[Xmca-l] Re: What is science?: Where to start doctoral students?

Sat Nov 3 16:03:23 PDT 2018

Dear Valerie,

I am amazed that you manage to that kind of stuff in the Japanese academy.
Not a small feat for sure.

I wish you lots of success.

Wagner

On Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 7:46 PM ウィルキンソン ヴァレリ <vwilk@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp>
wrote:

> Dear Beth,
> I have spent my life in academia (At the Academy).  My first graduate
> school class was methods and resources.  That boils down to approaches and
> tools.  I personaly boiled it down to Information and Access.  In 2 short
> sentences: "How do you get to the information you need?  The coherent story
> of that is the research."  That time was the beginning of
> post-structuralism and feminism was on the rise.  New departments, new
> Faculties, new international exchanges.  I was defining myself as a
> Medievalist and Classicist.  At least I knew that I couldn't put
> "philospher" on my  "sheepskin" and besides there were too many words there
> already.  Many, many years later, I got the idea that I am a philologist.
> Anyway, the academic tangle got worse. I entered my PhD program in
> Comparative Literature (2 Masters required).
>
> Some first problems in the doctoral class on research "methods."
> Define "romanticism" "new criticism" "lebensraum" "aporia."  Each student
> was expected to give a report on their researches on a particular topic,
> which would definitely have a comparative, meta, cross, or trans
> perspective.  ((By the way, I liked "lebensraum" and think of it basically
> as context, culture, and so on. (What I need to be able to do my work and
> live my life!) But then I found out a couple of years ago that it was the
> biggest excuse  for Nazi expansion throughout Europe.  I suppose Alexander
> would have been delighted to know that there was a word like that by which
> he could take over the whole world.))
>
> Since I got wrapped up in the Ionian Enchantment (Consilience E.O. Wilson)
> because I read Gregory Bateson's Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, I was
> looking for a way to interpret literature allegorically with a scientific
> frame work.  In that process I became inevitably a GENERALIST and an
> allegorist. The best approach to life and literature (for me) is "the case
> study." A sound unit of analysis is the project. After I "specialized" in
> Thomas Malory's take on the Saracen Palomides compared to the Prose Romance
> (Old French) Palomydes I got on with my life as an English teacher in a
> Faculty of Informatics.  Jobs for Medievalists?  In Japan?  I have been
> wrestling with the challenge of framing  personal life facts and processes
> with the academic persona writing articles combined with teaching what
> "they" (interpret "they" as a group of Japanese academics on the board of
> directors of a Faculty in a National University) wanted me to teach along
> with what I believed needs to be transmitted/constructed "experientially"
> to/by students.  I have always had to deal with complexity, paradox,
> hypocrisy. routine, testing, evaluation in the daily administration of my
> duties, my personal finances, and the higher calling.
>
> You already have Kuhn.
>
> Experience and Education (John Dewey 1938)
> The Great Chain of Being (Arthur O. Lovejoy 1964)
> Consilience (E.O Wilson 1998)
> The Science of Qualitative Research (Martin Packer 2011/2016)
>
> Everyone has to grapple with probablity and statistics, but "they" have
> put those researchers beyond the reach of the sociologists and humanist and
> soft sciences because specialization has taken its toll.  When I visited
> University of Alberta in Edmonton in 2007 I was delighted to meet the
> Chairman of the Graduate School of Comparative Literature.  He personally
> did not have any doctoral candidates to whom I could be introduced.  It
> turned out that we could not really have a connected conversation. It seems
> that admissions to the program were suspended as July 1, 2016 and I have to
> got to Transnational and Comparative Literatures in the Department of
> Modern Languages and Cultural Studies.  Every doctoral candidate has become
> an adult and citizen in an interaction with their own life and society. The
> measuring out of requirements and disseration work, in the sciences 3
> years, in the humanities 3-7or8or9 years makes us quite different in our
> professional lives while still having to work together on committees.
>
> Two more books that I love and value:
> The Book of Tea (Okakura Kakuzo 1906)
> The Poem Itself (Stanley Burnshaw 1995)
>
>
> I should say, "Don't get me started!"
> Doctoral students need to talk to each other with a supervising professor
> who can critique, encourage, and challenge new direction.  We need creative
> and independent scholars who can hold their own in a relentlessly changing
> world.
> It's really hard to keep my web site up to date.
>
> Valerie Anne Wilkinson, PhD
> Professor of Communication
> Faculty of Informatics
> The Integrated Graduate School of Science and Technology
> Shizuoka University
> email: vwilk@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp
> tel.: 81(53)478-1529
> WEBPAGE:
> http://www.inf.shizuoka.ac.jp/english/labs/society_detail.html?UC=vwilk
> Most recent publication: Wilkinson, V. and Marsden, J. (2018) “Big Data
> Analytics and Corporate Social Responsibility: Making Sustainability
> Science Part of the Bottom Line”,*Proceedings of the **IEEE Professional
> Communications Society Conference*, July 23 - 25, Toronto, ON, Canada.
>
> ------Original Message------
> 差出人："Beth Ferholt"<bferholt@gmail.com>
> 宛先："eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"<xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
> ＣＣ：
> 件名：[Xmca-l] Re: What is science?: Where to start doctoral students?
> 日時：2018年11月02日(金) 00:29(+0900)
> Great. Kuhn and Thinking and Speech are two of the few things on my list
> already and I’ll start reading the other two, sensible or no, now! Thanks
> so much, Beth
>
> On Thursday, November 1, 2018, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
>>
>> Beth, much as a part of me would like to recommend the Preface to Hegel's
>> Phenomenology, being sensible I would still recommend:
>>
>>    1. The first chapter of Thinking and Speech
>>    https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/words/ch01.htm
>>    2. Marx's Method of Political Economy
>>    https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm#loc3
>>    3. And they should read Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific
>>    Revolutions
>>
>>    https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/kuhn.htm
>>
>> Who knows? You might be fostering an original thinker?
>> Andy
>> ------------------------------
>> Andy Blunden
>> http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
>> On 1/11/2018 11:43 PM, Beth Ferholt wrote:
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 10:09 AM Beth Ferholt <bferholt@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> I'm starting to take the role of advisor on doctoral dissertations and
>>>>>> wonder how best to begin to discuss "what is science?" with students who
>>>>>> will need to respond concisely when asked about the rigor and reliability
>>>>>> of their formative intervention, narrative and/or autobiographical studies.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm looking for an overview or paper that does more than argue the
>>>>>> value of one approach -- something to start them off thinking about the
>>>>>> issues, not immerse them in one perspective quite yet.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> If not an overview then maybe a paper that contextualizes "rigor" and
>>>>>> "reliability".
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Obviously this is an endless topic but do some people reading XMCA
>>>>>> have some favorite papers that they give to their advisees or use when they
>>>>>> teach a methods class?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks!
>>>>>> Beth
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Beth Ferholt
>>>>>> Associate Professor, Department of Early Childhood and Art Education;
>>>>>> Affiliated Faculty, CUNY Graduate Center
>>>>>> Brooklyn College, City University of New York
>>>>>> 2900 Bedford Avenue
>>>>>> <https://maps.google.com/?q=2900+Bedford+Avenue+Brooklyn,+NY+11210&entry=gmail&source=g>
>>>>>> Brooklyn, NY 11210
>>>>>> <https://maps.google.com/?q=2900+Bedford+Avenue+Brooklyn,+NY+11210&entry=gmail&source=g>
>>>>>> -2889
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Email: bferholt@brooklyn.cuny.edu
>>>>>> Phone: (718) 951-5205
>>>>>> Fax: (718) 951-4816
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>
> --
> Beth Ferholt
> Associate Professor, Department of Early Childhood and Art Education;
> Affiliated Faculty, CUNY Graduate Center
> Brooklyn College, City University of New York
> 2900 Bedford Avenue
> Brooklyn, NY 11210-2889
>
> Email: bferholt@brooklyn.cuny.edu
> Phone: (718) 951-5205
> Fax: (718) 951-4816
>
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