Shayna Larson
Four Worlds of Advancements
My experience with this summer assignment can be closely related to a war. The two sides battle out their differences inside my head, one side insisting that I turn down offers to hang out, or go to the beach, and park myself at my desk and crank out those notes. The other side, the winning side, is a major procrastinator, whispering into my ear that I still have a month left to do homework, and that the weather is so nice today. So here I am, three weeks from the start of school, buried under a pile of notes, notecards, and a paper. The notecards, I am happy to report, are finished and neatly organized into their rightful spots in my backpack. The notes themselves were only halfway done before I realized that I desperately needed a change of scenery, but now they are finished as well. So now I am forcing myself to finish this paper, and then I can enjoy my last three weeks of freedom before the workload of two AP classes pulls me under again. While I was doing my notecards, I was really excited to learn that I actually liked learning about Plato, Martin Luther, Galileo, and Francis Bacon. So maybe I will actually like writing a paper during the summer if it is about something I kind of find interesting. Plato was taught by Socrates, alongside Xenophon, and was a mathematician. He is most credited with founding the Academy in Athens. A few of the most basic studies taught there included arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and harmonics of sound. Plato’s intention of starting the Academy was to train men and their minds to think for themselves. Aristotle even studied at Plato’s school for about 20 years. Plato also wrote his Socratic Dialogues, which included thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters that were credited to him. These dialogues have been used to teach many subjects, inclusive of philosophy, logic, ethics, religion and mathematics. The main reason that Plato’s notecard caught my eye was because I almost felt proud of him. Most philosophers that I have researched through this assignment have been very smart in perfecting the one thing that they found. They write books, poems, and more, but Plato did something different than any other philosopher. He built school to directly teach other people what he knew. A lot of other philosophers probably affected and inspired a lot of people, but Plato did both. He passed on his knowledge in a classroom setting, and wrote his Socratic Dialogues. So he affected people by telling them with words, and by having them read his words. Without Plato’s Academy, we might not have universities today, and the worlds of logic, ethics, philosophy, religion, and mathematics would not be as advanced. Martin Luther was a German monk, a Catholic priest, a professor of theology, and an important figure in the Protestant Reformation. During Luther’s life, Pope Leo X was selling “freedom” from God’s punishment. In retaliation, he confronted an indulgence salesman with his Ninety-Five Theses. Upon his refusal to take them down, he was excommunicated by the Pope and condemned an outlaw by the Emperor. He taught others that salvation was received as a free gift through faith in Jesus Christ. Luther wrote hymns and set the model for clerical marriage, or the allowing of Protestant priests to be married. The main reason that I picked Martin Luther was because I remembered him from my seventh grade history class. My teacher, Mrs. McLaughlin, painted a really solid picture in my head of him, and I honestly remembered what she taught me from three years ago. Martin Luther was a religious man who stood up against the selling of indulgences. I also disapprove of the fact that you can buy God’s freedom with money, so that was why Luther stood out to me. Popes might still be selling indulgences if it weren’t for Luther standing up and presenting his Ninety-Five Theses. Galileo was an Italian mathematician, physicist, astronomer, and philosopher, and he