Method on 1st Bachillerato Class

Picture from Wikipedia

Read the following text, by Descartes, and find

1. What is a method? How are its rules?
2. How different is following a method in learning, to follow
no method at all or to proceed just 'by chance' or 'at random'?
3. Synonyms of ‘by chance’ , and ‘at random’. Translate them into Spanish.
4. How could the activity of the mind 'be wasted' or 'thrown
away', according to the text?
5. Think of your own mental activity in the class. What does it
usually happen when you stop paying attention and start trying
something else, such as thinking about what you will be doing
after the class, about what you were doing before the class
or just about how you are looking out of the window
absentmindedly at that moment?


By Method (he says), I understand rules certain and easy, such as to prevent anyone, who shall have accurately observed them, from ever assuming what is false from what is true, and by which, with no effort of mind uselessly consumed, but always by degrees, increasing science, a person will arrive at a true knowledge of all those things which he will be capable of knowing.
In accordance with this declaration, it is manifest that procedure by a Method is a fixed procedure, for it is a procedure according to rule. It is thus opposed to procedure by chance or at random.
…/…
The cognitive power, by being thus limited to a determinate channel, is prevented from being wasted or thrown away in irregular exercise. The activity of the mind is subordinate to the realization of a given end; the mind itself has another rule that its own impetuosity. Descartes, therefore, to reach truth, and for the right conduct of the mind, that is, to prevent it from wasting its powers in capricious activity, instituted a Method.

Renée Descartes, “Introduction” in Discourse on Method, p XIV

From the above it follows that it would be recommendable to take some methodological steps in your daily thinking activity in the class :

1 Trust your own self-control ability
2 Be patient and constant
3 Focus on the activity you are doing (the opposite would be getting astray, which could be done as follows: By doing a bit of work on one subject different from the one you are attending at one given class period; by not paying attention; by talking to your classmates instead of drawing attention to the teacher or asking him about any doubts.
4 Do not look for immediate success, but listen attentively, since understanding will come over by means of close listening in the middle or long run. Comprehension seems only to arrive after listening, viewing and thinking a lot.
5 Be aware that time invested in study is a very good invested time.
6 Trying and applying what you already know to new fields will lead to the awakening of your love for knowledge.
Six ideas based on the 1st Course of Bachillerato Mathematics(2008), ANAYA

Two trends in Shakespeare's Love Poems (Sonnets, 1609)

In one of them, Shakespeare seems to understand love as a kind of psychological link or attachment between two minds. In the second interpretation of love, he's chosen to look down on 'his mistress'.
If in the first case, his love's neither Time's fool, nor alterable by circumstances, in the second, he finds no nice metaphors he could use to compare her to. Love in Sonnet 116 does not alter, nor bend, like a fixed mark which guided on tempests and carried to the one who loved even to the end of doom. Conversely, in Sonnet 130, he finds his love as rare as any other possible love she would have compared it to.

1.Read both Sheakspeare's sonnets and try to compare them in your own words
2.Explain the special vocabulary that is applied to love and you consider interesting enough.

Love Sonnet 116
Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments; love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wand'ring bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his heighth be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Love Sonnet 130

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red than her lips' red;
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound;
I grant I never saw a goddess go;
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare
As any she belied with false compare.
http://users.telenet.be/gaston.d.haese/shakespeare.html