SophieS World Essay Research Paper Sophie

Sophie.S World Essay, Research Paper

Sophie’s World

Looking in her mailbox one afternoon, a fourteen- year- old Norwegian schoolgirl

named Sophie Amundsen finds a surprising white envelope containing a piece of paper.

On it are written two questions: “Who are you.” and “Where did the world come

from.”. And at the same time she is also receiving letters for a girl named Hilde Moller

Kang and Sophie also finds a silk red scarf in her bedroom, not belonging to her, but to

this girl Hilde.

The writer is an enigmatic philosopher named Albert Knox and his messenger is his

dog Hermes. Albert Knox’s two teasing questions are the beginning of an extraordinary

journey through philosophy from philosophers such as what I have read so far: Thales,

Anaximenes, Parmenides, Heraclitus, Empedocles, Anaxgoras, Democritus, Socrates,

Plato, and Aristotle. Albert Knox, whom Sophie has not met in person or even seen for

that matter, has been inquiring Sophie’s mind to fundamental questions that philosophers

have been asking since the dawn of civilization.

Sophie is soon enough enrolled in this correspondence course. Everyday she gets

either a white envelope containing puzzling questions or a brown envelope containing type

written papers teaching her about what philosophy is and explaining to her all these

philosophers and their theories.

Sophie’s first lesson in philosophy was, “What is philosophy.”. How I

understood what was being said was that philosophy is the examination for beliefs and an

analysis of the basic concepts said in the expression of such beliefs. Philosophy is often

used to mean a set of values and attitudes toward life, nature, and society. Next Sophie

learned about was Thalas. According to Thalas, the original principle of all things is

water, from which everything proceeds and into which everything is again resolved. My

analysis on that is how can he come to that conclusion. Yes, all living things contain

water within themselves, but it seems preposterous for him to say that we evolved from

water. Living things not only contain water but contain substances. The only logical

conclusion that Sophie found was that water turns into ice, and ice can go back to flowing

water again. Another philosopher that was discussed along with Thalas was

Anaximander. Anaximander held that all things eventually return to the element from

which they originated. When a plant dies it desinigrates into the ground and the ground is

where the plant originated from, so I can see where Anaximender could propose that.

But human beings did not originate from the ground, unless he did have religious beliefs,

such that human evolved from dirt. So when he/she dies they go back to where they

originated, so I could see where that concept might come into place.

Although Anaximenes had a different concept. He held the concept that air is the

primary element to which everything else can be reduced. To explain how solid objects

are formed from air, he introduced the notions of condensation and rarefaction. These

processes, he claimed, make air, in itself invisible, visible as water, fire, and solid

matter. He thought that air becomes warmer and turns into fire when it rarefied and that it

turns colder and turns solid when condensed. How I see it his attempt was to discover the

ultimate nature of reality.

On the other hand, Sophie learned about Parmenidas’s philosophy. Parmendias’s

philosophy demonstrated the reality of the absolute being, the nonexistence of which

Parmenidas declared to be inconceivable, but the nature of which, he admitted to be

equally inconceivable, as it is dissociated from every limitation under which human beings

think. How I understand it, he held the fact that reality, is not known to the senses but it

is to be found only in reason. He plainly says that beings cannot rise from nonbeing, and

that being neither rises nor passes away. The phenomena of nature are only apparent and

due to human error, they seem to exist, but have no real existence. This is a man who

will not believe something is true or real not even if he saw it. I really don’t agree with

that concept. I believe if you see it, it really exists.

Another philosopher that was mentioned to Sophie was Empedocles. He believed

that all things are composed of four primal elements: earth, air, fire, and water. The two

active and opposing forces, love and hate, act upon these elements, combining separating

them into valid forms. Empedocles believed that no change involving the creation of new

matter is possible, only changes in the combinations of the four existing elements may

occur. I would have to agree with what was concluded on Empedocles theory. “The only

way we can accept the transformations we can see with our own eyes, is to admit the

existence of more than one single basic substance”. Earth does not make visual

transformation by fire, water, and air

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