Gordon Brown holds cabinet meeting in Southampton

It was by pure coincidence I realised that Gordon Brown was holding a meeting in Southampton today. I happened to walk past the Southampton civic centre to witness the british home secretary, Jacqui Smith leaving the building. For the fourth time since Brown has been in power there has been a cabinet meeting held outside of London. Today the meeting was held to discuss more apprenticeship places being opened in hospitals and schools... but it is thought Brown took a minute to praise the British success at last night's Oscars though... good to see he has his priorities right at a time of a major economic break-down.

A-priori and Empiricism

Last weeks People and Politics lecture moved away from what I would call "safe territory" and we moved onto full on economic theories and concepts from the 17th and 18th century. I, like I'm sure most of you in our group spent the lecture very very confused trying to grasp on to the few aspects I actually could comprehend.

I didn't get most of it first time round but upon some brief nerding this is what I have come to understand;

Empiricism - A view that you can not believe something until you have experienced it first hand. Empiricism is often contrasted to rationalisation. Refusing to believe before seeing Vs Using common sense to eliminate the latter. I would say that today's society has both empiricist and rationalised values alike but today we lean towards empiricism in my opinion. In 1920's newspaper journalism, a big story about UFO's being spotted and a mediocre photo showing a dark object in the sky which may or may not very well be a UFO... would probably be believed and cause a local uproar. Todays newspaper consumers are much more active whilst reading the news. We have an opinion, we have our own views. We also have grown up in a world where crop circles, bleeding statues and ghosts have been created by hoaxers. It is easy to see why today as a community people choose to believe something is real after they have seen it, touched it, smelt it, sensed it.

John Locke is thought to be the founder of British Empiricism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InO9xLuutuU this is quite useful to explain empiricism furthur... apologies for the cheesy music!

Ok and now the harder concept to grasp of the two. I am actually going to go into this in the most basic terms as it has been a bitch to get my head around.

A-priori - The view that something will be believed to be true without evidence until there is reason to believe otherwise. I would like to suggest that religious people all hold a-priori views. Religious folk all believe in a God being present without evidence. There is no solid reasoning that suggests there is a heaven/hell society after death but if you are Christian I presume you believe regardless of any social doubts... I guess that's why it's called a "faith". But also it seems to me to seem A-PRIORI.

That Politics Lecture...

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So yesterday we had our first People and Politics lecture. I must say I was rather dreading it as I have never really taken much of an interest in politics before. It wasn't quite what I expected. As the lecture began I was actually finding it interesting!

Chris Horrie was explaining how 'The State' is the "Monopoly of Legitimate Violence". To explain this in simple terms, what I think he meant is that The State (Hampshire County Council in our case) can use some violence, restraining citizens who do not adhere to the rules. Or to quote Chris's theory "At the end of the day if you don't pay your train ticket... you will be killed!" I'm thinking a little bit of a exaggeration but the general point was... there is always a next stage of punishment and if a citizen was to refuse to co-operate continuously they may finds themselves to be subject to treason eventually- in which case it is (though unlikely) possible to be executed.

Ok so that wasn't really explained in simple terms...

The main part of the lecture was based on the philosophical side of politics so were introduced to the likes of Aristotle, Plato and Machiavelli. But the part of the lecture which was of most interest to me was Darwin's 19th century theory of Evolution By Natural Selection.

Darwin argued that all species derive from a single organism. Some grew wings and bred this characteristic into their offspring enabling them to fly, hence making birds... while others grew fins and bred fish and eventually we had; cats, dogs, rats, monkeys, humans etc etc. Natural selection is the preservation of a functional advantage that enables a species to compete better in the wild.

Natural Selection is still being used today in dog and cat breeders. Favoured characteristics will be bred while the animals born with... say... 3 legs, different colour eyes, wrong colour, blind, deaf etc etc will not be used for breeding until those unfavoured genetics eventually die out.

I would like to end this blog on a thought by Machiavelli... So Darwin realised that we all evolved from breeding by natural selection and we were (apparently) derived from Apes...

How will humans evolve to the next stage of human evolution?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCXzcPNsqGA&feature=related