Nature and Technology Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Nature and Technology - Essay Example This means that historians study human actions, what determines actions, and what actions bring about. What determines action has usually been considered to be mental phenomena such as beliefs, hopes, and desires, whereas what results from human activity has typically been taken to be artifacts and further activity. The focus of history, as a result, has emphatically been human beings. Apart from environmental determinists and historical ecologists or environmentalists of various stripes, nature has largely been ignored. Technology, moreover, has been almost universally construed as a means for furthering human ends, as artifacts people produce, together with the skills and knowledge these artifacts require and engender, so as to facilitate their lives. According to this way of thinking, technology, unlike nature, is part of history. It is so because it shapes, facilitates, and is brought about by human activity. Whatever is part of history has a history. On the standard line of thinking, consequently, there is a history of technology but not of nature. The history of technology is simply that slice of the total realm of human activity that is tied to technology. In addition to technological objects, this slice includes the actions that generate, use, or result from technology, the knowledge and skills technology requires and engenders, and, it should be added, the complexes of these matters that are given such designations as computer networks, assembly line manufacturing, medical practices, and scientific investigation. Nature, by contrast, is not, on the standard view, part of human history. Hence, it has no history. Or rather, any conception of nature as a historical entity or realm-such as those of Whitehead, Alexander, and contemporary biological evolutionary theory-works with an expanded notion of history that does not attribute to generic history any particular connection to humans a nd human history (for example, history as events in time, as development, or as contingency). On these wider conceptions, the history of nature simply is, or pertains to, the temporal course or development of nature. There is no history of nature as something peculiarly related to humans and their history. At best, nature and its history form a backdrop against which (human) history takes place. A variety of developments has begun to chip away at the hegemony of this general conception of (human) history. Most centrally, its subversion is part of the general reconsideration currently underway of the relationship between society and nature. It has become tenuous, theoretically, to construe this relationship either reductionistically or oppositionally. This development, in turn, challenges the opposition between history and nature that is a facet of the venerable concept of history and that parallels, and maybe depends on, the society-nature opposition. (Mitcham, 233) It should be stressed that activity remains crucial to history on this expanded conception of its domain. In the first place, actions, as the moments of practices, are absolutely central to practice-arrangement nexuses. More deeply, one condition of the existence of history qua the development of the social site (or, for that matter, qua the course of activity) is the historicity of the individual lives bound up with it. By the historicity of

The understanding financial data, and developing and making judgements Essay

The understanding financial data, and developing and making judgements on proposals against strategic objectives - Essay Example In this study the researcher observed the role played by the finance and accounting function in the operation of a business. The author of the study recognized the following main functions: †¢ The raise of funds or financial management †¢ The role of financial reporting and †¢ The budgeting and organisational objectives. Financial management is a division of the finance and accounting purpose i.e. concerned with the financing of an industry’s activities. Finance is usually raised through loan capital, share capital and state finance or through inside generated funds. This report is prepared for Roberta Kelly and providing good budgeting plan to her business. It is designed to give the learners a chance to investigate the principles that support the financial decision making procedure and how they are applied into business. International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is a group of accounting standards build up by a sovereign, not-for-profit business called the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). â€Å"The goal of IFRS is to provide a global framework for how public companies prepare and disclose their financial statements. IFRS provides general guidance for the preparation of financial statements, rather than setting rules for industry-specific reporting†. Financial r eporting is the arrangement of financial data in a form that is helpful to interested parties. It includes the collection and presentation of data for utilize in management accounting and financial management. ... It includes the collection and presentation of data for utilize in management accounting and financial management. 3. Interpretation of Accounting Information – Public Limited Companies: For the comparison study and understanding of the Transportation sector we have chosen the two companies i.e. 1. MET Plc 2. KGL PTS. Both of the companies are well established in the transportation sector and they are diversifying their business worldwide. Marwyn European Transport Plc is newly established company in the transportation sector; it is formed by the leading Transport industry executives to exploit the opportunities in the European transport industry. They are now focusing on the German bus and coach industry and presently operating 250 buses in Germany. The MET is established as a wholly owned subsidiary company of the MMP (Marwyn Management Partner Plc.). The board of directors of the company has a belief on the attractive investment opportunities in the public transportation of the European countries and so they are willing to operate the business by keeping the favors of the stakeholders. Initially they are targeting the largest bus markets in the country. KGL Passenger Transport Services (KGL PTS) in Kuwait, a supplementary of KGL Holding, was recognized in 2005. Being the showpiece of KGL Holding’s Passenger Transport Management Company, the KGL PTS has developed themselves as one of the most important passenger travel service companies within Kuwait and Middle East. As they are offering different means of carrying to suit the necessities of customer both publicly and commercially, they are still leading the sector. The head quarter of KGL PTS is in Kuwait and they are operating in Sharjah, Abu Dhabi and in the United Arab