Witchcraft Religion Essay Example For Students

Witchcraft Religion Essay Since in this view, societal needs are mediated by individual agents responding, holding attitudes, and acting such a need fulfillment theory reduces to a psychological one. Every important custom has its pragmatic or emotional value for some members of the society, or else it falls into disuse and is forgotten. To reduce all actions to satisfying needs seems slightly simplistic. Many customs are observed today despite their original function now being long obsolete: no doubt many convinced atheists still throw spilt salt over their left shoulder, but in no way believe that this is because Beelzebub himself is standing behind them. We will write a custom essay on Witchcraft Religion specifically for you for only $16.38 $13.9/page Order now Furthermore, conclusions based upon the psychological makeup of people in the distant past are problematical because it is very hard to make the jump from what the sources tell us to what assumptions about the world actually lay behind them. As much as the anthropologist, studying cultures which are distant in space, the historian studying cultures distant in time must overcome a considerable difference in language, where the subtler meanings of words may be lost on the outside observer. Thomas does attempt to recreate the mental world of witch belief, and probably gets close to how it actually was, but there is no way of absolutely verifying his ideas. As such, with his anthropologically-informed conclusions resting at least in part upon his reconstruction of past mentalities, Thomas conclusions seem to have a potentially weak foundation. Religion and the Decline of Magic undoubtedly profits in some way at least from its borrowings from anthropology. Some of its main conclusions owe much to anthropological conclusions, and these are not simply forced upon history without the cross-examination of historical evidence. In the last resort this is a work of history drawing upon anthropology, not of anthropological conclusions imposed upon the past as part of some general positivist scheme. It is, however, far from perfect. The examples used, while numerous, are given in a sentence or two, which cannot hope to relate the full implications of the source being employed, and might simply be distortions of the facts to back up the scheme Thomas attempts to describe. The whole survey seems slightly lopsided as a result of the consideration of mainly anthropologically-informed conclusions, and some of the conclusions which he does draw seem to have their share of weaknesses. All of this is harsh criticism, though, especially as very few books (and this would be one of them) claim to tell the whole story. Thomas does show that anthropology can open up a number of routes of enquiry which may well have been obscure to conventional historians, and indeed to shed light on historical events. He may have gone a little too far in his borrowings, but he does not write bad history by any means. In the opinion of E. P. Thompson, Religion and the Decline of Magic is, an immensely important and stimulating book BIBLIOGRAPHY G. R. Elton, The Practice of History (London 1987) C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (London 1993) H. Geertz, An Anthropology of religion and Magic, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 6 (1975) K. Thomas, History and Anthropology, Past and Present, 24 (1963) K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London 1971) E. P. Thompson, Anthropology and the Discipline of Historical Context, Midland History, 1 (1971).

Calculate Concentration of Ions in Solution

Calculate Concentration of Ions in Solution This worked example problem illustrates the steps necessary to calculate the concentration of ions in an aqueous solution in terms of molarity.  Molarity is one of the most common units of concentration. Molarity is measured in  number of moles  of a substance per unit volume.   Question a. State the concentration, in moles per liter, of each ion in 1.0 mol Al(NO3)3.b. State the concentration, in moles per liter, of each ion in 0.20 mol K2CrO4. Solution Part a.  Dissolving 1 mol of Al(NO3)3 in water dissociates into 1 mol Al3 and 3 mol NO3- by the reaction: Al(NO3)3(s) → Al3(aq) 3 NO3-(aq) Therefore: concentration of Al3 1.0 Mconcentration of NO3- 3.0 M Part b.  K2CrO4 dissociates in water by the reaction: K2CrO4 → 2 K(aq) CrO42- One mol of K2CrO4 produces 2 mol of K and 1 mol of CrO42-. Therefore, for a 0.20 M solution: concentration of CrO42- 0.20 Mconcentration of K 2Ãâ€"(0.20 M) 0.40 M Answer Part a.Concentration of Al3 1.0 MConcentration of NO3- 3.0 M Part b.Concentration of CrO42- 0.20 MConcentration of K 0.40 M