Gobi Desert

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobi_Desert

The Gobi Desert (Mongolian: Говь, ᠭᠣᠪᠢ, /ˈɡoʊbi/; Chinese: 戈壁; pinyin: gēbì) is a large, cold desert and grassland region in northern China and southern Mongolia and is the sixth largest desert in the world. The name of the desert comes from the Mongolian word Gobi, used to refer to all of the waterless regions in the Mongolian Plateau, while in Chinese Gobi is used to refer to rocky, semi-deserts such as the Gobi itself rather than sandy deserts.

Geography

The Gobi measures 1,600 km (1,000 mi) from southwest to northeast and 800 km (500 mi) from north to south. The desert is widest in the west, along the line joining the Lake Bosten and the Lop Nor (87°–89° east). In 2007, it occupied an arc of land in area.

In its broadest definition, the Gobi includes the long stretch of desert extending from the foot of the Pamirs (77° east) to the Greater Khingan Mountains, 116–118° east, on the border of Manchuria; and from the foothills of the Altay, Sayan, and Yablonoi mountain ranges on the north to the Kunlun, Altyn-Tagh, and Qilian mountain ranges, which form the northern edges of the Tibetan Plateau, on the south.

A relatively large area on the east side of the Greater Khingan range, between the upper waters of the Songhua (Sungari) and the upper waters of the Liao-ho, is reckoned to belong to the Gobi by conventional usage. Some geographers and ecologists prefer to regard the western area of the Gobi region (as defined above): the basin of the Tarim in Xinjiang and the desert basin of Lop Nor and Hami (Kumul), as forming a separate and independent desert, called the Taklamakan Desert.

Much of the Gobi is not sandy, instead resembling exposed bare rock.

Climate

Gobi by NASA World Wind

Sand dunes in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China

Flaming Cliffs in Mongolia

Sacred ovoo in the Gobi Desert

The sand dunes of Khongoryn Els, Gurvansaikhan NP, Mongolia

Remains of the Great Wall of China in the Gobi Desert

The Gobi is overall a cold desert, with frost and occasionally snow occurring on its dunes. Besides being quite far north, it is also located on a plateau roughly 910–1,520 m (2,990–4,990 ft) above sea level, which contributes to its low temperatures. An average of about 194 mm (7.6 in) of rain falls annually in the Gobi. Additional moisture reaches parts of the Gobi in winter as snow is blown by the wind from the Siberian Steppes. These winds may cause the Gobi to reach −40 °C (−40 °F) in winter to 45 °C (113 °F) in summer.

However, the climate of the Gobi is one of great extremes, with rapid changes of temperature of as much as 35 °C (63 °F) in 24-hour spans.

Temperature

	(1190 m)	Ulaanbaatar (1150 m)
Annual mean	−2.5 °C (27.5 °F)	−0.4 °C (31.3 °F)
January mean	−26.5 °C (−15.7 °F)	−21.6 °C (−6.9 °F)
July mean	17.5 °C (63.5 °F)	18.2 °C (64.8 °F)
Extremes	−47 to 34 °C (−53 to 93 °F)	−42.2 to 39.0 °C (−44.0 to 102.2 °F)

In southern Mongolia, the temperature has been recorded as low as −32.8 °C (−27.0 °F). In contrast, in Alxa, Inner Mongolia, it rises as high as 37 °C (99 °F) in July.

Average winter minimums are a frigid −21 °C (−6 °F), while summertime maximums are a warm 27 °C (81 °F). Most of the precipitation falls during the summer.

Although the southeast monsoons reach the southeast parts of the Gobi, the area throughout this region is generally characterized by extreme dryness, especially during the winter, when the Siberian anticyclone is at its strongest. The southern and central parts of the Gobi Desert have variable plant growth due to this monsoon activity. The more northern areas of the Gobi are very cold and dry, making it unable to support much plant growth; this cold and dry weather is attributed to Siberian-Mongolian high pressure cells. Hence, the icy dust and snowstorms of spring and early summer plus early January (winter).

Conservation, ecology, and economy

The Gobi Desert is the source of many important fossils finds, including the first dinosaur eggs, twenty-six of which, averaging 23 centimetres (9 in) in length, were uncovered in 1923.

Archeologists and paleontologists have done excavations in the Nemegt Basin in the northwestern part of the Gobi Desert (in Mongolia), which is noted for its fossil treasures, including early mammals, dinosaur eggs, and prehistoric stone implements, some 100,000 years old.

Despite the harsh conditions, these deserts and the surrounding regions sustain many animals species, some are even unique, including black-tailed gazelles, marbled polecats, wild Bactrian camels, Mongolian wild ass and sandplovers. They are occasionally visited by snow leopards, Gobi bears, and wolves. Lizards are especially well-adapted to the climate of the Gobi Desert, with approximately 30 species distributed across its southern Mongolian border. The most common vegetation in the Gobi desert are shrubs adapted to drought. These shrubs included gray sparrow's saltwort (Salsola passerina), gray sagebrush, and low grasses such as needle grass and bridlegrass. Due to livestock grazing, the amount of shrubs in the desert has decreased. Several large nature reserves have been established in the Gobi, including Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park, Great Gobi A and Great Gobi B Strictly Protected Area.

The area is vulnerable to trampling by livestock and off-road vehicles (effects from human intervention are greater in the eastern Gobi Desert, where rainfall is heavier and may sustain livestock). In Mongolia, grasslands have been degraded by goats, which are raised by nomadic herders as source of cashmere wool.

Large copper deposits are being mined by Rio Tinto Group. The mine was and remains controversial. There was significant opposition in Mongolia's parliament to the terms under which the mine will proceed, and some are calling for the terms to be renegotiated. Specifically, the contention revolves primarily around the question of whether negotiations were fair (Rio Tinto is far better resourced) and whether Rio Tinto will pay adequate taxes on the revenues it derives from the mine (an agreement was reached whereby the operation will be exempt from windfall tax).

Desertification

The Gobi Desert is expanding through desertification, most rapidly on the southern edge into China, which is seeing 3,600 km² (1,390 sq mi) of grassland overtaken every year. Dust storms increased in frequency between 1996 and 2016, causing further damage to China's agriculture economy. However, in some areas desertification has been slowed or reversed.

The northern and eastern boundaries between desert and grassland are constantly changing. This is mostly due to the climate conditions before the growing season, which influence the rate of evapotranspiration and subsequent plant growth.

The expansion of the Gobi is attributed mostly to human activities, locally driven by deforestation, overgrazing, and depletion of water resources, as well as to climate change.

China has tried various plans to slow the expansion of the desert, which have met with some success. The Three-North Shelter Forest Program (or "Green Great Wall") is a Chinese government tree-planting project begun in 1978 and set to continue through 2050. The goal of the program is to reverse desertification by planting aspen and other fast-growing trees on some 36.5 million hectares across some 551 counties in 12 provinces of northern China.

Ecoregions

The Gobi, broadly defined, can be divided into five distinct dry ecoregions, based on variations in climate and topography:

• Eastern Gobi desert steppe, the easternmost of the Gobi ecoregions, covering an area of 281,800 km² (108,804 sq mi). It extends from the Inner Mongolian Plateau in China northward into Mongolia. It includes the Yin Mountains and many low-lying areas with salt pans and small ponds. It is bounded by the Mongolian-Manchurian grassland to the north, the Yellow River Plain to the southeast, and the Alashan Plateau semi-desert to the southeast and east.
• Alashan Plateau semi-desert, lies west and southwest of the Eastern Gobi desert steppe. It consists of the desert basins and low mountains lying between the Gobi Altai range on the north, the Helan Mountains to the southeast, and the Qilian Mountains and northeastern portion of the Tibetan Plateau on the southwest.
• Gobi Lakes Valley desert steppe, ecoregion lies north of Alashan Plateau semi-desert, between the Gobi Altai range to the south and the Khangai Mountains to the north.
• Dzungarian Basin semi-desert, includes the desert basin lying between the Altai mountains on the north and the Tian Shan range on the south. It includes the northern portion of China's Xinjiang province and extends into the southeastern corner of Mongolia. The Alashan Plateau semi-desert lies to the east, and the Emin Valley steppe to the west, on the China-Kazakhstan border.
• Tian Shan range, separates the Dzungarian Basin semi-desert from the Taklamakan Desert, which is a low, sandy desert basin surrounded by the high mountain ranges of the Tibetan Plateau to the south and the Pamirs to the west. The Taklamakan Desert ecoregion includes the Desert of Lop.

Eastern Gobi desert steppe

Main article: Eastern Gobi desert steppe

Bactrian camels in the Bayankhongor Province of Mongolia

A Khulan (Mongolian wild ass) on a hill in the eastern Gobi of Mongolia at sunset

The surface is extremely diversified, although there are no great differences in vertical elevation. Between Ulaanbaatar (48°00′N 107°00′E) and the small lake of Iren-dubasu-nor (43°45′N 111°50′E), the surface is greatly eroded. Broad flat depressions and basins are separated by groups of flat-topped mountains of relatively low elevation 150 to 180 m (490 to 590 ft), through which archaic rocks crop out as crags and isolated rugged masses. The floors of the depressions lie mostly between 900 and 1,000 m (3,000 and 3,300 ft) above sea-level. Further south, between Iren-dutiasu-nor and the Yellow River, comes a region of broad tablelands alternating with flat plains, the latter ranging at altitudes of 1000–1100 m and the former at 1,070 to 1,200 m (3,510 to 3,940 ft). The slopes of the plateaus are more or less steep and are sometimes penetrated by "bays" of the lowlands.

As the border-range of the Hyangan is approached, the country steadily rises up to 1,370 m (4,490 ft) and then to 1,630 m (5,350 ft). Here small lakes frequently fill the depressions, though the water in them is generally salty or brackish. Both here and for 320 km (199 mi) south of Ulaanbaatar, streams are frequent and grass grows more or less abundantly. Through all the central parts, until the bordering mountains are reached, trees and shrubs are utterly absent. Clay and sand are the predominant formations; the watercourses, especially in the north, being frequently excavated 2 to 3 m (6 ft 7 in to 9 ft 10 in) deep. In many places in the flat, dry valleys or depressions farther south, beds of loess, 5 to 6 m (16 to 20 ft) thick, are exposed. West of the route from Ulaanbaatar to Kalgan, the country presents approximately the same general features, except that the mountains are not so irregularly scattered in groups but have more strongly defined strikes, mostly east to west, west-north-west to east-south-east, and west-south-west to east-north-east.

The altitudes are higher, those of the lowlands ranging from 1,000 to 1,700 m (3,300 to 5,600 ft), and those of the ranges from 200 to 500 m (660 to 1,640 ft) higher, though in a few cases they reach altitudes of 2,400 m (7,900 ft). The elevations do not form continuous chains, but make up a congeries of short ridges and groups rising from a common base and intersected by a labyrinth of ravines, gullies, glens, and basins. But the tablelands, built up of the horizontal red deposits of the Han-gai (Obruchev's Gobi formation) which are characteristic of the southern parts of eastern Mongolia, are absent here or occur only in one locality, near the Shara-muren river. They are greatly intersected by gullies or dry watercourses. Water is scarce, with no streams, no lakes, no wells, and precipitation falls seldom. The prevailing winds blow from the west and northwest, and the pall of dust overhangs the country as in the Taklamakan and the desert of Lop. Characteristic of the flora are wild garlic, Kalidium gracile, wormwood, saxaul, Nitraria schoberi, Caragana, Ephedra, saltwort and the grass Lasiagrostis splendens. The taana wild onion Allium polyrrhizum is the main browse eaten by many herd animals, and Mongolians claim that this is essential in producing the proper, hazelnut-like notes of camel airag (fermented milk).

The vast desert is crisscrossed by several trade routes, some of which have been in use for thousands of years. Among the most important are those from Kalgan (at the Great Wall) to Ulaanbaatar (960 km (597 mi)); from Jiuquan (in Gansu) to Hami 670 km (416 mi); from Hami to Beijing (2,000 km (1,243 mi)); from Hohhot to Hami and Barkul; and from Lanzhou (in Gansu) to Hami.

Alashan Plateau semi-desert

Main article: Alashan Plateau semi-desert

Alxa Left Banner, Inner Mongolia, China

The southwestern portion of the Gobi, known also as the Xitao and the Little Gobi, fills the space between the great north loop of the Yellow River on the east, the Ejin River on the west, and the Qilian Mountains and narrow rocky chain of Longshou, 3,200 to 3,500 m (10,500 to 11,500 ft) in altitude, on the southwest. The Ordos Desert, which covers the northeastern portion of the Ordos Plateau, in the great north loop of the Yellow River, is part of this ecoregion. It belongs to the middle basin of the three great depressions into which Potanin divides the Gobi as a whole.

"Topographically," says Nikolai Przhevalsky, "it is a perfectly level plain, which in all probability once formed the bed of a huge lake or inland sea." He concludes this based on the level area of the region as a whole, the hard saline clay and the sand-strewn surface and, lastly, the salt lakes which occupy its lowest parts. For hundreds of kilometers, nothing can be seen but bare sands; in some places, they continue so far without a break that the Mongols call them Tengger (i.e. sky). These vast expanses are absolutely waterless, nor do any oases relieve the unbroken stretches of yellow sand, which alternate with equally vast areas of saline clay or, nearer the foot of the mountains, with barren shingle. Although on the whole a level country with a general altitude of 1,000 to 1,500 m (3,300 to 4,900 ft), this section, like most other parts of the Gobi, is crowned by a network of hills and broken ranges of at least 300 m in elevation. The vegetation is confined to a few varieties of bushes and a dozen kinds of grasses and herbs, the most conspicuous being saxaul (Haloxylon ammondendron) and Agriophyllum gobicum. The others include prickly convolvulus, field wormwood (Artemisia campestris), acacia, Inula ammophila, Sophora flavescens, Convolvulus ammanii, Peganum and Astragalus species, but all dwarfed, deformed and starved. The fauna consists of little but antelope, wolf, fox, hare, hedgehog, marten, numerous lizards and a few birds, e.g. the sandgrouse, lark, stonechat, sparrow, crane, Mongolian ground jay (Podoces hendersoni), horned lark (Eremophila alpestris), and crested lark (Galerida cristata).

Dzungarian Basin semi-desert

The structure here is that of the mighty T'ien Shan, or Heavenly Mountains, running from west to east. It divides the northern one-third of Sinkiang from the southern two-thirds. On the northern side, rivers formed from the snow and glaciers of the high mountains break through barren foothill ranges and flow out into an immense, hollow plain. Here the rivers begin to straggle and fan out, and form great marshes with dense reed-beds. Westerners call this terrain the Dzungarian desert. The Chinese also call it a desert, but the Mongols call it a 'gobi'—that is, a land of thin herbage, more suitable for camels than for cows, but capable also, if herds are kept small and moved frequently, of sustaining horses, sheep, and goats. The herbage comprises a high proportion of woody, fragrant plants. Gobi mutton is the most aromatic in the world.

The Yulduz valley or valley of the Haidag-gol (43°N 83°E–43°N 86°E) is a mini desert enclosed by two prominent members of the Shanashen Trahen Osh mountain range, namely the chucis and the kracenard pine rallies, running perpendicular and far from one another. As they proceed south, they transcend and transpose, sweeping back on east and west respectively, with Lake Bosten in between. These two ranges mark the northern and the southern edges respectively of a great swelling, which extends eastward for nearly twenty degrees of longitude. On its northern side, the Chol-tagh descends steeply, and its foot is fringed by a string of deep depressions, ranging from Lukchun (130 m (427 ft) below sea level) to Hami (850 m (2,789 ft) above sea-level). To the south of the Kuruk-tagh lie the desert of Lop Nur, the Kum-tagh desert, and the valley of the Bulunzir-gol. To this great swelling, which arches up between the two border-ranges of the Chol-tagh and Kuruk-tagh, the Mongols give the name of Ghashuun-Gobi or "Salt Desert". It is some 130 to 160 km (81 to 99 mi) across from north to south, and is traversed by a number of minor parallel ranges, ridges and chains of hills. Down its middle runs a broad stony valley, 40 to 80 km (25 to 50 mi) wide, at an elevation of 900 to 1,370 m (2,950 to 4,490 ft). The Chol-tagh, which reaches an average altitude of 1,800 m (5,900 ft), is absolutely sterile, and its northern foot rests upon a narrow belt of barren sand, which leads down to the depressions mentioned above.^[2]

The Kuruk-tagh is the greatly disintegrated, denuded and wasted relic of a mountain range which used to be of incomparably greater magnitude. In the west, between Lake Bosten and the Tarim, it consists of two, possibly of three, principal ranges, which, although broken in continuity, run generally parallel to one another, and embrace between them numerous minor chains of heights. These minor ranges, together with the principal ranges, divide the region into a series of long; narrow valleys, mostly parallel to one another and to the enclosing mountain chains, which descend like terraced steps, on the one side towards the depression of Lukchun and on the other towards the desert of Lop.

In many cases these latitudinal valleys are barred transversely by ridges or spurs, generally elevations en masse of the bottom of the valley. Where such elevations exist, there is generally found, on the east side of the transverse ridge, a cauldron-shaped depression, which some time or other has been the bottom of a former lake, but is now nearly a dry salt-basin. The surface configuration is in fact markedly similar to that which occurs in the inter-mount latitudinal valleys of the Kunlun Mountains. The hydrography of the Ghashiun-Gobi and the Kuruk-tagh is determined by the aforementioned arrangements of the latitudinal valleys. Most of the principal streams, instead of flowing straight down these valleys, cross them diagonally and only turn west after they have cut their way through one or more of the transverse barrier ranges.

To the highest range on the great swelling Grigory Grum-Grshimailo gives the name of Tuge-tau, its altitude being 2,700 m (8,858 ft) above the level of the sea and some 1,200 m (3,937 ft) above the crown of the swelling itself. This range he considers to belong to the Choltagh system, whereas Sven Hedin would assign it to the Kuruk-tagh. This last, which is pretty certainly identical with the range of Kharateken-ula (also known as the Kyzyl-sanghir, Sinir, and Singher Mountains), that overlooks the southern shore of the Lake Bosten, though parted from it by the drift-sand desert of Ak-bel-kum (White Pass Sands), has at first a west-northwest to east-southeast strike, but it gradually curves round like a scimitar towards the east-northeast and at the same time gradually decreases in elevation.

At 91° east, where the principal range of the Kuruk-tagh system wheels to the east-northeast, four of its subsidiary ranges terminate, or rather die away somewhat suddenly, on the brink of a long narrow depression (in which Sven Hedin sees a northeast bay of the former great Central Asian lake of Lop-nor), having over against them the écheloned terminals of similar subordinate ranges of the Pe-shan (Boy-san) system (see below). The Kuruk-tagh is throughout a relatively low, but almost completely barren range, being entirely destitute of animal life, save for hares, antelopes and wild camels, which frequent its few small, widely scattered oases. The vegetation, which is confined to these same areas, is of the scantiest and is mainly confined to bushes of saxaul (Haloxylon), anabasis, reeds (kamish), tamarisks, poplars, and Ephedra.

History

Prehistory

There is little information about early habitation of the Gobi desert.

Lisa Janz has proposed a system of nomenclature for early Gobi desert habitation. They are Oasis I, Oasis II, Oasis III. 

Oasis I is equivalent to the Mesolithic from 13500 cal BP to 8000 cal BP. During this time people began using oases. It is characterized by:

• micro blades
• small milling stones
• small tools
• plain, low fired, pottery with high organic content.

Oasis II is equivalent to the Neolithic from 8000 cal BP to 5000 cal BP. People used the oases extensively. It was characterized by:

• micro blades
• milling stones
• chipped macro tools
• adzes
• axes
• high quality cryptocrystallines
• honeycomb imprinted, corded, string paddled, low and high fired pottery with a sand and gravel mixture. 

Starting around 8000 cal BP there was a warm wet phase in the Gobi desert. By 7500 cal BP lake levels in the Western Gobi reached their peak. Around this time there was meadow steppe vegetation around lakes. In Ulaan Nuur there may have been shrubby riparian woodlands.

Oasis III is equivalent to the Bronze Age from 5000 cal BP to 3000 cal BP. It is characterized by:

• micro blades
• chipped micro tools
• bifacially flakes arrowheads
• blades
• knives
• grinding stones
• copper slag
• high quality chalcedony
• bone beads,
• clay spindle whorls
• plain, string paddled, moulded rim, painted, geometrically incised, high and low fired pottery with mixture of sand, gravel, mica, shells, and fiber. 

Bronze Age herder burials have been found in the Gobi desert, as well as Karasuk bronze knives, and Mongolian deer stones.  Between 5000 cal BP and 4500 cal BP there was a period of desertification.  Due to the increasing aridity between 3500 cal BP and 3000 cal BP there was a decline in human habitation in the Gobi desert. 

European and American exploration

The Gobi had a long history of human habitation, mostly by nomadic peoples. The name of Gobi means desert in Mongolian. The region was inhabited mostly by Mongols, Uyghurs, and Kazakhs.

The Gobi Desert as a whole was known only very imperfectly to outsiders, as information was confined to observations by individual travelers engaging in their respective itineraries across the desert. Among the European and American explorers who contributed to the understanding of the Gobi, the most important were the following:

• Jean-François Gerbillon (1688–1698)
• Eberhard Isbrand Ides (1692–1694)
• Lorenz Lange (1727–1728 and 1736)
• Fuss and Alexander G. von Bunge (1830–1831)
• Hermann Fritsche (1868–1873)
• Pavlinov and Z.L. Matusovski (1870)
• Ney Elias (1872–1873)
• Nikolai Przhevalsky (1870–1872 and 1876–1877)
• Zosnovsky (1875)
• Mikhail V. Pevtsov (1878)
• Grigory Potanin (1877 and 1884–1886)
• Béla Széchenyi and Lajos Lóczy (1879–1880)
• The brothers Grigory Grum-Grshimailo (1889–1890) and M. Y. Grigory Grum-Grshimailo
• Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov (1893–1894 and 1899–1900)
• Vsevolod I. Roborovsky (1894)
• Vladimir Obruchev (1894–1896)
• Karl Josef Futterer and Dr. Holderer (1896)
• Charles-Etienne Bonin (1896 and 1899)
• Sven Hedin (1897 and 1900–1901)
• K. Bogdanovich (1898)
• Ladyghin (1899–1900) and Katsnakov (1899–1900)
• Jacques Bouly de Lesdain and Martha Mailey, 1902
• Roy Chapman Andrews from the American Museum of Natural History who led several palaeontological expeditions to the Gobi Desert in the 1920-ies
• Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska who led Polish-Mongolian palaeontological expeditions in the 1960-ies.

Jewish-American working class

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish-American_working_class 

The Jewish-American working class consists of Jewish Americans who have a working-class socioeconomic status within the American class structure. American Jews were predominantly working-class and often working poor for much of American history, particularly between 1880 and the 1930s. During this period, Ashkenazi Eastern European Jewish immigrants constituted the majority of the Jewish-American working class. By the mid-1950s, the Jewish-American community had become predominantly middle class. Stereotypes commonly depict American Jews as fundamentally upwardly mobile and middle class to upper class. Despite the "imagined norm" that American Jews are "middle-class, white, straight Ashkenazi", many Jewish Americans are working class and around 15% of American Jews live in poverty.

History

1700s

In 1784, the Hebrew Benevolent Society was founded by Jews in Charleston, South Carolina to aid ill Jewish immigrants, expanding their mission in 1824 to the Jewish poor of the city. The Society helped poor Jews bury their dead, acquire heating fuel, and buy matzah for Passover.

1800s and 1900s

Historically, German Jews in the United States were more affluent on average than Eastern European Jews. Between 1880 and 1924, prior to the passage of the anti-immigrant and antisemitic Immigration Act of 1924, two and a half million Jews immigrated to the United States. Many settled in New York City, especially on the Lower East Side. Radical Jewish immigrants, particularly anarchists, socialists and communists, were active in creating the Jewish American labor movement. The Jewish labor movement also shaped the lives of working-class Jewish communities in cities such as Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia.

In Baltimore during the late 1800s and early 1900s, class divisions within the Ashkenazi Jewish community were often correlated with national background. In comparison to the wealthier and assimilated German Jews who had immigrated earlier, Russian Jews were largely poor immigrants who lived in slums with other Russians. The German-Russian divide among Baltimore's Jewry existed for at least a century and caused many Russian Jews to initially associate more with the Russian community than the wider Jewish community. Baltimore's Russian and Russian-Jewish community was originally centered in Southeast Baltimore.

By the 1920s, the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles was a predominantly working-class and lower-middle-class Jewish community. Jewish immigrants had begun to settle in Boyle Heights around 1900. It was known as the Lower East Side of LA, as many Orthodox Jewish Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Russia settled in the neighborhood. The Boyle Heights Jewish community featured "a vibrant, pre-World War II, Yiddish-speaking community, replete with small shops along Brooklyn Avenue, union halls, synagogues and hyperactive politics ... shaped by the enduring influence of the Socialist and Communist parties." Assimilated middle-class Jews, many of whom were Reform, tended to live in another neighborhood that was located west of downtown Los Angeles. Beginning in the 1940s, Mexican Americans began to settle in Boyle Heights, leading to white flight as white working-class Jews began to move outside of the neighborhood.

By 1955, American Jews of Eastern European descent were perceived as "fundamentally middle class", having attained a similar socioeconomic status to the German Jews before them. The post-war period is often regarded as a "golden age" for American Jews, as many previously working-class Ashkenazi Jews from Eastern European backgrounds were able to move up the economic ladder into the middle class.

In the 1970s and 1980s, tens of thousands of working-class Jews, many of whom were from New York or who were Holocaust survivors, settled in the South Beach neighborhood of Miami Beach, Florida. South Beach was known as the "shtetl by the bay" and had a thriving working-class Yiddish culture. As developers poured money into South Beach, the neighborhood rapidly gentrified, displacing many of the elderly and working-class Jews who lived there.

21st-century Jewish working-class

Contemporary poverty is common among Orthodox Jews, particularly within Haredi and Hasidic communities, as well as among Russian-speaking Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Jewish senior citizens, disabled Jews, and Holocaust survivors. 45% of Hasidic families in New York City live in poverty or near-poverty. During the 2000s and early 2010s, the poverty rate had doubled among Jewish New Yorkers. Brooklyn has been called "the capital of Jewish poverty in North America". Between 1991 and 2011, the numbers of impoverished Jewish households increased from 70,000 to 130,000.

The Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, founded in 1972, provides services to impoverished Jewish New Yorkers. Masbia, a network of kosher soup kitchens, provides food for poor and homeless Jews throughout the city.

By 2007, while poverty still existed among Orthodox Jews in South Florida, poverty was lesser than it was historically. While South Florida's Orthodox community were once primarily working-class first generation immigrants, many Orthodox Jews have become college educated and work professional jobs, particularly among Centrist and Modern Orthodox Jews. While upward mobility has been common throughout the Jewish community of South Florida, Orthodox Jews have had to face obstacles such as the cost of a Jewish education and the restrictions of being Shomer Shabbat, such as not working during Shabbat.

During the early 2000s and 2010s, the gentrification of Brooklyn greatly affected working-class Hasidim. Working-class Satmar residents suffered due to increasing rents, overcrowding, and displacement. Working-class Satmar and Hasidic community activists created HaVaad leHatsolos Vioyamsburg (Committee to Save Williamsburg), which objected to the presence of what they called the "artistn" (Yiddish for "artists") - the predominantly white, young, upper-middle class hipsters and artists living in Williamsburg. The committee recommended boycotting and shunning the hipster "artistn". Satmar leaders regarded the hipsters as morally bankrupt and economically disruptive, and worried that Hasidic youths would relate more to the hipsters than to working-class African-Americans and Puerto Ricans living in the neighborhood.

In 2022, the Jewish Federation of San Diego County launched a campaign to reduce poverty within the Jewish community of San Diego.

Politics

During the late 1800s and early 1900s, most working-class and lower-middle class Jewish immigrants did not support the Zionist movement, according to Middle Eastern studies professor Zachary Lockman of New York University. Benjamin Balthaser, associate professor of multiethnic literature at Indiana University South Bend, has claimed that the Zionist movement has a "distinct class character", writing that working-class Jewish communists historically opposed Zionism as a right-wing form of bourgeois nationalism.

Some commentators have claimed that Bernie Sanders, raised in a working-class Jewish community in Brooklyn, embodies a political strain that is influenced by the historical legacy of secular working-class Jewish-American radicalism in New York City and other urban centers.

Popular culture

Roseanne Barr, born into a white working-class Jewish family in Salt Lake City, played a "nominally half-Jewish, working-class wife and mother" in the popular sitcom series Roseanne. Although some commentators have mistakenly claimed that Jewishness is not mentioned on the Roseanne show, the "half-Jewish" character Roseanne Conner is depicting as having a Jewish father. The Jewishness of Roseanne Barr and her character Roseanne Connor has sometimes been overlooked, a fact that some commentators have claimed is because of public perceptions that Jewishness is at odds with being part of the white working class, in part because of antisemitic stereotypes that depict Jews as wealthy as well as Jewish self-representations of Jews as being middle class.

In The Nanny, Fran Drescher played Fran Fine, a working-class Jewish woman from Flushing, Queens, who is employed by a wealthy British-American family.

Adam Sandler played a working-class Jewish character in the 2018 comedy film The Week Of.

Pascal's mugging

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal's_mugging

In philosophy, Pascal's mugging is a thought experiment demonstrating a problem in expected utility maximization. A rational agent should choose actions whose outcomes, when weighed by their probability, have higher utility. But some very unlikely outcomes may have very great utilities, and these utilities can grow faster than the probability diminishes. Hence the agent should focus more on vastly improbable cases with implausibly high rewards; this leads first to counter-intuitive choices, and then to incoherence as the utility of every choice becomes unbounded.

The name refers to Pascal's Wager, but unlike the wager, it does not require infinite rewards. This sidesteps many objections to the Pascal's Wager dilemma that are based on the nature of infinity.

Problem statement

The term "Pascal's mugging" to refer to this problem was originally coined by Eliezer Yudkowsky in the Less Wrong forum. Philosopher Nick Bostrom later elaborated the thought experiment in the form of a fictional dialogue. Subsequently, other authors published their own sequels to the events of this first dialogue, adopting the same literary style.

In Bostrom's description, Blaise Pascal is accosted by a mugger who has forgotten their weapon. However, the mugger proposes a deal: the philosopher gives them his wallet, and in exchange the mugger will return twice the amount of money tomorrow. Pascal declines, pointing out that it is unlikely the deal will be honoured. The mugger then continues naming higher rewards, pointing out that even if it is just one chance in 1000 that they will be honourable, it would make sense for Pascal to make a deal for a 2000 times return. Pascal responds that the probability of that high return is even lower than one in 1000. The mugger argues back that for any low but strictly greater than 0 probability of being able to pay back a large amount of money (or pure utility) there exists a finite amount that makes it rational to take the bet. In one example, the mugger succeeds by promising Pascal 1,000 quadrillion happy days of life. Convinced by the argument, Pascal gives the mugger the wallet.

In one of Yudkowsky's examples, the mugger succeeds by saying "give me five dollars, or I'll use my magic powers from outside the Matrix to run a Turing machine that simulates and kills ${\displaystyle 3\uparrow \uparrow \uparrow \uparrow 3}$ people". Here, the number ${\displaystyle 3\uparrow \uparrow \uparrow \uparrow 3}$ uses Knuth's up-arrow notation; writing the number out in base 10 would require enormously more writing material than there are atoms in the known universe.

The supposed paradox results from two inconsistent views. On the one side, by multiplying an expected utility calculation, assuming loss of five dollars to be valued at ${\displaystyle f}$, loss of a life to be valued at ${\displaystyle l}$, and probability that the mugger is telling the truth at ${\displaystyle t}$, the solution is to give the money if and only if ${\displaystyle (3\uparrow \uparrow \uparrow \uparrow 3)\times t\times l>f}$. Assuming that ${\displaystyle l}$ is higher than ${\displaystyle f}$, so long as ${\displaystyle t}$ is higher than ${\displaystyle 1/(3\uparrow \uparrow \uparrow \uparrow 3)}$, which is assumed to be true, it is considered rational to pay the mugger. On the other side of the argument, paying the mugger is intuitively irrational due to its exploitability. If the person being mugged agrees to this sequence of logic, then they can be exploited repeatedly for all of their money, resulting in a Dutch-book, which is typically considered irrational. Views on which of these arguments is logically correct differ.

Moreover, in many reasonable-seeming decision systems, Pascal's mugging causes the expected utility of any action to fail to converge, as an unlimited chain of successively dire scenarios similar to Pascal's mugging would need to be factored in.

Some of the arguments concerning this paradox affect not only the expected utility maximization theory, but may also apply to other theoretical systems, such as consequentialist ethics, for example.

Consequences and remedies

Philosopher Nick Bostrom argues that Pascal's mugging, like Pascal's wager, suggests that giving a superintelligent artificial intelligence a flawed decision theory could be disastrous. Pascal's mugging may also be relevant when considering low-probability, high-stakes events such as existential risk or charitable interventions with a low probability of success but extremely high rewards. Common sense seems to suggest that spending effort on too unlikely scenarios is irrational.

One advocated remedy might be to only use bounded utility functions: rewards cannot be arbitrarily large. Another approach is to use Bayesian reasoning to (qualitatively) judge the quality of evidence and probability estimates rather than naively calculate expectations. Other approaches are to penalize the prior probability of hypotheses that argue that we are in a surprisingly unique position to affect large numbers of other people who cannot symmetrically affect us, reject providing the probability of a payout first, or abandon quantitative decision procedures in the presence of extremely large risks.

Medieval philosophy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_philosophy

Philosophy seated between the seven liberal arts; picture from the Hortus deliciarum of Herrad von Landsberg (12th century).

Medieval philosophy is the philosophy that existed through the Middle Ages, the period roughly extending from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century until after the Renaissance in the 13th and 14th centuries. Medieval philosophy, understood as a project of independent philosophical inquiry, began in Baghdad, in the middle of the 8th century, and in France, in the itinerant court of Charlemagne, in the last quarter of the 8th century. It is defined partly by the process of rediscovering the ancient culture developed in Greece and Rome during the Classical period, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate sacred doctrine with secular learning. This is one of the defining characteristics in this time period. Understanding God was the focal point of study of the philosophers at that time, Muslim and Christian alike.

The history of medieval philosophy is traditionally divided into two main periods: the period in the Latin West following the Early Middle Ages until the 12th century, when the works of Aristotle and Plato were rediscovered, translated, and studied upon, and the "golden age" of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries in the Latin West, which witnessed the culmination of the recovery of ancient philosophy, along with the reception of its Arabic commentators, and significant developments in the fields of philosophy of religion, logic, and metaphysics.

The high medieval Scholastic period was disparagingly treated by the Renaissance humanists, who saw it as a barbaric "middle period" between the Classical age of Greek and Roman culture, and the rebirth or renaissance of Classical culture. Modern historians consider the medieval era to be one of philosophical development, heavily influenced by Christian theology. One of the most notable thinkers of the era, Thomas of Aquinas, never considered himself a philosopher, and criticized philosophers for always "falling short of the true and proper wisdom".

The problems discussed throughout this period are the relation of faith to reason, the existence and simplicity of God, the purpose of theology and metaphysics, and the problems of knowledge, of universals, and of individuation.

Characteristics

Avicenna

Medieval philosophy places heavy emphasis on the theological. With the possible exceptions of Avicenna and Averroes, medieval thinkers did not consider themselves philosophers at all: for them, the philosophers were the ancient pagan writers such as Plato and Aristotle. However, their theology used the methods and logical techniques of the ancient philosophers to address difficult theological questions and points of doctrine. Thomas Aquinas, following Peter Damian, argued that philosophy is the handmaiden of theology (philosophia ancilla theologiae). Despite this view of philosophy as the servant of theology, this did not prevent the medievals from developing original and innovative philosophies against the backdrop of their theological projects. For instance, such thinkers as Augustine of Hippo and Thomas of Aquinas made monumental breakthroughs in the philosophy of temporality and metaphysics, respectively.

The principles that underlie all the medieval philosophers' work are:

• The use of logic, dialectic, and analysis to discover the truth, known as ratio;
• Respect for the insights of ancient philosophers, in particular Aristotle, and deference to their authority (auctoritas);
• The obligation to co-ordinate the insights of philosophy with theological teaching and revelation (concordia).

One of the most heavily debated things of the period was that of faith versus reason. Avicenna and Averroes both leaned more on the side of reason. Augustine stated that he would never allow his philosophical investigations to go beyond the authority of God. Anselm attempted to defend against what he saw as partly an assault on faith, with an approach allowing for both faith and reason. The Augustinian solution to the faith/reason problem is to first believe, and then subsequently seek to understand (fides quaerens intellectum). This was the mantra of Christian thinkers, most especially the scholastic philosophers (Albert the Great, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas).

History

Early medieval Christian philosophy

Portrait by Philippe de Champaigne, 17th century

The boundaries of the early medieval period are a matter of controversy. It is generally agreed that it begins with Augustine (354–430) who strictly belongs to the classical period, and ends with the lasting revival of learning in the late eleventh century, at the beginning of the high medieval period.

After the collapse of the Roman empire, Western Europe lapsed into the so-called Dark Ages. Monasteries were among the limited number of focal points of formal academic learning, which might be presumed to be a result of a rule of St Benedict's in 525, which required monks to read the Bible daily, and his suggestion that at the beginning of Lent, a book be given to each monk. In later periods, monks were used for training administrators and churchmen.

Early Christian thought, in particular in the patristic period, tends to be intuitional and mystical, and is less reliant on reason and logical argument. It also places more emphasis on the sometimes-mystical doctrines of Plato, and less upon the systematic thinking of Aristotle. Much of the work of Aristotle was unknown in the West in this period. Scholars relied on translations by Boethius into Latin of Aristotle's Categories, the logical work On Interpretation, and his Latin translation of Porphyry's Isagoge, a commentary on Aristotle's Categories.

Two Roman philosophers had a great influence on the development of medieval philosophy: Augustine and Boethius. Augustine is regarded as the greatest of the Church Fathers. He is primarily a theologian and a devotional writer, but much of his writing is philosophical. His thoughts revolve around on truth, God, the human soul, nature of sin, and salvation. For over a thousand years, there was hardly a Latin work of theology or philosophy that did not quote his writing, or invoke his authority. Some of his writing had an influence on the development of early modern philosophy, such as that of Descartes; Augustine stated that if I err therefore I exist (Si fallor, sum), which is identical to the cogito of Descartes. Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480 c.–524) was a Christian philosopher born in Rome to an ancient and influential family. He became consul in 510 in the kingdom of the Ostrogoths. His influence on the early medieval period was also marked (so much so that it is sometimes called the Boethian period). He intended to translate all the works of Aristotle and Plato from the original Greek into Latin, and translated many of Aristotle's logical works, such as On Interpretation, and the Categories. He wrote commentaries on these works, and on the Isagoge by Porphyry (a commentary on the Categories). This introduced the problem of universals to the medieval world.

The first significant renewal of learning in the West came when Charlemagne, advised by Candidus, Peter of Pisa and Alcuin of York, attracted the scholars of England and Ireland, and by imperial decree in 787 AD established schools in every abbey in his empire. These schools, from which the name Scholasticism is derived, became centres of medieval learning.

Abbo of Fleury

Johannes Scotus Eriugena (c. 815 – 877), successor of Alcuin of York as head of the Palace School, was an Irish theologian and Neoplatonic philosopher. He is notable for having translated and made commentaries upon the work of Pseudo-Dionysius, initially thought to be from the apostolic age. Around this period several doctrinal controversies emerged, such as the question of whether God had predestined some for salvation and some for damnation. Eriugena was called in to settle this dispute. At the same time, Paschasius Radbertus raised an important question about the real presence of Christ at the Eucharist. Is the host the same as Christ's historical body? How can it be present at many places and many times? Radbertus argued that Christ's real body is present, veiled by the appearance of bread and wine, and is present at all places and all times, by means of God's incomprehensible power.

This period also witnessed a revival of scholarship. At Fleury, Theodulphus, bishop of Orléans, established a school for young noblemen recommended there by Charlemagne. By the mid-ninth century, its library was one of the most comprehensive ever assembled in the West, and scholars such as Lupus of Ferrières (d. 862) traveled there to consult its texts. Later, under St. Abbo of Fleury (abbot 988–1004), head of the reformed abbey school, Fleury enjoyed a second golden age.

Remigius of Auxerre, at the beginning of the tenth century, produced glosses or commentaries on the classical texts of Donatus, Priscian, Boethius, and Martianus Capella. The Carolingian period was followed by a small dark age that was followed by a lasting revival of learning in the eleventh century, which owed much to the rediscovery of Greek thought from Arabic translations and Muslim contributions such as Avicenna's On the soul.

High Middle Ages

The period from the middle of the eleventh century to the middle of the fourteenth century is known as the 'High medieval' or 'scholastic' period. It is generally agreed to begin with Saint Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) an Italian philosopher, theologian, and church official who is famous as the originator of the ontological argument for the existence of God.

Plato, Seneca, and Aristotle from Devotional and Philosophical Writings, c. 1330

The 13th and early 14th centuries are generally regarded as the high period of scholasticism. The early 13th century witnessed the culmination of the recovery of Greek philosophy. Schools of translation grew up in Italy and Sicily, and eventually in the rest of Europe. Scholars such as Adelard of Bath travelled to Sicily and the Arab world, translating works on astronomy and mathematics, including the first complete translation of Euclid's Elements. Powerful Norman kings gathered men of knowledge from Italy and other areas into their courts as a sign of their prestige. William of Moerbeke's translations and editions of Greek philosophical texts in the middle half of the thirteenth century helped in forming a clearer picture of Greek philosophy, and in particular of Aristotle, than was given by the Arabic versions they had previously relied on, which had distorted or obscured the relation between Platonic and Aristotelian systems of philosophy. Moerbeke's work formed the basis of the major commentaries that followed.

The universities developed in the large cities of Europe during this period, and rival clerical orders within the Church began to battle for political and intellectual control over these centers of educational life. The two main orders founded in this period were the Franciscans and the Dominicans. The Franciscans were founded by Francis of Assisi in 1209. Their leader in the middle of the century was Bonaventure, a traditionalist who defended the theology of Augustine and the philosophy of Plato, incorporating only a little of Aristotle in with the more neoplatonist elements. Following Anselm, Bonaventure supposed that reason can discover truth only when philosophy is illuminated by religious faith. Other important Franciscan writers were Duns Scotus, Peter Auriol, and William of Ockham.

Thomas Aquinas

By contrast, the Dominican order, founded by St Dominic in 1215 placed more emphasis on the use of reason and made extensive use of the new Aristotelian sources derived from the East, and Moorish Spain. The great representatives of Dominican thinking in this period were Albertus Magnus and (especially) Thomas Aquinas, whose artful synthesis of Greek rationalism and Christian doctrine eventually came to define Catholic philosophy. Aquinas placed more emphasis on reason and argumentation, and was one of the first to use the new translation of Aristotle's metaphysical and epistemological writing. This was a significant departure from the Neoplatonic and Augustinian thinking that had dominated much of early Scholasticism. Aquinas showed how it was possible to incorporate much of the philosophy of Aristotle without falling into the "errors" of the Commentator Averroes, though Averroes was influential in the development of Aquinas' philosophy, particularly on metaphysics.

At the start of the 20th century, historian and philosopher Martin Grabmann was the first scholar to work out the outlines of the ongoing development of thought in scholasticism and to see in Thomas Aquinas a response and development of thought rather than a single, coherently emerged and organic whole. Although Grabmann's works in German are numerous, only Thomas Aquinas (1928) is available in English. However, Grabmann's thought was instrumental in the whole modern understanding of scholasticism and the pivotal role of Aquinas.

Topics

All the main branches of philosophy today were once a part of Medieval philosophy. Medieval philosophy also included most of the areas originally established by the pagan philosophers of antiquity, in particular Aristotle. However, the discipline now called Philosophy of religion was, it is presumed, a unique development of the Medieval era, and many of the problems that define the subject first took shape in the Middle Ages, in forms that are still recognisable today.

Theology

Medieval philosophy is characteristically theological. Subjects discussed in this period include:

• The problem of the compatibility of the divine attributes: How are the attributes traditionally ascribed to the Supreme Being, such as unlimited power, knowledge of all things, infinite goodness, existence outside time, immateriality, and so on, logically consistent with one another?
• The problem of evil: The classical philosophers had speculated on the nature of evil, but the problem of how an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God could create a system of things in which evil exists first arose in the medieval period.
• The problem of free will: A similar problem was to explain how 'divine foreknowledge' – God's knowledge of what will happen in the future – is compatible with our belief in our own free will.
• Questions regarding the immortality of the intellect, the unity or non-unity between the soul and the intellect, and the consequent intellectual basis for believing in the immortality of the soul.
• The question of whether there can be substances which are non-material, for example, angels.

Metaphysics

Book 7 of the Metaphysics: Ens dicitur multipliciter – the word 'being' is predicated in many ways

After the 'rediscovery' of Aristotle's Metaphysics in the mid-twelfth century, many scholastics wrote commentaries on this work (in particular Aquinas and Scotus). The problem of universals was one of the main problems engaged during that period. Other subjects included:

• Hylomorphism – development of the Aristotelian doctrine that individual things are a compound of material and form (the statue is a compound of granite, and the form sculpted into it)
• Existence – being qua being
• Causality – Discussion of causality consisted mostly of commentaries on Aristotle, mainly the Physics, On the Heavens, On Generation and Corruption. The approach to this subject area was uniquely medieval, the rational investigation of the universe being viewed as a way of approaching God. Duns Scotus' proof of the existence of God is based on the notion of causality.
• Individuation. The problem of individuation is to explain how we individuate or numerically distinguish the members of any kind for which it is given. The problem arose when it was required to explain how individual angels of the same species differ from one another. Angels are immaterial, and their numerical difference cannot be explained by the different matter they are made of. The main contributors to this discussion were Aquinas and Scotus.

Natural philosophy

In natural philosophy and the philosophy of science, medieval philosophers were mainly influenced by Aristotle. However, from the fourteenth century onward, the increasing use of mathematical reasoning in natural philosophy prepared the way for the rise of science in the early modern period. The more mathematical reasoning techniques of William Heytesbury and William of Ockham are indicative of this trend. Other contributors to natural philosophy are Albert of Saxony, John Buridan, and Nicholas of Autrecourt. See also the article on the Continuity thesis, the hypothesis that there was no radical discontinuity between the intellectual development of the Middle Ages and the developments in the Renaissance and early modern period.

Logic

The great historian of logic I. M. Bochenski regarded the Middle Ages as one of the three great periods in the history of logic. From the time of Abelard until the middle of the fourteenth century, scholastic writers refined and developed Aristotelian logic to a remarkable degree. In the earlier period, writers such as Peter Abelard wrote commentaries on the works of the Old logic (Aristotle's Categories, On interpretation, and the Isagoge of Porphyry). Later, new departments of logical enquiry arose, and new logical and semantic notions were developed. For logical developments in the Middle Ages, see the articles on insolubilia, obligations, properties of terms, syllogism, and sophismata. Other great contributors to medieval logic include Albert of Saxony, John Buridan, John Wyclif, Paul of Venice, Peter of Spain, Richard Kilvington, Walter Burley, William Heytesbury, and William of Ockham.

Philosophy of mind

Medieval philosophy of mind is based on Aristotle's De Anima, another work discovered in the Latin West in the twelfth century. It was regarded as a branch of the philosophy of nature. Some of the topics discussed in this area include:

• Divine illumination – The doctrine of Divine illumination was an alternative to naturalism. It holds that humans need a special assistance from God in their ordinary thinking. The doctrine is most closely associated with Augustine and his scholastic followers. It reappeared in a different form in the early modern era.
• theories of demonstration
• mental representation – The idea that mental states have 'intentionality'; i.e., despite being a state of the mind, they are able to represent things outside the mind is intrinsic to the modern philosophy of mind. It has its origins in medieval philosophy. (The word 'intentionality' was revived by Franz Brentano, who was intending to reflect medieval usage). Ockham is well known for his theory that language signifies mental states primarily by convention, real things secondarily, whereas the corresponding mental states signify real things of themselves and necessarily.

Writers in this area include Saint Augustine, Duns Scotus, Nicholas of Autrecourt, Thomas Aquinas, and William of Ockham.

Ethics

Abu Nasr al-Farabi:

Abu Nasr al-Farabi is well known in the world of medieval Islamic philosophy and ethics for his distinct approach to writing. Deviating from the traditional path of philosophical documentation, al-Farabi wrote in a simplistic manner. There is little immediate intricacy to be observed in his work. In addition to this, al-Farabi wrote in a narrative style. As opposed to listing theories, he told a story with subtle and implicit themes of original ethical concepts.

Contributions:

In his narrative pieces, al-Farabi discussed ethical and philosophical theories with reference to politics, leadership, morals, faith, and civics. Notable works of his include The Attainment of Happiness, in which al-Farabi reasons that conceptions of political science and religion must be built on a foundational understanding of the universe. He advocates that one must first construct notions in relation to universal matters to form just opinions in regard to political philosophy and religion. These two subjects are significant focal points in his work. Much of his writing is deliberated on his perceived conceptions of the juxtaposition and interaction of the aforementioned topics such as his claim that both political and religious figures rest in the same classification as adjacent to a fundamental comprehension of the universe.

Writers in this area include Anselm, Augustine, Peter Abelard, Scotus, Peter of Spain, Aquinas, and Ockham. Writers on political theory include Dante, John Wyclif, and William of Ockham.