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It really sounds nice when we consciously think that we are the part of a cosmic world and alive,we are just not living in four cornered wall of a country present on world's map of this earth.In words of Jostein Gaarder:-
"We are the great vessel sailing around a sun in the universe.But each and every of us is also a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes ."
Nowdays we consider the two professions philosophy and science almost different, still there is one thing that is similar between them both i.e. an insight to wonder,create and look beyond the possibility.
All these idiotic thoughts yet wonderful came to me while reading SOPHIE'S WORLD -a novel by Jostein Gaarder. This book has nothing new, as the matter of fact it's a blend of a fictional story with the history of Greek philosophy in western world.Motto of the novel seems very clear i.e. to make a bridge between the old philosophical views and the prevalent views of today- either in political,social ,economical or scientific environment .But for me its an amazing work to compile the whole history of philosophy in 400 pages.
The beginning of the story is enough to make you think on very subject of philosophy and very amusing instead of knowing that you're reading the same thing you already know about.But the question that startles is how it all started and what was the importance to know all this...it would have went as it was going on..... but they were so desperate to give birth to this child "philosophy" so that civilisation can have something to work on instead of wasting their time on wars.
This Novel starts with that same aesthetic question Who am i? And from where the world has come from?...the same question that we generally knew that ORACLE ( Delphi) had made people to think about down through the ages under the phrase "Know thyself?" and would have already read in the works of either Shakespeare or Buddha.
Gaarder compared a philosopher with a child who wonders on each and everything that he sees and come across ...why a child do so??? ,because he is not familiar with this world and its norms hence he does not know the difference between normal and abnormal so whatever he sees ,he keeps on studying it,but as he grow up he becomes accustomed or habitual to these norms and activities and he no more ask about them as for him it becomes a usual happening but still among these so many growing up children there remains few who don't let their talent of wondering to diminish i.e. philosophers.They do so because they do not want to accept the norms as they are,they want an appropriate reason to do so,they use to think indifferent not because they want to stand apart from crowd but they just want an answer that why i should stand with them.And now you see that how philosophers walked on the path of different sciences,and as a result moon is no more a god for us.Apart from this Gaarder has also made a very fine distinction between mythological examples and philosophy as many people use to inter-relate them.
And now to quote some of the examples...the first philosopher Anaxagoras gave the theory that everything in this world is made from the minute particle with which further Democritus gave the theory of atomic particles which is now a well known theory -the only difference is according to Democritus atoms do not divide further but as we know that they do.There are many such examples including the ultimate example of Aristotle who gave the base for the one today known as Charles Darwin theory of origin.
so you see it was just because of philosophers' and artists' common sense that we reached to the basics for the idea of great inventions and discoveries.
Not only this he even gives some examples from Indian myths , philosophies and languages that interconnect Europe and Indian cultures that somewhere proves that in every part of world human was busy answering the same question in best possible way.And the answers they found were almost similar yet everyone keep on saying that their tradition is different and pure from others. This is really amazing to know how different religions separated themselves from one huge civilisation just because they were not ready to accept the philosophies and facts behind evolution of humans and wanted to study them separately and some wanted to continue with old traditionalist outlook which resulted in the number of religions as we know them today.And how further to end wars among them they announced their own holy cities and kings.E.G. Buddha whose philosophies were almost similar to many Greek philosophers.
This book become more important in the way,that throughout the story, writer make us conscious that every character in this book has a part to play .Here a writer is writing about a person who is writing a book on the characters who almost seem to be alive.Idea behind this kind of story is again a philosophical one that down through the ages neither philosophers nor scientists,not even Darwin and big bang theory got success in explaining that right from the creation of first molecule which resulted into complex molecule from which we all are made was just an accident or was a well planned creation of a super being ,some greater energy.An unanswered question even after 3000 years since human got conscious about his own existence.That will genuinely make you think about that writer who is writing our stories placing every character at its proper place.He is like "thoughts" that have their existence in our physically existing brain and we are conscious about them but we can not see them.
Though the novel shares historical significance but you will somewhere find its genre similar to children fiction which will make even teenagers to read this book.Its almost like dreaming about 3000 years back just to get the answer of your existence in today's world and suddenly you get awake that it was all a writer's creation.
Not to miss the most important of all theory given by Freud ,which will help you to get closer to your own self as his analysis was about human mind and its unconscious behaviour and the most important the importance of dreams.It will show how a man develops a superego in order to avoid what he thinks is not normal or unpleasant in the society or his wishes which can not be fulfilled and hence, repress those thoughts which get revealed only in his unconscious actions like slipping of tongue and dreams.It seems to be an answer to the question that does dreams change into reality.If one will study this part deeply will surely find that its threads are connected back to philosophies given by students during the time of Romantics who believe that dreams has everything to do with human reality and it's conscious.And this was also used as inspiration behind modern art where an artist was allowed to paint or write his imagination as a result of his repressed thoughts which ultimately help him out from being a neurotic.Believe me,It's really a great fun reading your own mind.
Even the last bit of this book about "absurdism" -a way of living which we are living in 20th century onwards will really stir your mind that when we laughed on Charlie Chaplin just for his stupid actions, we actually laughed on ourselves ,the type of lifestyle we started living after industrial revolution that has changed us totally into absurd being who became just a part of rat race- who come in world,survive,and finally dies.But still there are some in this era too who crave for making their time into a epoch movement so that when future scholars will study our times,they just don't feel dejected of our absurdity.There are still few who have registered their name in the pages of history.
This novel will surely make you think about Agatha Cristie's idea of coincidences that they exists due to some purpose
.....and what you will learn! ...you will learn that nothing is innate in this world of human beings,it was all created by us just for our own sake..there is nothing like forever existing tradition or thoughts.Every thought comes as product of its own age or time.Hence we have the full right to ask questions without accepting anything blindly but do not conclude till you get the perfect rational answer which are unconsciously inspired from something irrational.
p.s- i am still stuck with the question if everything came from one single molecule dividing itself into two and got adapted and hence surviving....then who thought that their should be two different genders in every specie.very intrigue planning in order to make creatures self-dependent.
p.p.s.- criminologists make the full use of Freud's theory of repressed thoughts.Watching movies like psycho,se7en,vidoque and kartik calling kartik, even the world of Agatha Cristie every time puts forward the same questions that to what extent you can trust yourself who is a human -the only intriguing creature that exists on this earth.
It really sounds nice when we consciously think that we are the part of a cosmic world and alive,we are just not living in four cornered wall of a country present on world's map of this earth.In words of Jostein Gaarder:-
"We are the great vessel sailing around a sun in the universe.But each and every of us is also a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes ."
Nowdays we consider the two professions philosophy and science almost different, still there is one thing that is similar between them both i.e. an insight to wonder,create and look beyond the possibility.
All these idiotic thoughts yet wonderful came to me while reading SOPHIE'S WORLD -a novel by Jostein Gaarder. This book has nothing new, as the matter of fact it's a blend of a fictional story with the history of Greek philosophy in western world.Motto of the novel seems very clear i.e. to make a bridge between the old philosophical views and the prevalent views of today- either in political,social ,economical or scientific environment .But for me its an amazing work to compile the whole history of philosophy in 400 pages.
The beginning of the story is enough to make you think on very subject of philosophy and very amusing instead of knowing that you're reading the same thing you already know about.But the question that startles is how it all started and what was the importance to know all this...it would have went as it was going on..... but they were so desperate to give birth to this child "philosophy" so that civilisation can have something to work on instead of wasting their time on wars.
This fact in itself is amusing that the world we are now living in
and the facts,logics and science we today believe in were already given
and proved by the philosophers many years ago just on the basis of
their common sense without any electronic apparatus used to do the
research.
This Novel starts with that same aesthetic question Who am i? And from where the world has come from?...the same question that we generally knew that ORACLE ( Delphi) had made people to think about down through the ages under the phrase "Know thyself?" and would have already read in the works of either Shakespeare or Buddha.
Gaarder compared a philosopher with a child who wonders on each and everything that he sees and come across ...why a child do so??? ,because he is not familiar with this world and its norms hence he does not know the difference between normal and abnormal so whatever he sees ,he keeps on studying it,but as he grow up he becomes accustomed or habitual to these norms and activities and he no more ask about them as for him it becomes a usual happening but still among these so many growing up children there remains few who don't let their talent of wondering to diminish i.e. philosophers.They do so because they do not want to accept the norms as they are,they want an appropriate reason to do so,they use to think indifferent not because they want to stand apart from crowd but they just want an answer that why i should stand with them.And now you see that how philosophers walked on the path of different sciences,and as a result moon is no more a god for us.Apart from this Gaarder has also made a very fine distinction between mythological examples and philosophy as many people use to inter-relate them.
And now to quote some of the examples...the first philosopher Anaxagoras gave the theory that everything in this world is made from the minute particle with which further Democritus gave the theory of atomic particles which is now a well known theory -the only difference is according to Democritus atoms do not divide further but as we know that they do.There are many such examples including the ultimate example of Aristotle who gave the base for the one today known as Charles Darwin theory of origin.
so you see it was just because of philosophers' and artists' common sense that we reached to the basics for the idea of great inventions and discoveries.
Not only this he even gives some examples from Indian myths , philosophies and languages that interconnect Europe and Indian cultures that somewhere proves that in every part of world human was busy answering the same question in best possible way.And the answers they found were almost similar yet everyone keep on saying that their tradition is different and pure from others. This is really amazing to know how different religions separated themselves from one huge civilisation just because they were not ready to accept the philosophies and facts behind evolution of humans and wanted to study them separately and some wanted to continue with old traditionalist outlook which resulted in the number of religions as we know them today.And how further to end wars among them they announced their own holy cities and kings.E.G. Buddha whose philosophies were almost similar to many Greek philosophers.
This book become more important in the way,that throughout the story, writer make us conscious that every character in this book has a part to play .Here a writer is writing about a person who is writing a book on the characters who almost seem to be alive.Idea behind this kind of story is again a philosophical one that down through the ages neither philosophers nor scientists,not even Darwin and big bang theory got success in explaining that right from the creation of first molecule which resulted into complex molecule from which we all are made was just an accident or was a well planned creation of a super being ,some greater energy.An unanswered question even after 3000 years since human got conscious about his own existence.That will genuinely make you think about that writer who is writing our stories placing every character at its proper place.He is like "thoughts" that have their existence in our physically existing brain and we are conscious about them but we can not see them.
Though the novel shares historical significance but you will somewhere find its genre similar to children fiction which will make even teenagers to read this book.Its almost like dreaming about 3000 years back just to get the answer of your existence in today's world and suddenly you get awake that it was all a writer's creation.
Not to miss the most important of all theory given by Freud ,which will help you to get closer to your own self as his analysis was about human mind and its unconscious behaviour and the most important the importance of dreams.It will show how a man develops a superego in order to avoid what he thinks is not normal or unpleasant in the society or his wishes which can not be fulfilled and hence, repress those thoughts which get revealed only in his unconscious actions like slipping of tongue and dreams.It seems to be an answer to the question that does dreams change into reality.If one will study this part deeply will surely find that its threads are connected back to philosophies given by students during the time of Romantics who believe that dreams has everything to do with human reality and it's conscious.And this was also used as inspiration behind modern art where an artist was allowed to paint or write his imagination as a result of his repressed thoughts which ultimately help him out from being a neurotic.Believe me,It's really a great fun reading your own mind.
Even the last bit of this book about "absurdism" -a way of living which we are living in 20th century onwards will really stir your mind that when we laughed on Charlie Chaplin just for his stupid actions, we actually laughed on ourselves ,the type of lifestyle we started living after industrial revolution that has changed us totally into absurd being who became just a part of rat race- who come in world,survive,and finally dies.But still there are some in this era too who crave for making their time into a epoch movement so that when future scholars will study our times,they just don't feel dejected of our absurdity.There are still few who have registered their name in the pages of history.
This novel will surely make you think about Agatha Cristie's idea of coincidences that they exists due to some purpose
.....and what you will learn! ...you will learn that nothing is innate in this world of human beings,it was all created by us just for our own sake..there is nothing like forever existing tradition or thoughts.Every thought comes as product of its own age or time.Hence we have the full right to ask questions without accepting anything blindly but do not conclude till you get the perfect rational answer which are unconsciously inspired from something irrational.
And the ending of this fictional yet non-fictional story will make you think about your birth right i.e. "to dream".
p.s- i am still stuck with the question if everything came from one single molecule dividing itself into two and got adapted and hence surviving....then who thought that their should be two different genders in every specie.very intrigue planning in order to make creatures self-dependent.
p.p.s.- criminologists make the full use of Freud's theory of repressed thoughts.Watching movies like psycho,se7en,vidoque and kartik calling kartik, even the world of Agatha Cristie every time puts forward the same questions that to what extent you can trust yourself who is a human -the only intriguing creature that exists on this earth.
