Steven Pinker: “Dear Humanists, Science is Not Your Enemy”

in Education | August 7th, 2013

pinker humanities

Human­ists are feel­ing a bit belea­guered these days. And who can blame them? Enroll­ments in human­i­ties cours­es are in steady decline nation­wide, and every­one’s look­ing for a cause. Some blame the decline on the tough econ­o­my and the relent­less­ly voca­tion­al focus of stu­dents. Oth­ers attribute it to the â€śanti-intel­lec­tu­al moment” in which we’re now liv­ing. Still oth­ers place the blame right in the laps of human­ists who have “lost faith in their own enter­prise.” They’re com­mit­ting their own form of career sui­cide. And then some fault the ever-increas­ing encroach­ment of sci­ence. For nowa­days sci­ence tries to answer all ques­tions, includ­ing what’s good, beau­ti­ful and true.

But if you lis­ten to Steven Pinker, he’ll tell you that sci­ence is not the prob­lem. Ear­li­er today, the emi­nent Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist pub­lished a piece in The New Repub­lic called Sci­ence Is Not Your Ene­my: An impas­sioned plea to neglect­ed nov­el­ists, embat­tled pro­fes­sors, and tenure-less his­to­ri­ans. And he offered these assur­ances:

[Sci­ence does­n’t have] an impe­ri­al­is­tic dri­ve to occu­py the human­i­ties; the promise of sci­ence is to enrich and diver­si­fy the intel­lec­tu­al tools of human­is­tic schol­ar­ship, not to oblit­er­ate them. And it is not the dog­ma that phys­i­cal stuff is the only thing that exists. Sci­en­tists them­selves are immersed in the ethe­re­al medi­um of infor­ma­tion, includ­ing the truths of math­e­mat­ics, the log­ic of their the­o­ries, and the val­ues that guide their enter­prise. In this con­cep­tion, sci­ence is of a piece with phi­los­o­phy, rea­son, and Enlight­en­ment human­ism. It is dis­tin­guished by an explic­it com­mit­ment to two ideals, and it is these that sci­en­tism seeks to export to the rest of intel­lec­tu­al life.

If you’re a human­ist try­ing to fig­ure out whether you can take com­fort in Pinker’s argu­ment, you can read the rest of his piece here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Can Sci­ence Fic­tion Save the Lib­er­al Arts? (Asks The New Repub­lic)

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”

Read The Har­vard Clas­sics: A Free DIY Edu­ca­tion in the Lib­er­al Arts

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New Archive Reveals How Scientists Finally Solved the Vexing “Longitude Problem” During the 1700s

in Archives, Astronomy, Education, History, Science | July 31st, 2013

For cen­turies, sea­far­ing explor­ers and mer­chants reck­oned with the lon­gi­tude prob­lem. It was rel­a­tive­ly easy to fig­ure out a ship’s loca­tion on a north-south axis, but near­ly impos­si­ble to deter­mine how far east or west it was. And the stakes were high. Sail too far astray and your ship (and men) could end up so far afield that get­ting home before the food and water ran out might be impos­si­ble. The sail­ing world need­ed bet­ter tools to deter­mine loca­tion at sea.

In 1714 the British gov­ern­ment estab­lished the Board of Lon­gi­tude, offer­ing a cash prize to any­one who could fig­ure out how to detect how far east or west a ship was at sea. The Board was abol­ished in 1828, but only after fos­ter­ing inno­v­a­tive tech­niques that would for­ev­er change the nature of marine nav­i­ga­tion.

Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty and the Nation­al Mar­itime Muse­um at Green­wich recent­ly released an archive mak­ing all of the let­ters, objects, and doc­u­ments relat­ed to the Board’s work avail­able, along with a spiffy set of videos that brings the Board’s his­to­ry and achieve­ments to life.

Dur­ing the Board’s tenure, clock­mak­er John Har­ri­son fig­ured out that sailors could find out their loca­tion if they knew local time at sea and com­pared that to the time at a com­mon ref­er­ence point. The moon was seen as a giant clock, and its posi­tion rel­a­tive to stars was record­ed in the Nau­ti­cal Almanac, giv­ing sailors the data to com­pare against the time at sea. One of the inno­va­tions vet­ted by the Board of Lon­gi­tude is John Harrison’s Sea Clock. Also dur­ing that time, Green­wich became the prime merid­i­an.

All of this work led to more accu­rate maps. The Board spon­sored jour­neys, includ­ing some aboard Cap­tain Cook’s ships with portable obser­va­to­ries for map­mak­ers to sketch and use tri­an­gu­la­tion to deter­mine accu­rate loca­tion on voy­ages, includ­ing one to the North­west­ern Unit­ed States.

You can start rum­mag­ing through the fas­ci­nat­ing archive here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Caught Map­ping: A Cin­e­mat­ic Ride Through the Nit­ty Grit­ty World of Vin­tage Car­tog­ra­phy

Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map

Cut­ting-Edge Tech­nol­o­gy Recon­structs the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg 150 Years Lat­er

Kate Rix writes about edu­ca­tion and dig­i­tal media. Fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix or vis­it her on the web at .

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Spike Lee Shares His NYU Teaching List of 87 Essential Films Every Aspiring Director Should See

in Education, Film | July 29th, 2013

I’m sure you’ve heard by now: wealthy, suc­cess­ful film direc­tor Spike Lee hopes to fund his next film via a Kick­starter cam­paign. Yes, that’s right, he wants you to pay for his art. His cam­paign, per­haps need­less to say, is hard­ly pop­u­lar with the aver­age film fan, many of whom find it hard enough to scrounge up the sky­rock­et­ing prices of tick­ets these days. Lee has respond­ed to his crit­ics, but some­how I doubt his rea­son­ing will go over well.

But we’re not here to talk about alleged crowd­fund­ing abus­es (have at it in the com­ments if you must). Instead, today we have for you—in the tra­di­tion of our many posts on famous teach­ers’ syl­labi—one of Lee’s teach­ing tools in his role as an NYU pro­fes­sor. Where all of our pre­vi­ous posts have fea­tured read­ing lists, Lee’s is a list of films, which he hands out to all of the stu­dents who take his grad­u­ate class–not required view­ing, but rec­om­mend­ed as “essen­tial” for every aspir­ing direc­tor.

lee essential.jpg.CROP.article568-large

In the video at the top of the post, see Lee intro­duce the list of what he con­sid­ers, “the great­est films ever made.” “If you want to be a film­mak­er,” he says, “you should see these films.” The list, above and con­tin­ued below, includes some of the usu­al crit­i­cal favorites—Rashomon, Ver­ti­go, On the Water­front—and some pret­ty left field choic­es, like Mel Gibson’s Apoc­a­lyp­to.

Slate, which first pub­lished the list, notes the omis­sion of usu­al­ly revered direc­tors like Howard Hawks, John Ford, Fritz Lang, and Yasu­jirō Ozu as well as the paucity—or near non-existence—of female direc­tors (only one makes the list, the co-direc­tor of City of God). In addi­tion to pos­si­bly rant­i­ng about, or defend­ing, Lee’s use of Kick­starter, many of you may find your­selves quib­bling over, or defend­ing, his def­i­n­i­tion of “essen­tial.” And so, I say again, have at it, read­ers!

Note: When Spike orig­i­nal­ly released this list, many not­ed the lack of female film­mak­ers. Lee accept­ed that cri­tique and released an updat­ed list. Find it here.

lee essential 2.jpg.CROP.article568-large

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Spike Lee Got His First Big Break: From She’s Got­ta Have It to That Icon­ic Air Jor­dan Ad

David Fos­ter Wallace’s 1994 Syl­labus: How to Teach Seri­ous Lit­er­a­ture with Light­weight Books

W.H. Auden’s 1941 Lit­er­a­ture Syl­labus Asks Stu­dents to Read 32 Great Works, Cov­er­ing 6000 Pages

Allen Ginsberg’s “Celes­tial Home­work”: A Read­ing List for His Class “Lit­er­ary His­to­ry of the Beats”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Henry Rollins: Education is the Cure to “Disaster Capitalism”

in Current Affairs, Education, Politics | July 23rd, 2013

We’ve already fea­tured for­mer Black Flag front­man and cur­rent spo­ken-word artist Hen­ry Rollins explain­ing why, to his mind, only edu­ca­tion can restore democ­ra­cy. He also believes it can cure some­thing he calls “dis­as­ter cap­i­tal­ism,” and you can hear more from him about it in the Big Think video above. He address­es, in his char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly straight­for­ward man­ner, the ques­tions of what exact­ly ails the Amer­i­can econ­o­my, how that ail­ment might have come about, and how the coun­try can edu­cate itself back to health. We may indi­vid­u­al­ly get our edu­ca­tions now, he grants, but “how long will it be until Amer­i­ca fis­cal­ly turns itself around” to the point of repay­ing “the risk of the invest­ment on that stu­dent loan to get a per­son through four years of col­lege? Will that per­son get a job where pay­ing off that loan and get­ting a house and afford­ing a fam­i­ly, will that be a pos­si­bil­i­ty? In the present Amer­i­ca, it doesn’t look like it is.”

See­ing a dire nation­al sit­u­a­tion, Rollins rec­om­mends doing like Chi­na, but not in the way you might assume. He sug­gests look­ing “500 years at a time,” much far­ther up the road than we have of late. “I’d be look­ing up the road so far my eyes would fall out of my head.” He wants the coun­try to become “like Europe, where they’ll edu­cate your kid until his head explodes,” pro­duc­ing “three doc­tors per floor of every apart­ment build­ing” and doing so by mak­ing “col­lege tuition either free or real­ly low.” Gen­er­al­ly thought of as lib­er­al, Rollins sums this up in a way that might appeal to his ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­nents: “If you have a coun­try full of whip-crack smart peo­ple, you have a coun­try the rest of the world will fear. They will not invade a coun­try of edu­cat­ed peo­ple because we are so smart we’ll build a laser that will burn you, the ene­my, in your sleep before you can even mobi­lize your air force to kill us. We will kill you so fast because we are so smart and we will have for­eign pol­i­cy that will not piss you off to the point to where you have to attack us.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hen­ry Rollins Pitch­es Edu­ca­tion as the Key to Restor­ing Democ­ra­cy

Hen­ry Rollins Tells Young Peo­ple to Avoid Resent­ment and to Pur­sue Suc­cess with a “Monas­tic Obses­sion”

Hen­ry Rollins Remem­bers the Life-Chang­ing Deci­sion That Brought Him From Häa­gen-Dazs to Black Flag

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Can Science Fiction Save the Liberal Arts? (Asks The New Republic)

in Education, Literature | July 12th, 2013

Both the lit­er­ary and sci­ence fic­tion worlds have come out in the past few weeks with poignant trib­utes and acco­lades for recent­ly deceased Scot­tish writer Iain Banks. The remem­brances from both quar­ters are very well deserved, and very rare. Banks was an unusu­al kind of artist; he main­tained a high­ly respect­ed pres­ence as both a writer of real­ist lit­er­ary fic­tion (as Iain Banks) and superbly well-craft­ed, high­ly imag­i­na­tive sci­ence fic­tion (as Iain M. Banks). In the brief video inter­view above, you can hear Banks recount the ori­gin of the two names and make an impas­sioned case for sci­ence fic­tion as “the most impor­tant genre” of fic­tion.

Banks’ accom­plish­ments are all the more extra­or­di­nary giv­en that so-called lit­er­ary fic­tion and so-called genre writing—sci-fi, hor­ror, romance, etc.—have for so long occu­pied entire­ly dif­fer­ent cul­tur­al spheres, worlds, to use the words of Thomas Pyn­chon, as dif­fer­ent as “the hot­house and the street.” There were the obvi­ous exceptions—the work of Franz Kaf­ka, Drac­u­la and Franken­stein, 1984, Fahren­heit 451—that slipped through the gates, grand­fa­thered in as lega­cy cas­es or exem­plars of “Spec­u­la­tive Fic­tion,” the respectable term for genre writ­ing deemed “seri­ous” by aca­d­e­mics and the literati. Lit­er­ary schol­ar Fred­er­ic Jame­son has long been a fan of sci-fi. Crit­i­cal the­o­rist Felix Guatari once wrote a sci­ence fic­tion film script. Again, more excep­tions.

All of this has changed. After the suc­cess of pop­u­lar cul­ture stud­ies pro­grams in the free­wheel­ing post­mod­ern 90s, even the most tra­di­tion­al depart­ments have begun turn­ing toward genre fiction—the cur­rent pop­u­lar obses­sion with vam­pires and zom­bies, for example—as a means of re-invig­o­rat­ing the lib­er­al arts and reclaim­ing rel­e­vance. (I myself once helped an aca­d­e­m­ic press acquire and pub­lish a fun col­lec­tion called Bet­ter Off Dead: The Evo­lu­tion of the Zom­bie as Post-Human.)

FedFundingCharts

Is this a cyn­i­cal piece of strat­e­gy to mar­ket strug­gling human­i­ties pro­grams to increas­ing­ly busi­ness- and sci­ence-mind­ed stu­dents? A gen­er­a­tional turnover in the pro­fes­so­rate? An attempt to expand the mar­ket share of the human­i­ties in the over­all pic­ture of uni­ver­si­ty fund­ing? In a recent arti­cle in the New Repub­lic, sci­ence edi­tor Judith Shule­vitz argues, like Banks, that sci-fi is a genre of fic­tion that the acad­e­my should take more and more seri­ous­ly on prac­ti­cal grounds—sci-fi writ­ers show us the future of tech­nol­o­gy more accu­rate­ly than any tech­nol­o­gist. Shulavitz also writes that doing so will raise the pro­file, and fund­ing, of human­i­ties pro­grams.

As you can see from the charts above, the arts and sci­ences have reached a dire fund­ing asym­me­try. Shule­vitz quotes Vladimir Nabokov, who wrote, “There is no sci­ence with­out fan­cy and no art with­out fact” as part of her case for the impor­tance of lit­er­a­ture to the “prac­ti­cal arts” and vice-ver­sa. I don’t know if I’m entire­ly con­vinced, but Shulevitz’s argu­ment is wor­thy of con­sid­er­a­tion, unless you believe, with Oscar Wilde, that “all art is quite use­less” and in no need of an apolo­get­ics or a defense to bureau­crats.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Sci­ence Fic­tion Clas­sics Avail­able on the Web (Updat­ed)

Andy Sam­berg Announces Death of Lib­er­al Arts, Cool­ness of Sci­ence Majors at Har­vard Class Day

Ser­i­al Entre­pre­neur Damon Horowitz Says “Quit Your Tech Job and Get a Ph.D. in the Human­i­ties”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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See Stevie Wonder Play “Superstition” and Banter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

in Education, K-12, Music, Television | June 19th, 2013

In 1969, Sesame Street debuted and intro­duced America’s children—growing up in the midst of intense dis­putes over integration—to its urban sen­si­bil­i­ties and mul­ti­cul­tur­al cast, all dri­ven by the lat­est in child­hood devel­op­ment research and Jim Hen­son wiz­ardry. Despite the racial­ly frac­tious times of its ori­gin, the show was a suc­cess (although the state of Mis­sis­sip­pi briefly banned it in 1970), and its list of celebri­ty guests from every con­ceiv­able domain reflect­ed the diver­si­ty of its cast and hip­ness of its tone. With cer­tain excep­tions (par­tic­u­lar­ly in lat­er per­mu­ta­tions), it’s always been a show that knew how to gauge the tenor of the times and appeal broad­ly to both chil­dren and their weary, cap­tive guardians.

Being one of those weary cap­tives, I can’t say enough how grate­ful I’ve been when a rec­og­niz­able face inter­rupts Elmo’s bab­bling to sing a song or do a lit­tle com­e­dy bit, wink­ing at the par­ents all the while. These moments are few­er and far­ther between in the lat­er ages of the show, but in the sev­en­ties, Sesame Street had musi­cal rou­tines wor­thy of Sat­ur­day Night Live. Take, for exam­ple, the 1973 appear­ance of Ste­vie Won­der on the show. While I was born too late to catch this when it aired, there’s no doubt that the child me would find Won­der and his band as funky as the grown-up par­ent does. Check them out above doing “Super­sti­tion.”

Like most musi­cal artists who vis­it the show, Ste­vie also cooked some­thing espe­cial­ly for the kids. In the clip above, watch him do a lit­tle num­ber called “123 Sesame Street.” Won­der breaks out the talk box, a favorite gad­get of his (he turned Framp­ton on to it). The band gets so into it, you’d think this was a cut off their lat­est album, and the kids (the show nev­er used child actors) rock out like only sev­en­ties kids can. The show’s orig­i­nal theme song had its charm, but why the pro­duc­ers didn’t imme­di­ate­ly change it to this is beyond me. I’d pay vin­tage vinyl prices to get it on record.

Final­ly, in our last clip from Stevie’s won­der­ful guest spot, he takes a break from full-on funk and roll to give Grover a lit­tle scat les­son and show off his pipes. The great Frank Oz as the voice of Grover is, as always, a per­fect com­ic foil.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip Glass Com­pos­es for Sesame Street (1979)

Mon­ster­piece The­ater Presents Wait­ing for Elmo, Calls BS on Samuel Beck­ett

Jim Hen­son Pilots The Mup­pet Show with Adult Episode, “Sex and Vio­lence” (1975)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Real Women Talk About Their Careers in Science

in Biology, Education, Science | June 14th, 2013

A year ago the Euro­pean Union launched a cam­paign to attract more young women into the sci­en­tif­ic pro­fes­sions. In Europe, women lag behind men in sci­ence and engi­neer­ing, mak­ing up only a third of sci­ence researchers. But the video the EU made was laugh­able.

You may recall. It was called, Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing! and fea­tured three young fash­ion­istas parad­ing around in high heels while a male sci­en­tist peers quizzi­cal­ly at them over his micro­scope.

Along comes sci­ence jour­nal­ist Ker­stin Hop­pen­haus to set the record straight. Hoppenhaus’s new series for the Ger­man sci­ence site SciLogs is called Sig­nif­i­cant Details: Con­ver­sa­tions with Women in Sci­ence. The inter­views are fresh, infor­ma­tive, and acces­si­ble.

It’s inspir­ing to see such a range of women explain their research and walk us through their process for doing it.

A recent inter­view fea­tured Dr. Kris­ten Pan­fil­io (above), an Amer­i­can biol­o­gist on fac­ul­ty at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne. Panfilio’s work focus­es on insect extraem­bry­on­ic devel­op­ment, which means she stud­ies how insect tis­sues devel­op into the bug’s ulti­mate shape by com­par­ing the process in two insects: the milk­weed bug and the red flour bee­tle.

Each con­ver­sa­tion begins with a “sig­nif­i­cant detail” of the woman’s work. With the wry humor and pre­ci­sion of a true sci­en­tist, Pan­fil­io demon­strates how she pre­pares her favorite tool, a glass stick, by soft­en­ing the end with a cig­a­rette lighter.

Panfilio’s spe­cif­ic field is evo­lu­tion­ary devel­op­men­tal genet­ics. Along with her lab assis­tants she stud­ies how embry­on­ic cells know what role they should play in form­ing a spe­cif­ic organ­ism shape. How does a bone cell know it’s a bone cell?

The inter­view is about as much like Sci­ence: It’s a Girl Thing! as Meryl Streep is like Lind­say Lohan. This is a real per­son talk­ing about how she has built her career (she want­ed to be an artist when she was a teenag­er and stud­ied ancient Chi­nese his­to­ry at a small lib­er­al arts col­lege) and explain­ing her high­ly spe­cial­ized work.

She also touch­es on one of the most won­der­ful things about sci­en­tif­ic research: Some of the most excit­ing moments are when the results don’t align at all with expec­ta­tions.

Best of all, it’s just one of the won­der­ful inter­views in Hoppenhaus’s series.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

MAKERS Tells the Sto­ry of 50 Years of Progress for Women in the U.S.

No Women Need Apply: A Dis­heart­en­ing 1938 Rejec­tion Let­ter from Dis­ney Ani­ma­tion

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Fol­low her on Twit­ter @mskaterix and vis­it her web­site to learn more.

 

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David Byrne’s Graduation Speech Offers Troubling and Encouraging Advice for Students in the Arts

in Art, Education, Graduation Speech, Music | June 10th, 2013


How could David Byrne nev­er have giv­en a com­mence­ment address before? As an expe­ri­enced pub­lic speak­er, a well-known cre­ator who has carved out his own cul­tur­al niche, an advo­cate of things (such as cycling) beloved among world-chang­ing young peo­ple, the founder of a band with a sur­pris­ing mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional appeal, and a man with no small com­mand of Pow­er­point, he’d seem to make an appeal­ing choice indeed. His first com­mence­ment address ever came this year at the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty School of the Arts, and, view­able from 1:17:00 in the video above, it has cer­tain­ly made an impact in the inter­net. The mes­sage some grads and fans have tak­en away? “If you chose a career in the arts,” as the New York­er’s Rachel Arons puts it, “you are, basi­cal­ly, screwed.”

“A pie chart, based on 2011 data, showed that only three per cent of film and the­atre grads, and five per cent of writ­ing and visu­al-arts grads, end up work­ing in their areas of con­cen­tra­tion,” she writes of the visu­al aids deliv­er­ing Byrne’s grim ini­tial mes­sage. “A sub­se­quent bar graph showed that, accord­ing to those stats, four­teen writ­ing and four­teen Colum­bia visu­al-arts grad­u­ates will go on to careers in their fields, and eight the­atre and eight film grads will go on to careers in theirs.” But first­hand reports from the cer­e­mo­ny don’t describe a too ter­ri­bly shak­en Colum­bia grad­u­at­ing class, and even Byrne took pains to empha­size, or at least emphat­i­cal­ly imply, that tru­ly worth­while careers — such as, I would say, his own — lay out­side, or in between, or at the inter­sec­tion of, defin­able fields. And why would you want to work in the same field you stud­ied, any­way? To para­phrase some­thing Byrne’s friend and col­lab­o­ra­tor Bri­an Eno said about tech­nol­o­gy, once a whole major has built up around a pur­suit, it’s prob­a­bly not the most inter­est­ing thing to be doing any­more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

David Byrne Gives Us the Low­down on How Music Works (with Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin)

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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