Junhwan Oh (KIS 8)
Archaeology reveals the secrets of past civilizations through the analysis of material evidence. In the Summer of 2022, an excavation was carried out by high school students of ‘The Mansion House’, a house which stood on a school campus from 1782 until 1887 in Massachusetts, USA. The following is an analysis of the excavation and what it means for the intersection of archeology and history.
The excavation of The Mansion House focused on the material aspect of past human culture. However, when combined with the history of the area, our study tells us something profound and meaningful about the past. It is surprising how much information has been left out of the mainstream history narrative, like the histories of the Native American and African American groups that lived in this region of the United States. While governmental and economic infrastructure was generally created by white groups in the USA, black communities created the fabric of their own civilization using their traditional know-how and skills. So, leaving the African American groups out of history is not only misguided, but arrogant and wrong. The excavation aimed to find evidence of not only the major events and groups of people from this time period, but also the life of the people that have been omitted from the historical record. Artifacts that were excavated from the site are a fragment of history and can be further analyzed and connected to other artifacts; collectively, they tell a story about who occupied the land and how they lived. Archaeology not only provides valuable insights for modern historians and scientists but also grants nameless individuals from the past the respect and honor they deserve.
During the time that The Mansion House stood, Black workers were dehumanized and ostracized by white people due to the racist structure of society at the time. During the archaeology camp in Massachusetts in the Summer of 2022, students were able to use both history and archeology to study the past, and their learning came into focus through the study of ethics in archaeology. By learning about ethics, which is at the heart of archaeology, they were able to begin to understand that scientific methodology can often be destructive or limited if not paired with ethical considerations. Combining history with archaeology is beneficial for both historians and archaeologists because background information about the site is invaluable to archeologists, and historians use the results of excavations as tangible evidence of their historical hypotheses. Archaeology is also useful for contemporary historians and scientists, as it provides concrete evidence for the use of certain objects and materials that can help us understand what the world was like in the past.
Modern civilization is greatly affected by the traditions and practices of the past. Although human culture has changed exponentially over the last century with explosions in technology and global communications, it remains important to preserve the knowledge of our ancestors. Just like how ancient African influence can be seen in ceramics from Georgia, recording and developing past practices is important for the future.
Archaeology is for everyone, as it tells the story of all humans throughout time. Modern archeological methods are far removed from those of the early antiquarians, many of whom were concerned with profit and fame, and the archeological records suffered because of it. Now, archeology aims to gather material evidence and analyze it with ethical considerations in mind, working with local people to explore our shared past. It is only through considering the intersection of archeology with history that we will be able to fully illuminate the past and more fully understand our present world.
Time does not exist
Kyumin Kang (NLCS Jeju 11)
There are two ways to view time: one is as an empirical phenomenon and the other, as a mathematical concept used to describe the world. Galileo Galilei described time as distance divided by velocity and compared various values of the time taken for an object to travel a certain distance. Newtonian mechanics defined time as an absolute value throughout the universe even though Newton was aware of the conceptual problem that absolute time could not be measured. However, from the end of the 19th century, new perspectives on time emerged, and one of the theories that helped to shift the paradigm was the theory of relativity by Albert Einstein. He claimed that time is not absolute but relative. There are two types of this theory: special relativity, which claims that in the reference frame of a moving object, time appears to pass more slowly, and general relativity which claims that a gravitational field slows the flow of time. This theory created lots of paradoxes at first, one of the most famous being the ‘twin paradox’.
One twin (twin A) goes to space in a spaceship, and the other twin (twin B) stays on Earth. The spacecraft travels at a speed close to the speed of light. Each twin experiences time as normal in their own reference frames, but their reference frames are no longer the same. When viewed from Earth’s reference, a clock on A’s spaceship will appear to run slowly. By the time A returns to Earth, years later, less time has passed on the spaceship due to time dilation, and twin A should be younger than twin A. But viewed from the spaceship’s reference frame, Earth appears to move away very quickly, so a clock on Earth appears to move slower from the spaceship. Therefore, B should be younger than A! Both cannot be true, and this is where the paradox arises. The solution lies in the fact that the spaceship is accelerating, therefore it can’t be considered an inertial reference from which we can calculate time dilations. Therefore, A really does return to Earth younger than B.
The most interesting interpretation of this theory is that the concept of what we call ‘time’ does not actually exist. Einstein postulated that time is a dimension just like space. For example, let’s assume that there’s a graph in which the horizontal axis represents a spatial dimension, and the vertical axis represents a time dimension. If I decide to take an airplane from Korea to the UK, then my movement will be drawn as a diagonal line on the graph since I have moved in both space and time. Einstein then made a prediction that matter all moves through spacetime at the speed of light. This means that in the space-time graph, the resultant vector is always a constant length. When we increase our speed, for example by flying in a plane, increasing our rate of travel through spacetime, it is just that we move more slowly through the time dimension. In this regard, since all matter is traveling at the speed of light through spacetime, nothing can move faster than light through space. It truly is a cosmic speed limit.
If we accept this idea, then it is impossible to define the concepts of what we call the past, present, and future. If we could control our motion through time in the same way as we can through space, we would be able to see things from the past and the future, rather than being stuck in the present like a bug frozen in amber, being dragged every forward by the arrow of time. The point of this is that if we portray the universe’s journey from the Big-Bang to its eventual end (if there is one) as one single block, or rolling movie, then at every moment we are only looking at one scene or slice of it. But all matter moves at the speed of light in spacetime, thus when the relative speed in spatial directions is zero, then we are moving forwards in time at the speed of light (in reality this rarely happens, as we on Earth are constantly moving around the Sun and through the galaxy). Consequently, the position of the scene we can see in the story of the universe containing the past, present, and future constantly changes, and this is why we say that time “flows”. All past, present, and future events are actually just a single picture expressed in 4 dimensions, and the speed of light moving us through the picture is unchanging. To put it simply, every event that we have been through in the past or we will encounter in the future is part of the universe’s story which has already been decided, and we are just walking the path of destiny at the speed of light.
Rhetorical Analysis of Barack Obama’s Eulogy Memorializing Senator Ted Kennedy
Minseung Choi (St. Paul 11)
At Senator Ted Kennedy’s funeral in 2009, former President Barack Obama delivered a eulogy to praise and memorialize the late senator. His speech was marked with great use of pathos, especially appropriate given the setting, as he introduced Kennedy through an empathy-evoking anecdote. Furthermore, Obama juxtaposed Kennedy’s response to his tragic past with the societally expected response and implicitly compared Kennedy to modern politicians, praising Kennedy’s sincerity in his often-cynical field of politics. The powerful combination of pathos, juxtaposition, and comparison highlights Kennedy’s extraordinariness and successfully establishes him as a praiseworthy figure.
Obama first leads the speech with an anecdote about Kennedy. While Obama could have started by detailing his deeds as a senator, he deliberately introduces Kennedy by describing his more personal side to further emphasize and better memorialize Kennedy’s primary role as a beloved human being. He mentions how Kennedy was not only a great senator but also a “Father. Brother. Husband. Uncle Teddy” and even “The Big Cheese”. This is both considerate to the people who knew Kennedy more personally – “those of us who loved him” – and touching to others who knew him as a senator, allowing the audience to remember Kennedy not only as a respected and professional senator but also as an admirable member of a family. Overall, Obama’s anecdotal introduction of Kennedy serves as a great setup for the speech, as its emotional tone crescendos with the discussion of Kennedy’s more personal side.
Obama further details Kennedy’s tragic past to highlight Kennedy’s extraordinary strength in overcoming personal challenges. He explains how Kennedy suffered through extreme events such as losing beloved family members and narrowly surviving a plane crash. Despite these hardships that “would have broken a lesser man,” Obama notes that Kennedy still had a “spirit of resilience and good humor”. Kennedy’s extraordinary response to his suffering is contrasted with the ordinary, expected response to such hardships of “a lesser man” to “let himself become bitter and hardened” and “to surrender to self-pity and regret”. With this juxtaposition, Obama separates Kennedy from the ordinary, “lesser man” and highlights his extraordinariness, achieving his goal of praising Kennedy. The knowledge of Kennedy’s tragic past and his extraordinary response to it therefore evokes a sense of admiration among the audience, setting a respectful tone appropriate for a eulogy.
Obama adds more power to his words by comparing Kennedy to modern politicians to emphasize Kennedy’s sincerity as a politician who helped those in need. Using the words of the famous poet William Wordsworth, Obama smoothly transitions from Kennedy’s personal life to his political side, by explaining how his past, personal exposure “to suffering and distress” translated into Kennedy being “more alive to tenderness” in politics. Obama indicates that Kennedy’s great achievements as a politician were due to his empathy towards “the plight and suffering of others” and “not to champion those with wealth or power or special connections”. Obama is essentially hinting towards and criticizing modern politics, which focuses more on individual gain rather than a sincere desire to help citizens. The clarification of Kennedy’s intentions separates him from modern politicians, establishing him as a more praiseworthy figure.
Obama praises both Kennedy’s personal side and political side, using pathos, juxtaposition, and comparison to emphasize Kennedy’s greatness. He introduces Kennedy the man first, highlighting his resilience and noting that Kennedy’s past helped him become a great politician. When mentioning Kennedy’s political side, Obama does not simply list Kennedy’s great achievements but also praises them, focusing on his sincere intentions and how he helped those truly in need, making him different from modern politicians. Through the use of such rhetorical techniques, Obama highlights Kennedy’s remarkable traits and memorializes him.
Work Cited:Obama, Barack. “President Obama’s Eulogy for Senator Kennedy.” Boston, Massachusetts, 29 August, 2009.
