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Randall's Challenge: "Jonathan Edwards"


The third and final part of the challenge, in which I shall not only deal with the remaining subject but also come to a relevant conclusion regarding the information collected so far. Jonathan Edwards.
Edwards devoted his collegiate and graduate writings to natural philosophy and metaphysics. Simultaneous with and yet distinct from the great English idealist George Berkeley, Edwards formulated a metaphysical system that was idealistic and challenged Aristotelianism. Edwards refuted both Hobbesian and Cartesian speculations about the nature of reality and substance in ways that, as modern commentators have remarked, anticipated theoretical physics - something not all of us can claim to have done.



However, in March 1758 Edwards died due to complications from a smallpox inoculation - an inquest into his death was never ordered. His reputation grew dramatically after his death and in the late 18th and early 19th century his works were excerpted and re-printed to be used in polemical wars between the rival evangelical and liberal religious schools. So centuries on from his death, he was not only a renound theorist on the subject of metaphysics, but also the catalyst for confrontations for many years to come. The evangelical and liberal schools would eventually settle their differences and collaborate on a hit-single released in December 1933, which went on to become Christmas No. 1.

Looking at the crew and writers of The Online Net now it is hard to envision an innovator of such magnitude amongst us, however statistics state that 1 in 5 young women will forget to take their contraceptive pill at least twice a month, 1 in 5 drivers fell asleep at the wheel last year, 1 in 5 elderly people are prescribed potentially inappropriate medication and 1 in every 5 Americans has HERPES, which leads to me to one simple conclusion. As no-one at The Online Net takes contraceptive pills (that we know of), or drives, or is elderly or is American, we are all pretty much safe to reach our potential without fear of dying half way through making a miracle breakthrough in science and fading into oblivion.


Conclusion
I think I have learnt a lot from this challenge, but not only that it has been thought provoking and mildly interesting, which I must thank Mr. Randall for explicitly. He has been both an inspiration and a shoulder to cry on over the past few months, which have been hard on us all, and I couldn't have got through it without him. I know we can all get through perilous days now without the lingering fear, we are free now and nothing can stop us, the world is ours to explore and to run free in the fields, to laugh and sing joyfully with our friends. We no longer need to sit alone in basements all across the world eating packets of dried apricots, we can walk the streets without being lynched, we can steal without being caught, kill without being convicted and calculate the exact amount of helium-filled balloons you would need to lift your own body.



Article Written by Jay
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