Term project Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Term project - Assignment Example Kansas was first settled by European Americans in the 1830s, but the pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery issue. When it was officially opened to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine if Kansas would become a free state or a slave state. Thus, the area was a hotbed of violence and chaos in its early days as these forces collided, and was known as Bleeding Kansas. The abolitionists eventually prevailed and on January 29, 1861, Kansas entered the Union as a free state. After the Civil War, the population of Kansas grew rapidly, when waves of immigrants turned the prairie into farmland. Today, Kansas is one of the most productive agricultural states, producing high yields of wheat, sorghum, and sunflowers. Kansas is the 15th most extensive and the 33rd most populous of the 50 United States. Kansas is bordered by Nebraska on the north; Missouri on the east; Oklahoma on the south; and Colorado on the west. The state is divided into 105 counties with 628 cities, and is located equidistant from the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. The geographic center of the 48 contiguous states is located in Smith County near Lebanon. The geodetic center of North America was located in Meades Ranch, Kansas, Osborne County until 1983. This spot was used until that date as the central reference point for all maps of North America produced by the U.S. government. The geographic center of Kansas is located in Barton County. Kansas is underlain by a sequence of horizontal to gently westward dipping sedimentary rocks. A sequence of Mississippian, Pennsylvanian and Permian rocks outcrop in the eastern and southern part of the state. The western half of the state has exposures of Cretaceous through Tertiary sediments, the latter

The Interaction Between an Individual and Society Research Paper

The Interaction Between an Individual and Society - Research Paper Example Human rationality implies, for enlightened thinkers, an attempt to know and understand the natural world, and the use of rational principles to solve social interaction problems. These attempts should culminate in the realization of enlightened faith and idealism in a utopian society. Nietzsche opposed this progress as being naà ¯ve but was unable to elude it. A second theme is those involving contradictions existing between commonality and individuality. Human consciousness was passive while accepting ideology, doctrine, orthodoxy and mass thinking, and it saw reality in the liturgy of vested interests. Ideology arises when a group advances certain socially constructed realities which serve their interests, but which are projected as being in everyone else’s best interests, even though others disagree or don’t understand it. Critical theory views rationality in terms of theoretical consistency and in the standards of pragmatic social reality. Rational planning for rea listic action involves regulative ideals, which have been formulated as enlightened possibilities for the acquisition of knowledge and proper conduct. Enlightenment’s theoretical reverence for reason proceeded in two opposing wrong directions. One became the instrumental reason for technological rationality and the other culminated in logical positivism which, understood knowledge only in logico-mathematical terms, denying any truth or practical relevance to values (Regelski, 2005). Historically, mobility, economy, technology and infrastructure rapidly transformed the metropolis, in disruptive and sometimes destructive ways.