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100	Abraham Lincoln Biographers James G. Randall and Richard Current, according to David Lincove, argue that: It is likely that had he lived, Lincoln would have followed a policy similar to Johnson's, that he would have clashed with congressional Radicals, that he would have produced a better result for the freedmen than occurred, and that his political skills would have helped him avoid Johnson's mistakes. Eric Foner argues that: Unlike Sumner and other Radicals, Lincoln did not see Reconstruction as an opportunity for a sweeping political and social revolution beyond emancipation. He had long made clear his opposition to the confiscation and redistribution of land. He believed, as most Republicans did in April 1865, that voting requirements should be determined by the states. He assumed that political control in the South would pass to white Unionists, reluctant secessionists, and forward-looking former Confederates. But time and again during the war, Lincoln, after initial opposition, had come to embrace positions first advanced by abolitionists and Radical Republicans. ... Lincoln undoubtedly would have listened carefully to the outcry for further protection for the former slaves. ... It is entirely plausible to imagine Lincoln and Congress agreeing on a Reconstruction policy that encompassed federal protection for basic civil rights plus limited black suffrage, along the lines Lincoln proposed just before his death. Lincoln vetoed only four bills during his presidency, including the Wade-Davis Bill with its harsh Reconstruction program. The 1862 Homestead Act made millions of acres of Western government-held land available for purchase at low cost. The 1862 Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act provided government grants for agricultural colleges in each state. The Pacific Railway Acts of 1862 and 1864 granted federal support for the construction of the United States' first transcontinental railroad, which was completed in 1869. The passage of the Homestead Act and the Pacific Railway Acts was enabled by the absence of Southern congressmen and senators who had opposed the measures in the 1850s. There were two measures passed to raise revenues for the federal government: tariffs (a policy with long precedent), and a federal income tax. In 1861, Lincoln signed the second and third Morrill Tariffs, following the first enacted by Buchanan. He also signed the Revenue Act of 1861, creating the first U.S. income tax—a flat tax of 3 percent on incomes above $800 (). The Revenue Act of 1862 adopted rates that increased with income. The Lincoln Administration presided over the expansion of the federal government's economic influence in other areas. The National Banking Act created the system of national banks. The U.S. issued paper currency for the first time, known as greenbacks—printed in green on the reverse side. In 1862, Congress created the Department of Agriculture.
101	Abraham Lincoln In response to rumors of a renewed draft, the editors of the "New York World" and the "Journal of Commerce" published a false draft proclamation that created an opportunity for the editors and others to corner the gold market. Lincoln attacked the media for such behavior, and ordered a military seizure of the two papers which lasted for two days. Lincoln is largely responsible for the Thanksgiving holiday. Thanksgiving had become a regional holiday in New England in the 17th century. It had been sporadically proclaimed by the federal government on irregular dates. The prior proclamation had been during James Madison's presidency 50 years earlier. In 1863, Lincoln declared the final Thursday in November of that year to be a day of Thanksgiving. In June 1864 Lincoln approved the Yosemite Grant enacted by Congress, which provided unprecedented federal protection for the area now known as Yosemite National Park. Assassination. John Wilkes Booth was a well-known actor and a Confederate spy from Maryland; though he never joined the Confederate army, he had contacts with the Confederate secret service. After attending Lincoln's last public address, on April 11, 1865, in which Lincoln stated his preference that the franchise be conferred on some black men, specifically "on the very intelligent, and on those who serve our cause as soldiers", Booth hatched a plot to assassinate the President. When Booth learned of the Lincolns' intent to attend a play with General Grant, he planned to assassinate Lincoln and Grant at Ford's Theatre. "Booth had attended a dress rehearsal the day before to better rehearse his scheme for shooting Lincoln ... and then escaping." Lincoln and his wife attended the play "Our American Cousin" on the evening of April 14, just five days after the Union victory at the Battle of Appomattox Courthouse. At the last minute, Grant decided to go to New Jersey to visit his children instead of attending the play. At 10:15 in the evening, Booth entered the back of Lincoln's theater box, crept up from behind, and fired at the back of Lincoln's head, mortally wounding him. Lincoln's guest, Major Henry Rathbone, momentarily grappled with Booth, but Booth stabbed him and escaped. After being attended by Doctor Charles Leale and two other doctors, Lincoln was taken across the street to Petersen House. After remaining in a coma for nine hours, Lincoln died at 7:22 in the morning on April 15. Stanton saluted and said, "Now he belongs to the ages." Lincoln's body was placed in a flag-wrapped coffin, which was loaded into a hearse and escorted to the White House by Union soldiers. President Johnson was sworn in later that same day.
102	Abraham Lincoln Two weeks later, Booth, refusing to surrender, was tracked to a farm in Virginia. He was mortally shot by Sergeant Boston Corbett and died on April 26. Secretary of War Stanton had issued orders that Booth be taken alive, so Corbett was initially arrested to be court martialed. After a brief interview, Stanton declared him a patriot and dismissed the charge. Funeral and burial. From April 19 to 21, the late President lay in state, first in the East Room of the White House and then in the Capitol Rotunda. The caskets containing Lincoln's body and the body of his third son Willie then traveled for three weeks on the "Lincoln Special" funeral train. The train followed a circuitous route from Washington D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, stopping at many cities for memorials attended by hundreds of thousands. Many others gathered along the tracks as the train passed with bands, bonfires, and hymn singing or in silent grief. Poet Walt Whitman composed "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" to eulogize him, one of four poems he wrote about Lincoln. African Americans were especially moved; they had lost their "Moses". In a larger sense, the reaction was in response to the deaths of so many men in the war. Historians emphasized the widespread shock and sorrow, but noted that some Lincoln haters celebrated his death. Lincoln's body was buried at Oak Ridge Cemetery in Springfield and now lies within the Lincoln Tomb. Philosophy and religious views. Philosophy of republicanism. Lincoln's redefinition of the political philosophy of "republicanism in the United States" has been stressed by historians such as John Patrick Diggins, Harry V. Jaffa, Vernon Burton, Eric Foner, and Herman J. Belz. Lincoln called the Declaration of Independence—which emphasized freedom and equality for all—the "sheet anchor" of republicanism beginning in the 1850s. He did this at a time when the Constitution, which "tolerated slavery", was the focus of most political discourse. Diggins notes, "Lincoln presented Americans a theory of history that offers a profound contribution to the theory and destiny of republicanism itself" in the 1860 Cooper Union speech. Instead of focusing on the legality of an argument, he focused on the moral basis of republicanism. His position on war was founded on a legal argument regarding the Constitution as essentially a contract among the states, and all parties must agree to pull out of the contract. Furthermore, it was a national duty to ensure the republic stands in every state. Many soldiers and religious leaders from the north, though, felt the fight for liberty and freedom of slaves was ordained by their moral and religious beliefs.
103	Abraham Lincoln As a Whig activist Lincoln was a spokesman for business interests, favoring high tariffs, banks, infrastructure improvements, and railroads, in opposition to Jacksonian democrats. Lincoln shared the sympathies that the Jacksonians professed for the common man, but he disagreed with the Jacksonian view that the government should be divorced from economic enterprise. Nevertheless, Lincoln admired Andrew Jackson's steeliness as well as his patriotism. According to historian Sean Wilentz: Just as the Republican Party of the 1850s absorbed certain elements of Jacksonianism, so Lincoln, whose Whiggery had always been more egalitarian than that of other Whigs, found himself absorbing some of them as well. And some of the Jacksonian spirit resided inside the Lincoln White House. William C. Harris found that Lincoln's "reverence for the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, the laws under it, and the preservation of the Republic and its institutions strengthened his conservatism." James G. Randall emphasizes his tolerance and moderation "in his preference for orderly progress, his distrust of dangerous agitation, and his reluctance toward ill digested schemes of reform." Randall concludes that "he was conservative in his complete avoidance of that type of so-called 'radicalism' which involved abuse of the South, hatred for the slaveholder, thirst for vengeance, partisan plotting, and ungenerous demands that Southern institutions be transformed overnight by outsiders." Political philosophy of reunification. In Lincoln's first inaugural address, he explored the nature of democracy. He denounced secession as anarchy, and he explained that majority rule had to be balanced by constitutional restraints. He said, "A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people." The successful reunification of the states had consequences for how people viewed the country. The term "the United States" has historically been used sometimes in the plural ("these United States") and other times in the singular. The Civil War was a significant force in the eventual dominance of the singular usage by the end of the 19th century. Religious skepticism and providence. As a young man Lincoln was a religious skeptic. He was deeply familiar with the Bible, quoting and praising it. He was private about his position on organized religion and respected the beliefs of others. He never made a clear profession of Christian beliefs. Throughout his public career, Lincoln often quoted Scripture. His three most famous speeches—the House Divided Speech, the Gettysburg Address, and his second inaugural—all contain direct allusions to Providence and quote from Scripture. In the 1840s Lincoln subscribed to the Doctrine of Necessity, a belief that the human mind was controlled by a higher power.
104	Abraham Lincoln With the death of his son Edward in 1850 he more frequently expressed a dependence on God. He never joined a church, although he frequently attended First Presbyterian Church in Springfield, Illinois, with his wife beginning in 1852. When he was president, Lincoln and his wife often attended services at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. In the 1850s Lincoln asserted his belief in "providence" in a general way and rarely used the language or imagery of the evangelicals; instead, he regarded the republicanism of the Founding Fathers with an almost religious reverence. The death of his son Willie in February 1862 may have caused him to look toward religion for solace. After Willie's death, he questioned the divine necessity of the war's severity. He wrote at this time that God "could have either "saved" or "destroyed" the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds." Lincoln believed in an all-powerful God who shaped events and by 1865 was expressing that belief in major speeches. By the end of the war, he increasingly appealed to the Almighty for solace and to explain events, writing on April 4, 1864, to a newspaper editor in Kentucky: I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly that events have controlled me. Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. Whither it is tending seems plain. If God now wills the removal of a great wrong, and wills also that we of the North as well as you of the South, shall pay fairly for our complicity in that wrong, impartial history will find therein new cause to attest and revere the justice and goodness of God.This spirituality can best be seen in his second inaugural address, considered by some scholars as the greatest such address in American history, and by Lincoln himself as his own greatest speech, or one of them at the very least. Lincoln explains therein that the cause, purpose, and result of the war was God's will. Lincoln's frequent use of religious imagery and language toward the end of his life may have reflected his own personal beliefs or might have been a device to reach his audiences, who were mostly evangelical Protestants. On the day Lincoln was assassinated, he reportedly told his wife he desired to visit the Holy Land. Personal life. Lincoln is believed to have had depression, smallpox, and malaria. He took blue mass pills, which contained mercury, to treat constipation.
105	Abraham Lincoln It is unknown to what extent this may have resulted in mercury poisoning. Several claims have been made that Lincoln's health was declining before the assassination. These are often based on photographs of Lincoln appearing to show weight loss and muscle wasting. It is also suspected that he might have had a rare genetic disease such as Marfan syndrome or multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2B. Legacy. Bureau of Engraving and Printing portrait of Lincoln as president Historical reputation. In surveys of U.S. scholars ranking presidents conducted since 1948, the top three presidents are generally Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, although the order varies. Between 1999 and 2011, Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, and Ronald Reagan were the top-ranked presidents in eight public opinion surveys, according to Gallup. A 2004 study found that scholars in the fields of history and politics ranked Lincoln number one, while legal scholars placed him second after George Washington. Frederick Douglass stated that in "his company, I was never reminded of my humble origin, or of my unpopular color. Lincoln's assassination made him a national martyr. He was viewed by abolitionists as a champion of human liberty. Republicans linked Lincoln's name to their party. Many, though not all, in the South considered Lincoln as a man of outstanding ability. Historians have said he was "a classical liberal" in the 19th-century sense. Allen C. Guelzo states that Lincoln was a "classical liberal democrat—an enemy of artificial hierarchy, a friend to trade and business as ennobling and enabling, and an American counterpart to Mill, Cobden, and Bright (whose portrait Lincoln hung in his White House office)". Union nationalism, as envisioned by Lincoln, "helped lead America to the nationalism of Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt." In the New Deal era, liberals honored Lincoln not so much as the self-made man or the great war president, but as the advocate of the common man who they claimed would have supported the welfare state. Sociologist Barry Schwartz argues that in the 1930s and 1940s the memory of Abraham Lincoln was practically sacred and provided the nation with "a moral symbol inspiring and guiding American life." During the Great Depression, he argues, Lincoln served "as a means for seeing the world's disappointments, for making its sufferings not so much explicable as meaningful." Franklin D. Roosevelt, preparing America for war, used the words of the Civil War president to clarify the threat posed by Germany and Japan. Americans asked, "What would Lincoln do?"
106	Abraham Lincoln However, Schwartz also finds that since World War II Lincoln's symbolic power has lost relevance, and this "fading hero is symptomatic of fading confidence in national greatness." He suggested that postmodernism and multiculturalism have diluted greatness as a concept. Schwartz argues that Lincoln's American reputation grew slowly from the late 19th century until the Progressive Era (1900–1920s), when he emerged as one of America's most venerated heroes, even among white Southerners. The high point came in 1922 with the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. In the Cold War years Lincoln's image shifted to a symbol of freedom who brought hope to those oppressed by Communist regimes. Barry Schwartz wrote in 2009 that Lincoln's image suffered "erosion, fading prestige, benign ridicule" in the late 20th century. Lincoln had long been known as the Great Emancipator, but, by the late 1960s, some African American intellectuals, led by Lerone Bennett Jr., denied that Lincoln deserved that title. Bennett won wide attention when he called Lincoln a white supremacist in 1968. He noted that Lincoln used ethnic slurs and told jokes that ridiculed blacks. Bennett argued that Lincoln opposed social equality and proposed that freed slaves voluntarily move to another country. The emphasis shifted away from Lincoln the emancipator to an argument that blacks had freed themselves from slavery, or at least were responsible for pressuring the government to emancipate them. Defenders of Lincoln retorted that he was a "moral visionary" who deftly advanced the abolitionist cause, as fast as politically possible. Brian Dirck stated that few Civil War scholars take Bennett (or Thomas DiLorenzo) seriously, pointing to their "narrow political agendas and faulty research". By the 1970s Lincoln had become a hero to political conservatives—apart from neo-Confederates such as Mel Bradford, who denounced his treatment of the white South—for his intense nationalism, his support for business, his insistence on stopping the spread of slavery, his acting on Lockean and Burkean principles on behalf of both liberty and tradition, and his devotion to the principles of the Founding Fathers. Lincoln became a favorite of liberal intellectuals across the world. David Herbert Donald opined in his 1996 biography that Lincoln was distinctly endowed with the personality trait of negative capability, defined by the poet John Keats and attributed to extraordinary leaders who were "capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason". In the 21st century President Barack Obama named Lincoln his favorite president and insisted on using the Lincoln Bible for his inaugural ceremonies. Lincoln has often been portrayed by Hollywood, almost always in a flattering light.
107	Abraham Lincoln Lincoln has also been admired by political figures outside the U.S., including German political theorist Karl Marx, Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, former Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, leader of the Italian Risorgimento, Giuseppe Garibaldi, and Libyan revolutionary Muammar Gaddafi. Memorials and commemorations. Lincoln's portrait appears on two denominations of United States currency, the penny and the $5 bill. He appears on postage stamps across the world. While he is usually portrayed bearded, he did not grow a beard until 1860 at the suggestion of 11-year-old Grace Bedell. He was the first of five presidents to do so. He has been memorialized in many town, city, and county names, including the capital of Nebraska. The United States Navy is named after Lincoln, the second Navy ship to bear his name. The Lincoln Memorial is one of the most visited monuments in the nation's capital and is one of the most visited National Park Service sites in the country. Ford's Theatre, among the most visited sites in Washington, D.C., is across the street from Petersen House, where Lincoln died. Memorials in Springfield, Illinois, include the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Lincoln's home, and his tomb. A portrait carving of Lincoln appears with those of three other presidents on Mount Rushmore, which receives about 3 million visitors a year. A that influenced later sculptors stands in Lincoln Park, Chicago, with recastings given as diplomatic gifts standing in Parliament Square, London, and Parque Lincoln, Mexico City. Lincoln Portrait is a 1942 classical orchestral work written by the American composer Aaron Copland to commemorate five speeches and writings of Lincoln. The work involves a full orchestra, with particular emphasis on the brass section at climactic moments and the work is narrated by prominent politicians and actors periodically invited to perform with the orchestra. In 2019, Congress officially dedicated room H-226 in the United States Capitol to Abraham Lincoln. The room is located off National Statuary Hall and served as the post office of the House while then-Representative Abraham Lincoln served in Congress from 1847 to 1849. References. Bibliography.
108	Aristotle Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath (384–322 BC) Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science. Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical period. His father, Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At around eighteen years old, he joined Plato's Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty seven (c. 347 BC). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request of Philip II of Macedon, tutored his son Alexander the Great beginning in 343 BC. He established a library in the Lyceum, which helped him to produce many of his hundreds of books on papyrus scrolls. Though Aristotle wrote many treatises and dialogues for publication, only around a third of his original output has survived, none of it intended for publication. Aristotle provided a complex synthesis of the various philosophies existing prior to him. His teachings and methods of inquiry have had a significant impact across the world, and remain a subject of contemporary philosophical discussion. Aristotle's views profoundly shaped medieval scholarship. The influence of his physical science extended from late antiquity and the Early Middle Ages into the Renaissance, and was not replaced systematically until the Enlightenment and theories such as classical mechanics were developed. He influenced Judeo-Islamic philosophies during the Middle Ages, as well as Christian theology, especially the Neoplatonism of the Early Church and the scholastic tradition of the Catholic Church. Aristotle was revered among medieval Muslim scholars as "The First Teacher", and among medieval Christians like Thomas Aquinas as simply "The Philosopher", while the poet Dante called him "the master of those who know". He has been referred to as the first scientist. His works contain the earliest known formal study of logic, and were studied by medieval scholars such as Peter Abelard and Jean Buridan. His influence on logic continued well into the 19th century. In addition, his ethics, although always influential, has gained renewed interest with the modern advent of virtue ethics. Life. In general, the details of Aristotle's life are not well-established. The biographies written in ancient times are often speculative and historians only agree on a few salient points.
109	Aristotle Aristotle was born in 384 BC in Stagira, Chalcidice, about 55 km (34 miles) east of modern-day Thessaloniki. He was the son of Nicomachus, the personal physician of King Amyntas of Macedon, and Phaestis, a woman with origins from Chalcis, Euboea. Nicomachus was said to have belonged to the medical guild of Asclepiadae and was likely responsible for Aristotle's early interest in biology and medicine. Ancient tradition held that Aristotle's family descended from the legendary physician Asclepius and his son Machaon. Both of Aristotle's parents died when he was still at a young age and Proxenus of Atarneus became his guardian. Although little information about Aristotle's childhood has survived, he probably spent some time in the Macedonian capital, making his first connections with the Macedonian monarchy. At the age of seventeen or eighteen, Aristotle moved to Athens to continue his education at Plato's Academy. He became distinguished as a researcher and lecturer, earning for himself the nickname "mind of the school" by his tutor Plato. In Athens, he probably experienced the Eleusinian Mysteries as he wrote when describing the sights one viewed at the Mysteries, "to experience is to learn" (). Aristotle remained in Athens for nearly twenty years before leaving in 348/47 BC after Plato's death. The traditional story about his departure records that he was disappointed with the academy's direction after control passed to Plato's nephew Speusippus, although it is possible that the anti-Macedonian sentiments in Athens could have also influenced his decision. Aristotle left with Xenocrates to Assos in Asia Minor, where he was invited by his former fellow student Hermias of Atarneus; he stayed there for a few years and left around the time of Hermias' death. While at Assos, Aristotle and his colleague Theophrastus did extensive research in botany and marine biology, which they later continued at the near-by island of Lesbos. During this time, Aristotle married Pythias, Hermias's adoptive daughter and niece, and had a daughter whom they also named Pythias. In 343/42 BC, Aristotle was invited to Pella by Philip II of Macedon in order to become the tutor to his thirteen-year-old son Alexander; a choice perhaps influenced by the relationship of Aristotle's family with the Macedonian dynasty. Aristotle taught Alexander at the private school of Mieza, in the gardens of the Nymphs, the royal estate near Pella. Alexander's education probably included a number of subjects, such as ethics and politics, as well as standard literary texts, like Euripides and Homer. It is likely that during Aristotle's time in the Macedonian court, other prominent nobles, like Ptolemy and Cassander, would have occasionally attended his lectures.
110	Aristotle Aristotle encouraged Alexander toward eastern conquest, and his own attitude towards Persia was strongly ethnocentric. In one famous example, he counsels Alexander to be "a leader to the Greeks and a despot to the barbarians". Alexander's education under the guardianship of Aristotle likely lasted for only a few years, as at around the age of sixteen he returned to Pella and was appointed regent of Macedon by his father Philip. During this time, Aristotle is said to have gifted Alexander an annotated copy of the "Iliad", which reportedly became one of Alexander's most prized possessions. Scholars speculate that two of Aristotle's now lost works, "On kingship" and "On behalf of the Colonies", were composed by the philosopher for the young prince. Aristotle returned to Athens for the second and final time a year after Philip II's assassination in 336 BC. As a metic, Aristotle could not own property in Athens and thus rented a building known as the Lyceum (named after the sacred grove of Apollo "Lykeios"), in which he established his own school. The building included a gymnasium and a colonnade (), from which the school acquired the name "Peripatetic". Aristotle conducted courses and research at the school for the next twelve years. He often lectured small groups of distinguished students and, along with some of them, such as Theophrastus, Eudemus, and Aristoxenus, Aristotle built a large library which included manuscripts, maps, and museum objects. While in Athens, his wife Pythias died and Aristotle became involved with Herpyllis of Stagira. They had a son whom Aristotle named after his father, Nicomachus. This period in Athens, between 335 and 323 BC, is when Aristotle is believed to have composed many of his philosophical works. He wrote many dialogues, of which only fragments have survived. Those works that have survived are in treatise form and were not, for the most part, intended for widespread publication; they are generally thought to be lecture aids for his students. His most important treatises include "Physics", "Metaphysics", "Nicomachean Ethics", "Politics", "On the Soul" and "Poetics". Aristotle studied and made significant contributions to "logic, metaphysics, mathematics, physics, biology, botany, ethics, politics, agriculture, medicine, dance, and theatre." While Alexander deeply admired Aristotle, near the end of his life, the two men became estranged having diverging opinions over issues, like the optimal administration of city-states, the treatment of conquered populations, such as the Persians, and philosophical questions, like the definition of braveness.
111	Aristotle A widespread speculation in antiquity suggested that Aristotle played a role in Alexander's death, but the only evidence of this is an unlikely claim made some six years after the death. Following Alexander's death, anti-Macedonian sentiment in Athens was rekindled. In 322 BC, Demophilus and Eurymedon the Hierophant reportedly denounced Aristotle for impiety, prompting him to flee to his mother's family estate in Chalcis, Euboea, at which occasion he was said to have stated "I will not allow the Athenians to sin twice against philosophy" – a reference to Athens's trial and execution of Socrates. He died in Chalcis, Euboea of natural causes later that same year, having named his student Antipater as his chief executor and leaving a will in which he asked to be buried next to his wife. Aristotle left his works to Theophrastus, his successor as the head of the Lyceum, who in turn passed them down to Neleus of Scepsis in Asia Minor. There, the papers remained hidden for protection until they were purchased by the collector Apellicon. In the meantime, many copies of Aristotle's major works had already begun to circulate and be used in the Lyceum of Athens, Alexandria, and later in Rome. Theoretical philosophy. Logic. With the "Prior Analytics", Aristotle is credited with the earliest study of formal logic, and his conception of it was the dominant form of Western logic until 19th-century advances in mathematical logic. Kant stated in the "Critique of Pure Reason" that with Aristotle, logic reached its completion. "Organon". Most of Aristotle's work is probably not in its original form, because it was most likely edited by students and later lecturers. The logical works of Aristotle were compiled into a set of six books called the "Organon" around 40 BC by Andronicus of Rhodes or others among his followers. The books are: The order of the books (or the teachings from which they are composed) is not certain, but this list was derived from analysis of Aristotle's writings. It goes from the basics, the analysis of simple terms in the "Categories," the analysis of propositions and their elementary relations in "On Interpretation", to the study of more complex forms, namely, syllogisms (in the "Analytics") and dialectics (in the "Topics" and "Sophistical Refutations"). The first three treatises form the core of the logical theory "stricto sensu": the grammar of the language of logic and the correct rules of reasoning. The "Rhetoric" is not conventionally included, but it states that it relies on the "Topics".
112	Aristotle What is today called "Aristotelian logic" with its types of syllogism (methods of logical argument), Aristotle himself would have labelled "analytics". The term "logic" he reserved to mean "dialectics". Metaphysics. The word "metaphysics" appears to have been coined by the first century AD editor who assembled various small selections of Aristotle's works to create the treatise we know by the name "Metaphysics". Aristotle called it "first philosophy", and distinguished it from mathematics and natural science (physics) as the contemplative ("theoretikē") philosophy which is "theological" and studies the divine. He wrote in his "Metaphysics" (1026a16): If there were no other independent things besides the composite natural ones, the study of nature would be the primary kind of knowledge; but if there is some motionless independent thing, the knowledge of this precedes it and is first philosophy, and it is universal "in just this way", because it is first. And it belongs to this sort of philosophy to study being as being, both what it is and what belongs to it just by virtue of being. Substance. Aristotle examines the concepts of substance ("ousia") and essence ("to ti ên einai", "the what it was to be") in his "Metaphysics" (Book VII), and he concludes that a particular substance is a combination of both matter and form, a philosophical theory called hylomorphism. In Book VIII, he distinguishes the matter of the substance as the substratum, or the stuff of which it is composed. For example, the matter of a house is the bricks, stones, timbers, etc., or whatever constitutes the "potential" house, while the form of the substance is the "actual" house, namely 'covering for bodies and chattels' or any other differentia that let us define something as a house. The formula that gives the components is the account of the matter, and the formula that gives the differentia is the account of the form. Immanent realism. Like his teacher Plato, Aristotle's philosophy aims at the universal. Aristotle's ontology places the universal () in particulars (), things in the world, whereas for Plato the universal is a separately existing form which actual things imitate. For Aristotle, "form" is still what phenomena are based on, but is "instantiated" in a particular substance. Plato argued that all things have a universal form, which could be either a property or a relation to other things.
113	Aristotle When one looks at an apple, for example, one sees an apple, and one can also analyse a form of an apple. In this distinction, there is a particular apple and a universal form of an apple. Moreover, one can place an apple next to a book, so that one can speak of both the book and apple as being next to each other. Plato argued that there are some universal forms that are not a part of particular things. For example, it is possible that there is no particular good in existence, but "good" is still a proper universal form. Aristotle disagreed with Plato on this point, arguing that all universals are instantiated at some period of time, and that there are no universals that are unattached to existing things. In addition, Aristotle disagreed with Plato about the location of universals. Where Plato spoke of the forms as existing separately from the things that participate in them, Aristotle maintained that universals exist within each thing on which each universal is predicated. So, according to Aristotle, the form of apple exists within each apple, rather than in the world of the forms. Potentiality and actuality. Concerning the nature of change ("kinesis") and its causes, as he outlines in his "Physics" and "On Generation and Corruption ("319b–320a), he distinguishes coming-to-be ("genesis", also translated as 'generation') from: Coming-to-be is a change where the substrate of the thing that has undergone the change has itself changed. In that particular change he introduces the concept of potentiality ("dynamis") and actuality ("entelecheia") in association with the matter and the form. Referring to potentiality, this is what a thing is capable of doing or being acted upon if the conditions are right and it is not prevented by something else. For example, the seed of a plant in the soil is potentially ("dynamei") a plant, and if it is not prevented by something, it will become a plant. Potentially, beings can either 'act' ("poiein") or 'be acted upon' ("paschein"), which can be either innate or learned. For example, the eyes possess the potentiality of sight (innate – being acted upon), while the capability of playing the flute can be possessed by learning (exercise – acting). Actuality is the fulfilment of the end of the potentiality. Because the end ("telos") is the principle of every change, and potentiality exists for the sake of the end, actuality, accordingly, is the end.
114	Aristotle Referring then to the previous example, it can be said that an actuality is when a plant does one of the activities that plants do. For that for the sake of which ("to hou heneka") a thing is, is its principle, and the becoming is for the sake of the end; and the actuality is the end, and it is for the sake of this that the potentiality is acquired. For animals do not see in order that they may have sight, but they have sight that they may see. In summary, the matter used to make a house has potentiality to be a house and both the activity of building and the form of the final house are actualities, which is also a final cause or end. Then Aristotle proceeds and concludes that the actuality is prior to potentiality in formula, in time and in substantiality. With this definition of the particular substance (i.e., matter and form), Aristotle tries to solve the problem of the unity of the beings, for example, "what is it that makes a man one"? Since, according to Plato there are two Ideas: animal and biped, how then is man a unity? However, according to Aristotle, the potential being (matter) and the actual one (form) are one and the same. Epistemology. Aristotle's immanent realism means his epistemology is based on the study of things that exist or happen in the world, and rises to knowledge of the universal, whereas for Plato epistemology begins with knowledge of universal Forms (or ideas) and descends to knowledge of particular imitations of these. Aristotle uses induction from examples alongside deduction, whereas Plato relies on deduction from "a priori" principles. Natural philosophy. Aristotle's "natural philosophy" spans a wide range of natural phenomena including those now covered by physics, biology and other natural sciences. In Aristotle's terminology, "natural philosophy" is a branch of philosophy examining the phenomena of the natural world, and includes fields that would be regarded today as physics, biology and other natural sciences. Aristotle's work encompassed virtually all facets of intellectual inquiry. Aristotle makes philosophy in the broad sense coextensive with reasoning, which he also would describe as "science". However, his use of the term "science" carries a different meaning than that covered by the term "scientific method". For Aristotle, "all science ("dianoia") is either practical, poetical or theoretical" ("Metaphysics" 1025b25). His practical science includes ethics and politics; his poetical science means the study of fine arts including poetry; his theoretical science covers physics, mathematics and metaphysics. Physics.
115	Aristotle Five elements. In his "On Generation and Corruption", Aristotle related each of the four elements proposed earlier by Empedocles, earth, water, air, and fire, to two of the four sensible qualities, hot, cold, wet, and dry. In the Empedoclean scheme, all matter was made of the four elements, in differing proportions. Aristotle's scheme added the heavenly aether, the divine substance of the heavenly spheres, stars and planets. Motion. Aristotle describes two kinds of motion: "violent" or "unnatural motion", such as that of a thrown stone, in the "Physics" (254b10), and "natural motion", such as of a falling object, in "On the Heavens" (300a20). In violent motion, as soon as the agent stops causing it, the motion stops also: in other words, the natural state of an object is to be at rest, since Aristotle does not address friction. With this understanding, it can be observed that, as Aristotle stated, heavy objects (on the ground, say) require more force to make them move; and objects pushed with greater force move faster. This would imply the equation formula_1, incorrect in modern physics. Natural motion depends on the element concerned: the aether naturally moves in a circle around the heavens, while the 4 Empedoclean elements move vertically up (like fire, as is observed) or down (like earth) towards their natural resting places. In the "Physics" (215a25), Aristotle effectively states a quantitative law, that the speed, v, of a falling body is proportional (say, with constant c) to its weight, W, and inversely proportional to the density, ρ, of the fluid in which it is falling:; formula_2 Aristotle implies that in a vacuum the speed of fall would become infinite, and concludes from this apparent absurdity that a vacuum is not possible. Opinions have varied on whether Aristotle intended to state quantitative laws. Henri Carteron held the "extreme view" that Aristotle's concept of force was basically qualitative, but other authors reject this. Archimedes corrected Aristotle's theory that bodies move towards their natural resting places; metal boats can float if they displace enough water; floating depends in Archimedes' scheme on the mass and volume of the object, not, as Aristotle thought, its elementary composition. Aristotle's writings on motion remained influential until the Early Modern period. John Philoponus (in Late antiquity) and Galileo (in Early modern period) are said to have shown by experiment that Aristotle's claim that a heavier object falls faster than a lighter object is incorrect.
116	Aristotle A contrary opinion is given by Carlo Rovelli, who argues that Aristotle's physics of motion is correct within its domain of validity, that of objects in the Earth's gravitational field immersed in a fluid such as air. In this system, heavy bodies in steady fall indeed travel faster than light ones (whether friction is ignored, or not), and they do fall more slowly in a denser medium. Newton's "forced" motion corresponds to Aristotle's "violent" motion with its external agent, but Aristotle's assumption that the agent's effect stops immediately it stops acting (e.g., the ball leaves the thrower's hand) has awkward consequences: he has to suppose that surrounding fluid helps to push the ball along to make it continue to rise even though the hand is no longer acting on it, resulting in the Medieval theory of impetus. Four causes. Aristotle suggested that the reason for anything coming about can be attributed to four different types of simultaneously active factors. His term "aitia" is traditionally translated as "cause", but it does not always refer to temporal sequence; it might be better translated as "explanation", but the traditional rendering will be employed here. Optics. Aristotle describes experiments in optics using a camera obscura in "Problems", book 15. The apparatus consisted of a dark chamber with a small aperture that let light in. With it, he saw that whatever shape he made the hole, the sun's image always remained circular. He also noted that increasing the distance between the aperture and the image surface magnified the image. Chance and spontaneity. According to Aristotle, spontaneity and chance are causes of some things, distinguishable from other types of cause such as simple necessity. Chance as an incidental cause lies in the realm of accidental things, "from what is spontaneous". There is also more a specific kind of chance, which Aristotle names "luck", that only applies to people's moral choices. Astronomy. In astronomy, Aristotle refuted Democritus's claim that the Milky Way was made up of "those stars which are shaded by the earth from the sun's rays," pointing out partly correctly that if "the size of the sun is greater than that of the earth and the distance of the stars from the earth many times greater than that of the sun, then... the sun shines on all the stars and the earth screens none of them." He also wrote descriptions of comets, including the Great Comet of 371 BC. Geology and natural sciences. Aristotle was one of the first people to record any geological observations.
117	Aristotle He stated that geological change was too slow to be observed in one person's lifetime. The geologist Charles Lyell noted that Aristotle described such change, including "lakes that had dried up" and "deserts that had become watered by rivers", giving as examples the growth of the Nile delta since the time of Homer, and "the upheaving of one of the Aeolian islands, previous to a volcanic eruption."' "Meteorologica" lends its name to the modern study of meteorology, but its modern usage diverges from the content of Aristotle's ancient treatise on meteors. The ancient Greeks did use the term for a range of atmospheric phenomena, but also for earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Aristotle proposed that the cause of earthquakes was a gas or vapor ("anathymiaseis") that was trapped inside the earth and trying to escape, following other Greek authors Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Democritus. Aristotle also made many observations about the hydrologic cycle. For example, he made some of the earliest observations about desalination: he observed early – and correctly – that when seawater is heated, freshwater evaporates and that the oceans are then replenished by the cycle of rainfall and river runoff ("I have proved by experiment that salt water evaporated forms fresh and the vapor does not when it condenses condense into sea water again.") Biology. Empirical research. Aristotle was the first person to study biology systematically, and biology forms a large part of his writings. He spent two years observing and describing the zoology of Lesbos and the surrounding seas, including in particular the Pyrrha lagoon in the centre of Lesbos. His data in "History of Animals", "Generation of Animals", "Movement of Animals", and "Parts of Animals" are assembled from his own observations, statements given by people with specialized knowledge, such as beekeepers and fishermen, and less accurate accounts provided by travellers from overseas. His apparent emphasis on animals rather than plants is a historical accident: his works on botany have been lost, but two books on plants by his pupil Theophrastus have survived. Aristotle reports on the sea-life visible from observation on Lesbos and the catches of fishermen. He describes the catfish, electric ray, and frogfish in detail, as well as cephalopods such as the octopus and paper nautilus. His description of the hectocotyl arm of cephalopods, used in sexual reproduction, was widely disbelieved until the 19th century. He gives accurate descriptions of the four-chambered fore-stomachs of ruminants, and of the ovoviviparous embryological development of the hound shark.
118	Aristotle He notes that an animal's structure is well matched to function so birds like the heron (which live in marshes with soft mud and live by catching fish) have a long neck, long legs, and a sharp spear-like beak, whereas ducks that swim have short legs and webbed feet. Darwin, too, noted these sorts of differences between similar kinds of animal, but unlike Aristotle used the data to come to the theory of evolution. Aristotle's writings can seem to modern readers close to implying evolution, but while Aristotle was aware that new mutations or hybridizations could occur, he saw these as rare accidents. For Aristotle, accidents, like heat waves in winter, must be considered distinct from natural causes. He was thus critical of Empedocles's materialist theory of a "survival of the fittest" origin of living things and their organs, and ridiculed the idea that accidents could lead to orderly results. To put his views into modern terms, he nowhere says that different species can have a common ancestor, or that one kind can change into another, or that kinds can become extinct. Scientific style. Aristotle did not do experiments in the modern sense. He used the ancient Greek term to mean observations, or at most investigative procedures like dissection. In "Generation of Animals", he finds a fertilized hen's egg of a suitable stage and opens it to see the embryo's heart beating inside. Instead, he practiced a different style of science: systematically gathering data, discovering patterns common to whole groups of animals, and inferring possible causal explanations from these. This style is common in modern biology when large amounts of data become available in a new field, such as genomics. It does not result in the same certainty as experimental science, but it sets out testable hypotheses and constructs a narrative explanation of what is observed. In this sense, Aristotle's biology is scientific. From the data he collected and documented, Aristotle inferred quite a number of rules relating the life-history features of the live-bearing tetrapods (terrestrial placental mammals) that he studied. Among these correct predictions are the following. Brood size decreases with (adult) body mass, so that an elephant has fewer young (usually just one) per brood than a mouse. Lifespan increases with gestation period, and also with body mass, so that elephants live longer than mice, have a longer period of gestation, and are heavier. As a final example, fecundity decreases with lifespan, so long-lived kinds like elephants have fewer young in total than short-lived kinds like mice. Classification of living things.
119	Aristotle Aristotle distinguished about 500 species of animals, arranging these in the "History of Animals" in a graded scale of perfection, a nonreligious version of the "scala naturae", with man at the top. His system had eleven grades of animal, from highest potential to lowest, expressed in their form at birth: the highest gave live birth to hot and wet creatures, the lowest laid cold, dry mineral-like eggs. Animals came above plants, and these in turn were above minerals. He grouped what the modern zoologist would call vertebrates as the hotter "animals with blood", and below them the colder invertebrates as "animals without blood". Those with blood were divided into the live-bearing (mammals), and the egg-laying (birds, reptiles, fish). Those without blood were insects, crustacea (non-shelled – cephalopods, and shelled) and the hard-shelled molluscs (bivalves and gastropods). He recognised that animals did not exactly fit into a linear scale, and noted various exceptions, such as that sharks had a placenta like the tetrapods. To a modern biologist, the explanation, not available to Aristotle, is convergent evolution. Philosophers of science have generally concluded that Aristotle was not interested in taxonomy, but zoologists who studied this question in the early 21st century think otherwise. He believed that purposive final causes guided all natural processes; this teleological view justified his observed data as an expression of formal design. Psychology. Soul. Aristotle's psychology, given in his treatise "On the Soul" (), posits three kinds of soul (): the vegetative soul, the sensitive soul, and the rational soul. Humans have all three. The vegetative soul is concerned with growth and nourishment. The sensitive soul experiences sensations and movement. The unique part of the human, rational soul is its ability to receive forms of other things and to compare them using the (intellect) and (reason). For Aristotle, the soul is the form of a living being. Because all beings are composites of form and matter, the form of living beings is that which endows them with what is specific to living beings, e.g. the ability to initiate movement (or in the case of plants, growth and transformations, which Aristotle considers types of movement). In contrast to earlier philosophers, but in accordance with the Egyptians, he placed the rational soul in the heart, rather than the brain. Notable is Aristotle's division of sensation and thought, which generally differed from the concepts of previous philosophers, with the exception of Alcmaeon. In "On the Soul", Aristotle famously criticizes Plato's theory of the soul and develops his own in response.
120	Aristotle The first criticism is against Plato's view of the soul in the "Timaeus" that the soul takes up space and is able to come into physical contact with bodies. 20th-century scholarship overwhelmingly opposed Aristotle's interpretation of Plato and maintained that he had misunderstood him. Today's scholars have tended to re-assess Aristotle's interpretation and been more positive about it. Aristotle's other criticism is that Plato's view of reincarnation entails that it is possible for a soul and its body to be mis-matched; in principle, Aristotle alleges, any soul can go with any body, according to Plato's theory. Aristotle's claim that the soul is the form of a living being eliminates that possibility and thus rules out reincarnation. Memory. According to Aristotle in "On the Soul", memory is the ability to hold a perceived experience in the mind and to distinguish between the internal "appearance" and an occurrence in the past. In other words, a memory is a mental picture (phantasm) that can be recovered. Aristotle believed an impression is left on a semi-fluid bodily organ that undergoes several changes in order to make a memory. A memory occurs when stimuli such as sights or sounds are so complex that the nervous system cannot receive all the impressions at once. These changes are the same as those involved in the operations of sensation, Aristotelian 'common sense', and thinking. Aristotle uses the term 'memory' for the actual retaining of an experience in the impression that can develop from sensation, and for the intellectual anxiety that comes with the impression because it is formed at a particular time and processing specific contents. Memory is of the past, prediction is of the future, and sensation is of the present. Retrieval of impressions cannot be performed suddenly. A transitional channel is needed and located in past experiences, both for previous experience and present experience. Because Aristotle believes people receive all kinds of sense perceptions and perceive them as impressions, people are continually weaving together new impressions of experiences. To search for these impressions, people search the memory itself. Within the memory, if one experience is offered instead of a specific memory, that person will reject this experience until they find what they are looking for. Recollection occurs when one retrieved experience naturally follows another. If the chain of "images" is needed, one memory will stimulate the next. When people recall experiences, they stimulate certain previous experiences until they reach the one that is needed. Recollection is thus the self-directed activity of retrieving the information stored in a memory impression. Only humans can remember impressions of intellectual activity, such as numbers and words.
121	Aristotle Animals that have perception of time can retrieve memories of their past observations. Remembering involves only perception of the things remembered and of the time passed. Aristotle believed the chain of thought, which ends in recollection of certain impressions, was connected systematically in relationships such as similarity, contrast, and contiguity, described in his laws of association. Aristotle believed that past experiences are hidden within the mind. A force operates to awaken the hidden material to bring up the actual experience. According to Aristotle, association is the power innate in a mental state, which operates upon the unexpressed remains of former experiences, allowing them to rise and be recalled. Dreams. Aristotle describes sleep in "On Sleep and Wakefulness". Sleep takes place as a result of overuse of the senses or of digestion, so it is vital to the body. While a person is asleep, the critical activities, which include thinking, sensing, recalling and remembering, do not function as they do during wakefulness. Since a person cannot sense during sleep, they cannot have desire, which is the result of sensation. However, the senses are able to work during sleep, albeit differently, unless they are weary. Dreams do not involve actually sensing a stimulus. In dreams, sensation is still involved, but in an altered manner. Aristotle explains that when a person stares at a moving stimulus such as the waves in a body of water, and then looks away, the next thing they look at appears to have a wavelike motion. When a person perceives a stimulus and the stimulus is no longer the focus of their attention, it leaves an impression. When the body is awake and the senses are functioning properly, a person constantly encounters new stimuli to sense and so the impressions of previously perceived stimuli are ignored. However, during sleep the impressions made throughout the day are noticed as there are no new distracting sensory experiences. So, dreams result from these lasting impressions. Since impressions are all that are left and not the exact stimuli, dreams do not resemble the actual waking experience. During sleep, a person is in an altered state of mind. Aristotle compares a sleeping person to a person who is overtaken by strong feelings toward a stimulus. For example, a person who has a strong infatuation with someone may begin to think they see that person everywhere because they are so overtaken by their feelings. Since a person sleeping is in a suggestible state and unable to make judgements, they become easily deceived by what appears in their dreams, like the infatuated person. This leads the person to believe the dream is real, even when the dreams are absurd in nature.
122	Aristotle In "De Anima" iii 3, Aristotle ascribes the ability to create, to store, and to recall images in the absence of perception to the faculty of imagination, "phantasia". One component of Aristotle's theory of dreams disagrees with previously held beliefs. He claimed that dreams are not foretelling and not sent by a divine being. Aristotle reasoned naturalistically that instances in which dreams do resemble future events are simply coincidences. Aristotle claimed that a dream is first established by the fact that the person is asleep when they experience it. If a person had an image appear for a moment after waking up or if they see something in the dark it is not considered a dream because they were awake when it occurred. Secondly, any sensory experience that is perceived while a person is asleep does not qualify as part of a dream. For example, if, while a person is sleeping, a door shuts and in their dream they hear a door is shut, this sensory experience is not part of the dream. Lastly, the images of dreams must be a result of lasting impressions of waking sensory experiences. Practical philosophy. Aristotle's practical philosophy covers areas such as ethics, politics, economics, and rhetoric. Ethics. Aristotle considered ethics to be a practical rather than theoretical study, i.e., one aimed at becoming good and doing good rather than knowing for its own sake. He wrote several treatises on ethics, most notably including the "Nicomachean Ethics". Aristotle taught that virtue has to do with the proper function ("ergon") of a thing. An eye is only a good eye in so much as it can see because the proper function of an eye is sight. Aristotle reasoned that humans must have a function specific to humans, and that this function must be an activity of the "psuchē" ("soul") in accordance with reason ("logos"). Aristotle identified such an optimum activity (the virtuous mean, between the accompanying vices of excess or deficiency) of the soul as the aim of all human deliberate action, "eudaimonia", generally translated as "happiness" or sometimes "well-being". To have the potential of ever being happy in this way necessarily requires a good character ("ēthikē" "aretē"), often translated as moral or ethical virtue or excellence. Aristotle taught that to achieve a virtuous and potentially happy character requires a first stage of having the fortune to be habituated not deliberately, but by teachers, and experience, leading to a later stage in which one consciously chooses to do the best things.
123	Aristotle When the best people come to live life this way their practical wisdom () and their intellect () can develop with each other towards the highest possible human virtue, the wisdom of an accomplished theoretical or speculative thinker, or in other words, a philosopher. Politics. In addition to his works on ethics, which address the individual, Aristotle addressed the city in his work titled "Politics". Aristotle considered the city to be a natural community. Moreover, he considered the city to be prior in importance to the family, which in turn is prior to the individual, "for the whole must of necessity be prior to the part". He famously stated that "man is by nature a political animal" and argued that humanity's defining factor among others in the animal kingdom is its rationality. Aristotle conceived of politics as being like an organism rather than like a machine, and as a collection of parts none of which can exist without the others. Aristotle's conception of the city is organic, and he is considered one of the first to conceive of the city in this manner. The common modern understanding of a political community as a modern state is quite different from Aristotle's understanding. Although he was aware of the existence and potential of larger empires, the natural community according to Aristotle was the city ("polis") which functions as a political "community" or "partnership" ("koinōnia"). The aim of the city is not just to avoid injustice or for economic stability, but rather to allow at least some citizens the possibility to live a good life, and to perform beautiful acts: "The political partnership must be regarded, therefore, as being for the sake of noble actions, not for the sake of living together." This is distinguished from modern approaches, beginning with social contract theory, according to which individuals leave the state of nature because of "fear of violent death" or its "inconveniences". In "Protrepticus", the character 'Aristotle' states: For we all agree that the most excellent man should rule, i.e., the supreme by nature, and that the law rules and alone is authoritative; but the law is a kind of intelligence, i.e. a discourse based on intelligence. And again, what standard do we have, what criterion of good things, that is more precise than the intelligent man? For all that this man will choose, if the choice is based on his knowledge, are good things and their contraries are bad.
124	Aristotle And since everybody chooses most of all what conforms to their own proper dispositions (a just man choosing to live justly, a man with bravery to live bravely, likewise a self-controlled man to live with self-control), it is clear that the intelligent man will choose most of all to be intelligent; for this is the function of that capacity. Hence it's evident that, according to the most authoritative judgment, intelligence is supreme among goods. As Plato's disciple Aristotle was rather critical concerning democracy and, following the outline of certain ideas from Plato's "Statesman", he developed a coherent theory of integrating various forms of power into a so-called mixed state: It is ... constitutional to take ... from oligarchy that offices are to be elected, and from democracy that this is not to be on a property-qualification. This then is the mode of the mixture; and the mark of a good mixture of democracy and oligarchy is when it is possible to speak of the same constitution as a democracy and as an oligarchy. Economics. Aristotle made substantial contributions to economic thought, especially to thought in the Middle Ages. In "Politics", Aristotle addresses the city, property, and trade. His response to criticisms of private property, in Lionel Robbins's view, anticipated later proponents of private property among philosophers and economists, as it related to the overall utility of social arrangements. Aristotle believed that although communal arrangements may seem beneficial to society, and that although private property is often blamed for social strife, such evils in fact come from human nature. In "Politics", Aristotle offers one of the earliest accounts of the origin of money. Money came into use because people became dependent on one another, importing what they needed and exporting the surplus. For the sake of convenience, people then agreed to deal in something that is intrinsically useful and easily applicable, such as iron or silver. Aristotle's discussions on retail and interest was a major influence on economic thought in the Middle Ages. He had a low opinion of retail, believing that contrary to using money to procure things one needs in managing the household, retail trade seeks to make a profit. It thus uses goods as a means to an end, rather than as an end unto itself. He believed that retail trade was in this way unnatural. Similarly, Aristotle considered making a profit through interest unnatural, as it makes a gain out of the money itself, and not from its use. Aristotle gave a summary of the function of money that was perhaps remarkably precocious for his time.
125	Aristotle He wrote that because it is impossible to determine the value of every good through a count of the number of other goods it is worth, the necessity arises of a single universal standard of measurement. Money thus allows for the association of different goods and makes them "commensurable". He goes on to state that money is also useful for future exchange, making it a sort of security. That is, "if we do not want a thing now, we shall be able to get it when we do want it". Rhetoric. Aristotle's "Rhetoric" proposes that a speaker can use three basic kinds of appeals to persuade his audience: "ethos" (an appeal to the speaker's character), "pathos" (an appeal to the audience's emotion), and "logos" (an appeal to logical reasoning). He also categorizes rhetoric into three genres: epideictic (ceremonial speeches dealing with praise or blame), forensic (judicial speeches over guilt or innocence), and deliberative (speeches calling on an audience to decide on an issue). Aristotle also outlines two kinds of rhetorical proofs: "enthymeme" (proof by syllogism) and "paradeigma" (proof by example). Poetics. Aristotle writes in his "Poetics" that epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, painting, sculpture, music, and dance are all fundamentally acts of "mimesis" ("imitation"), each varying in imitation by medium, object, and manner. He applies the term "mimesis" both as a property of a work of art and also as the product of the artist's intention and contends that the audience's realisation of the "mimesis" is vital to understanding the work itself. Aristotle states that "mimesis" is a natural instinct of humanity that separates humans from animals and that all human artistry "follows the pattern of nature". Because of this, Aristotle believed that each of the mimetic arts possesses what Stephen Halliwell calls "highly structured procedures for the achievement of their purposes." For example, music imitates with the media of rhythm and harmony, whereas dance imitates with rhythm alone, and poetry with language. The forms also differ in their object of imitation. Comedy, for instance, is a dramatic imitation of men worse than average; whereas tragedy imitates men slightly better than average. Lastly, the forms differ in their manner of imitation – through narrative or character, through change or no change, and through drama or no drama.
126	Aristotle While it is believed that Aristotle's "Poetics" originally comprised two books – one on comedy and one on tragedy – only the portion that focuses on tragedy has survived. Aristotle taught that tragedy is composed of six elements: plot-structure, character, style, thought, spectacle, and lyric poetry. The characters in a tragedy are merely a means of driving the story; and the plot, not the characters, is the chief focus of tragedy. Tragedy is the imitation of action arousing pity and fear, and is meant to effect the catharsis of those same emotions. Aristotle concludes "Poetics" with a discussion on which, if either, is superior: epic or tragic mimesis. He suggests that because tragedy possesses all the attributes of an epic, possibly possesses additional attributes such as spectacle and music, is more unified, and achieves the aim of its mimesis in shorter scope, it can be considered superior to epic. Aristotle was a keen systematic collector of riddles, folklore, and proverbs; he and his school had a special interest in the riddles of the Delphic Oracle and studied the fables of Aesop. Gender and sexuality. Aristotle never wrote a specific work on women. However, he asserted the existence of differences between men and women throughout his biological, political, and ethical works. For most female animals, including human women, Aristotle maintains that they are for the most part physically smaller and of a more cowardly constitution. From these comments in his biological works, he often connects the idea that women are inferior with their need to be ruled over by men. Proponents of feminist philosophy question the extent to which Aristotle's philosophy relies on misogynistic and sexist tenets. Within the same works, however, there is still concern for women's happiness and participation within the city. For instance, women are meant to be consulted on household decisions, are praised for their tenderness to children, and expected to participate in religious festivals. Aristotle, like other Greek philosophers such as Plato and Xenophon, rejected homosexuality, believing that it could lead people to become immoral due to the fact that he believed it went against nature's purpose. Transmission. More than 2300 years after his death, Aristotle remains one of the most influential people who ever lived. He contributed to almost every field of human knowledge then in existence, and he was the founder of many new fields. According to the philosopher Bryan Magee, "it is doubtful whether any human being has ever known as much as he did". Aristotle has been regarded as the first scientist.
127	Aristotle Among countless other achievements, Aristotle was the founder of formal logic, pioneered the study of zoology, and left every future scientist and philosopher in his debt through his contributions to the scientific method. Taneli Kukkonen, observes that his achievement in founding two sciences is unmatched, and his reach in influencing "every branch of intellectual enterprise" including Western ethical and political theory, theology, rhetoric, and literary analysis is equally long. As a result, Kukkonen argues, any analysis of reality today "will almost certainly carry Aristotelian overtones ... evidence of an exceptionally forceful mind." Jonathan Barnes wrote that "an account of Aristotle's intellectual afterlife would be little less than a history of European thought". Aristotle has been called the father of logic, biology, political science, zoology, embryology, natural law, scientific method, rhetoric, psychology, realism, criticism, individualism, teleology, and meteorology. The scholar Taneli Kukkonen notes that "in the best 20th-century scholarship Aristotle comes alive as a thinker wrestling with the full weight of the Greek philosophical tradition." What follows is an overview of the transmission and influence of his texts and ideas into the modern era. His successor, Theophrastus. Aristotle's pupil and successor, Theophrastus, wrote the "History of Plants", a pioneering work in botany. Some of his technical terms remain in use, such as carpel from "carpos", fruit, and pericarp, from "pericarpion", seed chamber. Theophrastus was much less concerned with formal causes than Aristotle was, instead pragmatically describing how plants functioned. Later Greek philosophy. The immediate influence of Aristotle's work was felt as the Lyceum grew into the Peripatetic school. Aristotle's students included Aristoxenus, Dicaearchus, Demetrius of Phalerum, Eudemos of Rhodes, Harpalus, Hephaestion, Mnason of Phocis, Nicomachus, and Theophrastus. Aristotle's influence over Alexander the Great is seen in the latter's bringing with him on his expedition a host of zoologists, botanists, and researchers. He had also learned a great deal about Persian customs and traditions from his teacher. Although his respect for Aristotle was diminished as his travels made it clear that much of Aristotle's geography was clearly wrong, when the old philosopher released his works to the public, Alexander complained "Thou hast not done well to publish thy acroamatic doctrines; for in what shall I surpass other men if those doctrines wherein I have been trained are to be all men's common property?" Hellenistic science. After Theophrastus, the Lyceum failed to produce any original work. Though interest in Aristotle's ideas survived, they were generally taken unquestioningly.
128	Aristotle It is not until the age of Alexandria under the Ptolemies that advances in biology can be again found. The first medical teacher at Alexandria, Herophilus of Chalcedon, corrected Aristotle, placing intelligence in the brain, and connected the nervous system to motion and sensation. Herophilus also distinguished between veins and arteries, noting that the latter pulse while the former do not. Though a few ancient atomists such as Lucretius challenged the teleological viewpoint of Aristotelian ideas about life, teleology (and after the rise of Christianity, natural theology) would remain central to biological thought essentially until the 18th and 19th centuries. Ernst Mayr states that there was "nothing of any real consequence in biology after Lucretius and Galen until the Renaissance." Revival. Following the decline of the Roman Empire, Aristotle's vast philosophical and scientific corpus lay largely dormant in the West. However, his works underwent a remarkable revival in the Abbasid Caliphate. Translated into Arabic alongside other Greek classics, Aristotle's logic, ethics, and natural philosophy ignited the minds of early Islamic scholars. Through meticulous commentaries and critical engagements, figures like Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) breathed new life into Aristotle's ideas. They harmonized his logic with Islamic theology, employed his scientific methodologies to explore the natural world, and even reinterpreted his ethics within the framework of Islamic morality. This revival was not mere imitation. Islamic thinkers embraced Aristotle's rigorous methods while simultaneously challenging his conclusions where they diverged from their own religious beliefs. Byzantine scholars. Greek Christian scribes played a crucial role in the preservation of Aristotle by copying all the extant Greek language manuscripts of the corpus. The first Greek Christians to comment extensively on Aristotle were Philoponus, Elias, and David in the sixth century, and Stephen of Alexandria in the early seventh century. John Philoponus stands out for having attempted a fundamental critique of Aristotle's views on the eternity of the world, movement, and other elements of Aristotelian thought. Philoponus questioned Aristotle's teaching of physics, noting its flaws and introducing the theory of impetus to explain his observations. After a hiatus of several centuries, formal commentary by Eustratius and Michael of Ephesus reappeared in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, apparently sponsored by Anna Comnena. Medieval Islamic world. Aristotle is considered the most influential figure in the history of Arabic philosophy and was one of the most revered thinkers in early Islamic theology. Most of the still extant works of Aristotle, as well as a number of the original Greek commentaries, were translated into Arabic and studied by Muslim philosophers, scientists, and scholars. Averroes, Avicenna, and Alpharabius, who wrote on Aristotle in great depth, also influenced Thomas Aquinas and other Western Christian scholastic philosophers.
129	Aristotle Alkindus greatly admired Aristotle's philosophy, and Averroes spoke of Aristotle as the "exemplar" for all future philosophers. Medieval Muslim scholars regularly described Aristotle as the "First Teacher". The title was later used by Western philosophers (as in the famous poem of Dante) who were influenced by the tradition of Islamic philosophy. Medieval Europe. With the loss of the study of ancient Greek in the early medieval Latin West, Aristotle was practically unknown there from c. CE 600 to c. 1100 except through the Latin translation of the "Organon" made by Boethius. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, interest in Aristotle revived and Latin Christians had translations made, both from Arabic translations, such as those by Gerard of Cremona, and from the original Greek, such as those by James of Venice and William of Moerbeke. After the Scholastic Thomas Aquinas wrote his "Summa Theologica", working from Moerbeke's translations and calling Aristotle "The Philosopher", the demand for Aristotle's writings grew, and the Greek manuscripts returned to the West, stimulating a revival of Aristotelianism in Europe that continued into the Renaissance. These thinkers blended Aristotelian philosophy with Christianity, bringing the thought of Ancient Greece into the Middle Ages. Scholars such as Boethius, Peter Abelard, and John Buridan worked on Aristotelian logic. According to scholar Roger Theodore Lafferty, Dante built up the philosophy of the "Comedy" with the works of Aristotle as a foundation, just as the scholastics used Aristotle as the basis for their thinking. Dante knew Aristotle directly from Latin translations of his works and indirectly through quotations in the works of Albert Magnus. Dante even acknowledges Aristotle's influence explicitly in the poem, specifically when Virgil justifies the Inferno's structure by citing the "Nicomachean Ethics". Dante famously refers to him as "he / Who is acknowledged Master of those who know". Medieval Judaism. Moses Maimonides (considered to be the foremost intellectual figure of medieval Judaism) adopted Aristotelianism from the Islamic scholars and based his "Guide for the Perplexed" on it and that became the basis of Jewish scholastic philosophy. Maimonides also considered Aristotle to be the greatest philosopher that ever lived, and styled him as the "chief of the philosophers". Also, in his letter to Samuel ibn Tibbon, Maimonides observes that there is no need for Samuel to study the writings of philosophers who preceded Aristotle because the works of the latter are "sufficient by themselves and [superior] to all that were written before them.
130	Aristotle His intellect, Aristotle's is the extreme limit of human intellect, apart from him upon whom the divine emanation has flowed forth to such an extent that they reach the level of prophecy, there being no level higher". Early Modern science. In the early modern period, scientists such as William Harvey in England and Galileo Galilei in Italy reacted against the theories of Aristotle and other classical era thinkers like Galen, establishing new theories based to some degree on observation and experiment. Harvey demonstrated the circulation of the blood, establishing that the heart functioned as a pump rather than being the seat of the soul and the controller of the body's heat, as Aristotle thought. Galileo used more doubtful arguments to displace Aristotle's physics, proposing that bodies all fall at the same speed whatever their weight. 18th and 19th-century science. The English mathematician George Boole fully accepted Aristotle's logic, but decided "to go under, over, and beyond" it with his system of algebraic logic in his 1854 book "The Laws of Thought". This gives logic a mathematical foundation with equations, enables it to solve equations as well as check validity, and allows it to handle a wider class of problems by expanding propositions of any number of terms, not just two. Charles Darwin regarded Aristotle as the most important contributor to the subject of biology. In an 1882 letter he wrote that "Linnaeus and Cuvier have been my two gods, though in very different ways, but they were mere schoolboys to old Aristotle". Also, in later editions of the book "On the Origin of Species', Darwin traced evolutionary ideas as far back as Aristotle; the text he cites is a summary by Aristotle of the ideas of the earlier Greek philosopher Empedocles. Present science. The philosopher Bertrand Russell claims that "almost every serious intellectual advance has had to begin with an attack on some Aristotelian doctrine". Russell calls Aristotle's ethics "repulsive", and labelled his logic "as definitely antiquated as Ptolemaic astronomy". Russell states that these errors make it difficult to do historical justice to Aristotle, until one remembers what an advance he made upon all of his predecessors. The Dutch historian of science Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis writes that Aristotle and his predecessors showed the difficulty of science by "proceed[ing] so readily to frame a theory of such a general character" on limited evidence from their senses. In 1985, the biologist Peter Medawar could still state in "pure seventeenth century" tones that Aristotle had assembled "a strange and generally speaking rather tiresome farrago of hearsay, imperfect observation, wishful thinking and credulity amounting to downright gullibility".
131	Aristotle Zoologists have frequently mocked Aristotle for errors and unverified secondhand reports. However, modern observation has confirmed several of his more surprising claims. Aristotle's work remains largely unknown to modern scientists, though zoologists sometimes mention him as the father of biology or in particular of marine biology. Practising zoologists are unlikely to adhere to Aristotle's chain of being, but its influence is still perceptible in the use of the terms "lower" and "upper" to designate taxa such as groups of plants. The evolutionary biologist Armand Marie Leroi has reconstructed Aristotle's biology, while Niko Tinbergen's four questions, based on Aristotle's four causes, are used to analyse animal behaviour; they examine function, phylogeny, mechanism, and ontogeny. The concept of homology began with Aristotle; the evolutionary developmental biologist Lewis I. Held commented that he would be interested in the concept of deep homology. In systematics too, recent studies suggest that Aristotle made important contributions in taxonomy and biological nomenclature. Surviving works. Corpus Aristotelicum. The works of Aristotle that have survived from antiquity through medieval manuscript transmission are collected in the Corpus Aristotelicum. These texts, as opposed to Aristotle's lost works, are technical philosophical treatises from within Aristotle's school. Reference to them is made according to the organization of Immanuel Bekker's Royal Prussian Academy edition ("", Berlin, 1831–1870), which in turn is based on ancient classifications of these works. Loss and preservation. Aristotle wrote his works on papyrus scrolls, the common writing medium of that era. His writings are divisible into two groups: the "exoteric", intended for the public, and the "esoteric", for use within the Lyceum school. Aristotle's "lost" works stray considerably in characterization from the surviving Aristotelian corpus. Whereas the lost works appear to have been originally written with a view to subsequent publication, the surviving works mostly resemble lecture notes not intended for publication. Cicero's description of Aristotle's literary style as "a river of gold" must have applied to the published works, not the surviving notes. A major question in the history of Aristotle's works is how the exoteric writings were all lost, and how the ones now possessed came to be found. The consensus is that Andronicus of Rhodes collected the esoteric works of Aristotle's school which existed in the form of smaller, separate works, distinguished them from those of Theophrastus and other Peripatetics, edited them, and finally compiled them into the more cohesive, larger works as they are known today. According to Strabo and Plutarch, after Aristotle's death, his library and writings went to Theophrastus (Aristotle's successor as head of the Lyceum and the Peripatetic school).
132	Aristotle After the death of Theophrastus, the peripatetic library went to Neleus of Scepsis. Some time later, the Kingdom of Pergamon began conscripting books for a royal library, and the heirs of Neleus hid their collection in a cellar to prevent it from being seized for that purpose. The library was stored there for about a century and a half, in conditions that were not ideal for document preservation. On the death of Attalus III, which also ended the royal library ambitions, the existence of Aristotelian library was disclosed, and it was purchased by Apellicon and returned to Athens c. 100 BC. Apellicon sought to recover the texts, many of which were seriously degraded at this point due to the conditions in which they were stored. He had them copied out into new manuscripts, and used his best guesswork to fill in the gaps where the originals were unreadable. When Sulla seized Athens in 86 BC, he seized the library and transferred it to Rome. There, Andronicus of Rhodes organized the texts into the first complete edition of Aristotle's works (and works attributed to him). The Aristotelian texts we have today are based on these. Depictions in art. Paintings. Aristotle has been depicted by major artists including Lucas Cranach the Elder, Justus van Gent, Raphael, Paolo Veronese, Jusepe de Ribera, Rembrandt, and Francesco Hayez over the centuries. Among the best-known depictions is Raphael's fresco "The School of Athens", in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, where the figures of Plato and Aristotle are central to the image, at the architectural vanishing point, reflecting their importance. Rembrandt's "Aristotle with a Bust of Homer", too, is a celebrated work, showing the knowing philosopher and the blind Homer from an earlier age: as the art critic Jonathan Jones writes, "this painting will remain one of the greatest and most mysterious in the world, ensnaring us in its musty, glowing, pitch-black, terrible knowledge of time." Eponyms. The Aristotle Mountains in Antarctica are named after Aristotle. He was the first person known to conjecture, in his book "Meteorology", the existence of a landmass in the southern high-latitude region, which he called "Antarctica". Aristoteles is a crater on the Moon bearing the classical form of Aristotle's name. (6123) Aristoteles, an asteroid in the main asteroid belt is also bearing the classical form of his name. References. Citations. Sources. Further reading. The secondary literature on Aristotle is vast. The following is only a small selection.
133	An American in Paris 1928 composition by George Gershwin An American in Paris is a jazz-influenced symphonic poem (or tone poem) for orchestra by American composer George Gershwin first performed in 1928. It was inspired by the time that Gershwin had spent in Paris and evokes the sights and energy of the French capital during the "". Gershwin scored the piece for the standard instruments of the symphony orchestra plus celesta, saxophones, and automobile horns. He brought back four Parisian taxi horns for the New York premiere of the composition, which took place on December 13, 1928, in Carnegie Hall, with Walter Damrosch conducting the New York Philharmonic. It was Damrosch who had commissioned Gershwin to write his Concerto in F following the earlier success of "Rhapsody in Blue" (1924). He completed the orchestration on November 18, less than four weeks before the work's premiere. He collaborated on the original program notes with critic and composer Deems Taylor. On January 1, 2025, "An American in Paris" entered the public domain. Background. Although the story is likely apocryphal, Gershwin is said to have been attracted by Maurice Ravel's unusual chords, and Gershwin went on his first trip to Paris in 1926 ready to study with Ravel. After his initial student audition with Ravel turned into a sharing of musical theories, Ravel said he could not teach him, saying, "Why be a second-rate Ravel when you can be a first-rate Gershwin?" Gershwin strongly encouraged Ravel to come to the United States for a tour. To this end, upon his return to New York, Gershwin joined the efforts of Ravel's friend Robert Schmitz, a pianist Ravel had met during the war, to urge Ravel to tour the U.S. Schmitz was the head of Pro Musica, promoting Franco-American musical relations, and was able to offer Ravel a $10,000 fee for the tour, an enticement Gershwin knew would be important to Ravel. Gershwin greeted Ravel in New York in March 1928 during a party held for Ravel's birthday by Éva Gauthier. Ravel's tour reignited Gershwin's desire to return to Paris, which he and his brother Ira did after meeting Ravel. Ravel's high praise of Gershwin in an introductory letter to Nadia Boulanger caused Gershwin to seriously consider taking much more time to study abroad in Paris. Yet after he played for her, she told him she could not teach him. Boulanger gave Gershwin basically the same advice she gave all her accomplished master students: "What could I give you that you haven't already got?"
134	An American in Paris This did not set Gershwin back, as his real intent abroad was to complete a new work based on Paris and perhaps a second rhapsody for piano and orchestra to follow his "Rhapsody in Blue". Paris at this time hosted many expatriate writers, among them Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and artist Pablo Picasso. Composition. Themes from "An American in Paris" \key f \major \relative c" { \acciaccatura b8\mp( c-.) d,-. e4 Gershwin based "An American in Paris" on a melodic fragment called "Very Parisienne", written in 1926 on his first visit to Paris as a gift to his hosts, Robert and Mabel Schirmer. Gershwin called it "a rhapsodic ballet"; it is written freely and in a much more modern idiom than his prior works. Gershwin explained in "Musical America", "My purpose here is to portray the impressions of an American visitor in Paris as he strolls about the city, listens to the various street noises, and absorbs the French atmosphere." The piece is structured into five sections, which culminate in a loose A–B–A format. Gershwin's first A episode introduces the two main "walking" themes in the "Allegretto grazioso" and develops a third theme in the "Subito con brio". The style of this A section is written in the typical French style of composers Claude Debussy and Les Six. This A section featured duple meter, singsong rhythms, and diatonic melodies with the sounds of oboe, English horn, and taxi horns. The B section's "Andante ma con ritmo deciso" introduces the American Blues and spasms of homesickness. The "Allegro" that follows continues to express homesickness in a faster twelve-bar blues. In the B section, Gershwin uses common time, syncopated rhythms, and bluesy melodies with the sounds of trumpet, saxophone, and snare drum. "Moderato con grazia" is the last A section that returns to the themes set in A. After recapitulating the "walking" themes, Gershwin overlays the slow blues theme from section B in the final "Grandioso". Response. Gershwin did not particularly like Walter Damrosch's interpretation at the world premiere of "An American in Paris". He stated that Damrosch's sluggish, dragging tempo caused him to walk out of the hall during a matinee performance of this work. The audience, according to Edward Cushing, responded with "a demonstration of enthusiasm impressively genuine in contrast to the conventional applause which new music, good and bad, ordinarily arouses."
135	An American in Paris Critics believed that "An American in Paris" was better crafted than Gershwin's Concerto in F. "Evening Post" did not think it belonged in a program with classical composers César Franck, Richard Wagner, or Guillaume Lekeu on its premiere. Gershwin responded to the critics: It's not a Beethoven Symphony, you know... It's a humorous piece, nothing solemn about it. It's not intended to draw tears. If it pleases symphony audiences as a light, jolly piece, a series of impressions musically expressed, it succeeds. Instrumentation. "An American in Paris" was originally scored for 3 flutes (3rd doubling on piccolo), 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets in B-flat, bass clarinet in B-flat, 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B-flat, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, snare drum, bass drum, triangle, wood block, ratchet, cymbals, low and high tom-toms, xylophone, glockenspiel, celesta, 4 taxi horns labeled as A, B, C, and D with circles around them, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone (all doubling soprano and alto saxophones), and strings. Although most modern audiences have heard the taxi horns using the notes A, B, C, and D, it had been Gershwin's intention to use the notes A♭4, B♭4, D5, and A3. It is likely that in labeling the taxi horns as A, B, C, and D with circles, he was referring to the four horns, and not the notes that they played. A major revision of the work by composer and arranger F. Campbell-Watson simplified the instrumentation by reducing the saxophones to only three instruments: alto, tenor and baritone; the soprano and alto saxophone doublings were eliminated to avoid changing instruments. This became the standard performing edition until 2000, when Gershwin specialist Jack Gibbons made his own restoration of the original orchestration of "An American in Paris", working directly from Gershwin's original manuscript, including the restoration of Gershwin's soprano saxophone parts removed in Campbell-Watson's revision. Gibbons' restored orchestration of "An American in Paris" was performed at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall on July 9, 2000, by the City of Oxford Orchestra conducted by Levon Parikian. William Daly arranged the score for piano solo; this was published by New World Music in 1929. Preservation status. On September 22, 2013, it was announced that a musicological critical edition of the full orchestral score would be eventually released.
136	An American in Paris The Gershwin family, working in conjunction with the Library of Congress and the University of Michigan, were working to make scores available to the public that represent Gershwin's true intent. It was unknown whether the critical score would include the four minutes of material Gershwin later deleted from the work (such as the restatement of the blues theme after the faster 12 bar blues section), or if the score would document changes in the orchestration during Gershwin's composition process. The score to "An American in Paris" was scheduled to be issued first in a series of scores to be released. The entire project was expected to take 30 to 40 years to complete, but "An American in Paris" was planned to be an early volume in the series. Two urtext editions of the work were published by the German publisher B-Note Music in 2015. The changes made by Campbell-Watson were withdrawn in both editions. In the extended urtext, 120 bars of music were re-integrated. Conductor Walter Damrosch had cut them shortly before the first performance. On September 9, 2017, The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra gave the world premiere of the long-awaited critical edition of the piece prepared by Mark Clague, director of the Gershwin initiative at the University of Michigan. This performance was of the original 1928 orchestration. Recordings. "An American in Paris" has been frequently recorded. The first recording was made for the Victor Talking Machine Company in 1929 with Nathaniel Shilkret conducting the Victor Symphony Orchestra, drawn from members of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Gershwin was on hand to "supervise" the recording; however, Shilkret was reported to be in charge and eventually asked the composer to leave the recording studio. Then, a little later, Shilkret discovered there was no one to play the brief celesta solo during the slow section, so he hastily asked Gershwin if he might play the solo; Gershwin said he could and so he briefly participated in the actual recording. This recording is believed to use the taxi horns in the way that Gershwin had intended using the notes A-flat, B-flat, a higher D, and a lower A. The radio broadcast of the September 8, 1937, Hollywood Bowl George Gershwin Memorial Concert, in which "An American in Paris," also conducted by Shilkret, was second on the program, was recorded and was released in 1998 in a two-CD set. Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra recorded the work for RCA Victor, including one of the first stereo recordings of the music. In 1945, Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra recorded the piece for RCA Victor, one of the few commercial recordings Toscanini made of music by an American composer.
137	An American in Paris The Seattle Symphony also recorded a version in 1990 of Gershwin's original score, before numerous edits were made resulting in the score as we hear it today. The blues section of "An American in Paris" has been recorded separately by a number of artists; Ralph Flanagan & His Orchestra released it as a single in 1951 which reached No. 15 on the "Billboard" chart. Harry James released a version of the blues section on his 1953 album "One Night Stand," recorded live at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago (Columbia GL 522 and CL 522). Use in film. In 1951, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer released the musical film "An American in Paris", featuring Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron and directed by Vincente Minnelli. Winning the 1951 Best Picture Oscar and numerous other awards, the film featured many tunes of Gershwin and concluded with an extensive, elaborate dance sequence built around the symphonic poem "An American in Paris" (arranged for the film by Johnny Green), which at the time was the most expensive musical number ever filmed, costing $500,000 . Notes and references.
138	Academy Award for Best Production Design Academy Award which recognizes achievement for art direction in film The Academy Award for Best Production Design recognizes achievement for art direction in film. The category's original name was Best Art Direction, but was changed to its current name in 2012 for the 85th Academy Awards. This change resulted from the Art Directors' branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) being renamed the Designers' branch. Since 1947, the award is shared with the set decorators. It is awarded to the best interior design in a film. The films below are listed with their production year (for example, the 2000 Academy Award for Best Art Direction is given to a film from 1999). In the lists below, the winner of the award for each year is shown first, followed by the other nominees in alphabetical order. Winners and nominees. indicates the winner Notes. Shortlisted finalists. Finalists for Best Production Design were selected by branch members, who voted for ten finalists which were screened to determine the five nominees. Individuals with multiple wins. References.
139	Academy Awards Annual awards for cinematic achievements The Academy Awards, commonly known as the Oscars, are awards for artistic and technical merit in film. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States in recognition of excellence in cinematic achievements as assessed by the Academy's voting membership. The Oscars are widely considered to be the most prestigious awards in the film industry. The major award categories, known as the Academy Awards of Merit, are presented during a live-televised Hollywood ceremony in February or March. It is the oldest worldwide entertainment awards ceremony. The 1st Academy Awards were held in 1929. The second ceremony, in 1930, was the first one broadcast by radio. The 1953 ceremony was the first one televised. It is the oldest of the four major annual American entertainment awards. Its counterparts—the Emmy Awards for television, the Tony Awards for theater, and the Grammy Awards for music—are modeled after the Academy Awards. The Oscar statuette depicts a knight, rendered in the Art Deco style. History. The first Academy Awards presentation was held on May 16, 1929, at a private dinner function at The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, with an audience of about 270 people. The post-awards party was held at the Mayfair Hotel. The cost of guest tickets for that night's ceremony was $ (). Fifteen statuettes were awarded, honoring artists, directors, and other participants in the film-making industry of the time, for their works during the 1927–28 period. The ceremony ran for 15minutes. For this first ceremony, winners were announced to the media three months earlier. For the second ceremony in 1930, and the rest of the first decade, the results were given to newspapers for publication at 11:00pm on the night of the awards. In 1940, the "Los Angeles Times" announced the winners before the ceremony began. As a result, in 1941 the Academy started using a sealed envelope to reveal the names of the winners. The term "Oscar" is a registered trademark of the AMPAS. Milestones. The first Best Actor awarded was Emil Jannings, for his performances in "The Last Command" and "The Way of All Flesh". As he had to return to Europe before the ceremony, the Academy agreed to give him the prize early, making him the first Academy Award recipient. For the first Awards, winners were recognized for multiple films during the qualifying period; Jannings received the award for two movies in which he starred, and Janet Gaynor won the first Best Actress award for performances in three films.
140	Academy Awards Beginning with the second ceremony, performers received separate nominations for individual films; no performer has received multiple nominations in the same category since the 3rd Academy Awards. For the first six ceremonies, the eligibility period ran from August 1 to July 31. The 6th Academy Awards' eligibility ran from August 1, 1932, to December 31, 1933, and as of the 7th Academy Awards, subsequent eligibility periods have matched the calendar year (with the exception of the 93rd Academy Awards, which, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, extended the eligibility period to February 28, 2021). Best Foreign Language Film, now known as Best International Feature Film, was introduced at the 20th Academy Awards as a special award, and became a competitive category at the 29th Academy Awards. The 74th Academy Awards, held in 2002, presented the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Since 1973, all Academy Awards ceremonies, except for 2021, have ended with the Academy Award for Best Picture. Traditionally, the previous year's winners for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor present the awards for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively, and vice versa. In 2009, this model was replaced by each acting award being introduced by five previous winners, each of whom introduces one of the nominated performances, referred to as the "Fab 5" presenters format. The Fab 5 model returned in 2024 after a 15-year hiatus. On February 9, 2020, "Parasite" became the first foreign-language film to win Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards. The 93rd Academy Awards ceremony, honoring the best films of 2020 and early 2021, was held on April 25, 2021, after it was postponed from its original February 28, 2021, schedule due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cinema. As with the two previous ceremonies, there was no host. The ceremony was broadcast on ABC. It took place at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, California for the 19th consecutive year, with satellite locations at Union Station also in Los Angeles. Because of the virus impact on films and TV industries, Academy president David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson announced that for the 2021 Oscar Ceremony, streaming movies with a previously planned theatrical release were eligible. The theatrical requirement was reinstated starting with the 95th Academy Awards. Oscar statuette. Overview. The Oscar statuette, officially the Academy Award of Merit, is given to winners of each year's awards. Made of gold-plated bronze on a black metal base, it is tall, weighs and depicts a knight rendered in Art Deco style holding a sword standing on a reel of film with five spokes.
141	Academy Awards The five spokes represent the original branches of the Academy: Actors, Writers, Directors, Producers, and Technicians. Sculptor George Stanley, who also did the Muse Fountain at the Hollywood Bowl, sculpted Cedric Gibbons' design. The statuettes presented at the initial ceremonies were gold-plated solid bronze. Within a few years, the bronze was abandoned in favor of Britannia metal, a pewter-like alloy that is then plated in copper, nickel silver, and finally, 24-karat gold. Due to a metal shortage during World War II, Oscars were made of painted plaster for three years. Following the war, the Academy invited recipients to redeem the plaster figures for gold-plated metal ones. The only addition to the Oscar since it was created is a minor streamlining of the base. The original Oscar mold was cast in 1928 at the C.W. Shumway & Sons Foundry in Batavia, Illinois, which also contributed to casting the molds for the Vince Lombardi Trophy and Emmy Award statuettes. During the 1970s, the Oscar statues were cast in Crystal Lake, Illinois. From 1983 to 2015, approximately 50 Oscars in a tin alloy with gold plating were made each year in Chicago by Illinois manufacturer R.S. Owens & Company. It would take between three and four weeks to manufacture 50 statuettes. In 2016, the Academy returned to bronze as the core metal of the statuettes, handing manufacturing duties to Walden, New York-based Polich Tallix Fine Art Foundry, now owned and operated by UAP Urban Art Projects. While based on a digital scan of an original 1929 Oscar, the statuettes retain their modern-era dimensions and black pedestal. Cast in liquid bronze from 3D-printed ceramic molds and polished, they are then electroplated in 24-karat gold by Brooklyn, New York-based Epner Technology. The time required to produce 50 such statuettes is roughly three months. R.S. Owens is expected to continue producing other awards for the Academy, and service existing Oscars that need replating. Naming. The origin of the nickname of the trophy has been disputed, as multiple people have taken credit for naming the trophy "Oscar". Margaret Herrick, librarian and president of the Academy, may have said she named it after her supposed uncle Oscar in 1921. The only corroboration was a 1938 clipping from the "Los Angeles Examiner", in which Herrick told a story of her and her husband joking with each other using the phrase, "How's your uncle Oscar". Bette Davis, in her 1962 autobiography, claimed she named it in 1936 after her first husband, Harmon Oscar Nelson, of whom the statue's rear end reminded her. But the term had been in use at least two years before.
142	Academy Awards In a 1974 biography written by Whitney Stine with commentary from Davis, Davis wrote "I relinquish once and for all any claim that I was the one—so, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the honor is all yours". Columnist Sidney Skolsky wrote in his 1970 memoir that he came up with the term in 1934 under pressure for a deadline, mocking Vaudeville comedians who asked "Will you have a cigar, Oscar?" The Academy credits Skolsky with "the first confirmed newspaper reference" to "Oscar" in his column on March 16, 1934, which was written about that year's 6th Academy Awards. But in the newspaper clipping that Skolsky referred to, he wrote that , meaning that the name was already in use. Bruce Davis, a former executive director of the Academy, credited Eleanore Lilleberg, a secretary at the Academy when the award was first introduced, for the nickname. She had overseen the pre-ceremony handling of the awards. Davis credits Lilleberg because he found in an autobiography of Einar Lilleberg, Eleanore's brother, that Einar had referenced a Norwegian army veteran named Oscar whom the two knew in Chicago, whom Einar described as having always "stood straight and tall". He asserts credit "should almost certainly belong to" Lilleberg. In 2021, Brazilian researcher Dr. Waldemar Dalenogare Neto found the probable first public mention of the name "Oscar", in journalist Relman Morin's "Cinematters" column in the "Los Angeles Evening Post-Record" on December 5, 1933. Since the awards didn't take place that year, he said: "What's happened to the annual Academy banquet? As a rule, the banquet and the awarding of "Oscar", the bronze statuette given for best performances, is all over long before this". This information changes the version of Sidney Skolsky as the first to publicly mention the name. Engraving. To prevent information identifying the Oscar winners from leaking ahead of the ceremony, Oscar statuettes presented at the ceremony have blank baseplates. Until 2010, winners returned their statuettes to the Academy and had to wait several weeks to have their names inscribed on their respective Oscars. Since 2010, winners have had the option of having engraved nameplates applied to their statuettes at an inscription-processing station at the Governor's Ball, a party held immediately after the Oscar ceremony. The R.S. Owens company has engraved nameplates made before the ceremony, bearing the name of every potential winner. The nameplates for the non-winning nominees are later recycled. Ownership of Oscar statuettes. Before 1950, Oscar statuettes were, and remain, the property of the recipient.
143	Academy Awards Since then the statuettes have been legally encumbered by the requirement that the statuette be first offered for sale back to the Academy for $. If a winner refuses to agree to this stipulation, then the Academy keeps the statuette. Academy Awards predating this agreement have been sold in public auctions and private deals for six-figure sums. In 1989, Michael Todd's grandson tried to sell Todd's Best Picture Oscar for his 1956 production of "Around the World in 80 Days" to a movie prop collector. The Academy earned enforcement of its statuette contract by gaining a permanent injunction against the sale. In 1992, Harold Russell consigned his 1946 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for "The Best Years of Our Lives" to auction to raise money for his wife's medical expenses. Though his decision caused controversy, the first Oscar ever to be sold passed to a private collector on August 6, 1992, for $. Russell defended his action, saying, "I don't know why anybody would be critical. My wife's health is much more important than sentimental reasons. The movie will be here, even if Oscar isn't". In December 2011, Orson Welles' 1941 Oscar for "Citizen Kane" (Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay) was put up for auction, after his heirs won a 2004 court decision contending that Welles did not sign any agreement to return the statue to the Academy. On December 20, 2011, it sold in an online auction for $. Some buyers have subsequently returned the statuettes to the Academy, which keeps them in its treasury. Other awards presented by the Academy. In addition to the Academy Award of Merit (Oscar award), there are nine honorary (non-competitive) awards presented by the Academy from time to time (except for the Academy Honorary Award, the Technical Achievement Award, and the Student Academy Awards, which are presented annually): The Academy also awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. Nomination. From 2004 to 2020, the Academy Award nomination results were announced to the public in mid-January. Prior to that, the results were announced in early February. In 2021, the nominees were announced in March. In 2022, the nominees were announced in early February for the first time since 2003. Voters. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), a professional honorary organization, is composed of 9,905 voting members as of 2024[ [update]]. Academy membership is divided into different branches, with each representing a different discipline in film production. As of 2024[ [update]], actors constitute the largest bloc, numbering 1,258 (12.7% of the voting body).
144	Academy Awards Votes have been certified by the auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, and its predecessor Price Waterhouse, since the 7th Academy Awards in 1935. In May 2011, the Academy sent a letter advising its then-6,000 or so voting members that an online system for Oscar voting would be implemented in 2013, replacing mailed paper ballots. All AMPAS members must be invited to join by the Board of Governors, on behalf of Academy Branch Executive Committees. Membership eligibility may be achieved by a competitive nomination, or an existing member may submit a name, based on other significant contributions to the field of motion pictures. New membership proposals are considered annually. The Academy does not publicly disclose its membership, although as recently as 2007 press releases have announced the names of those who have been invited to join. In 2012, the results of a study conducted by the "Los Angeles Times" were published describing the demographic breakdown of approximately 88% of AMPAS' voting membership. Of the 5,100+ active voters confirmed, 94% were Caucasian, 77% were male, and 54% were found to be over the age of 60. 33% of voting members are former nominees (14%) and winners (19%). In 2016, the Academy launched an initiative to expand its membership and increase diversity. In 2024, voting membership stood at 9,905. Rules. According to Rules 2 and 3 of the official Academy Awards Rules, a film must open in the previous calendar year, from midnight at the start of January 1 to midnight at the end of December 31, in Los Angeles County, California, and play for seven consecutive days, to qualify, except for the Best International Feature Film, Best Documentary Feature, and awards in short film categories. The film must be shown at least three times on each day of its qualifying run, with at least one of the daily showings starting between 6pm and 10pm local time. For example, the 2009 Best Picture winner, "The Hurt Locker", was originally first released in 2008, but did not qualify for the 2008 awards, as it did not play its Oscar-qualifying run in Los Angeles until mid-2009, thus qualifying for the 2009 awards. Foreign films must include English subtitles. Each country can submit only one film for consideration in the International Feature Film category per year. Rule 2 states that a film must be feature-length, defined as a minimum of 40minutes, except for short-subject awards. It must exist either on a 35 mm or 70 mm film print, or in 24frame/s or 48frame/s progressive scan digital cinema format, with a minimum projector resolution of 2,048 by 1,080 pixels.
145	Academy Awards Since the 90th Academy Awards, presented in 2018, multi-part and limited series have been ineligible for the Best Documentary Feature award. This followed the win of "", an eight-hour presentation that was screened in a limited release before being broadcast in five parts on ABC and ESPN, in that category in 2017. The Academy's announcement of the new rule made no direct mention of that film. The Best International Feature Film award does not require a U.S. release. It requires the film to be submitted as its country's official selection. The Best Documentary Feature award requires either week-long releases in "both" Los Angeles County "and" any of the five boroughs of New York City during the previous calendar year, or a qualifying award at a competitive film festival from the Documentary Feature Qualifying Festival list, regardless of any public exhibition or distribution, or submission in the International Feature Film category as its country's official selection. The qualifying theatrical runs must meet the same requirements as those for non-documentary films regarding numbers and times of screenings. A film must have been reviewed by a critic from "The New York Times", "Time Out New York", the "Los Angeles Times", or "LA Weekly". Producers must submit an Official Screen Credits online form before the deadline. If it is not submitted by the defined deadline, the film will be ineligible for Academy Awards in any year. The form includes the production credits for all related categories. Awards in short film categories (Best Documentary Short Subject, Best Animated Short Film, and Best Live Action Short Film) have different eligibility rules from most other competitive awards. First, the qualifying period for release does not coincide with a calendar year, instead covering one year starting on October 1, and ending on September 30 of the calendar year before the ceremony. Second, there are multiple methods of qualification. The main method is a week-long theatrical release in "either" New York City "or" Los Angeles County during the eligibility period. Films also can qualify by winning specified awards at one of several competitive film festivals designated by the Academy, also without regard to prior public distribution. A film that is selected as a gold, silver, or bronze medal winner in an appropriate category of the immediately previous Student Academy Awards is also eligible (Documentary category for that award, and Animation, Narrative, Alternative, or International for the other awards). The requirements for the qualifying theatrical run are also different from those for other awards. Only one screening per day is required. For the Documentary award, the screening must start between noon and 10pm local time.
146	Academy Awards For other awards, no specific start time is required, but the film must appear in regular theater listings with dates and screening times. In late December, ballots and lists of eligible films are sent to the membership. For most categories, members from each of the branches vote to determine the nominees only in their respective categories, i.e. only directors vote for directors, writers for writers, actors for actors, etc. In the special case of Best Picture, all voting members are eligible to select the nominees. A number of branches are only eligible to vote in Best Picture during nomination voting; this includes a producers' branch, as Best Picture is awarded to a film's producer(s), and other branches which have no corresponding award. In all major categories, a variant of the single transferable vote is used, with each member casting a ballot with up to five nominees (ten for Best Picture) ranked preferentially. In certain categories, including International Feature Film, Documentary and Animated Feature, nominees are selected by special screening committees made up of members from all branches. In most categories, the winner is selected from among the nominees by plurality voting of all members. Since 2009, the Best Picture winner has been chosen by instant runoff voting. Since 2013, re-weighted range voting has been used to select the nominees for the Best Visual Effects. Film companies will spend as much as several million dollars on marketing to awards voters for a movie in the running for Best Picture, in attempts to improve chances of receiving Oscars and other movie awards conferred in Oscar season. The Academy enforces rules to limit overt campaigning by its members to try to eliminate excesses and prevent the process from becoming undignified. It has an awards czar on staff who advises members on allowed practices and levies penalties on offenders. For example, a producer of the 2009 Best Picture nominee "The Hurt Locker" was disqualified as a producer in the category when he contacted associates urging them to vote for his film and not another that was seen as the front-runner. "The Hurt Locker" eventually won. Academy Screening Room. The Academy Screening Room or Academy Digital Screening Room is a secure streaming platform which allows voting members of the Academy to view all eligible films (except, initially, those in the International category) in one place. It was introduced in 2019, for the 2020 Oscars. DVD screeners and Academy in-person screenings were still provided. For films to be included on the platform, the North American distributor must pay $, including a watermarking fee, and a digital copy of the film to be prepared for streaming by the Academy.
147	Academy Awards The platform can be accessed via Apple TV and Roku players. The watermarking process involved several video security firms, creating a forensic watermark and restricting the ability to take screenshots or screen recordings. In 2021, for the 2022 Oscars, the Academy banned all physical screeners and in-person screenings, restricting official membership viewing to the Academy Screening Room. Films eligible in the Documentary and International categories were made available in different sections of the platform. Distributors can also pay an extra fee to add video featurettes to promote their films on the platform. The in-person screenings were said to be cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Eligible films do not have to be added to the platform, but the Academy advertises them to voting members when they are. Awards ceremonies. Telecast. The major awards are presented at a live televised ceremony, commonly in late February or early March following the relevant calendar year, and six weeks after the announcement of the nominees. It is the culmination of the film awards season, which usually begins during November or December of the previous year. This is an elaborate extravaganza, with the invited guests walking up the red carpet in the creations of the most prominent fashion designers of the day. Black tie dress is the most common outfit for men. Fashion may dictate not wearing a bow-tie, and musical performers are sometimes not required to adhere to this. The artists who recorded the nominees for Best Original Song quite often perform those songs live at the awards ceremony, and the fact that they are performing is often used to promote the television broadcast. The Academy Awards is the world's longest-running awards show televised live from the United States to all time zones in North America and worldwide, and gathers billions of viewers elsewhere throughout the world. The Oscars were first televised in 1953 by NBC, which continued to broadcast the event until 1960, when ABC took over, televising the festivities, including the first color broadcast of the event in 1966, to 1970. NBC regained the rights for five years (1971–75), then ABC resumed broadcast duties in 1976 and its current contract with the Academy runs through 2028. The Academy has produced condensed versions of the ceremony for broadcast in international markets, especially those outside of the Americas, in more desirable local timeslots. The ceremony was broadcast live internationally for the first time via satellite since 1970, but only two South American countries, Chile and Brazil, purchased the rights to air the broadcast. By that time, the television rights to the Academy Awards had been sold in 50 countries. In 1980, the rights were sold to 60 countries, and by 1984, the television rights to the Academy Awards were licensed in 76 countries.
148	Academy Awards In 2004, the ceremonies were moved up from late March/early April to late February, to help disrupt and shorten the intense lobbying and ad campaigns associated with Oscar season in the film industry. Another reason was because of the growing television ratings success coinciding with the NCAA division I men's basketball tournament, which would cut into the Academy Awards audience. In 1976 and 1977, ABC's regained Oscars were moved from Tuesday to Monday and went directly opposite the national championship game on NBC. The earlier date is also to the advantage of ABC, as it now usually occurs during the highly profitable and important February sweeps period. Some years, the ceremony is moved into the first Sunday of March to avoid a clash with the Winter Olympic Games. Another reason for the move to late February and early March is to avoid the awards ceremony occurring so close to the religious holidays of Passover and Easter, which for decades had been a grievance from members and the general public. Advertising is somewhat restricted, as traditionally no movie studios or competitors of official Academy Award sponsors may advertise during the telecast. As of 2020, the production of the Academy Awards telecast held the distinction of winning one the highest number of Emmys in history, with 54 wins and 280 nominations overall. After many years of being held on Mondays at 6:00p.m. Pacific/9:00pm Eastern, since the 1999 ceremonies, it was moved to Sundays at 5:30pm PT/8:30pm ET. The reasons given for the move were that more viewers would tune in on Sundays, that Los Angeles rush-hour traffic jams could be avoided, and an earlier start time would allow viewers on the East Coast to go to bed earlier. For many years the film industry opposed a Sunday broadcast because it would cut into the weekend box office. In 2010, the Academy contemplated moving the ceremony even further back into January, citing television viewers' fatigue with the film industry's long awards season. However, such an accelerated schedule would dramatically decrease the voting period for its members, to the point where some voters would only have time to view the contending films streamed on their computers, as opposed to traditionally receiving the films and ballots in the mail. Furthermore, a January ceremony on Sunday would clash with National Football League (NFL) playoff games. In 2018, the Academy announced that the ceremony would be moved from late February to mid-February beginning with the 92nd Academy Awards in 2020. In 2024, the ceremony was moved to an even earlier start time of 4:00pm PT/7:00p.m. ET, the apparent impetus being the ability for ABC to air a half-hour of primetime programming as a lead-out program at 7:30p.m. PT/10:30p.m. ET.
149	Academy Awards Originally scheduled for April 8, 1968, the 40th Academy Awards ceremony was postponed for two days, because of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On March 30, 1981, the 53rd Academy Awards was postponed for one day, after the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan and others in Washington, D.C. In 1993, an "In Memoriam" segment was introduced, honoring those who had made a significant contribution to cinema who had died in the preceding 12 months, a selection compiled by a small committee of Academy members. This segment has drawn criticism over the years for the omission of some names. Criticism was also levied for many years regarding another aspect, with the segment having a "popularity contest" feel as the audience varied their applause to those who had died by the subject's cultural impact. The applause has since been muted during the telecast, and the audience is discouraged from clapping during the segment and giving silent reflection instead. This segment was later followed by a commercial break. In terms of broadcast length, the ceremony generally averages three and a half hours. The first Oscars, in 1929, lasted 15minutes. At the other end of the spectrum, the 2002 ceremony lasted four hours and twenty-three minutes. In 2010, the organizers of the Academy Awards announced winners' acceptance speeches must not run past 45seconds. This, according to organizer Bill Mechanic, was to ensure the elimination of what he termed "the single most hated thing on the show"—overly long and embarrassing displays of emotion. In 2016, in a further effort to streamline speeches, winners' dedications were displayed on an on-screen ticker. During the 2018 ceremony, host Jimmy Kimmel acknowledged how long the ceremony had become, by announcing that he would give a brand-new jet ski to whoever gave the shortest speech of the night, a reward won by Mark Bridges when accepting his Best Costume Design award for "Phantom Thread". "The Wall Street Journal" analyzed the average minutes spent across the 2014–2018 telecasts as follows: 14 on song performances; 25 on the hosts' speeches; 38 on prerecorded clips; and 78 on the awards themselves, broken into 24 on the introduction and announcement, 24 on winners walking to the stage, and 30 on their acceptance speeches. Although still dominant in ratings, the viewership of the Academy Awards has steadily dropped. The 88th Academy Awards were the lowest-rated in the past eight years (although with increases in male and 18–49 viewership), while the show itself also faced mixed reception.
150	Academy Awards Following the show, "Variety" reported that ABC was, in negotiating an extension to its contract to broadcast the Oscars, seeking to have more creative control over the broadcast itself. Currently and nominally, AMPAS is responsible for most aspects of the telecast, including the choice of production staff and hosting, although ABC is allowed to have some input on their decisions. In August 2016, AMPAS extended its contract with ABC to 2028: the contract neither contains any notable changes nor gives ABC any further creative control over the telecast. TV ratings. Historically, the telecast's viewership is higher when box-office hits are favored to win the Best Picture award. More than 57.25million viewers tuned to the telecast for the 70th Academy Awards in 1998, the year of "Titanic", which generated a box office haul during its initial 1997–98 run of $ in the US, a box-office record that would remain unsurpassed for years. The 76th Academy Awards ceremony, in which "" (pre-telecast box office earnings of $) received 11 Awards, including Best Picture, drew 43.56million viewers. The most-watched ceremony based on Nielsen ratings to date, was the 42nd Academy Awards (Best Picture "Midnight Cowboy"), which drew a 43.4% household rating on April 7, 1970. Hoping to reinvigorate the pre-show and ratings, the 2023 Oscars organizers hired members of the Met Gala creative team. By contrast, ceremonies honoring films that have not performed well at the box office tend to show weaker ratings, despite how much critical acclaim those films have received. The 78th Academy Awards, which awarded a low-budget independent film ("Crash" with a pre-Oscar gross of $) generated an audience of 38.64million with a household rating of 22.91%. In 2008, the 80th Academy Awards telecast was watched by 31.76million viewers on average with an 18.66% household rating, the lowest-rated and least-watched ceremony at the time, in spite of celebrating 80 years of the Academy Awards. The Best Picture winner of that particular ceremony was another independent film (this time, the Coen brothers's "No Country for Old Men"). Whereas the 92nd Academy Awards drew an average of 23.6million viewers, the 93rd Academy Awards drew an even lower viewership of 10.4million, the lowest viewership recorded by Nielsen since it started recording audience totals in 1974. The 94th and 95th editions drew 16.6 and 18.7million viewers, respectively, still below the audience of the 92nd edition. Archive. The Academy Film Archive holds copies of every Academy Awards ceremony since the 1949 Oscars, as well as material on many prior ceremonies, along with ancillary material related to more recent shows. Copies are held in a variety of film, video and digital formats.
151	Academy Awards Venues. In 1929, the first Academy Awards were presented at a banquet dinner at The Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. From 1930 to 1943, the ceremony alternated between two venues: the Ambassador Hotel on Wilshire Boulevard and the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles. Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood then hosted the awards from 1944 to 1946, followed by the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles from 1947 to 1948. The 21st Academy Awards in 1949 were held at the Academy Award Theatre at what had been the Academy's headquarters on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. From 1950 to 1960, the awards were presented at Hollywood's Pantages Theatre. With the advent of television, the awards from 1953 to 1957 took place simultaneously in Hollywood and New York, first at the NBC International Theatre (1953) and then at the NBC Century Theatre, after which the ceremony took place solely in Los Angeles. In 1961, the Oscars moved to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in Santa Monica, California. In 1969, the Academy moved the ceremonies back to Downtown Los Angeles, to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion at the Los Angeles County Music Center. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the ceremony returned to the Shrine Auditorium. In 2002, Hollywood's Dolby Theatre, previously known as the Kodak Theatre, became the presentation's current venue. Categories. Current categories. In the first year of the awards, the Best Directing award was split into two categories, Drama and Comedy. At times, the Best Original Score award has also been split into separate categories, Drama and Comedy/Musical. From the 1930s to the 1960s, the Art Direction (now Production Design), Cinematography, and Costume Design awards were split into two categories (black-and-white films and color films). Prior to 2012, the Production Design award was called Art Direction, while the Makeup and Hairstyling award was called Makeup. In August 2018, the Academy announced that several categories would not be televised live, but recorded during commercial breaks and aired later in the ceremony. Following dissent from Academy members, they announced that they would air all 24 categories live. This followed several proposals, among them, the introduction of a Popular Film category, that the Academy had announced but did not implement. Proposed categories. The Board of Governors meets each year and considers new award categories. To date, the following categories have been proposed: Special categories. The Special Academy Awards are voted on by special committees, rather than by the Academy membership as a whole. They are not always presented on an annual basis. Criticism and controversies. Accusations of commercialism.
152	Academy Awards Due to the positive exposure and prestige of the Academy Awards, many studios spend around 25 million dollars and hire publicists specifically to promote their films during what is typically called the "Oscar season". This has generated accusations of the Academy Awards being influenced more by marketing and lobbying than by quality. William Friedkin, an Academy Award-winning film director and former producer of the ceremony, expressed this sentiment at a conference in New York in 2009, describing it as "the greatest promotion scheme that any industry ever devised for itself". Tim Dirks, editor of AMC's Filmsite, has written of the Academy Awards: Unfortunately, the critical worth, artistic vision, cultural influence and innovative qualities of many films are not given the same voting weight. Especially since the 1980s, moneymaking "formula-made" blockbusters with glossy production values have often been crowd-pleasing titans (and Best Picture winners), but they haven't necessarily been great films with depth or critical acclaim by any measure.A recent technique that has been claimed to be used during the Oscar season is the whisper campaign. These campaigns are intended to spread negative perceptions of other movies nominated and are believed to be perpetrated by those who were involved in creating the movie. Examples of whisper campaigns include the allegations against "Zero Dark Thirty" suggesting that it justifies torture and the claim that "Lincoln" distorts history. Accusations of bias. Typical criticism of the Academy Awards for Best Picture is that among the winners and nominees there is an over-representation of romantic historical epics, biographical dramas, romantic dramedies and family melodramas, most of which are released in the U.S. in the last three months of the calendar year. The Oscars have been infamously known for selecting specific genres of movies to be awarded. The term "Oscar bait" was coined to describe such movies. This has led, at times, to more specific criticisms that the Academy is disconnected from the audience, e.g., by favoring "Oscar bait" over audience favorites or favoring historical melodramas over critically acclaimed movies that depict current life issues. Despite the success of "The Dark Knight", the film did not receive a Best Picture nomination at the 81st Academy Awards. This decision received substantial criticism and was described as a "snub" by many publications. The backlash to the decision was such that, for the 82nd Academy Awards awards in 2010, the Academy increased the limit for Best Picture nominees from five to ten, a change known as "The Dark Knight Rule". Lack of diversity. The Academy Awards have long received criticism over its lack of diversity among the nominees.
153	Academy Awards This criticism is based on the statistics from every Academy Awards since 1929, which show that only 6.4% of Academy Award nominees have been non-white and since 1991, 11.2% of nominees have been non-white, with the rate of winners being even more polarizing. For a variety of reasons, including marketability and historical bans on interracial couples, a number of high-profile Oscars have been given to yellowface portrayals, as well as performances of Asian characters rewritten for white characters. It took until 2023 for an Asian woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress, when Michelle Yeoh received the award for her performance in "Everything Everywhere All at Once". The 88th awards ceremony became the target of a boycott, popularized on social media with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite, based on activists' perception that its all-white acting nominee list reflected bias. In response, the Academy initiated "historic" changes in membership by 2020. Some media critics claim the Academy's efforts to address its purported racial, gender and national biases are merely distractions. By contrast, the Golden Globe Awards already have multiple winners of Asian descent in leading actress categories. Some question whether the Academy's definition of "merit" is just or empowering for non-Americans. The Academy's Representation and Inclusion Standards have been criticized for excluding Jews as a distinct underrepresented class. Miscategorization of actors. The Academy has no rules for how to categorize whether a performance is leading or supporting, and it is up to the discretion of the studios whether a given performance is submitted for either Best Actor/Actress or Best Supporting Actor/Actress. This has led to situations where a film has two or more co-leads, and one of these is submitted in a supporting category to avoid the two leads competing against each other, and to increase the film's chances of winning. This practice has been derisively called "category fraud". For example, Rooney Mara was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for "Carol" (2015), despite her having a comparable amount of screentime to Cate Blanchett, who was nominated for Best Actress. Another example is "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" (2019), where Brad Pitt was nominated for and won Best Supporting Actor, even though he played an equally important role to Best Actor nominee Leonardo DiCaprio. In both these cases, critics argued that The Weinstein Company, the studio behind the former film, had placed someone who was actually a leading actor or actress into the supporting categories to avoid them competing against their co-lead. Symbolism or sentimentalization.
154	Academy Awards Acting prizes in certain years have been criticized for not recognizing superior performances so much as being awarded for personal popularity, to make up for a "snub" for a work that proved in time to be more popular or renowned than the one awarded, or presented as a "career honor" to recognize a distinguished nominee's entire body of work. Recognition of streaming media film. Following the 91st Academy Awards in February 2019 in which the Netflix-broadcast film "Roma" had been nominated for ten awards including the Best Picture category, Steven Spielberg and other members of the Academy discussed changing the requirements through the Board of Governors for films as to exclude those from Netflix and other media streaming services. Spielberg had been concerned that Netflix as a movie production and distribution studio could spend much more than for typical Oscar-winning films and have much wider and earlier distribution than for other Best Picture-nominated films, while still being able to meet the minimal theatrical-run status to qualify for an Oscar. The United States Department of Justice, having heard of this potential rule change, wrote a letter to the Academy in March 2019, cautioning them that placing additional restrictions on films that originate from streaming media services without proper justification could raise anti-trust concerns against the Academy. Following its April 2019 board meeting, the Academy Board of Governors agreed to retain the current rules that allow for streaming media films to be eligible for Oscars as long as they enjoy limited theatrical runs. 2022 Chris Rock and Will Smith slapping incident. During the 94th Academy Awards on March 27, 2022, Chris Rock joked about Jada Pinkett Smith's shaved head with a "G.I. Jane" reference. Will Smith walked onstage and slapped Rock across the face, then returned to his seat and told Rock, twice, to "Keep my wife's name out [of] your fucking mouth!" While later accepting the Best Actor award for "King Richard", Smith apologized to the Academy and the other nominees, but not to Rock. Rock decided not to press charges against Smith. On April 8, 2022, the Academy made an announcement via a letter sent by president David Rubin and CEO Dawn Hudson informing the public that Will Smith had received a ten-year ban from attending the Oscars as a result of the incident. Refusals of the award. Some winners critical of the Academy Awards have boycotted the ceremonies and refused to accept their Oscars. The first to do so was screenwriter Dudley Nichols (Best Writing in 1935 for "The Informer"). Nichols boycotted the 8th Academy Awards ceremony because of conflicts between the Academy and the Writers' Guild. Nichols eventually accepted the 1935 award three years later, at the 1938 ceremony.
155	Academy Awards Nichols was nominated for three further Academy Awards during his career. George C. Scott became the second person to refuse his award (Best Actor in 1970 for "Patton") at the 43rd Academy Awards ceremony. Scott described it as a "meat parade", saying, "I don't want any part of it". The third person to refuse the award was Marlon Brando, who refused his award (Best Actor for 1972's "The Godfather"), citing the film industry's discrimination against and mistreatment of Native Americans. At the 45th Academy Awards ceremony, Brando asked actress and civil rights activist Sacheen Littlefeather to read a 15-page speech in his place, detailing his criticisms, for which there was booing and cheering by the audience. In 2022, Littlefeather was accused by her sisters of misrepresenting her ancestry as Native American. Disqualifications. Seven films have had nominations revoked before the official award ceremony: One film was disqualified after winning the award, and had the winner return the Oscar: One film had its nomination revoked after the award ceremony when it had not won the Oscar: Remarks about animated films as children's genre. At the 94th Academy Awards in 2022, the award for the Best Animated Feature was presented by three actresses who portrayed Disney princess characters in live-action remakes of their respective animated films: Lily James ("Cinderella"), Naomi Scott ("Aladdin"), and Halle Bailey ("The Little Mermaid"). While introducing the category, Bailey stated that animated films are "formative experiences as kids who watch them," as James put it, "So many kids watch these movies over and over, over and over again." Scott added: "I see some parents who know exactly what we're talking about." The remarks were heavily criticized by animation enthusiasts and those working in the industry as infantilizing the medium and perpetuating the stigma that animated works are strictly for children, especially since the industry was credited with sustaining the flow of Hollywood content and revenue during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Phil Lord, co-producer of one of the nominated films, "The Mitchells vs. the Machines", tweeted that it was "super cool to position animation as something that kids watch and adults have to endure." The film's official social media accounts responded to the joke with an image reading: "Animation is cinema."
156	Academy Awards A week later, Lord and his producing partner Christopher Miller wrote a guest column in "Variety" criticizing the Academy for the joke and how Hollywood has treated animation, writing that "no one set out to diminish animated films, but it's high time we set out to elevate them." They also suggested to the Academy that the category should be presented by a filmmaker who respects the art of animation as cinema. Adding to the controversy was that the award for Best Animated Short Film (the nominees for which were mostly made up of shorts not aimed at children) was one of the eight categories that were not presented during the live broadcast. The winner for the Best Animated Short award was "The Windshield Wiper", a multilingual Spanish-American film which is adult animated, while another nominee in three categories: Best Animated Feature, Best Documentary Feature Film, and Best International Feature Film, was "Flee", a PG-13 rated animated documentary about an Afghan refugee. Alberto Mielgo, director of "The Windshield Wiper", later gave an acceptance speech for the Oscar: "Animation is an art that includes every single art that you can imagine. Animation for adults is a fact. It's happening. Let's call it cinema. I'm very honored because this is just the beginning of what we can do with animation." Some speculations suggested that the speech played a role in the decision not to broadcast the award. Another factor is that numerous animated films have been made for mature audiences or with ranges of PG-13 or more, with a few of them—"The Triplets of Belleville", "Persepolis", "Chico and Rita", "The Wind Rises", "Anomalisa", "My Life as a Courgette", "The Breadwinner", "Loving Vincent", "Isle of Dogs", "I Lost My Body", "Flee" and "Memoir of a Snail"— having been nominated in this category, with "The Boy and the Heron" being the first adult animated film (in this case, PG-13-rated) to win in the 96th Academy Awards. These comments came as "#NewDeal4Animation", a movement of animation workers demanding equal pay, treatment and recognition alongside their contemporaries working in live-action, was picking up momentum during negotiations for a new contract between The Animation Guild, IATSE Local 839/SAG-AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, and the presentation is being used to rally the movement. During the 96th Academy Awards in 2024, host Jimmy Kimmel said, "Please raise your hand if you let your kid fill out this part of the ballot."
157	Academy Awards These remarks would again prompt backlash, with Christopher Miller, producer of that year's nominated "", tweeting out that the joke was "tired and lazy". The PG-13-rated "The Boy and the Heron" would subsequently win the award. Associated events. The following events are closely associated with the annual Academy Awards: Presenter and performer gifts. It has become a tradition to give out gift bags to the presenters and performers at the Oscars. In recent years, these gifts have been extended to award nominees and winners. The value of each of these gift bags can reach into the tens of thousands of dollars. In 2014, the value was reported to be as high as $. The value has risen to the point where the U.S. Internal Revenue Service issued a statement regarding the gifts and their taxable status. Oscar gift bags have included vacation packages to Hawaii and Mexico and Japan, a private dinner party for the recipient and friends at a restaurant, videophones, a four-night stay at a hotel, watches, bracelets, spa treatments, bottles of vodka, maple salad dressing, weight-loss gummie candy and up to $ worth of cosmetic treatments and rejuvenation procedures such as lip fillers and chemical peels from New York City facial plastic surgeon Konstantin Vasyukevich. Some of the gifts have even had a "risque" element to them; in 2014, the adult products retailer Adam & Eve had a "Secret Room Gifting Suite". Celebrities visiting the gifting suite included Judith Hoag, Carolyn Hennesy, Kate Linder, Chris Mulkey, Jim O'Heir and John Salley. Television ratings and advertisement prices. From 2006 onwards, results are Live+SD; all previous years are live viewing. Notable highest wins and nominees. By films. By franchises. By people. References.
158	Actrius Actresses (Catalan: Actrius) is a 1997 Catalan language Spanish drama film produced and directed by Ventura Pons and based on the award-winning stage play "E.R." by Josep Maria Benet i Jornet. The film has no male actors, with all roles played by females. The film was produced in 1996. Synopsis. In order to prepare herself to play a role commemorating the life of legendary actress Empar Ribera, young actress (Mercè Pons) interviews three established actresses who had been the Ribera's pupils: the international diva Glòria Marc (Núria Espert), the television star Assumpta Roca (Rosa Maria Sardà), and dubbing director Maria Caminal (Anna Lizaran). Recognition. Screenings. "Actrius" screened in 2001 at the Grauman's Egyptian Theatre in an American Cinematheque retrospective of the works of its director. The film had first screened at the same location in 1998. It was also shown at the 1997 Stockholm International Film Festival. Reception. In "Movie - Film - Review", Christopher Tookey wrote that though the actresses were "competent in roles that may have some reference to their own careers", the film "is visually unimaginative, never escapes its stage origins, and is almost totally lacking in revelation or surprising incident". Noting that there were "occasional, refreshing moments of intergenerational bitchiness", they did not "justify comparisons to "All About Eve"", and were "insufficiently different to deserve critical parallels with "Rashomon"". He also wrote that "The Guardian" called the film a "slow, stuffy chamber-piece", and that "The Evening Standard" stated the film's "best moments exhibit the bitchy tantrums seething beneath the threesome's composed veneers". MRQE wrote "This cinematic adaptation of a theatrical work is true to the original, but does not stray far from a theatrical rendering of the story." References.
159	Animalia (book) 1986 picture book by Graeme Base Animalia is an illustrated children's book by Graeme Base. It was originally published in 1986, followed by a tenth anniversary edition in 1996, and a 25th anniversary edition in 2012. Over four million copies have been sold worldwide. A special numbered and signed anniversary edition was also published in 1996, with an embossed gold jacket. Synopsis. "Animalia" is an alliterative alphabet book and contains twenty-six illustrations, one for each letter of the alphabet. Each illustration features an animal from the animal kingdom (A is for alligator and armadillo, B is for butterfly, C is for cat, etc.) along with a short poem utilizing the letter of the page for many of the words. The illustrations contain many other objects beginning with that letter that the reader can try to identify (however, there are not necessarily "a thousand things, or maybe more", as the author states). As an additional challenge, the author has hidden a picture of himself as a child in every picture. Related products. Julia MacRae Books published an "Animalia" colouring book in 2008. H. N. Abrams also published a wall calendar colouring book version for children the same year. H. N. Abrams published "The Animalia Wall Frieze", a fold-out over 26 feet in length, in which the author created new riddles for each letter. The Great American Puzzle Factory created a 300-piece jigsaw puzzle based on the book's cover. Adaptations. A television series was also created, based on the book, which airs in Canada. The Australian Children's Television Foundation released a teaching resource DVD-ROM in 2011 to accompany the TV series with teaching aids for classroom use. In 2010, The Base Factory and AppBooks released Animalia as an application for iPad and iPhone/iPod Touch. Awards. "Animalia" won the Young Australian's Best Book Award in 1987 for Best Picture Story Book. The Children's Book Council of Australia designated "Animalia" a 1987 : Honour Book. Kid's Own Australian Literature Awards named "Animalia" the 1988 Picture Book Winner. References.
160	International Atomic Time Time standard based on atomic clocks International Atomic Time (abbreviated TAI, from its French name ) is a high-precision atomic coordinate time standard based on the notional passage of proper time on Earth's geoid. TAI is a weighted average of the time kept by over 450 atomic clocks in over 80 national laboratories worldwide. It is a continuous scale of time, without leap seconds, and it is the principal realisation of Terrestrial Time (with a fixed offset of epoch). It is the basis for Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), which is used for civil timekeeping all over the Earth's surface and which has leap seconds. UTC deviates from TAI by a number of whole seconds. As of 2017[ [update]], immediately after the most recent leap second was put into effect, UTC has been exactly 37 seconds behind TAI. The 37 seconds result from the initial difference of 10 seconds at the start of 1972, plus 27 leap seconds in UTC since 1972. In 2022, the General Conference on Weights and Measures decided to abandon the leap second by or before 2035, at which point the difference between TAI and UTC will remain fixed. TAI may be reported using traditional means of specifying days, carried over from non-uniform time standards based on the rotation of the Earth. Specifically, both Julian days and the Gregorian calendar are used. TAI in this form was synchronised with Universal Time at the beginning of 1958, and the two have drifted apart ever since, due primarily to the slowing rotation of the Earth. Operation. TAI is a weighted average of the time kept by over 450 atomic clocks in over 80 national laboratories worldwide. The majority of the clocks involved are caesium clocks; the International System of Units (SI) definition of the second is based on caesium. The clocks are compared using GPS signals and two-way satellite time and frequency transfer. Due to the signal averaging TAI is an order of magnitude more stable than its best constituent clock. The participating institutions each broadcast, in real time, a frequency signal with timecodes, which is their estimate of TAI. Time codes are usually published in the form of UTC, which differs from TAI by a well-known integer number of seconds. These time scales are denoted in the form "UTC(NPL)" in the UTC form, where "NPL" here identifies the National Physical Laboratory, UK. The TAI form may be denoted "TAI(NPL)". The latter is not to be confused with "TA(NPL)", which denotes an independent atomic time scale, not synchronised to TAI or to anything else. The clocks at different institutions are regularly compared against each other.
161	International Atomic Time The International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM, France), combines these measurements to retrospectively calculate the weighted average that forms the most stable time scale possible. This combined time scale is published monthly in "Circular T", and is the canonical TAI. This time scale is expressed in the form of tables of differences UTC − UTC("k") (equal to TAI − TAI("k")) for each participating institution "k". The same circular also gives tables of TAI − TA("k"), for the various unsynchronised atomic time scales. Errors in publication may be corrected by issuing a revision of the faulty Circular T or by errata in a subsequent Circular T. Aside from this, once published in Circular T, the TAI scale is not revised. In hindsight, it is possible to discover errors in TAI and to make better estimates of the true proper time scale. Since the published circulars are definitive, better estimates do not create another version of TAI; it is instead considered to be creating a better realisation of Terrestrial Time (TT). History. Early atomic time scales consisted of quartz clocks with frequencies calibrated by a single atomic clock; the atomic clocks were not operated continuously. Atomic timekeeping services started experimentally in 1955, using the first caesium atomic clock at the National Physical Laboratory, UK (NPL). It was used as a basis for calibrating the quartz clocks at the Royal Greenwich Observatory and to establish a time scale, called Greenwich Atomic (GA). The United States Naval Observatory began the A.1 scale on 13 September 1956, using an Atomichron commercial atomic clock, followed by the NBS-A scale at the National Bureau of Standards, Boulder, Colorado on 9 October 1957. The International Time Bureau (BIH) began a time scale, Tm or AM, in July 1955, using both local caesium clocks and comparisons to distant clocks using the phase of VLF radio signals. The BIH scale, A.1, and NBS-A were defined by an epoch at the beginning of 1958 The procedures used by the BIH evolved, and the name for the time scale changed: "A3" in 1964 and "TA(BIH)" in 1969. The SI second was defined in terms of the caesium atom in 1967. From 1971 to 1975 the General Conference on Weights and Measures and the International Committee for Weights and Measures made a series of decisions that designated the BIPM time scale International Atomic Time (TAI).
162	International Atomic Time In the 1970s, it became clear that the clocks participating in TAI were ticking at different rates due to gravitational time dilation, and the combined TAI scale, therefore, corresponded to an average of the altitudes of the various clocks. Starting from the Julian Date 2443144.5 (1 January 1977 00:00:00 TAI), corrections were applied to the output of all participating clocks, so that TAI would correspond to proper time at the geoid (mean sea level). Because the clocks were, on average, well above sea level, this meant that TAI slowed by about one part in a trillion. The former uncorrected time scale continues to be published under the name "EAL" ("Échelle Atomique Libre", meaning "Free Atomic Scale"). The instant that the gravitational correction started to be applied serves as the epoch for Barycentric Coordinate Time (TCB), Geocentric Coordinate Time (TCG), and Terrestrial Time (TT), which represent three fundamental time scales in the solar system. All three of these time scales were defined to read JD 2443144.5003725 (1 January 1977 00:00:32.184) exactly at that instant. TAI was henceforth a realisation of TT, with the equation TT(TAI) = TAI + 32.184 s. The continued existence of TAI was questioned in a 2007 letter from the BIPM to the ITU-R which stated, "In the case of a redefinition of UTC without leap seconds, the CCTF would consider discussing the possibility of suppressing TAI, as it would remain parallel to the continuous UTC." Relation to UTC. Contrary to TAI, UTC is a discontinuous time scale. It is occasionally adjusted by leap seconds. Between these adjustments, it is composed of segments that are mapped to atomic time by a constant offset. From its beginning in 1961 through December 1971, the adjustments were made regularly in fractional leap seconds so that UTC approximated UT2. Afterwards, these adjustments were made only in whole seconds to approximate UT1. This was a compromise arrangement in order to enable a publicly broadcast time scale. The less frequent whole-second adjustments meant that the time scale would be more stable and easier to synchronize internationally. The fact that it continues to approximate UT1 means that tasks such as navigation which require a source of Universal Time continue to be well served by the public broadcast of UTC. References. Footnotes. Bibliography.
163	Altruism Principle or practice of concern for the welfare of others Altruism is the concern for the well-being of others, independently of personal benefit or reciprocity. The word "altruism" was popularised (and possibly coined) by the French philosopher Auguste Comte in French, as , for an antonym of egoism. He derived it from the Italian , which in turn was derived from Latin , meaning "other people" or "somebody else". Altruism may be considered a synonym of selflessness, the opposite of self-centeredness. Altruism is an important moral value in many cultures and religions. It can expand beyond care for humans to include other sentient beings and future generations. Altruism, as observed in populations of organisms, is when an individual performs an action at a cost to itself (in terms of e.g. pleasure and quality of life, time, probability of survival or reproduction) that benefits, directly or indirectly, another individual, without the expectation of reciprocity or compensation for that action. The theory of psychological egoism suggests that no act of sharing, helping, or sacrificing can be "truly" altruistic, as the actor may receive an intrinsic reward in the form of personal gratification. The validity of this argument depends on whether such intrinsic rewards qualify as "benefits". The term "altruism" can also refer to an ethical doctrine that claims that individuals are morally obliged to benefit others. Used in this sense, it is usually contrasted with egoism, which claims individuals are morally obligated to serve themselves first. Effective altruism is the use of evidence and reason to determine the most effective ways to benefit others. The notion of altruism. The concept of altruism has a history in philosophical and ethical thought. The term was coined in the 19th century by the founding sociologist and philosopher of science Auguste Comte, and has become a major topic for psychologists (especially evolutionary psychology researchers), evolutionary biologists, and ethologists. Whilst ideas about altruism from one field can affect the other fields, the different methods and focuses of these fields always lead to different perspectives on altruism. In simple terms, altruism is caring about the welfare of other people and acting to help them, above oneself. Cross-cultural perspectives on altruism. Cross-cultural perspectives on altruism show that how we view and experience helping others depends heavily on where we come from. In individualistic cultures, like many Western countries, acts of altruism often bring personal joy and satisfaction, as they align with values that emphasize individual achievement and self-fulfillment. On the other hand, in collectivist cultures, common in many Eastern societies, altruism is often seen as a responsibility to the group rather than a personal choice.
164	Altruism This difference means that people in collectivist cultures might not feel the same personal happiness from helping others, as the act is more about fulfilling social obligations. Ultimately, these variations highlight how deeply cultural norms shape the way we approach and experience altruism. Scientific viewpoints. Anthropology. Marcel Mauss's essay "The Gift" contains a passage called "Note on alms". This note describes the evolution of the notion of alms (and by extension of altruism) from the notion of sacrifice. In it, he writes: Alms are the fruits of a moral notion of the gift and of fortune on the one hand, and of a notion of sacrifice, on the other. Generosity is an obligation, because Nemesis avenges the poor and the gods for the superabundance of happiness and wealth of certain people who should rid themselves of it. This is the ancient morality of the gift, which has become a principle of justice. The gods and the spirits accept that the share of wealth and happiness that has been offered to them and had been hitherto destroyed in useless sacrifices should serve the poor and children. Evolutionary explanations. In ethology (the scientific study of animal behaviour), and more generally in the study of social evolution, altruism refers to behavior by an individual that increases the fitness of another individual while decreasing the fitness of the actor. In evolutionary psychology this term may be applied to a wide range of human behaviors such as charity, emergency aid, help to coalition partners, tipping, courtship gifts, production of public goods, and environmentalism. The need for an explanation of altruistic behavior that is compatible with evolutionary origins has driven the development of new theories. Two related strands of research on altruism have emerged from traditional evolutionary analyses and evolutionary game theory: a mathematical model and analysis of behavioral strategies. Some of the proposed mechanisms are: Hunters who share meat display a costly signal of ability. The research found that good hunters have higher reproductive success and more adulterous relations even if they receive no more of the hunted meat than anyone else. Similarly, holding large feasts and giving large donations are ways of demonstrating one's resources. Heroic risk-taking has also been interpreted as a costly signal of ability. Both indirect reciprocity and costly signaling depend on reputation value and tend to make similar predictions. One is that people will be more helpful when they know that their helping behavior will be communicated to people they will interact with later, publicly announced, discussed, or observed by someone else. This has been documented in many studies. The effect is sensitive to subtle cues, such as people being more helpful when there were stylized eyespots instead of a logo on a computer screen.
165	Altruism Weak reputational cues such as eyespots may become unimportant if there are stronger cues present and may lose their effect with continued exposure unless reinforced with real reputational effects. Public displays such as public weeping for dead celebrities and participation in demonstrations may be influenced by a desire to be seen as generous. People who know that they are publicly monitored sometimes even wastefully donate the money they know is not needed by the recipient because of reputational concerns. Typically, women find altruistic men to be attractive partners. When women look for a long-term partner, altruism may be a trait they prefer as it may indicate that the prospective partner is also willing to share resources with her and her children. Men perform charitable acts in the early stages of a romantic relationship or simply when in the presence of an attractive woman. While both sexes state that kindness is the most preferable trait in a partner, there is some evidence that men place less value on this than women and that women may not be more altruistic in the presence of an attractive man. Men may even avoid altruistic women in short-term relationships, which may be because they expect less success. People may compete for the social benefit of a burnished reputation, which may cause competitive altruism. On the other hand, in some experiments, a proportion of people do not seem to care about reputation and do not help more, even if this is conspicuous. This may be due to reasons such as psychopathy or that they are so attractive that they need not be seen as altruistic. The reputational benefits of altruism occur in the future compared to the immediate costs of altruism. While humans and other organisms generally place less value on future costs/benefits as compared to those in the present, some have shorter time horizons than others, and these people tend to be less cooperative. Explicit extrinsic rewards and punishments have sometimes been found to have a counterintuitively inverse effect on behaviors when compared to intrinsic rewards. This may be because such extrinsic incentives may replace (partially or in whole) intrinsic and reputational incentives, motivating the person to focus on obtaining the extrinsic rewards, which may make the thus-incentivized behaviors less desirable. People prefer altruism in others when it appears to be due to a personality characteristic rather than overt reputational concerns; simply pointing out that there are reputational benefits of action may reduce them. This may be used as a derogatory tactic against altruists ("you're just virtue signalling"), especially by those who are non-cooperators. A counterargument is that doing good due to reputational concerns is better than doing no good. Such explanations do not imply that humans consciously calculate how to increase their inclusive fitness when doing altruistic acts.
166	Altruism Instead, evolution has shaped psychological mechanisms, such as emotions, that promote certain altruistic behaviors. The benefits for the altruist may be increased, and the costs reduced by being more altruistic towards certain groups. Research has found that people are more altruistic to kin than to no-kin, to friends than strangers, to those attractive than to those unattractive, to non-competitors than competitors, and to members in-groups than to members of out-groups. The study of altruism was the initial impetus behind George R. Price's development of the Price equation, a mathematical equation used to study genetic evolution. An interesting example of altruism is found in the cellular slime moulds, such as "Dictyostelium mucoroides". These protists live as individual amoebae until starved, at which point they aggregate and form a multicellular fruiting body in which some cells sacrifice themselves to promote the survival of other cells in the fruiting body. Selective investment theory proposes that close social bonds, and associated emotional, cognitive, and neurohormonal mechanisms, evolved to facilitate long-term, high-cost altruism between those closely depending on one another for survival and reproductive success. Such cooperative behaviors have sometimes been seen as arguments for left-wing politics, for example, by the Russian zoologist and anarchist Peter Kropotkin in his 1902 book "" and moral philosopher Peter Singer in his book "A Darwinian Left". Neurobiology. Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health and LABS-D'Or Hospital Network, provided the first evidence for the neural bases of altruistic giving in normal healthy volunteers, using functional magnetic resonance imaging. In their research, they showed that both pure monetary rewards and charitable donations activated the mesolimbic reward pathway, a primitive part of the brain that usually responds to food and sex. However, when volunteers generously placed the interests of others before their own by making charitable donations, another brain circuit was also selectively activated: the subgenual cortex/septal region. These structures are related to social attachment and bonding in other species. The experiment suggested that altruism is not a higher moral faculty overpowering innate selfish desires, but a fundamental, ingrained, and enjoyable trait in the brain. One brain region, the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex/basal forebrain, contributes to learning altruistic behavior, especially in people with a propensity for empathy. Bill Harbaugh, a University of Oregon economist, in an fMRI scanner test conducted with his psychologist colleague Dr. Ulrich Mayr, reached the same conclusions as Jorge Moll and Jordan Grafman about giving to charity, although they were able to divide the study group into two groups: "egoists" and "altruists".
167	Altruism One of their discoveries was that, though rarely, even some of the considered "egoists" sometimes gave more than expected because that would help others, leading to the conclusion that there are other factors in charity, such as a person's environment and values. A recent meta-analysis of fMRI studies conducted by Shawn Rhoads, Jo Cutler, and Abigail Marsh analyzed the results of prior studies of generosity in which participants could freely choose to give or not give resources to someone else. The results of this study confirmed that altruism is supported by distinct mechanisms from giving motivated by reciprocity or by fairness. This study also confirmed that the right ventral striatum is recruited during altruistic giving, as well as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, bilateral anterior cingulate cortex, and bilateral anterior insula, which are regions previously implicated in empathy. Abigail Marsh has conducted studies of real-world altruists that have also identified an important role for the amygdala in human altruism. In real-world altruists, such as people who have donated kidneys to strangers, the amygdala is larger than in typical adults. Altruists' amygdalas are also more responsive than those of typical adults to the sight of others' distress, which is thought to reflect an empathic response to distress. This structure may also be involved in altruistic choices due to its role in encoding the value of outcomes for others. This is consistent with the findings of research in non-human animals, which has identified neurons within the amygdala that specifically encode the value of others' outcomes, activity in which appears to drive altruistic choices in monkeys. Psychology. The International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences defines "psychological altruism" as "a motivational state to increase another's welfare". Psychological altruism is contrasted with "psychological egoism", which refers to the motivation to increase one's welfare. In keeping with this, research in real-world altruists, including altruistic kidney donors, bone marrow donors, humanitarian aid workers, and heroic rescuers findings that these altruists are primarily distinguished from other adults by unselfish traits and decision-making patterns. This suggests that human altruism reflects genuinely high valuation of others' outcomes. There has been some debate on whether humans are capable of psychological altruism. Some definitions specify a self-sacrificial nature to altruism and a lack of external rewards for altruistic behaviors. However, because altruism ultimately benefits the self in many cases, the selflessness of altruistic acts is difficult to prove. The social exchange theory postulates that altruism only exists when the benefits outweigh the costs to the self. Daniel Batson, a psychologist, examined this question and argued against the social exchange theory.
168	Altruism He identified four significant motives: to ultimately benefit the self (egoism), to ultimately benefit the other person (altruism), to benefit a group (collectivism), or to uphold a moral principle (principlism). Altruism that ultimately serves selfish gains is thus differentiated from selfless altruism, but the general conclusion has been that empathy-induced altruism can be genuinely selfless. The "empathy-altruism hypothesis" states that psychological altruism exists and is evoked by the empathic desire to help someone suffering. Feelings of empathic concern are contrasted with personal distress, which compels people to reduce their unpleasant emotions and increase their positive ones by helping someone in need. Empathy is thus not selfless since altruism works either as a way to avoid those negative, unpleasant feelings and have positive, pleasant feelings when triggered by others' need for help or as a way to gain social reward or avoid social punishment by helping. People with empathic concern help others in distress even when exposure to the situation could be easily avoided, whereas those lacking in empathic concern avoid allowing it unless it is difficult or impossible to avoid exposure to another's suffering. Helping behavior is seen in humans from about two years old when a toddler can understand subtle emotional cues. In psychological research on altruism, studies often observe altruism as demonstrated through prosocial behaviors such as helping, comforting, sharing, cooperation, philanthropy, and community service. People are most likely to help if they recognize that a person is in need and feel personal responsibility for reducing the person's distress. The number of bystanders witnessing pain or suffering affects the likelihood of helping (the "Bystander effect"). More significant numbers of bystanders decrease individual feelings of responsibility. However, a witness with a high level of empathic concern is likely to assume personal responsibility entirely regardless of the number of bystanders. Many studies have observed the effects of volunteerism (as a form of altruism) on happiness and health and have consistently found that those who exhibit volunteerism also have better current and future health and well-being. In a study of older adults, those who volunteered had higher life satisfaction and will to live, and less depression, anxiety, and somatization. Volunteerism and helping behavior have not only been shown to improve mental health but physical health and longevity as well, attributable to the activity and social integration it encourages. One study examined the physical health of mothers who volunteered over 30 years and found that 52% of those who did not belong to a volunteer organization experienced a major illness while only 36% of those who did volunteer experienced one.
169	Altruism A study on adults aged 55 and older found that during the four-year study period, people who volunteered for two or more organizations had a 63% lower likelihood of dying. After controlling for prior health status, it was determined that volunteerism accounted for a 44% reduction in mortality. Merely being aware of kindness in oneself and others is also associated with greater well-being. A study that asked participants to count each act of kindness they performed for one week significantly enhanced their subjective happiness. Happier people are kinder and more grateful, kinder people are happier and more grateful and more grateful people are happier and kinder, the study suggests. While research supports the idea that altruistic acts bring about happiness, it has also been found to work in the opposite direction—that happier people are also kinder. The relationship between altruistic behavior and happiness is bidirectional. Studies found that generosity increases linearly from sad to happy affective states. Feeling over-taxed by the needs of others has negative effects on health and happiness. For example, one study on volunteerism found that feeling overwhelmed by others' demands had an even stronger negative effect on mental health than helping had a positive one (although positive effects were still significant). Older humans were found to have higher altruism. Genetics and environment. Both genetics and environment have been implicated in influencing pro-social or altruistic behavior. Candidate genes include OXTR (polymorphisms in the oxytocin receptor), CD38, COMT, DRD4, DRD5, IGF2, AVPR1A and GABRB2. It is theorized that some of these genes influence altruistic behavior by modulating levels of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and dopamine. According to Christopher Boehm, altruistic behaviour evolved as a way of surviving within a group. Sociology. "Sociologists have long been concerned with how to build the good society". The structure of our societies and how individuals come to exhibit charitable, philanthropic, and other pro-social, altruistic actions for the common good is a commonly researched topic within the field. The American Sociology Association (ASA) acknowledges public sociology saying, "The intrinsic scientific, policy, and public relevance of this field of investigation in helping to construct 'good societies' is unquestionable". This type of sociology seeks contributions that aid popular and theoretical understandings of what motivates altruism and how it is organized, and promotes an altruistic focus in order to benefit the world and people it studies. How altruism is framed, organized, carried out, and what motivates it at the group level is an area of focus that sociologists investigate in order to contribute back to the groups it studies and "build the good society".
170	Altruism The motivation of altruism is also the focus of study; for example, one study links the occurrence of moral outrage to altruistic compensation of victims. Studies show that generosity in laboratory and in online experiments is contagious – people imitate the generosity they observe in others. Religious viewpoints. Most, if not all, of the world's religions promote altruism as a very important moral value. Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Judaism, and Sikhism, etc., place particular emphasis on altruistic morality. Buddhism. Altruism figures prominently in Buddhism. Love and compassion are components of all forms of Buddhism, and are focused on all beings equally: love is the wish that all beings be happy, and compassion is the wish that all beings be free from suffering. "Many illnesses can be cured by the one medicine of love and compassion. These qualities are the ultimate source of human happiness, and the need for them lies at the very core of our being" (Dalai Lama). The notion of altruism is modified in such a world-view, since the belief is that such a practice promotes the practitioner's own happiness: "The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes" (Dalai Lama). In Buddhism, a person's actions cause karma, which consists of consequences proportional to the moral implications of their actions. Deeds considered to be bad are punished, while those considered to be good are rewarded. Jainism. The fundamental principles of Jainism revolve around altruism, not only for other humans but for all sentient beings. Jainism preaches – to live and let live, not harming sentient beings, i.e. uncompromising reverence for all life. The first , Rishabhdev, introduced the concept of altruism for all living beings, from extending knowledge and experience to others to donation, giving oneself up for others, non-violence, and compassion for all living things. The principle of nonviolence seeks to minimize karmas which limit the capabilities of the soul. Jainism views every soul as worthy of respect because it has the potential to become (God in Jainism). Because all living beings possess a soul, great care and awareness is essential in one's actions. Jainism emphasizes the equality of all life, advocating harmlessness towards all, whether the creatures are great or small. This policy extends even to microscopic organisms. Jainism acknowledges that every person has different capabilities and capacities to practice and therefore accepts different levels of compliance for ascetics and householders. Christianity. Thomas Aquinas interprets the biblical phrase "You should love your neighbour as yourself" as meaning that love for ourselves is the exemplar of love for others.
171	Altruism Considering that "the love with which a man loves himself is the form and root of friendship", he quotes Aristotle that "the origin of friendly relations with others lies in our relations to ourselves". Aquinas concluded that though we are not bound to love others more than ourselves, we naturally seek the common good, the good of the whole, more than any private good, the good of a part. However, he thought we should love God more than ourselves and our neighbours, and more than our bodily life—since the ultimate purpose of loving our neighbour is to share in eternal beatitude: a more desirable thing than bodily well-being. In coining the word "altruism", as stated above, Comte was probably opposing this Thomistic doctrine, which is present in some theological schools within Catholicism. The aim and focus of Christian life is a life that glorifies God, while obeying Christ's command to treat others equally, caring for them and understanding that eternity in heaven is what Jesus' Resurrection at Calvary was all about. Many biblical authors draw a strong connection between love of others and love of God. states that for one to love God one must love his fellow man, and that hatred of one's fellow man is the same as hatred of God. Thomas Jay Oord has argued in several books that altruism is but one possible form of love. An altruistic action is not always a loving action. Oord defines altruism as acting for the other's good, and he agrees with feminists who note that sometimes love requires acting for one's own good when the other's demands undermine overall well-being. German philosopher Max Scheler distinguishes two ways in which the strong can help the weak. One way is a sincere expression of Christian love, "motivated by a powerful feeling of security, strength, and inner salvation, of the invincible fullness of one's own life and existence". Another way is merely "one of the many modern substitutes for love... nothing but the urge to turn away from oneself and to lose oneself in other people's business". At its worst, Scheler says, "love for the small, the poor, the weak, and the oppressed is really disguised hatred, repressed envy, an impulse to detract, etc., directed against the opposite phenomena: wealth, strength, power, largesse." Islam. In the Arabic language, "" (إيثار) means "preferring others to oneself". On the topic of donating blood to non-Muslims (a controversial topic within the faith), the Shia religious professor, Fadhil al-Milani has provided theological evidence that makes it positively justifiable.
172	Altruism In fact, he considers it a form of religious sacrifice and "ithar" (altruism). For Sufis, 'iythar means devotion to others through complete forgetfulness of one's own concerns, where concern for others is deemed as a demand made by God on the human body, considered to be property of God alone. The importance of 'iythar (also known as ) lies in sacrifice for the sake of the greater good; Islam considers those practicing as abiding by the highest degree of nobility. This is similar to the notion of chivalry. A constant concern for God results in a careful attitude towards people, animals, and other things in this world. Judaism. Judaism defines altruism as the desired goal of creation. Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook stated that love is the most important attribute in humanity. Love is defined as bestowal, or giving, which is the intention of altruism. This can be altruism towards humanity that leads to altruism towards the creator or God. Kabbalah defines God as the force of giving in existence. Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto focused on the "purpose of creation" and how the will of God was to bring creation into perfection and adhesion with this force of giving. Modern Kabbalah developed by Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag, in his writings about the future generation, focuses on how society could achieve an altruistic social framework. Ashlag proposed that such a framework is the purpose of creation, and everything that happens is to raise humanity to the level of altruism, love for one another. Ashlag focused on society and its relation to divinity. Sikhism. Altruism is essential to the Sikh religion. The central faith in Sikhism is that the greatest deed anyone can do is to imbibe and live the godly qualities such as love, affection, sacrifice, patience, harmony, and truthfulness. , or selfless service to the community for its own sake, is an important concept in Sikhism. The fifth Guru, Guru Arjun, sacrificed his life to uphold "22 carats of pure truth, the greatest gift to humanity", according to the Guru Granth Sahib. The ninth Guru, Tegh Bahadur, sacrificed his life to protect weak and defenseless people against atrocity. In the late seventeenth century, Guru Gobind Singh (the tenth Guru in Sikhism), was at war with the Mughal rulers to protect the people of different faiths when a fellow Sikh, Bhai Kanhaiya, attended the troops of the enemy. He gave water to both friends and foes who were wounded on the battlefield. Some of the enemy began to fight again and some Sikh warriors were annoyed by Bhai Kanhaiya as he was helping their enemy.
173	Altruism Sikh soldiers brought Bhai Kanhaiya before Guru Gobind Singh, and complained of his action that they considered counterproductive to their struggle on the battlefield. "What were you doing, and why?" asked the Guru. "I was giving water to the wounded because I saw your face in all of them", replied Bhai Kanhaiya. The Guru responded, "Then you should also give them ointment to heal their wounds. You were practicing what you were coached in the house of the Guru." Under the tutelage of the Guru, Bhai Kanhaiya subsequently founded a volunteer corps for altruism, which is still engaged today in doing good to others and in training new recruits for this service. Hinduism. In Hinduism, selflessness (), love (), kindness (), and forgiveness () are considered as the highest acts of humanity or ". Giving alms to the beggars or poor people is considered as a divine act or " and Hindus believe it will free their souls from guilt or " and will led them to heaven or " in afterlife. Altruism is also the central act of various Hindu mythology and religious poems and songs. Mass donation of clothes to poor people (), or blood donation camp or mass food donation () for poor people is common in various Hindu religious ceremonies. The Bhagavad Gita supports the doctrine of karma yoga (achieving oneness with God through action) and Nishkama Karma or action without expectation or desire for personal gain which can be said to encompass altruism. Altruistic acts are generally celebrated and well received in Hindu literature and are central to Hindu morality. Philosophy. There is a wide range of philosophical views on humans' obligations or motivations to act altruistically. Proponents of ethical altruism maintain that individuals are morally obligated to act altruistically. The opposing view is ethical egoism, which maintains that moral agents should always act in their own self-interest. Both ethical altruism and ethical egoism contrast with utilitarianism, which maintains that each agent should act in order to maximise the efficacy of their function and the benefit to both themselves and their co-inhabitants. A related concept in descriptive ethics is psychological egoism, the thesis that humans always act in their own self-interest and that true altruism is impossible. Rational egoism is the view that rationality consists in acting in one's self-interest (without specifying how this affects one's moral obligations). In his book "I am You: The Metaphysical Foundations for Global Ethics", Daniel Kolak argues that open individualism provides a rational basis for altruism.552 According to Kolak, egoism is incoherent because the concept of a future self is incoherent, similar to the idea of anattā in Buddhist philosophy, and everyone is in reality the same being.
174	Altruism Derek Parfit made similar arguments in the book "Reasons and Persons", using thought experiments such as the teletransportation paradox to illustrate the philosophical problems with personal identity. Effective altruism. Effective altruism is a philosophy and social movement that uses evidence and reasoning to determine the most effective ways to benefit others. Effective altruism encourages individuals to consider all causes and actions and to act in the way that brings about the greatest positive impact, based upon their values. It is the broad, evidence-based, and cause-neutral approach that distinguishes effective altruism from traditional altruism or charity. Effective altruism is part of the larger movement towards evidence-based practices. While a substantial proportion of effective altruists have focused on the nonprofit sector, the philosophy of effective altruism applies more broadly to prioritizing the scientific projects, companies, and policy initiatives which can be estimated to save lives, help people, or otherwise have the biggest benefit. People associated with the movement include philosopher Peter Singer, Facebook co founder Dustin Moskovitz, Cari Tuna, Oxford-based researchers William MacAskill and Toby Ord, and professional poker player Liv Boeree. Extreme altruism. Pathological altruism. Pathological altruism is altruism taken to an unhealthy extreme, such that it either harms the altruistic person or the person's well-intentioned actions cause more harm than good. The term "pathological altruism" was popularised by the book "Pathological Altruism". Examples include depression and burnout seen in healthcare professionals, an unhealthy focus on others to the detriment of one's own needs, animal hoarding, and ineffective philanthropic and social programs that ultimately worsen the situations they are meant to aid. Extreme altruism also known as costly altruism, extraordinary altruism, or heroic behaviours (shall be distinguished from heroism), refers to selfless acts directed to a stranger which significantly exceed the normal altruistic behaviours, often involving risks or great cost to the altruists themselves. Since acts of extreme altruism are often directed towards strangers, many commonly accepted models of simple altruism appear inadequate in explaining this phenomenon. One of the initial concepts was introduced by Wilson in 1976, which he referred to as "hard-core" altruism. This form is characterised by impulsive actions directed towards others, typically a stranger and lacking incentives for reward. Since then, several papers have mentioned the possibility of such altruism. In 21st century the progress in the field slowed down due to adopting ethical guidelines that restrict exposing research participants to costly or risky decisions (see Declaration of Helsinki). Consequently, much research has based their studies on living organ donations and the actions of Carnegie Hero medal Recipients, actions which involve high risk, high cost, and are of infrequent occurrences.
175	Altruism A typical example of extreme altruism would be non-directed kidney donation—a living person donating one of their kidneys to a stranger without any benefits or knowing the recipient. However, current research can only be carried out on a small population that meets the requirements of extreme altruism. Most of the time the research is also via the form of self-report which could lead to self-report biases. Due to the limitations, the current gap between high stakes and normal altruism remains unknown. Characteristics of extreme altruists. In 1970, Schwartz hypothesised that extreme altruism is positively related to a person's moral norms and is not influenced by the cost associated with the action. This hypothesis was supported in the same study examining bone marrow donors. Schwartz discovered that individuals with strong personal norms and those who attribute more responsibility to themselves are more inclined to participate in bone marrow donation. Similar findings were observed in a 1986 study by Piliavin and Libby focusing on blood donors. These studies suggest that personal norms lead to the activation of moral norms, leading individuals to feel compelled to help others. Abigail Marsh has described psychopaths as the "opposite" group of people to extreme altruists and has conducted a few research, comparing these two groups of individuals. Utilising techniques such as brain imaging and behavioural experiments, Marsh's team observed that kidney donors tend to have larger amygdala sizes and exhibit better abilities in recognizing fearful expressions compared to psychopathic individuals. Furthermore, an improved ability to recognize fear has been associated with an increase in prosocial behaviours, including greater charity contribution. Rand and Epstein explored the behaviours of 51 Carnegie Hero Medal Recipients, demonstrating how extreme altruistic behaviours often stem from system I of the Dual Process Theory, which leads to rapid and intuitive behaviours. Additionally, a separate by Carlson et al. indicated that such prosocial behaviours are prevalent in emergencies where immediate actions are required. This discovery has led to ethical debates, particularly in the context of living organ donation, where laws regarding this issue differ by country. As observed in extreme altruists, these decisions are made intuitively, which may reflect insufficient consideration. Critics are concerned about whether this rapid decision encompasses a thorough cost-benefit analysis and question the appropriateness of exposing donors to such risk. One finding suggests how extreme altruists exhibit lower levels of social discounting as compared to others. With that meaning extreme altruists place a higher value on the welfare of strangers than a typical person does. Analysis of 676 Carnegie Hero Award Recipients and another study on 243 rescuing acts reveal that a significant proportion of rescuers come from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Johnson attributes the distribution to the high-risk occupations that are more prevalent between lower socioeconomic groups.
176	Altruism Another hypothesis proposed by Lyons is that individuals from these groups may perceive they have less to lose when engaging in high-risk extreme altruistic behaviours. Possible explanations. Evolutionary theories such as the kin-selection, reciprocity, vested interest and punishment either contradict or do not fully explain the concept of extreme altruism. As a result, considerable research has attempted for a separate explanation for this behaviour. Research suggests that males are more likely to engage in heroic and risk-taking behaviours due to a preference among females for such traits. These extreme altruistic behaviours could serve to act as an unconscious "signal" to showcase superior power and ability compared to ordinary individuals. When an extreme altruist survives a high-risk situation, they send an "honest signal" of quality. Three qualities hypothesized to be exhibited by extreme altruists, which could be interpreted as "signals", are: (1) traits that are difficult to fake, (2) a willingness to help, and (3) generous behaviours. The empathy altruism hypothesis appears to align with the concept of extreme altruism without contradiction. The hypothesis was supported with further brain scanning research, which indicates how this group of people demonstrate a higher level of empathy concern. The level of empathy concern then triggers activation in specific brain regions, urging the individual to engage in heroic behaviours. While most altruistic behaviours offer some form of benefit, extreme altruism may sometimes result from a mistake where the victim does not reciprocate. Considering the impulsive characteristic of extreme altruists, some researchers suggest that these individuals have made a wrong judgement during the cost-benefit analysis. Furthermore, extreme altruism might be a rare variation of altruism where they lie towards to ends of a normal distribution. In the US, the annual prevalence rate per capita is less than 0.00005%, this shows the rarity of such behaviours. Digital altruism. Digital altruism is the notion that some are willing to freely share information based on the principle of reciprocity and in the belief that in the end, everyone benefits from sharing information via the Internet. There are three types of digital altruism: (1) "everyday digital altruism", involving expedience, ease, moral engagement, and conformity; (2) "creative digital altruism", involving creativity, heightened moral engagement, and cooperation; and (3) "co-creative digital altruism" involving creativity, moral engagement, and meta cooperative efforts. See also. Notes. References.
177	Ayn Rand Russian-born American writer and philosopher (1905–1982) Alice O'Connor (born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum; February 2 [O.S. January 20], 1905 – March 6, 1982), better known by her pen name Ayn Rand (), was a Russian-born American writer and philosopher. She is known for her fiction and for developing a philosophical system which she named "Objectivism". Born and educated in Russia, she moved to the United States in 1926. After two early novels that were initially unsuccessful and two Broadway plays, Rand achieved fame with her 1943 novel "The Fountainhead". In 1957, she published her best-selling work, the novel "Atlas Shrugged". Afterward, until her death in 1982, she turned to non-fiction to promote her philosophy, publishing her own periodicals and releasing several collections of essays. Rand advocated reason and rejected faith and religion. She supported rational and ethical egoism as opposed to altruism and hedonism. In politics, she condemned the initiation of force as immoral and supported "laissez-faire" capitalism, which she defined as the system based on recognizing individual rights, including private property rights. Although she opposed libertarianism, which she viewed as anarchism, Rand is often associated with the modern libertarian movement in the United States. In art, she promoted romantic realism. She was sharply critical of most philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her, with a few exceptions. Rand's books have sold over 37 million copies. Her fiction received mixed reviews from literary critics, with reviews becoming more negative for her later work. Although academic interest in her ideas has grown since her death, academic philosophers have generally ignored or rejected Rand's philosophy, arguing that she has a polemical approach and that her work lacks methodological rigor. Her writings have politically influenced some right-libertarians and conservatives. The Objectivist movement circulates her ideas, both to the public and in academic settings. Life. Early life. Rand was born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum on February2, 1905, into a Jewish bourgeois family living in Saint Petersburg, which was then the capital of the Russian Empire. She was the eldest of three daughters of Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum, a pharmacist, and Anna Borisovna (née Kaplan). She was 12 when the October Revolution and the rule of the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin disrupted her family's lives. Her father's pharmacy was nationalized, and the family fled to Yevpatoria in Crimea, which was initially under the control of the White Army during the Russian Civil War. After graduating high school there in June 1921, she returned with her family to Petrograd (as Saint Petersburg was then named), where they faced desperate conditions, occasionally nearly starving.
178	Ayn Rand After the Russian Revolution opened up Russian universities to women, Rand was among the first to enroll at Petrograd State University (now Saint Petersburg State University). At 16, she began her studies in the department of social pedagogy, majoring in history. She was one of many bourgeois students purged from the university shortly before graduating. After complaints from a group of visiting foreign scientists, many purged students, including Rand, were reinstated. She graduated from the renamed Leningrad State University in October 1924. She then studied for a year at the State Technicum for Screen Arts in Leningrad. For an assignment, Rand wrote an essay about the Polish actress Pola Negri; it became her first published work. She decided her professional surname for writing would be "Rand", and she adopted the first name "Ayn" (pronounced ). In late 1925, Rand was granted a visa to visit relatives in Chicago. She arrived in New York City on February19, 1926. Intent on staying in the United States to become a screenwriter, she lived for a few months with her relatives learning English before moving to Hollywood, California. In Hollywood a chance meeting with director Cecil B. DeMille led to work as an extra in his film "The King of Kings" and a subsequent job as a junior screenwriter. While working on "The King of Kings", she met the aspiring actor Frank O'Connor; they married on April15, 1929. She became a permanent American resident in July 1929 and an American citizen on March3, 1931. She tried to bring her parents and sisters to the United States, but they could not obtain permission to emigrate. Rand's father died of a heart attack in 1939; one of her sisters and their mother died during the siege of Leningrad. Early fiction. Rand's first literary success was the sale of her screenplay "Red Pawn" to Universal Studios in 1932, although it was never produced. Her courtroom drama "Night of January 16th", first staged in Hollywood in 1934, reopened successfully on Broadway in 1935. Each night, a jury was selected from members of the audience; based on its vote, one of two different endings would be performed. Rand and O'Connor moved to New York City in December 1934 so she could handle revisions for the Broadway production. Her first novel, the semi-autobiographical "We the Living", was published in 1936. Set in Soviet Russia, it focuses on the struggle between the individual and the state. Initial sales were slow, and the American publisher let it go out of print; however, European editions continued to sell.
179	Ayn Rand She adapted the story as a stage play, but the Broadway production closed in less than a week. After the success of her later novels, Rand released a revised version in 1959 that has sold over three million copies. Rand started her next major novel, "The Fountainhead", in December 1935, but took a break from it in 1937 to write her novella "Anthem". The novella presents a dystopian future world in which totalitarian collectivism has triumphed to such an extent that the word "I" has been forgotten and replaced with "we". Protagonists Equality 7-2521 and Liberty 5-3000 eventually escape the collectivistic society and rediscover the word "I". It was published in England in 1938, but Rand could not find an American publisher at that time. As with "We the Living", Rand's later success allowed her to get a revised version published in 1946, and this sold over 3.5million copies. "The Fountainhead" and political activism. During the 1940s, Rand became politically active. She and her husband were full-time volunteers for Republican Wendell Willkie's 1940 presidential campaign. This work put her in contact with other intellectuals sympathetic to free-market capitalism. She became friends with journalist Henry Hazlitt, who introduced her to the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises. Despite philosophical differences with them, Rand strongly endorsed the writings of both men, and they expressed admiration for her. Mises once called her "the most courageous man in America", a compliment that particularly pleased her because he said "man" instead of "woman". Rand became friends with libertarian writer Isabel Paterson. Rand questioned her about American history and politics during their many meetings, and gave Paterson ideas for her only non-fiction book, "The God of the Machine". Rand's first major success as a writer came in 1943 with "The Fountainhead", a novel about an uncompromising architect named Howard Roark and his struggle against what Rand described as "second-handers" who attempt to live through others, placing others above themselves. Twelve publishers rejected it before Bobbs-Merrill Company accepted it at the insistence of editor Archibald Ogden, who threatened to quit if his employer did not publish it. While completing the novel, Rand was prescribed Benzedrine, an amphetamine, to fight fatigue. The drug helped her to work long hours to meet her deadline for delivering the novel, but afterwards she was so exhausted that her doctor ordered two weeks' rest. Her use of the drug for approximately three decades may have contributed to mood swings and outbursts described by some of her later associates. The success of "The Fountainhead" brought Rand fame and financial security.
180	Ayn Rand In 1943, she sold the film rights to Warner Bros. and returned to Hollywood to write the screenplay. Producer Hal B. Wallis then hired her as a screenwriter and script-doctor for screenplays including "Love Letters" and "You Came Along". Rand became involved with the anti-Communist Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals and American Writers Association. In 1947, during the Second Red Scare, she testified as a "friendly witness" before the United States House Un-American Activities Committee that the 1944 film "Song of Russia" grossly misrepresented conditions in the Soviet Union, portraying life there as much better and happier than it was. She also wanted to criticize the lauded 1946 film "The Best Years of Our Lives" for what she interpreted as its negative presentation of the business world but was not allowed to do so. When asked after the hearings about her feelings on the investigations' effectiveness, Rand described the process as "futile". After several delays, the film version of "The Fountainhead" was released in 1949. Although it used Rand's screenplay with minimal alterations, she "disliked the movie from beginning to end" and complained about its editing, the acting and other elements. "Atlas Shrugged" and Objectivism. Following the publication of "The Fountainhead", Rand received many letters from readers, some of whom the book had influenced profoundly. In 1951, Rand moved from Los Angeles to New York City, where she gathered a group of these admirers who met at Rand's apartment on weekends to discuss philosophy. The group included future chair of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, a young psychology student named Nathan Blumenthal (later Nathaniel Branden) and his wife Barbara, and Barbara's cousin Leonard Peikoff. Later, Rand began allowing them to read the manuscript drafts of her new novel, "Atlas Shrugged". In 1954, her close relationship with Nathaniel Branden turned into a romantic affair. They informed both their spouses, who briefly objected, until Rand "sp[u]n out a deductive chain from which you just couldn't escape", in Barbara Branden's words, resulting in her and O'Connor's assent. Historian Jennifer Burns concludes that O'Connor was likely "the hardest hit" emotionally by the affair. Published in 1957, "Atlas Shrugged" is considered Rand's "magnum opus". She described the novel's theme as "the role of the mind in man's existence—and, as a corollary, the demonstration of a new moral philosophy: the morality of rational self-interest". It advocates the core tenets of Rand's philosophy of Objectivism and expresses her concept of human achievement.
181	Ayn Rand The plot involves a dystopian United States in which the most creative industrialists, scientists, and artists respond to a welfare state government by going on strike and retreating to a hidden valley where they build an independent free economy. The novel's hero and leader of the strike, John Galt, describes it as stopping "the motor of the world" by withdrawing the minds of individuals contributing most to the nation's wealth and achievements. The novel contains an exposition of Objectivism in a lengthy monologue delivered by Galt. Despite many negative reviews, "Atlas Shrugged" became an international bestseller, but the reaction of intellectuals to the novel discouraged and depressed Rand. "Atlas Shrugged" was her last completed work of fiction, marking the end of her career as a novelist and the beginning of her role as a popular philosopher. In 1958, Nathaniel Branden established the Nathaniel Branden Lectures, later incorporated as the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), to promote Rand's philosophy through public lectures. He and Rand co-founded "The Objectivist Newsletter" (later renamed "The Objectivist") in 1962 to circulate articles about her ideas; she later republished some of these articles in book form. Rand was unimpressed by many of the NBI students and held them to strict standards, sometimes reacting coldly or angrily to those who disagreed with her. Critics, including some former NBI students and Branden himself, later said the NBI culture was one of intellectual conformity and excessive reverence for Rand. Some described the NBI or the Objectivist movement as a cult or religion. Rand expressed opinions on a wide range of topics, from literature and music to sexuality and facial hair. Some of her followers mimicked her preferences, wearing clothes to match characters from her novels and buying furniture like hers. Some former NBI students believed the extent of these behaviors was exaggerated, and the problem was concentrated among Rand's closest followers in New York. Later years. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Rand developed and promoted her Objectivist philosophy through nonfiction and speeches, including annual lectures at the Ford Hall Forum. In answers to audience questions, she took controversial stances on political and social issues. These included supporting abortion rights, opposing the Vietnam War and the military draft (but condemning many draft dodgers as "bums"), supporting Israel in the Yom Kippur War of 1973 against a coalition of Arab nations as "civilized men fighting savages", claiming European colonists had the right to invade and take land inhabited by American Indians, and calling homosexuality "immoral" and "disgusting", despite advocating the repeal of all laws concerning it.
182	Ayn Rand She endorsed several Republican candidates for president of the United States, most strongly Barry Goldwater in 1964. In 1964, Nathaniel Branden began an affair with the young actress Patrecia Scott, whom he later married. Nathaniel and Barbara Branden kept the affair hidden from Rand. As her relationship with Nathaniel Branden deteriorated, Rand had her husband be present for difficult conversations between her and Branden. In 1968, Rand learned about Branden's relationship with Scott. Though her romantic involvement with Nathaniel Branden was already over, Rand ended her relationship with both Brandens, and the NBI closed. She published an article in "The Objectivist" repudiating Nathaniel Branden for dishonesty and "irrational behavior in his private life". In subsequent years, Rand and several more of her closest associates parted company. Rand's younger sister Eleonora Drobisheva (née "Rosenbaum", 1910–1999) visited her in the US in 1973 at the former's invitation, but did not accept her lifestyle and views, as well as finding little literary merit in her works. She subsequently returned to the Soviet Union and spent the rest of her life in Leningrad (later Saint Petersburg). Rand had surgery for lung cancer in 1974 after decades of heavy smoking. In 1976, she retired from her newsletter and, despite her lifelong objections to any government-run program, was enrolled in and subsequently claimed Social Security and Medicare with the aid of a social worker. Her activities in the Objectivist movement declined, especially after her husband died on November9, 1979. One of her final projects was a never-completed television adaptation of "Atlas Shrugged". On March6, 1982, Rand died of heart failure at her home in New York City. Her funeral included a floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign. In her will, Rand named Peikoff as her heir. Literary approach, influences and reception. Rand described her approach to literature as "romantic realism". She wanted her fiction to present the world "as it could be and should be", rather than as it was. This approach led her to create highly stylized situations and characters. Her fiction typically has protagonists who are heroic individualists, depicted as fit and attractive. Her villains support duty and collectivist moral ideals. Rand often describes them as unattractive, and some have names that suggest negative traits, such as Wesley Mouch in "Atlas Shrugged". Rand considered plot a critical element of literature, and her stories typically have what biographer Anne Heller described as "tight, elaborate, fast-paced plotting". Romantic triangles are a common plot element in Rand's fiction; in most of her novels and plays, the main female character is romantically involved with at least two men.
183	Ayn Rand Influences. In school, Rand read works by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Victor Hugo, Edmond Rostand, and Friedrich Schiller, who became her favorites. She considered them to be among the "top rank" of Romantic writers because of their focus on moral themes and their skill at constructing plots. Hugo was an important influence on her writing, especially her approach to plotting. In the introduction she wrote for an English-language edition of his novel "Ninety-Three", Rand called him "the greatest novelist in world literature". Although Rand disliked most Russian literature, her depictions of her heroes show the influence of the Russian Symbolists and other nineteenth-century Russian writing, most notably the 1863 novel "What Is to Be Done?" by Nikolay Chernyshevsky. Scholars of Russian literature see in Chernyshevsky's character Rakhmetov, an "ascetic revolutionist", the template for Rand's literary heroes and heroines. Rand's experience of the Russian Revolution and early Communist Russia influenced the portrayal of her villains. Beyond "We the Living", which is set in Russia, this influence can be seen in the ideas and rhetoric of Ellsworth Toohey in "The Fountainhead", and in the destruction of the economy in "Atlas Shrugged". Rand's descriptive style echoes her early career writing scenarios and scripts for movies; her novels have many narrative descriptions that resemble early Hollywood movie scenarios. They often follow common film editing conventions, such as having a broad establishing shot description of a scene followed by close-up details, and her descriptions of women characters often take a "male gaze" perspective. Contemporary reviews. The first reviews Rand received were for "Night of January 16th". Reviews of the Broadway production were largely positive, but Rand considered even positive reviews to be embarrassing because of significant changes made to her script by the producer. Although Rand believed that "We the Living" was not widely reviewed, over 200 publications published approximately 125 different reviews. Overall, they were more positive than those she received for her later work. "Anthem" received little review attention, both for its first publication in England and for subsequent re-issues. Rand's first bestseller, "The Fountainhead", received far fewer reviews than "We the Living", and reviewers' opinions were mixed. Lorine Pruette's positive review in "The New York Times", which called the author "a writer of great power" who wrote "brilliantly, beautifully and bitterly", was one that Rand greatly appreciated. There were other positive reviews, but Rand dismissed most of them for either misunderstanding her message or for being in unimportant publications.
184	Ayn Rand Some negative reviews said the novel was too long; others called the characters unsympathetic and Rand's style "offensively pedestrian". "Atlas Shrugged" was widely reviewed, and many of the reviews were strongly negative. "Atlas Shrugged" received positive reviews from a few publications; however, Rand scholar Mimi Reisel Gladstein later wrote that "reviewers seemed to vie with each other in a contest to devise the cleverest put-downs", with reviews including comments that it was "written out of hate" and showed "remorseless hectoring and prolixity". Whittaker Chambers wrote what was later called the novel's most "notorious" review for the conservative magazine "National Review". He accused Rand of supporting a godless system (which he related to that of the Soviets), claiming, "From almost any page of "Atlas Shrugged", a voice can be heard ... commanding: 'To a gas chamber—go!'". Rand's nonfiction received far fewer reviews than her novels. The tenor of the criticism for her first nonfiction book, "For the New Intellectual", was similar to that for "Atlas Shrugged". Philosopher Sidney Hook likened her certainty to "the way philosophy is written in the Soviet Union", and author Gore Vidal called her viewpoint "nearly perfect in its immorality". These reviews set the pattern for reaction to her ideas among liberal critics. Her subsequent books got progressively less review attention. Academic assessments of Rand's fiction. Academic consideration of Rand as a literary figure during her life was limited. Mimi Reisel Gladstein could not find any scholarly articles about Rand's novels when she began researching her in 1973, and only three such articles appeared during the rest of the 1970s. Since her death, scholars of English and American literature have continued largely to ignore her work, although attention to her literary work has increased since the 1990s. Several academic book series about important authors cover Rand and her works, as do popular study guides like CliffsNotes and SparkNotes. In "The Literary Encyclopedia" entry for Rand written in 2001, John David Lewis declared that "Rand wrote the most intellectually challenging fiction of her generation." In 2019, Lisa Duggan described Rand's fiction as popular and influential on many readers, despite being easy to criticize for "her cartoonish characters and melodramatic plots, her rigid moralizing, her middle- to lowbrow aesthetic preferences... and philosophical strivings". Philosophy. Rand called her philosophy "Objectivism", describing its essence as "the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute".
185	Ayn Rand She considered Objectivism a systematic philosophy and laid out positions on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy. Metaphysics and epistemology. In metaphysics, Rand supported philosophical realism and opposed anything she regarded as mysticism or supernaturalism, including all forms of religion. Rand believed in free will as a form of agent causation and rejected determinism. Rand also related her aesthetics to metaphysics by defining art as a "selective re-creation of reality according to an artist's metaphysical value-judgments". According to her, art allows philosophical concepts to be presented in a concrete form that can be grasped easily, thereby fulfilling a need of human consciousness. As a writer, the art form Rand focused on most closely was literature. In works such as "The Romantic Manifesto" and "", she described Romanticism as the approach that most accurately reflects the existence of human free will. In epistemology, Rand considered all knowledge to be based on forming higher levels of understanding from sense perception, the validity of which she considered axiomatic. She described reason as "the faculty that identifies and integrates the material provided by man's senses". Rand rejected all claims of non-perceptual knowledge, including "'instinct,' 'intuition,' 'revelation,' or any form of 'just knowing'". In her "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology", Rand presented a theory of concept formation and rejected the analytic–synthetic dichotomy. She believed epistemology was a foundational branch of philosophy and considered the advocacy of reason to be the single most significant aspect of her philosophy. Commentators, including Hazel Barnes, Nathaniel Branden, and Albert Ellis, have criticized Rand's focus on the importance of reason. Barnes and Ellis said Rand was too dismissive of emotion and failed to recognize its importance in human life. Branden said Rand's emphasis on reason led her to denigrate emotions and create unrealistic expectations of how consistently rational human beings should be. Ethics and politics. In ethics, Rand argued for rational and ethical egoism (rational self-interest), as the guiding moral principle. She said the individual should "exist for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing others to himself". Rand referred to egoism as "the virtue of selfishness" in her book of that title. In it, she presented her solution to the is–ought problem by describing a meta-ethical theory that based morality in the needs of "man's survival qua man", which requires the use of a rational mind. She condemned ethical altruism as incompatible with the requirements of human life and happiness, and held the initiation of force was evil and irrational, writing in "Atlas Shrugged" that "Force and mind are opposites".
186	Ayn Rand Rand's ethics and politics are the most criticized areas of her philosophy. Several authors, including Robert Nozick and William F. O'Neill in two of the earliest academic critiques of her ideas, said she failed in her attempt to solve the is–ought problem. Critics have called her definitions of "egoism" and "altruism" biased and inconsistent with normal usage. Critics from religious traditions oppose her atheism and her rejection of altruism. Rand's political philosophy emphasized individual rights, including property rights. She considered "laissez-faire" capitalism the only moral social system because in her view it was the only system based on protecting those rights. Rand opposed collectivism and statism, which she considered to include many specific forms of government, such as communism, fascism, socialism, theocracy, and the welfare state. Her preferred form of government was a constitutional republic that is limited to the protection of individual rights. Although her political views are often classified as conservative or libertarian, Rand preferred the term "radical for capitalism". She worked with conservatives on political projects but disagreed with them over issues such as religion and ethics. Rand rejected anarchism as a naive theory based in subjectivism that would lead to collectivism in practice, and denounced libertarianism, which she associated with anarchism. Several critics, including Nozick, have said her attempt to justify individual rights based on egoism fails. Others, like libertarian philosopher Michael Huemer, have gone further, saying that her support of egoism and her support of individual rights are inconsistent positions. Some critics, like Roy Childs, have said that her opposition to the initiation of force should lead to support of anarchism, rather than limited government. Relationship to other philosophers. Except for Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and classical liberals, Rand was sharply critical of most philosophers and philosophical traditions known to her. Acknowledging Aristotle as her greatest influence, Rand remarked that in the history of philosophy she could only recommend "three A's"—Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ayn Rand. In a 1959 interview with Mike Wallace, when asked where her philosophy came from, she responded: "Out of my own mind, with the sole acknowledgement of a debt to Aristotle, the only philosopher who ever influenced me." In an article for the "Claremont Review of Books", political scientist Charles Murray criticized Rand's claim that her only "philosophical debt" was to Aristotle. He asserted her ideas were derivative of previous thinkers such as John Locke and Friedrich Nietzsche. Rand took early inspiration from Nietzsche, and scholars have found indications of this in Rand's private journals.
187	Ayn Rand In 1928, she alluded to his idea of the "superman" in notes for an unwritten novel whose protagonist was inspired by the murderer William Edward Hickman. There are other indications of Nietzsche's influence in passages from the first edition of "We the Living" (which Rand later revised), and in her overall writing style. By the time she wrote "The Fountainhead", Rand had turned against Nietzsche's ideas, and the extent of his influence on her even during her early years is disputed. Rand's views also may have been influenced by the promotion of egoism among the Russian nihilists, including Chernyshevsky and Dmitry Pisarev, although there is no direct evidence that she read them. Rand considered Immanuel Kant her philosophical opposite and "the most evil man in mankind's history"; she believed his epistemology undermined reason and his ethics opposed self-interest. Philosophers George Walsh and Fred Seddon have argued she misinterpreted Kant and exaggerated their differences. She was also critical of Plato and viewed his differences with Aristotle on questions of metaphysics and epistemology as the primary conflict in the history of philosophy. Rand's relationship with contemporary philosophers was mostly antagonistic. She was not an academic and did not participate in academic discourse. She was dismissive of critics and wrote about ideas she disagreed with in a polemical manner without in-depth analysis. Academic philosophers in turn viewed her negatively and dismissed her as an unimportant figure who should not be considered a philosopher or given any serious response. Early academic reaction. During Rand's lifetime, her work received little attention from academic scholars. In 1967, John Hospers discussed Rand's ethical ideas in the second edition of his textbook, "An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis". That same year, Hazel Barnes included a chapter critiquing Objectivism in her book "An Existentialist Ethics". When the first full-length academic book about Rand's philosophy appeared in 1971, its author declared writing about Rand "a treacherous undertaking" that could lead to "guilt by association" for taking her seriously. A few articles about Rand's ideas appeared in academic journals before her death in 1982, many of them in "The Personalist". One of these was "On the Randian Argument" by libertarian philosopher Robert Nozick, who criticized her meta-ethical arguments. In the same journal, other philosophers argued that Nozick misstated Rand's case. In an article responding to Nozick, Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas B. Rasmussen defended her positions, but described her style as "literary, hyperbolic and emotional". After her death, interest in Rand's ideas increased gradually.
188	Ayn Rand "The Philosophic Thought of Ayn Rand", a 1984 collection of essays about Objectivism edited by Den Uyl and Rasmussen, was the first academic book about Rand's ideas published after her death. In one essay, political writer Jack Wheeler wrote that despite "the incessant bombast and continuous venting of Randian rage", Rand's ethics are "a most immense achievement, the study of which is vastly more fruitful than any other in contemporary thought". In 1987, the Ayn Rand Society was founded as an affiliate of the American Philosophical Association. In a 1995 entry about Rand in "Contemporary Women Philosophers", Jenny A. Heyl described a divergence in how different academic specialties viewed Rand. She said that Rand's philosophy "is regularly omitted from academic philosophy. Yet, throughout literary academia, Ayn Rand is considered a philosopher." Writing in the 1998 edition of the "Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy", political theorist Chandran Kukathas summarized the mainstream philosophical reception of her work in two parts. He said most commentators view her ethical argument as an unconvincing variant of Aristotle's ethics, and her political theory "is of little interest" because it is marred by an "ill-thought out and unsystematic" effort to reconcile her hostility to the state with her rejection of anarchism. "The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies", a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary academic journal devoted to the study of Rand and her ideas, was established in 1999. 21st-century academic reaction. In 2009, historian Jennifer Burns identified "an explosion of scholarship" about Rand since 2000, although as of that year, few universities included Rand or Objectivism as a philosophical specialty or research area. From 2002 to 2012, over 60 colleges and universities accepted grants from the charitable foundation of BB&T that required teaching Rand's ideas or works; in some cases, the grants were controversial or even rejected because of the requirement to teach about Rand. In a 2010 essay for the Cato Institute, Huemer argued very few people find Rand's ideas convincing, especially her ethics. He attributed the attention she receives to her being a "compelling writer", especially as a novelist. In 2012, the Pennsylvania State University Press agreed to take over publication of "The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies", and the University of Pittsburgh Press launched an "Ayn Rand Society Philosophical Studies" series based on the Society's proceedings. The Fall 2012 update to the entry about Rand in the "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy" said that "only a few professional philosophers have taken her work seriously".
189	Ayn Rand That same year, political scientist Alan Wolfe dismissed Rand as a "nonperson" among academics, an attitude that writer Ben Murnane later described as "the traditional academic view" of Rand. In a 2018 article for "Aeon", philosopher Skye C. Cleary wrote: "Philosophers love to hate Ayn Rand. It's trendy to scoff at any mention of her." However, Cleary said that because many people take Rand's ideas seriously, philosophers "need to treat the Ayn Rand phenomenon seriously" and provide refutations rather than ignoring her. Media critic Eric Burns said in 2020 that "Rand is surely the most engaging philosopher of my lifetime", but "nobody in the academe pays any attention to her, neither as an author nor a philosopher". That same year, the editor of a collection of critical essays about Rand said academics who disapproved of her ideas had long held "a stubborn resolve to ignore or ridicule" her work but that more were engaging with her work in recent years. In 2023, "The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies" ceased publication. Legacy. Popular interest. With over 37million copies sold as of 2020[ [update]], Rand's books continue to be read widely. A survey conducted for the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club in 1991 asked club members to name the most influential book in their lives. Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" was the second most popular choice, after the Bible. Although Rand's influence has been greatest in the United States, there has been international interest in her work. Rand's contemporary admirers included fellow novelists, like Ira Levin, Kay Nolte Smith and L. Neil Smith; she has influenced later writers like Erika Holzer, Terry Goodkind, and comic book artist Steve Ditko. Rand provided a positive view of business and subsequently many business executives and entrepreneurs have admired and promoted her work. Businessmen such as John Allison of BB&T and Ed Snider of Comcast Spectacor have funded the promotion of Rand's ideas. Television shows, movies, songs, and video games have referred to Rand and her works. Throughout her life she was the subject of many articles in popular magazines, as well as book-length critiques by authors such as the psychologist Albert Ellis and Trinity Foundation president John W. Robbins. Rand or characters based on her figure prominently in novels by American authors, including Kay Nolte Smith, Mary Gaitskill, Matt Ruff, and Tobias Wolff. Nick Gillespie, former editor-in-chief of "Reason", remarked: "Rand's is a tortured immortality, one in which she's as likely to be a punch line as a protagonist.
190	Ayn Rand Jibes at Rand as cold and inhuman run through the popular culture." Two movies have been made about Rand's life. A 1997 documentary film, "", was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. "The Passion of Ayn Rand", a 1999 television adaptation of the book of the same name, won several awards. Rand's image also appears on a 1999 U.S. postage stamp illustrated by artist Nick Gaetano. Rand's works, most commonly "Anthem" or "The Fountainhead", are sometimes assigned as secondary school reading. Since 2002, the Ayn Rand Institute has provided free copies of Rand's novels to teachers who promise to include the books in their curriculum. The Institute had distributed 4.5million copies in the U.S. and Canada by the end of 2020. In 2017, Rand was added to the required reading list for the A Level Politics exam in the United Kingdom. Political influence. Although she rejected the labels "conservative" and "libertarian", Rand has had a continuing influence on right-wing politics and libertarianism. Rand is often considered one of the three most important women (along with Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson) in the early development of modern American libertarianism. David Nolan, one founder of the Libertarian Party, said that "without Ayn Rand, the libertarian movement would not exist". In his history of that movement, journalist Brian Doherty described her as "the most influential libertarian of the twentieth century to the public at large". Political scientist Andrew Koppelman called her "the most widely read libertarian". Historian Jennifer Burns referred to her as "the ultimate gateway drug to life on the right". The political figures who cite Rand as an influence are usually conservatives (often members of the Republican Party), despite Rand taking some atypical positions for a conservative, like being pro-choice and an atheist. She faced intense opposition from William F. Buckley Jr. and other contributors to the conservative "National Review" magazine, which published numerous criticisms of her writings and ideas. Nevertheless, a 1987 article in "The New York Times" called her the Reagan administration's "novelist laureate". Republican congressmen and conservative pundits have acknowledged her influence on their lives and have recommended her novels. She has influenced some conservative politicians outside the U.S., such as Sajid Javid in the United Kingdom, Siv Jensen in Norway, and Ayelet Shaked in Israel. The 2007–2008 financial crisis renewed interest in her works, especially "Atlas Shrugged", which some saw as foreshadowing the crisis. Opinion articles compared real-world events with the novel's plot. Signs mentioning Rand and her fictional hero John Galt appeared at Tea Party protests.
191	Ayn Rand There was increased criticism of her ideas, especially from the political left. Critics blamed the Great Recession on her support of selfishness and free markets, particularly through her influence on Alan Greenspan. In 2015, Adam Weiner said that through Greenspan, "Rand had effectively chucked a ticking time bomb into the boiler room of the US economy". Lisa Duggan said that Rand's novels had "incalculable impact" in encouraging the spread of neoliberal political ideas. In 2021, Cass Sunstein said Rand's ideas could be seen in the tax and regulatory policies of the Trump administration, which he attributed to the "enduring influence" of Rand's fiction. Objectivist movement. After the closure of the Nathaniel Branden Institute, the Objectivist movement continued in other forms. In the 1970s, Peikoff began delivering courses on Objectivism. In 1979, Peter Schwartz started a newsletter called "The Intellectual Activist", which Rand endorsed. She also endorsed "The Objectivist Forum", a bimonthly magazine founded by Objectivist philosopher Harry Binswanger, which ran from 1980 to 1987. In 1985, Peikoff worked with businessman Ed Snider to establish the Ayn Rand Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting Rand's ideas and works. In 1990, after an ideological disagreement with Peikoff, David Kelley founded the Institute for Objectivist Studies, now known as The Atlas Society. In 2001, historian John P. McCaskey organized the Anthem Foundation for Objectivist Scholarship, which provides grants for scholarly work on Objectivism in academia. Selected works. Fiction and drama Non-fiction References. Works cited.
192	Alain Connes French mathematician (born 1947) Alain Connes (; born 1 April 1947) is a French mathematician, known for his contributions to the study of operator algebras and noncommutative geometry. He was a professor at the , , Ohio State University and Vanderbilt University. He was awarded the Fields Medal in 1982. Career. Alain Connes attended high school at Lycée Saint-Charles in Marseille, and was then a student of the classes préparatoires in Lycée Thiers. Between 1966 and 1970 he studied at École normale supérieure in Paris, and in 1973 he obtained a PhD from Pierre and Marie Curie University, under the supervision of Jacques Dixmier. From 1970 to 1974 he was research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research and during 1975 he held a visiting position at Queen's University at Kingston in Canada. In 1976 he returned to France and worked as professor at Pierre and Marie Curie University until 1980 and at CNRS between 1981 and 1984. Moreover, since 1979 he holds the Léon Motchane Chair at IHES. From 1984 until his retirement in 2017 he held the chair of Analysis and Geometry at Collège de France. In parallel, he was awarded a distinguished professorship at Vanderbilt University between 2003 and 2012, and at Ohio State University between 2012 and 2021. Research. Connes' main research interests revolved around operator algebras. Besides noncommutative geometry, he has applied his works in various areas of mathematics and number theory, differential geometry. Since the 1990s, he developped noncommutative geometry. In his early work on von Neumann algebras in the 1970s, he succeeded in obtaining the almost complete classification of injective factors. He also formulated the Connes embedding problem. Following this, he made contributions in operator K-theory and index theory, which culminated in the Baum–Connes conjecture. He also introduced cyclic cohomology in the early 1980s as a first step in the study of noncommutative differential geometry. He was a member of Nicolas Bourbaki. Over many years, he collaborated extensively with Henri Moscovici. Awards and honours. Connes was awarded the Peccot-Vimont Prize in 1976, the Ampère Prize in 1980, the Fields Medal in 1982, the Clay Research Award in 2000 and the Crafoord Prize in 2001. The French National Centre for Scientific Research granted him the silver medal in 1977 and the gold medal in 2004. He was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematicians in 1974 at Vancouver and in 1986 at Berkeley, and a plenary speaker at the ICM in 1978 at Helsinki. He was awarded honorary degrees from Queen's University at Kingston in 1979, University of Rome Tor Vergata in 1997, University of Oslo in 1999, University of Southern Denmark in 2009, Université Libre de Bruxelles in 2010 and Shanghai Fudan University in 2017.
193	Alain Connes Since 1982 he is a member of the French Academy of Sciences. He was elected member of several foreign academies and societies, including the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in 1980, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in 1983, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1989, the London Mathematical Society in 1994, the Canadian Academy of Sciences in 1995 (incorporated since 2002 in the Royal Society of Canada), the US National Academy of Sciences in 1997, the Russian Academy of Science in 2003 and the Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium in 2016. In 2001 he received (together with his co-authors André Lichnerowicz and Marco Schutzenberger) the Peano Prize for his work "Triangle of Thoughts." Family. Alain Connes is the middle-born of three sons — born to parents both of whom lived to be 101 years old. He married in 1971. References.
194	Allan Dwan American film director & screenwriter (1885–1981) Allan Dwan (born Joseph Aloysius Dwan; April 3, 1885 – December 28, 1981) was a pioneering Canadian-born American motion picture director, producer, and screenwriter. Early life. Born Joseph Aloysius Dwan in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Dwan was the younger son of commercial traveler of woolen clothing Joseph Michael Dwan (1857–1917) and his wife Mary Jane Dwan (née Hunt). The family moved to the United States when he was seven years old on December 4, 1892, by ferry from Windsor to Detroit, according to his naturalization petition of August 1939. His elder brother, Leo Garnet Dwan (1883–1964), became a physician. Allan Dwan studied engineering at the University of Notre Dame and then worked for a lighting company in Chicago. He had a strong interest in the fledgling motion picture industry, and when Essanay Studios offered him the opportunity to become a scriptwriter, he took the job. At that time, some of the East Coast movie makers began to spend winters in California where the climate allowed them to continue productions requiring warm weather. Soon, a number of movie companies worked there year-round, and in 1911, Dwan began working part-time in Hollywood. While still in New York, in 1917 he was the founding president of the East Coast chapter of the Motion Picture Directors Association. Career. Dwan started his directing career by accident in 1911, when he was sent by his employers to California, in order to locate a company that had vanished. Dwan managed to track the company down, and learned that they were waiting for a film director (who was an alcoholic) to return from a binge and allow them to resume their work. Dwan wired back to his employers in Chicago, informing them of the situation, and suggested that they disband the company. They wired back, instructing Dwan to direct the stalled film. When Dwan informed the company of the situation, and that their jobs were on the line, they responded: "You're the best damn director we ever saw". Dwan operated Flying A Studios in La Mesa, California, from August 1911 to July 1912. Flying A was one of the first motion pictures studios in California history. On August 12, 2011, a plaque was unveiled on the Wolff building at Third Avenue and La Mesa Boulevard commemorating Dwan and the Flying A Studios origins in La Mesa, California. After making a series of westerns and comedies, Dwan directed fellow Canadian-American Mary Pickford in several very successful movies as well as her husband, Douglas Fairbanks, notably in the acclaimed 1922 "Robin Hood".
195	Allan Dwan Around that time, he also directed Carole Lombard in "A Perfect Crime", her film debut. Dwan directed Gloria Swanson in eight feature films, and one short film made in the short-lived sound-on-film process Phonofilm. This short, also featuring Thomas Meighan and Henri de la Falaise, was produced as a joke, for the April 26, 1925 "Lambs' Gambol" for The Lambs, with the film showing Swanson crashing the all-male club. Following the introduction of the talkies, Dwan directed child-star Shirley Temple in "Heidi" (1937) and "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" (1938). Dwan helped launch the career of two other successful Hollywood directors, Victor Fleming, who went on to direct "The Wizard of Oz" and "Gone With the Wind", and Marshall Neilan, who became an actor, director, writer and producer. Over a long career spanning almost 50 years, Dwan directed 125 motion pictures, some of which were highly acclaimed, such as the 1949 box office hit, "Sands of Iwo Jima". He directed his last movie in 1961. Being one of the last surviving pioneers of the cinema, he was interviewed at length for the 1980 documentary series "Hollywood". He died in Los Angeles at the age of 96, and is interred in the San Fernando Mission Cemetery, Mission Hills, California. Dwan has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6263 Hollywood Boulevard. Daniel Eagan of "Film Journal International" described Dwan as one of the early pioneers of cinema, stating that his style "is so basic as to seem invisible, but he treats his characters with uncommon sympathy and compassion." Partial filmography as director. References. Further reading. Print E-book
196	Algeria Country in North Africa Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia; to the east by Libya; to the southeast by Niger; to the southwest by Mali, Mauritania, and Western Sahara; to the west by Morocco; and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. The capital and largest city is Algiers, located in the far north on the Mediterranean coast. Inhabited since prehistory, Algeria has been at the crossroads of numerous cultures and civilisations, including the Phoenicians, Numidians, Romans, Vandals, and Byzantine Greeks. Its modern identity is rooted in centuries of Arab Muslim migration waves since the seventh century and the subsequent Arabisation of the indigenous populations. Following a succession of Islamic Arab and Berber dynasties between the eighth and 15th centuries, the Regency of Algiers was established in 1516 as a largely independent tributary state of the Ottoman Empire. After nearly three centuries as a major power in the Mediterranean, the country was invaded by France in 1830 and formally annexed in 1848, though it was not fully conquered and pacified until 1903. French rule brought mass European settlement that displaced the local population, which was reduced by up to one-third due to warfare, disease, and starvation. The Sétif and Guelma massacre in 1945 catalysed local resistance that culminated in the outbreak of the Algerian War in 1954. Algeria gained its independence in 1962. The country descended into a bloody civil war from 1992 to 2002. Spanning , Algeria is the world's tenth-largest nation by area, and the largest nation in Africa. It has a semi-arid climate, with the Sahara desert dominating most of the territory except for its fertile and mountainous north, where most of the population is concentrated. With a population of 44 million, Algeria is the tenth-most populous country in Africa, and the 33rd-most populous country in the world. Algeria's official languages are Arabic and Tamazight; French is used in media, education, and certain administrative matters, but it has no official status. The vast majority of the population speak the Algerian dialect of Arabic. Most Algerians are Arabs, with Berbers forming a sizeable minority. Sunni Islam is the official religion and practised by 99 percent of the population. Algeria is a semi-presidential republic composed of 58 provinces ("wilayas") and 1,541 communes. It is a regional power in North Africa and a middle power in global affairs. The country has the second-highest Human Development Index in continental Africa and one of the largest economies in Africa, due mostly to its large petroleum and natural gas reserves, which are the sixteenth and ninth-largest in the world, respectively.
197	Algeria Sonatrach, the national oil company, is the largest company in Africa and a major supplier of natural gas to Europe. The Algerian military is one of the largest in Africa, with the highest defence budget on the continent and among the highest in the world (ranks 22nd globally). Algeria is a member of the African Union, the Arab League, the OIC, OPEC, the United Nations, and the Arab Maghreb Union, of which it is a founding member. Name. Different forms of the name Algeria include: , , . The country's full name is officially the "People's Democratic Republic of Algeria" (; , abbr. RADP; Berber Tifinagh: , Berber Latin alphabet: ). Etymology. Algeria's name derives from the city of Algiers, which in turn derives from the Arabic (, "the islands"), referring to four small islands off its coast, a truncated form of the older (, "islands of Bani Mazghanna"). The name was given by Buluggin ibn Ziri after he established the city on the ruins of the Phoenician city of Icosium in 950. It was employed by medieval geographers such as Muhammad al-Idrisi and Yaqut al-Hamawi. Algeria took its name from the Regency of Algeria or Regency of Algiers, when Ottoman rule was established in the central Maghreb in early 16th century. This period saw the installation of a political and administrative organisation which participated in the establishment of the "Watan el djazâïr" (, country of Algiers) and the definition of its borders with its neighboring entities on the east and west. The Ottoman Turks who settled in Algeria referred both to themselves and the peoples as "Algerians". Acting as a central military and political authority in the regency, the Ottoman Turks shaped the modern political identity of Algeria as a state possessing all the attributes of sovereign independence, despite still being nominally subject to the Ottoman sultan. Algerian nationalist, historian and statesman Ahmed Tewfik El Madani regarded the regency as the "first Algerian state" and the "Algerian Ottoman republic". History. Prehistory and ancient history. Around ~1.8-million-year-old stone artifacts from Ain Hanech (Algeria) were considered to represent the oldest archaeological materials in North Africa. Stone artifacts and cut-marked bones that were excavated from two nearby deposits at Ain Boucherit are estimated to be ~1.9 million years old, and even older stone artifacts to be as old as ~2.4 million years. Hence, the Ain Boucherit evidence shows that ancestral hominins inhabited the Mediterranean fringe in northern Africa much earlier than previously thought.
198	Algeria The evidence strongly argues for early dispersal of stone tool manufacture and use from East Africa, or a possible multiple-origin scenario of stone technology in both East and North Africa. Neanderthal tool makers produced hand axes in the Levalloisian and Mousterian styles (43,000 BC) similar to those in the Levant. Algeria was the site of the highest state of development of Middle Paleolithic Flake tool techniques. Tools of this era, starting about 30,000 BC, are called Aterian (after the archaeological site of Bir el Ater, south of Tebessa). The earliest blade industries in North Africa are called Iberomaurusian (located mainly in the Oran region). This industry appears to have spread throughout the coastal regions of the Maghreb between 15,000 and 10,000 BC. Neolithic civilisation (animal domestication and agriculture) developed in the Saharan and Mediterranean Maghreb perhaps as early as 11,000 BC or as late as between 6000 and 2000 BC. This life, richly depicted in the Tassili n'Ajjer paintings, predominated in Algeria until the classical period. The mixture of peoples of North Africa coalesced eventually into a distinct native population that came to be called Berbers, who are the indigenous peoples of northern Africa. From their principal center of power at Carthage, the Carthaginians expanded and established small settlements along the North African coast; by 600 BC, a Phoenician presence existed at Tipasa, east of Cherchell, Hippo Regius (modern Annaba) and Rusicade (modern Skikda). These settlements served as market towns as well as anchorages. As Carthaginian power grew, its impact on the indigenous population increased dramatically. Berber civilisation was already at a stage in which agriculture, manufacturing, trade, and political organisation supported several states. Trade links between Carthage and the Berbers in the interior grew, but territorial expansion also resulted in the enslavement or military recruitment of some Berbers and in the extraction of tribute from others. By the early 4th century BC, Berbers formed the single largest element of the Carthaginian army. In the Revolt of the Mercenaries, Berber soldiers rebelled from 241 to 238 BC after being unpaid following the defeat of Carthage in the First Punic War. They succeeded in obtaining control of much of Carthage's North African territory, and they minted coins bearing the name Libyan, used in Greek to describe natives of North Africa. The Carthaginian state declined because of successive defeats by the Romans in the Punic Wars. In 146 BC the city of Carthage was destroyed. As Carthaginian power waned, the influence of Berber leaders in the hinterland grew. By the 2nd century BC, several large but loosely administered Berber kingdoms had emerged. Two of them were established in Numidia, behind the coastal areas controlled by Carthage.
199	Algeria West of Numidia lay Mauretania, which extended across the Moulouya River in modern-day Morocco to the Atlantic Ocean. The high point of Berber civilisation, unequalled until the coming of the Almohads and Almoravids more than a millennium later, was reached during the reign of Masinissa in the 2nd century BC. After Masinissa's death in 148 BC, the Berber kingdoms were divided and reunited several times. Masinissa's line survived until 24 AD, when the remaining Berber territory was annexed to the Roman Empire. For several centuries Algeria was ruled by the Romans, who founded many colonies in the region. Algeria is home to the second-largest number of Roman sites and remains after Italy. Rome, after getting rid of its powerful rival Carthage in the year 146 BC, decided a century later to include Numidia to become the new master of North Africa. They built more than 500 cities. Like the rest of North Africa, Algeria was one of the breadbaskets of the empire, exporting cereals and other agricultural products. Saint Augustine was the bishop of Hippo Regius (modern-day Annaba, Algeria), located in the Roman province of Africa. The Germanic Vandals of Geiseric moved into North Africa in 429, and by 435 controlled coastal Numidia. They did not make any significant settlement on the land, as they were harassed by local tribes. In fact, by the time the Byzantines arrived Leptis Magna was abandoned and the Msellata region was occupied by the indigenous Laguatan who had been busy facilitating an Amazigh political, military and cultural revival. Furthermore, during the rule of the Romans, Byzantines, Vandals, Carthaginians, and Ottomans the Berber people were the only or one of the few in North Africa who remained independent. The Berber people were so resistant that even during the Muslim conquest of North Africa they still had control and possession over their mountains. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire led to the establishment of a native Kingdom based in Altava (modern-day Algeria) known as the Mauro-Roman Kingdom. It was succeeded by another Kingdom based in Altava, the Kingdom of Altava. During the reign of Kusaila its territory extended from the region of modern-day Fez in the west to the western Aurès and later Kairaouan and the interior of Ifriqiya in the east. Middle Ages. After negligible resistance from the locals, Muslim Arabs of the Umayyad Caliphate conquered Algeria in the early 8th century. Large numbers of the indigenous Berber people converted to Islam. Christians, Berber and Latin speakers remained in the great majority in Tunisia until the end of the 9th century and Muslims only became a vast majority some time in the 10th.

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