Items of the academy / learning
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The 3QD experience
I’ve contributed essays to the aggregator site 3quarksdaily.com for two years, and have just decided to bring that relationship to a close. Nothing went wrong – no falling out, no throwing of lamps, no screaming fits of “I just don’t love you anymore!” I just decided that I’d had my run, and it was time to free Continue reading
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What are libraries?
[Currently reading: The Meaning of the Library, Princeton University Press, 2015.] When I went to college, I had a part-time job reshelving books in the library. I really liked it: I was on my own, rolling a little wooden cart through a quiet place, placing things where they belong. It felt serene and meditative. I Continue reading
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Does philosophy belong in the humanities?
In the old model of the liberal arts, the trivium was the ground floor of the “core curriculum” for students. It consisted in logic, rhetoric, and grammar, or the basic tools for scholarly reading, understanding, and writing. One then studied the quadrivium, or the four fundamental tools for researching nature’s design: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and Continue reading
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On lecturing
I am happy to see this essay in the NYT by Molly Worthen recalling us to the value of lectures. In circles of higher ed, “student-centered learning” and “engaged teaching” have been endlessly recommended, emphasized, extolled, and quite nearly made mandatory across the curriculum – and very often to very good effect, as it’s not Continue reading
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Online education as the silver bullet
A recent story on Utah Public Radio reports that the Utah System of Higher Education is projecting an increase of 50,000 additional college students in Utah over the next ten years. That’s huge. And the immediately attractive response – “More online education!” – is not the way to go. Let me be straight: for the Continue reading
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On the mistaken view that there is something especially sciency about the so-called scientific method
I heard it again on the radio today as I was driving around. The story was about a new science curriculum to be introduced in public schools. The problem with the existing curriculum is that kids are getting the idea that being a scientist means reading lots of textbooks and memorizing stuff. “They are thinking Continue reading
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William James, “The Social Value of the College-Bed” (1907)
The sifting of human creations! —nothing less than this is what we ought to mean by the humanities. Essentially this means biography; what our colleges should teach is, therefore, biographical history, that not of politics merely, but of anything and everything so far as human efforts and conquests are factors that have played their part. Continue reading
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Descartes’s new operating system: the “iThink”
There is no text more commonly read in philosophy courses than Descartes’s Meditations on First Philosophy. This is astonishing, given that the work was written well over three centuries ago. To some extent, to be sure, it is so commonly assigned simply because it is so commonly assigned; that is, it is hard to imagine Continue reading
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Interesting minds
(Warning: here comes a rant) I recently had the joy of meeting with colleagues from around the state, but unfortunately most of our meeting was focused on one of the least interesting topics with which academics can interact: outcome assessments, or essential learning outcomes, or “learning how to measure what we value”. Everything that can Continue reading
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Where academic philosophy went wrong
A potted history: I believe Peter Sloterdijk is right that the Enlightenment has been followed by philosophical cynicism, or an impressive array of natural knowledge unaccompanied by any faith in providence. The U.S., which became the dominant intellectual and cultural force in the course of the 20th century, was well-suited to put this cynicism to Continue reading
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On Neil deGrasse Tyson and philosophical philistinism
A recent post on the internet has outed Neil deGrasse Tyson (or “NdGT,” as he’s been dubbed by the blogosphere) as a philistine in matters of philosophy. True enough: as charismatic as he is, and as beneficial as his public service has been in bringing the wonders of modern science to a big audience, he Continue reading
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Reflections on academic administration
I’m just ending my second foray into academic administration. The first one was serving as department head over a department including philosophy, communications studies, and all of our foreign language programs. It was a terrific exercise in mental and emotional flexibility – at one point I was adjudicating a dispute between a faculty member and a staff assistant Continue reading
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My six recommendations for what academics in the humanities can do to help save the humanities
An idle self-scolding: 1. Everyone – not all the time, but every once in a while, acknowledge the fact that human beings occasionally produce something noble, beautiful, or virtuous without oppressing anyone. Writing like Eeyore is not doing us any favors. 2. English faculty – it’s okay to get excited once in a while about Continue reading
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Scholarship vs. Research vs. Push-ups
When I started as an Assistant Professor, people started calling my kind of academic reading and writing “RESEARCH”, and they encouraged me to do the same. At least, this is how I remember it. It seemed to me strange and awkward, because in my mind “RESEARCH” required surveys at the very minimum, and perhaps also Continue reading
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Ah, libraries.
“Sit in your local coffee shop and your laptop can tell you a lot, especially if you wield your search terms adeptly. But if you want deeper, more local knowledge, you will still have to take the narrower path that leads between the lions and up the stone stairs. There – as in great libraries Continue reading
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How the internet, and computers generally, impart education
Answer: by not working very well. I’ll explain. My son spends a lot of time playing Minecraft. It’s a brilliant game that operates in two modes: creative mode, in which you can build all sorts of structures and even simple circuits my collecting raw materials and re-shaping them; and play mode, in which you and Continue reading
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Philosophical progress?
David Chalmers recently addressed the Moral Sciences Club at Cambridge, and he jokingly announced at the beginning that everything he was about to say was not to leave the room. Of course, there are links to the talk everywhere now, and here is another one. His joke makes sense as a joke because of the Continue reading
Huenemanniac 