A Pre-Pantone Guide to Colors: Dutch Book From 1692 Documents Every Color Under the Sun

in Art, Books, Design | July 9th, 2014

In 1963, the Pan­tone cor­po­ra­tion began pub­lish­ing a bi-year­ly col­or guide, which divides and cat­e­go­rizes every col­or under the sun. The aston­ish­ing­ly ubiq­ui­tous guide is an essen­tial tool for design­ers of every stripe, from a fash­ion guru fig­ur­ing out what col­or to high­light in her fall line to the guy in charge of cre­at­ing a col­or palette for the inte­ri­or of a new Boe­ing-787.

Twice a year, Pan­tone, along with a shad­owy cabal of col­orists from around the world, meet in a Euro­pean city and, with the secre­cy of the Vat­i­can choos­ing a new pope, they select the col­or of the sea­son.

They are the rea­son why you paint­ed your kitchen Wasabi Green a cou­ple years ago and why, whether you want to or not, you’ll be wear­ing Radi­ant Orchid next year. Slate did a great write up about the whole con­fus­ing process a while back.

Over 250 years before the Col­or-Indus­tri­al Com­plex reared its head, a mys­te­ri­ous Dutch artist also detailed every col­or in the spec­trum, only he did it all by hand. Known by the snick­er-induc­ing name of A. Boogert, the author set out to demon­strate how to mix water­col­or paint and how to manip­u­late the paint’s val­ue by adding water. Yet he approached his task with a stag­ger­ing lev­el of detail and depth; the result­ing book — Traité des couleurs ser­vant à la pein­ture à l’eau — is over 700 pages. It’s about as thor­ough a col­or guide as one could imag­ine in a world with­out col­or print­ers.

The book was large­ly for­got­ten, gath­er­ing dust at the Bib­lio­thèque Méjanes in Aix-en-Provence, France until Dutch art his­to­ri­an Erik Kwakkel, who trans­lat­ed the intro­duc­tion, post­ed selec­tions from the book on his blog. Herr Boogert appar­ent­ly intend­ed the book to be edu­ca­tion­al for aspir­ing artists. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, only a few artists at the time ever got a chance to see the one-of-a-kind book.

You can see scans of the book above. And if you want to more, click here to see them in high res­o­lu­tion.

For more intrigu­ing man­u­scripts, be sure to fol­low Erik Kwakkel’s Tum­blr here.

via This is Colos­sal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Goethe’s The­o­ry of Col­ors: The 1810 Trea­tise That Inspired Kandin­sky & Ear­ly Abstract Paint­ing

Wass­i­ly Kandin­sky Caught in the Act of Cre­ation, 1926

When Respect­ed Authors, from Goethe to Hen­ry Miller, Try Their Hand at Paint­ing

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

130 Free Microsoft eBooks & Guides

in e-books, Technology | July 9th, 2014

Quick fyi: Eric Lig­man, a Microsoft Sales Excel­lence Man­ag­er, has gath­ered togeth­er a big list of free Microsoft ebooks and resource guides that will help you nav­i­gate through var­i­ous Microsoft issues. Some of the texts are geared toward con­sumers; oth­ers toward IT pro­fes­sion­als work­ing with Microsoft prod­ucts. A few handy titles include:

• How To Recov­er That Un-Saved Office Doc­u­ment
• Win­dows 8 Key­board Short­cuts
• Microsoft Excel 2013 Quick Start Guide

Most titles are made avail­able as in epub, pdf, and mobi for­mats.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Free Online Com­put­er Sci­ence Cours­es

Free Text­books: Com­put­er Sci­ence

Read Online J.K. Rowling’s New Harry Potter Story: The First Glimpse of Harry as an Adult

in K-12, Literature, Sci Fi | July 8th, 2014

Quick note: Ear­li­er this year, J. K. Rowl­ing began writ­ing new sto­ries about the 2014 Quid­ditch World Cup Finals for Pot­ter­more, the web­site for all things Har­ry Pot­ter. Today, she fol­lowed up with a sto­ry that takes the form of an arti­cle pub­lished in The Dai­ly Prophet: “Dumbledore’s Army Reunites at Quid­ditch World Cup Final” by Rita Skeeter. Here, Rowl­ing gives us the first glimpse of the adult Har­ry Pot­ter.

About to turn 34, there are a cou­ple of threads of sil­ver in the famous Auror’s black hair, but he con­tin­ues to wear the dis­tinc­tive round glass­es that some might say are bet­ter suit­ed to a style-defi­cient twelve-year-old. The famous light­ning scar has com­pa­ny: Pot­ter is sport­ing a nasty cut over his right cheek­bone. Requests for infor­ma­tion as to its prove­nance mere­ly pro­duced the usu­al response from the Min­istry of Mag­ic: ‘We do not com­ment on the top secret work of the Auror depart­ment, as we have told you no less than 514 times, Ms. Skeeter.’ So what are they hid­ing? Is the Cho­sen One embroiled in fresh mys­ter­ies that will one day explode upon us all, plung­ing us into a new age of ter­ror and may­hem?

You can read the full sto­ry on Pot­ter­more, where reg­is­tra­tion is required. Or the com­plete sto­ry can also be read on Today.com (with­out reg­is­tra­tion).

via i09

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How J.K. Rowl­ing Plot­ted Har­ry Pot­ter with a Hand-Drawn Spread­sheet

Take Free Online Cours­es at Hog­warts: Charms, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts & More

The Quan­tum Physics of Har­ry Pot­ter, Bro­ken Down By a Physi­cist and a Magi­cian

Cel­e­brate Har­ry Potter’s Birth­day with Song. Daniel Rad­cliffe Sings Tom Lehrer’s Tune, The Ele­ments.

Har­ry Pot­ter Pre­quel Now Online

Marcel Duchamp, Chess Enthusiast, Created an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Available via 3D Printer

in Art, Games | July 8th, 2014

What would Mar­cel Duchamp have thought of the age of 3D print­ing, had he fore­seen it? I reck­on that the inven­tor of the “ready­made” work of art — i.e., a piece found in the real world and placed into an artis­tic con­text, as he famously/infamously did with a uri­nal for 1917’s Foun­tain — would endorse it as the log­i­cal exten­sion of his own cre­ative prin­ci­ples. But man, espe­cial­ly a man like Duchamp, does not live by recon­tex­tu­al­ized plumb­ing alone: he also paint­ed, sculpt­ed, and even carved. This last prac­tice result­ed, after some time in Buenos Aires the year after Foun­tain, in his very own one-of-a-kind Art Deco chess set. But now this unique item has turned ready­made, so Boing­bo­ing reports via Kot­tke, as “freely down­load­able 3D print-files on Thin­gi­verse, where the com­mu­ni­ty is active­ly remix­ing them” into ver­sions “like this one, with self-sup­port­ing over­hangs.”

Duchamp him­self, who appears in the video at the top of the post describ­ing his pas­sion for chess, sure­ly would have enjoyed all this. After his time in Buenos Aires, he moved to Paris, then to Amer­i­ca, and, in 1923, back to Paris again, by which time he’d ded­i­cat­ed him­self almost ful­ly to the game. Chess has obsessed many of human­i­ty’s finest minds over cen­turies and cen­turies, and Duchamp seems to have shown lit­tle resis­tance to its intel­lec­tu­al and aes­thet­ic pull. Still, just as he crossed chess and art when he craft­ed his Art Deco set (pic­tured above), he did it again in 1925, when he not only com­pet­ed in the Third French Chess Cham­pi­onship (earn­ing the title of grand mas­ter as a result) but also designed its strik­ing poster below. The New York Times’ Hol­land Cot­ter, review­ing the Fran­cis M. Nau­mann Fine Arts show “Mar­cel Duchamp: The Art of Chess,” writes that Duchamp ulti­mate­ly found his two pas­sions not just rec­on­cil­able but “com­ple­men­tary, an ide­al inter­sec­tion of brain­pow­er and beau­ty. Chess was art; art was chess. Every­thing was about mak­ing the right moves.”

To delve deep­er, you can explore the book, Mar­cel Duchamp: The Art of Chess by Fran­cis M. Nau­mann.

via Boing­bo­ing/Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Anémic Ciné­ma: Mar­cel Duchamp’s Whirling Avant-Garde Film (1926)

Free App Lets You Play Chess With 23-Year-Old Nor­we­gian World Cham­pi­on Mag­nus Carlsen

A Famous Chess Match from 1910 Reen­act­ed with Clay­ma­tion

Chess Rivals Bob­by Fis­ch­er and Boris Spassky Meet in the ‘Match of the Cen­tu­ry’

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

Robert De Niro’s Taxi Cab License Used to Prepare for Taxi Driver (1976)

in Film | July 7th, 2014

We all know that Robert De Niro has nev­er cut cor­ners when it comes to prepar­ing for roles in films. Need him to gain 60 pounds to play the retired Jake LaM­ot­ta in Rag­ing Bull? No prob­lem. How about drop­ping down to a lean 4% body fat for Cape Fear? Con­sid­er it done. And while we’re at it, let’s pay a den­tist $20k to grind the actor’s teeth down, you know, to achieve the men­ac­ing look of Max Cady. When it comes to Taxi Dri­ver, the least a method actor can do is learn to dri­ve a cab. Above, behold the hack license obtained by Bob­by D. in 1976. As part of De Niro’s metic­u­lous prepa­ra­tion for Taxi Dri­ver, writes Andrew J. Rausch in The Films of Mar­tin Scors­ese and Robert De Niro, the actor spent some week­ends as a cab­bie. On one occa­sion, a pas­sen­ger rec­og­nized him and asked him if he was Robert De Niro. The pas­sen­ger, who also hap­pened to be an actor, then quipped: “Well, that’s act­ing. One year the Oscar, the next you’re dri­ving a cab!” (I’d real­ly like to believe that sto­ry is true.) The license per­ma­nent­ly resides at the Har­ry Ran­som Cen­ter in Austin, Texas.

via That Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Revis­it Mar­tin Scorsese’s Hand-Drawn Sto­ry­boards for Taxi Dri­ver

Mar­tin Scorsese’s Very First Films: Three Imag­i­na­tive Short Works

Young Robert De Niro Appears in 1969 AMC Car Com­mer­cial

A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Cast­ing of The God­fa­ther with Cop­po­la, Paci­no, De Niro & Caan

13-Year-Old Charlotte Brontë & Her Brother Wrote Teeny Tiny Adventure Books, Measuring 1 x 2 Inches

in Books | July 7th, 2014

So you con­sid­er your­self a read­er of the Bron­tës? Of course you’ve read Wuther­ing Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Ten­ant of Wild­fell Hall. (Find these clas­sics in our col­lec­tion of Free eBooks and Free Audio Books.) You’ve prob­a­bly even got on to the likes of The Green Dwarf and Agnes Grey. Sure­ly you know details from the lives of Char­lotte, Emi­ly, and Anne. But have you read such less­er-known entries in the Bron­të canon as Scenes on a Great Bridge, The Poet­aster: A Dra­ma in Two Vol­umes, or An Inter­est­ing Pas­sage in the Lives of Some Emi­nent Per­son­ages of the Present Age? Do you know of Bron­të broth­er Bran­well, the ill-fat­ed tutor, clerk, and artist, and have you seen his own lit­er­ary out­put? Now you can, as Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s Houghton Library has put online nine very ear­ly works from Char­lotte and Bran­well Bron­të — all of which mea­sure less than one inch by two inch­es.

“In 1829 and 1830,” writes Har­vard Library Com­mu­ni­ca­tions’ Kate Kon­dayen, “Char­lotte and Bran­well cob­bled pages togeth­er from print­ed waste and scrap paper, per­haps cut from mar­gins of dis­card­ed pam­phlets,” pro­duc­ing “tiny, hand-let­tered, hand-bound books” in which “page after mini-page brims with poems, sto­ries, songs, illus­tra­tions, maps, build­ing plans, and dia­logue. The books, let­tered in minus­cule, even script, tell of the ‘Glass Town Con­fed­er­a­cy,’ a fic­tion­al world the sib­lings cre­at­ed for and around Branwell’s toy sol­diers, which were both the pro­tag­o­nists of and audi­ence for the lit­tle books.” A ded­i­cat­ed Bron­të afi­ciona­do may set­tle for noth­ing less than see­ing these in per­son, but a read­er more inter­est­ed in the avoid­ance of eye­strain will cer­tain­ly pre­fer to read these dig­i­tal­ly mag­nifi­able edi­tions on the web. The hat tip for these minis­cule trea­sures of lit­er­ary juve­na­lia goes to the Los Ange­les Times’ Car­olyn Kel­logg, who pro­vides a list of links to the indi­vid­ual works:

By Char­lotte Bron­të:
Scenes on the great bridge, Novem­ber 1829
The sil­ver cup: a tale, Octo­ber 1829
Black­woods young mens mag­a­zine, August 1829
An inter­est­ing pas­sage in the lives of some emi­nent per­son­ages of the present age, June 1830
The poet­aster: a dra­ma in two vol­umes, July 1830
The adven­tures of Mon. Edouard de Crack, Feb­ru­ary 1830

By Patrick Bran­well Bron­të:
Bran­wells Black­woods mag­a­zine, June 1829
Mag­a­zine, Jan­u­ary 1829
Bran­wells Black­woods mag­a­zine, July 1829

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Jane Eyre” Adapts Brontë’s Hero­ine for Vlogs, Tum­blr, Twit­ter & Insta­gram

The British Library Puts Online 1,200 Lit­er­ary Trea­sures From Great Roman­tic & Vic­to­ri­an Writ­ers

Bron­të Sis­ters Pow­er Dolls

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

What Does the Spleen Do? A Music Video Starring Harvard School of Medicine’s Class of 2016

in Biology, Comedy, Harvard, K-12, Science | July 7th, 2014

Accord­ing to Har­vard Med­ical School’s Admis­sions depart­ment, “to study med­i­cine at Har­vard is to pre­pare to play a lead­ing role” in the “quest to improve the human con­di­tion.”

It might also pre­pare you to play a giant spleen, as Richard Ngo, Class of 2016, does in this video for the Har­vard Med­ical School and Har­vard School of Den­tal Med­i­cine’s 107th Annu­al Sec­ond Year Show. 

In this anatom­i­cal homage to  “The Fox,” Nor­we­gian com­e­dy duo Ylvis’ delib­er­ate­ly bizarre hit, the Crim­sonites demon­strate a pret­ty straight­for­ward grasp of their stud­ies:

Lungs go whoosh

Help you breathe

Kid­neys fil­ter

Make your pee

If, as they freely admit,  they’re a bit murky on sple­net­ic func­tion, well, that’s why they’re at the top ranked med­ical school in the coun­try, right? To learn?

And to dance?

Their par­ents, par­tic­u­lar­ly the hard work­ing immi­grant ones, must have been so relieved to learn that music videos are a fall­back should the doc­tor thing not work out.

Though why would­n’t it? Secret male uterus? Ves­ti­gial fin? Pos­si­bly a back­up tongue?

They may be guess­es, but they’re edu­cat­ed guess­es!

For com­par­ison’s sake, here are two of the win­ning entries in the Med­ical and Den­tal School’s Organ Chal­lenge, an anato­my-based music video con­test for kids K‑12: Oak­land’s Pacif­ic Boy­choir Acad­e­my’s Miley Cyrus-inspired take on the Diges­tive Sys­tem (above) and Poolesville, Mary­land’s local high school’s  “Hap­py”-fla­vored anthem to healthy car­diac func­tion (below).

I’d say those kids stand a good chance of get­ting into Har­vard.

(Don’t be embar­rassed if you remain a bit shaky on what exact­ly the spleen’s there to do. This sim­ple, non-musi­cal primer on the “Queen of Clean,” com­pli­ments of I Heart Guts, should clear things up right away.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 100,000+ Images From The His­to­ry of Med­i­cine, All Free Cour­tesy of The Well­come Library

The Stan­ford Mini Med School: The Com­plete Col­lec­tion

Sci­ence & Cook­ing: Har­vard Profs Meet World-Class Chefs in Unique Online Course

Learn to Code with Harvard’s Intro to Com­put­er Sci­ence Course And Oth­er Free Tech Class­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er and the Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of The East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Watch John Coltrane Turn His Handwritten Poem Into a Sublime Musical Passage on A Love Supreme

in Jazz, Music, Poetry | July 4th, 2014

On Vimeo, James Cary describes his video cre­ation:

A few years ago, know­ing I absolute­ly adored the John Coltrane album, “A Love Supreme” my wife gave me this incred­i­ble book by Ash­ley Kahn : “A Love Surpreme/The Sto­ry of John Coltrane’s Sig­na­ture Album.” Read­ing the book, I dis­cov­ered some­thing remark­able: the fourth move­ment, Psalm, was actu­al­ly John Coltrane play­ing the ‘words’ of the poem that was includ­ed in the orig­i­nal lin­er notes. Appar­ent­ly he put the hand­writ­ten poem on the music stand in front of him, and ‘played’ it, as if it were music. I imme­di­ate­ly played the move­ment while read­ing the poem, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. It was one of the most inspi­ra­tional and spir­i­tu­al moments of my life.
I’ve seen some nice ver­sions of this post­ed on the net, but want­ed to make one using his exact hand­writ­ing. I also want­ed to keep it sim­ple. The music and John’s poem are what’s impor­tant. I hope you enjoy this. I hope this inspires you, no mat­ter what ‘God’ you may believe in.

You can find a tran­script of the poem below the jump. And while we have your atten­tion, we’d also strong­ly encour­age you to explore anoth­er post from our archive: John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme. Housed at the Smithsonian’s Nation­al Muse­um of Amer­i­can His­to­ry, this hand­writ­ten doc­u­ment cap­tures Coltrane’s orig­i­nal sketch for his 33-minute jazz mas­ter­piece. It’s tru­ly a trea­sure of Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

via Ellen McGirt

(more…)

The Celebrity Encounters of Koko the Gorilla. For Her 43rd Birthday Today.

in Biology, Film, Life, Television | July 4th, 2014

Koko the Goril­la, who cel­e­brates her 43rd birth­day today, keeps pret­ty down-to-earth com­pa­ny for a celebri­ty. While oth­ers court the paparazzi with their pub­lic canoodling and high pro­file Twit­ter feuds, Koko’s most com­fort­able hang­ing with non-mar­quee-name kit­tens and pals Pen­ny Pat­ter­son and Ron Cohn, the human doc­tors who’ve head­ed her care­giv­ing team for the past 41 years.

Her pri­va­cy is close­ly guard­ed, but there have been a hand­ful of times over the years when her name has been linked to oth­er celebs…

Above, actor William Shat­ner recalls how, as a younger man, he called upon her in her quar­ters. He was ner­vous, approach­ing sub­mis­sive­ly, but deter­mined not to retreat. “I love you, Koko,” he told her. “I love you.”

She respond­ed by grip­ping a part of his anato­my that just hap­pens to be one of the thou­sand or so words that com­prise her Amer­i­can Sign Lan­guage vocab­u­lary. One that takes two hands to sign…

Their time was fleet­ing, but as evi­denced below, the con­nec­tion was intense.

Come­di­an Robin Williams also claims to have shared “some­thing extra­or­di­nary” with Koko. Their flir­ta­tion seems inno­cent enough, despite Williams’ NSFW descrip­tion of their encounter, below. (He under­cuts his cred­i­bil­i­ty by refer­ring to her as a “sil­ver­back”.)

Leonar­do DiCaprio is yet anoth­er famous admir­er to be caught on cam­era with Koko. Is it any won­der that she embod­ies all of the qual­i­ties he claims to look for in a poten­tial love inter­est: “humil­i­ty, a sense of humor and not a lot of dra­ma”? No word as to how the Titan­ic hunk mea­sures up against the qual­i­ties Koko looks for in a mate, though footage of their one and only meet­ing has been known to get fans fan­ta­siz­ing in the com­ments sec­tion: “I wish I was that goril­la ;) lol I looooooooooooooooove u Leo”

From the lady’s per­spec­tive, Koko’s sweet­est celebri­ty encounter was almost cer­tain­ly with her favorite, the late chil­dren’s tele­vi­sion host, Fred Rogers. She removed his shoes and socks, he stud­ied her lips, love was a pri­ma­ry top­ic and yet their time togeth­er does not invite pruri­ent spec­u­la­tion. I can’t think of anoth­er human male as deserv­ing of her affec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Plan­et of the Apes: A Species Mis­un­der­stood

Ayun Hal­l­i­day invites you to read her thoughts on anoth­er July 4 birth­day on Rewire Me. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Steven Pinker Uses Theories from Evolutionary Biology to Explain Why Academic Writing is So Bad

in Education, English Language, Harvard, Psychology | July 4th, 2014

I don’t know about oth­er dis­ci­plines, but aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing in the human­i­ties has become noto­ri­ous for its jar­gon-laden wordi­ness, tan­gled con­struc­tions, and seem­ing­ly delib­er­ate vagary and obscu­ri­ty. A pop­u­lar demon­stra­tion of this comes via the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chicago’s aca­d­e­m­ic sen­tence gen­er­a­tor, which allows one to plug in a num­ber of stock phras­es, verbs, and “-tion” words to pro­duce cork­ers like “The reifi­ca­tion of post-cap­i­tal­ist hege­mo­ny is always already par­tic­i­pat­ing in the engen­der­ing of print cul­ture” or “The dis­course of the gaze ges­tures toward the lin­guis­tic con­struc­tion of the gen­dered body”—the point, of course, being that the lan­guage of acad­e­mia has become so mean­ing­less that ran­dom­ly gen­er­at­ed sen­tences close­ly resem­ble and make as much sense as those pulled from the aver­age jour­nal arti­cle (a point well made by the so-called “Sokal hoax”).

There are many the­o­ries as to why this is so. Some say it’s sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions of schol­ars poor­ly imi­tat­ing famous­ly dif­fi­cult writ­ers like Hegel and Hei­deg­ger, Lacan and Der­ri­da; oth­ers blame a host of post­mod­ern ‑isms, with their politi­cized lan­guage games and sec­tar­i­an schisms. A recent dis­cus­sion cit­ed schol­ar­ly van­i­ty as the cause of incom­pre­hen­si­ble aca­d­e­m­ic prose. A more prac­ti­cal expla­na­tion holds that the pub­lish or per­ish grind forces schol­ars to turn out deriv­a­tive work at an unrea­son­able pace sim­ply to keep their jobs, hence stuff­ing jour­nals with rehashed argu­ments and fan­cy-sound­ing puffery that sig­ni­fies lit­tle. In the above video, Har­vard cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist and lin­guist Steven Pinker offers his own the­o­ry, work­ing with exam­ples drawn from aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing in psy­chol­o­gy.

For Pinker, the ten­den­cy of aca­d­e­mics to use “pas­sives, abstrac­tions, and ‘zom­bie nouns’” stems not pri­mar­i­ly from “nefar­i­ous motives” or the desire to “sound sophis­ti­cat­ed and recher­ché and try to bam­boo­zle their read­ers with high-falutin’ ver­biage.” He doesn’t deny that this takes place on occa­sion, but con­tra George Orwell’s claim in “Pol­i­tics and the Eng­lish Lan­guage” that bad writ­ing gen­er­al­ly hopes to dis­guise bad polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic motives, Pinker defers to evo­lu­tion­ary biol­o­gy, and refers to “men­tal habits” and the “mis­match between ordi­nary think­ing and speak­ing and what we have to do as aca­d­e­mics.” He goes on to explain, in some fair­ly aca­d­e­m­ic terms, his the­o­ry of how our pri­mate mind, which did not evolve to think thoughts about soci­ol­o­gy or lit­er­ary crit­i­cism, strug­gles to schema­tize “learned abstrac­tions” that are not a part of every­day expe­ri­ence. It’s a plau­si­ble the­o­ry that doesn’t rule out oth­er rea­son­able alter­na­tives (like the per­fect­ly straight­for­ward claim that clear, con­cise writ­ing pos­es a for­mi­da­ble chal­lenge for aca­d­e­mics as much as any­one else.)

Pinker’s talk was part of a larg­er Har­vard con­fer­ence called “Styl­ish Aca­d­e­m­ic Writ­ing” and spon­sored by the Office of Fac­ul­ty Devel­op­ment & Diver­si­ty. The full con­fer­ence seems designed pri­mar­i­ly as pro­fes­sion­al devel­op­ment for oth­er aca­d­e­mics, but lay­folks may find much here of inter­est as well. See more talks from the con­fer­ence, as well as a num­ber of unre­lat­ed videos on good aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing here. Or, for more amuse­ment at the expense of clunky aca­d­e­m­ic prose, see the results of the Phi­los­o­phy and Lit­er­a­ture bad writ­ing con­test, which ran from 1995–98 and turned up some almost shock­ing­ly unread­able sen­tences from a vari­ety of schol­ar­ly texts.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steven Pinker Explains the Neu­ro­science of Swear­ing (NSFW)

John Sear­le on Fou­cault and the Obscu­ran­tism in French Phi­los­o­phy

“Lol My The­sis” Show­cas­es Painful­ly Hilar­i­ous Attempts to Sum up Years of Aca­d­e­m­ic Work in One Sen­tence

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