They Changed Their World and Ours 2 Quiz

Answer: Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton (1755-1804) embodied the spirit of the American opportunist while, perhaps contradictory to some, he maintained an elitist and monarchist attitude. In fact, he once wrote, "The whole world is a mass of fools and knaves". Such an approach to the world around him led him into several conflicts with several other significant leaders of the early United States--Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, and Aaron Burr, to name just a few. However, it was this same attitude of his that was responsible for the solidification of a strong central government that the United States has today, a powerful federal government that authoritatively roped into one nation the individual states that had been accustomed to perceiving themselves as separate colonies, each with its own government and monetary system.

Hamilton's service as a militia captain during the American Revolution so impressed General George Washington that he appointed Hamilton his senior aide, and when Washington was elected the first President of the newly created United States, he selected Hamilton as his Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton quickly established himself as one of the most powerful and influential members of Washington's Presidential Cabinet, and he used his position to push for the United States' assumption of the indiviudal states' debts as well as for the quick payment of all of the United States' Revolutionary War debt. Thus, the United States' financial credibility was quickly established globally. Then, through his interpretation of the United States Constitution's implied powers given to the nation, he established the National Bank of the United States as well as the U.S. Mint.

Pushing for a strong federal government and particularly a strong executive branch caused a great amount of conflict between him and other United States leaders, particularly Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who supported a system in which states' rights were more important. Hamilton created the Federalist Party to help support his agenda, and its influence was so overwhelming that Jefferson and Madison helped establish a the Democratic-Republican Party to counter it. Thus, the United States' two-party government system was created, much to Washington's dismay as he worried about having any political parties whatsoever.

Hamilton also quarreled with others. His dislike of John Adams led him to campaign against Adams' re-election as President of the United States, and, of course, he was successful. Then, despite his disagreements with Jefferson, he pushed for Jefferson's election to the Presidency over Aaron Burr's, whom he despised even more. Burr, who had already lost the New York Governor's election due to Hamilton's interference, believed Hamilton had slandered his character and challenged Hamilton to a duel, which Hamilton unfortunately accepted. Burr's bullet penetrated Hamilton's liver and diaphragm, settling in Hamilton's spine and leaving him paralyzed. He died the next day..

Answer: K'ang-hsi (Kangxi)

K'ang-hsi (1654-1722) is as significant to China's history as Louis IV of France and Peter the Great of Russia are to theirs. His rule was celebrated for its number of military achievements, such as his defeat of revolutionary movements like the Revolt of the Three Feudatories and the Hoifan Rebellion as well as his defeat of what were perceived as external threats like Mongolia and Russia.

However, he accomplished even more. He cut taxes while also building and improving public works, such as methods to control the flooding of the Yellow River and to repair the Grand Canal.

He was also a great patron of Chinese artists and was the motivational force behind the creation of a Chinese dictionary and an encyclodpeia as well as different anthologies of Chinese literature. Furthermore, K'ang-hsi was interested in Western science and technology and was able to improve his own nation's understanding of astronomy and weaponry through his ability to work diplomatically with Jesuit missionaries.

This strong sense of diplomacy assisted him throughout his life, for very early in his rule he was able to convince loyalists to the previous Ming dynasty to support the Qings through his embracing Confucianism, which he devoted himself to studying and practising. One of his great executive mandates was the Sacred Edict, which consisted of sixteen proverbs to instruct the average citizen in living according to the essentials of Confucianism. However, he still continued to practice the culture of the Manchus, the people of his own ancestry, so that he did not alienate them either.

Answer: Mark Twain

Mark Twain (1835-1910) was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in the state of Missouri. He began using his pen name after his experiences on the Mississippi River, where boatmen would often cry out, "Mark twain!" when they had measured the depth of the water to be two fathoms; shallower depths were not safe for riverboat travel. The book Ernest Hemingway was referring to in the quotation in the question is "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn". The eponymous character is a boy who runs away from his abusive father by rafting down the Mississippi River with a runaway slave named Jim. While the novel is characteristic of Twain's writing in that it relies on a great amount of humor, it is nevertheless a condemnation of America's so-called "civilized" society. After a lengthy self-exploration that coincides with the lengthy journey down the Mississippi, the novel's hero, Huck, discovers an inner voice that rejects the cruelty and hypocrisy of society, including its teaching that those who help slaves run away are doomed to hell.

Twain grew more and more egalitarian and liberal as he grew older. He not only supported the abolition of slavery but the defense of civil rights for people of all backgrounds. He eventually became anti-imperialist regarding the United States' affairs of state, and he was pro-union concerning the United States' system of labor. His views toward religion were also not mainstream; his eventual understanding of a god was one more in line with that of the deists, and he did not accept the legitimacy of any holy scriptures or any other sources considered to be the result of divine revelation. He was certainly against institutionalized religion; he once wrote, "If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be--a Christian".

Some of Mark Twain's other books include "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", "The Prince and the Pauper", "The Innocents Abroad", "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", "Life on the Mississippi", "Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc" and "Letters from the Earth".

Answer: Ramanuja

Ramanuja is traditionally believed to have lived from c. 1017 to c. 1137; however, contemporary scholars argue that he most likely lived from c. 1077 to c. 1157, a lifespan of about eighty years rather than one hundred and twenty. He was born in the Tamil-speaking southern region of India on the outskirts of Chennai (Madras) and into a Brahmin family, a priestly caste known for its adherence to the Vedas, the oldest of Hindu texts written in Sanskrit and considered to have no author or, rather, to have a supernatural source as an author.

Ramanuja became the primary proponent of Vishishtadvaita, which essentially argues for the existence of unity in diversity--out of the many, one. Thus, his ideas are the driving force of one of the three subgroups of the Orthodox school of Vedanta, the other two being Âdi Shankara's Advaita and Madhvâchârya's Dvaita. Ramanuja taught that reality was composed of a plurality of individual existences manifested by different people, animals, plants, objects, values, etc., but that all of these individual identities comprised a unified whole. This unified whole or ultimate reality is referred to as Brahman (manifested by Vishnu), and Ramanuja argued that worship and love of Brahman would free one from the cycle of life and death. Thus, Brahman is a personal God who bestows salvation through grace. Furthermore, Ramanuja did not accept the divisions of the caste system as wholeheartedly as his contemporaries, for he saw this offering of grace as a gift bestowed upon all regardless of caste. This belief system gradually infiltrated the culture of the subcontinent so vastly that it became the basis of popular Hindu philosophy, and many scholars understand Ramanuja to be the single most influential thinker of devotional Hinduism. Three texts usually accepted as his are Shri Bhâshya, Vedârthasangraha, and the Bhagavad Gita Bhâshya.

Answer: Albrecht Durer

Albrect Durer (1471-1528) is arguably the foremost German Renaissance artist. His masterful altarpieces, religious works, woodcut prints, nature studies, portraits, self-portraits, and copper engravings are as remarkable today as they were centuries ago. Durer made two significant excursions to Italy, and his adoration for the country as well as its artists was apparent in a letter he wrote from Venice in 1506: "Oh, how cold I will be away from the sun; here I am a gentleman and at home a parasite". More than any other Northern European artist of the time, Durer embraced Italian artistic practices and theoretical interests, and he masterfully combined them with the themes and ideas of the German humanists. As stated in the question, he was fascinated with geometry and the rational use of perspective and proportion. He even wrote two highly influential theoretical works: "Four Books on Measurement" and "Four Books on Human Proportion".

Through Durer's expansion of printmaking's tonal and dramatic range, he revolutionized the craft so that it rose to the level of an independent art form. "The Apocalypse" (1498), "Adam and Eve" (1504), "Knight, Death, and the Devil" (1513), "Saint Jerome in His Study" (1514), and "Melencolia I" (1514) are some of his most celebrated prints. "Melencolia I" remains one of the most enigmatic prints in history as scholars and theorists continue to debate its meaning.

Whether Durer ever officially left the Catholic Church is uncertain; however, his personal letters and artwork certainly exhibit his sympathies toward Protestantism, and his diary provides evidence that he longed to create an engraving of Martin Luther in a copper plate. Today, the Lutheran Church annually celebrates Durer as an influential Christian on April 6.

When Durer was buried, his epitaph was "Whatever was mortal in Albrecht Durer lies beneath this mound", suggesting that many considered him to possess much that was beyond his mortal shell.

Answer: David Hume

David Hume (1711-1776) is considered by many to be one of the most brilliant philosophers to write in the English language; however, just as many consider him a despicable man. In fact, when one of Hume's contemporaries, the English writer Samuel Johnson, was informed that Hume had denied the existence of God, Johnson exploded, "He lies, sir." Many of Hume's contemporaries believed him to be an atheist, and their beliefs were a hindrance to Hume's career as he was denied a university position because of them. However, he eventually worked as a librarian at the University of Edinburgh and achieved great recognition during his time as an essayist and an author of such books as "A Treatise of Human Nature" (1739), "An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding" (1748), "An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals" (1751), and "The History of England" (1754-61), a six-volume publication that became a best seller and established Hume as a celebrated historian.

Perhaps, Hume's most significant contribution to philosophy is his refutation of inductive reasoning and causality. At the risk of greatly oversimplifying his work, I nevertheless suggest you consider the following scenario. Suppose you see a red apple before you. You reach out and grab the apple. You eat the apple and are certain that you taste something delicious and sweet. You believe that the vision, tactile sensations, and taste are confirmation that there was something very real before you and that this real something appears, feels, and tastes exactly as you have experienced it. However, Hume might argue, you are making only an assumption. You have no evidence that the image in your mind of an apple was put there by the apple at which you believed you were looking. You cannot work backwards from an effect to that which caused the effect. You have an image in your mind that you think you are seeing or a taste in your mind that you believe you are experiencing, but you cannot conclude that an object outside of yourself caused those sensations in your mind simply because you looked at, touched, or tasted something right before you experienced those sensations. Likewise, you cannot look at the world around you and infer that this world exists because of a creator who created it. An individual cannot make a logical leap from something's existence to an absolute and definite cause of that something's existence. To make a connection between something and its cause would require not a logical leap but rather a leap of faith. It should be noted that Hume never argued that there are no causes for what we see and experience; he only argued that we cannot truly know or understand those causes.

Interestingly, Hume was for a short while an admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau as well as a friend to him. He helped Rousseau escape persecution in France and set up residence in England. However, Rousseau grew convinced that Hume was part of a plot to humiliate him, and the two had a very bitter falling out. Of course, Hume was utterly befuddled by Rousseau's accusations as well as hurt and angered by them.

Hume also struggled with obesity as he grew older and eventually died from some sort of abdominal cancer.

Answer: Marian Evans (aka Mary Anne Evans)

All four of the above women used male pseudonyms at some point (Blixen, Isak Dinesen; Bronte, Ellis Bell; and Dupin, George Sand), but it is Mary Anne (aka Mary Ann and Marian) Evans who published "Silas Marner", "The Mill on the Floss", and "Middlemarch" as well as a few other novels, such as "Adam Bede" and "Romola", under the pen name of George Eliot. At first, many believed George Eliot to be a country parson, and when a minister named Joseph Liggins stepped forward pretending to be George Eliot, Evans was forced to expose herself as the true George Eliot. While many did indeed view her as a very scandalous person, they could not deny the greatness of her wildly successful first novel "Adam Bede", which she had published in 1859. Furthermore, Queen Victoria herself eventually grew tremendously fond of Evans' work, and she couldn't have asked for a greater endorsement during that age.

Evans met the journalist George Henry Lewes in 1851, and despite his being married, the two of them fell in love and began living together in 1854. They considered themselves married and remained together for twenty-four years until he died in 1878. Many believe her nom de plume to be inspired by Lewes. "George" was, of course, Lewes' first name, and "Eliot" is thought to be a cryptic representation of "to L--, I owe it".

Though Evans grew up under the influence of evangelical Christianity, she eventually rejected her faith after a lengthy study of historical and philosophical texts, primarily German ones. While she is respected for her essays and wrote several poems, it is her novel writing for which she is greatly celebrated. Her in-depth analysis of her characters' psychological compositions foreshadowed twentieth-century fiction and led Virginia Woolf to write of "Middlemarch", the novel usually considered Evans' masterpiece, that it is "one of the few English novels written for grown-up people".

Answer: Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was born the son of a Ukrainian-born opera singer living in a suburb of St. Petersburg. As a child, Stravinsky developed a great love for music, mastered the piano, and began studying theory and composition. However, as some thought he was not particularly talented, his father pushed him to prepare for the life of a lawyer. During his college years, however, he made a decision to abandon his study of law, and he began to study music instead under the tutelage of the older Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Eventually, Stravinsky emerged on the musical scene as a most radical composer and conductor, an individual still considered one of the most revolutionary musicians of the twentieth century. Not only did he alter what many considered conventional patterns of rhythm and harmony, but he explored methods of presenting the same motif or theme in various forms throughout one composition. At first, most found accepting his nonconformity to be impossible. In fact, what many consider his masterpiece--"Le Sacre du Printemps" or "The Rite of Spring"--was booed so loudly during its première in Paris in 1913 that the ballet dancers could not perform because they could not hear the music. Now, however, "The Rite of Spring" is considered the standard by which modern classical music is judged, and Aaron Copland described this particular musical work as the "foremost orchestral achievement of the twentieth century".

Interestingly, Stravinsky and the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas were to have collaborated, but Thomas died before any real composing ever began. Also of note is that Stravinsky hated communism and was a devoted monarchist who at one point believed Mussolini's version of fascism might be an answer to Russia's communist influence. He also was a devout adherent of the Eastern Orthodox faith and rejected arguments supporting atheism.

Answer: Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) spent his childhood in poverty, and despite marrying a well-to-do widow, struggled in his career until 1755--the year he published "A Dictionary of the English Language", which solidified his fame as a writer. Before Johnson, no standard dictionary of English existed, so he embarked, mostly by himself, on a task that took him nine years to complete. The "Preface" to his "Dictionary" explains his frustration at the failure of any attempts to preserve a language and prevent its changing, and his definitions are often tainted with personal opinion, sometimes comically--such as his explanation of "lexicographer--a writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge ..." He was also an excellent satirist. His poem "The Vanity of Human Wishes" and his prose fable "Rasselas" expose and admonish humanity for its stubborn preference for an unrealistic view of the world. In "Rasselas", Johnson speaks of "the hunger of imagination, which preys upon life". Typical of the writers of the Age of Reason, Johnson favored an emphasis on rational thinking and logic instead of imaginative and fantastical thinking. These writers also adhered to tradition and celebrated the ideas and forms of the classical writers long before them; however, Johnson demonstrates the eventual clash of reason and tradition when in his "Preface" to "Shakespeare" he praises Shakespeare for his creative abandonment of Aristotle's "Unities" when writing drama.

He was also one of the earliest of literary critics and a superb essayist, and he wrote frequently of his positions on politics and social issues. His stands, which he supported with sound logic and reasoning, were considered liberal in his own lifetime, and some of them would probably be considered the same in some of today's societies. For example, he was against capital punishment and the practice of slavery. He very poignantly wrote of the American colonists, "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?" These rebukes of Americans and his support for the English monarchy are what led a few American revolutionaries to hang Samuel Johnson in effigy.

Answer: Kemal Ataturk

Kemal Ataturk (1881-1938) was born Ali Riza oglu Mustafa and, according to many sources was given the name of Kemal by one of his mathematics instructors when he was a youth. "Kemal" means "perfection" or "maturity" and was meant to praise Mustafa for his exceptional accomplishments in his mathematical studies. In the 1930's Ataturk published a brochure of geometrical terms and definitions that were still begin used at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In 1934, Mustafa was granted by Turkey's Parliament the surname "Ataturk", which means "father of the Turks".

Ataturk remains one of the most historically significant people from Turkey. He believed that the Turkish system of clerical rule and government was not a system for continued success and that Western systems were more promising. However, he was by no means an enemy of Islam or a supporter of all things Western. He remained Muslim all of of his life as well as a celebrant of Turkish culture and nationalism. What he accomplished was truly significant during his short role as Turkey's President, an office he held from 1923 until his death in 1938. He managed to separate church and state, and this allowed the people of his nation access to the kind of education the majority of the Western world was experiencing. In fact, Ataturk invited the great American educator John Dewey to Turkey and modeled their system of schools after his philosophies. Ataturk also led the revision of Turkey's civil code after Switzerland's and Turkey's penal code after Italy's. Because of his leadership, he is considered a heroic figure to a great number of the followers of Islam.