Wonderful wonderful wonderful

It's pure awesome to see things we love but which exist in odd corners of our lives come together and meet each other!

An article in yesterday's New York Times describes The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, an art exhibit by Margaret and Christine Wertheim featuring all these wonderful elements:

textile art: In this case, crochet. The exhibit features sea creatures, such as kelp, anemones, corals, and sponges, crocheted out of the most magnificent yarns. The crochet coral reef covers 35,000 square feet! In the Wertheim's essay for the Chicago Cultural Center, they write:

Every person who takes up this craft creates new species of crochet organisms and we have come to see the project as a collective experiment in textile-based evolution. Just as all living creatures result from variations in an underlying DNA code, so the species in these handi-crafted reefs arise from deviations in a single simple algorithm.

feminism: Crochet and knitting, though not exclusive to women, are undoubtedly a feminine realm. (Though there are exceptions!) In 1997 Margaret Wertheim published a feminism-inflected book on women and science, titled Pythagoras' Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender Wars.

mathematical theory: The crocheted forms grew from a mathematical model:

Hyperbolic crochet was itself the outgrowth of an unexpected branch of geometry. For two thousand years mathematicians attempted to prove that the only possible geometries were the flat, or Euclidean, plane, and the sphere. Great minds expended themselves on the effort, only to discover in the nineteenth century that a third option was logically necessitated....Mathematicians’ skepticism about hyperbolic space had been based in part on their inability to imagine how it would look, for they had no way to model it physically. Most were thus astounded when, in 1997, Dr. Daina Taimina, a Latvian émigré at Cornell University, presented a hyperbolic structure made with crochet.

science: The crocheted coral reef forms imitate real creatures dwelling on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, whose bodies exhibit hyperbolic forms.

environmentalism: The project highlights the rate at which coral reefs are being devastated by global warming and agricultural run-off.

More photos here!

Maternity and an Academic Career

Adventures in Ethics and Science gives marvelously informative detail about the hazards and joys of bearing children while still in graduate school, with more narrative from readers in the comments section.

The worry that she emphasizes again and again is the need for good childcare, the expense of good childcare, and the inadequacy of even good childcare when the child is sick. I can't imagine who you can call--other than retired grandparents--for back-up childcare in that case. The only solution I know is for one parent or the other to take off from work. Skipping class is a hard thing for an academic to do. Babies do get sick, sometimes for a week at a time.

I've heard colleagues express similar concerns about whether it's possible to have a baby before tenure. GonePublic blogged about this some time ago, and commenters cited evidence that women with children fall behind in rank. Still, we can pursue our careers for 25 years longer than we can pursue reproduction. Reproduction is not for everyone, but in a better world women desiring maternity would not have such worries. And mothers would have the option to work outside the home--or not, as they wished.

The untenured body

I've been recommended for tenure. Sure, the decision still has to climb through some levels of administration, but it's basically over for me. The weight has lifted. It lifted a little when I began my tenure-track post, but now I feel almost ..... normal.

I sleep better, I eat better, and I want to exercise. I'm looking forward to the post-tenure body, a healthy body. However, in all my privilege and good fortune, I pause for a moment of bitterness about the damage my career has had on my health, both mental and physical, and what my case seems to indicate.

During my graduate career, I've had periods of good physical health, when I didn't have chronic headaches, backaches, yo-yo weight, and anxiety. I worked on them all and, as on everything, worked extremely hard. I looked forward to greater "balance" in my life when I started full-time. But this hope was short-lived as the spectre of tenure review came closer.

Why be optimistic now? Academic training is designed to make us workaholics; the system depends on it. However, my old friends from grad school have turned around their health post-tenure in ways they assure me were impossible before. So, I believe that with tenure I can be a higher functioning workaholic.

This raises the issue, however, of the accessibility (not just the desirability) of academic jobs. My health is generally pretty good, and I live in a country with (still mostly) socialized medicine. If my struggles are in any way representative, then anyone with health or ability challenges may have their professional potential undermined by the rigours, no tortures, of the educational and employment system. (And all this stands without even beginning to address how sessional or adjunct faculty are exploited.)

Philosophy and science careers may not be attractive to women or other marginalized people because of the various ways we are given the cold shoulder. Yet, perhaps more than that social discomfort, however, we need to consider people's health. More than concerning ourselves with individual people, we need to consider how to make academic life more healthy.

The Value in BS

After talking about BS in class and reading students' papers, I have good evidence that many of them believe that they are expected to BS their way through most of the writing they do in college, including in the class I'm teaching, and that their professors (including me) can't tell the difference between BS and sincere conviction.

Frankfurt's analysis encourages the students' belief that it's all BS, all the way down. That's because Frankfurt identifies author intent as the marker of BS, and the kind of intent that a BS artist has is the intention of speaking something about a topic when she is not an expert, especially when she is not passionate about it or sure of the truth.

But that is inevitably the circumstance of a learner. Students take courses because they are not yet experts. They write papers to practice skills and to learn how to develop arguments. They don't have enough experience with a topic to have a stake in it. And yet, some papers are merely BS and others are creative and well-developed. So I think that Frankfurt is wrong, and that content and form do have something to do with BS.

I understand exactly the feeling that students are reporting--that they can't help but BS when they don't know how well their ideas will fly. But I think that feeling of producing BS is a necessary stage of doing original work. It's how I feel in the early stages of writing--not yet convinced that I have something new to say. Making it all the way through a rough draft and then rewriting and rewriting cures that feeling. Of course student writing usually is not put through multiple drafts. But just because it stinks doesn't mean that it's bull.

Bullshit in Media and Politics

I've started grading students' written responses to Harry Frankfurt's "On Bullshit."

Frankfurt writes that "One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit." Later on, he declines to take a stand on the essentially empirical question of whether there is more now than ever:

"Of course it is impossible to be sure that there is relatively more of it nowadays than at other times. There is more communication of all kinds in our time than ever before, but the proportion that is bullshit may not have increased."

To my mind, this all but asserts that there is more now, and I would have thought that there is more right now than 20 years ago when Frankfurt originally wrote the essay. Isn't there more TV but less content? And don't media technologies allow us and tempt us to publicize our opinions whether we are experts or not? (Frankfurt says that "Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.")

But a student raised the insightful objection that there may very well be less bullshit now than 50 or 500 years ago, precisely because we can all be experts or can find an expert. There is more information--even more knowledge--easily available than anyone would have imagined a generation ago. And the standards of evidence are widely recognized. Superstition, myth, and ignorance allow bullshit to proliferate. The internet counters this, though, in holding varied sources of information (wikipedia alongside library databases), in encouraging multiple reports of experience (product reviews), and in helping people connect (MoveOn or consumer groups).

Students also quickly expressed the view that the current presidential administration relies on Bullshit. Frankfurt writes that

"telling lies does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way that bullshitting tends to. Through excessive indulgence in the latter activity, which involves making assertaions without paying attention to anything except what it suits one to say, a person's normal habit of attending to the way things are may become attenuated or lost." And this is why "bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."

As one student paper points out, one can be caught out in a lie. A liar can be confronted with evidence. But bullshit, being empty and made-up, is elusive and always leaves the bullshitter a way out. The Bushies have been careful enough to remain ignorant whenever possible, to filter evidence, to isolate themselves from expertise and knowledge, to make many leading but vague claims, and so to indulge in the refuge of Bullshit.

Jim Johnson has a label devoted to such political BS.

Addendum: Students suggest films to accompany Frankfurt's essay, in particular Wag the Dog and Thank Your For Smoking.

On Bullshit

Back in November I asked for reading suggestions for my Critical Thinking course. The one that I picked is Harry Frankfurt's contribution to the "theoretical understanding of bullshit"--his analysis of "the structure of its concept."

The 1986 article "On Bullshit" was known only to philosophical initiates until 2005 when, in a timely marketing move, it was published as a teeny-tiny book by Princeton University Press and found its way into the very short list of bestselling books written by philosophers. Others have cashed in since then, including the Popular Culture and Philosophy series at Open Court, with a whole collection of essays on Bullshit and Philosophy (see Rob Loftis' comment here).

Frankfurt distinguishes bullshit from lying. Liars know the truth and take some pains to conceal it, whereas bullshitters lack any sort of connection to or concern about truth: "this indifference to how things really are...[is]...the essence of bullshit." The bullshitter's "speech is empty, without substance or content." It is trivial; it is insincere. The bullshitter has his own motives, and in pursuing his goals, truth is a casualty. He does not even care about truth enough to lie. The evidence supporting a claim has nothing to do with the reasons why it should be accepted, for a bullshitter. And in virtue of paying no attention to the claims of reason and logic, "bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."

My Critical Thinking class has taken one day to discuss this book, and we'll discuss it more today. I asked for examples of BS and the students came up with the usual examples from marketing and business. Several also had some sharp political insights (more about that tomorrow). And there was the predictably cynical comment that the essay was nothing but a performative confirmation that philosophy itself is nothing but BS.

But the comment that made me chuckle loudest was that

"Scientology is the biggest load of BS that God ever created."

"How It Works"

The Summers Principle, from XKCD:

Here's something cool

A post at Feminist Philosophers on a crocheted mathematical model.
Gorgeous and smart!

Darwin Day coming up...

February 12 is celebrated as Darwin Day, and although events are planned in many countries for 2008, the big celebrations are being planned for Darwin Day 2009. Why, you ask? Because 2/19/09 will mark Darwin's 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species.

Is it a sad state of affairs that I hesitate, even briefly, to say these are days worth celebrating? Yes, it is. If I have any cowardly qualms, and I do, about calling attention to upcoming celebrations of the life and influence of such a major figure in intellectual history, I hope I overcome my own shameful vulnerability to the disapproval of irrational anti-intellectuals with this small act of bloggery.

(And if one can't note the upcoming anniversary of Darwin's birthday on a philosophy of science-related blog, where can one?)

Teach Global Warming

Today is the day of Focus the Nation's national Teach-in on the subject of global warming.

I just learned about the event this week--and my classes aren't meeting today--so I'm sorry to say that I'm not participating this year.

Focus the Nation has assembled teaching resources for higher-ed related to global warming in about 30 disciplines, including anthropology, math, and physics. These teaching resources, which have been submitted by participating educators, include lecture notes, research results, TV and radio interviews, graphics, and suggestions for classroom activities. But there are no materials related to philosophy! Although there is a category labeled "Ethics," it is cross-linked with "Religion" and the content concerns religious views on climate change. I would think that a number of different philosophy courses could find a place to discuss global warming--practical ethics, environmental philosophy, philosophy of science, and social theory.

This is a shame, and I would not put the blame on Focus the Nation for overlooking our field. Rather, I think it reflects the regrettable disengagement of philosophers from public affairs. I intend to participate in next year's event on Feb. 5, 2009!

Gender, Race, and Philosophy Blog

A warm welcome goes to the new Gender, Race and Philosophy blog, which accompanies the online journal Symposia on Gender, Race, and Philosophy.

Bob Gooding-Williams has started with a post about Barack Obama's deliberative and participatory vision of democracy. I look forward to more feminist and antiracist philosophy and critique!

The Symposia's current discussion is on an article by Noelle McAfee which was published in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy. There are responses by critical theorist Amy Allen and pragmatist Scott Pratt.

Art, Science, and Civil Liberties

Last week I had the chance to catch a screening of the film Strange Culture about artist and SUNY Buffalo professor Steve Kurtz.

The movie tells (part of) the story of Kurtz' treatment as a suspected bioterrorist:

The surreal nightmare of internationally-acclaimed artist and professor Steve Kurtz began when his wife Hope died in her sleep of heart failure. Police who responded to Kurtz’s 911 call deemed Kurtz’s art suspicious and called the FBI. Within hours the artist was detained as a suspected "bioterrorist" as dozens of federal agents in Hazmat suits sifted through his work and impounded his computers, manuscripts, books, his cat, and even his wife’s body.

In contrast with this gripping teaser, there was no evidence against Kurtz--the bacteria he had been culturing were harmless and his wife died of natural causes. The Department of Justice is pursuing the case nonetheless (more info here).

Kurtz' artwork makes use of scientific images and scientific practices in order to invite his audience to reflect on the potential harmful effects of biotechnologies such as genetically modified foods. It blends art, science, teaching, and political commentary. The case truly threatens academic freedom.

Jim Johnson has more commentary on the political valence of the artwork of Kurtz and the Critical Art Ensemble. Jim quotes Dewey:

“The function of art has always been to break through the crust of conventionalized and routine consciousness."

Society for Analytical Feminism 2nd Conference Program

The Society for Analytical Feminism 2nd Conference program is now available at A Philosopher's Walk and at the Society for Analytical Feminism webpage. The dates for the conference are April 4-6, 2008 and it will be in Lexington, KY.

Professional Philosophers: What Makes Them Tick?

This is a good time to post some links and air some thoughts:

No doubt it is partly voyeuristic, but I'm fascinated by the Philosophy Job Market blog. They give some rules for one of my long-time favorite pen-and-paper games: Women in Philosophy Hangman.

Feministphilosophers comment on the philosophy job market: Why do we spend so much money making up complete applications with teaching materials and writing samples, when most of the supplementary applications are not even read? In some fields (e.g. English), an initial application includes only a letter and CV. There may be some disadvantages, but the advantages are the time and expense saved by job applicants, the convenience for hiring departments to not have boxes and boxes of applications to store, and the savings in environmental costs. Moreover, why not electronic applications? The sciences have been doing that for years already.

Last week Rob Helpychalk gave a talk on "A Retrospective Look at Postmodernism," a fun read.

There is a constant stream of reflective and thoughtful posts about teaching philosophy on the blog In Socrates' Wake. I would love to hear if their team has any thoughts on my concerns about attracting women to major in philosophy. A search of the blog says they haven't paid any specific attention to women as teachers or as students, so I'd like to hear if they have any ideas about why women make up only 30% of philosophy students or if there are any unique issues for women as philosophy teachers.

And here's a blog post with more comments than you have time to read--all about the ways in which women are excluded in math and computer science courses. Is philosophy different?

Fantasy Philosophy Recruitment Scenario

The gender inequity in philosophy is undergoing another wave of recognition. In other places (like the SWIP list), there have been discussions about how to make philosophy less of a 19th century male bastion. We could work on the hiring of women, their chances at completing grad school, their grad school application rates, and their participation in undergraduate majors.

The more of these we can do, the better, and I think that multiple simultaneous projects have a better chance for success. Contributions to professional service, of course, cut into one's research time, so it would be nice if any efforts could be well-funded and appropriately recognized.

I think that in the past there have been efforts to attract women to graduate school and to help them stay there (for example in my graduate school while I was there). These efforts tend to get more attention than the strategy of focusing on undergraduates, and I think it's partly because there are a small number of graduate schools, so it seems like a more manageable agenda.

But I'm particularly a fan of the strategy of recruiting more undergraduate majors. This strategy combines two of my commitments: to increasing gender equity in education and to promoting philosophy.

Leaving reality for the realm of fantasy, I've concocted a (fantastic!) plan, with the goal of making the project of recruiting to the major seem more manageable:

There are almost 750 universities in the US that offer a bachelor's degree in philosophy. Since there are about 6500 degrees awarded every year, that comes to an average of 9 students per institution. (Many with zero and some with huge numbers--this is fantasy, remember?)

If you teach at one of those institutions, then ask yourself: Could I attract just one additional woman to major in philosophy?

If most universities attracted just one more woman to the philosophy major, the number of degrees earned in philosophy would increase by over 10% and the percentage of philosophy majors who are women would increase from 30% to 37%.