British Doctors To Prescribe Arts & Culture to Patients: “The Arts Are Essential to our Health and Wellbeing”

in Art, Health, Life | November 12th, 2018

Pho­to by Adam Jones, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

The arts and human­i­ties are after­thoughts in many Amer­i­can schools, rarely giv­en pri­or­i­ty as part of a com­pre­hen­sive edu­ca­tion, though they formed the basis of one for thou­sands of years else­where. One might say some­thing sim­i­lar of pre­ven­ta­tive med­i­cine in the U.S. health­care sys­tem. It’s tempt­ing to ide­al­ize the pri­or­i­ties of oth­er wealthy coun­tries. The Japan­ese invest­ment in “for­est bathing,” for exam­ple, comes to mind, or Finnish pub­lic schools and France’s fund­ing of an Alzheimer’s vil­lage.

But every­place has its prob­lems, and no coun­try is an island, exempt from the glob­al pres­sures of cap­i­tal or hos­tile inter­fer­ence.

But if we con­sid­er such things as art, music, and dance as essential—not only to an edu­ca­tion, but to our gen­er­al well-being—we must com­mend the UK’s Health Sec­re­tary, Matt Han­cock, for his “social pre­scrib­ing” ini­tia­tive.

Han­cock wants “the country’s doc­tors to pre­scribe ther­a­peu­tic art- or hob­by-based treat­ments for ail­ments rang­ing from demen­tia to psy­chosis, lung con­di­tions and men­tal health issues,” reports Meilan Sol­ly at Smith­son­ian. The plan “could find patients enrolled in dance class­es and singing lessons, or per­haps enjoy­ing a per­son­al­ized music playlist.”

In a speech Han­cock deliv­ered on what hap­pened to be elec­tion day in the U.S., he referred to a quote from Con­fu­cius that rep­re­sents one par­tic­u­lar­ly ancient edu­ca­tion­al tra­di­tion: “Music pro­duces a kind of plea­sure, which human nature can­not do with­out.” (He also quotes the Rolling Stones’ “Sat­is­fac­tion.”) Hancock’s idea goes beyond aris­to­crat­ic tra­di­tions of old, pro­claim­ing a diet of the arts for every­one.

They’re not just a right in their own terms as the search for truth and expres­sion of the human con­di­tion. We shouldn’t only val­ue them for the role they play in bring­ing mean­ing and dig­ni­ty to our lives. We should val­ue the arts and social activ­i­ties because they’re essen­tial to our health and well­be­ing. And that’s not me as a for­mer Cul­ture Sec­re­tary say­ing it. It’s sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly proven. Access to the arts and social activ­i­ties improves people’s men­tal and phys­i­cal health.

We’ve like­ly all come across research on the tremen­dous health ben­e­fits of what Warnock calls “social activ­i­ties,” main­tain­ing friend­ships and get­ting out and about. But what does the research into art and health say? “The med­ical ben­e­fits of engag­ing with the arts are well-record­ed,” Sol­ly writes, cit­ing stud­ies of stroke sur­vivors mak­ing great strides after per­form­ing with the Roy­al Phil­har­mon­ic; dance lessons improv­ing clar­i­ty and con­cen­tra­tion among those with ear­ly psy­chosis; and those with lung con­di­tions improv­ing with singing lessons. Addi­tion­al­ly, many stud­ies have shown the emo­tion­al lift muse­um vis­its and oth­er cul­tur­al activ­i­ties of a social nature can give.

Sim­i­lar tri­als have tak­en place in Cana­da, but the UK project is “simul­ta­ne­ous­ly more com­pre­hen­sive and less fleshed-out,” aim­ing to encour­age every­thing from cook­ing class­es, play­ing bin­go, and gar­den­ing to “more cul­tur­al­ly focused ven­tures.” The pro­pos­al does not, how­ev­er, ful­ly address fund­ing or acces­si­bil­i­ty issues for the most at-risk patients. Hancock’s rhetoric also per­haps heed­less­ly pits “more pre­ven­tion and per­spi­ra­tion” against “pop­ping pills and Prozac,” a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion that seems to triv­i­al­ize drug ther­a­pies and cre­ate a false bina­ry where the two approach­es can work well hand-in-hand.

Nonethe­less, a shift away from “over-med­ical­is­ing” and toward pre­ven­ta­tive and holis­tic approach­es has the poten­tial to address not only chron­ic symp­toms of dis­ease, but the non-med­ical causes—including stress, iso­la­tion, and sadness—that con­tribute to and wors­en ill­ness. The plan may require a rig­or­ous­ly indi­vid­u­al­ized imple­men­ta­tion by physi­cians and it will “start at a dis­ad­van­tage,” with 4% cuts per year to the NHS bud­get until 2021, as Roy­al Col­lege of Nurs­ing pub­lic health expert Helen Dono­van points out.

Those chal­lenges aside, giv­en all we know about the impor­tance of emo­tion­al well-being to phys­i­cal health, it’s hard to argue with Hancock’s premise. “Access to the arts improves people’s men­tal and phys­i­cal health,” he tweet­ed dur­ing his Novem­ber 6th roll-out of the ini­tia­tive. “It makes us hap­pi­er and health­i­er.” Art is not a lux­u­ry, but a nec­es­sary ingre­di­ent in human flour­ish­ing, and yet “the arts do not tend to be thought of in med­ical terms,” writes pro­fes­sor of health human­i­ties Paul Craw­ford, though they con­sti­tute a “shad­ow health ser­vice,” bring­ing us a kind of hap­pi­ness, I’d argue with Con­fu­cius, that we sim­ply can­not find any­where else.

via The Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

How Fin­land Cre­at­ed One of the Best Edu­ca­tion­al Sys­tems in the World (by Doing the Oppo­site of U.S.)

The French Vil­lage Designed to Pro­mote the Well-Being of Alzheimer’s Patients: A Visu­al Intro­duc­tion to the Pio­neer­ing Exper­i­ment

Med­i­ta­tion is Replac­ing Deten­tion in Baltimore’s Pub­lic Schools, and the Stu­dents Are Thriv­ing

On the Pow­er of Teach­ing Phi­los­o­phy in Pris­ons

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

A Database of Paper Airplane Designs: Hours of Fun for Kids & Adults Alike

in Design | November 8th, 2018

Though we can trace the his­to­ry of paper air­craft back 2000 years to the Chi­nese and their kites, and into the 19th cen­tu­ry with the French and their imag­i­nary air­ships, the ori­gin of the mod­ern paper air­plane is shroud­ed in mys­tery. A San Diego Read­er arti­cle placed the birth some­where in 1910. By 1915, most Amer­i­can kids were already tor­ment­ing teach­ers. And Jack Northrup used paper mod­els to work on aero­dy­nam­ics at Lock­heed in the 1930s, but even that doesn’t do much to explain how such a ubiq­ui­tous object has con­tin­ued to be so hum­ble and ordi­nary while inspir­ing a recent upsurge of inter­est.

The data­base at Fold’n’Fly shows how much vari­ety there is beyond the basic “dart” style, and each air­plane comes with step-by-step fold­ing instruc­tions, a print­able pat­tern page, and a help­ful video.

You can choose by dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el, whether or not you will need scis­sors, or sort by dis­tance, acro­bat­ics, time aloft, or pure­ly dec­o­ra­tive.

One of the rea­sons for the renewed inter­est in paper air­planes is the use of CAD (com­put­er aid­ed design) in con­struct­ing pro­to­types, and that in itself is a response to the chal­lenge set by var­i­ous Guin­ness world records.

The cur­rent dis­tance record is 226 feet, 10 inch­es, set in March 2012 by a for­mer col­lege quar­ter­back Joe Ayoob. The plane was designed by tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er John Collins, who used Ayoob’s throw­ing arm strength to break the pre­vi­ous record hold­er by near­ly 20 feet.

The longest time a paper air­plane has been in the air is cur­rent­ly 27.6 sec­onds, set in 1998 by Ken Black­burn at the Geor­gia Dome. He was break­ing his own record for the third time.

Last­ly, the record for largest paper air­plane is 40 ft 10 inch­es, designed by stu­dents from the Tech­nol­o­gy Uni­ver­si­ty of Delft in 1995.

So, now you know what you’re up against. If you think you can do bet­ter, dive into this web­site and get fold­ing.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sci­ence of Beer: A New Free Online Course Promis­es to Enhance Your Appre­ci­a­tion of the Time­less Bev­er­age

NASA Puts 400+ His­toric Exper­i­men­tal Flight Videos on YouTube

NASA Releas­es a Mas­sive Online Archive: 140,000 Pho­tos, Videos & Audio Files Free to Search and Down­load

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

What Are the Most Influential Books Written by Scholars in the Last 20 Years?: Leading Academics Pick “The New Canon”

in Books | November 7th, 2018

It’s a fraught time to be an aca­d­e­m­ic. Bud­gets have been slashed, depart­ments dec­i­mat­ed, polit­i­cal bat­tles sen­sa­tion­al­ized by par­ti­san oppor­tunists, social media posts inten­si­fied into test cas­es for speech. Yet as cor­po­ratism and cul­ture wars have pushed their way into acad­e­mia in the past twen­ty plus years, more schol­ar­ship has seemed to make its way out into the main­stream, with books by aca­d­e­m­ic his­to­ri­ans like Eric Fon­er and Ibram X. Ken­di, lit­er­ary schol­ars like Stephen Green­blatt and bell hooks, soci­ol­o­gists like Robert Put­nam, sci­en­tists like Richard Dawkins, econ­o­mists like Thomas Piket­ty, legal schol­ars like Michelle Alexan­der, and so on, top­ping best­seller lists and win­ning Nation­al Book Awards.

Such books dis­till dif­fi­cult ideas with­out dumb­ing them down, in acces­si­ble and often urgent prose. Their pop­u­lar­i­ty speaks to how they address the press­ing issues of their times, and under­cuts the stereo­type of aca­d­e­mics as jar­gon-spew­ing, out-of-touch inhab­i­tants of ivory tow­ers. And they often have the pow­er to not only rad­i­cal­ly alter pub­lic dis­course, but to inspire mass move­ments and shift pub­lic pol­i­cy.

Most of the more than 15,000 aca­d­e­m­ic books pub­lished each year—by uni­ver­si­ty press­es or tiny independents—reach only “their core audi­ence of dis­ci­pli­nary spe­cial­ists.” A few res­onate out­side their fields yet still fail to find an audi­ence out­side high­er edu­ca­tion cir­cles (nor are they real­ly meant to).

But some books by schol­ars, like those by the authors named above, “enter the pub­lic con­scious­ness,” writes The Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion, and thus deserve to be described as “influ­en­tial” in a broad sense, “like On the Ori­gin of Species or Das Kap­i­tal or The Inter­pre­ta­tion of Dreams,” as Yale pro­fes­sor of psy­chol­o­gy Paul Bloom writes (while also point­ing out that none of these books’ authors were pro­fes­sion­al aca­d­e­mics). Under the ban­ner of form­ing a “New Canon,” the Chron­i­cle asked Bloom and a num­ber of oth­er scholars—including Deb­o­rah Tan­nen, pro­fes­sor of lin­guis­tics and author of sev­er­al best-sell­ing pop­u­lar books—to name what they believed were the most influ­en­tial schol­ar­ly books of the past 20 years.

Each respon­dent was asked “to select books—academic or not, but writ­ten by scholars—from with­in or out­side their own fields.” Each wrote a brief defense of their choice and, in some cas­es, of their cri­te­ria for “influ­ence.” You can read these blurbs at the Chron­i­cle’s site, and just below, see a full list of the picks. Some of the books, the Chron­i­cle con­cedes, fall “slight­ly out­side our time frame, but we includ­ed them any­way.”

Some of them are typ­i­cal­ly aca­d­e­m­ic works, like Mark Greif’s choice of Eve Kosof­sky Sedgwick’s Touch­ing Feel­ing, a book unlike­ly to inspire a Net­flix doc­u­men­tary. Oth­ers, like Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, an impe­tus for Ava DuVernay’s 13th, were writ­ten for the widest of read­er­ships. Do these dis­tinc­tions make books like Alexan­der more “influ­en­tial” than those like Sedgewick’s? It all depends, I sup­pose, on what we mean by the word—and by what, or whom, or how, or why, or how many we think need to be influ­enced.

The Bet­ter Angels of our Nature, by Steven Pinker

Bowl­ing Alone: The Col­lapse and Revival of Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty, by Robert Put­nam

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incar­cer­a­tion in the Age of Col­or­blind­ness, by Michelle Alexan­der

The His­to­ry Man­i­festo, by Jo Gul­di and David Armitage

Freaks of For­tune: The Emerg­ing World of Cap­i­tal­ism and Risk in Amer­i­ca, Jonathan Levy

What Art Is, by Arthur Dan­to

Homo Deus: A Brief His­to­ry of Tomor­row, by Yuval Noah Harari

Killing the Black Body: Race, Repro­duc­tion, and the Mean­ing of Lib­er­ty, by Dorothy Roberts

The Feel­ing of What Hap­pens: Body and Emo­tion in the Mak­ing of Con­scious­ness, by Anto­nio R. Dama­sio

Pay­ing for the Par­ty: How Col­lege Main­tains Inequal­i­ty, by Eliz­a­beth A. Arm­strong and Lau­ra T. Hamil­ton

A Brief His­to­ry of NeoLib­er­al­ism, by David Har­vey

Crit­i­cal Race The­o­ry: The Key Writ­ings That Formed The Move­ment, by Kim­ber­le Cren­shaw and Neil Gotan­da

The Rest­less Clock: A His­to­ry of the Cen­turies-Long Argu­ment over What Makes Liv­ing Things Tick, by Jes­si­ca Riskin

Touch­ing Feel­ing: Affect, Ped­a­gogy, Per­for­ma­tiv­i­ty, by Eve Kosof­sky Sedg­wick

Ella Bak­er and the Black Free­dom Move­ment: A Rad­i­cal Demo­c­ra­t­ic Vision, by Bar­bara Rans­by

Truth and Truth­ful­ness: An Essay in Geneal­o­gy, by Bernard Williams

War Pow­ers: How the Impe­r­i­al Pres­i­den­cy Hijacked the Con­sti­tu­tion, by Peter Irons

Age of Frac­ture, by Daniel T. Rodgers

Shapeshifters: Black Girls and the Chore­og­ra­phy of Cit­i­zen­ship, by Daniel T. Rodgers

The Arg­onauts, by Mag­gie Nel­son

Read about all of the books at the Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 20 Most Influ­en­tial Aca­d­e­m­ic Books of All Time: No Spoil­ers

29 Lists of Rec­om­mend­ed Books Cre­at­ed by Well-Known Authors, Artists & Thinkers: Jorge Luis Borges, Pat­ti Smith, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, David Bowie & More

74 Essen­tial Books for Your Per­son­al Library: A List Curat­ed by Female Cre­atives

Umber­to Eco Explains Why We Make Lists

The Big Lebowski at 20: Jeff Bridges, John Goodman & Steve Buscemi Reunite to Discuss the Coen Brothers’ Beloved Film

in Film | October 22nd, 2018

The Big Lebows­ki came out 20 years ago. State­ments of that kind are often pre­ced­ed by the ques­tion of whether you want to feel old, but this one would­n’t have quite the same effect: on some lev­el, The Big Lebows­ki feels as old as, or maybe even old­er than, cin­e­ma itself. In their half-hour con­ver­sa­tion look­ing back at the film and its lega­cy, NBC’s Har­ry Smith asks actors John Good­man, Steve Busce­mi, and Jeff Bridges, bet­ter known to the movie’s legions of fans as Wal­ter Sobchak, Don­ny Ker­abat­sos, and of course Jeff Lebows­ki — also known as His Dude­ness, Dud­er, El Dud­eri­no if you’re not into the whole brevi­ty thing, but above all as the Dude — whether it felt like 20 years have passed. More than one of them come right back with just the right response: “It does and does­n’t.”

The con­ver­sa­tion touch­es on such sub­jects as what they first thought of the script (“Right on the page, it felt like it was impro­vi­sa­tion,” says Bridges), the spir­i­tu­al impli­ca­tions of the sto­ry and char­ac­ters (Bridges tells of the encounter with a Bud­dhist teacher that led to the book The Dude and the Zen Mas­ter in 2013), how many “F‑bombs” the final prod­uct end­ed up con­tain­ing (275), and what usu­al­ly hap­pens in the still extreme­ly com­mon event of an encounter with a Lebows­ki fan on the street.

All three actors evince great plea­sure at the oppor­tu­ni­ty to remem­ber work­ing with Joel and Ethan Coen on what would become the direct­ing broth­ers’ most beloved film, one that has inspired its own fes­ti­val, its own reli­gion, and much more besides. But as many of the movie’s cur­rent enthu­si­asts (per­haps due to their youth, per­haps due to their indul­gence in mem­o­ry-cloud­ing sub­stances) won’t remem­ber, The Big Lebows­ki did­n’t become a phe­nom­e­non right away.

“So you make a movie like this, you love the script, you love work­ing togeth­er,” as Smith puts it, “and then nobody goes to see it.” Indeed, the moviego­ing pub­lic of 1998 did­n’t quite know what to make of the fact that, as a fol­low-up to the Acad­e­my Award-win­ning Far­go, the Coen broth­ers served up what Good­man describes as “Philip Mar­lowe meets The Trip.” As Busce­mi remem­bers, “it took like five or six years before peo­ple start­ed com­ing up to me and say­ing that they loved it.” Then came the col­lege kids, who would tell him not just that they loved it, but that they’d seen it eight, nine, ten times. The first time peo­ple saw The Big Lebows­ki they came out in bewil­der­ment ask­ing what it means, but “what the movie does so bril­liant­ly is, once you know what it is, then you real­ly enjoy, like, every moment of it.”

Among the few view­ers attuned enough to its fre­quen­cy to enjoy it right away was Roger Ebert: “Some may com­plain The Big Lebows­ki rush­es in all direc­tions and nev­er ends up any­where,” he wrote in his ini­tial review. “That isn’t the film’s flaw, but its style.” But even his appre­ci­a­tion grew over time, and in 2010 he anoint­ed it one of his offi­cial Great Movies, describ­ing it as involv­ing “kid­nap­ping, ran­som mon­ey, a porno king, a reclu­sive mil­lion­aire, a run­away girl, the Mal­ibu police, a woman who paints while nude and strapped to an over­head har­ness, and the last act of the dis­agree­ment between Viet­nam vet­er­ans and Flower Pow­er,” all held togeth­er by “a plot and dia­logue that per­haps only the Coen broth­ers could have devised.” Hence Bridges’ wor­ries about get­ting the music of the script down cold before shoot­ing: “Did I get the ‘man’ in the right place? Did I add anoth­er F‑bomb?”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Is The Big Lebows­ki a Great Noir Film? A New Way to Look at the Coen Broth­ers’ Icon­ic Movie

What Makes a Coen Broth­ers Movie a Coen Broth­ers Movie? Find Out in a 4‑Hour Video Essay of Bar­ton Fink, The Big Lebows­ki, Far­go, No Coun­try for Old Men & More

The Big Lebows­ki Reimag­ined as a Clas­sic 8‑Bit Video Game

Tui­leries: The Coen Broth­ers’ Short Film About Steve Buscemi’s Very Bad Day in the Paris Metro

The City in Cin­e­ma Mini-Doc­u­men­taries Reveal the Los Ange­les of Blade Run­ner, Her, Dri­ve, Repo Man, and More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Twerking, Moonwalking AI Robots–They’re Now Here

in Dance, Technology | October 18th, 2018

In a study released last year, Kat­ja Grace at Oxford’s Future of Human­i­ty Insti­tute “sur­veyed the world’s lead­ing researchers in arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence by ask­ing them when they think intel­li­gent machines will bet­ter humans in a wide range of tasks.” After inter­view­ing 1,634 experts, they found that they “believe there is a 50% chance of AI out­per­form­ing humans in all tasks in 45 years and of automat­ing all human jobs in 120 years.” That includes every­thing from dri­ving trucks, run­ning cash reg­is­ters, to per­form­ing surgery, and writ­ing New York Times best­sellers. These sober­ing pre­dic­tions have prompt­ed aca­d­e­mics, like North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dent Joseph Aoun, to write books along the lines of Robot-Proof: High­er Edu­ca­tion in the Age of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence which asks the ques­tion, How can uni­ver­si­ties “edu­cate the next gen­er­a­tion of col­lege stu­dents to invent, to cre­ate, and to discover—filling needs that even the most sophis­ti­cat­ed robot can­not”? It’s a good ques­tion. But a chal­leng­ing one too. Because it assumes we under­stand what robots can, and can­not, do. Case in point, Boston Dynam­ics released a video this week of its Spot­Mi­ni robot danc­ing to Bruno Mars’s “Uptown Funk.” It can moon­walk. It can twerk. Did the dance depart­ments see that com­ing? Doubt it.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Robots of Your Dystopi­an Future Are Already Here: Two Chill­ing Videos Dri­ve It All Home

Experts Pre­dict When Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Will Take Our Jobs: From Writ­ing Essays, Books & Songs, to Per­form­ing Surgery and Dri­ving Trucks

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: A Free Online Course from MIT

Philosophers Name the Best Philosophy Books: From Stoicism and Existentialism, to Metaphysics & Ethics for Artificial Intelligence

in Philosophy | October 17th, 2018

As an Eng­lish major under­grad in the 90s, I had a keen side inter­est in read­ing phi­los­o­phy of all kinds. But I had lit­tle sense of what I should be read­ing. I browsed the library shelves, pick­ing out what caught my atten­tion. Not a bad way to make unusu­al dis­cov­er­ies, but if you want to get a focused, not to men­tion cur­rent, view of a par­tic­u­lar field, you need to have a knowl­edge­able guide.

Back in those days, the inter­net was, as they say, in its infan­cy. How much bet­ter I would have fared if some­thing like Five Books had exist­ed! The site’s gen­er­al idea, as it trum­pets on its home­page, is to rec­om­mend “the best books on every­thing.” Argue amongst your­selves about whether any one resource can deliv­er on that promise, but let’s keep our focus on the excel­lent space of their Phi­los­o­phy sec­tion, curat­ed by free­lance philoso­pher-at-large Nigel War­bur­ton.

You may know Dr. War­bur­ton from his many for­ays in pub­lic phi­los­o­phy. Whether it’s the Phi­los­o­phy Bites pod­cast, or its spin-offs Free Speech Bites and Ethics Bites, or his work on the BBC’s ani­mat­ed his­to­ry of ideas series, or any one of his books, he has a rare knack for bring­ing the obscure and often dif­fi­cult con­cepts of aca­d­e­m­ic phi­los­o­phy to light with both con­ver­sa­tion­al good humor and intel­lec­tu­al rig­or. Most of that work takes place in dia­logue, the orig­i­nal form of clas­si­cal phi­los­o­phy.

The Five Books forum is no excep­tion. In the lat­est post, War­bur­ton inter­views Uni­ver­si­ty of Sheffield’s Kei­th Frank­ish on the five best books on Phi­los­o­phy of Mind. What is “Phi­los­o­phy of Mind”? Read Frankish’s answer to that ques­tion here. What are his five picks? See below:

1. A Mate­ri­al­ist The­o­ry of the Mind, by D.M. Arm­strong
2. Con­scious­ness Explained, by Daniel C. Den­nett
3. Vari­eties of Mean­ing: The 2002 Jean Nicod Lec­tures, by Ruth Gar­rett Milikan
4. The Archi­tec­ture of the Mind, by Peter Car­ruthers
5. Super­siz­ing the Mind: Embod­i­ment, Action, and Cog­ni­tive Exten­sion, by Andy Clark

What about the best books on Ethics for Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence? It’s a far more press­ing ques­tion than it was when Arthur C. Clarke pub­lished 2001: A Space Odyssey, which hap­pens to be one of the books on Oxford aca­d­e­m­ic Paula Boddington’s list. In his inter­view with Bod­ding­ton, War­bur­ton asks for, and receives, a clar­i­fi­ca­tion of the phrase “ethics for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence.” In her choice of books, Bod­ding­ton rec­om­mends those below. You may not find some of them shelved in phi­los­o­phy sec­tions, but when it comes to our sci-fi present, it seems, we may need to expand our cat­e­gories of thought.

1. Hearti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Embrac­ing Our Human­i­ty to Max­i­mize Machines, by John Havens
2. The Tech­no­log­i­cal Sin­gu­lar­i­ty, by Mur­ray Shana­han
3. Weapons of Math Destruc­tion: How Big Data Increas­es Inequal­i­ty and Threat­ens Democ­ra­cy, by Cathy O’Neil
4. Moral Machines: Teach­ing Robots Right from Wrong, by Wen­dell Wal­lach and Col­in Allen
5. 2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke

There are dozens more enlight­en­ing inter­views and lists of five best books—on Niet­zsche, Marx, and Hegel, on Exis­ten­tial­ism, Sto­icism, Con­scious­ness, Chi­nese Phi­los­o­phy…. Too many to direct­ly quote here. There are lists from War­bur­ton him­self, on the best phi­los­o­phy books from 2017, and best intro­duc­tions to phi­los­o­phy. The whole expe­ri­ence is a lit­tle like vis­it­ing, vir­tu­al­ly, a cou­ple dozen or so high­ly-regard­ed philoso­phers in every field, lis­ten­ing in on an infor­ma­tive chat, and get­ting a book­list from every one. You’ve still got to find and buy the books your­self (and read and talk about them), but this kind of guid­ance from liv­ing philoso­phers cur­rent­ly work­ing in the field has nev­er before been so wide­ly and freely avail­able out­side of acad­e­mia.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

170+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Emi­nent Philoso­phers Name the 43 Most Impor­tant Phi­los­o­phy Books Writ­ten Between 1950–2000: Wittgen­stein, Fou­cault, Rawls & More

28 Impor­tant Philoso­phers List the Books That Influ­enced Them Most Dur­ing Their Col­lege Days

48 Ani­mat­ed Videos Explain the His­to­ry of Ideas: From Aris­to­tle to Sartre

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

The Cornell Note-Taking System: Learn the Method Students Have Used to Enhance Their Learning Since the 1940s

in Education | October 10th, 2018

How should you take notes in class? Like so many stu­dents who came before me and would come after, I had lit­tle idea in col­lege and even less in high school. The inher­ent­ly ambigu­ous nature of the note-tak­ing task has inspired a vari­ety of meth­ods and sys­tems, few of them as respect­ed as Cor­nell Notes. Invent­ed in the 1940s by Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty edu­ca­tion pro­fes­sor Wal­ter Pauk, author of How to Study in Col­lege, Cor­nell Notes involves divid­ing each page up into three sec­tions: one to para­phrase the lec­ture’s main ideas, one to sum­ma­rize those ideas, and one to write ques­tions. After writ­ing down those main ideas dur­ing class, imme­di­ate­ly sum­ma­rize and add ques­tions about the con­tent. Then, while study­ing lat­er, try to answer those ques­tions with­out look­ing at the main body of notes.

You’ll find a com­plete and con­cise expla­na­tion of how to take Cor­nell Notes at Cor­nel­l’s web site, which includes infor­ma­tion on the “Reflect” stage (in which you ask your­self broad­er ques­tions like “What’s the sig­nif­i­cance of these facts?” and “What prin­ci­ple are they based on?”) and the “Review” stage (in which you “spend at least ten min­utes every week review­ing all your pre­vi­ous notes” to aid reten­tion).

For a more detailed visu­al expla­na­tion, have a look at teacher Jen­nifer DesRochers’ instruc­tions for how to take Cor­nell Notes in the video above, which now approach­es one mil­lion views on Youtube. Her own ver­sion encour­ages tak­ing down main-idea sum­maries in draw­ings as well as text, and includ­ing things like “key points” and “impor­tant peo­ple or ideas” in the ques­tion col­umn.

That DesRochers’ video now approach­es one mil­lion views sug­gests stu­dents still find the Cor­nell Notes sys­tem effec­tive, as much as or even more so than they did when Pauk first pub­lished it. Over time, of course, its users have also aug­ment­ed it: take Doug Neil­l’s video “Improv­ing Cor­nell Notes With Sketch­not­ing Tech­niques” above, which com­bines stan­dard Cor­nell Notes with his sys­tem of “sketch­not­ing,” also known as “visu­al note-tak­ing and graph­ic record­ing.”

He pro­vides exam­ples of what such Cor­nell-for­mat­ted sketch­not­ing might look like, explain­ing that “hav­ing the option of doing some­thing more visu­al in your mind trig­gers a dif­fer­ent type of pro­cess­ing pow­er, so that you’re more active in the way that you’re respond­ing to the ideas. You’re not just pas­sive­ly tak­ing in infor­ma­tion.” The nature of school, as stu­dents in every era have known, can often induce a state of pas­siv­i­ty; sys­tems like Cor­nell Notes and its many vari­a­tions remind us of how much more we can learn if we have a way to break out of it.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1,300 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties

Richard Feynman’s “Note­book Tech­nique” Will Help You Learn Any Subject–at School, at Work, or in Life

Wyn­ton Marsalis Gives 12 Tips on How to Prac­tice: For Musi­cians, Ath­letes, or Any­one Who Wants to Learn Some­thing New

Carl Sagan’s Syl­labus & Final Exam for His Course on Crit­i­cal Think­ing (Cor­nell, 1986)

What’s a Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly-Proven Way to Improve Your Abil­i­ty to Learn? Get Out and Exer­cise

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

The Emperor of Japan, Akihito, Is Still Publishing Scientific Papers in His 80s

in Science | October 5th, 2018

State Depart­ment pho­to by William Ng, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

On April 30, 2019, Emper­or Aki­hi­to of Japan will abdi­cate, and pass the throne to his son, Crown Prince Naruhi­to. What will he do in his retire­ment? Prob­a­bly the same thing he has done most of his life: make “tax­o­nom­ic stud­ies of gob­ies,” as the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of Japan reports, “small fish found in fresh, brack­ish and marine waters.” Aki­hi­to has been a mem­ber of Japan’s Ichthy­olog­i­cal Soci­ety of Japan for decades and “pub­lished 30 papers in the society’s jour­nal between 1963 and 1989.”

Aki­hi­to ascend­ed the throne in 1989, at age 56, and yes, Japan still has an emper­or, though—since the post-war Con­sti­tu­tion of 1947—the con­sti­tu­tion­al monarch has no polit­i­cal pow­er and serves only a cer­e­mo­ni­al role. This has left Aki­hi­to with a lot of time to fill with sci­en­tif­ic pur­suits: to become an hon­orary mem­ber of the Lin­nean Soci­ety of Lon­don, Zoo­log­i­cal Soci­ety of Lon­don, and Research Insti­tute for Nat­ur­al Sci­ence of Argenti­na, and a research asso­ciate at the Aus­tralian Muse­um.

Emper­or Aki­hi­to remained an active sci­en­tist in his emper­or­ship, pub­lish­ing a his­to­ry of sci­ence arti­cle in Nature titled “Lin­naeus and tax­on­o­my in Japan” in 2007. In 2016, Aki­hi­to appeared as first author in a study pub­lished in Gene. The sec­ond author is his younger son, Crown Prince Fumi­hi­to Akishi­no, who stud­ied fish tax­on­o­my at St. John’s Col­lege, Oxford, then com­plet­ed a doc­tor­al degree in ornithol­o­gy. The prince now serves as the pres­i­dent of the Yamashina Insti­tute for Ornithol­o­gy and the Japan­ese Asso­ci­a­tion of Zoo­log­i­cal Gar­dens and Aquar­i­ums.

The family’s inter­est in sci­ence goes beyond the dab­bling of bored aris­to­crats or a sense of noblesse oblige. Fumi­hi­to intro­duced tilapia to Thai­land as an impor­tant food source and has helped Thai sci­en­tists expand their aqua­cul­tur­al research. The Emperor’s broth­er, Prince Masahi­to, is a can­cer researcher who has been rec­og­nized for mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the field, pub­lish­ing in jour­nals like Can­cer Research and the Jour­nal of the Inter­na­tion­al Union Against Can­cer.

The Impe­r­i­al fam­i­ly may rep­re­sent an out­mod­ed and archa­ic insti­tu­tion, one humankind can do just as well with­out. But it’s refresh­ing to see peo­ple with such vast resources and priv­i­lege use them for the pur­suit of intel­lec­tu­al inquiry and the bet­ter­ment of human and ani­mal life. You can read the first page of one of Emper­or Akihito’s papers, “Ear­ly Cul­ti­va­tors of Sci­ence in Japan” at Sci­ence in which he makes a case for the glob­al shar­ing of knowl­edge.

“Through my own study of ichthy­ol­o­gy,” Aki­hi­to writes, “I have come to feel strong­ly the impor­tance of inter­na­tion­al coop­er­a­tion in con­duct­ing sci­en­tif­ic stud­ies. I recall with a sense of grat­i­tude that behind each one of the papers I have pub­lished there has been the unspar­ing coop­er­a­tion of peo­ple abroad.”

via Sha­haf Peleg

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Entire His­to­ry of Japan in 9 Quirky Min­utes

How the Japan­ese Prac­tice of “For­est Bathing”—Or Just Hang­ing Out in the Woods—Can Low­er Stress Lev­els and Fight Dis­ease

After­math of the Tsuna­mi in Japan

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

The Outsiders: Lou Reed, Hunter S. Thompson, and Frank Zappa Reveal Themselves in Captivatingly Animated Interviews

in Animation, Radio | October 2nd, 2018

Lou Reed thought the Bea­t­les were garbage. Or at least he did when he start­ed out in music, as he reveals in a 1987 inter­view. “We had an ambi­tion and a goal: to ele­vate the rock song and take it where it had­n’t been before,” he says of his first band — per­haps you’ve heard of them — the Vel­vet Under­ground. “I just thought the oth­er stuff could­n’t even come up to our ankles,” he adds. “They were just painful­ly stu­pid and pre­ten­tious. When they did try to get ‘arty,’ it was worse than stu­pid rock-and-roll.” Hav­ing grad­u­at­ed from col­lege want­i­ng to write “the great Amer­i­can nov­el,” Reed even­tu­al­ly decid­ed to incor­po­rate lit­er­a­ture, and all the cul­ture he knew, into music, to “write rock-and-roll that you could lis­ten to as you got old­er and it would­n’t lose any­thing. it would be time­less in the sub­ject mat­ter and the lit­er­a­cy of our lyrics.” The con­ver­sa­tion appears first in “The Out­siders,” a com­pi­la­tion of three record­ings made with three pil­lars of alter­na­tive Amer­i­can cul­ture and imag­i­na­tive­ly ani­mat­ed by Blank on Blank.

The sec­ond, which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, finds Studs Terkel sit­ting down with Hunter S. Thomp­son in 1967, talk­ing about his first book Hel­l’s Angels: The Strange and Ter­ri­ble Saga of the Out­law Motor­cy­cle Gangs. “The Angels came out of World War Two,” Thomp­son explains, “this whole kind of alien­at­ed, vio­lent, sub­cul­ture of peo­ple wan­der­ing around look­ing for either an oppor­tu­ni­ty, or if not an oppor­tu­ni­ty, then vengeance for not get­ting an oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

But if peo­ple insist on think­ing of the Angels and their kind as the only vio­lent trou­ble­mak­ers in exis­tence, “then it’s just putting off the recog­ni­tion that the same ven­om that the Angels are spew­ing around in pub­lic, a lot of peo­ple are just keep­ing bot­tled up in pri­vate.” In explor­ing the cul­ture of the Angels, Thomp­son found that the ven­om filled him no less than it does every­one else: “I was see­ing a very ugly side of myself a lot of times. I’m much more con­scious of the kind of anger that lurks every­where.”

The third, a 1971 inter­view with Frank Zap­pa, takes on the sub­ject of fads. Zap­pa con­sid­ered every­thing a fad, includ­ing the sup­posed polit­i­cal awak­en­ing of youth in the 60s: “It’s as super­fi­cial as their musi­cal con­scious­ness. It’s just anoth­er aspect of being involved in the actions of their peer group. One guy in the group says, ‘Hey, pol­i­tics,’ and they go, ‘Yeah, pol­i­tics.’ Or they go, ‘Grand Funk Rail­road,’ and they go, ‘Yeah, Grand Funk Rail­road. It’s the same thing.’ ” In Amer­i­ca Zap­pa saw “a lot of changes, but I think that they’re all tem­po­rary things, and any change for the good is always sub­ject to can­cel­la­tion upon the arrival of the next fad.” That’s what hap­pens, he explains, in a coun­try that “does­n’t have any real cul­ture. It does­n’t have any real art. It does­n’t have any real any­thing. It’s just got fads and a gross nation­al prod­uct and a lot of infla­tion.” Does that, asks inter­view­er Howard Smith, make Zap­pa him­self a fad as well? “I’m an Amer­i­can, I was born here,” Zap­pa replies. “I auto­mat­i­cal­ly got entered in a mem­ber­ship in the club.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ani­ma­tions Revive Lost Inter­views with David Fos­ter Wal­lace, Jim Mor­ri­son & Dave Brubeck

New Ani­ma­tion Brings to Life a Lost 1974 Inter­view with Leonard Cohen, and Cohen Read­ing His Poem “Two Slept Togeth­er”

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

Young Pat­ti Smith Rails Against the Cen­sor­ship of Her Music: An Ani­mat­ed, NSFW Inter­view from 1976

An Ani­mat­ed Bill Mur­ray on the Advan­tages & Dis­ad­van­tages of Fame

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Europe’s Oldest Intact Book Was Preserved and Found in the Coffin of a Saint

in Books, History | September 28th, 2018

Pho­to via the British Library

If you’re a British his­to­ry buff, next month is an ide­al time to be in Lon­don for the British Library’s “once-in-a-gen­er­a­tion exhi­bi­tion” Anglo-Sax­on King­doms: Art, Word, War, open­ing Octo­ber 19th and fea­tur­ing the illu­mi­nat­ed Lind­is­farne Gospels, Beowulf, Bede’s Eccle­si­as­ti­cal His­to­ry, the “world-famous” Domes­day Book, and Codex Ami­at­i­nus, a “giant Northum­bri­an Bible tak­en to Italy in 716” and return­ing to Eng­land for the first time in 1300 years. But with all of these man­u­script stars steal­ing the show, one spe­cial exhib­it might go over­looked, the St. Cuth­bert Gospel, the old­est sur­viv­ing intact Euro­pean book.

A Latin copy of the Gospel of John, the book was orig­i­nal­ly called the Stony­hurst Gospel, after its first own­er, Stony­hurst Col­lege. It acquired its cur­rent name because it was found inside the cof­fin of St. Cuth­bert, a her­mit monk who died in 687 and whose remains, leg­end has it, were incor­rupt­ible. This sup­posed mir­a­cle inspired a cult that placed offer­ings around Cuthbert’s tomb. Just when and how the small book made its way into his cof­fin remains a mys­tery. It was like­ly some­time between the 700s and 800s CE, when his body was moved to Durham due to Viking raids.

When Cuthbert’s cas­ket was opened in 1104, the book was found “in mirac­u­lous­ly per­fect con­di­tion,” writes the British Library, inside “a satchel-like con­tain­er of red leather with a bad­ly-frayed sling made of silken threads.” Schol­ars have dat­ed the book’s cre­ation to between 700 and 730, and its inter­est for aca­d­e­mics and lay peo­ple alike lies not only in the leg­end of St. Cuth­bert but in the book’s phys­i­cal qual­i­ties and its own uncor­rupt­ed nature. As Alli­son Meier writes at JSTOR Dai­ly, “the 1,300-year-old man­u­script retains its orig­i­nal pages and bind­ing,” a remark­able fact for a book of its age.

Its con­di­tion makes it an “impor­tant exam­ple of Insu­lar art, which was cre­at­ed on the British Isles and Ire­land between 600 and 900 CE.” The gen­er­al fea­tures of this style involve “the lay­er­ing of pat­tern, line, and col­or on seem­ing­ly flat sur­faces,” notes Oxford Bib­li­ogra­phies, in order to cre­ate “com­plex spa­tial pat­terns.” Schol­ar Robert D. Ste­vick describes these prop­er­ties on the ornate dyed leather cov­ers of the St. Cuth­bert Gospel:

There is inter­lace pat­tern in two pan­els on the front cov­er, step-pat­tern imply­ing two cross­es on the low­er cov­er, a promi­nent dou­ble vine scroll at the cen­ter of the front cover—elements of this ear­ly art that have been well cat­a­logued for their indi­vid­ual fea­tures as well as for their affini­ties to sim­i­lar dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments in oth­er arti­facts.

Bound with a sewing tech­nique that orig­i­nat­ed in North Africa (and there­fore often called “Cop­tic sewing”), the “sim­ple but ele­gant” book, Meier explains, “reflects the trans­mis­sion of pub­lish­ing knowl­edge across Europe” from the Mediter­ranean. Its small size and place­ment in a leather pouch is also sig­nif­i­cant. St. John’s Gospel “was some­times employed as a pro­tec­tive tal­is­man,” worn in a pouch on the body to ward off evil. Why one of Cuthbert’s admir­ers would have giv­en such a tal­is­man to his corpse remains unclear.

If you can’t make it to the British Library to see this fas­ci­nat­ing arti­fact in per­son, you can see its mirac­u­lous­ly well-pre­served bind­ing and pages in scans at the British Library site here.

via JSTOR Dai­ly

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold 3,000 Dig­i­tized Man­u­scripts from the Bib­lio­the­ca Palati­na: The Moth­er of All Medieval Libraries Is Get­ting Recon­struct­ed Online

1,000-Year-Old Man­u­script of Beowulf Dig­i­tized and Now Online

How Illu­mi­nat­ed Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Made: A Step-by-Step Look at this Beau­ti­ful, Cen­turies-Old Craft

Wear­able Books: In Medieval Times, They Took Old Man­u­scripts & Turned Them into Clothes

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