News and Issues of the Day for You to Follow and Ponder

1. French president Emmanuel Macron is in Beijing on a 3-day state visit to China. Together with him is a 50 plus degalation of French business leaders. Macron has made it clear that "decoupling" with China is not in the interests of France. In the meantime, The European Commission president von de Leyon is also in China. The three leaders are expected to hold talks together. Political commentators have pointed out that Macron wants to show to the world that France is independent in its relations with China.

2. Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, a Democract, wrote in a court filing against Donald Trump laid 34 criminal charges against the former president. Trump's actions arose to the level of felonies, Bragg said. Still, many questions about the case remain unanswered legal expects said. It will be interesting to see how the charges can be proved, according to those expects.

3. Donald Trump will appear in a Manhattan courtroom today, April 4. He is expected to plead not guilty to charges related to the so-called "hush money" paid to a porn star just before the 2016 presidential elections. Special accomodations are reported to have been made for the former president so that he will not be handcuffed for the brief court appearance and he may go home afterwards. The Trump campain has indicated that he will make a speech from his Florida home tonight.

4. Former President Trump is expected to appear at a Manhattan courtroom on Tuesday as both a defendant and a presidential candidate. Political commentators predict that the indictment will bolster his standing in his bid for the G.O.P. nomination and his chance during the presidential election next year.

Welcome to make your own comments/observations by completing the form on the bottom of this page.

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Questions and Answers to Provoke Your Thoughts

Everyday, I post a question -- usually a philosophical one -- and try to answer it myself. The goal is twofold -- to stimulate myself to relfect upon important things in lifeI, and hopefully provoke in you a little critical thinking. I therefore encourage you to provide your own answer or make comments by completing the contact form on the bottom of this page. I will get back to you and discuss it with you as soon as I can. Thank you.

Question: You are a professor of Sociology. What is sociology?

Answer: To put it briefly, sociology is the scientific study of human behavior in society. For sociologists, all human behavior occurs in a social context. It is social context, composed of culture and all social institutions, that shapes what we do and think. Living in society, we human beings are dependent on one another for our very existence, influencing and being influenced by one another. What kind of people we are is not decided by ourselves but by other people. Likewise, the way we look at the world is the result of our exposure to other human beings. Sociologists use a variety of methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to help us understand how we influence and are influenced by other people in society. In a word, sociology is about people. If you are interested in watching people and how they interact, sociology is probably the right subject for you, either as a student or just as a curious observer.

Sociology is both interesting and challenging because the subject of it is the social world, which is enormous and extremely complex. Sociological questions are many and various; and anyone, such as your grandma or your next door neighbor who know nothing about atoms or molecules may have lots of questions or opinions about society. This is also a reason why sociology is a controversial subject. Different people may have totally different opinions. For a sociologist, one challenge is to set aside his or her own biases and preconceptions about how society “should” work. His or her task is to discover and explain how society functions.

Most sociologists work in academia, teaching sociology and conduct sociological research. Oftentimes, their findings are used by policy makers, law enforcement agencies, and others. Some sociologists work for government agencies, think tanks, nonprofit organizations, or private corporations. They also publish research reports which can impact policies or rally public support for a particular cause. Students who major in sociology may find themselves employed in a variety of fields after graduation. They may work as law enforcement officers, social workers, high school teachers and educational administrators, journalists, business consultants, and so on.

It should be pointed out that society is different from sociology. Society is what sociologists study; sociology is the study of society. Some people make the mistake of using social when they should have used sociological. Whether crime rates in your community go up or down, it is s social problem. But if you try to find out how they go up or down, you are trying to solve a sociological problem.

Question: How do you look at everything from a sociological perspective?

Answer: To understand the very complicated social world, sociologists have developed some useful perspectives. A perspective is a way of looking at and seeing (or interpreting) something. To have a perspective, therefore, is to look at something in a particular way. When we talk about the sociological perspective, we are referring to the particular way in which sociologists, as opposed to non-sociologists, try to understand human social behavior. This, of course, does not mean that all sociologists will look at the world from exactly the same viewpoint. Neither does it mean that there is only one perspective. It only means that all sociologists have received special training and see what ordinary people usually do not see.

How do you develop the sociological perspective? It begins with as simple a thing as watching people and wondering about how society influences people’s lives. You start your sociological work by curiously observing people and their behavior. Then, you convert this curiosity into the systematic study of how society influences different people’s experience within it. Once this is done, you have developed the sociological perspective.

The sociological perspective was perhaps best explained by C. Wright Mills (1916-1962), one of the most famous American sociologists. In his classic book, The Sociological Imagination (1959), he writes: “The sociological imagination (or perspective) enables us to grasp the connection between history and biography.” Here, history refers to society’s historical background, how it came to be and how it is changing. Biography refers to the individual’s specific experiences within this broad background. In other words, the sociological imagination gives us the ability to look beyond our personality and local environment to a wider social structure. It allows us to see how our personal experiences influence and are influenced by existing social arrangements. Sociology enables us to understand the general by abstracting from the specific.

To Further explain the sociological imagination (or perspective), Mills points out the distinction between “troubles” and “issues.” Troubles, according to him, are privately felt problems which stem from one individual’s personal life. Issues, on the other hand, affect large numbers of people because they originate from the institutional arrangements and history of a society. To illustrate this point, Mills provides an example. If one person is out of work, this could be seen as his or her “personal trouble.” Any effort to help with the trouble would focus on the individual. If, however, a million or more people are out of work, that is a “social problem (social issue)” which requires a social solution. In this way, the sociological perspective helps sociologists see the link between troubles and issues.

The sociological perspective is similarly explained by another American sociologist, Peter Burger (1963), who described it as seeing the general in the particular. It means that sociologists identify general patterns by looking at the behavior of particular people. This is possible because society influences all its members even though each individual is unique.

Question: You also teach Philosopohy. What is philosophy all about?

Asnwer: Maybe you are a college student and you have just registered for a course in philosophy. Or you are someone with an interest in philosophy and want to read some books about it. Maybe you already know what the word “philosophy” means in daily use. You may have heard your English professor say to the class, “My teaching philosophy is: the more you write the better writer you will be.” Used in this sense, the word philosophy is synonymous to outlook, or general viewpoint. Or you may have heard a fellow worker say to you, “I didn’t get the bonus, but I’m philosophical about it.” Here, to be philosophical simply means to have a calm and passive attitude towards disappointments or difficulties. In general, if you are philosophical about life, you take life as it is, accepting things without worrying about them.

But your philosophy professor or a philosophy book will not teach you how to take a passive attitude towards your life or how not to worry about things. The professor or the writer will start with explaining to you that the word “philosophy” is actually a combination of two Greek words “Philos” (love) and “Sophia” (wisdom), literally meaning “the love of wisdom.” But what exactly is wisdom, you may ask? For ancient Greek thinkers such as Socrates, wisdom referred to the knowledge of fundamental principles and laws. It was something that was basic and unchanging, as opposed to those things that were only transitory and ever changing. To put it another way, for the ancient Greek philosophers, philosophy was knowledge of things as they really were, not as they appeared to be. It is thus very important to know that you can only get the true Knowledge of things when you don’t take your life for granted. You can’t take a passive attitude towards life when you study philosophy.

For a long time since the Ancient Greek times, philosophy in the West was considered as the mother of all knowledge. The study of philosophy created most of the academic fields of research that we are still doing today. The highest degrees we can obtain are Ph.D.’s, that is, philosophy doctorates. Both in the West and East, philosophers have tried to ask and answer all kinds of questions about life. They have tried to get at the basis of things, not the superficial, trivial details, but the underlying fundamentals. In your philosophy class, for example, your professor will not talk about the differences between oil painting and water color because that’s the job for a different class. Instead, your philosophy professor will focus on discussing what art is in general. In a philosophy class, you will learn fundamental principles in different fields by touching upon many branches of philosophy: What is reality (Metaphysics)? How do we know anything (Epistemology)? What do we ought to do (Ethics)? What is the nature of correct reasoning (Logic)? What is art (Esthetics)? etc.

Unlike a science, such as physics or biology, which is done through observation and experiment, philosophy is not concerned with the structure or behavior of physical and natural world. Neither is philosophy entirely an art, such as painting or music, which is done through creation. Philosophy is about obtaining wisdom, which suggests a sense of objective knowledge. We do philosophy in a unique way, a mixture of observation, thinking, and reasoning. During its long history, philosophers have put forward various theories that explain many general and fundamental principles of human world. These principles are not the same as those found in nature. They are the ones that shape and guide human behavior. When you study philosophy, you are taught and trained to think systematically and rationally about many questions. The ultimate goal is to learn how these fundamental questions relate to all human activities. Indeed, your philosophy professor will tell you that you have a lot of thinking to do in this class, far more than you have probably expected. This little philosophy book tells you the same thing.

Question: What is knowledge?

Anwer: What do you mean when you say you know something? When you have an opinion about something, can you say you know it? When you believe something, can you say you have knowledge of it? These questions and many others all boil down to one question: What is knowledge?

In philosophy, questions of this kind are addressed in the study of epistemology. Broadly speaking, all epistemologists have two tasks. First, they must determine the nature of knowledge; that is, what does it mean to say that someone knows something, or doesn’t know something. Secondly, they must determine the extent of human knowledge; that is, how much do we, or can we, know? How do we acquire knowledge? Do we use our reason, our senses, the testimony of others, or other sources for obtaining knowledge?

What is the nature of knowledge? First of all, knowledge implies being sure, being certain. You wouldn’t say you know something if you are not sure about it. For example, it sounds odd if you say, “I know he will come, but I’m not sure.” Secondly, knowledge is related to but different from belief. When you know something, you truly believe it. But when you believe something, you may or may not know it. Thus, there is no problem saying, “I think so, but I am not sure.” Finally, knowledge is also different from mere opinions. An opinion is a belief of something to be true. Again, an opinion may or may not be true. But, when you know something, you not only have an opinion, but also that opinion is true; that is, it coincides with realityThen, where do we obtain knowledge? Do we get knowledge entirely from reason, as the rationalist insists, or is knowledge based on direct sensory experience of the world, as believed by empiricists? Or does it require some kind of combination of the two? The central concept of rationalism is a priori (Latin, from what is before) knowledge. According to rationalists, we can obtain knowledge independently of, or prior to, any sensory experience. A priori knowledge requires only the use of reason. For example, in the case of 2+3=5, we don’t need any experience to prove that 2 plus 3 is 5. It is only a matter of reasoning. Other examples include logical truths, such as “it is wrong to kill innocent people.”

On the other hand, empiricists argue that knowledge is entirely a posteriori (Latin, from what is after). That is, all knowledge comes from sensory experience. For example, when you say, “It is raining outside,” you can justify it because you have either seen rain drops, heard them, or felt them. Without such experience, you can’t say you know that it is raining. So a posteriori knowledge is empirical, experience-based knowledge. Examples of such kind of knowledge are natural sciences and the truths which involve perceptual experience. To put it another way, truths can’t be understood without you seeing.

Plato was probably one of the earliest rationalist philosophers. He believed that some truths are certain and unchanging because we obtain them through reasoning, not through sensory experience which he believed to be different under different circumstances. For him the most reliable knowledge that human beings can get is a priori knowledge. Plato’s thinking was further developed by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, who was probably the best known rationalist in the history of philosophy. His book, “Critic of Pure Reason”, was his major contribution to rationalist thinking. In contrast with both of them, Aristotle was an empiricist. He advocated an epistemology that focused on a posteriori knowledge of the world. Aristotle wrote many books, most of which were on nature. His knowledge of the natural world was based on the information from sensory experience, making him the first empiricist in philosophy. But his influence was beyond philosophy. Nowadays, some major research methods of many modern sciences, such as physics, originated from Aristotle’s epistemological thinking and writing.

-- Taken from my book "Random Thoughts in Philosophy".

Question: You wrote and published "Essentials of World History". What is history?

Answer: Let me first quote a famous sentence from Winston Churchill, "The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see." For most people, history is what has happened in the past. It is the story of men and women, of what they have done, enjoyed or suffered. For students and historians, history is the systematic study and interpretation of past events. They study those events that are most important, with most lasting significance and most enduring consequence, analyzing their causes, exploring their processes and examining their impact. In daily use, history may also refer to the records or narrative description of these events that historians create and preserve. To create these records, historians mostly rely upon written documents that have been preserved from ancient times. For the period of prehistory (before any writing system was invented) when there were no written documents available, they use a variety of other sources, including artifacts (such as pottery and tools) and artworks (such as cave paintings, statues) to record and interpret events.

It was the ancient Greeks who first made systematic studies of history. As a matter of fact, the word “history” derived from the Greek word for “research” or “inquiry”. Herodotus, an ancient Greek scholar who was widely regarded as the father of history, wrote one of the first history books that still attract readers today. In the modern times, history became an independent academic discipline—a formal field of study which is examined in schools and universities. Nowadays, it is universally agreed that a college student should be engaged in a systematic study of history sometime while at college.

Question: Why should we study history?

Answer: Some people think of history as a boring subject, regarding it as little more than a tedious list of names and dates. It seems to them that history is only a record of revolutions and battles, or the meaningless stories of kings, queens, and other rulers. None of these, in their opinion, has much to do with their daily lives in modern society. The fact that we live in a time of rapid change and progress also makes some people define themselves in terms of where they are going, not where they have come from. They do not believe that history matters.

But history does matter. First and foremost, history offers us perspectives and guidance in forming a view of human development. By studying history, we see patterns and meaning of human life. Secondly, history fosters and enhances our critical thinking abilities, because in history studies we need to explore the complexity of events. As a result, we develop the skill of seeing many sides of issues. History also examines interrelationships of events. In this world, no matter where and when, everything happens for a reason and has its consequences. An important event that happened in one place at one time must have been caused by other events and was bound to have its impact upon people in other places at another time. Students of history study these reasons, consequences, relations, and impacts. Thirdly, history teaches us how we have arrived where we are now. After learning about civilizations, empires, revolutions, and many other things, we come to realize why and how our world has become what it is now. We study history to know who we are, who we might have become, and who we might yet become. Finally, it has often been said that history repeats itself. Seldom can we see an event that does not have its precedent in the past. Winston Churchill best summarized the importance of history when he said this: the farther backward we look in history, the farther forward we are likely to see in the future.