Reviews for Organicum; practical handbook of organic chemistry

The average rating for Organicum; practical handbook of organic chemistry based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-01-26 00:00:00 Kim Witmer As I was finishing Locke and beginning to put this review together, a news story came to my attention which, in a circuitous manner, reminded me of why I felt the need to do some (re)reading about liberalism this year. A FRIVOLOUS DIGRESSION An American woman was going through security at Frankfurt International Airport when she was taken aside and told that her carry-on bag contained too many liquids, and that she would have to either dispose of a stick of deodorant in her bag or put it in her checked luggage. While a reasonable person would likely have parted with their deodorant without much fuss, this woman decided to have a debate with the German federal police as to whether her rub-on deodorant was a solid or a liquid. According to the police report, the woman was adamant, uncooperative, and increasingly belligerent; apparently having chosen to fight and die on Speed Stick Hill rather than suffer the minor inconvenience of conforming to a quite standard airport security regulation. Then she did something really stupid. She called them Nazis. Now I've never been to Germany before, but even I know that references to Nazism, in speech or in symbol, are treated with extreme seriousness by German law. The woman was forced to pay a preliminary fine at the airport before continuing on her way. She now faces criminal charges for slander. The story could have ended here; but it's a testament to the peculiar "character" of our protagonist that it didn't. This woman was not just some ignorant American tourist; one of those stock-and-trade "ugly Americans" who routinely bring shame and dishonor upon my nationality through feats of international asshattery. She's an associate professor of Peace and Security Studies at the foreign service school of Georgetown University. For those unaware, Georgetown was founded by the Jesuit Order, and is famous for providing a high-quality education in international affairs, and for training a good portion of America's foreign service officers. A professor at this prestigious institution, suffice it to say, should be one of the last people one would expect to make so unsightly a spectacle of herself in a foreign airport. But the spectacle having been made, her reaction was even more galling. Did she apologize? Did she do damage control? Did she quietly move on with her life and let the incident be forgotten? Negatory! She's an American, silly goose! She wrote a political hit piece in the Huffington Post. "No!", I screamed to myself, alone in my car, reading the story on my phone during a work break and seeing a link to the HuffPost article. "I'm not going to read it! No! Never!" But I had already clicked the link, like a man possessed. Like that lecherous lactophile from A Clockwork Orange, my eyes felt like they were being held open, my retinas burned by this woman's idiocy. The article is fascinating in a number of ways; none of them positive. For one, it reads as if it were written by a precocious middle schooler with a thesaurus close at hand. This is a woman who never met an adverb she didn't like, or a metaphor she wasn't willing to use, whether or not it makes sense. Superfluous description abounds, as well as oracular vocabulary plucked from the scriptures of Merriam-Webster; words that amateurs use to make their writing feel more "grown up", but which have the ironic effect of highlighting the whole piece as a shallow contrivance. But even more damning than the style of the piece is its content, which is, in two words, preposterously typical. So rote and predictable and mindless is the procedure by which she checks every requisite box of a progressive liberal diatribe that it occurred to me that the entire article could have been composed by a computer algorithm. By her telling, not only were the German police "thuggish" fascists; they were misogynists as well: Agent Smiths of the Matrix of Patriarchy terrified by the "assertiveness" (i.e. insolence) of a woke woman'despite the fact that at least one of the officers was a woman herself. She asserts that while she did use the word "Nazi", she was not directing it at the police officers, but at a young American man in line behind her, whose haircut, in her eyes, made him look like a member of "the Hitler's Youth." In an article about her, a white woman, being stopped by police in Germany, she finds a way to invoke the specter of "white privilege" in the United States. She wonders whether a Muslim woman wearing a hijab would receive even worse treatment than she did. She makes an obligatory quip about Donald Trump's self-description as a "stable genius". Check, check, check, check, and check. The article should be stored in the Smithsonian. It's a pristine example of the shitshow of furious intellectual wheelspinning that American liberalism has become in the year 2018. LIBERALISM AS TABOO Liberalism has always been the political religion of the United States; if not the actual, theological one as well. John Locke was not only the greatest influence on the Founding Fathers; his writings established the parameters and the very language of our political discourse. Anyone with clout in American politics is a Lockean. The Democratic and Republican parties are best described as representatives of progressive and classical liberalism, respectively. Partisan animus is so acute not because of their ideological differences, but because of their overwhelming, stifling uniformity. The superficial differences must be accentuated to give the illusion that political debate in the United States is robust and thriving, when it is anything but. When you strip away the snark, the cultural prejudices, and the bandying of slogans, clichés, and soundbites that constitute the American electoral process, you find that the subject of politics, how best to organize and improve our life together under this constitutional order, is hardly ever broached. When real political discussion disappears in a liberal democracy, the language of liberalism remains, but functions only like a religious artifact that has been taken from an Indigenous American tribe and placed in a museum. It has a certain natural beauty and elegance to it'one suspects that it represents something important'but outside of its original social context it is a dead thing, disconnected from the roots of its spiritual power. Like the professor in our story, our liberalism, which was once the subject of intense, high-stakes physical and rhetorical combat among the midwives of our republic, has devolved into an endless regression of clichés, which are waved about like incense. The professor ran into an embarrassing situation of her own making, but as an acolyte of our ritualized liberalism, she could only write about her experience by invoking the fashionable controversies of American politics as if they were animistic deities. She has a vague sense that her rights and autonomy were violated; that she is perpetually victimized by "fascists" who are all around her, desperate to deprive her of her self-ownership, which is constantly under threat by people who want to tell her what to do. As a woman, she identifies herself with other groups of people who she believes are deprived of their "rights" like she is; African-Americans, Muslims, and so on. But it's clear that, like most of us, she is not thinking critically about the historical and intellectual roots of the "freedom" that her intuition tells her is so existentially threatened in the age of The Donald. This way of (not) thinking, of praying to our ideals instead of wrestling with them, is draining the blood of our civil society. We need to do something about it. It's not enough anymore to lay flowers at Locke's tomb, to light candles at his altars, or to collect relics of his to try and piece them together like Frankenstein's monster. We must dare to attempt more than an incantation. It's time for a conjuration. Let's put on our necromancer's robes and try to resurrect Locke wholesale. The master must be summoned. Arise, Lazarus! FIRST TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT Okay, so when you crack open Locke's First Treatise of Government, it doesn't seem to promise much in terms of contemporary relevance. It is a refutation (more like a demolition) of Sir Robert Filmer's Patriarcha; a Biblical defense of absolute monarchy by divine right. Sir Robert believed that absolute monarchy was established by God from the creation of Adam, and that this right to absolute, patriarchal authority had been passed down through all the generations of human history, right down to the absolute monarchs of Sir Robert's day. Monarchical power passed from Adam down to Noah, and from him to his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, each of whom, according to Sir Robert, was given absolute power over a continent of the eastern hemisphere after the Flood. All legitimate monarchs are descendants of one of these three, and thus exercise total, private power by dictate of God. Contrary to republican thought, Sir Robert held that laws were derived from the persons of kings, rather than the other way around. Laws were instituted to serve as symbolic expressions of the king's personal will; they were to be consulted in order to get an idea of the king's will when the king's personal presence was unavailable. Locke takes this theory apart piece by piece through his own exegesis of the book of Genesis. It deserves mentioning that the Hebrew Bible had taken on a critical importance for virtually all the political theorists of the seventeenth century; historians have nicknamed it the "Biblical Century" for this reason. New rabbinical sources allowed intellectuals to look upon the familiar scriptures with fresh eyes. Political theorists came to believe that the Hebrew Bible contained a total blueprint for God's ideal human government, and that the perfect political system, through a proper application of reason, could be extracted from it. Locke cuts off Sir Robert's argument at the roots. Contrary to his claim, there is no evidence in scripture that God gave Adam authority over other people. God gives Adam dominion over the natural environment and the lesser animals, but never over another person. Sir Robert cited scripture where God tells Eve that she is to be subordinate to Adam, but Locke counters that this occurs after their fall from grace, and so does not reflect on the original condition of mankind. Locke points out that it's a bit silly to say that Adam was given "paternal" authority over mankind when he didn't even have any children over which to exercise this authority. Sir Robert believed that he possessed this power in potentiality; but Locke, humorously, wonders whether this means that Sir Robert became an author before he wrote his book. And even if Adam had been given this power, there's no indication that it passed down to Noah and his sons. If Noah were an absolute monarch, he would have had absolute authority over the life and death of his sons; but scripture doesn't attest to this. After the flood, God gives the new world to Noah and his sons to share in common. Sir Robert apparently argued that when God gave the likes of Adam and Noah power over the "beasts" of the earth, the meaning of the Hebrew word for "beasts" could be extended to include their human subjects as well. If this is so, says Locke, then God gave Noah the power to eat his sons after the flood, and thus the absolute monarchs who now rule the world in his stead have the power to consume their subjects as a healthy midnight snack. And this doesn't even begin to address the issue of how such an original lineage of absolutism could have survived unbroken through the Egyptian and Babylonian captivities. Sir Robert's theory is easy to ridicule, as Locke's rebuttals demonstrate. Given that there's virtually no one left in the world who believes what he believed (if you know someone who does, please introduce us), is there anything we can learn from Locke's takedown? I think you can rehabilitate Sir Robert a little by reading him non-literally. His argument derives from a simple inversion of the republican theory we're accustomed to: that good governments are governed by laws, and not by men. Sir Robert is arguing that good laws are derived from the example of good men; that the norms established through history, by well-adjusted people living real lives, make a more beneficial model for good government than any abstract legal principles. Reading it this way, Sir Robert might be described as taking a more traditionalist, Catholic view, while Locke is rebutting him from a legalistic, protestant view. Even back then, after all, Anglicans were trying to be both Catholic and protestant at the same time. If you want to be really irresponsible (I do), you could even map their comparative positions onto the debate between "evolutionism" or "Darwinism", on the one side, and "creationism" or "intelligent design" on the other. Sir Robert is an "evolutionist" because he believes that the concept of rulership has been established by rulers themselves, demonstrating through historical trial, error, and adaptation, how power and legitimacy is acquired and maintained. Locke, conversely, is more of a "creationist", because he believes that God created nature and humanity through abstract reason, and so good government consists merely in adhering to the timeless natural law that God has handed down. Locke's humanity owes nothing to the past; Sir Robert's humanity is constituted by it. Neither position'that of traditionalism or that of legalism'is unassailable. A Filmerian monarch who rules merely by dictate of tradition can still be a corrupt bastard who brings ruin to the people under his protection. Good norms may be derived from good men, but it's just as true that bad norms can be derived from bad ones. A state founded by a Frederick the Great is not invulnerable to the later ravages of a Caligula. A Lockean legalism can become dehumanizing when its precepts fail to align with actually-existing human nature but are still forcibly imposed over it. Traditionalism can turn over into tyranny, while legalism can turn over into fundamentalism. SECOND TREATISE OF GOVERNMENT Having demolished Sir Robert's political theory, Locke now has the task of advancing a positive conception of his own. His basic ideals are hinted at apophatically in the first treatise, but now he makes them explicit. From the days of Genesis until now'eternally, providentially'God has written the law of reason into the fabric of creation. Man's capacity for reason is what separates him from the animals, and an individual's reasoning mind is what guarantees his access to equal rights in the commonwealth. Just as Adam was given authority over nature by God, so each man's reasoning consciousness entitles him to the same endowment. Reason allows man to possess nature and make it his property (and his "property", by the way, includes his own body). In the state of nature, every individual has an inalienable right to their own property; to dispose of themselves and their possessions as they see fit. Locke's model for life in the state of nature is the Biblical patriarchs, who go out into the world, dominate nature, and proliferate the species. God intended every man to be a Noah, an Abraham, an Isaac, a Jacob, or a Joseph. Nor is prosperity a zero-sum game; God created nature in such abundance that the enlargement of one man's estate does not need to come at the expense of another's. Jacob and Esau, though rivals, went their separate ways, built separate livelihoods, and had an emotional reunion later in life, having both sired prosperous dynasties quite independently of one another. In such a free and non-competitive state, there is a natural peace and equality among all people, because there is no impetus for envy or interpersonal domination. War is thus an aberration and an imposition on individual rights under natural law. According to Locke, a state of war is what happens when one person or group is trying to take away the natural rights of another person or group. It is not necessarily a matter of explicit, physical violence. In war, the aggressor is trying to assert their power over the defender. By attempting to take the defender's life, the aggressor is first and foremost claiming the power to deprive the defender of his right to his life, which is naturally his alone. All injustices stem from the usurpation of an individual's natural rights. A legislature that passes a law depriving you of your property is as much an enemy combatant as a guy trying to hack through your door with an axe. Everyone having these natural rights, each individual in a state of nature also has a natural executive power which allows him to protect those rights and restore them when they are encroached upon. You have the right to kick someone's ass if they're trying to take your property; whether that property is your life or any of your possessions. Locke even thinks that men in the state of nature have the right to kill someone who is just trying to steal money or goods from them. Before he is trying to steal from you, a thief is trying to usurp your natural right to your own stuff, making you the subject of his arbitrary will. Once he has established this power over you, who is to say that he will use it only to deprive you of your money? A threat to liberty is a threat to life, so both must be defended with the sword. Having established an individual's right to property, how does a person legitimately claim property as his own? For Locke, people gain a right to property by using it. Their legitimate domain consists precisely of everything they're able to make use of and improve without letting it go to waste. Nature is originally the common property of mankind, but when people use it, it becomes an extension of their person. Governments are instituted not to limit the rights of the individuals of whom it is composed, but rather to protect those rights. To be legitimate, a government must be based in natural law, and thus to make no further impositions on individual autonomy than those strictly necessary in order to more fully secure that autonomy from outside forces. In the Lockean liberal state, government and personal property are not adversaries; they in fact buttress each other. Now there's something your progressive Democrat and your small-government Republican would do well to learn; each party being inheritors of part of the Lockean legacy. The liberal state and the individual accumulation of wealth through the "free market" are deeply reliant upon one another. Statism and individualism are two halves of an arch; you cannot expand one without expanding the other. It is common for American political commentators to say that the left won the culture war, while the right won the economic war. It is more accurate to say that liberalism won both wars, liberalizing both social relations and economic ones, and now stands unchallenged over American life like a colossus. For the discontents of neoliberal American life, wary of the darkness brooding beneath its grinning exterior but at a loss to formulate a coherent response to it, the way forward may be to look beyond the boundaries of liberalism itself.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-11-05 00:00:00 Dan Shoemaker I figured that at some point or another it would be a responsible thing to read through some of the foundational documents and ideas that founded America - which is why I picked this up and dove into it. It's fascinating to read from this vantage point in history, where our nation and its constitution have been around for so long. Many of the ideas in the book seem self-evident, or commonsensical, and so it was a fascinating exercise to try and put ones mind into the arena of the day it was written, and to understand how radical the ideas in this slim volume really were. Additionally the letter concerning toleration was just a fascinating look into the way that the church ought to be and behave--and yet doesn't. The ideas that Locke gives here are so straightforward and ought to be the way that the Gospel and the church function, and yet it is clear in our world today that there are so many who have forsaken the true mission and motives of the gospel for their own ends. This is tremendously sad, and Locke really hits home hard for those who seek to practice their religion faithfully in that concluding chapter. Overall an interesting and useful historical read that also provided a fresh sense of perspective on some modern religious and political issues.