Are human beings fundamentally witnesses to or creators of reality Essay

Are human beings fundamentally witnesses to or creators of reality (Gay Science 301) - Essay Example ality, and his declaration that ‘God was Dead’ (Theory of Perspectivism, developed by Immanuel Kant), resulted in a lot of controversies and speculations over his works. Amongst many of his well known works, the book â€Å"The Gay Science† first published in 1882 was considered by the author to be the closest to his heart or the most personal. This article will examine closely the Book IV, aphorism #301, of â€Å"The Gay Science† and find out the underlying meaning, and study Nietzsche’s views on the topic â€Å"Are Human Beings Fundamentally Witnesses to or Creators of Reality?† The Gay Science was written during a very dark phase in the author’s life. Between 1876, when Untimely Meditations was published and 1882 when The Gay Science was published, Nietzsche had undergone terrible sickness and complete isolation, which gave him time for self introspection, and an overall development of his mental faculties, and a quest for the right path. Therefore it was almost inevitable that the book The Gay Science would reflect these dark times and thoughts, exploring the profundity of human psychological thoughts. However, by the time it was published his mood had invariably changed for the better, so the book also gives the readers a feeling of being alive and vigorous yet light, and to some extent of joyous happiness. At the end of Book I Nietzsche himself comments "Pardon me, my friends, I have ventured to paint my  happiness  on the wall† (Nietzsche, 2001, 65). Book IV, aphorism #301: The Book IV as a whole advocates on how to live well, and is a positive and heroic acceptance of life. It pays allegiance to the legend of Saint Januarius, and assumes the tone of a teacher giving advice. Aphorism 301 is extremely important as it speaks of further augmentation of the ‘higher being’, a state of existence developed by Nietzsche in the earlier parts, where he describes this ‘higher being’ as someone who is courageous and takes pleasure in a hard fight,

Fine chemical production Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Fine chemical production - Essay Example Chemically, citral consists of a mixture of a pair of aldehydes (terpenoids) having similar molecular formula but different structures. The two compounds are considered to be double bond isomers with the E-isomer being referred to as citral â€Å"a† or geranial while Z-isomer is known as citral â€Å"b† or neral. Although citral naturally occurs in compounds such as lemon grass and can be isolated from these citral containing oils, it is only available in sizable quantities. For effective synthetic manufacture of citral on a large scale basis for industrial purposes, it is increasingly becoming important to have a synthetic method of fine production from simple, inexpensive but readily available commercial chemicals such as isoprene and bata-pinene among others. Citral is widely used in the manufacture of perfumes, lotions, creams, shampoos and flavourings. In addition, the chemical compound is also an important basis for synthesizing a variety of popular fragrance compounds such as geraniol, eugenal, ionones and citronellol as well as in making carotinoids used for both vitamin A and E. Being one of the most important acyclic monoterpenes due to its numerous industrial applications, citral has many synthetic routes some of which are currently being used in commercial production of the chemical. This paper presents a fine chemical production of Citral including its chemistry, synthetic route selection, thermodynamics, kinetics and wastes issues. The current selected synthetic route for the production of citral involves the use of isobutene and formaldehyde as the primary feeding stocks with nitric acid as the preferred choice of catalysts. Using this method, citral can effectively be produced by from the reaction between isobutene and formaldehyde molecules under high temperatures and pressure and using a catalyst. The resultant chemical is then subjected to numerous special