john kemeny :: essays research papers

JOHN KEMENY: MATHEMATICIAN   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚     Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  John Kemeny was born on May 13, 1926, in Budapest Hungary. He attended primary school in Budapest. He came from a Jewish family and in 1940, due to the Holocaust, Kemeny’s father moved the family to the U.S. Kemeny’s family moved to New York, and John attended school in New York City. He attended Princeton University where he studied mathematics and philosophy. He took a year off during his undergraduate course to work on the Manhattan project in Los Alamos. John’s boss was Richard Feynman and he also worked with Von Neumann.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  He returned to Princeton, and graduated with a B.A. in 1947. He then worked for his doctorate under the supervision of Alonzo Church. Kemeny received his doctorate in 1949 for a dissertation entitled Type-Theory vs. Set-Theory. He was appointed as Albert Einstein’s mathematical assistant while he was still a doctoral student. John continued to study both mathematics and philosophy, and became a professor of philosophy at Princeton in 1951. In 1953 he was appointed to the mathematics department at Dartmouth, and in two years he became chairman of the department. He held his position until 1967. He was president of Dartmouth between 1970, 1981, and 1982. He soon returned to be a full-time teacher.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Kemeny co-invented the Basic(Beginners All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) computer code. It was in 1963 that John and Thomas Kurtz decided that they wanted to give students easy access to computing. They designed the first system so that many students could use a single computer at the same time. It was designed to allow students to write programs easily. The first Basic program was run at Dartmouth at 2am on May 4, 1964. Kemeny also introduced a new teaching innovation. He developed a Finite mathematics course including topics that we still use today. Some of the topics were logic, probability and matrix algebra.

Freeman vs Friedman

Edward Freeman’s â€Å"Managing for stakeholders† was an interesting selection which clearly defined several possible stakeholders for a business, primary and secondary, and how important each one is to the survival of the business as is the survival of the business to their survival. Customers, bankers, financiers, employees, and suppliers are all stakeholders. The selection stressed how important it was for the executive of a given corporation to have the skill set to manage the relationship between the stakeholders and the corporation to create value for all over time. My personal reaction to the article was a positive one in the sense that it was a clear message and made sense. However, I feel the article was repetitive and a little too drawn out. I realize the importance of the examples and the different perspectives of managing stakeholders and putting yourself in their position. I learned a lot from this article, but it became tedious in the last seven pages. Milton Friedman’s article went into grave detail the social responsibilities of an individual vs. he social responsibilities of a business. He also explained the duties of the businessman: legislator, executive, and the jurist. He couldn’t understand how some businessman could be so â€Å"clear headed† regarding matters internal to their business but so â€Å"muddle headed† in matters outside their business in matters critical to their business’s survival. According to Friedman, there is one social responsibility for a business â€Å"engage in open and f ree competition without deception or fraud. My personal reaction to this article was that it was very difficult to read and comprehend. I had to reread the article and several sections of it several times to figure out what Friedman was trying to convey. I agree with Friedman’s one social responsibility for a business. However, when compared to Freeman’s article, his message was much clearer and defined better than Friedman’s.

Form and Meaning of Happiness in Plato - 2749 Words

An Analysis of the Form and Meaning of Happiness in Plato’s Republic I. Introduction One of the central claims of Plato’s Republic is that justice is not only desirable for its own sake, but that it maximises the happiness of those who practice it. This paper examines Plato’s arguments in support of this thesis to determine (a) what he means by happiness, (b) to what extent it exists in his proposed ideal state, and (c) whether this in any way substantiates his claims about the benefits of justice. In particular, I will argue that there are two different conceptions of happiness at play in The Republic, and two methods of achieving its highest form, namely the pursuit of justice and philosophy, before arriving at a final definition of†¦show more content†¦However, although this provides us with a way of categorising pleasure, it does not bring us any closer to a theory of happiness, as there is no suggestion that it too has three different forms. From this I conclude that Plato considers the notion of pleasure to be insufficient as an explanati on of happiness, and that these instead represent two different, but interrelated, concepts. III. Happiness and Justice In order to fully appreciate what Plato means by eudaimonia, we must instead consider the ways in which it is supposedly achieved: namely, through the twin pursuits of justice and philosophy. The first argument for this thesis is found at the end of Book 1 (352d–354a) where Socrates states that everything has both a characteristic function and a virtue (or excellence) that enables it to perform its function well. He goes on to say that living is the function of the soul, and justice its characteristic excellence, from which it follows that the just man lives well and is therefore happy. This is a classic piece of Socratic wordplay that relies upon a disputed, question-begging premise (justice being the virtue of the soul), two unsubstantiated assumptions (that the soul has both a function and an excellence) and equivocation (‘to live well’ is the same as ‘to be happy’), all of which renders itShow MoreRelatedEssay about Aristotle and Platos Views on R eality980 Words   |  4 PagesAristotle and Plato were both great thinkers but their views on realty were different. Plato viewed realty as taking place in the mind but Aristotle viewed realty is tangible. Even though Aristotle termed reality as concrete, he stated that reality does not make sense or exist until the mind process it. Therefore truth is dependent upon a person’s mind and external factors. According to Aristotle, things are seen as taking course and will eventually come to a stop when potential is reachedRead MoreWilliam Miller s The Of The Soul 940 Words   |  4 Pagesworld, so that pure justness as well as its opposite can be sought in a complete form. Cooper’s ideas concerning this desire seem to fit a model Plato would readily accept as this interpretation of wholeness is fleshed out in greater detail certainly seem Platonic especially as this idea of wholeness is presented in a speech in the Symposium, and it is of intrigue as to why it never became a part of the soul Plato set out to define. Perhaps it was too much for him to interfere with the parallelRead MoreThe Individual and the Community963 Words   |  4 Pagesan individual under a ruler and how a good citizen should be characterized. 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For Greek thinkers like Aristotle or even Plato, human actions derived from reason, rationality, and intellect. Christian thinkers like Augustine saw philosophical reflection as a complement to theology. Those philosophical reflections were based off of the underlying intellectual commitment of the Christian Faith. The thoughts of both Augustine and Thomas Aquinas are but a simulation of the thoughts of the Greek philosophers, Plato and Aristotle. Augustine’s perspective is towardsRead MoreAristotle: The Pursuit of Happiness1358 Words   |  6 PagesAristotle and Plato both are both well known for their focus on defining the purpose of being human. To them, humans have a particular characteristic that no other living thing possesses. That characteristic is that humans strive to achieve a level of goodness. Although they agree with each other that there is a highest good one must achieve in order to live a fulfilling life, they have different ideas on what that good is. On Aristotle’s search to find the highest good of a human being, he firstRead MoreTrue Knowledge Is Blinded By Ignorance1658 Words   |  7 Pagesappearance. Both money and physical appearance, are mistaken for true happiness, and serve as examples of how human ignorance clouds our ability to truly know what really makes one happy. These mistaken or ignorant beliefs, often prevent us from understanding the true values of life. They take us down a wrong path that is unfulfilling and misinformed. Due to people’s ignorance, they are not able to see the true and complete meaning of life, as a result no human will ever poses true knowledge, and human