2010-2011学年英语国家概况教案

Chapter 1 Introduction of UK

Teaching Aims and Requirements:

To make a short introduction to UK;

To fully understand the details of the four parts of UK;

To know something more about the important Ages of England, Scotland and Wales.

Teaching Importance:

England and Scotland

Teaching Periods: 4*50‟

Teaching Procedure:

1. Introduce all the important points in this chapter.

2. Explain them as detailed as possible.

3. Rationalism

It refers to the belief that reason is the primary source of knowledge, and Human beings could understand Nature through reasoning because Nature followed rational laws.

1) Major Greek philosophers

A. Thales (624-550 BC)

a. He claimed that Nature is rational; therefore, human beings could use their reasoning abilities to understand Nature.

b. He reasoned that water is the basis of everything.

B. Anaximander (611-547 BC)

a. He disagreed that water or any single substance could explain everything, but viewed the world in terms of opposites.

b. He incorporated mathematical ideas to describe the world.

C. Pythagoras (570-500 BC)

Pythagorean theory (勾股定理); explaining the entire natural world with numbers.

D. Heraclitus (535-475 BC)

a. He introduced the concept of change as the only unchanging reality in the universe.

b. He compared life to a flowing river: a person cannot step into the same river twice.

c. Opposites are inherently connecte

d.

d. …Unity in opposition‟ created for perpetual chang

e.

E. Parmenides (515-440 BC)

a. Change was an illusion.

b. Human reasoning could discover the hidden universal truth(s) disguised by the facade of

change.

F. Democritus (460-390 BC)

a. Everything in the universe obeys the laws of necessity; they are the result of mechanical laws.

b. atomic theory, explaining that nothing actually changes.

2) Socrates, Aristotle, Plato

A. Socrates (470-399 BC)

a. He disagreed with the Sophists, and argued that some norms are universally valid and absolute.

b. two types of knowledge: innate or a priori knowledge and empirical or a posteriori knowledge.

c. question-and-answer technique, called the Socratic metho

d.

B. Plato (428-347 BC)

a. There were a limited number of forms (ideas), transcending the sensory world.

b. True, absolute and eternal knowledge must be a priori, or innate within human beings.

c. Idealism: Mind over Matter—Human senses provide inexact concepts of things; only human reason can give us true knowledge about the worl

d.

d. the Republic—Every person could reach the highest level of wisdom and virtue possible in his society.

C. Aristotle (385-323 BC)

a. To Plato, the highest reality was gained through reason; to Aristotle, the highest reality was gained through the physical senses.

b. Plato‟s motto was …Mind over Matter‟, but Aristotle‟s motto was …Matter over Mind‟.

c. Reason depended on the senses.

d. Four causes for why events occur in the natural world: material, efficient, formal and final.

e. He founded the science of logic: syllogism.

f. Geocentric theory: the earth was the center of the universe; women were …incomplete‟ men.

4. The Middle Ages/ the Medieval Period

It is a thousand-year-feudal era which occurred between Antiquity and the Modern Age, when the Christian dominated Western Europe.

a. Christianity

b. Christians accepted some earlier ideas.

c. religious interpretation/the study of theology

5. The Renaissance

It refers to the rebirth of knowledge in Europe, particularly the rediscovery of the Greco-Roman texts, based on a new humanism which focused on Man and characterized by changes in all areas of human endeavor.

1) Rene Descartes (1596-1650)

the father of modern Rationalism and the father of modern Western philosophy

a. mathematical logic

b. dualism

c. …What am I?‟—I am a thinking, conscious being for as long as I am thinking.