Natural Medicine

1 1. What is a naturopathologist?

   2. What kind of environment do naturopathologists work in?

   3. How does the practice differ from common medicine?

   4. What role does nature play in treatment and healing?

   5. Under what circumstances would a person be in need of seeing such a doctor?

   6. How much more effective is natural medicine versus the medication prescribed today?

   7.  Is acupuncture a reliable source of treatment?

   8. What are the health benefits of being treated by natural medicine instead of prescription drugs?

Perception is Everything

Challenges

The biggest challenge I have encountered thus far was the literary analysis paper. I think that even though I managed to explain my points well, I struggled the most with understanding the poem. I overcame this by simply analyzing and making sense of the poem to the best of my abilities and providing enough support for my claims.

Steven Pinker's History of Thought

The Harvard Gazette presents an interview with cognitive psychologist, Steven Pinker. Pinker holds an interest for vision and language which are relevant to the mysteries of thought that drive his career. Growing up, his parents had always wanted for Pinker to become a psychiatrist due to his interest in the human mind which would create multiple career opportunities in medicine for Pinker. But, Pinker was not interested in pursuing a medical degree nor was he interested in psychopathology. His primary interest laid in cognitive psychology which all started by a particular incident involving the creation of profound questions about our kind and the ability to gain their answers through lab. Pinker began his journey towards cognitive psychology by finishing graduate school still with an interest in vision and language. After graduate school, Pinker was hired back at Harvard, where he originally left from, and was given the responsibility of three courses in language acquisition. Even though he closed down his lab in visual cognition, Pinker’s ultimate focus was on language. Steven Pinker, throughout his life, wrote a few books including: The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, Words and Rules, The Better Angels of Our Nature. This forthcoming book, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person’s Guide to Writing in the 21^st Century, focuses on Pinker’s liking of his freedom to avoid academese and the ability to write in an accessible style.

The Summoned Life

In his article, David Brooks, explains the two different views one may have on their life. One being the "Well-Planned Life" and the other being the "Summoned Life." The well-planned life focuses on taking the time to come up with an overall purpose of one's life and then proceeding to making such choices which in turn help them achieve their goals and meet that purpose. Brooks talks about Clayton Christensen, a professor at the Harvard Business school, who devoted an hour of his day, each day, towards reading, thinking, and praying to help himself find his purpose in life, which in the end he did. Another view on life, the summoned life, focuses on one's current life path and figuring out what one's purpose in life is by taking specific actions relating to those current circumstances. In both cases, both views on life are useful in living a well-considered life.