth and his personality as a whole. 31 (F) (back to top) Fibonacci His real name was da Vinci Pisano (Italian, 1170-1250) but he is better known by his nickname Fibonacci (filius Bonacci), which means son of Bonacci. A striking example of Fibonaccis genius is his observation that the classification of irrationals given by Euclid in Book X of the Elements did not include all irrat ionals. Fibonacci is credibly best known for his rabbit problem. da Vinci Fibonacci began the study of this sequence by posing the following problem in his book, Liber Abaci, How many twains of rabbits will be produced in a year, beginning with a single couplet? 32 The analogy that starts with one pair of rabbits who give birth to a new pair from the first month on, and every succeeding pair gives birth to a new pair in the blink of an eye month after their birth. Fibonacci shows that this leads to the sequences 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, and so on. As one can see, each term is the sum of the two previous terms.For example, 2 + 3 = 5 and 3 + 5 = 8, and the farther and farther you go to the right of this sequence, the ratio of a term to the one before it will get ambient and closer to the favorable Ratio. Additionally, this same principal also applies to that of the Golden rectangle. The connection between the Golden Ratio and the Fibonacci series is fa scinating, and is very simple to understand. If you take a Golden Rectangle, and cut off a solid toes with side lengths equal to the length shorter to the rectangle side, then what remains is another Golden Rectangle. This could go on forever.You can just discover cutting off these big squares and acquire smaller and smaller Golden Rectangles. Consequently, the idea with the Fibonacci series is to do the same thing in reverse. You start with a square (1 by 1), find the longer side, and then add a square of that surface to the whole thing to form a new rectangle. Therefore, when we start with a (1 by 1) square the longest side is one, so we add another square to it. As a result, we have accumulated a (2 by 1) rectangle. Then the longest side is 2, so we connect a (2 by 2) square to our (2 by 1) rectangle to get a (3 by 2) rectangle.As this continues, the sides of the rectangle will always be a successive Fibonacci number, and eventually the rectangle will be very close to a Gold en Rectangle. To translate in more illustrative terms, the ratio of two successive numbers in the Fibonacci series, as aforementioned, if divided by each number before it, will result in the following series of numbers 1/1 = 1, 2/1 = 2, 3/2 = 1. 5, 5/3 = 1. 666, 8/5 = 1. 6, 13/8 = 1. 625, 21/13 = 1. 61538. The ratio that is settling down to a particular value is the well-fixed ratio or the golden number, which has a value of approximately 1.618034. 33 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb Johann Gottlieb Fichte (German, 1762-1814) was one of the major figures in German philosophy in between Kant and Hegel. He was regarded as one of Kants most quick-witted philosophers, but later developed a system of his own transcendental philosophy called the Wissenschaftslehre. Fichte had immense influence on his contemporaries, especially during his professorship at the University of Jenna, a position he held for five years (1794-1799) before taking up a profes.