POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

POLITICS OF KNOWLEDGE - Essay Example cesses based upon divine or supernatural intervention.1 For instance, earliest humans attributed floods, famines, and other natural occurrences to spirits and the fact that they were otherwise frustrated or angry with their behavior. However, with the advent of the scientific revolution, identifiable and statistically measurable metrics were provided that helped the average individual to understand the fact that they live in a rational and bounded universe; bounded to science and the processes that it involves. As a function of seeking to understand this scientific revolution to a more demonstrable degree, the following discussion will be based upon how rationalist and empirical epistemologists facilitated a fundamental shift from divine human-based knowledge. Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, the individuals involved within shifting epistemology towards a human-based knowledge most essentially affected the means by which stakeholders within society sought to question the status quo.2 For centuries, the church had held unchecked authority over the way in which individuals understood the world around them. To a varying degree, the overall level to which individuals sought to question this authority was relatively limited. However, with the advent of the scientific revolution, stakeholders within society, although all classes, were encouraged to question the status quo and consider whether or not scientific merit provided a rational and reasonable explanation for the processes and beliefs that they had so long been led to engage with. A secondary manner by which rationalist attempted to provide a fundamental shift from divine to human-based knowledge is with regard to the way in which they sought to use identifiable numbers and processes as a function of proving a particular point. Naturally, this is the very cornerstone of science; however, in centuries past, the league and dictated as the final understanding of whether or not a particular process or

Historiographical perspectives of the Cold War Essay

Historiographical perspectives of the Cold War - Essay Example While the explanations of the origins of the conflict in academic discussions are complex and diverse, several general schools of thought on the subject can be identified. Historians commonly speak of three differing approaches to the study of the Cold War: "orthodox" accounts, "revisionism," and "post-revisionism." Nevertheless, much of the historiography on the Cold War weaves together two or even all three of these broad categories. The first school of interpretation to emerge in the U.S. was "orthodox". For more than a decade after the end of the Second World War, few U.S. historians challenged the official U.S. interpretation of the beginnings of the Cold War. This "orthodox" school places the responsibility for the Cold War on the Soviet Union and its expansion into Eastern Europe. Thomas A. Bailey, for example, argued in his 1950 America Faces Russia that the breakdown of postwar peace was the result of Soviet expansionism in the immediate postwar years. Bailey argued Stalin violated promises he had made at Yalta, imposed Soviet-dominated regimes on unwilling Eastern European populations, and conspired to spread communism throughout the world. From this view, U.S. officials were forced to respond to Soviet aggression with the Truman Doctrine, plans to contain communist subversion around the world, and the Marshall Plan. U.S. involvement in Vietnam in the 1960s disillusioned many historians with the premises of "containment", and thus with the assumptions of the "orthodox" approach to understanding the Cold War. "Revisionist" accounts emerged in the wake of the Vietnam War, in the context of a larger rethinking of the U.S. role in international affairs, which was seen more in terms of American empire or hegemony. While the new school of thought spanned many differences among individual scholars, the works comprising it were generally responses in one way or another to Williams' Apple man landmark 1959 volume, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy. Williams challenged the long-held assumptions of "orthodox" accounts, arguing that Americans had always been an empire-building people, even while American leaders denied it. Following Williams, "revisionist" writers placed more responsibility for the breakdown of postwar peace on the United States, citing a range of U.S. efforts to isolate and confront the Soviet Union well before the end of World War II. According to Williams and later "revisionist" writers, U.S. policymakers shared an overarching concern with maintaining capitalism domestically. In order to achieve that objective, they pursued an "open door" policy abroad, aimed at increasing access to foreign markets for U.S. business and agriculture. From this perspective, a growing economy domestically went hand-in-hand with the consolidation of U.S. power internationally. "Revisionist" scholars challenged the widely accepted notion that Soviet leaders were committed to postwar "expansionism". They cited evidence that the Soviet Union's occupation of Eastern Europe had a defensive rationale, and that Soviet leaders saw themselves as attempting to avoid encirclement by the United States and its allies. In this view, the Soviet Union was so weak and devastated after the end of the Second World War as to be unable to pose any serious threat to the United States; moreover,