Symbolic Learning Methods Essay Example for Free

Symbolic Learning Methods Essay Abstract In this paper, performance of symbolic learning algorithms and neural learning algorithms on different kinds of datasets has been evaluated. Experimental results on the datasets indicate that in the absence of noise, the performances of symbolic and neural learning methods were comparable in most of the cases. For datasets containing only symbolic attributes, in the presence of noise, the performance of neural learning methods was superior to symbolic learning methods. But for datasets containing mixed attributes (few numeric and few nominal), the recent versions of the symbolic learning algorithms performed better when noise was introduced into the datasets. 1. Introduction The problem most often addressed by both neural network and symbolic learning systems is the inductive acquisition of concepts from examples [1]. This problem can be briefly defined as follows: given descriptions of a set of examples each labeled as belonging to a particular class, determine a procedure for correctly assigning new examples to these classes. In the neural network literature, this problem is frequently referred to as supervised or associative learning. For supervised learning, both the symbolic and neural learning methods require the same input data, which is a set of classified examples represented as feature vectors. The performance of both types of learning systems is evaluated by testing how well these systems can accurately classify new examples. Symbolic learning algorithms have been tested on problems ranging from soybean disease diagnosis [2] to classifying chess end games [3]. Neural learning algorithms have been tested on problems ranging from converting text to speech [4] to evaluating moves in backgammon [5]. In this paper, the current problem is to do a comparative evaluation of the performances of the symbolic learning methods which use decision trees such as ID3 [6] and its revised versions like C4.5 [7] against neural learning methods like Multilayer perceptrons [8] which implements a feed-forward neural network with error back propagation. Since the late 1980s, several studies have been done that compared the performance of symbolic learning approaches to the neural network techniques. Fisher and McKusick [9] compared ID3 and Backpropagation on the basis of both prediction accuracy and the length of training. According to their conclusions, Backpropagation attained a slightly higher accuracy. Mooney et al., [10] found that ID3 was faster than a Backpropagation network, but the Backpropagation network was more adaptive to noisy data sets. Shavlik et al., [1] compared ID3 algorithm with perceptron and backpropagation neural learning algorithms. They found that in all cases, backpropagation took much longer to train but the accuracies varied slightly depending on the type of dataset. Besides accuracy and learning time, this paper investigated three additional aspects of empirical learning, namely, the dependence on the amount of training data, the ability to handle imperfect data of various types and the ability to utilize distributed output encodings. Depending upon the type of datasets they worked on, some authors claimed that symbolic learning methods were quite superior to neural nets while some others claimed that accuracies predicted by neural nets were far better than symbolic learning methods. The hypothesis being made is that in case of noise free data, ID3 gives faster results whose accuracy will be comparable to that of back propagation techniques. But in case of noisy data, neural networks will perform better than ID3 though the time taken will be more in case of neural networks. Also, in the case of noisy data, performance of C4.5 and neural nets will be comparable since C4.5 too is resistant to noise to an extent due to pruning. 2. Symbolic Learning Methods In ID3, the system constructs a decision tree from a set of training objects. At each node of the tree the training objects are partitioned by their value along a single attribute. An information theoretic measure is used to select the attribute whose values improve prediction of class membership above the accuracy expected from a random guess. The training set is recursively decomposed in this manner until no remaining attribute improves prediction in a statistically significant manner when the confidence factor is supplied by the user. So, ID3 method uses Information Gain heuristic which is based on Shannon’s entropy to build efficient decision trees. But one dis advantage with ID3 is that it overfits the training data. So, it gives rise to decision trees which are too specific and hence this approach is not noise resistant when tested on novel examples. Another disadvantage is that it cannot deal with missing attributes and requires all attributes to have nominal values. C4.5 is an improved version of ID3 which prevents over-fitting of training data by pruning the decision tree when required, thus making it more noise resistant. 3. Neural Network Learning Methods Multilayer perceptron is a layered network comprising of input nodes, hidden nodes and output nodes [11]. The error values are back propagated from the output nodes to the input nodes via the hidden nodes. Considerable time is required to build a neural network but once it is done, classification is quite fast. Neural networks are robust to noisy data as long as too many epochs are not considered since they do not overfit the training data. 4. Evaluation Design For the evaluation purposes, a free and popular software tool called Weka (Waikato Environment for Knowledge Acquisition) is used. This software has the implementations of several machine learning algorithms made easily accessible to the user with the help of graphical user interfaces. The training and the test datasets have been taken from the UCI machine learning repository. Two different types of datasets will be used for the evaluation purposes. One type of datasets contain only symbolic attributes (Symbolic Datasets) and the other type contain mixed attributes (Numeric Datasets). Performance of the different learning methods will be evaluated using the original datasets which do not contain any noise and after introducing noise into them. Noise is introduced in the class attributes of the datasets by using the ‘AddNoise’ filter option in Weka which adds the specified percentage of noise randomly into the datasets. Symbolic Datasets are those which contain only symbolic attributes. Symbolic learning methods like ID3 and its recent developments can be run only on datasets where all the attributes are nominal. In Weka, these nominal attributes are automatically converted to numeric ones for neural network learning methods. So, preprocessing is not required in this type of datasets. Numeric Datasets are those which contain few nominal and few numeric attributes. Since symbolic learning methods like ID3 and its recent developments can be run only on datasets where all the attributes are nominal, these datasets first need to be preprocessed. A ‘Discretize’ filter option available in Weka is used to discretize all the non-symbolic attribute values into individual intervals so that each attribute can now be treated as a symbolic one. Initially, the entire data being considered is randomized. Two types of evaluation techniques are being used to analyze the data. (a) Percentage Split: In general, the data will be split up randomly into training data and test data. In the experiments conducted, the data will be split such that training data comprises 66% of the entire data and the rest is used for testing. (b) K-fold Cross-validation: In general, the data is split into k disjoint subsets and one of it is used as testing data and the rest of them are used as training data. This is continued till every subset has been used once as a testing dataset. In the experiments conducted, 5-fold cross validation was done. 5. Experimental Results Experiments were conducted on two symbolic datasets and two numeric datasets. The two symbolic datasets are tic-tac-toe and chess. The two numeric datasets are segment and teacher’s assistant evaluation (tae). DataSet 1 : TIC-TAC-TOE (a) 5-fold cross validation (i)Without any noise: Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 (ii) Percentage of noisy data = 10% Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 Time to build 0.03 6.16 0.02 0.06 0.01 % correct 67.4322 81.8372 75.8873 73.5908 71.2944 % incorrect 28.0793 18.1628 24.1127 26.4092 28.7056 % not classified 4.4885 0 0 0 0 Time to build 0.06 6.35 0.06 0.01 0.02 % correct 86.1169 97.4948 85.8038 87.5783 83.1942 % incorrect 11.691 2.5052 14.1962 12.4217 16.8058 % not classified 2.1921 0 0 0 0 (b) Percentage split with training data being 66% and the rest is testing data (i)Without Noise: Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 (ii)Percentage of Noisy data = 10% Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 Time to build 0.05 6.5 0.01 0.01 0.02 % correct 85.5828 97.546 83.1288 88.0368 82.2086 % incorrect 11.0429 2.454 16.8712 11.9632 17.7914 % not classified 3.3742 0 0 0 0 Time to build 0.04 6.15 0.02 0.02 0.01 % correct 68.4049 80.6748 73.9264 72.3926 71.4724 % incorrect 28.2209 19.3252 26.0736 27.6074 28.5276 % not classified 3.3742 0 0 0 0 For the tic-tac-toe dataset, in the presence of noise, neural nets had better prediction accuracies than all the other algorithms as expected. Though C4.5 gives better accuracy than ID3, its accuracy is still lower in comparison to Neural Nets. If the pruning factor (confidence factor was lowered) was increased, the prediction accuracies of C4.5 dropped a little. But in the absence of noise, the performances of ID3 and Multilayer Perceptron should have been comparable. But the performance of Multilayer Perceptron is quite superior to ID3. DataSet 2 : CHESS (a) 5-fold cross validation (i)Without any noise: Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 (ii) Percentage of noisy data = 10% Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 Time to build 0.36 47.75 0.21 0.18 0.19 % correct 81.1952 86.796 89.0488 84.6683 88.4856 % incorrect 18.8048 13.204 10.9512 15.3317 11.5144 % not classified 0 0 0 0 0 Time to build 0.21 47.67 0.15 0.05 0.1 % correct 99.562 97.4656 99.3742 99.3116 99.2178 % incorrect 0.438 2.5344 0.6258 0.6884 0.7822 % not classified 0 0 0 0 0 (b) Percentage split with training data being 66% and the rest is testing data (i)Without Noise: Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 (ii)Percentage of Noisy data = 10% Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 Time to build 0.33 41.73 0.24 0.19 0.19 % correct 80.1288 85.7406 87.5805 82.6127 87.6725 % incorrect 19.8712 14.2594 12.4195 17.3873 12.3275 % not classified 0 0 0 0 0 Time to build 0.13 43.55 0.06 0.06 0.08 % correct 99.448 97.1481 99.08 98.988 99.08 % incorrect 0.552 2.8519 0.92 1.012 0.92 % not classified 0 0 0 0 0 For the chess dataset, in the absence of noise, the performance of ID3 is better than that of Multilayer perceptron and takes lesser time. For the noisy data, back propagation predicts better accuracies than that of ID3 as expected, but the performance of C4.5 is slightly higher than back propagation. The reason for this could be that the feature space in this dataset is more relevant. So, C4.5 builds a tree and prunes it to get a more efficient tree. DataSet 3 : SEGMENT (a) 5-fold cross validation (i) Without any noise: Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 (ii) Percentage of noisy data = 10% Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 Time to build 0.07 9.64 0.04 0.04 0.03 % correct 68.9333 80.8667 81.2667 79.6 80.5333 % incorrect 21.3333 19.1333 18.7333 20.4 19.4667 % not classified 9.7333 0 0 0 0 Time to build 0.05 10.3 0.02 0.23 0.12 % correct 88.0667 90.6 91.6 94 94.3333 % incorrect 5.2 9.4 8.4 6 5.6667 % not classified 6.7333 0 0 0 0 (b) Percentage split with training data being 66% and the rest is testing data (i) Without Noise: Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 (ii) Percentage of Noisy data = 10% Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 Time to build 0.07 11.73 0.03 0.04 0.03 % correct 72.9412 82.549 82.1569 82.549 81.3725 % incorrect 19.6078 17.451 17.8431 17.451 18.6275 % not classified 7.451 0 0 0 0 Time to build 0.06 9.87 0.03 0.02 0.03 % correct 89.8039 87.6471 92.1569 93.7255 90.1961 % incorrect 4.1176 12.3529 7.8431 6.2745 9.8039 % not classified 6.0784 0 0 0 0 Segment, being a numeric dataset, all the attribute values had to be discretized before running the algorithms. In the absence of noise, ID3 performs slightly better than back propagation and the performance of J48 (implementation of C4.5 in Weka) is much better than ID3 and backpropagation. But a very interesting observation was found. In the absence of noise, the performance of an unpruned tree generated by C4.5 was quite superior to the rest. In the presence of noise, the performances of back propagation and C4.5 were comparable. DataSet 4 : TAE (a) 5-fold cross validation (i) Without any noise: Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 (ii) Percentage of noisy data = 10% Time to % % build correct incorrect ID3 0.02 53.6424 37.0861 Multilayer Perceptron 0.16 38.4106 61.5894 J48 0.02 52.9801 47.0199 C4.5 unpruned 0.01 56.2914 43.7086 C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 0.01 54.3046 45.6954 (b) Percentage split with training data being 66% and the rest is testing data (i) Without Noise: Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 (ii) Percentage of Noisy data = 10% Classifiers ID3 Multilayer Perceptron J48 C4.5 unpruned C4.5 confidence factor = 0.1 Time to build 0.01 0.17 0.01 0.01 0.01 % correct 38.4615 44.2308 44.2308 50 44.2308 % incorrect 40.3846 55.7692 55.7692 50 55.7692 % not classified 21.1538 0 0 0 0 Time to build 0.02 2.23 0.03 0.02 0.01 % correct 44.2308 57.6923 51.9231 55.7692 42.3077 % incorrect 34.6154 42.3077 48.0769 44.2308 57.6923 % not classified 21.1538 0 0 0 0 Classifiers % not classified 0 0 0 0 0 Time to build 0.02 0.18 0.02 0.01 0.01 % correct 54.3046 54.9669 48.3444 50.9934 47.0199 % incorrect 35.0993 45.0331 51.6556 49.0066 52.9801 % not classified 10.596 0 0 0 0 TAE, being a numeric dataset, its attribute values had to be discretized too before running the algorithms. But after observing the results, it is very clear that the random discretization provided by Weka did not generate good intervals due to which the overall accuracy predicted by all the methods is quite poor. Again, interestingly an unpruned tree built by C4.5 seems to give high prediction accuracies relative to the rest in most of the cases. In this case, for cross-validation approach and noisy data, surprisingly the performance of back-propagation was very poor. One reason for this could be that only few epochs of the training data were run to build the neural network. In the absence of noise, accuracy prediction of Multilayer perceptron was either comparable or greater than that of ID3. 6. Conclusion No single machine learning algorithm can be considered superior to the rest. The performance of each algorithm depends on what type of dataset is being considered, whether the f eature space is relevant and whether the data contains noise. In the absence of noise, in some cases, the performance of ID3 was comparable or sometimes better than back-propagation and was faster but in some cases Multilayer perceptron performed better. When noisy datasets were considered, back propagation definitely did better than ID3 though it took more time to build the neural network. But in the presence of noise, in some cases, C4.5 gave faster and better results when the attributes being considered were relevant. But some surprising observations were made when the attribute values of the numeric datasets were discretized, the prediction accuracy of an unpruned tree generated by C4.5 algorithm was much higher than the rest. This shows that the unpruned tree generated by C4.5 is not the same as that generated by ID3. References: 1.Mooney, R., Shalvik, J., and Towell, G. (1991): Symbolic and Neural Learning Algorithms An experimental comparison, in Machine Learning 6, pp. 111-143. 2. Michalski, R.S., Chilausky, R.L. (1980): Learning by being told and learning from examples An experimental comparison of two methods of knowledge acquisition in the context of developing an expert system for soybean disease diagnosis, in Policy Analysis and Information Systems, 4, pp. 125-160. 3. Quinlan, J.R. (1983): Learning efficient classification procedures and their application to chess end games in R.S. Michalski, J.G. Carbonell, T.M. Mitchell (Eds.), in Machine learning: An artificial intelligence approach (Vol. 1). Palo Alto, CA: Tioga. 4. Sejnowski, T.J., Rosenberg, C. (1987): Parallel networks that learn to pronounce English text, in Complex Systems, 1, pp. 145-168. 5. Tesauro, G., Sejnowski, T.J. (1989): A p arallel network that learns to play backgammon, in Artificial Intelligence, 39, pp. 357-390. 6. Quinlan, J.R. (1986): Induction on Decision Trees, in Machine Learning 1, 1 7. Quinlan, J.R. (1993): C4.5 – Programs for Machine Learning. San Mateo: Morgan Kaufmann. 8. Rumelhart, D., Hinton, G., Williams, J. (1986): Learning Internal Representations by Error Propagation, in Parallel Distributed Processing, Vol. 1 (D. Rumelhart k J. McClelland, eds.). MIT Press. 9. Fisher, D.H. and McKusick, K.B. (1989): An empirical comparison of ID3 and backpropagation, in Proc. of the Eleventh International Joint Conference on Artificia1 Intelligence (IJCAI-89), Detroit, MI, August 20-25, pp. 788-793. 10. Mooney, R., Shavlik, J., Towell, G., and Gove, A.(1989): An experimental comparison of symbolic and connectionist learning algorithms, in Proc. of the Eleventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-89), Detroit, MI, August 20-25, pp. 775-780. 11. McClelland, J. k Rumelhart, D. (1988). Explorations in Parallel Distributed Processing, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

Free Essays - Memories and Motherhood in Landscape for a Good Woman :: Landscape for a Good Woman Essays

Memories and Motherhood in Landscape for a Good Woman The relevance and subsequent interpretation of memories as they relate to one's desire to mother ". . . refusal to reproduce oneself is a refusal to perpetuate what one is, that is, the way one understands oneself to be in the social world." -- pg. 84 In reading Carolyn Kay Steedman's Landscape for a Good Woman, two themes took center stage: Memories and Motherhood. As the book unfolds Steedman repeatedly points out that childhood memories are used by individuals for various purposes; rather than objective recollections dominated by facts, she proposes that they are more subjective in nature, likely to alter with time or as circumstances dictate. Thus, fact has very little relevance, taking a back seat to the history we create for ourselves. ". . . childhood is a kind of history, the continually reworked and re-used personal history that lies at the heart of each present" -- pg. 128 Though she examined sociological, political, economic and psychoanalytic issues, one aspect Steedman fails to address is the biological, as in the so-called "biological clock". Frankly, her argument may benefit from this phenomena. Though women in their teens and early twenties frequently express an emphatic lack of desire for children, citing specifics of their personal histories to support these decisions, years later the same memories are given an opportunity to soften, recede or even disappear altogether. Thus, in light of this altered history, the individual in question feels more at ease reassessing her choices (in light of these memories) and considering motherhood a viable alternative. "We all return to memories and dreams . . . again and again; the story we tell of our own life is reshaped around them. But the point doesn't lie there, back in the past, back in the lost time at which they happened; the only point lies in interpretation." -- pg. 5 Another point Steedman only touches on lightly is her sister's interpretation of the past. Personally, I find it fascinating to discuss childhood events with siblings who participated in the same events. The significance of seemingly unrelated experiences, occurring after the occasion in question, together with personal feelings, frequently cause siblings' recollections of the same events to differ. In light of Steedman's work, it is easier now to understand how children, raised by the same parents, offered the same opportunities and sharing the same historical events, may end up with radically different memories.

Big business affects television ethics Essay

Today, a child watches television twenty to thirty hours a week and an adult is close to this number. Television is one of the most patronized media. Almost every house in the world has a television. This kind of media instrument is an avenue for people to be connected to the outside. It also enables people to be acquainted with products in the market. â€Å"Television ethics are derived from early professional codes of broadcasting that began in the late 1920s and are grounded in problems and issues identified in early radio. For television these ethical systems came into their own and grew rapidly, in conjunction with the development of the new medium, during the 1960s. But they now no longer exist as they once did. † (NBC, 1929) With the dominance of television in people’s lives, most companies use this as a tool to advertise their own products. We can see different products in different television programs being endorsed. Products that are being endorsed ranges from children to adults’ needs. We can see commercials of milk for children, liquor for adults and more. Anything that can pay to a television network for advertisements are seen on television, almost everyday. Even big business such as the war in Iraq is hounding journalists of their ethical practice. â€Å"The war in Iraq provided particularly difficult ethical challenges. Embedded journalists were scrutinized for their ability to report with independence. And their news organizations were tested — and often criticized — for their degree of either patriotic support or rigorous scrutiny of our government. † (Steele, 2004) Television stations depend their airtime life to advertisements. It is through paid advertisements that a television station is most likely to get their income. Without paid advertisements, a television station will collapse because it is truly expensive to maintain a station to stay on air. A station has a lot of people to be paid for their services and has a lot of machineries to maintain. Big companies affect television ethics. The money a company is willing to give in order to advertise their product is one factor to contend with. It has been estimated that a 30-second national TV commercial average cost is nearly $350,000. This is a cost that a small business cannot afford. In some cases, big companies are willing to pay larger amounts than the $350,000 just for their product to be aired on a particular station. This was simpler in the past decades. â€Å"Business news became of general public significance beginning in ? the late 1960s and early 1970s. Such newly emergent issues as equal ? opportunity, consumerism, and environmentalism brought business to the front page but often in a way that made it appear to be a ? major obstacle to progress. Add to this the seemingly endless economic problems of the 1970s–skyrocketing oil prices, recession, ?unemployment, inflation–and business news coverage seemed to ? many business executives as hostile, indeed. Faced with such accusations from business, reporters, for the most part, responded that ? they were not hostile toward business but simply reporting events as they see it. † (Evans, 1987) With the overwhelming amount at stake, most television stations do not care about the product they will advertise. This scenario is not only seen in the relationship of companies and television stations but even in the relationship of websites, radios, and other media types to the business world. With the power of money, television stations become apathetic to the content of the product a company will advertise. Television stations become blinded of the fact that their viewers are not only adults but most are children. They don’t mind the outcome of an advertisement and they don’t mind how it will influence the people specially the children. As long as the pay is good, an advertisement will surely be seen on air. We see almost all themes of life if not all in television today. We can see love, family, church, and even violence. This only says that television stations do not really have a clear censor rule regarding what to air and how to air or they are just being insensitive to the ethical demands of the public because of the money at stake in advertising. Wherever we go, we cannot do away from the reality that money rules almost everything. Even in different fields of life such as politics and education, money is the determining factor. If a politician has a lot of money, he or she will probably win. If a person is wealthy, most probably, he or she will have a greater education program. Indeed, big business affects television ethics. Television stations lives and continue to live because of paid advertisements. Big businesses continue to pay large amount of money for their products to be advertised. Connecting the two realities, we can say that because big businesses pays big on advertisements and television stations live because of paid advertisements, television ethics is affected. Most television stations do not care about ethics anymore. All they care is for their station to profit and to stay on air.

Analysis Of James Joyce s The Artist As A Young Man

INTRODUCTION APortrait of the artist as a young man was the first novel of James Joyce. The novel talks about the religious and spiritual awakening of the protagonist. The narrative technique of the novel keeps the reader close to Stephen’s psyche. Even though the novel is not written in first person style, the author constantly takes us into his mind and keeps us aware of the mental changes taking place in Stephen. Stephen’s rise of consciousness can be linked with his intellectual growth which is reflected upon his thoughts and actions. Joyce portrays the growth of Stephen’s consciousness through the gradual evolution of his thought process. This evolution can be understood by analyzing three different stages of his life CHAPTER 1 The narrative of the novel reflects the various stages of Stephen’s intellectual development by imitating the childlike simplicity of his earliest memories and by articulating his artistic awakening. Joyce takes us directly to Stephen’s interior world through the use of stream of consciousness. The book begins by describing Stephen’s experience as a baby, which represents the thoughts of an infant. ] Joyce begins the novel with Stephen’s earliest memories, by making considerable use of this stream of consciousness technique. The workings of Stephen’s mind are produced by showing how circumstances in the action evokes the thought process. The evolution of Stephen and his sensibilities are responses to these moments. By understanding theShow MoreRelatedAnalysis Of James Joyce s A Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Man Essay2057 Words   |  9 PagesJames Joyce and H.G. Wells had different styles of writing and relied on different forms of narration. H.G. Wells was direct and focused on the external environment or situation. He did not give much insight on the thoughts or internal struggle of his characters, while James Joyce did. Joyce supplied his characters with a greater level of internal comprehension than Wells did and was able to provide more human like characters. This difference is especially seen in H.G Well’s Tono-Bungay and JamesRead MoreAnalysis Of James Joyce s Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man2299 Words   |  10 Pagescontrol by the Catholic Church provided structure and stability in their lives, for others it was a source of major st ruggle and inner conflict. James Joyce found the Catholic Church’s power to be both overwhelming and repressive. In his Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, we see his inner struggle portrayed through the main character Stephen Dedalus. Like Joyce, Stephen struggles throughout his childhood and adolescence with the rigidity and severity of the Catholic Church. Initially, Stephen blindlyRead MoreAnalysis Of James Joyce s Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Man2639 Words   |  11 Pagesof the nature of God. 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The birth of the Bildungsroman is normally dated to the publication of Wilhelm Meister s Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang Goethe in 1795–96,[8] or, sometimes, to Christoph Martin Wieland s Geschichte des Agathon of 1767.[9] Although the Bildungsroman arose in Germany, it has had extensive influence first in Europe and later throughout the world. Thomas Carlyle translated Goethe’s novel