Enter the Platypus

Test Post-this is private

Thu, 10 Aug 2006 13:54:11 GMT

This is a test.

The Big Story

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 21:33:49 GMT

And now, for the most requested blog story ever! (Truth in advertising: no one has ever requested a story before, and one person requested this one.) Seriously, though, this is an important story: I will share what happened in my dissertation defense. My discussion will be partly aimed at helping explain what happens to those who will have to go through it themselves, so I will dwell on some of the details of administration and process. I hope this is not too boring to the rest of the blog readers. Perhaps it might shed some light on the otherwise hidden world of academia. If it sounds arcane, it is good to remember that (as far as I know) the idea of oral exams and defenses as a part of academic degree-granting is essentially a Medieval tradition. One can only imagine the seriousness with which it was taken, say, in Descartes' time.

I also note that I will not have much to say here about my feelings and outlook on things, given the successful defense; here, I just want to tell the story of what happened on that day.

Before I start, I want to remark that producing the final draft of the dissertation took considerable effort, just if the editing and proofreading is considered. Even though I read many, many drafts, and my advisors had read many, many drafts, I found typos and sentences so ugly that they were painful to read even after two readings of the entire final draft. I stopped after the third reading; during this last look, I found about 10 typos. To be fair, I had struggled with some of the offending sentences for years. No really, I'm serious. Some sentences I just couldn't get right. I think I got them pretty close to right by the end. As for the typos, there is simply no excuse. The point is that, if you want to proofread seriously, be prepared to spend a week or so on it. Also, be aware that this is an exhausting and difficult process. Do it in a coffee shop or someplace pleasant. You have to concentrate, but you also have to look up and relax now and again. When you are only one chapter in, you will have a horrible feeling: I have so much more to go.

Enough preliminaries. Off we go . . .

First, a little bit about the committee. In our department, the defense is what is termed the "Graduate Board oral." This places certain requirements on the exam committee, although it is not clear if there really is any respect in which these requirements really do constrain anyone in any way, as will be seen. For the Board oral, some number N of people will be selected from the department; I will call these people the "internal committee." One member of the internal committee, clearly, is the thesis advisor. In my case, one member of the internal committee was from a different university entirely, and in fact, someone outside the department can qualify as an internal committee member. The internal committee need not be internal. Well, at least the function of the internal committee is clear enough: to certify the dissertation as ready to defend.

Once the dissertation is deemed ready to defend, the remainder of the Board Oral committee members are solicited. The "rule" is as follows. If you have N people on your internal committee, you must have N + 1 people in addition, drawn from outside the department. Strangely, it seems as though, in some cases, a department member can be "external." It also seems as though some people are allowed to have a total of 2N people, and that this is left up to the department chair. In my case, the 2N + 1 rule was used, so I had 5 people examining me.

I am glad that understanding the Board oral rules is not required for getting the degree! All of these rules are applied by the advisor and the department administrators, and the student has no part in selecting any of the committee members, determining their number, and so on. This is just as well. No phone calls or emails were required to move the process along. Everyone took their jobs quite seriously when it came to getting the Board oral set up, which is as it should be, as this is ultimately the function of the university, particularly Hopkins. I gather that the committee was formed by the combined efforts of my advisor, who approached certain people individually, and the various university administrators whose job it is to solicit the committee members. Availability at the time is a key factor.

When it is decided that the external committee will be put together, the rules state that the candidate must submit enough copies of the dissertation for everyone on the committee. These are passed on to the committee members by the department; I sent the department administrators copies for the three external members, as my internal members already had the latest drafts. I took a copy that I laser-printed at home to Kinko's, and had them velo-bind copies of it. This took a while (a whole day), as Kinko's was rather slow. There are rules about how far in advance the copies must be submitted. In my case, we waited until the defense was ready to be scheduled before doing so. I don't know if it is possible to schedule the defense far enough ahead of time that a student will still be working on the dissertation after the date is set; in this case, he or she would have to finish far enough ahead of time to meet the deadline, which I think is two weeks. There is not to be any communication between the external committee members and the candidate after the committee has been formed, at least, there is not be any communication about the dissertation; all questions are to be saved for the defense itself.

I was told that I was to be available at any time on any day for the defense. That was fine with me. About four weeks ahead of time, I was told that the defense would be from 2 - 4 on a Thursday. It is unclear what the ending time signified. Regarding the length of time, the rules are apparently as follows: your dissertation advisors each have one half-hour to question you; the additional members of the committee each have as much time as they like. In my case the defense was just under two hours. We met in the Humanities Center seminar room. I don't know if the rules stipulate this, but in my defense, my two thesis advisors went first.

I tried to study for the defense, but of course, any studying I was going to do was pretty much wasted, except for the fact that it gave me something related to the defense to do while I waited. I figured that, well, I wrote the dissertation, and I should at least be able to repeat the arguments I made in it. I pretended like I would have to teach the dissertation, and practiced giving my main arguments and describing the main concepts and terms I introduced.

At times I became panicked when I thought: what if someone asks me to derive some of the formulas of population genetics that I use in the dissertation? That is not the kind of thing that I can do on the spot. There are many whose derivation I can follow, but cannot perform on my own. This does not make me feel particularly bad because it took some of the most gifted mathematicians in history to invent these things. Well, someone could still ask. As it happens, this didn't matter, as the questions were much broader. It was pointed out to me by someone (not in the defense; by someone I was talking with about this) that doing something like deriving a formula is not a particularly interesting activity in the context of defending a philosophy of science dissertation, and that someone asking something like this may be doing so because he or she did not read the dissertation closely.

I was there a little bit ahead of time. While I was waiting, the department administrators came down with a bottle of water and the sign that says "Exam in Progress." I was already in the room when some of the committee members entered the room. I greeted them happily and introduced myself. A had been waiting around with me, and at this point, we said goodbye; I did introduce her to one of the committee members, as it would have been rather rude to all involved not to do so.

While we waited, I made small talk on neutral subjects, although I did stray into controversial territory by discussing the departure of a faculty member from the department of one of the examiners. The person who left was generally well-liked, so I thought it was likely that his departure would be viewed in the same way that one would view a friend moving away. As it turns out, I seem to have been correct about this and the discussion remained congenial.

When all committee members arrived, I was asked to leave the room. Apparently they had to discuss how the defense would be conducted. This took about 5 minutes. LP was designated to be the chair of the examining committee. The rule is apparently that the chair is the most senior individual who has been at Hopkins the longest; in this case, that was LP. This surprised me, as I thought that my thesis advisor would be the chair. In any case, after I was re-admitted to the room, LP signaled that the defense was to begin. I don't recall if everyone was introduced formally at this point; I think that those who did not obviously know one another well introduced themselves. Then the floor was turned over to me; LP asked me to provide a short precis of the dissertation. I took the advice of my advisor and simply expressed the main claim of my dissertation in a single sentence, adding that, having uttered that sentence, I was now prepared to take questions about it.

I am afraid that the start of the questioning was worse rather than better. My advisor, PA, started off with a rather difficult question, in which he proposed a supposed counterexample to my theory of explanation. In retrospect, I am not sure whether the supposed counterexample he offered really is one. I struggled. Part of this is due to PA's ability to make almost anything he says seem to be important and correct, particularly if it is an objection to a view you are claiming to hold. He speaks with such authority. You have to take a second to think about what he is saying and try to get over the initial shock of hearing him say it. I did recover, but it was a slow process, and it ended with some unanswered questions about the nature of understanding.

Next, the questioning moved to my other "internal" committee member, AR. AR asked a series of questions directed at getting to my view on a larger issue, which I think is something like, for any state of affairs, does there exist a statement or set of statements that is the best explanation of that state of affairs? I mean best explanation in a conceptual sense, i.e., is there a form of explanation that characterizes all and only complete explanations; the issue isn't whether there is an explanation for every event. Some events may well not have an explanation; in this case, we will not be able to formulate a set of statements of the appropriate kind concerning these events. Anyhow, AR seems to feel quite strongly that it is true that there is one single kind of best explanation for every event, and also that this best explanation will be a microphysical one. I reject this view (as does PA). AR was only about 2/3 of the way to getting to this question when the chair of the examining committee told him his time was up!

We continued around the room, moving next to the remaining three advisors: EL, a biophysicist and Dean; GF, a geologist and former Dean; and LP (a chemist and historian of chemistry). I was very fortunate that my external committee consisted entirely of scientists. The questions asked by these "external" examiners took two forms: either they were questions of clarification ("What did you mean by such-and-such?"), or they were questions about the implications and meaning of my main claims. One of the big topics discussed, brought up by GF, was whether ``purpose'' has any place in studies of evolution and biology. Some felt strongly that Darwin naturalized these notions; others felt strongly that he had shown that they were no longer necessary.

As was evident even from examples of evolution by natural selection given during the defense, it is nearly impossible to talk about biological adaptation without using teleological terms ("these ones are better in environments with penicillin''). In my dissertation, I describe drift in teleological terms, contrasting it with a purposive description of natural selection. In fact, I don't think that it makes sense to distinguish between drift and selection unless one conceives of drift as a kind of evolution by accident, and natural selection as a kind of evolution by purpose.

Although no one thought I was unclear that I use ``purpose'' and related terms in an entirely naturalistic sense, there was some discomfort with the idea that creationists or intelligent design theorists might read the thesis and say (loudly, to as many people as possible), ``look, even the academics use 'purpose,''' and ignore all the careful work that I do to explain that I mean it in a purely naturalistic sense. Of course, there is nothing that anyone can do about what creationists and intelligent design people are going to do. If I were to present the dissertation to general audience, I would emphasize that random drift, which is so frequent and so important in evolution, cannot be accounted for by intelligent design at all, except to say that sometimes the designer likes to take his or her chances.

It became a kind of running joke in the defense that people asked about specific page numbers from the dissertation. PA began by saying, "My questions concern page 66." Everyone else had a specific page number or set of page numbers. Someone asked about page 2; and then the next person asked about page 1. I think that it was GF who asked about 2, and then LP who asked about page 1; the latter also asked about page 27 and one of the last pages.

The defense lasted about 1 hour and 45 minutes. By the end, I was totally drained. At the start, I had been taking notes; but it quickly became apparent that I would not be able to do so, because the pace of questioning was so fast, and the nature of the questions was so deep. I do not want to give the impression that the questions were hostile. If I didn't know PA, I would have said his questions were hostile; however, I think he just wanted to provoke me. Although AR clearly disagreed with me on fundamental issues, his questions were asked with the awareness that the questions he was asking were still open, and that my position is viable and perhaps correct. The other committee members' questions were (it seems to me) rooted in sincere interest in the material.

Was there any danger of failing? Before the defense, PA was reassuring. He said that "there are always some bad moments in these exams" but that there was no real risk of failing. I suppose that, if I had said nothing, I would have failed. I think that it is the dissertation that is under examination. If that's not good, you might fail, but probably nothing you can say about a good dissertation in the defense will cause you to fail. Mistakes attributable to nerves are easily overlooked in most cases. PA and AR said at dinner that they had each only once in their respective careers seen anyone fail outright. The Graduate Board rules allow for a conditional pass, and they also allow for a complete and irremediable failure. Most likely, an advisor will not take the action to form a committee, if he or she does not think that the dissertation can be successfully defended. His or her own reputation, and that of the department, is at stake. Once the committee has been formed, a conscientious external committee member that does not think that the dissertation is defensible is obligated to make this known before the defense.

This raises the question, If it is (as AR said at dinner) pro forma that a student defending will pass, why have the defense at all? There is a small chance of failure, so it does serve as a real exam, I suppose. I think it is more important as a kind of ritual or ceremony. For me, it was highly satisfying in this regard. I feel some sense of finality. I feel that my achievement was recognized. There was a moment, an occasion---the defense---at which people from around the university came together just for the purpose of reading my work and talking with me about it. It represents a deliberately structured encounter of the kind that the university is supposed to promote informally, that is, spontaneous collaboration among those of different disciplines, that share a common mission of inquiry and learning. The exam context and the nature of the examining committee serves, as much as is possible, to remove personal friendships and politics from the discussion. The intent is to get to the heart of the matters raised in the dissertation. Also, it represents the last time in the course of my degree in which faculty of the university will address me as their student, and I will address them as my teachers: the defense serves to recognize the transition of a student of a discipline into a trusted colleague. The idea is that this happened during the course of writing the dissertation itself; the defense serves as a ceremonial occasion on which the passing of this transition is marked. I think that this is an idealized description of what is supposed to happen in a defense. Nonetheless, I believe that in my case, this situation really did obtain.

After we had gone around the table once, people were clearly ready to quit. I was asked to leave the room again. I wandered into the Hut (undergraduate reading room) and grabbed a copy of The Newsletter. I only got to look at the headlines before I was called back into the room. LP told me that I had passed. Everyone shook my hand. I thanked the committee members. Everyone was in a good mood. LP turned in the form with all the committee members' signatures on it to the department. At this point, I was told that I could use the term "doctor," applied to myself. By this point, A had returned from wherever she had been passing the time (the Hut, I think). We adjourned briefly in PA's office, where we all agreed to meet in Mt. Vernon at 6 pm for dinner.

Today, I sent off two copies of the dissertation to the MSE Library; they will be bound into a book format. One will go into the university archives; the other will be sent back to me. It took a while to get the final copies together. I had to find archival paper, which I bought at a big office supply store, and I also had to fiddle with the margins and spacing of the copy, to make it conform to the university's requirements. After I did this, the final draft turns out to be 315 pages long! I filled out a form provided by the library authorizing UMI to distribute the dissertation in hard copy, microfilm, and digital format, and to register the copyright on my behalf. They will send a copy of the dissertation to the Library of Congress. Also, the whole affair cost me $152, including all the binding and copyright fees. I am a little worried that the paper I used is not sufficiently alkaline; but I am sure that the bindery will let me know if I have to print it out again on better paper. The paper I used is 100% cotton, and the type came out crisp and black. The final copy looks really good, if I might say so.

Short film

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 19:28:08 GMT

Jesus: The Musical is an amusing short film. You must have Quicktime to see this (chances are you do); a high-speed connection will improve the experience considerably.

This may offend some people, but I think it is tongue-in-cheek humor that need not be taken in the worst sense.

Thanks to Amayita for this link.

Do you believe? A Question for Philosophers and Children

Sun, 01 Jan 2006 17:20:23 GMT

When I was walking out of the train station at Bryant Square park yesterday, I witnessed the following.

A mother, father, and daughter---the daughter was about 2 or 3---were ascending the stairs to street level together. The daughter was holding her father's hand with one hand, and her mother's with the other, and her parents lifted her up each step. As they ascended each one, they counted out loud together.

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine!"

At "nine," the daughter interrupted loudly, "I don't believe in nine!"

An update

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 03:07:21 GMT

I wrote an email to my father recently, and the following is excerpted from that letter. It offers some reflection on life in New York.

As he has not responded, I do not know whether he has read it. I assume that he has. One would think that reporting, as I do in the email, that I am nearly done with a major chunk of my dissertation, which I am about to send to the second reader, would have been worthy of a response.

I have added a few comments today concerning events that have occurred since I wrote the initial letter. These are marked with square brackets.

I promise that it is more exciting than ambulatory meat lockers and tensing in an essay.

---

I am waiting to get a flu shot now. The city is giving them away free, and they give you a little ticket. There is a two hour wait, but you don't have to wait there (it is in a big auditorium). So I came down the street to one of the many coffee shops around here (the West Village). Most places have a wireless network, which is very convenient.

[I think that approximately 20,000 flu shots were given out that day. Wow!]

I have started my library classes, although I am only taking one this time. I met someone interesting---she spent the last several years managing the library at a research station in Antarctica, including once during the winter. Another one of my classmates is an independent music producer, singer, and musician, which is also interesting; he gave me a copy of his latest CD. It's quite good. It sounds like a lot of stuff from the 60's, like the beach boys, but a little more psychedelic. He is a huge Beatles fan and knows about their history in detail.

I also have visited my advisor several times at her work in the medical library at Cornell (their medical school is in NYC, as you may know). That is exciting. They work very closely with the doctors, and are well-respected by them. For instance, one time when I was there, she (my advisor) was working on a problem brought to her by an oncologist. The doctor's patient had not responded to all of the conventional treatments, and the question was, were there any others? There are all sorts of places you can search, including the medical literature, which is indexed in big databases; but then there are databases of molecules of all kinds, and also all kinds of pre-print archives and review articles. Also, the place is very high-tech, with people using palm pilots and laptops to beam around the results of their searches as well as information about the patients on a wireless network in the hospital.

My main focus of work has been my dissertation, of course. I am nearly done with all but the concluding chapter (the first four chapters), and my advisor has said that I ought to send those four chapters to the second reader, who is at Duke, when I am done with it. By ``almost done'' I mean that I am mere paragraphs away---I am working on revising a few sections of the fourth chapter in response to my advisor's comments. I am going to have to do a massive copy-editing job when I finish that stuff, which will be painstaking, but not intellectually taxing.

[I finished this work on Friday, and sent the draft of the dissertation, including the fifth and concluding chapter, to Duke, on Saturday (12 Nov). This is a major milestone. Right now I am simply too drained to really have anything much to say about it. I am happy, but also apprehensive about what changes might be required by the second reader. I realized this afternoon that today was the first day in a very, very long time that I did not have any writing work on the dissertation to do.]

New York has a lot of great places to work, especially the big New York Public Library on 42nd street, with the lions in front, as well as the many coffee shops. Not only is the library extremely beautiful and quiet, they have access to pretty much any book or journal I need, as well as a high-speed Internet link. Bryant Square park, right behind the library, often has free music, for instance, a piano player or jazz group---not an amateur, either.

For my dissertation, I found a paper in a book that is only held in six libraries in the world, only four of which were in the US; the Rockefeller University had a copy. It was the proceedings of a conference about genetics; it was one of those old books from the 1960's and 70's that is basically a typed manuscript bound in hardcover. There were a lot of well-known and important scientists speaking there, so it is not as though it should have been that hard to find, however. I guess they didn't have the money to publish a lot of copies.

Life in New York is very enjoyable. Every trip outside is a mini adventure. There are people playing music on the subways, which is always nice. I have adopted the East Village and Lower East Side (the Tompkins Square Park area) as my neighborhood; there are lots of neat little coffee shops and restaurants around there. It is much different than 10 or 15 years ago, when it was very dangerous. I think its moment is almost past, however, because the big chains are moving in; they are building several big luxury-type apartment buildings. However, it is inhabited by lots of artists and writers, many of whom are very politically active. There are a few too many conspiracy theories floating around there for me, but its a nice break from world of Bush, in which there seems to be no hope for anything good happening in the government or in foreign policy. You can still imagine Bob Dylan wandering around there with his guitar on his back---and in fact there are many musicians who do just that, on their way to play a show. People are very friendly and there is a real neighborhood feel to it.

Ambulatory Meat Lockers

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 23:17:44 GMT

"The Spanish brought pigs with them as a kind of ambulatory meat locker.''

-Leonard Lopate show, WNYC, New York, 8 September 2005

The topic was the population of the North and South American continents at the time of its discovery by Europeans. Apparently, many had been wiped out by diseases which are passed from pigs to humans; the question had been asked, Why did the Spanish bring pigs with them?

Tensing in an essay

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 23:17:31 GMT

Lately I have struggled with keeping to the right verb tense. For instance, should I say, ``Sewall Wright argues that the shifting balance theory is correct,'' or ``Sewall Wright argued that the shifting balance theory is correct.'' He is, unfortunately, dead; so he can't argue it today. Then again, the present tense is used to refer to ideas, theories, concepts, and so on, as they presumably exist here and now, at least abstractly. ``Kant's view is that the categorical imperative is of first importance.''

The resolution of this problem is as follows. If referring to the thinker's initial proposal of the theory, its place in history, or in the development of his or her thought, the tenses should reflect temporal relationships. Otherwise, the present tense should be used. ``Wright first argued that species differences were nonadaptive; he later changed his view, arguing that interdeme differences, but not species differences, were nonadaptive.''

A similar problem arises when referring to one's own work. ``Above, I argue that drift has explanatory power.'' What about ``Above, I argued that drift has explanatory power''? It has been pointed out that ``above'' indicates a location in space, and so referring to it in the past tense doesn't make sense. However, ``above'' refers to a point previously in the essay, and if someone were reading the essay from start to finish, one would have read past that point previously in time. So the spatial term is used as a metaphor for a temporal one. I think that it would be better not to use the past tense in this case.

However, there is a clear warrant for using the past tense in the following kind of sentence. ``I have just argued that Rosenberg is incorrect; now, I will argue that Millstein is as well.'' Here, the author looks back at what has been accomplished, and looks forward to what he or she intends to do. This signals a point of transition in the essay.

Paul G. suggested that it doesn't matter what tense is used, since he sometimes reads essays starting in the middle. His suggestion is just to refer to section numbers or page numbers without reference to their relative location. I take it that he believes that the present tense ought to be used in such cases. ``Section 3.1.3 concerns Hempel.'' I suppose that much of what he reads is on the web, so he would expect the reference to the section number to be hyperlinked. I suppose ``above'' would not really make sense, literally, in this case.

Still, I think that maintaining the coherence of an essay requires that sometimes ``above'' and the temporal markers I discuss in the paragraph before last be used. ``Above'' can refer to the position of a claim in the development of an argument, for instance.

A Grammatical Question about Disjunctions

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 23:17:07 GMT

Which of the following is correct?

"If either A or B occur, then X."

"If either A or B occurs, then X."

I think that (1) is correct. This is because the disjunction is true even if just A or just B is true. In that case, the subject of the verb is singular. Though the disjunction is true if both A and B are true, it would prejudge the case in favor of that possibility to use the plural form of the verb.

I suppose that someone could make a parallel argument in favor of (2) as well, that is, that the singular prejudges the case in favor of a ``singular'' interpretation.

Note that it is clear that

``If A and B occur, then X.''

is correct.

I don't know if these problems occur outside of the context of a conditional; I can't think up an example just now.

Where I think I might want to work

Sat, 03 Sep 2005 17:35:45 GMT

Hospital medical library (preferably within a medical school system or a research institution.)

AMNH, Brooklyn Botanical Garden

Research-oriented science department

The U.N.

Uniformed public health service (Does this still exist?)

NASA

NYPL's Science, Industry, and Business library

School of Public Health library

(I will add more to this list later.)

Put down your freedom fries for a moment . . .

Wed, 31 Aug 2005 02:13:35 GMT

Seriously, though, here is a link to a Buffalo News Article article about vending machines in Paris that dispense books ranging from Baudelaire to couscous recipes to dictionaries, $2.45 each, 24 hours a day.

Apparently Barcelona has such vending machines, as well.

Thanks to Sabrina on the Pratt SILS listserv for this link and to Deborah for adding the information about Barcelona.

First day of school and other matters

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 01:07:21 GMT

Tomorrow is my first day of library school. I am looking forward to it, but also a little bit nervous. I have been writing for eight or ten hours a day every day for the last few months and I am worried about how starting school will cut into my dissertation work.

I am taking only one class, so I will not be swamped with work.

It will be strange being in class again as a student. For the previous seven years (!!!!!) I have been the teaching assistant or professor. I wonder what it will be like not to be the center of attention in class.

We were asked to buy one book, which looks like a good one. It's just called Introduction to Information and Library Science. There are chapters on major topics, e.g., the organization of the library, people's information seeking behavior, and library ethics.

Today I spent most of the day cleaning the apartment---perhaps a little ``cleaning house'' before the new semester begins?

I am determined to distinguish myself in the class, hopefully not by making an ass of myself.

Back to the issue of not teaching this Fall---I don't know how to feel about it. I feel some relief about not having to get up in front of everybody again, something that is particularly unnerving at the start of each semester. I also feel glad that I will not be going back into the hornet's nest of difficulties presented by adjunct life: the invisibility to administration and faculty, outside of my little department; the difficulty clarifying my position to students who want me to advise them or their thesis; the strange interactions with other adjuncts, who probably want my job; the aggravating train commute; the weird atmosphere surrounding political issues on campus, a mix of burnt-out sixties radical types and arch-right-wing conservatives who cannot talk about a real political issue to save their lives, except to bandy about scary catch-phrases and slogans; the strange feeling that, although people aren't really focused on their teaching, they aren't really focused on their research, either.

I will miss the students, of course, and a part of me wonders what happened, the part of me that thinks that teaching philosophy is the most important thing that there is for me to do. I think it has added a kind of dreamlike feel to the summer, which I usually spend reading what I am going to teach and preparing my slide shows and paper topics, something that is very engaging, and that really feels good, because I feel a real sense of purpose doing it. It's an activity that really makes philosophy feel alive.

To reassure myself, I often consult my list of projects; and I tell myself that I am going to try to get my dissertation work published; and I remind myself that there will probably be teaching opportunities in the future, perhaps back at Pratt, after I graduate, teaching medical librarianship, or something interesting like research ethics.

Plans and Projects

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 04:02:57 GMT

Assessment of the "Google Scholar" service: What are the strengths and weaknesses of this service? What resources does it include? How good a search facility does it provide? In general, what are the risks for the user who is not a researcher for using the results of such searches? How does it interact with databases such as JSTOR or other proprietary sources of information? What are the risks for the free flow of information to the public? (An analogous question could be posed for JSTOR, or in fact, for any on-line archive that serves a single copy of a document to a multitude of users. What are the risks of having a journal article kept at a central location? Thanks to PG for emphasizing the importance of this issue) Does it have any value for the professional of a given field who has access to databases?
"Open source" publishing on-line: What are the models for publishing professional quality periodicals free of charge on the web that are accessible from the Internet without authentication of the user, i.e., without a password or registration? How successful are they, and why have they reached that level of success?
Internet resources in philosophy: Develop a student guide for doing research for undergraduate level work in philosophy, including theses, on-line. Develop a set of lectures, exercises, and slides for a library research component of an upper-level philosophy course. Include resources that would be of use in researching related disciplines and current events, e.g., art, natural and social sciences, architecture, linguistics. Cover resources available on the Internet outside the proprietary databases available from within the library, including archives of papers on personal web pages.
Professional communication in the science disciplines: Provide a clinic for scientists and medical researchers who want to publish their work. Focus on clarity of expression and elegance in the context of the research literature. Additional focus on the use of figures and illustrations, that is, what may be termed "visual explanation." Also, provide a clinic on using slides in teaching and research, and on the lecture form.
Public research in the Humanities: Are there resources available free of charge or for a nominal fee that would allow a researcher in the Humanities to produce professional-quality research? That is, is there access to scholarly journals, books, databases, and dissertations that someone with no academic affiliation can access (again, for little or no charge)?
History of philosophy and science at the NYPL and AMNH: Find out what early editions of the works of various philosophers and scientists are available at the NYPL (New York Public Library) and AMNH (American Museum of Natural History) in special collections. Write an annotated bibliography indicating their provenance, including how they came to be obtained by the NYPL or AMNH. Produce lectures and other materials for presentation to history of philosophy, science, and philosophy of science students at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
Johns Hopkins Philosophy Graduates pre-print and draft space on-line: Provide a venue for graduates of the Johns Hopkins University Department of Philosophy to publish their work, whether in the form of pre prints or draft work. Graduate student and faculty work will not be permitted. See "open source publishing on-line:" this would serve as a laboratory for providing free access to original scholarly materials.
Guided tour of the fossils: The argument for evolution: Develop a talk that uses examples from the History of Vertebrates hall to illustrate the logic of Darwin's argument for evolution.
On-line journal of conceptual issues in population genetics: Provide a venue for philosophical work on conceptual issues in population genetics, such as questions concerning the use of probability and statistics, "bean bag genetics," i.e., the issue of whether population-genetic models oversimplify evolution so that they are not of real value, whether population genetics can be used for macro- as well as micro-evolutionary studies, the role of population genetics in the evolutionary synthesis, and more generally, its relationship to other disciplines such as evolutionary-development biology. The goal would be to counteract the fact that "evolution" seems to mean "game theory" or "behavioral genetics" to most who study conceptual issues in evolutionary theory.
Bibliographic research: Use bibliographic databases (i.e., databases that provide information about publications) in biology to determine the extent to which evolutionists have pursued questions about adaptive evolution rather than those about non-adaptive evolution. Use similar methods to try to discover biases in research. Do funding sources and authors' affiliations have any kind of correlation with the kinds of questions asked by researchers? With the kinds of results obtained? Develop a methodology for doing such research. What are its strengths and weaknesses?
Primer of scientific method for evidence-based research in the life and social sciences: Develop a taxonomy of the kind of methods used by researchers in the life and social sciences, and assess the limitations of each as a strategy for producing evidence. Develop bibliographic searching tools keyed to method. Special focus on the Bayesianism controversy. Target audience: librarians and researchers.
Review Michal Zalewski's Silence on the Wire: Write a review of Silence on the Wire focusing on Zalewski's understanding of the role of the Internet and computers in our social life, and about how the threat of passive reconnaissance illuminates that role. Use Wittgenstein's private language argument to explore the idea of privacy in computing. Compare and contrast the growth of computing and network technologies with the history of life as a contribution to the philosophy of engineering, which as Daniel Dennett suggests, does not really exist, but definitely ought to.
The null results archive: Create an on line repository for null results. Why was no effect observed? Due to lack of proper controls? Of special interest: null results concerning the effectiveness of medications hyped by their manufacturers. What don't these medications do better than those they are intended to replace or a placebo? In contrast, what null results are ignored, for instance, those having to do with remote prayer. echinacea, and other cures advocated by so-called ``alternative medicine?'' Thanks to Molly, Senior Researcher for Epidemiology, at the Platypus Institute for Research, for calling this issue to my attention.
A.'s Orals List: Create a BibTeX archive of A.'s orals lists. Distribute it on the WWW.
Evolutionary biology on the Internet: Create a clearing-house for sites about evolutionary biology, including all sub-disciplines of it. Provide a review of each site, indicating who is responsible for it. Highlight relationship of the sources to creationism.
Books to read: Richard Jeffreys, The Logic of Decision and Subjective Probability: the Real Thing; the Jane Austen novels; Proust, In Search of Lost Time; and the Harry Potter books.

The falling prestige of physicians: A diagnosis

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 20:44:29 GMT

Recently [31 May 05] on the WNYC talk show hosted by Brian Lehrer, the topic was the prestige of various professions. Medicine came up. It has declined considerably in prestige, according to the survey that was cited, although it remains quite prestigious. One of the callers offered the following, um, diagnosis of why this is so by way of an anecdote.

The caller was introduced to the spouse of a friend; the spouse was a gerontologist. The spouse, upon meeting the caller, described, in graphic terms, the deterioration of her patients' bodies, denigrating them as disgusting and ugly. The caller suggested that part of the reason that people no longer have as much regard for physicians as they once did is that they (the physicians) cultivate a feeling of disgust for their patients, which lurks just below the surface, and is clearly detectable. "I want to heal your body---but don't bring it too close, because it's disgusting."

A. encountered a similar situation recently. Outside of the local coffee shop, which is near a large university medical center, a group of residents were talking. "What would you rather have on your shoes, urine or vomit?" I think that she (A.) was correct to point out the following. The notable aspect of the experience, if you are a physician, is not the fact that now you will have to clean up your shoes or replace them, but that someone is sick enough to be vomiting or peeing uncontrollably, and that you are the one who is supposed to try to help that person.

Here is a related comment from a recent MD: "People who go to pain management clinics, it is because they are too weak. Some people are in just as much pain [as those who come to pain management clinics], but never seek help." The idea is that those who do come into the clinic lack the moral and spiritual strength, the strength of will, to cope with their pain.

Where to begin? It is unclear how to regard someone who thinks that it is wrong for someone in pain to seek the help of physician. I would say someone who is in pain and who does not seek the help of a physician, if that help is readily available, is irrational. Truthfully, though, it was A. who provided the moral insight on this issue for me. Assume that people who seek the help of a pain management physician are, in fact, weak. Does this excuse those who are strong from helping them? Clearly, it does not.

The statement about the pain clinics suggests that he holds a kind of social Darwinism, applied to medicine. The social Darwinist reasons that the poor are poor because they deserve to be, and so do not deserve help with any of the problems that result from being poor; and their poverty is the evidence of their being undeserving. Here, the reasoning is as follows. Those who seek the help of a physician are weak, and so do not deserve help with any of the problems that result from their being weak; and their seeking the help of a physician is the evidence of this.

Indeed, this is a strange attitude for a physician to have!

Here is another anecdote. Said by a GI, with a sneering look of disgust, implying that the patient ought to "get over" his or her digestive problems, perhaps talking to a psychiatrist about his or her fixation with them, that apparently drive him or her to want to discuss them in some detail: "People come in here, and they tell me about their bowel movements all day, how many they are having, what they are like." Oh, wait, this is---a gastroenterology clinic?

There is an analogy in the Humanities. Some people in the Humanities, confronted with the near-illiteracy and extraordinary lack of moral insight displayed in the student papers they must grade, react with repugnance and disgust. The level of achievement among the students is so low that it is hard not to laugh, to carry on about how stupid the students are, about how things are slipping in the high schools, about how the students lack even the most rudimentary feeling for humanity. Eventually, one comes to see that people in such desperate need require the services of an expert teacher, and one comes to feel privileged to be the one to try to fill that role. It no longer seems so funny, and it is no longer disturbing.

In the opening passages of The Claim of Reason, Stanley Cavell suggests that philosophers are not the most rational people. The suggestion is that the most rational people have no need to study rationality, as they are already fully in possession of it. I suppose that one could be fully rational and desire to know more about his or her rationality. I think that, whatever the reason, someone who wants to know about rationality must at some level love the problems with rationality, the difficulties with it. I think that there is an analogy with the physician. Someone who becomes a physician ought to love sickness in the sense of being fully committed to being close enough to it to learn enough about it to alleviate its symptoms. A doctor must desire to be made aware of when people are sick, want to be with sick people to see how they behave, what happens to them as they become sicker, and---how it is that they can eventually be made not to be sick any more. This seems to me to require a kind of good-natured acceptance of the physical manifestation of it in the sick, rather than an attitude of disgust or displeasure.

Repeat after me.

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 20:22:35 GMT

Wrong: "John Hopkins."

Right: "Johns Hopkins."

Sound it out, people.

How hard can it be to get that right?

Summer Reading list

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 02:08:32 GMT

If you are looking for a book to read, or for a movie to watch, check out the Summer Reading List. The list is a PDF file; it is a handout I gave to my students on the last day of class, after they turned in their final exams and filled out their evaluation of me.

Enjoy!

An aside---I notice that, even though I did not check the box in the Livejournal set-up options that would prevent web indexing robots from indexing my blog, "Enter the Platypus" does not show up if I do a Google search for it.

Speaking of web-indexing robots, I recommend reading Michal Zalewski's article about a novel kind of attack that uses them. Note that you have to scroll down the page a little to see the article.

I also recommend visiting Michal's web site.

I offer my condolences to the friends and families of those killed in this morning's terrorist attacks in London, and my sympathies to those who were injured.

You know you are a New Yorker When . . .

Fri, 01 Jul 2005 18:58:36 GMT

You have a permanently-assigned IP address for the wifi at at least one coffee shop (I have two---dtut and Drink Me).

You've deliberated about whether it's better to wait for the express, or get on the local, which is here now.

A. and I discuss the latter pretty much every time we take the train. In fact, I've sketched out a decision-theoretic model for it, including such factors as:

How hot it is---is it better arrive sooner, but wait in the underground heat for longer? Related factor: the general level of body odor of those sharing the platform.

Whether you have a book, a CD player, or both.

The time of day---can an express be expected anytime soon?

Whether the transfer needed requires ascending or descending stairs, or whether it comes on the same platform; especially important for those with ankle sprains, or the chronically lazy, or if you are carrying groceries or extra books.

Whether there is a newsstand on the platform---every minute spent waiting increases the chance that candy will be purchased, something that is desirable, on the one hand, but on the other hand, ought to be avoided, for those that are trying to cut back. Importance of this factor depends upon whether healthier snacks have been brought from home.

Two Green Guys

Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:14:48 GMT

I have several long blog entries that I have to revise and post. However, I wanted to mention my idea for a TV talk show briefly.

It would be called "Two Green Guys," and it would be hosted by Gollum (the Lord of the Rings character) and Yoda (From Star Wars).

Topics discussed would include the following:

• Bogs and swamps
• Encounters with evil---clearly, Gollum and Yoda are going to have different perspectives on this issue
• Card games, chess, and other activities for the very long-lived
• Special guest segments, hosted by Kermit the Frog, interviewing those such as the Hulk, Green Lantern
• Skin care for the green: safety in the sun, keeping that "green glow," interviews with dermatologists, makeup artists
• Fashion segments on what goes with green
• Politics: editorials with Ralph Nader; surveys of international green party activities in Europe
• Where to get the best sushi, hosted by Gollum (recall his propensity for raw fish)

I have been watching the Lord of the Rings films again, and it occurs to me that Gollum is not in fact green. In the cartoon version I watched when I was younger, he was green. I think he is described as looking sickly and sallow, but not necessarily green, by Tolkien himself. I have to confess that I am at a loss about what to do about this. Clearly, this threatens the very premise of the show.

A. often points out that both Gollum and Yoda die in the relevant films, and that, in any case, they are not real, but rather, are fictional characters. In fact, I think that the following is true. Both Yoda and Gollum are real, and they have survived. The films are fictionalized accounts of real events, slightly altered to get that "Hollywood ending," or, in Tolkien's case, that "Oxbridge ending." George Lucas and Peter Jackson know where they are, and contact them occasionally.

To support this view, I note that both Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings are set in the past.

Let's all breathe a big sigh of relief. . .

Mon, 30 May 2005 15:13:26 GMT

I thought that this news would come by the US post, in the form of one of those big envelopes from the department, with the pretty laser-printed address label with the department letterhead on it. Moreover, although I had great hope, I certainly did not have any expectation that the news would be good. I suppose that is a form of faith, right?And yet the news is good---very good, in fact.

Total time to rewrite the chapter: one week.

Total time for my advisor to read it and comment: one week, less one day.

What follows is an excerpt from the email in question.

*****
From: [o_paradoxus's dissertation advisor; name and address withheld]
Date: May 30, 2005 10:45:19 AM EDT
To: [o_paradoxus]
Subject: Re: Chapter draft

I have completed your chapter 2 and will mail it to you tomorrow. Here's what I say: "Much better! Move ahead." I have made a few comments and suggestions for you to think about. But don't dwell on these; get more material out.

The Sublime at the 168th Street A train stop

Sun, 29 May 2005 19:41:52 GMT

It's another really, really, beautiful day here in the city. The sun is shining and it is warm, although not too warm; it's perfect for walking. I found a little coffee importer that only charges $3.15 for half a pound of flavored coffee. It's on St. Mark's.

Freakishly, the A trains are running express in both directions, something rare for a weekend. Again I had that feeling of the sublime while waiting for the subway: rushing toward me at 30 mph or so, the light coming from its headlight ought to be approaching me at a rate of c + 30 mph. However, according to Einstein, c is an absolute velocity, i.e., it is impossible for any signal to travel faster. So really it is coming toward me at a rate of just c. I call the experience of this sublime because it makes me aware of the limits of the universe, and how someone can have a direct encounter with them, and this makes me aware of my own power of will. Of course this is also humbling.

I have had a similar kind of thought lately, a kind of what-is-our-place-in-nature? kind of revelation. I have come to appreciate that we should be proud of our tetrapod inheritance; the tetrapods are one of the great lineages, if there ever were one. Moreover, the mammalian lineages, within the tetrapods, also ranks as one of the great lineages. I think that both compare favorably with the great beetle lineages among the arthropods. I am not prepared to say what criteria I am using for "great" here; I will say that it has to do with the range of adaptations, longevity, diversification. I consider these aesthetic criteria. I suppose it is easy to become fixated on the fact that we only have one species, and that it has been so short-lived, and that our great adaptations---culture, language, and social organization---are so unstable. What do I mean by unstable? I just mean that they can result, sometimes, in mass killing of our own, and potentially, to our own extinction. Certainly, these are the reasons why I have tended in the past to be skeptical of humanity's place in the tree of life.

I hope I am not engaging in what we are not supposed to do, that is, try to re-instate human beings as the pinnacle of the natural world. (The third narcissism, according to Freud.)

Some Observations

Fri, 27 May 2005 03:13:56 GMT

Why don't people publish null results? Well, one reason is that the null result may be due to a failure to control the experiment properly. That's not interesting. In any case, in the spirit of publishing null results, this is all I will say in this blog entry.

Paradigms of Drift

Wed, 18 May 2005 21:41:36 GMT

Today I really struggled, but, I think, eventually succeeded. I made it to the library rather late in the day, having had to take care of some chores around the house. In keeping with my effort to lose weight, I walked from 59th. I knew it was going to be a hard day of writing because I would be starting on a new chapter. This is the chapter on the nature of drift. I have struggled with this for a long time. I had about 20 pages written. I have some ideas, but I am sure that nobody else would agree to them. I decided to lower might sights: rather than formulate a complete account of drift, I will just try to identify the key aspects of some paradigm cases. That's a disappointment, but I think that it is necessary at this stage.

By the way, the fact that I am starting on a new chapter means that I finally sent a revised draft of the previous one to PA. I emailed it in last night. He hasn't emailed me back to confirm receipt of it, which I asked him to do in the email; but perhaps he didn't read that anyhow. I found a few errors in the chapter, and then fixed them, and then sent another copy of it about two hours later. That's not the way that I want to do things, but clearly, it is better to fix the mistakes as soon as they are found, rather than wait to see if anyone else will notice.

For Faculty, By Faculty?

Tue, 17 May 2005 17:50:45 GMT

This is one of those posts about teaching and academic life, so if you have heard enough about that, then you had better hang on for a few more days until I get another post up. Of course, the next post might be about the same thing.

Last week I went to the faculty lab's seminar about using computers in the classroom. I gave a presentation about my use of Blackboard and presentation software. I probably could have shortened the presentation a little, and focused it more on my use of the slides.

This year, again, there was a presentation by MG about an application he is developing that I will just call L. L works with Powerpoint. You put on a microphone and talk, and it records you; and anything you draw on the screen on top of your slide show (you have to use a touch-screen, such as would be found on a tablet PC) will be saved. Then you can play the whole thing back. The idea is that students now have a record of the lecture, along with the slides. They can also post questions, pointing to a certain point on a certain slide, and entering in text. You can then respond.

It does seem that there are some good uses for this. For instance, in a calculus class, a teacher could use blank slides and write on them, doing problems and explaining as he or she goes along. Then students would have an archive of worked-through and explained examples, along with narration.

Of course, that wouldn't work for me, since my handwriting is so bad. That's why I use slide shows to begin with.

However, there is a sinister aspect to all this. I am sure that the university would like nothing more than to do the following. Hire me for one semester and have me record lectures and my slide shows, together. Then fire me, but keep the slide shows, and hire me back for a third of my former rate of pay to grade papers and answer questions by students.

Part of the L software package is that you can save segments of your lectures and re-use them. MG calls these "knowledge objects."

I don't think that MG really understands the difference between presenting information, and teaching. Teaching requires challenging a student, and it also requires being able to probe the student with questions and problems to see what their understanding is. This has to happen in real time, so that the teacher knows what to explain next, what examples to bring up, what further questions to pose. Furthermore, student comments and questions build on one another. What one person discovers, others do as well.

The idea of the "knowledge objects" is particularly absurd. Clearly, there are uses for these things. "Knowledge object" is a nice bit of propaganda. Knowledge (or more properly, understanding) is what someone gets by doing problems, working through examples, engaging with the teacher and other students, writing papers, and so on. The whole history of Western philosophy is readily available as a "knowledge object," if you will; and yet to understand it, you need a teacher. I think that this is true for other disciplines too.

Part of what was really enraging was that MG cited a case in which far fewer students came to the office hour but used the L system, and did far better in the class at issue than in past years. "This is purely anecdotal," he said, by way of disavowal. If he knew it to be anecdotal, then why did he bring it up? I hardly need to point out the possible confounding circumstances that could account for that result. The strange set of priorities and values that someone must have to have in order for him or her to point out that this kind of case as something to be emulated is much more conspicuous, of course, than the methodological problems concerning it. I can still barely believe that he said this to an audience of university professors. It is hard for me to imagine what he thinks we are supposed to be doing, if he thinks that our goals include replacing office hours with the kind of pre-recorded (or even dynamically generated) presentation slides with commentary that his software generates.

Some people said that they would feel awkward about hearing themselves and saving recordings of themselves talking to students in front of the class. MG's response was that you can use the recordings as a way to improve public speaking. I am sure that there is this benefit to recording one's self. However, we already have tools to do that, never mind the fact that we are evaluated by our department chairs for that sort of thing; they sit in on a class and listen in. I think the point is that discussions with students in class are, for lack of a better term, personal and private. It's a conversation. Moreover, it can be rather intense.

Last year when MG gave this presentation, he was working on as a part of some kind of university incubator. Now he has made it into his own company. It seems clear that he has taken on the attitude that he needs to promote it, rather than that there ought to be a frank critical discussion about its limitations as well as benefits. The way that things are going in higher education, however, it looks like that is just the sort of thing that we can expect will not happen, while at the same time, these kinds of technological projects are pursued aggressively.

The Riot Act

Sat, 14 May 2005 01:36:26 GMT

As usual, there is much to tell, but not much time in which to tell it. I have to get writing. My trip to Baltimore was pretty intense. PA read me the riot act: this next chapter had better be good, and it had better get that way quickly, or else it is going to become really unlikely that I am going to finish.

So off to work I go!

Singing in the Bathroom

Mon, 09 May 2005 01:08:36 GMT

There is much to tell about my feelings and experiences on the last day of class this semester, but for now I will just relate one of them, which is not connected in particular with teaching.

As soon as I got on the train, I inquired of the conductor where the restroom was. "Five cars back," he said. I proceeded through the end portion of the train, which was empty; the cars there had not been opened yet. Finding the restroom locked, I sat down on the bench of seats across from it and waited.

After a few minutes of waiting, I heard some rustling sounds from inside the restroom, and I figured the person was about done. Then I heard the person singing---a brief portion of an aria, which I could not identify. It sounded quite good, in fact. It was a male voice.

Then, there was silence again for several minutes. I knocked on the door. "Is anyone in there?" I asked.

"Yes," the male voice replied.

"Well, there's a line out here," I replied. The line just consisted of me alone, but I thought that my reply had got the idea across.

I heard nothing for about five more minutes, at which point I heard some more snippets of the aria.

At this point, I figured my musical friend was not going to be done anytime soon, and I gave up. I wound my way back through the last five cars of the train; when I reached an open car, I saw the conductor. He asked me if I had found the bathroom.

"Yeah, but I didn't get to use it, because there was someone in it, singing, who wouldn't leave."

"What?" The conductor's tone clearly indicated that he believed that he had not properly heard what I was saying, and that his belief that I had just said that there was someone in there singing, who would not leave, was incorrect.

"There's someone in there, singing, who wouldn't leave."

"What?!" I suppose much can happen on a New Jersey Transit line, but apparently, this was a first for this conductor.

I repeated my statement. The conductor sighed, raised his eyebrows, and headed back into the empty cars, and, a few minutes later, returned, shepherding a small, round man in a blue t-shirt and jeans whose expression I could not read.

"It's free now," the conductor said, matter-of-factly."

The last week or two of class

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 02:40:23 GMT

As the last week or two of class approaches, I have been reflecting on teaching and life in the university more generally. As I may have said to some of you, it has been, in many ways, a disappointment. I will elaborate on this in greater depth in future entries. For now I will keep my comments brief.

Teaching has been one activity that I have been disappointed with. Perhaps it is just DU that is the problem. I do not see teaching as an activity that the university is fully committed to. I see the students as barely participating in their own education, and what is worse, I feel that my colleagues in other departments there have accepted this, and are happy with the situation. It is distressing to me. The tech support people seem more committed to discussing teaching, generating new ideas for it, bringing people together as teachers, and so on, as opposed to many of the faculty, who seem totally uninterested in teaching, and would never discuss it with me, even if I asked them about it.

Then there is the issue that the intellectual life of the humanities departments seems to consist of standing around in our office doors while people hold forth about how horrible George Bush is.

I miss Gilman Hall!