Oh, the humanities....

Biochemist Gregory Petsko wants your help. He wants you and me to help save the humanities from the growing "spectre [that] is haunting higher education: the spectre of the market", where significant sectors of university education are being reduced, or cut entirely. In this one page commentary in Nature (2010, vol. 468, p. 1003) he observes "the humanities are a victim of two pernicious trends that have crept into the management of universities in the past decade or two, based on the idea that market forces should control what happens in education...". First, it is the running of universities as a business. "Nothing could so undermine the mission of a university as the misguided principle that all parts of it must make a profit" he says. The second "damaging trend is the growing mantra of student choice." He pounds hard by emphasising that "students have neither the wisdom nor the experience to know that they need to know." Petsko, to who I heartily agree with, understands that depth and breadth of education is the most rewarding, and students nor business minded bureaucrats appreciate.
"There is only one market that has any place in higher education: the marketplace of ideas". For if not, universities, the lobby for all the doors to unimaginable breadth of knowledge, are simply closed, making room for the myopic technical schools.

Big Swimmer with Big Pics

BBC reports Colossal pliosaur fossil secrets revealed by CT scanner.
"The X-rays are helping to build up a 3D picture of this ferocious predator, called a pliosaur, which terrorized the oceans 150m years ago. The 2.4m-long (7.9ft) fossil skull was recently unearthed along the UK's Jurassic coast, and is thought to belong to one of the biggest pliosaurs ever found. The scans could establish if the giant is a species that is new to science", according to the report which includes some video of the skull and CT scanning.

More News about Paper and their bound Distributors

In the continually changing world of print or "print", or book or "book", a recent article in the Huffington Post provides more fuel to the burning book question of whether the traditional book will survive. In Print Books (and Bookstores) Aren't Dead, But the Book Business Is about to Change one commentator laments the decline in print book sales is inevitable and probably irreversible.

China, We Have a Problem

A recent article in Science by R. Stone (Altering the Past: China's Faked Fossil Problem. Science, 2010, vol. 330, p. 1740-1741) shows "that many composites and fakes are now finding their way into Chinese museums, especially local museums" who often do not have palaeontologists on staff. Some of these fossils include large marine reptiles, supposedly early Cheetahs, and the now infamous "Archaeoraptor". There are several suggestions to at least reduce the amount of alteration of fossils but for the most part this is still "too lucrative".

More Discoveries From China

New Fossil Site in China Shows Long Recovery of Life from the Largest Extinction in Earth's History
From Science Daily

Below is a piece of correspondence submitted (and rejected) to Nature.

Being weighed, measured and still found wanting
The recent editorial in, “Do Scientists really need a PhD?” (Nature, 464, 7; 2010), suggests a relatively novel approach to higher learning than is traditionally accepted in western nations (in light of some measures in China). The editorial characterized this as the title implies, but more specifically as an “increasing rigidity and length of Western academic pipeline”, in light of possible progressive alternatives currently offered by Beijing Genomics Institute.

What the editorial did not consider, which is in lock step with any research program, regardless of Eastern or Western, is ‘Where is the money coming from?”, and more specifically, “Who is going to judge an non-traditionally trained researcher and his/her proposal, against one that is support by a PhD?”

Our academic culture is one of steps on ladder, rather than one of an apprentice in a guild. Funding agencies, whether NGOs, provincial/state, or national, almost certainly have the PhD stipulation, implicit, if not implied for any applicant. As one who has not been formally trained but has modestly made some contributions in my field, and as head of my institutional program, this is a perpetual quandary. Though I have recently found an adjunct alliance with a moderate size university (again, the larger ones wouldn’t even consider this possibility), this still does not allow access to any of these traditional funding sources. What is hoped is that some organizational leadership evolves where the practice of science is determined on the demonstrated history and the reasonably expected results.

Commentary: The Planned, the Intended, and the Real.

To provide apologies at the beginning of an essay is not standard, yet, the circular, elongated route I am taking may seem extreme. But imagine that the stray path, though requiring more time, also provides a dynamic, unexpected vista, making any detour seem worthwhile.

Imagine a world where smog and other pollutants filled the air and your lungs. Where dampness was a year round infliction; your living space like moist, cobbled cells. You were free but only in a state of mind. The labor you endured was tortuous. The sewers were the streets you walked along. This was a time when a medical man like Peter Roget had to create mental barriers for his own survival as he applied his trade amongst the less fortunate class. His belief in the good of all man was complicated by his own crippled mental, privileged state, expressed in what one would today call OCD – obsessive, compulsive disorder. But the early 19^th century England would have viewed Peter as only odd, in service for the betterment of man.

Peter had a lively medical practice, but with a scientific mind, sought causes of some of the common maladies he saw living in a class state, where factory workers in the industrial areas were over flowing. This was the contrary of a typical medical man at the time, where practice alone brought in financial security. Not tinkering with ideas. As a practical approach, he worked with the public health causes, calling for improved personal hygiene, airier living quarters, to which to a larger populace, in sorts, perceived him as a righteous sort.

As stated, Peter was a man of science. Early 19^th century allowed men of scientific training (or of a priestly background) to wander between disciplines of knowledge, from botany to zoology, to geology, to politics, to literature. He was a man of training and knowledge. A privileged place indeed. He was a strict follower of Linnaeus, the cataloguing of nature who created the binomial classification we still use today. Homo sapiens, italicized with capital at the genus Homo, and sapiens the species. “I classify, therefore, I am” he once wrote in his youthful period. This would seem a reasonable expression considering his OCD. Besides, the study of natural history, in its more scientific rather than theological genre, was just beginning. Always ready for a thought, one day he observed a horse drawn cart roll by his vertical slat-shaded basement window. The wheels' spokes seemed distorted through the blinds as the cart moved on. Curious, he ran out of his house, paid the driver a few coins to continue back and forth in front of his windows at different speeds. He was noting how the eye, specifically the retina sees still images as a continuous picture moving. He notified the scientific elite with a publication, “Explanation of an Optical Description in the Appearance of the Spokes in a Wheel as Seen through Vertical Apertures,” which immediately drew the attention of other scientists. What Peter described was the theoretical structure of what we would later call motion pictures. The movies.

What is thought as a life achievement in ones own time, history may have other plans. Peter’s major work in science was the contribution to a series of very popular books call the Bridgewater Treatise. These were to describe the works of God as seen through the natural world. Peter’s contribution, summed up in two volumes, was the physiology of animal and plants. It was a best seller in the 1830s where a hungry population were eager to learn, and explain the wonders of nature in light of reveled religion.

But history has an odd way of twisting the final outcomes of a life, for Peter was no singular man. His psychosis was strong, heavy on the anxiety from the time of a child. Some of his immediate relatives had deep psychological issues that were manifested in Peters own home environment. His relationship with his doting mother was abhorrent. To save himself, to finally have moments of sane control over his life, he secluded himself writing lists of words. Organizing and comparing them. We would call these a list of synonyms, words that have similar meaning. Throughout his life, in small packets of time, he would add to this growing list for practical, almost therapeutic purposes. “The process of verbal classification” he once wrote “is similar in principle to that which is employed in the various departments of Natural History.”

After a successful career in medicine, his retirement brought further anxiety. Idle hands were not his habit. With some nudging by his family, he dusted off his list of words, thousands in total, and began further organizing them, not just for personal distraction and play, but for actual publication. Published in 1852, Thesaurus of Words and Phrases by the author, Peter Roget first entered the populace. As one biographer noted, “Roget looked to words as an essential tool in the fight to advance human knowledge”.

The 21^st century has come to know Peter not for his dedication to medicine or science, or even the instigator of the movies. But for his thesaurus. Though still in in print, with numerous editions, history has not been so kind to Roget. Some critics today find the thesaurus, and all its versions and types as cheats to the English language. “It brings words to the mouths … where words were not earned by a breadth of reading.” Further, the substituted words provide “no context, [a] standard requirement of intellect.” As an earlier critic wrote, the thesaurus “accelerates the tongue without accelerating the faculties.”

Still, the thesaurus persevered, but only for one reason. It's usage was ‘accelerated’ thanks in part to New York World newspaper in 1913 with a game called “Fun”. Fun was the precursor to the crossword puzzle. And here, the thesaurus became almost essential as the game spread across North America, and elsewhere.

Critics of the Peter Roget’s thesaurus in the 1850s were already ringing the alarm bells, however. An American essayist, Edwin Whipple believed that this book of synonyms “was certain to spread contagion of literary mediocrity” by shortening the act of naturally acquiring language and words. Securing the “results without imposing the task of labor.” Whipple saw the cheat right away.

And here comes the end. In an austere, progressive, humane world today, with all the possibilities of learning and acquiring knowledge through digital means, or at least the allusions we have about how great we are with our digital media, what would Whipple think of the internet? Despite infecting all of the current generation and most of us in the earlier segment of life, with EVERY need, want, and desire, the internet as an educational tool has a failing grade. At least according to the numerous surveys and studies. It provides access to almost everything….and almost no one is using it in this fashion. It provides texts and studies, yet most users go for the crib notes. It provides an avenue for short cuts, without the act of reading the sources themselves [the cut and paste generation as I call it]. And as many studies have shown, hasn’t helped our children learn [comparative assessment of grades and reading skills of today compared to 20, 30 years ago have remained the same, if not fallen].

If this sounds like an old curmudgeon blowing his horn about days gone by, listen to the more youthful J. J. Abrams, film producer of TV shows like LOST, and the latest STAR TREK movie. “Earning the end game”, the short cuts, whether computer games, or in life, “seems so yesterday, especially when we can know whatever we need to know whenever we need to know it” [emphasis mine]. Peter Roget’s thesaurus was meant to provide structure to the English language. Its usage was then twisted for the easy way out, of amplifying ones knowledge and intellect when there was less so. In parallel the digital age of options, “aps”, and solitary social media is to me, somewhat striking.

TTT

"The Man Who F rgot How to Read", by H. Engel

"The Man Who F rgot How to Read" is a surprisingly even tempered, unemotional memoir of a rare condition called alexia sine agraphia - the ability to still write but would almost immediately forget what he or she wrote or read. Compounded, the author, Howard Engel is, by profession, a writer (if something like this could be compounded in any profession).

Its hard not to wonder, 'if that were me', how emotional and angry the natural reaction would be. Engel too said as much but maybe by maturity he was able to find alternative routes to the same ends; It probably says more about my own immaturity. "I was beginning to feel like an eunuch in a harem" he once thought, working with authors and writers before he himself finally put pen to paper creating his own novels. "I saw the trick done every day, but I wasn't doing it myself". But then to have this happen later in life would have been almost unbearable to most. But Engel's stoic determination can only be marvelled at.

This memoir travels through much of his time up to, during, and the recovery of from his stroke. Alexia by definition is "word blindness" which seems somewhat counter-intuitive "for one thinks of reading and writing as going together...that someone should be able to write" and read what they have just written. The the brain is a funny piece of hardware, illustrating that something we take for granted as operating in sync with each other, actually uses different parts of the brain.

As a source of inspiration "The Man Who F rgot How to Read" is essential reading for anyone who may for a moment takes for granted what may seem like a natural, air breathing exercise for the bibliophile.

No. 0885

"Love, Death, Madness, and the Creation of Roget's Thesaurus" by J. Kendall

"There really was no such thing as a synonym, because no two words can mean exactly the same thing" Tell that to Peter Roget, the early 19th century polymath. Kendall's biography elucidates a life that, like the proverbial cat, had many lives. Successful doctor, public health reformer, inventor, scientist, and as we know him today, a creator of list.

We would also refer to him, if we were to dig a little deeper as Kendall has, as one who was afflicted by OCD - obsessive compulsive disorder. Whether by nature or nurture, certainly the latter had some influence. With a family who suffered from neuroses and psychosis, his excessive doting mother caged Roget almost since birth. "Burying himself in words was the only survival strategy available to him", Kendall notes. His escape was making lists of words, even as a young child. "I classify, therefore, I am" was his childhood motto.

As a man of medicine, thus with some privileges in a society of quasi obedient social structure, he fought for the humanity and future of the people he served, ensconced in a pollutant, poor, industrial state. Personal hygiene, and clean quarters, were of some practical utility that we would take for granted today, and public need, which Roget would preach. Meanwhile, nature and science, in his day called "natural theology", formed the basis of further classifying and study. So much so, he was asked to contribute to the serial publication of the Bridgewater Treatise; a collection of summations of science, for the glory of God. This was a time when science was edging in on the morals of theology. "He simply could not abide by the new paradigm" Kendall states "in which God was becoming increasingly irrelevant." His writings were very successful, and if one were predict history's final outcome, this volume would be a likely candidate.

However, time and history have a way of choosing it's own personal trait. After leaving medicine, retirement for one so prone to anxiety and fear of idle mind and hands, Roget momentarily struggled for his own fate. By mid-19th century in a glorious, proud nation like Great Britain created a populace that were hungry for learning. Literature and its structure, were amiss with theory and discord. Dictionaries and useful guides like a book of synonyms were cheap, and unsatisfying. They weren't consistently critical and structured. Urged on by family Roget dusted off his book of lists, something toyed with over his life, and spent several months refining the eventual treatise we come to know as Roget's Thesaurus. The stated purpose: "The appropriate terms, notwithstanding our utmost efforts, cannot be conjured up at will. Like "spirits from the vasty deep," they come not when we call."

Though successful in his time, the thesaurus was a regional volume. American editions popped up that sliced and diced the English to appease the American taste for language. But the thesaurus never took off until years after Roget died. In 1913 a New York newspaper created a game called "Fun". We would know it today as the first crossword puzzle. And as any crosswordian knows [I am sure there is some, single creation in the Oxford English Dictionary for one who is, if not addicted to the crossword, a 'professional' at the crossword. If they have come up with a word for those who create these puzzles - a cruciverbalist - then dam it, there should be one for the the addict who fills in little white boxes using a pen no less], one of the essential tools of the not so pure form of doing crosswords is the use of a thesaurus.

Biographer Kendall has dug deep into the life and lives touched by Roget. I was so enamored by the man (as I am with most polymath's) that the included references were gone over with a fine tooth comb. So much so, I wrote an essay based mostly on Roget's life for a local 'weekly' which I hope to post after it is published in the upcoming week or two.

No. 0868