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College

College

The term college (Latin collegium) is most often used today to denote an educational institution. The precise usage of the term varies among English-speaking countries. However, it can be the name of any group of colleagues; originally it meant a group of people living together under a common set of rules (con-, "together" + leg-, "law"). As a consequence members of colleges were originally styled "fellows" and still are in some places.

United Kingdom

British usage of the word "college" remains the loosest, encompassing a range of institutions:
- certain public schools for children such as Eton and Winchester
- certain secondary schools, particularly "sixth form colleges", where students (ages 16-18) finish their secondary education, and some specialist schools
- the constituent parts of some universities (see below)
- university colleges — independent higher education institutions that have been granted degree-awarding powers but not university status.
- colleges of further education and adult education.
- professional associations such as the Royal College of Organists, the Royal College of Surgeons and other various Royal Colleges.
- the College of Justice or Court of Session of Scotland

Universities and colleges

Oxford and Cambridge

The two ancient universities of England: Oxford and Cambridge (collectively termed Oxbridge), are federations of autonomous colleges. While many of the Student Affairs functions are housed in the colleges, each college is more than a residence hall. In addition to accommodation, meals, common rooms, libraries, sporting and social facilities for its students, each college admits students to the University and, through tutorials or supervisions, contributes to the work of educating them. The faculties at each university provide lectures, central facilities such as libraries and laboratories, and examines for and awards degrees. Academic staff are commonly employed both by the university (typically as lecturer or professor) and by a college (as fellow or tutor), though some may have only a college or university post. Nearly all colleges cater to students studying a range of subjects. Since the colleges are all fully independent legal entities owning their own buildings, employing their own staff, and managing their own endowments, colleges vary widely in wealth. It is entirely possible for some colleges to be in better financial health than the universities of which they are a part. Typically a student or fellow of an Oxbridge college is said to be "living in college" if their accommodation is inside the college buildings. Most colleges also accommodate students in houses or other buildings away from the college site.

University of Durham

The University of Durham is also collegiate in nature, and its colleges enjoy the same legal status as 'listed bodies' as the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge. Generally, however, its colleges are not financially independent and do not have any teaching duties as part of the university, though they do provide meals, libraries, computers, and recreational facilities for their members.

University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh recently restructured and created colleges along academic lines merging the old Faculties into larger bodies, and devolving control for most matters to academic schools.

University of St Andrews

The University of St Andrews is legally a collegiate University, having two colleges: the United College of St Salvator and St Leonard and St Mary's College. However, each college exists in name only and the power they once held is now vested in the Academic Senate and the Faculties of Arts, Divinity, Medicine and Science.

University of Wales

In the University of Wales, colleges are the lower tier of institutional membership, below constituent institutions, following the reorganisation of the university in 1996. Prior to this, the member institutions were all called colleges. There are not currently any colleges in the University of Wales, but this is likely to change in the future.

New Universities

Three of the New Universities, Lancaster, York and Kent, have a similar system, although their colleges lack the legal status of those at Durham and Oxbridge. Officially, the University of London consists of a number of colleges. However, the federation has always been even looser there than at Oxford or Cambridge, to the extent that each of these "colleges" is essentially an independent university-level institution.

United States of America

By contrast to British usage, in American English the term "college" is generally reserved for institutions of higher education, which are often totally independent and fully empowered to grant degrees. The usual practice in America today is to call an institution made up of several faculties and granting a range of higher degrees a "university" while a smaller institution only granting bachelor's or associate's degrees is called a "college". (See liberal arts colleges, community college). Nevertheless, a few of America's most prestigious universities, such as Boston College, Dartmouth College and the College of William and Mary, have retained the term "college" in their names for historical reasons though they offer a wide range of higher degrees. This problem led, in part, to the threatened lawsuit between Yale College Wrexham (equivalent to an American 'high school') and Yale University, the latter claiming copyright infringement. Usage of the terms varies among the states, each of which operates its own institutions and licenses private ones. In 1996 for example, Georgia changed all of its four-year colleges to universities, and all of its vocational technology schools to technical colleges. (Previously, only the four research institutions were called universities.) Other states have changed the names of individual colleges, many having started as a teachers' college or vocational school (such as an A&M — an agricultural and mechanical school) that ended up as a full-fledged state university. It should be noted, too, that "university" and "college" do not exhaust all possible titles for an American institution of higher education. Other options include "institute", "academy", "union," and "school" as in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [http://www.mit.edu], United States Military Academy at West Point, New York [http://www.usma.edu], Cooper Union, or the Juilliard School. The term college is also, as in Britain, used for a constituent semi-autonomous part of a larger university but generally organized on academic rather than residential lines. For example, at many institutions, the undergraduate portion of the university can be briefly referred to as the college (such as The College at Brown or Harvard College at Harvard) while at others each of the faculties may be called a "college" (the "college of engineering", the "college of nursing", and so forth). Some American universities, such as Rice, Princeton and Yale, do have residential colleges along the lines of Oxford or Cambridge, but the name was clearly adopted in homage to the British system. Unlike the Oxbridge colleges, these residential colleges are not autonomous legal entities nor are they typically much involved in education itself, being primarily concerned with room, board, and social life. At the University of California, San Diego, however, each of the six residential colleges does teach its own core writing courses and has its own distinctive set of graduation requirements.

The origin of America's usage

The founders of the first institutions of higher education in the United States were graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. The small institutions they founded would not have seemed to them like universities — they were tiny and did not offer the higher degrees in medicine and theology. Furthermore, they were not composed of several small colleges. Instead, the new institutions felt like the Oxbridge colleges they were used to — small communities, housing and feeding their students who were instructed by residential tutors (see United Kingdom/Universities and Colleges above). However, when the first students came to be graduated, these "colleges" proceeded to assume (without any recognized authority) the right to confer degrees upon them. In Europe only universities could grant degrees. Presumably the leaders of Harvard College (which granted America's first degrees in 1642) thought of their college as the first of many residential colleges which would grow up into a New Cambridge university. However, over time, no new colleges were founded; and Harvard grew and added higher faculties. Eventually, it changed its title to university, but the term "college" had stuck and "colleges" had sprung up all over America.

British and American usage contrasted

The most confusing aspect of the conflict between the British and American terminology arises from the colloquial use of the word "college" by Americans. Where a British person (or indeed, most people around the world) would say "attend university", the American instead says, "go to college" — even if he is referring to a something formally called a university. In Britain, aside from usage in reference to collegiate universities as detailed above, to attend "college" would usually be accepted as meaning one attends a technical college or a specific sixth form institution (NB. Most state schools and public schools in Britain have sixth forms, but there are a number of sixth form specific institutions). However, in the States, the student at the enormous University of Michigan still calls it his "college". Similarly, the institution that administers many standardized admissions tests in the US is known as the College Board. Thus to the American, the word "college" refers not only to an institution but to a phase in one's life. Anywhere else in the world that phase is called "university". However, this phase itself varies somewhat around the world, which can lead to confusion even when the terminology is understood. Two outstanding features of the American version are universality and breadth: #nearly half of all Americans attend at least one year of "college", so the word is more natural, less remarkable, than "university" might sound abroad. At the less-academic end of the scale, American universities award a great many degrees for professional training which might be accomplished on-the-job elsewhere. #at the more-academic end of the scale, on the other hand, many American college students (especially at the most elite institutions) see "college" as a time of intellectual exploration which can be accomplished free from any need to prepare for the future, believing graduate school to be the time for that. The American system, by permitting students to spend some of their time in classes entirely removed from their major field of study, forces much less specialization and focus than is common in the rest of the world. Hence "college" is less dryly academic than "university" might sound abroad. Furthermore, a great many students in American universities and colleges live either in institution-run dormitories or in neighborhoods made up largely of student apartments. Hence one's college years involve a quite distinct kind of living arrangement between the family home and the first adult apartment. For all these reasons, "college" as a phase-in-life between childhood and adulthood has become very important culturally in America, perhaps more so than in the rest of the world.

The rest of the English-speaking world

Influenced by their origins in the British Empire, and by modern American pop culture, the rest of the English-speaking world seems to have adopted a mix of their practices.

Australia

In Australia, the term "college" can refer to an institution of tertiary education that is smaller than a university, run independently or as part of a university. Following a reform in the 1980s many of the formerly independent colleges now belong to a larger university. Many private high schools that provide secondary education are called "colleges" in Australia. The term can also be used to refer to residence halls, as in the United Kingdom, but compared to the UK their tutorial programs are relatively small-scale and they do no actual teaching towards academic degrees (with the exception of one or two that host theological colleges). Additionally, in Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory, "college" refers to the final two years of high school (years eleven and twelve), and the institutions which provide this. In this context, "college" is a system independent of the other years of high school. (Here, the expression is a shorter version of matriculation college.) All college courses in the ACT are sanctioned by the Board of Senior Secondary Studies, or BSSS.

Canada

In Canada, the term "college" usually refers to a community college or a technical, applied arts, or applied science school. These are post-secondary diploma-granting institutions, but they are not universities, and typically do not grant degrees. In Quebec, it can refer in particular to CEGEP (Collège d'enseignement général et professionnel, "college of general and professional education"), a form of post-secondary education specific to the Quebec education system that is required in order to continue onto university, or to learn a trade. The Royal Military College of Canada is a full-fledged degree-granting university, but does not follow the naming convention used by the rest of the country. The term "college" also applies to separate entities within a university (usually referred to as "affiliated colleges" and "federated colleges"), akin to the residential colleges in the United Kingdom. These colleges act independently, but in affiliation or federation with the university that actually grants the degrees. For example, Trinity College was once an independent institution, but later became federated with the University of Toronto, and is now one of its residential colleges. It should be noted that, unlike in the United States, there is a strong distinction between "college" and "university" in Canada. In conversation one specifically would say either "I'm going to university" (i.e., studying for a three- or four-year degree at a university) or "I'm going to college" (suggesting a technical or career college). Similarly, the term "college professor" does not hold nearly the same prestige in Canada as it does in the United States (whereas "university professor" does). In Toronto, Ontario, a government-run secondary school is generally called a “collegiate institute” (C.I.), a complicated form of the word “college” which avoids the usual “post-secondary” connotation. Some private secondary schools choose to use the word “college” in their names nevertheless. (See Toronto for examples of secondary schools called “colleges”.)

Ireland

In the Republic of Ireland, the term "college" is usually limited to an institution of tertiary education, but the term is quite generic within this field. University students often say they attend "college" rather than "university", with the term college being more popular in wider society. This is possibly due to the fact that, until 1989, no university provided teaching or research directly. Instead, these were offered by an constituent college of the university, in the case of the National University of Ireland and University of Dublin — or at least in strict legal terms. A limited number of secondary education institutions use the word college to describe or name themselves, but this tends to be the exception. The state's only ancient university, the University of Dublin, is really English in its origins and, until recently, its outlook. Created during the reign of Elizabeth I, it is modeled on the universities of Cambridge and Oxford. However, only one constituent college was ever founded, hence the curious position of Trinity College, Dublin today. For a time, degrees in Dublin Institute of Technology were also conferred by the university. However, that institution now has its own degree awarding powers and is considering applying for full university status. Among more modern foundations, the National University of Ireland, founded in 1908, consisted of constituent colleges and recognised colleges until 1997. The former are now referred to as constituent universities — institutions that are essentially universities in their own right. The National University can trace its existence back to 1850 and the creation of the Queen's University of Ireland and the creation of the Catholic University of Ireland in 1854. From 1880, the degree awarding roles of these two universities was taken over by the Royal University of Ireland, which remained until the creation of the National University in 1908 and the Queen's University of Belfast. The state's two new universities Dublin City University and University of Limerick were initially National Institute for Higher Education institutions. These institutions offered university level academic degrees and research from the start of their existence and were awarded university status in 1989 in recognition of this. These two universities now follow the general trend of universities having associated colleges offering their degrees. Third level technical education in the state has been carried out in the Regional Technical College network since 1970. These institutions are now referred to as Institutes of Technology, and some have delegated authority that entitles them to give degrees and diplomas in their own name. Initially these institutions offered only National Certificate and National Diploma courses. Now they also offer academic degrees at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Other types of college include Colleges of Education. These are specialist institutions, often linked to a university, which provide both undergraduate and postgraduate academic degrees for people who want to train as teachers.

Hong Kong

In Hong Kong, the term "college" mostly refers to secondary schools. It is also used for some tertiary institutions (e.g., Shue Yan College, or United College of the Chinese University of Hong Kong), or a residence hall of a university (as in British usage, e.g., St. John's College of the University of Hong Kong).

India

The term university is more common than college in India. Generally, colleges are located in different parts of a state and all of them are affiliated to a regional university. The colleges offer programmes under that university. Examinations are conducted by the university at the same time for all colleges under its affiliation. There are several hundred universities and each university has affiliated colleges. The first liberal arts and sciences college in India was the Presidency College, Kolkata (estd. 1817) (initially known as Hindu College). The first Missionary institution to impart Western style education in India was the Scottish Church College, Calcutta (estd. 1830). The first modern university in India was the University of Calcutta (estd. January 1857). The first research institution for the study of the social sciences and ushering the spirit of Oriental research was the Asiatic Society, (estd. 1784). The first college for the study of Christian theology and ecumenical enquiry has been the Serampore College (estd. 1818). The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are specialized institutions that award their own degrees. They are premier institutes in India. There are only seven of them at present. Of late the government has been establishing Indian Institutes of Information Technology (IIITs) as specialized centres of excellence in the rapidly emerging field of Information Technology. They have been setup to educate professionals for the booming technology oriented market.

Singapore

The term "college" in Singapore is generally only used for pre-university educational institutions called "Junior Colleges", which provide the final two years of secondary education (equivalent to sixth form in English terms or grades 11-12 in the American system). Since 1 January 2005, the term also refers to the three campuses of the Institute of Technical Education with the introduction of the "collegiate system", in which the three institutions are called ITE College East, ITE College Central, and ITE College West respectively. The term "university" is used to describe higher-education institutions offering locally-conferred degrees. Institutions offering diplomas are called "polytechnics", while other institutions are often referred to as "institutes" and so forth.

New Zealand

In New Zealand the word "college" normally refers to a newer secondary school for ages 13 to 17. In contrast, most older schools of the same type are "high schools", and "high schools". Also, single-sex schools are more likely to be "Someplace Boys/Girls High School", but there are also very many coeducational "high schools". There is no distinction between "high schools" and "colleges". Some older schools are more collegiate in nature, however: Christ's College, Canterbury is still in theory organised as a body of fellows, and was a college of the Universities of New Zealand and Canterbury. Wellington College also enjoys its right to be named a College by virtue of its affiliation with the former University of New Zealand. The constituent colleges of the former University of New Zealand (such as Canterbury University College) have become independent universities. Some halls of residence associated with New Zealand universities retain the name of "college", particularly at the University of Otago (which although brought under the umbrella of the University of New Zealand, already possessed university status and degree awarding powers). The institutions formerly known as "Teacher-training colleges" now style themselves "College of education". Essentially the pattern of usage found in the United Kingdom is followed in New Zealand (refer: Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, R.A.C. of Physicians etc.).

The non-English-speaking world

Some languages beyond English use words similar to "college". (French, for example, has the Collège de France.) However, in other languages, confusion is most likely to arise when an American is reading something translated by someone using British conventions, or vice versa.
- In Germany a Hochschule is an institute of tertiary education. "College" is a more proper term to use than a direct translation: Hochschule literally means "high school". German secondary education often takes place in an institution called in German an Oberschule, with its specific forms Hauptschule, Realschule, Gymnasium, and in some states also Gesamtschule, together with vocational secondary education in Berufsschule (in North Rhine-Westphalia called Berufskolleg). The term Kolleg (literally: college) is used in some states for institutions of adult education where graduates of a Berufsschule can graduate with an Abitur. A Graduierten-Kolleg is a German Graduate school.
- In Sweden the term "university college" is used as an official English translation for högskola, a term used for independent educational institutions providing tertiary, but not quaternary education. Similarly to the situation in Germany, the Swedish term högskola literally means "high school". The same term is also used for a number of institutions which function as specialized universities rather than as university colleges, providing quaternary education and conducting research (such as Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, the Royal Institute of Technology).
- In China, Japan, Korea and other East Asian nations, colleges and universities are collectively named 大學 or in simplified writing 大学, which is a word originally introduced by Confucius with his influential book of the same name. The original word and subsequently the book's title is most frequently translated to "The Great Learning". Today's pronunciation of this word is country- and sometimes region- specific and includes daxue and daigaku. In Japan, daigaku is usually considered distinct from senmon gakkou (専門学校), which is more of a post-secondary vocational school. In China, the college students are selected through the annual National College Entrance Examination.
- In Belgium, the term college is used for institutes of secondary education, more in particular for Catholic schools (official secondary schools are called atheneum). For tertiary education, the difference is made between hogeschool (which literally means high school) and university. With the current reform of higher education under the Bologna process, the hogeschool institutions now offer professional bachelor's degrees (three years study in one cycle) as well as master's degrees (four years study in two cycles). Universities offer academic master's degrees (four to five years study in two cycles). Recent government measures have brought the hogeschool institutions to associate with an university in order to academize their curriculum and to get involved in applied research projects.
- In France, collège generally refers to a middle school or junior high school. However, it can also be used in a manner more similar to that of English, such as in the term electoral college or the Collège de France. The latter use, though, is not as common.
- In Greece the term college is mainly used to refer to private secondary education institutions (high schools and junior high schools), while Πανεπιστήμιο (University) is the term utilized for Higher Education.
- In the Netherlands the term college is used for institutes of secondary education. The term college is also used for classes or lectures at university.
- In the French speaking part of Switzerland and also on the border to the Swiss German speaking part (i.e. in Fribourg) the French term “Collège” (German: Kollegium) is used for the Gymnasium (10th to 13th grade) which lends to the matura.

References

Category:Academia Category:Educational stages Category:School types th:วิทยาลัย

Latin

Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. It gained great importance as the formal language of the Roman Empire. All Romance languages, those being most notably Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, and Romanian, are descended from Latin, and many words based on Latin are found in other modern languages such as English. The Latin alphabet, derived from the Greek, remains the most widely-used alphabet in the world. It is said that 80 percent of scholarly English words are derived from Latin (in a large number of cases by way of French). Moreover, in the Western world, Latin was a lingua franca, the learned language for scientific and political affairs, for more than a thousand years, being eventually replaced by French in the 18th century and English in the late 19th. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the formal language of the Roman Catholic Church to this day, and thus the official national language of the Vatican. The Church used Latin as its primary liturgical language until the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s. Latin is also still used (drawing heavily on Greek roots) to furnish the names used in the scientific classification of living things. The modern study of Latin, along with Greek, is known as Classics.

Main features

Latin is a synthetic inflectional language: affixes (which usually encode more than one grammatical category) are attached to fixed stems to express gender, number, and case in adjectives, nouns, and pronouns, which is called declension; and person, number, tense, voice, mood, and aspect in verbs, which is called conjugation. There are five declensions (declinationes) of nouns and four conjugations of verbs. There are six noun cases: #nominative (used as the subject of the verb or the predicate nominative), #genitive (used to indicate relation or possession, often represented by the English of or the addition of s to a noun), #dative (used of the indirect object of the verb, often represented by the English to or for), #accusative (used of the direct object of the verb, or object of the preposition in some cases), #ablative (separation, source, cause, or instrument, often represented by the English by, with, from), #vocative (used of the person or thing being addressed). In addition, some nouns have a locative case used to express location (otherwise expressed by the ablative with a preposition such as in), but this survival from Proto-Indo-European is found only in the names of lakes, cities, towns, small islands, and a few other words related to locations, such as "house", "ground", and "countryside". Latin itself, being a very old language, is far closer to Proto-Indo-European than are most modern Western European languages; it has, in fact, about the same relationship with PIE as modern Italian or French has to Latin. There are six general tenses in Latin (technically they are tense/aspect/mood complexes). The indicative mood can be used with all of them. The subjunctive mood, however, has only present, imperfect, perfect, and pluperfect tenses. These tenses in the subjunctive mood do not completely correlate in meaning to the tenses in the indicative. The following examples are of the first conjugation verb "laudare" ("to praise") in the indicative mood and the active voice:
Primary sequence tenses
# present (laudo, "I praise") # imperfect (laudabam, "I was praising") # future (laudabo, "I shall praise," "I will praise")
Secondary sequence tenses
# perfect (laudavi, "I praised", "I have praised") # pluperfect (laudaveram, "I had praised") # future perfect (laudavero, "I shall have praised," "I will have praised") The future perfect tense can also imply a normal future idea (like in "When I will have run...") and so may also sometimes be included in the primary sequence.
Latin and Romance
After the collapse of the Roman Empire, Latin evolved into the various Romance languages. These were for many centuries only spoken languages, Latin still being used for writing. For example, Latin was the official language of Portugal until 1296 when it was replaced by Portuguese. The Romance languages evolved from Vulgar Latin, the spoken language of common usage, which in turn evolved from an older speech which also produced the formal classical standard. Latin and Romance differ (for example) in that Romance had distinctive stress, whereas Latin had distinctive length of vowels. In Italian and Sardo logudorese, there is distinctive length of consonants and stress, in Spanish only distinctive stress, and in French even stress is no longer distinctive. Another major distinction between Romance and Latin is that all Romance languages, excluding Romanian, have lost their case endings in most words except for some pronouns. Romanian retains a direct case (nominative/accusative), an indirect case (dative/genitive), and vocative. In Italy, Latin is still compulsory in secondary schools as Liceo Classico and Liceo Scientifico which are usually attended by people who aim to the highest level of education. In Liceo Classico Ancient Greek is a compulsory subject.
Latin and English
See Latin influence in English for a more complete exposition. English grammar is independent of Latin grammar, though prescriptive grammarians in English have been heavily influenced by Latin. Attempts to make English grammar follow Latin rules — such as the prohibition against the split infinitive — have not worked successfully in regular usage. However, as many as half the words in English were derived from Latin, including many words of Greek origin first adopted by the Romans, not to mention the thousands of French, hundreds of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian words of Latin origin that have also enriched English. During the 16th and on through the 18th century English writers created huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek roots. These words were dubbed "inkhorn" or "inkpot" words (as if they had spilled from a pot of ink). Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, but some remain. Imbibe, extrapolate, dormant and inebriation are all inkhorn terms carved from Latin words. In fact, the word etymology is derived from the Greek word etymologia, meaning "true sense of the word." Latin was once taught in many of the schools in Britain with academic leanings - perhaps 25% of the total [http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/T/teachem2/thennow/]. However, the requirement for it was gradually abandoned in the professions such as the law and medicine, and then, from around the late 1960s, for admission to university. After the introduction of the Modern Language GCSE in the 1980s, it was gradually replaced by other languages, although it is now being taught by more schools along with other classical languages.
Latin education
The linguistic element of Latin courses offered in high schools or secondary schools, and in universities, is primarily geared toward an ability to translate Latin texts into modern languages, rather than using it in oral communication. As such, the skill of reading is heavily emphasized, whereas speaking and listening skills are barely touched upon. However, there is a growing movement, sometimes known as the Living Latin movement, whose supporters believe that Latin can, or should, be taught in the same way that modern "living" languages are taught, that is, as a means of both spoken and written communication. One of the most interesting aspects of such an approach is that it assists speculative insight into how many of the ancient authors spoke and incorporated sounds of the language stylistically; without understanding how the language is meant to be heard it is very difficult to identify patterns in Latin poetry. Institutions offering Living Latin instruction include the Vatican and the University of Kentucky. In Britain the Classical Association encourages this approach, and there has been something of a vogue for books describing the adventures of a mouse called Minimus. In the United States there is a thriving competitive organization for high school Latin students, the National Junior Classical League (the second-largest youth organization in the world after the Boy Scouts), backed up by the Senior Classical League for college students. Many would-be international auxiliary languages have been heavily influenced by Latin, and the moderately successful Interlingua considers itself to be the modernized and simplified version of the language (le latino moderne international e simplificate). Latin translations of modern literature such as Paddington Bear, Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, Le Petit Prince, Max und Moritz, and The Cat in the Hat have also helped boost interest in the language.
See also

About the Latin language

- Latin grammar
- Latin spelling and pronunciation
- Latin declension
- Latin conjugation
- Latin alphabet
- List of Latin words with English derivatives
- Latin verbs with English derivatives
- Latin nouns with English derivatives
- ablative absolute
- Word order in Latin
About the Latin literary heritage

- Latin literature
- Romance languages
- Loeb Classical Library
- List of Latin phrases
- List of Latin proverbs
- Brocard
- List of Latin and Greek words commonly used in systematic names
- List of Latin place names in Europe
- Carmen Possum
Other related topics

- Roman Empire
- Internationalism
References

- Bennett, Charles E. Latin Grammar (Allyn and Bacon, Chicago, 1908)
- N. Vincent: "Latin", in The Romance Languages, M. Harris and N. Vincent, eds., (Oxford Univ. Press. 1990), ISBN 0195208293
- Waquet, Françoise, Latin, or the Empire of a Sign: From the Sixteenth to the Twentieth Centuries (Verso, 2003) ISBN 1859844022; translated from the French by John Howe.
- Wheelock, Frederic. Latin: An Introduction (Collins, 6th ed., 2005) ISBN 0060784237
External links

- [http://www.jambell.com/latin.html Latin Phrases for after dinner conversation (Thanks to Elaine Poole)]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lat Ethnologue report for Latin]
- [http://forumromanum.org/literature/index.html Corpus Scriptorum Latinorum] is a comprehensive webography of Latin texts and their translations.
- [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/ The Perseus Project] has many useful pages for the study of classical languages and literatures, including [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/resolveform?lang=Latin an interactive Latin dictionary].
- [http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe words by William whitaker] is a dictionary program online capable of looking up various word forms.
- [http://retiarius.org/ Retiarius.Org] includes a Latin text search engine.
- [http://www.nd.edu/~archives/latgramm.htm Latin-English dictionary and Latin grammar from U of Notre Dame]
- [http://latin-language.co.uk/ Latin language] History of Latin language, Latin texts with English translation and a collection of dictionaries.
- [http://augustinus.eresmas.net/scl/ Societas Circulorum Latinorum] gathers together Latin Circles all over the world.
- [http://www.learnlatin.tk LearnLatin.tk] - Free online course in Latin
- [http://www.latintests.net/ LatinTests.net] - Lets Latin learners test their grammar and vocabulary with self-checking quizzes.
- [http://thelatinlibrary.com/ The Latin Library] contains many Latin etexts
- [http://www.textkit.com/ Textkit] has Latin textbooks and etexts.
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/definition/Latin-english/ Latin–English Dictionary]: from Webster's Rosetta Edition.
- [http://www.language-reference.com/ Language reference] Cross-foreign-language lexicon powered by its own search engine. All cross combinations between Latin and French, German, Italian, Spanish.
- [http://comp.uark.edu/~mreynold/rhetor.html Rhetor by Gabriel Harvey] was originally published in 1577 and never again reprinted.
- [http://freewebs.com/omniamundamundis omniamundamundis] Latin hypertexts from fourteen ancient Roman authors.
- [http://www.saltspring.com/capewest/pron.htm Pronunciation of Biological Latin, Including Taxonomic Names of Plants and Animals]
- [http://www.yleradio1.fi/nuntii Nuntii Latini (News in Latin)], written and spoken (RealAudio) news in latin. Weekly review of world news in Classical Latin, the only international broadcast of its kind in the world, produced by YLE, the Finnish Broadcasting Company.
- [http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?url=http%3A%2F%2F&type=text&text=Replace%20Me&from=eng&to=ltt InterTran Latin], Translate from Latin to ENGLISH or vice versa.
- [http://www.latinvulgate.com Latin Vulgate] The Latin and English of the Old & New Testaments in parallel, along with the Complete Sayings of Jesus in parallel Latin and English. Category:Classical languages Category:Ancient languages Category:Fusional languages Category:Languages of Italy Category:Languages of Vatican City als:Latein zh-min-nan:Latin-gí ko:라틴어 ja:ラテン語 simple:Latin language th:ภาษาละติน

Institution

This article is about institutions as social mechanisms. Please see Organization article for formal establishments. ---- Institutions are structures and mechanisms of social order and cooperation, governing the behavior of two or more individuals. Institutions are identified with a social purpose and permanence, transcending individual human lives and intentions, and with the making and enforcing of rules governing cooperative human behavior. The term, institution, is commonly applied to customs and behavior patterns important to a social community, as well as to particular formal organizations of government and public service. As structures and mechanisms of social order among humans, institutions are one of the principal objects of study in the social sciences, including sociology, political science and economics. Institutions are a central concern for law, the formal regime for political rule-making and enforcement. The creation and evolution of institutions is a primary topic for history.
Aspects of Institutions
Although individual, formal organizations, commonly identified as "institutions," may be deliberately and intentionally created by people, the development and functioning of institutions in society in general may be regarded as an instance of emergence; that is, institutions arise, develop and function in a pattern of social self-organization, which goes beyond the conscious intentions of the individual humans involved. As mechanisms of social cooperation, institutions are manifest in both objectively real, formal organizations, such as the U.S. Congress, the Roman Catholic Church or the Bank of England, and, also, in informal social order and organization, reflecting human psychology, culture, habits and customs. Most important institutions, considered abstractly, have both objective and subjective aspects: examples include money and marriage. The institution of money encompasses many formal organizations, including banks and government treasury departments and stock exchanges, which may be termed, "institutions," as well as subjective experiences, which guide people in their pursuit of personal economic well-being and wealth. Powerful institutions are able to imbue a paper currency with certain value, and to induce millions into cooperative production and trade in pursuit of economic ends abstractly denominated in that currency's units. The subjective experience of money is so pervasive and persuasive that economists talk of the "money illusion" and try to disabuse their students of it, in preparation for learning economic analysis. Marriage and family, as a set of institutions, also encompass formal and informal, objective and subjective aspects. Both governments and religious institutions make and enforce rules and laws regarding marriage and family, create and regulate various concepts of how people relate to one another, and what their rights, obligations and duties may be as a consequence. Culture and custom permeate marriage and family. In the United States and western Europe, a transition from a conception of marriage, as license for sexual intercourse granted by Church and State, to a conception of marriage as a form of contract, freely entered into, has occasioned momentous social and political controversies regarding laws and customs governing the freedom of women, divorce, cohabitation outside marriage, contraception, and homosexuality.
Perspectives of the Social Sciences
While institutions tend to appear to people in society as part of the natural, unchanging landscape of their lives, study of institutions by the social sciences tends to reveal the nature of institutions as social constructions, artifacts of a particular time, culture and society, produced by collective human choice, though not directly by individual intention. The relationship of institutions to human nature is a foundational question for the social sciences. Institutions can be seen as "naturally" arising from, and conforming to, human nature -- a fundamentally conservative view -- or institutions can be seen as artificial, almost accidental, and in need of architectural redesign, informed by expert social analysis, to better serve human needs -- a fundamentally progressive view. Adam Smith anchored his economics in the supposed human "propensity to truck, barter and exchange". Modern feminists have criticized traditional marriage and other institutions as elements of an oppressive and obsolete patriarchy. Economics, in recent years, has used game theory to study institutions from two perspectives. Firstly, how do institutions survive and evolve? In this perspective, institutions arise from Nash equilibria of games. For example, whenever people pass each other in a corridor or thoroughfare, there is a need for customs, which avoid collisions. Such a custom might call for each party to keep to their own right (or left -- such a choice is arbitrary, it is only necessary that the choice be uniform and consistent). Such customs may be supposed to be the origin of rules, such as the rule, adopted in many countries, which requires driving automobiles on the right side of the road. Secondly, how do institutions affect behaviour? In this perspective, the focus is on behaviour arising from a given set of institutional rules. In these models, institutions determine the rules (i.e. strategy sets and utility functions) of games, rather than arise as equilibria out of games. For example, the Cournot duopoly model is based on an institution involving an auctioneer who sells all goods at the market-clearing price. While it is always possible to analyse behaviour with the institutions-as-equilibria approach instead, it is much more complicated. Public choice theory, a branch of economics with a close relationship to political science, considers how government policy choices are made, and seeks to determine what the policy outcomes are likely to be, given a particular political decision-making process and context. Sociology traditionally analyzed social institutions in terms of interlocking social roles and expectations. Social institutions created and were composed of groups of roles, or expected behaviors. The social function of the institution was executed by the fulfillment of roles. Basic biological requirements, for reproduction and care of the young, are served by the institutions of marriage and family, for example, by creating, elaborating and prescribing the behaviors expected for husband/father, wife/mother, child, etc. In history, a distinction between eras or periods, implies a major and fundamental change in the system of institutions governing a society. Political and military events are judged to be of historical significance to the extent that they are associated with changes in institutions. In European history, particular significance is attached to the long transition from the feudal institutions of the Middle Ages to the modern institutions, which govern contemporary life.
See also

- nation, country, state.
- effect on individuals institutionalisation
- institutional economics
- establishment
- Institute
- Institution (computer science)
References

External links

- Avner Greif, [http://www-econ.stanford.edu/faculty/Greif_Instutions/GreifBook.html Institutions: Theory and History], Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
- [http://www.isnie.org International Society for New Institutional Economics]
- [http://www.institutionalreform.org Institutional reform]
- category:Political science category:Economics ko:기관 (조직) ja:制度

GrouP

In mathematics, a group is a set, together with a binary operation, such as multiplication or addition, satisfying certain axioms, detailed below. For example, the set of integers is a group under the operation of addition. The branch of mathematics which studies groups is called group theory. The historical origin of group theory goes back to the works of Évariste Galois (1830), concerning the problem of when an algebraic equation is soluble by radicals. Previous to this work, groups were mainly studied concretely, in the form of permutations; some aspects of abelian group theory were known in the theory of quadratic forms. A great many of the objects investigated in mathematics turn out to be groups. These include familiar number systems, such as the integers, the rational numbers, the real numbers, and the complex numbers under addition, as well as the non-zero rationals, reals, and complex numbers, under multiplication. Another important example is given by non-singular matrices under multiplication, and more generally, invertible functions under composition. Group theory allows for the properties of these systems and many others to be investigated in a more general setting, and its results are widely applicable. Group theory is also a rich source of theorems in its own right. Groups underlie many other algebraic structures such as fields and vector spaces. They are also important tools for studying symmetry in all its forms; the principle that the symmetries of any object form a group is foundational for much mathematics. For these reasons, group theory is an important area in modern mathematics, and also one with many applications to mathematical physics (for example, in particle physics).

History

See Group theory.

Basic definitions

A group (G,
- ) is a nonempty set G together with a binary operation
- : G × G → G, satisfying the group axioms below. "a
- b" represents the result of applying the operation
- to the ordered pair (a, b) of elements of G. The group axioms are the following:
- Associativity: For all a, b and c in G, (a
- b)
- c = a
- (b
- c).
- Identity element: There is an element e in G such that for all a in G, e
- a = a
- e = a.
- Inverse element: For all a in G, there is an element b in G such that a
- b = b
- a = e, where e is the identity element from the previous axiom. You will often also see the axiom
- Closure: For all a and b in G, a
- b belongs to G. The way that the definition above is phrased, this axiom is not necessary, since binary operations are already required to satisfy closure. When determining if
- is a group operation, however, it is nonetheless necessary to verify that
- satisfies closure; this is part of verifying that it is in fact a binary operation. The above axioms are not strictly minimal from a logical viewpoint; they contain a small amount of redundancy. However, the difference is slight and in practice one usually just checks the above axioms. It should be noted that there is no requirement that the group operation be commutative, that is there may exist elements such that a
- b ≠ b
- a. A group G is said to be abelian (after the mathematician Niels Abel) (or commutative) if for every a, b in G, a
- b = b
- a. Groups lacking this property are called non-abelian. The order of a group G, denoted by |G| or o(G), is the number of elements of the set G. A group is called finite if it has finitely many elements, that is if the set G is a finite set. Note that we often refer to the group (G,
- ) as simply "G", leaving the operation
- unmentioned. But to be perfectly precise, different operations on the same set define different groups.

Notation for groups

Usually the operation, whatever it really is, is thought of as an analogue of multiplication, and the group operations are therefore written multiplicatively. That is:
- We write "a · b" or even "ab" for a
- b and call it the product of a and b;
- We write "1" for the identity element and call it the unit element;
- We write "a⁻¹" for the inverse of a and call it the reciprocal of a. However, sometimes the group operation is thought of as analogous to addition and written additively:
- We write "a + b" for a
- b and call it the sum of a and b;
- We write "0" for the identity element and call it the zero element;
- We write "−a" for the inverse of a and call it the opposite of a. Usually, only abelian groups are written additively, although abelian groups may also be written multiplicatively. When being noncommittal, one can use the notation (with "
- ") and terminology that was introduced in the definition, using the notation a⁻¹ for the inverse of a. If S is a subset of G and x an element of G, then, in multiplicative notation, xS is the set of all products ; similarly the notation Sx = ; and for two subsets S and T of G, we write ST for . In additive notation, we write x + S, S + x, and S + T for the respective sets.

Some elementary examples and nonexamples

An abelian group: the integers under addition

A group that we are introduced to in elementary school is the integers under addition. For this example, let Z be the set of integers, , and let the symbol "+" indicate the operation of addition. Then (Z,+) is a group (written additively). Proof:
- If a and b are integers then a + b is an integer. (Closure; + really is a binary operation)
- If a, b, and c are integers, then (a + b) + c = a + (b + c). (Associativity)
- 0 is an integer and for any integer a, 0 + a = a + 0 = a. (Identity element)
- If a is an integer, then there is an integer b := −a, such that a + b = b + a = 0. (Inverse element) This group is also abelian: a + b = b + a. The integers with both addition and multiplication together form the more complicated algebraic structure of a ring. In fact, the elements of any ring form an abelian group under addition, called the additive group of the ring.

Not a group: the integers under multiplication

On the other hand, if we consider the operation of multiplication, denoted by "·", then (Z,·) is not a group:
- If a and b are integers then a · b is an integer. (Closure)
- If a, b, and c are integers, then (a · b) · c = a · (b · c). (Associativity)
- 1 is an integer and for any integer a, 1 · a = a · 1 = a. (Identity element)
- However, it is not true that whenever a is an integer, there is an integer b such that ab = ba = 1. For example, a = 2 is a integer, but the only solution to the equation ab = 1 in this case is b = 1/2. We cannot choose b = 1/2 because 1/2 is not an integer. (Inverse element fails) Since not every element of (Z,·) has an inverse, (Z,·) is not a group. The most we can say is that it is a commutative monoid.

An abelian group: the nonzero rational numbers under multiplication

Consider the set of rational numbers Q, that is the set of numbers a/b such that a and b are integers and b is nonzero, and the operation multiplication, denoted by "·". Since the rational number 0 does not have a multiplicative inverse, (Q,·), like (Z,·), is not a group. However, if we instead use the set Q \ instead of Q, that is include every rational number except zero, then (Q \ ,·) does form an abelian group (written multiplicatively). The inverse of a/b is b/a, and the other group axioms are simple to check. We don't lose closure by removing zero, because the product of two nonzero rationals is never zero. Just as the integers form a ring, the rational numbers form the algebraic structure of a field. In fact, the nonzero elements of any given field form a group under multiplication, called the multiplicative group of the field.

A finite nonabelian group: permutations of a set

For a more concrete example, consider three colored blocks (red, green, and blue), initially placed in the order RGB. Let a be the action "swap the first block and the second block", and let b be the action "swap the second block and the third block". field In multiplicative form, we traditionally write xy for the combined action "first do y, then do x"; so that ab is the action RGB → RBG → BRG, i.e., "take the last block and move it to the front". If we write e for "leave the blocks as they are" (the identity action), then we can write the six permutations of the set of three blocks as the following actions:
- e : RGB → RGB
- a : RGB → GRB
- b : RGB → RBG
- ab : RGB → BRG
- ba : RGB → GBR
- aba : RGB → BGR Note that the action aa has the effect RGB → GRB → RGB, leaving the blocks as they were; so we can write aa = e. Similarly,
- bb = e,
- (aba)(aba) = e, and
- (ab)(ba) = (ba)(ab) = e; so each of the above actions has an inverse. By inspection, we can also determine associativity and closure; note for example that
- (ab)a = a(ba) = aba, and
- (ba)b = b(ab) = bab. This group is called the symmetric group on 3 letters, or S₃. It has order 6 (or 3 factorial), and is non-abelian (since, for example, ab ≠ ba). Since S₃ is built up from the basic actions a and b, we say that the set generates it. Every group can be expressed in terms of permutation groups like S₃; this result is Cayley's theorem and is studied as part of the subject of group actions.

Further examples

For some further examples of groups from a variety of applications, see Examples of groups and List of small groups.

Simple theorems

- A group has exactly one identity element.
- Every element has exactly one inverse.
- You can perform division in groups; that is, given elements a and b of the group G, there is exactly one solution x in G to the equation x
- a = b and exactly one solution y in G to the equation a
- y = b.
- The expression "a₁
- a₂
- ···
- a_n" is unambiguous, because the result will be the same no matter where we place parentheses.
- (Socks and shoes) The inverse of a product is the product of the inverses in the opposite order: (a
- b)⁻¹ = b⁻¹
- a⁻¹. These and other basic facts that hold for all individual groups form the field of elementary group theory.

Constructing new groups from given ones

#If a subset H of a group (G,
- ) together with the operation
- restricted on H is itself a group, then it is called a subgroup of (G,
- ). #The direct product of two groups (G,
- ) and (H,•) is the set G×H together with the operation (g₁,h₁)(g₂,h₂) = (g₁
- g₂,h₁•h₂). The product can also be defined with an infinite number of terms. #The direct external sum of a family of groups is the subgroup of the product constituted by elements that have a finite number of non zero terms. If the family is finite the direct sum and the product are of course the same. #Given a group G and a normal subgroup N, the quotient group is the set of cosets of G/N together with the operation (gN)(hN)=ghN.

Person

Person, in the classic sense, refers to a living human being. However, in philosophy, there has been debate over the precise meaning and correct usage of the term, whether the classical definition should be expanded or in some cases reduced, and which constituent elements or criteria must exist to establish personhood.

Are all persons human?

Firstly, there is the simple and traditional view that the common usage is the correct one: that "person" does indeed mean "human". However, this runs into the problem that the term "person" has a somewhat loaded meaning - we commonly believe that all and only persons have certain rights, for example, the right to life. Some would go so far as to say that all and only persons are sacred. However, we can imagine the hypothetical alien from another planet, who, despite not being human, nevertheless has every trait that we see as being essential for this protected status that elevates it above mere objects. Thus, many claim that the simple view implies a sort of arrogant speciesism. There are also religious views that attribute personhood to supernatural beings such as gods, angels, demons, elves, and so on. Similar ethical debates centre around the question of animal rights and artificial intelligence. Some would argue that humans have an amount of hubris that could potentially prevent us from recognizing the personhood of other sentient species. Some argue that certain primates and cetaceans (particularly the most highly intelligent species, such as the Great Apes and dolphins and killer whales) possess enough of the commonly held criteria for personhood to be considered persons. Recently corvids (crow species) have been recognized as highly intelligent tool users and strategists, while parrots display more linguistic intelligence. (see also animal intelligence and animal cognition). In fact, it is possible to teach a gorilla sign language, as evidenced by the case of Koko, who has expressed pride and flattery at having been awarded a place in the Guinness Book of Records for this. Some extend the list still further. In the future sentient programs and computers may even emerge, extending the argument beyond all biological realms. The issue of how we might discern whether artificial information processing systems are conscious will likely become a matter of important debate. Alan Turing first suggested that we give convincing machines or programs the benefit of the doubt, using his Turing test. However, even a simple chatbot can fool people for a time. The best evidence for consciousness or "sentience" would be the subjective reports of people undergoing gradual replacement of brain tissue with artificial processors (see cyborgs). For example, surgeons are already beginning to integrate artificial "neural prosthetics" in patients to repair some forms of brain damage. At some point such a person's cognitive system could require no biological elements. Because the process is gradual, the success or failure of the facilitation of phenomenal elements of conscious experience in a particular device could be reported by a person whom we are pragmatically warranted is considered conscious from the outset. At least in artificial systems designed in the same manner, we would be much more warranted in ascribing personhood than the low standards of the Turing test. Justification would become extremely high for ascribing personhood to any artificial cognitive system that either (1) became artificial through a gradual process of "cyborgization" (permitting subjective reports from a highly trusted source) or (2) was an artificial cognitive system whose design replicated a completely artificial stage of a cyborgization process that has been proven effective, in all relevant respects (e.g. not "personality," but the same type of hardware, organization, and operations). An elaboration on this theme is sometimes called "uploading", though the term carries baggage. "Uploading" here refers to a theoretical transfer of a mind to an artificial environment. Uploading proposals tend to assume that the mind does not persist through time in a substantial way (usually theoretically grounded on "deep reductivist" arguments that there is no soul or "self") so making a "copy" of brain structures is - in terms of survival - just as good as preserving the original structure. Advocates also tend to believe that such a copy would have conscious experience rather than merely acting as a convincing automaton. Reservations aside though, there does not seem to be any intrinsic reason that, some day, the mind of a human subject could not gradually extend into a functional simulation running on an advanced supercomputer. Related to this idea are cyberpunk/postcyberpunk science fiction (especially Ghost in the Shell) and the Transhumanist movement.

Are all humans persons?

There are certain challenges to the classical view regarding disputes over whether certain humans are persons. For example, in the abortion controversy, although the fetus is clearly of the human species, the personhood of the fetus has been challenged and has become a matter of debate. Some argue that an early stage a fetus is not a person, because of its lack of any form of consciousness, while others would argue that they are persons because they are human, or because they will develop into conscious beings. Also, in the case of a victim of severe brain damage who has no mental activity, many would concede that the person has ceased to exist, leaving only an "empty shell".

Possible criteria for personhood

The above points seem to indicate that there may be persons that are not human, and there may be humans that are not persons. For these reasons, many philosophers have tried to give a more precise definition, focusing on some trait or traits that all persons, real and hypothetical, must possess. The most obvious such trait that individuals considered persons usually possess is a conscious mind, typically (but not necessarily) with plans, goals, desires, hopes, fears, and so on. These traits therefore form a natural set of criteria for personhood. Despite this, these criteria are controversial. In particular, some have argued that these criteria fail to recognize babies as persons. Although they meet some of the criteria, such as some degree of consciousness, and the ability to feel pain, the mental abilities of a newborn baby often seem to some to be no more impressive than many animals not commonly considered persons. Another problematic example is the status of a person in deep sleep, with no consciousness at the moment, but who upon waking would return to being an entity with full subjective awareness in the future. However, this latter case becomes less problematic with the assistance of theories of embodied subjectivity (mind-brain identity or unity), which allow for the persistence of an intelligent physical system that both has been self-aware in the past and has the capacity to continue being self-aware in the future. A variation of this example is a "reversibly comatose patient," though criteria for reversibility complicate such an analysis. Because of these problems, some philosophers suggest that the potential to become fully thinking beings is sufficient to convey personhood, regardless of present mental status. Others take this view for essentially religious reasons. A consequence of this view is that an embryo would be considered a person from conception; but others see the idea of a single cell - with absolutely no mind of any sort - being a person as counterintuitive. It is a matter of debate when in development any conscious awareness is possible, as seemingly cognitive behaviour that may or may not be attributable to stimuli can be seen at multiple stages in a pregnancy. Nevertheless, consistent correlative evidence enables us to rule out awareness in the early and middle stages of foetal development with a high degree of confidence. As is reported in the August 24, 2005 Clinical Review article, Foetal Pain: A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence, at 29 weeks of development fetuses have mature somatosensory evoked potentials that indicate that pain signals travel above the spine, through the thalamus and to the somatosensory cortex; and at around 30 weeks of development the brain's EEG signals suggest the first signs of wakefulness. Wakefulness is a necessary condition for any awareness, including pain recognition, but is insufficient for awareness without a functional somatosensory cortex to recognize pain signals as such - which is lacking for people in permanently vegetative states. Because these two necessary conditions for consciousness do not occur before the 29th week of development, fetuses cannot be consciously aware (and therefore subjects of experience) before the 29th week. Another view amongst scholars is that personhood is not all-or-nothing: there can be degrees of personhood, based on how close to a fully working mind the individual in question has. Thus, a typical adult is entirely a person, while a human permanently in a persistent vegetative state would not be considered a person at all. Partial personhood is tacitly recognized by law in most cultures as reflected by parental rights and obligations, and in legal treatment of minors, the mentally handicapped, and the comatose. However, other philosophers argue that the concept of an incomplete or partial person is dangerous, possibly leading to weakened protection for those not considered complete persons. Others would argue that we are all incomplete or "developing" persons regardless of our developmental state.

Personhood theory

According to Boethius: :Person is an individual substance of rational nature. As individual it is material, since matter supplies the principle of individuation. The soul is not person, only the composite is. Man alone is among the material beings person, he alone having a rational nature. He is the highest of the material beings, endowed with particular dignity and rights. In recent years a kind of consensus among secular scholars has emerged, which might be referred to as "personhood theory". The criteria a person must have in personhood theory are one or more of the following: # Consciousness, # The ability to steer one's attention and action purposively, # Self-awareness, self-bonded to objectivities (existing independently of the subject's perception of it), # Self as longitudinal thematic identity, one's biographic identity. Neo-Kantian philosophers over the last two decades have emphasized that conscious awareness requires both: # The sensorial capacity to access an environment (and one's own body) in a way that offers the basic qualitative content for subjective experience. # The intellectual capacity to conceptually interpret sensorial content as representing some thing to oneself. Both of these capacities are required for a subject of experience, action, thought, or self-reflection to exist, at least in the physically embodied, world-accessing manner of humans (and presumably other intelligent animals). As Kant wrote: Without sensibility no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. (Critique of Pure Reason, A 51 = B 75). For those who consider an embodied capacity for subjectivity as necessary for personhood, these abstract constraints are quite relevant to the personhood theory debate. Advocates of alternative positions, such as a biological species or potentiality criterion, would instead need to provide arguments against embodied subjectivity as a basis for personhood. For example, one might argue that property claims are made by immaterial minds on immature material bodies, though any claim as to the nature of such minds would be necessarily speculative and would typically involve an argument for Cartesian substance dualism (see "mind-body problem").

Implications of the personhood debate

Personhood theory has become a pivotal issue in the interdisciplinary field of bioethics. While historically most humans did not enjoy full legal protection as "persons" (women, children, non-landowners, minorities, slaves, etc.), from the late 18th through the late 20th century being born as a member of the human species gradually became secular grounds for an appeal for basic rights of liberty, freedom from persecution, and humanitarian care. Since modern movements emerged to oppose animal cruelty (and advocate vegetarian or vegan lifestyles) and theorists like Turing have recognized the possibility of artificial minds with human-level competence, the identification of personhood protections exclusively with human species membership has been challenged. On the other hand, some proponents of "human exceptionism" (also referred to as "speciesism") have countered that we must institute a strict demarcation of personhood based on species membership in order to avoid the horrors of genocide (based on propaganda dehumanizing one or more ethnicities) or the injustices of forced sterilization (as occurred in the U.S. to people with low I.Q. scores and prisoners). While the former advocates tend to be comfortable constraining personhood status within the human species based on basic capacities (e.g. excluding human stem cells, fetuses, and bodies that cannot recover awareness), the latter often wish to include all these forms of human bodies even if they have never had awareness (which some would call "pre-persons") or had awareness, but could never have awareness again due to massive and irrecoverable brain damage (some would call these "post-persons"). The Vatican has recently been advancing a human exceptionist understanding of personhood theory, while other communities such as Christian Evangelicals in the U.S. have sometimes rejected personhood theory as biased against human exeptionism. Of course, many religious communities (of many traditions) find the more politically "progressive" versions of personhood theory perfectly compatible with their faith, as do the majority of modern Humanists. The theoretical landscape of personhood theory has been altered recently by controversy in the bioethics community concerning an emerging community of scholars, researchers and activists identifying with an explicitly Transhumanist position, which supports morphological freedom even if some people change so much as to no longer be considered members of the human species (whatever standard is used for this determination). Francis Fukuyama first brought the transhumanist philosophy to the attention of the bioethics community in 2002 with his critical book, Our Posthuman Future, in which he presents a bioconservative view.

Individual rights and responsibility

Closely related to the debate on the definition of personhood is the relationship between persons, individual rights, and ethical responsibility. Many philosophers would agree that all and only persons are expected to be ethically responsible, and that all persons deserve a varying degree of individual rights (see human rights). There is less consensus on whether only persons deserve individual rights and whether persons deserve greater individual rights than non-persons. The rights of non-person animals are an example of contention on this issue (see animal rights).

Corporations as persons

See also legal entity (artificial person) and natural person Largely separate from the discussion of "real" persons are considerations regarding artificial persons such as corporations and states. In Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company the United States Supreme Court ruled that a corporation is considered a person for many legal purposes. Many question the wisdom of this; the philosopher John Ralston Saul said, "If you are a person before the law and Exxon or Ford is also a person, it is clear that the concept of democratic legitimacy lying with the individual has been mortally wounded." It must be emphasized that corporate personhood is a legal fiction -- in other terms, a convenient assumption adopted for practical reasons that is not necessarily accepted as true (see also the documentary film The Corporation).

References

- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- [http://www.iep.utm.edu/ The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
- Fetal Pain: A Systematic Multidisciplinary Review of the Evidence, Clinical Review August 24, 2005 Category:Humans Category:Personal life Category:Philosophical terminology

Fellow

A fellow in the broadest sense is someone who is an equal or a comrade. The term is most often used in an academic context: a fellow is (at least in theory) part of an elite group of learned people who work together as peers in the pursuit of knowledge. However, there are no precise rules for how the title is used, and each academic institution grants the title as it sees fit.

General academic use

The term "Fellow" is most often used to describe a temporary academic post. Generally, a fellow of this type has very limited teaching duties and devotes the bulk of their time to research. A junior research fellow is known informally as a "postdoc". The position is equivalent to research associate, but whereas a research associate works on a specific project under the direction of a supervisor, a research fellow has greater freedom to work independently and choose their own projects. A research associate's salary is paid out of their supervisor's budget, whereas a research fellow is paid either from central university funds or by an outside organisation such as a charity or company. A senior research fellow is an established academic, often a Professor on sabbatical from another institution. The research fellow may or may not be granted the title of Professor by their temporary employer; if they are, they are more likely to be referred to as a Research Professor.

Oxford and Cambridge

The Colleges of Oxford and Cambridge use the term "fellow" in a more specific sense. The fellows of a College form the governing body of the College, although they may elect a Council to handle day-to-day management. All fellows are entitled to certain privileges within their College, such as free meals at High Table and the right to a rent-free room in College. Broadly speaking, College fellows fall into five groups:
- Research fellows, as discussed above, whose salaries are paid by the College from the income on its endowment. Some of the poorer Colleges do not pay their research fellows a salary, instead awarding fellowships to postdocs already employed by the University.
- College lecturers are paid to provide small-group teaching to the College's undergraduates. The position is typically part-time, and combined with a part-time research post elsewhere in the University.
- Some senior non-academic College staff such as bursars are made fellows as an benefit of their employment.
- University Teaching Officers (lecturers, readers, and professors) are entitled to College fellowships. For lecturers and readers, the process is competitive - generally the most able academics get fellowships at the richest and most prestigious Colleges. Professors are allocated to Colleges by a centralised process to ensure fairness. These fellows may or may not provide small-group teaching to undergraduates in the College, for which they would be paid by the hour.
- Most Colleges grant fellowships for life after a qualifying period. Retired academics may therefore remain as fellows. Except for research fellows, College fellows have no duties as such and are not paid. They will typically have a salaried post either with their College or the University.

Professional societies

Fellows are the highest grade of membership of most professional societies. Lower grades are referred to as members (who typically share voting rights with the fellows), or associates (who do not). How fellowship is acquired varies from society to society. It is typically involves some or all of:
- A qualifying period in a lower grade
- Nomination by two existing fellows who know the applicant professionally
- Evidence of continued formal training post-qualification
- Evidence of substantial achievement in the profession

Learned societies

Exclusive learned societies such as the Royal Society have Fellow as the only grade of membership.

US universities

Some US universities, such as Harvard call the members of their Board of Trustees "fellows". This differs from the general academic use of the term, because this kind of fellow is a non-executive trustee rather than a working academic.

Graduate school fellowships

In the context of graduate school in the United States, a fellowship is a merit-based scholarship. Fellowships include:
- MacArthur Fellowship
- NSF Fellowship
- Guggenheim Fellowship

Other uses

In Christianity, fellowship means individual Christians who are in communion with each other. Today the word fellowship is often used to designate a group, either run by a denomination or is interdenominational, aimed at fostering a sense of fellowship (that is, mutual support and common purpose) among Christians of a particular demographic. An example of a large fellowship would be the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. In the USA, a period of medical training following on from residency is sometimes called fellowship. In medical education, a fellow is generally a medical doctor who has finished a residency and is studying a specialty. Alcoholics Anonymous considers itself a fellowship in the sense that it has no hierarchy or other organizational structure, and hence all members are equals. Historically, the word "fellow" was also used to describe a man, particularly by those in the upper social classes.

External links

- [http://scholarships.fatomei.com Nationally Coveted College Scholarships, Graduate Fellowships and Postoctoral Awards]

United Kingdom

:For other meanings of the terms "United Kingdom" and "UK" , see United Kingdom (disambiguation) and UK (disambiguation). :For an explanation of terms like England, (Great) Britain and United Kingdom see British Isles (terminology). The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (usually shortened to the United Kingdom or the UK) is a country located off the north-western coast of continental Europe, surrounded by the North Sea, the English Channel, the Celtic Sea, the Irish Sea, and the Atlantic Ocean. It is composed of four constituent parts: three constituent countries—England, Scotland, and Wales—on the island of Great Britain, and the province of Northern Ireland on the island of Ireland. The border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland forms the United Kingdom's principal international land border, although there is a nominal frontier with France in the middle of the Channel Tunnel. The UK has several overseas territories and the Crown dependencies of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands come under the UK's sovereignty. The UK also has close relationships with the fifteen other Commonwealth Realms, as they all share the same head of state. The UK is also one of the largest member states of the European Union and a founding partner of both the UN and NATO.
Terminology

- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland: The official name for the sovereign state
- United Kingdom: an abbreviation of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- Britain: an informal term that sometimes means United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and sometimes means Great Britain
- British: an informal term that sometimes means from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and sometimes means from Great Britain
- Great Britain (as a geographical term): the largest island of the British Isles
- Great Britain (as a political term): England + Wales + Scotland
- British Isles (as a geographical term): Great Britain + Ireland + many smaller surrounding islands. This term is disputed, please see below.
- Ireland (as a geographical term): the second largest island of