tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50497006227788245592024-03-19T05:38:50.882+01:00Diary of Dr. LogicSara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.comBlogger367125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-2882075669098033082020-07-09T15:37:00.002+02:002020-07-09T15:37:54.674+02:00Farewell, blogger<p>I've been happily blogging here for many years, until a month or two ago I discovered that blogger doesn't keep back-ups of draft posts, and I lost January - April of my "Wot I Read This Year 2020" draft post. Not cool, blogger, not cool.</p>
<p>So you can now find me at <a href="http://diaryofdoctorlogic.wordpress.com">diaryofdoctorlogic.wordpress.com</a>. See you there!</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-27982115535270431722020-05-27T22:59:00.002+02:002020-05-27T22:59:48.078+02:00Bob Ross and the Art of Learning Online<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOa3b5eJrRfHJGDDA9UKDlSyWyx2jIzVYwWV8_QEYHAE3KjrA7pd7IdUM1zbVxH5SkOyuQFNCHFC0D6DiwAK9grMbP6y5UZ0VUbjQkcT1xkU6HQb2NpX4AXoO0btSJPUP73SdtYq1AYo-W/s1600/trees1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOa3b5eJrRfHJGDDA9UKDlSyWyx2jIzVYwWV8_QEYHAE3KjrA7pd7IdUM1zbVxH5SkOyuQFNCHFC0D6DiwAK9grMbP6y5UZ0VUbjQkcT1xkU6HQb2NpX4AXoO0btSJPUP73SdtYq1AYo-W/s320/trees1.jpg" width="320" height="212" data-original-width="623" data-original-height="413" /></a></div>
<p>My 8yo and I both enjoy painting. She's a very enthusiastic artist, in all media, but is sometimes hampered by being eight. My painting experience is limited to <a href="http://scriptura-et-pictura.blogspot.com/">medieval illumination</a>, and has been very hard fought for over the last 12 years or so. (In particular, I'm utterly baffled by anything involving realism. And anything involving watercolors. Baffling, I tell you.)</p>
<p>A few weeks ago, we started watching Bob Ross on Netflix. After about 5 episodes, we were like "I bet we could do that!" -- despite the fact that (a) neither of us have any experience painting with oil paints, (b) we don't have any oil paints, (c) we don't have any canvases, and (d) we have almost none of the right brushes. But why let small hindrances like that stop us? I have a decent selection of gouaches, some high-quality watercolor paper that I was smart enough to purchase before lockdown started, and a decent selection of brushes for small-scale paintings. So we sat down one weekend to see what happens if you follow a Bob Ross episode and try to reconstruct it with entirely wrong materials and tools:</p>
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<p>The results were quite literally miraculous. I have never painting anything (a) so large (6x9") or (b) so realistic in my life. G, for her part, was amazed that if she tried to do the same things Ross was doing on TV, she got <i>basically the same results</i>.</p>
<p>The best part was, each painting only took half an hour. So this was something that I was willing to not only do with G on weekends as a special treat, but it was something we could plausibly fit in between supper and bedtime.</p>
<p>We took the techniques we'd learned and applied them to fall scenes:</p>
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<p>We tried out winter, too:</p>
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<p>All the while we worked, I'd hear G repeating back to me things she'd learned: Thin paint sticks to wet paint; things get darker as you come forward, away from the light source; there's no such thing as a mistake, only a happy accident; every happy little tree needs a friend. In like 2.5 hours of watching TV, she and I had learned more about the mechanics of painting than I'd learned in 12 years of self-teaching and a variety of classes. We've continued to watch (so soothing!) and we've continued to experiment.</p>
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<p>As should come as no surprise to anyone in academia, I'm facing the likelihood of having to teach remotely come fall -- and teach what is in many respects a highly visual subject (formal/symbolic logic). Teaching online/remotely isn't something I have any experience with -- my being dumped into the deep edge for the final week of term in March does <i>not</i> count as experience! -- and teaching logic presents unique complications that do not necessarily affect my colleagues in my department.</p>
<p>Which is the other reason why I found Bob Ross's shows so fascinating: How successful he was at teaching someone such a visual -- and physical -- exercise remotely in the way he did. It seems like this is something that should be enormously difficult. And yet, he did it effortlessly, <i>and</i> effectively. So what have I learned about the art of teaching/learning remotely/online from watching Bob Ross?</p>
<p><b>You don't need bells and whistles</b>. The shows are Ross, his canvas, his palate (already prepped with paints) and his brushes, brush stand, and cleaner. The background is dull black. There is no background music. It's just him, doing his thing. Super effective.</p>
<p><b>Break the fourth wall</b>. He's not teaching into a vacuum, he's teaching to a very real, very concrete (albeit not present) audience. When he asks his audience to send him photos of their attempts, he means it.</p>
<p><b>Care about your students</b>. It is obvious that Ross does; when he says "so glad you could join us today," he means it. When he hopes that we're happy with what we're doing, he means it. That real audience that he's clearly talking to is an audience whose happiness and wellbeing he cares about, and his shows are opened and closed with an explicit statement of that care.</p>
<p><b>Slip-ups are part of the game.</b> The shows were taped in one go, with no editing. Sometimes he misspeaks. He corrects himself and moves on. Sometimes he misspaints. He teaches the audience how to correct and move on.</p>
<p><b>Mistakes don't exist.</b> Or rather, things can happen that you didn't want to happen or didn't plan on happening, but none of them are ever significant enough to ruin things. He spent a lot of time talking about how to deal with these hiccoughs, so that there are no mistakes, only happy accidents.</p>
<p><b>Repetition works.</b> Any individual show didn't have much repetition, either in techniques, composition, or verbal phrases, but by the time you've watched *cough* 20+ episodes in two weeks *cough* they start feeling like little puzzles, built from the same basic pieces but combined in different ways. This is particularly noticeable in the way that he says the same things over and over again; this really does help reinforce the more global techniques that he's trying to impart.</p>
<p><b>30 minutes is a good length</b> <i>if</i> you are actively working alongside; if you're <i>not</i> either painting along, or paying very close attention, it's easy to zone out long enough to miss something crucial.</p>
<p>Is oil painting like doing logic? In many ways, not. The glory of his approach to painting is that so long as you're happy with the result, it's a success. That isn't the case with formal proofs. Another feature of his approach is that he's always encouraging people to work out their own idea of a scene, not slavishly copy his; what is true in his world may not be true in my world. That is another thing that isn't true of formal logic -- you don't get to decide what is right and what is wrong. But logic <i>does</i> benefit from lots of repetitions of the same techniques in different combinations; it benefits from starting in one direction and having it go wrong and needing to go another direction to recover. It benefits from having someone who cares about their subject, <i>and</i> their audience. It benefits from having someone convinced that just giving it a go will make you happier.</p>
<p>So there's a lot I've taken away from watching his shows that I intend to incorporate into logic videos that I'll be doing for fall.</p>
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<p>If you had told me 10 years ago, I could paint a painting like this (inspired by a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=2914846035269590&set=a.871207096300171&type=3&hc_location=ufi">photograph the father of a friend took</a>), I would have laughed at you. If you had told me 2 weeks ago, I could paint a painting like this, I would have laughed at you. If I tell you that you, <i>too</i>, can become a logician, and you want to laugh at me -- well, maybe you can follow along with my class remotely in fall.</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-80779352494726803482020-04-06T17:45:00.001+02:002020-04-06T17:45:38.533+02:00Short story birthday! "Candace Swallowed the Sea"<p>Back in January, I wrote an ocean-themed drabble for an ocean-themed drabble collection put out by <a href="blackharepress.com/">Black Hare Press</a>. It was a strange story, in that it basically all came out in one go and was weirdly surreal in a way that I don't normally write (I want my fantasy to MAKE SENSE and have an INTERNAL LOGIC and have a COMPLETELY BUILT WORLD!). I was a bit disappointed when the story was rejected, because I quite liked it, and also, when you've written a 100-word story on a specific theme and it isn't successful, it's not entirely clear what else you'll ever be able to do with it. (But I wasn't so disappointed when they accepted the next three stories I submitted -- more about that later this month!)</p>
<p>Then, about two weeks ago, I saw this <a href="https://maurayzmore.com/quarantine-quanta-a-drabble-contest/">drabble contest</a> hosted by Maura Yzmore. She was looking for 100 word short stories, not necessarily related to the pandemic. Hey, guess what! I had a 100 word story at loose ends! So I sent it off.</p>
<p>Three days ago, I was immensely pleased to be notified that "Candace Swallowed the Sea" received an <a href="https://maurayzmore.com/quarantine-quanta-a-drabble-contest/results-of-quarantine-quanta/">"honorable mention"</a> (and $10, making this story the highest-rate-paid piece I've ever sold :) ) in the realism/surrealism category. You can <a href="https://maurayzmore.com/quarantine-quanta-a-drabble-contest/results-of-quarantine-quanta/real-and-surreal-quanta/candace-swallowed-the-sea-by-sara-l-uckelman/">read the story here online</a> or download all the stories in a single collection (<a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WPEJ017knV1VoGQKh01mapUtS87GSz_n/view?usp=sharing">PDF</a>, <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E5oIDkauvZqJ5MT25Wo0Qm1bSkJZDbL_/view?usp=sharing">EPUB</a>, <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/1urtF71UNIEhpL3omZTzRoE6kdOds-Apk/view?usp=sharing">MOBI</a>.)</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-2359166478924091652020-03-26T12:33:00.001+01:002020-03-26T12:33:56.386+01:00Things I said I'd never do<p>I was homeschooled from kindergarten until 12th grade. So was my sister (the elder by 3 years). In the US in the 80s and 90s, this was only moderately unusual; in the Netherlands, people used to find my story marvelous and strange.</p>
<p>It started out with my parents (both college-educated, but neither in education/teaching) decided they could give me sister a better education at home than the public school could. The plan had always been to educate us at home in primary school, and then as we got older give the choice to us, to be homeschooled or go to public school. I'd always thought, when I was young, that I'd be homeschooled all the way up to high school and then go to actual high school, so that I could experience the social side of things. By the time 9th grade came around, my answer was "oh, hell, no", because (a) I didn't really like people, (b) home-schooling took a lot less time, and (c) being available during school hours meant my sister and I were highly sought after babysitters; in the mid 90s, I was making between $6-$10/hour babysitting.</p>
<p>Whenever I talked about being homeschooled, it was with nothing but positivity. I had the freedom to study what I wanted (in 9th grade, I discovered the Society for Creative Anachronism; my mom then assigned the Middle Ages for my history topic, and I had to develop my persona, research, design, and make clothing and food, and learn the history of my chosen period), I had the free time to do non-school things (cf. babysitting above; that's how I could afford my first year at university), and the self-teaching/self-organising skills it taught me were invaluable particularly during my PhD. But whenever anyone asked if I was planning to homeschool my own children, the answer was always "oh, hell, no". Because long before I ever had a kid, I knew that the optimal age of students for me to teach was 18+. I couldn't fathom trying to teach a child to read; my experience tutoring middle schoolers left me with a huge appreciation for people who could help those children navigate life <i>and</i> teach them something. Also, there was no way that I would give up my working life in order to properly homeschool a young child.</p>
<p>And yet, here we are...</p>
<p>As it happened, G was due to start Easter break the week the UK government shut down schools. So we're still in holiday mode and don't have to really think about schooling. Her teachers have already set up some online sites for remote teaching come April, and sent home a few workbooks. But in the meantime, I'm still trying to work and G does better with having activities, so here is what homeschooling looks like in the Uckelhaus:</p>
<ul>
<li>English: She needs to spend some time reading every day. I'm hoping to direct her towards some slightly more sophisticated books than what she has been reading, but I'm also fine with her just reading something every day. Next month, I'm doing a prompt-a-day poetry course, and I'm going to encourage her to write with me, so that covers writing.</li>
<li>Science: A week or so ago, I opened up a notebook from my childhood, and discovered systematic notes I took 30 years -- almost exactly the same age G is now -- on observations made about the attraction of different insects to different types of baits. Monday we set up a bait jar in the backyard, and she built a bug hotel, and she's doing daily observations, in the same notebook.</li>
<li>Mathematics: Tracking distances via PokemonGo when we go out for our daily walk, measuring and calculating with measures for cooking, and plenty of discussions on various topics over dinner (the other day, I taught her the sieve of Eratosthenes). She has also been writing up word problems for her stuffed toys, and has access to Times Tables Rockstars.</li>
<li>History: If things continue, I'll add in some nonfiction/history books to her reading repertoire, but honestly, I'm fine if this slides a bit.</li>
<li>Music: After about a year and a half, we finally purchased a stand and a stool for her keyboard, and set things up. She has (voluntarily!) spent time playing each day, practising pieces she'd been set by her teacher and composing new songs.</li>
<li>Languages: She's been doing German on duolingo for quite some time, and a friend has offered to skype with her and talk French, which we'll start doing after the break is over. Also, the FrogPlay account school set up for her has quizzes tests in German, even though that's not a language they teach at school, so she's enjoyed trying a few of those!</li>
<li>Art: Every day she's spent some time drawing freehand or following a how-to-draw video, and yesterday we painted together. There's also plenty of sewing to be done.</li>
</ul>
<p>This is more than sufficient education for an 8yo for the rest of the academic year. So, I guess I'm homeschooling!</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-6915121782567002392020-03-16T14:25:00.001+01:002020-03-16T14:44:50.247+01:00Dear students: We're all anxious and uncertain too<p>Dear students,</p>
<p>With only a few days' notice, all your in-person classes were cancelled, with promises of online content delivery instead. Your last week of term is in upheaval. All your plans, gone. And you have no idea what's going to happen, not this week, not during the break, not next term. Everything is uncertain, everything is anxiety-making.</p>
<p>Dear students, we're all anxious and uncertain, too. Many of us have never done online teaching before -- we don't know the software, we don't have the hardware, we never imagined we'd be doing this without months of preparation -- and those of us who were on strike last week have either had no time to think/prepare or had to break our strike to do so.</p>
<p>We're sitting in our offices today doing our best, trying our hardest to ensure your education is not disrupted more than it has to, learning new software, sourcing new hardware. We're constantly emailing colleagues, taking advantage of the offers of those who <i>have</i> done online teaching before to help us through Blackboard Collaborative Ultra, or Panopto, or even just simple things like "use a headset if you're able to" (one colleague even offered to come in and video my whiteboard if I need her to), we're chatting in WhatsApp groups designed to share best practices and provide moral support, we're passing tips on in googledocs and Facebook groups and Twitter.</p>
<p>I don't know how to teach logic without access to a whiteboard. I'm lucky enough that I (a) have a whiteboard in my office and (b) am (for the time being) still allowed into my office to access it. (If (b) changes before I can do my videos, I'll take my whiteboard home with me.) Over the weekend, I googled "how to take videos on linux", because so many of the options that are offered are for Windows computers only. I've found a programme that I'll test out this afternoon, figuring out where I can perch my laptop so that it's got a full view of the board but is still close enough to me that I don't accidentally topple it by being connected to it with a headset! If I can't do my videos in my office, I'm already mentally planning where there's space to set up at home...and how to keep random cat-butts out of the video. Whatever I end up with, it won't be pretty. It won't be flashy. It will not be optimal. But it will be as close to sitting in class with me as I can get, because I owe you that.</p>
<p>And then there's exams. We don't know what's going to happen with exams, any more than you do. Will we be given a chance to revise the exam questions, set way back in January? Is it possible to change the modes of assessment for a module -- to drop an exam or make it a take-home one instead of a timed one? If this were any country other than the UK, doing either of these would be easy -- of all the countries that I've worked in higher education in, only the UK is so bureaucratic about its exams and assessments. The lack of flexibility is stifling. I want to be able to examine my students on the material they have been taught, in a format that will best allow them to demonstrate to me what they have learned in my classes. Between the strikes and now Covid-19, I don't see how that is going to happen. No wonder I'm anxious.</p>
<p>The situation is so fast-changing, there's no way to say now what things will be like at the end of this week, much less at the start of next term. Which research deadlines will be postponed, and which ones won't be? When will schools and holiday camps and clubs be closed, and I have to start juggling all of this along with taking care of my child? How can I do my best by her in this difficult and uncertain time? How can I do my best by my students? I want to be able to give you all reassurances, but I can't. I can't say everything will be all right or that we'll figure it out or that in the long run it'll all work out.</p>
<p>Dear students, I wish we had more answers for you. I wish you weren't in this situation, especially those of you in your final year, who've had far more disruption to your education than any other cohort in at least a generation. We're doing our best, and will continue to do so. I know you're anxious and uncertain; we are too. We're all in this together.</p>
<p>Take care, and wash your hands!,
<br/>Doctor Logic</p>
<p>--
<br/>Dr. Sara L. Uckelman
<br/>Assistant professor of logic and philosophy of language
<br/>Durham University</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-48896338373759504122020-03-07T13:28:00.003+01:002020-03-07T13:28:41.674+01:00The most pernicious fallacy<p>UK Higher Ed loves metrics. REF. TEF. KEF. QS rankings. (I've <a href="https://diaryofdoctorlogic.blogspot.com/2020/01/resolution-read-week-3.html">written before</a> about other types of rankings we might consider...)</p>
<p>Of course, there is no easy way to collate and evaluate the data necessary to make these different type of ranking systems robust. The QS rankings are made by surveying academics about their perceptions of other departments. I received a request to participate in this manner a few years ago, took a look at the survey, realised how entirely inadequate my knowledge was to allow me to give informed responses, and promptly decided to never contribute to these surveys ever again. Plenty has been said about how graduate earnings and employability are no indication of the teaching quality of the course the person graduated from, and neither is student satisfaction, and yet these are all factors that are taken into account in the TEF. I don't know enough about KEF to say anything about the methods it uses, but I'm sure they're just as problematic.</p>
<p>But in this post, I want to talk about REF and the proxies it uses.</p>
<p>The point of REF is to grade the research outputs of individual departments as a means of determining how to allocate money to departments, rewarding ones that are good and punishing ones that are bad. In an ideal world, the research produced would be read carefully and evaluated by panels of experts who have sufficient time and expertise to do this, and are commensurately recompensed for it. We all know that we're not in an ideal world, and that this doesn't happen: There are insufficient experts on the panels and they are given insufficient time to be able to read and evaluate all the work they're given in a careful and calm manner. This isn't something unique to REF and REF panels too -- it's the case any time research has to be evaluated, e.g., by promotions and progression committees, or on grant evaluation panels, or on hiring panels.</p>
<p>As a result, proxies have to be developed. Even though people are not supposed to take publication venue into account when determining the research quality of a piece, the fact remains that <i>venue matters</i>. After all, <i>Philosophical Quarterly</i> is a highly prestigious journal, accepting only a very small percentage of submissions it receives -- so if a paper has managed to jump that high bar, it must be a good paper, right?</p>
<p>But the fact is, the prestige of a journal is a supervening property, not something endemic to a journal. A journal receives its high prestige <i>from the quality of the papers it publishes</i>. That this is the case can be clearly demonstrated: If a currently high-prestige journal started publishing rubbish, then the consequence of this would be that the prestige level of the journal would decrease, rather than the quality of the papers increase (to match the quality/prestige of the journal).</p>
<p>And yet, because the prestige of the publication venue is all too often taken as a proxy for the quality of what is published in that venue, too often people become susceptible to what I have entitled in this post the <b>most pernicious fallacy</b>: The way to demonstrate the quality of your research is not by writing high-quality papers, but to publish them in prestigious journals. Because if your paper was in a prestigious journal, it must be a good paper, right? We have gone from journals deriving their prestige from the quality of the papers in them, to papers deriving their quality from the prestige of the journal that published them.</p>
<p>Why is this problematic? Because it treats publication as an end in itself rather than a means to an end, that end being the dissemination of research. When I am doing research myself, in preparation for writing an article, where do I go to find relevant papers? <i>Not</i> to the high-prestige journals, in general; no, I go to the journals that specialise in the area that I am working in, because these are the papers that are going to be relevant to what I want to do. Similarly, when I publish, I want to publish in venues that tend to publish other papers on the same sort of topics -- because this increases the chances that the people I would like to have read my paper will actually do so.</p>
<p>As a result of this, I have tended to publish papers in specialist journals in my field -- journals which, quite rightly, have a high prestige in their respective fields because of the quality of the specialist papers they publish, places like the <i>Journal of Philosophical Logic</i> for logic and <i>Vivarium</i> for medieval philosophy. But because these are specialist journals, rather than generalist journals, if these venues are taken as proxy for the quality of my papers that I've published in them, they get ranked lower than the generalist journals -- because if my paper were <i>truly</i> high-quality research, then <i>of course</i> a generalist journal would want to publish it. Now, that may be true: Maybe <i>Philosophy</i> and <i>Mind</i> and <i>Philosophical Quarterly</i> and the like are equally likely to publish philosophical logic or medieval philosophy as another subarea of philosophy (I have my doubts about this, but I'm happy to suppose that it's true for the purposes of example here). But is it equally likely that people interested in philosophical logic or medieval philosophy will go first to those journals to find the new, relevant research for their own projects? No.</p>
<p>And that's what I meant about publication becoming an end in itself rather than a means to an end. If the publication venue prestige determines the quality of the paper, for the purposes of rankings/evaluations such as REF, promotion, grant applications, job applications, etc., then getting a paper published in, e.g., <i>Mind</i> is an end in itself, even if the paper then dies a lonely, unread death because no one would ever think to look there to find a paper on that topic. If it is the journal that endows high quality upon the papers it publishes, rather than the papers published in a journal endowing high quality upon that journal, then whether anyone <i>reads</i> or <i>uses</i> the research becomes irrelevant: the actual research, and its actual quality, becomes irrelevant.</p>
<p>When we tell junior colleagues, ones applying for jobs, or applying for promotions, or trying to put together a good REF package, that they should be submitting their work to the high prestige journals, because those are the ones that will "count", then we are falling prey to this pernicious fallacy. We should never forget that the quality of a research paper lies in the paper itself, <i>not</i> in the venue that publishes it.</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-4961002490410614902020-02-21T14:09:00.000+01:002020-02-21T14:09:47.294+01:00New publication announcement!<p>My short story, <a href="http://www.withpaintedwords.com/view_submission.php?news_id=1413">"What Lies Beneath the Waves"</a>, was published yesterday in <i>With Painted Words</i>, an online magazine with an unusual modus operandi: "every month a new image is chosen as a prompt and, for that month, all submissions must have used it as their inspiration – no matter how slight, vague or metaphorical it is there must be some form of link between the image and the work." The prompt for January 2020 was a couple of brightly covered starfish beneath rippling waves. During January, I took part in <a href="https://wendyprattpoetry.com/">Wendy Pratt</a>'s daily poetry prompt course, on the theme of Beginnings and Endings. Despite being a poetry course, short flash fic was also encouraged, and the prompt one day was to write a story about a childhood game gone wrong. This story is not the sort I usually write, but I enjoyed the double challenge – to write a story inspired by the image and to write to a specific topic/brief.</p>
<p>The best part about the starfish image is that it <i>also</i> inspired my daughter – I explained to her what I was doing, and she too wanted to write a story inspired by that picture. It turned into a joint effort, and we have Big Plans afoot for it. Watch this space!</p>
<p>I'm definitely going to be writing more for <i>WPW</i>.</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-28620946419529551242020-02-18T17:37:00.000+01:002020-02-18T17:37:20.383+01:00Resolution Read, Week 8: Are Aliens Incompatible with Christian Salvation?<p>So last week I read up on <a href="http://diaryofdoctorlogic.blogspot.com/2020/02/resolution-read-week-7-would-aquinas.html">whether Aquinas would baptise aliens</a>. Following in that theme, this week I'm reading:</p>
<blockquote><p>Christian Weidemann, "Christian Soteriology and Extraterrestrial Intelligence", <i>Journal of the British Interplanetary Society</i> 67, nos. 11/2 (2014): 418-425.</p></blockquote>
<p>Per the abstract, this article is going to argue that the classical Christian doctrine of salvation is incompatible with the belief in non-human, extraterrestrial intelligence. This is a stronger claim than Lazzari's that we considered last week, which was simply that because Christ's incarnation as a human is a specifically human thing, if aliens do not share our human essence/nature, then human baptism would do nothing for them, leaving open the possibility that there are other ways that non-human intelligent beings could be saved. I'm curious to see why Weidemann thinks that the possibility of human salvation <i>by itself</i> is enough to exclude the existence of non-human extra-terrestrial intelligences. (In particular, I'm interested to see how he excludes aliens but <i>not</i> angels.)</p>
<p>Weidemann quotes Thomas Paine, "to believe that God created a plurality of [inhabited] worlds...renders the Christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous" (p. 418), and now I want to write a paper called "On the Plurality of Inhabited Worlds". I wonder if Paine is where Lewis got his title from? Anyway, Paine argues that there are other inhabited worlds, and hence Christianity is "ridiculous". I wonder if Weidemann is going to modus tollen's Paine's argument, and go from the non-ridiculousness of Christianity to our sole existence in the universe. We'll see. First, let's look at Paine's argument.</p>
<p>Paine's argument is the following dilemma: If there are multiple inhabited worlds in the universe, then either God was incarnated on in one, or he was incarnated in all of them. (The case in which he is incarnated into some, but not all, ends up being functionally equivalent to the first one). In the first case, Paine argues that it would be "a strange conceit" to think that out of all the inhabited worlds out there, either ours was the only one that had a fall event or, if multiple ones did, ours is the only one where Christ became incarnate. What makes us so special? In the second case, assuming that multiple worlds had fall events, then Christ would "have nothing to do than travel from world to world in an endless succession of deaths with scarcely a momentary interval of life" (p. 418). Both of these options, Paine believes, gives rise to absurdity.</p>
<p>But this overlooks a genuine third alternative, which we saw in my previous post -- there is more than one way that God could choose to save a fallen alien species. Maybe some get incarnations. Maybe some are gifted grace. Maybe others get something so far beyond our ken we cannot even articulate it. Now, this may itself raise the question of "why does he choose to do it one way here and another way there?" and answering that question may yet also lead us to absurdity, but it is important to point out that Paine reaches his conclusion too quickly.</p>
<p>In pursuit of <i>his</i> conclusion, Weidemann next turns to the orthodoxy expressed at the council of Chalcedon, namely, that Christ is both "truly God and truly man". He says he will argue that people who take this doctrine seriously should be concerned that the existence of non-human aliens "would undercut (their) religious beliefs" (p. 418). This...worries me. First, I hope he's not about to say that being truly God and truly man excludes Christ from being, e.g., truly Martian too. (It would be hard to see how omnipotence would <i>not</i> allow for Christ to have a plurality of natures.) Second, I hope he's not about to say that the Chalcedonian orthodoxy, because it is "still binding for the Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and for more traditional forms of Protestantism" (p. 418) is thereby <i>true</i>.</p>
<p>I was right when I hypothesized above that Weidemann would modus tollens's Paine's modus ponens. In the first stage of his argument, he gives "a ten step argument for the claim that God's salvation extends to extraterrestrial intelligent beings" (p. 419). I won't quote the argument here, but merely comment on the various steps.</p>
<p>The first step that I find interesting is his invoking of the Principle of Mediocrity (a principle which finds a warm, welcoming spot in my heart): If there are many intelligent species in the universe, humans most likely to not occupy any special position w.r.t. moral goodness, intelligence, technology, etc. Therefore, if we fell, it's highly probable that it wasn't because we're special in any particular way (e.g., highly susceptible to sin), but because <i>all</i> intelligent species are liable to sin. The rest of the steps all seem pretty reasonable to me, though the connection between many of them is one of probability rather than necessity. Still, given what I've said in my previous post, I'm happy with the idea that there are multitudinous extraterrestrial beings God wants to -- and hence does -- save. I am pleased to see that Weidemann explicitly admits the possibility that different types of reconciliations exist for different types of intelligent beings (p. 419); so far, so good.</p>
<p>The next step of the argument is to show that if we accept the first part, namely that God does save myriad other intelligent beings, "adopting a Christian soteriology will lead to one of three equally unacceptable consequences" (p. 420):</p>
<ol>
<li>Extraterrestrials sinners are reconciled by the incarnation on Earth.</li>
<li>Extraterrestrials are reconciled by incarnation elsewhere.</li>
<li>Extraterrestrials are reconciled by some other means.</li>
</ol>
<p>I think Lazzari has successfully dispensed with possibility (1), if we adopt a Thomistic metaphysics. Thus, I'll be concentrating on why Weidemann thinks (2) and (3) are "unacceptable".</p>
<p><b>Why can't extraterrestrials be saved through their own personal incarnation?</b> Weidemann appeals to the uniqueness of Christ's death: "We know, however, that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him" (Romans 6:9). Well, this isn't <i>quite</i> uniqueness, but rather finality -- all we can take from the Romans verse is that once Christ has died on earth, he will not die again. But let's ignore the possibility that he had numerous other deaths that happened previously, and did not result in him having dominion over death. Suppose that he's right, that once Christ has died once, he cannot die again, and hence any other incarnation event is excluded. The problem is that if we accept this, we must accept that there is some special or unique status that humans have such that when Christ is incarnated <i>as a human</i>, this gives him the power of dominion over death. If we accept this, we must reject the Principle of Mediocrity: For then humanity/human nature is <i>not mediocre at all</i>, but extremely distinctive!</p>
<p>I'd also like to suggest a possibility that Weidemann doesn't appear to have considered: Given that God is omnitemporal, why couldn't Christ have been raised from the dead simultaneously in all incarnations, and that it is this manifold incarnation, death, and resurrection that gives him the ultimate power over death, such that he will never die any more? So I think (2) is still a live option, though Weidemann feels he's adequately discarded it. That leaves him with (3).</p>
<p><b>Why can't extraterrestrials be saved through some means other than incarnation?</b> For this, Weidemann appeals to <i>God's Act of Solidarity</i>, namely, that "God's incarnating, suffering, and dying is the greatest possible (perhaps the only possible) act of solidarity with his creation" (p. 420). The only justification for this claim is that it is "essentially for the traditional Christian believer" and "abandoning [it] means abandoning traditional Christianity" (p. 420). This is not true. Let me raise again the possibility that all the incarnations, deaths, and resurrections happened simultaneously. Would not <i>this</i>, as opposed to a single incarnative act that excludes the vast majority of intelligent life in the universe, be the greatest possible act of solidarity? An act that is truly in solidarity with <i>all</i> creation, and not just created humans? I do not know of anything in Christian theology that requires that God's Act of Solidarity be in solidarity with humanity only, and assuming that it is begs the question not only against the Principle of Mediocrity (by giving humanity a special status amongst all of creation) but against the possibility at hand, that extra terrestrial intelligences can be saved as well.</p>
<p>In the next section, Weidemann turns to consider objections to the various steps in the argument, and I look forward to seeing whether he touches upon the points I've raised above. At first, I thought he did, as he brought up the Principle of Mediocrity. However, he in fact uses the PM, rather than rejecting it, in his dismissal of option (1), which we were happy to assent to. Furthermore, he says:
<blockquote><p>Correspondingly, is there any analogous evidence trumping PM that Earth plays a special role in God's plan for cosmic salvation?...I do not think so (p. 421).<p></blockquote>
<p>Therefore, rejecting PM in order to deal with the objections I raise above will not be an option for Weidemann.</p>
<p>Concerning option (2), the first objection that Weidemann considers -- that Paul in writing Romans, and other Biblical authors who express similar sentiments, took it for granted that they were writing to a human audience, and therefore didn't, but could have, restrict their statement to "he will not die again <i>on earth</i>" -- is not my objection. However, Weidemann does appear to address my objection when he says, again with appeal to the Confession of Chalcedon, that "simultaneous incarnations are metaphysically impossible" (p. 421). His argument for this? Why, simply that "since the relation of identity is transitive...Jesus of Nazareth is personally identical with his counterparts at Alpha Centauri, Kronos, and numerous other places" (p. 421). The problem with this argument is that -- as is well known -- identity does not work in God the same way it does in created things, not unless you want to end up in paralogism. In fact, as an anonymous medieval author that I discussed in <a href="http://www.illc.uva.nl/cms/Research/Publications/Dissertations/DS-2009-04.text.pdf">in my dissertation</a> points out, when we distinguish personal and essential identity from formal identity, it is quite clear that personal identity is reflexive and symmetric, but is <i>not</i> transitive. God the Father is personally identical with God, and God the Son is personally identical with God, but it does not follow that God the Father is personally identical with God the Son. Therefore, we are under no obligation to accept that Jesus of Nazarath is <i>personally</i> identical with his counterparts in other worlds, even if all of these incarnate person are personally identical with God.</p>
<p>Next, Weidemann objects, against simultaneous incarnation, that no one thing can be both wholly human and wholly Klingon at the same time -- it is metaphysically impossible. But since it is also metaphysically for one thing to be both wholly human and wholly divine at the same time (which is precisely what the Chalcedonian doctrine says is true), I hardly think this is a strong objection.</p>
<p>Thus, we can maintain that we <i>can</i> straightforwardly accept that once Christ died and was resurrected, he would never die again -- he just died infinitely many times simultaneously.</p>
<p>Let us now finally consider Weidemann's objections to the idea that there are other means of extraterrestrial salvation, and whether he addresses my suggestion that the greatest act of solidarity would involve <i>all</i> creation, not humanity alone, especially in the presence of the Principle of Mediocrity. Interestingly, Weidemann suggests, by appeal to PM that if every intelligent species had its own method of salvation, well, then one of them had to have been incarnated, so why not ours? There's nothing special -- or not special -- about us that would make it <i>less</i> likely for us to be incarnated as opposed to any other species. As he says: "Some way of salvation God had to choose. The actual outcome is nothing to be stunned about" (p. 423). But perhaps we <i>should</i> be stunned at the diversity of options, when there is a perfectly plausible (as argued above) singular option, whereby every species is reconciled via incarnation. As it turns out, Weidemann thinks we have other reasons to be stunned by the fact of the human incarnation "against other means of redemption" (p. 423), because (he believes) it is unique, "one of the most remarkable events in the history of the cosmos" (p. 423). Given that it did happen, we can be surprised that it happened to us rather than to any of the other possible species.</p>
<p>But this assumes, contra what we've argued above, that the greatest act of solidarity with creation is the reconciliation of humanity. And if we reject that, then we do not have to reject either the rest of Christian theology, <i>or</i> the belief in the pervasiveness of extra-terrestrials. Win!</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-35636228331499495882020-02-14T17:18:00.003+01:002020-02-16T12:42:33.370+01:00Resolution Read, Week 7: Would Aquinas Baptise Aliens?<p>This week's Resolution Read is a bit of a cheat. It's a paper that's been sitting on my desktop for ages because it has a great title, but which was so far removed from anything I do that I knew I'd never get a Round Tuit. Which actually makes it the perfect paper for a Resolution Read, since the whole point of the not-a-resolution was to give me as many Tuits in whichever shape is most pleasing that I need to read papers like this. So why did I pick this paper this week, and why is it a bit of a cheat? Because I was recently shared a call for papers on <a href="https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-iGaXe1XxLtM0dnclUxcmYzaUpBTnJNZ1ZuY08yWFQzbTA4/view">Theological Explorations in Time and Space</a>, and it occurred to me that if I read something about aliens, I might have something to say on the topic. So...<i>maybe</i> this will end up being research related? Who knows! That's the whole point of reading these things!</p>
<p>The paper in question is:</p>
<blockquote><p>Edmund Michael Lazzari, "Would St. Thomas Aquinas Baptize an Extraterrestrial?" <i>New Blackfriars</i> 99, no. 1082 (2018): 440-457, DOI:10.1111/nbfr.12319.</p></blockquote>
<p><b>Point The First</b> I want to make: The idea of there being intelligent extraterrestrials is probably less unrealistic for Aquinas than it is for (some) modern people -- this is because Aquinas's ontology includes angels, which <i>by definition</i> are non-terrestrial intelligences who live in the heavens (at least, some of them do). Once you've got both humans and angels in your ontology, expanding it to include the possibility extra-terrestrial beings (like angels) who are rational (like humans) should be a no brainer.</p>
<p>Lazzari poses the initial question he considers thusly: "the question of fallen extraterrestrials who do not share the human nature assumed by Christ is an interesting and important one for contemporary theologians" (p. 440). <b>Point The Second</b> that I would like to make: Even if we're happy admitting extraterrestrials into our ontology, why would we think that they have to be fallen? For there are two options: One, Adam and Eve's transgression is not species-specific, but infects beyond the bounds of humanity. Two, Adam and Eve's transgression <i>is</i> species-specific, so the only way there could be <i>fallen</i> aliens is if they experienced their own fall. If the former option is the case, one might ask why their sin spreads to extraterrestrials but not to, say, animals. If the latter option is the case, then what is to prevent Christ from assuming their nature and providing them with the same act of salvation?</p>
<p>Anyway, onto the actual paper. In the first section, Lazzari establishes that, on Thomist metaphysics, if "intelligent extraterrestrial life forms" have "radically different matter than human beings", then they do not have human natures, because human nature is hylomorphic, and if you change the matter you no longer have the same nature, but that if they are in fact intelligent (able to receive intelligible universals), then this "is a guarantee of an immortal soul" (p. 445). So much for metaphysics.</p>
<p>In section two, Lazzari moves on to theology. Because theology, unlike metaphysics, relies so much on revelation, any theological conclusions we draw about aliens will be necessarily speculative (absent any divine revelation that specifically addresses aliens!) And here Lazzari addresses my concerns about fallen aliens, by pointing out two important things: First, if the aliens weren't fallen, it wouldn't make sense to talk about their soteriology, so there'd be no point in writing this paper. Second, if the aliens have fallen, there's no reason why they shouldn't have their <i>own</i> fall event (so, the two options I outlined above in fact should be <i>three</i>). Indeed, Lazzari argues that according to Aquinas, <i>it is not possible</i> that the fallen of humanity could have caused the aliens to fall too:</p>
<blockquote><p>Any fall of extraterrestrial life could not be caused by human beings in the theology of St. Thomas Aquinas. While other theologians in the Christian tradition have a strong belief in the fall of human beings introducing disharmony into the cosmos, St. Thomas holds that the natures of other animals were not changed by the fall...Therefore, it is not the case that the fall
of extraterrestrial life can be included under the same fault as the
fall of humanity (p. 447).</p></blockquote>
<p>So, if the aliens had their own fall event, Lazzari says this could've happened in two ways: It could be that Alien Adam and Alien Eve fell just as Human Adam and Human Eve did. <i>Or</i>, it could be that Alien Adam and Alien Eve metaphorically eschewed the apple, and it was one of their descendants that fell. In this latter case, "it would be possible for some of the species to be in need of salvation and some to still have that right relationship with God" (p. 448).</p>
<p>From this conclusion, Lazzari moves on to Section III, in which he argues that since humanity's fall cannot have caused the alien's fall, humanity's salvation cannot be the alien's salvation. This is because the redemptive act for humanity involved Jesus taking on <i>human</i> nature, not alien nature. However, while "it was fitting that the Incarnation occur because human nature was in need of salvation and it is by the Incarnation that humanity is saved...it could have happened another way" (pp. 448-449). This leaves open the possibility that some other redemptive act -- whether Incarnation or not -- is available to redeem the aliens.</p>
<p>Given this, I find it strange that Lazzari's conclusion in this section is that "Since baptism is the remedy of original sin for human beings, it seems as though one must have a human nature to undergo baptism" (p. 451). It is not clear why baptism couldn't be a part of the remedy of original sin in other beings as well. While it is true that if one is a human being, then one must be baptised in order to be saved, it doesn't follow that if one is baptised (in order to be saved), one must be a human being.</p>
<p>Lazzari opens section 4 with:</p>
<blockquote><p>The sacrificial life of Jesus Christ redeemed those who have a human nature and are incorporated into His sacrifice by baptism. Because of the crucial role that assumption of a human nature plays in Chalcedonian and Thomistic soteriology, it is not possible to simply transfer the effects of the life of Jesus Christ to other intelligent beings who are not sharers in human nature" (p. 451).</p></blockquote>
<p>The question I immediately have is: Why must Jesus have <i>only one</i> sacrificial life? What is to prevent him from becoming Incarnate as human, to save humanity, and <i>then</i> later (or earlier!) becoming Incarnate as alien, to same alienity? We don't need to be able to transfer "the effects of the life of Jesus Christ" to other natures, if there is nothing to prevent him from having had another life, with another nature. And since he is, you know, <i>God</i>, and omnipotent, and there doesn't seem to be anything self-contradictory in his being incarnated more than once, I don't see why this isn't an option for Lazzari (and for Jesus).</p>
<p>Well, Lazzari considers this in his survey of options offered by other authors: "The second is that there would be an Incarnation for every intelligent species which fell from grace" (p. 451). Lazzari's rejection of this position appears to be on the basis that it is one that is held by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who also argued for the "(heretical concept of) the inevitable and universal domain of sin" (p. 453). But I don't see that there being an Incarnation for every species that fell from grace entails that every species fell or will fall from grace -- so just because Teilhard de Chardin maintains one heretical view it doesn't follow that all his views are heretical. It appears that the other objection one would have to the one-incarnation-per-distinct-fall response is that (quoting Teilhard), it would "still [be] the same sacrifice, at all times and in all places" (p. 453) -- i.e., that Jesus's sacrifice as a man would be <i>essentially the same</i> as his sacrifice as an alien. But that presupposes that the essential <i>distinction</i> of human nature from alien nature is not enough to differentiate the sacrifices -- for indeed, the human sacrifice saves humanity, while the alien sacrifice saves alienity. How on earth can these then be "the same sacrifice", if they involve distinct natures and have distinct consequences?</p>
<p>As far as I can tell, Lazzari doesn't give us a reason to reject the one-incarnation-per-distinct-fall position, he merely argues that such a position is not <i>necessary</i> ("for there is nothing preventing God from simply forgiving without satisfaction" p. 456), and further calls it "highly unfitting" because "the Incarnation is such an important and pivotal event in the universe that it would not be fitting for such an event to be repeated" (p. 455). (Why can't one argue the contrary: It is such an important enough, it should be maximally repeated, to infinity!?)</p>
<p>But these concerns are to some extent beside the point. The question was, would Aquinas baptise aliens? It appears that in the absence of evidence that aliens shared in our human nature or that Jesus was also incarnated with an alien nature, the answer is "No, he wouldn't." Baptism is specifically tied to the rehabilitation of fallen human natures <i>via</i> a redemptive act that involved Jesus taking on such a human nature. Without the relevant redemptive act or participation in the relevant nature, baptism would be irrelevant for an alien.</p>
<p>A final comment on the paper: It was very weird to read a paper in <i>New Franciscan</i> that discusses Aquinas and <i>doesn't have a single quote in Latin</i>. (References are given to Latin texts, but no actual quotes.)</p>
<p>Edited to add: When I said "New Franciscan" I mean "New Blackfriars". I can never remember what color which order wears...</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-20499291657300229102020-02-07T17:32:00.003+01:002020-02-07T17:32:55.220+01:00Resolution Read, Week 6: Early Modern Women Philosophers<p>Whoever would've thought it'd be so hard to read <i>one</i> item of my own choice (rather than dictated by deadlines or teaching) per week? Uh, well, me, which is why this was not-a-resolution.</p>
<p>However, at the end of another busy week I had 30 minutes to spare, so I picked up something I'd downloaded a few days earlier:</p>
<blockquote><p>Eileen O'Neill, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3811122">"Early Modern Women Philosophers and the History of Philosophy"</a>, <i>Hypatia</i> 20, no. 3 (Summer, 2005): pp. 185-197</p></blockquote>
<p>Why did I download this? Because Wednesday I needed to suggest some potential referees for a paper on a 19th C woman philosopher, and went to google. What I found was interesting: In the context of people who are interested in rehabilitating the history of women in philosophy, a disproportionate amount of time is spent on the 17th and 18th century. I found almost <i>nothing</i> that focused on the 19th century. (This gives me some hope that the paper I submitted on Tuesday will find a niche to fill -- but also makes me sad that it'll be basically impossible to find any other philosopher who has written on this particular woman before.)</p>
<p>Why focus on women philosophers in the 17th and 18th century? Well, certainly one benefit is that this is a period in which women were increasingly writing more and more, <i>and</i> writing more and more in readable vernaculars. (I mean, no one disputes that medieval women philosophers and mystics were also writing in the vernacular, but more people probably know medieval Latin than Middle English, Middle French, or Old German. And compared to any of these languages, Early Modern English and Early Modern/Modern French are much more accessible.) Another reason people focus on these women is, as O'Neill notes, that their importance is demonstrated "by the numerous editions and translation of their texts that continued to appear into the nineteenth century" (p. 186). Not only that, but there were large numbers of men philosophers who wrote on these 17th- and 18th-century women in the 19th century, thus further contributing to them being a part of a longer conversation.</p>
<p>One wonders, therefore, where the 19th-century women fit into this. Were the men reading and commentating on women of the previous centuries alone, or were they in dialogue with women as well? And where are the 20th-century men discussing the works of 19th-century women? For the former question, O'Neill gestures towards a negative answer: "by the nineteenth century, much of the published material by women once deemed philosophical no longer seemed so" (p. 186). This idea that what women were doing in this period is not philosophy appears to be reinforced in Mary Warnock's choice of whom to include in her anthology of 17th-21st C women philosophers, based on an underlying conception of what philosophy is that O'Neill criticises on pp. 191-192.</p>
<p>The gap in the market for discussions of 19th-century women philosophers is noted by O'Neill in her paper: when
<blockquote><p>in the mid-1990s a publishing company decided to produce a supplement for one of its reference works on philosophy...a feminist philosopher who was on the editorial board had encouraged the press to include in the supplement a number of entries on women philosophers...It was never explained to me...no women philosophers from the nineteenth century were included (p. 190)</p></blockquote>
<p>Hopefully, things have improved in the last 15 years, and this gap no longer exists.</p>
<p>In the end, why did I read a paper on early modern women philosophers, when the woman philosopher I was interested in lived at the end of the 19th/beginning of the 20th century? In part because there is no such corresponding paper for that period, and reading O'Neill's paper gave me space for interesting reflections as to why.</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-91424563602938159632020-01-17T16:08:00.001+01:002020-01-17T16:08:34.310+01:00Resolution Read Week 3<p>This week's read is:</p>
<blockquote><p>Mark Erickson, Paul Hanna, & Carl Walker, (2020), "The UK higher education senior management survey: a statactivist response to managerialist governance", <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03075079.2020.1712693">Studies in Higher Education</a>; <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338606700_The_UK_Higher_Education_Senior_Management_Survey_a_statactivist_response_to_managerialist_governance">preprint here</a>.</p></blockquote>
<p>It's dire.</p>
<p>Following in the footsteps of UK Higher Education's desire to put metrics on everything, the authors produced and ran the first "Senior Management Survey" (SMS), "investigating satisfaction with senior managers and university governance" (p. 1). Over 5000 academics responded (I have a suspicion, unconfirmed, that I was one of them; I seem to remember taking such a survey at the time the authors say they were gathering data), with the primary result being that the mean satisfaction score across all universities that had at least 25 responses (78 universities in total) was 10.54%.</p>
<p><b>10.54%</b>.</p>
<p><b>Dire</b>.</p>
<p>Of course the first thing I did, when the reference came across twitter, was search to see where my own university falls. I was rather shocked to find it was no. 3 on the table, but less shocked when I saw that the highest satisfaction score of any surveyed university was 36.60%. That's <i>still</i> pretty dire.</p>
<p>The authors quote, anonymously, one free-text response to their survey:</p>
<blockquote><p>We hold students accountable (through marking and attendance monitoring), students hold us accountable (through teaching evaluations and NSS), senior management holds us accountable. Why do we not get to evaluate senior management in the same way students get to evaluate us, and why can’t these necessary metrics carry at least some weight? (p. 8)</p></blockquote>
<p>This I think hits the nail directly on the head, and is reflective of the problematic balance of power that UK HEs currently have to deal with. There is little, if any, recourse (beyond <a href="http://ucu.org.uk/">union activism</a>) that academics have to the increasing erosion of their working conditions through systemic mismanagement.</p>
<p>A few things stood out to me, reading this paper:</p>
<p>Firstly, "academics are estimated to be one of the most surveilled groups in history" (p. 3). Working in academia, you tend to get inured to the constant measurement that is done. Of your research quality, of your student satisfaction (which is NOT teaching quality!), of your intrinsic value as a person (I jest...or do I). But this statement made me pause for a moment and reflect on the fact that I can't think of <i>any</i> such metrics that my partner, a computer scientist in industry, is subjected to. It also made me remember <a href="https://www.facebook.com/sara.uckelman/posts/10156393680132809">this FB post</a> I posted last year. <i>Why</i> are we so closely surveyed? Why are <i>other</i> industries not?</p>
<p>Secondly, the authors did not pull any punches when they came to describing general HE management structures in the UK: "Senior management teams now appoint self-selecting and self-reproducing boards of governors that allow them to exercise largely unlimited powers that are endorsed by governing boards, usually after faux exercises in consultation (Holmwood et al. 2016)" (p. 4). It's hard not to read that and feel a sense of recognition: I know I've been involved in too many "faux exercises in consultation".</p>
<p>Thirdly, "the [SMS] survey sought to move the gaze from the narrow metrics of staff performance to the senior management teams who set the conditions through which staff performance becomes possible" (p. 7). Yeah. We're always being told how important it is to contextualise things, and yet there seems to be very little desire to contextualise the metrics that academics are measured by via the conditions which they must work in.</p>
<p>Finally, in the subsection "Work as a mental health hazard", a few quotes struck quite a chord with me, including: "my anxiety levels have reached critical to the extent that I literally find it hard to breathe. I often wake in the early hours and can’t go back to sleep because of having to make notes about things I’ve forgotten to do at work" (p. 13) and "characteristics of generalised anxiety disorder (e.g. struggling to sleep and breathe)" (p. 13). These resonated with me at a very personal level, because this describes my own experiences of the last year or two <i>precisely</i>, and I would not have known, otherwise, that something as simple as waking up at 3am with a huge jolt of adrenaline as your brain starts going over all the things you didn't do the day before (or the day before that or the day before that or the day before that) and all the things you need to do the next day (and the day after that and the day after that and the day after that) and that you can't shut down for at least an hour or so in order to fall back asleep (no wonder I am constantly exhausted, it's not just because I have a busy life with a partner and a kid and outside hobbies, etc.) rises to the level of problematic anxiety. I think I'm going to make an appointment with my GP to discuss this further.</p>
<p>Reading the article, it was hard not to recognise a lot of my own experiences within it. On the other hand, I couldn't help but think how easy it would be for the very people that should be reading it with horror and changing their practices as a result to simply disregard the content of the paper as sour grapes. And therein lies one of the biggest problems UK HE faces: The power dynamics are such that although "academics cannot wait for university leaders to rise to a challenge they do not recognise" (p. 5) it's not clear what power we have to do anything to address this challenge.</p>
<p>I hope the authors continue to circulate the SMS (maybe on a yearly basis?) and publish follow-up results. It would be interesting to see what longer term trends can be seen.</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-73486813528543884862020-01-10T15:01:00.001+01:002020-01-10T15:01:15.166+01:00Resolution Read Week 2<p>My first paper for my <a href="http://diaryofdoctorlogic.blogspot.com/2020/01/not-new-years-resolution.html">New Year's not a resolution</a> is:</p>
<blockquote><p>Wang, Hao. 1957. "The Axiomatization of Arithmetic", <i>Journal of Symbolic Logic</i> 22, no. 2: 145-158.</p></blockquote>
<p>This was recommended to me as a recommendation for one of my students, but it's a topic I'm also interested in, especially as we're heading into the term where I teach PA! Maybe I can fill in a bit more history, this year.</p>
<p>The paper addresses a question that I've asked myself, and my own students have asked me, namely: Where do the axioms come from? This isn't just an abstract question, but a historical/conceptual one. Once you have an axiom set it's easy (well...) to see that they are the right ones; but how do you discover the axioms in the first place? Wang identifies one option:</p>
<ul>
<li>You start from typical proofs and results, and work backwards to determine what the underlying assumptions are.</li>
</ul>
<p>Another option would be to pick some reasonable assumptions, and adopt them until they are shown to be inconsistent. A third would be to prove what you can, and when you get stuck, add what you need as an axiom.</p>
<p>The focus of Wang's paper is Peano's axiomatization of arithmetic, which is not wholly Peano's but is in fact a borrowing from Dedekind and Grassmann (p. 145). All three were, however, rooted in a desire to make "an explicit statement of some adequate group of natural rules and conventions which enables us to justify all the true numerical formulae containing 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, +, *, =, (, )" (p. 146)" (note the lack of exponentiation). Wang describes Grassmann's <i>Lehrbuch der Arithmetik</i> (1861) as "the first serious and rather successful attempt to put numbers on a more or less axiomatic basis" (p. 147); his scope covered not only the non-negative integers but also the negative ones. Wang gives Grassmann's axiomatization (which he calls L_2), and notes that from it, the system L_1 (which consists in the commutativity and associativity of + and *, the distribution of * over +, the fact that 0 is the identity for + and 1 for *, that a+(-a)=0, that if c is non-zero and ca=cb, then a=b, that sums and products of positive numbers are positive numbers, that every number is either positive, not positive, or 0, and a version of mathematical induction) can be derived. (L_1 is described as the contemporary -- i.e., in the 1950s -- characterisation of the integers in abstract algebra).</p>
<p>Wang points out a drawback of Grassmann's L_2, which is that it does not require distinct integers to have distinct successors, and hence L_2 has models consisting in only a single object (p. 149). This was made explicit in Peano, whose system contained the basic concepts of 1, number, and successor, and five axioms:</p>
<ol>
<li>1 is a number</li>
<li>The successor of any number is a number</li>
<li>No two numbers have the same successor</li>
<li>1 is not the successor of any number</li>
<li>Any property which belongs to 1, and also to the successor of every number which has the property, belongs to all numbers</li>
</ol>
<p>(Nowadays, presentations of PA often start from 0, as opposed to 1; in this, Frege's account of numbers differs from Dedekind's in that Frege did begin with 0.) These axioms were taken from Dedekind's essay <i>Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen?</i> (1888) (p. 149), and Dedekind's source for these axioms is preserved in a two-page letter that Wang quotes (in translation) (pp. 150-151). What's important is that these are an axiomatisation <i>of the concept of number only</i> -- there's nothing here to cover the arithmetic operations. These (addition, multiplication, and exponentiation) Dedekind defines later in the essay.</p>
<p>Sadly, since Wang's interest is in how Dedekind got to the axioms, and not what the axioms were, he does not discuss the axioms for the arithmetic operations, which leaves me with two questions:</p>
<ol>
<li>How do you define the arithmetic operations if you're starting from 1 rather than from 0?</li>
<li>Is Dedekind 1888 translated into English so I can read it and find out the answer to the previous questions myself?</li>
</ol>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-76264346418828642572020-01-06T10:11:00.003+01:002020-01-06T10:11:52.769+01:00Not a New Year's Resolution<p>As I was lying in bed last night (thanks, jetlag, for three hours only half-asleep during the middle of the night), I realised that while I've gotten into a good writing habit (first via my resolution of <a href="http://diaryofdoctorlogic.blogspot.com/2014/01/a-resolution.html">2014</a> and later on via the <a href="https://anygoodthing.com/agt-monthly-writing-challenge/">Any Good Thing</a> monthy writing challenge plus tracking my words at <a href="http://wordkeeperalpha.com/">wordkeeperalpha.com</a>), and am making a conscious effort to <a href="https://twitter.com/SaraLUckelman/status/1173503406130049024">keep my email under control</a>, the thing I feel like I never have time to do any more, or that I feel guilty about doing because there's always something better/more important I should be doing instead, is read journal articles just for the sake of reading about something that interests me and may one day be relevant (or may not be) -- to be distinguished from seeking out articles and reading them specifically because I'm writing a paper about the topic right this very moment.</p>
<p>So my not-resolution for 2020 is that I'm going to read one journal article a week, excepting weeks I'm on holiday, or probably also during marking season in May/June, and then blog about it briefly here, hopefully every Friday. Then it will be a Thing To Be Done rather than a Thing To Do, and hopefully I can get it done guilt-free!</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-16896933204455115002019-12-31T11:19:00.000+01:002019-12-31T23:15:29.520+01:00Wot I Read in 2019<p>In an attempt to track my reading in 2019, I created this post in early January to note down every book that I finished in 2019 (I say "finished" because there were two that I was reading at the turn of the year, which I wanted to count; but this also doesn't count books I started but didn't finish before the end of the year). We'll see how long this lasts. [Edit Dec 31: I did it! It lasted all year!]</p>
<h4>Fiction</h4>
<ol>
<li>Acks, Alex, <i>Wireless and More Steam-Powered Adventures</i> (finished July 11, 2019): I <a href="https://sffreviews.com/2019/06/06/review-wireless-and-more-steam-powered-adventures-by-alex-acks/">reviewed this book on SFFReviews</a>.</li>
<li>Atwood, Margaret, <i>Hag-Seed</i> (finished April 3, 2019): I picked this up from the airport the week before; I'd read some good buzz about it when it first came out, and it had gone on my mental to-read list then. It <i>was</i> good, but it also felt very...<i>self-indulgent</i>, I think is the best way to characterise it. It's a book that an established writer gets to write, not a book that could be a debut. It was as if the entire book was a Mary Sue, even if all of the characters in it had their foibles. Nevertheless, it was hard to put down.</li>
<li>B.B., <i>The Little Grey Men</i> (finished October 6, 2019): Recommendation from WorldCon. What a strange little book. It was immensely descriptive, being suffused throughout with a deep intimate knowledge of nature. This is probably a plus in many people's books, but there was just <i>so much</i> description, which made it hard going for me. I loved the three gnomes, though, and their distinctive characters, and found the grim, dark way that death was treated to be both rather harsh and comfortingly ordinary. I'm not sure I'd call it a kids book, but I might try reading it to G in a few years. (Not now. There is too much vocabulary in it that she doesn't know, I'd be interrupted every few words to define them!)</li>
<li>Benaway, Gwen, ed., <i>Mother, Maiden, Crone</i> (finished December 30, 2019): I picked this up at Portal Bookshop in York last month. It's a collection of fantasy stories all written by trans women and trans feminine people. I reviewed it for SFFReviews, but <a href="http://sffreviews.com/2020/02/04/review-maiden-mother-crone-edited-by-gwen-benaway/">the review</a> won't be up until February.</li>
<li>Brennan, Sarah Rees, <i>Unspoken</i> (finished January 6, 2019): I can't remember now where this book was recommended to me, and I'll admit my first reaction on looking at the cover when my copy arrived was "erm...." And while it <i>was</i> a bit Twilight-stalkery, it <i>didn't</i> involve vampires, it made me laugh <i>a lot</i>, it filled me with teenage angst (yes, this can be a good thing), and I'm a sucker for a gothic romance, whether it's 19th C or 21st C. Looking forward to reading the sequel.</li>
<li>Brennan, Sarah Rees, <i>Untold</i> (finished January 29, 2019): Alas, this one didn't live up to the standard set by the first one. Not enough Gothicness, not too many, too complicated love triangles, weirdly awkward not-quite-sex, and enough little details that didn't add up or showed the author isn't British... -- the idea that someone in Britain would threaten someone else by saying "I'll get a gun and shoot you"; the idea that <i>everyone</i> tourist goes to a post office; calling university "college". I'm glad I got this one from the library rather than buying a copy.</li>
<li>Burgis, Stephanie, <i>Kat Incorrigible</i> (finished September 26, 2019): A WorldCon recommendation. Fun, but unlike some middle grade books that are great for adults, this one felt more like it was merely okay for adults.</li>
<li>Carey, Jacqueline, <i>Kushiel's Dart</i> (finished September 8, 2019): A friend lent this (and the next two) to me after it came up on an FB conversation. The book did not sit well with me in its opening chapters, but the worries that I had in them were actually quite strongly assuaged as the book went on, and I came away from it thinking it was quite superlative, extremely well constructed, with great world-building, entrancing characters, and a complex but believable plot. I just wish Carey would've addressed the issue of birth control.</li>
<li>Carey, Jacqueline, <i>Kushiel's Chosen</i> (finished September 13, 2019): This was a <i>very good</i> second book. It very nearly stood on its own feet, and much of what I loved about the previous one was maintained in this one. If I have one complaint, it's that the first one seemed...bigger. The way in which backstory was introduced in the first book was more seamless and better integrated -- little side bits and details were mentioned long before their import was ever highlighted. In this book, though, new cultures sprung onto the page fully-fledged as soon as they were needed. The result was something that was just as fun and well-crafted, but not as realistic.</li>
<li>Carey, Jacqueline, <i>Kushiel's Avatar</i> (finished September 23, 2019): The minor complaints I had about book 2 did not surface at all in book 3. Book 3 actually reminded me a lot of book 1, in terms of the plot cycle, but everything was bigger, wider, and deeper. It lacked some of the erotic elements that the first two books did, but it also felt like that ws a natural progression, too. I was quite impressed.</li>
<li>Carlisle, Karen J., <i>Department of Curiosities</i> (finished June 5, 2019): I've been anticipating reading this book ever since Karen first started blogging about her nascent ideas for it years ago. It was a long time coming, but as soon as it arrived I quit reading the book I had been reading to start this. I really enjoyed it; it was a sophisticated story with believable steampunk elements, and the heroine, Tilly, was the right balance of proper and improper. She's not afraid to hike up her skirts -- or rip them off entirely! -- and get her hands dirty, but she also is distractingly interested in her clothing -- I'm not sure I've ever read a book that used the word "bustle" quite so often! At first I was a bit disappointed, because I thought the book was going to be set in Australia rather than England, but I was pleased at the end when Tilly ended up in Oz.</li>
<li>Cho, Zen, <i>Sorcerer to the Crown</i> (finished December 1, 2019): This was a WorldCon rec; a couple people whom I know in person suggested it, and I also attended a panel that Cho was on and really liked her. The book is basically "Austen with dragons and magic and people of color", which is a premise I find hard to fault. The book was...good. I enjoyed it. It was fun. It had all the right early-19th C feel, and it didn't get the names seriously wrong, so that's a plus in its favor. It wasn't outstanding, but it was good enough I'll probably eventually get the sequel.</li>
<li>Córdova, Zoraida, <i>Labyrinth Lost</i> (finished December 18, 2019): This was another WorldCon rec. It was...okay. I'm coming to realise that urban/modern fantasy isn't really my thing, and I found the plot both a bit linear and a bit predictable and the writing was at times ponderous and too full of exposition. I'll probably read the sequel if I can get it from the library, but I'm not sure I'd purchase it.</li>
<li>Coulthurst, Audrey, <i>Of Fire and Stars</i> (finished June 23, 2019): This book was an exercise in how not to write. I wanted to like it -- it had a solid premise, and I definitely want to see more lesbian NA fantasy -- but it was just...not good. The politics felt superficial and unrealistic, most of the main characters who were not the two female leads seemed to exist solely as foils to put up barriers between the MCs, I never got any sense of realism or urgency, and while you knew from the start that the two female leads were going to end up together, there was never any scope in there for any other strong relationships, whether romantic, platonic, or other (except for ONE, but one of the two involved died before the end of the book). It just didn't work for me.</li>
<li>Epps, E. M., <i>You Made My Heart a Hunter</i> (finished January 8, 2019): Lhennuen is the logician-trying-to-be-human heroine that I have always wanted.</li>
<li>Epps, E. M., <i>The Interpreter's Tale</i> (finished February 12, 2019): Having enjoyed the previous novella so much, I wanted to read something else by Epps, and <a href="http://www.emepps.com/it/">its description</a> intrigued me. I was delighted to find out it was set in the same universe as YMMHaH, and even briefly mentioned Lhennuen. But the focus of the story was Eliadmaru, the titular interpreter, and a royal assignment he was given. I loved how the story upset conventions: A plot point that I was sure would go badly ended up happily and sweetly, with no drama, whereas another plot point that <i>should</i> have been some sort of happily ever after went south in an unexpected way. So reading it was full of peaks and valleys, and now I'd like to read even more by Epps.</li>
<li>Fennell, Jack, ed., <i>A Brilliant Void</i> (finished January 31, 2019): I started this in 2018, but finished it in 2019. It's a collection of early Irish short science fiction, and I reviewed it <a href="https://sffreviews.com/2019/01/13/review-a-brilliant-void-edited-by-jack-fennell/">at SFFReviews</a>.</li>
<li>Fellman, Isaac (published under the name Rachel Fellman), <i>The Breath of the Sun</i> (finished August 25, 2019): Personal recommendation from a friend on twitter. The back blurb described the MC as someone who deals in paradoxes, which got me all excited, until I started reading and realised the description was rather metaphorical. But even without actual paradoxes, this book was very good. It was deep and intimate, and cold and quiet, and I had to read it slowly (I also read a lot of it while at WorldCon, tucked into a little cubicle bed in a hostel after long days of peopling, which I'm sure enhanced the slightly otherworldly feel of the experience of reading it). It wasn't sparkling and brilliant in the way that some of the books I read this year were, but I think it's among one of the best.</li>
<li>Fforde, Katie, <i>A Country Escape</i> (finished March 15, 2019): I had a long layover at LHR, so I bought this book; I started it around 1:30pm and finished it around 8:00pm, which was a satisfying experience. The book itself contained no suspense, no surprises, no worries that the heroine wouldn't end up having a happily ever after, and gave the impression of having been written according to a very precise structure/framework/recipe into which various characters and side quirks could be inserted. (E.g., the heroine's best friend was [rifle through character types] a PhD student! And the heroine's side hobby is [rifle through odd-but-not-too-out-there hobbies] cheesemaking!) I think I've been reading too much queer lit lately, because what let the book down the most for me was that <i>not once</i> was there any epistemic possibility that maybe Fran would end up romantically involved with Issi, rather than one of the male antagonists. Now <i>that</i> would've been a fun turn of events (and save PhD student Issi from the ignominity of falling in love with a minor side character, getting married, AND having a kid before the book was over.)</li>
<li>Gaiman, Neil & Terry Pratchett, <i>Good Omens</i> (finished May 26, 2019): I've been wanting to reread this for awhile now, especially since finding out about the TV adaptation, so as soon as we moved house and started unpacking all the books that had been in boxes for years, I found it and started rereading it.</li>
<li>Gladstone, Max, <i>Three Parts Dead</i> (finished June 13, 2019): I can't remember who recommended this to me, but it was intriguing enough for me to put in my "books I'll buy when I need to buy something more on Amazon to get free shipping". It was a combination fantasy, steampunk, and legal thriller/mystery, and it provided me with good solid enjoyment (especially the legal wrangling!). Strong female characters, including a black FMC, and an intriguing religious set-up were further pluses. The book was good enough for me to bump up the sequel on my want list.</li>
<li>Gowar, Imogen Hermes, <i>The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock</i> (finished March 24, 2019): I picked this up at the airport 10 days previously, intrigued by the blurb. I had to recalibrate my expectations a bit when I found out that despite the presence of mermaids in the story, it was straight up historical fiction, no fantasy or speculative elements. Nevertheless, it was an interesting story with distinctive characters, and my only complaint is that it reinforced my dislike of present-tense stories.</li>
<li>Harkness, Deborah, <i>A Discovery of Witches</i> (finished August 11, 2019): I wanted to love this book so much, and I just couldn't. The premise was great: A clever academic woman in her mid-30s stumbles across a missing medieval manuscript while researching in Oxford and witches are involved. But this book ranged from making me mildly bothered (the author is an academic historian herself, and she got so many historical details wrong!) to outright enraged (SO much patriarchy! SO much problematic vampirish stalking! SO much white-European-ness! SO much reduction of the main character to her role as first wife, and then mother; her academic expertise is never taken advantage of!). Just so, so disappointing.</li>
<li>Huff, Tanya, <i>The Fire's Stone</i> (finished July 8, 2019): This was another book that someone recommended somewhere so I added it to my amazon list and then bought it one time I needed to make up the difference to get free shipping. The first chapter or two were just okay, but then it really picked up and it became one of those books that taps into a crack of my heart and both fills it and makes it hurt. Two standout elements: Huff's portrayal of an alcoholic character, and a happily-ever-after for a polycule including two bi men. And while I'd love for this to be the first-of-many involving these characters, I also really appreciate a well-written standalone fantasy novel; there are not many of them.</li>
<li>Jones, Heather Rose, <i>Floodtide</i> (finished January 21, 2019): It is enormously satisfying to beta read a book you've been waiting for for two years or so.</li>
<li>Jones, Heather Rose, <i>Floodtide</i> (finished November 25, 2019): It's so interesting reading the published version after having betaed. This was the first time where I could tell what had been cut, and while I missed the characters that had been introduced in those chapters, I think the structure of the published version is cleaner and tighter and makes more sense. The book itself remains perhaps my favorite of the Alpennia books -- it flows along so easily and naturally. One thing I particularly liked about it was that you reach the titular floodtide, but that's not the end of the story -- in fact, it almost feels like the last few chapters are where the most important stuff happens. Too often, we never see the consequences of the resolution of a problem, but here, you do. Looking forward to when one of my nieces is of an age to buy this for her.</li>
<li>Jones, Heather Rose, <i>Mother of Souls</i> (finished October 14, 2019): I'd lent this to a friend and she returned it in August, and when I reached a gap in my other books I decided to reread this in advance of <i>Floodtide</i> coming out next month. Having had some distance from when I last read it, which was quite close after beta reading it, I found I got something different out of it from previously. The first two times I'd read it, I remember being perennial uncertain how time was passing; but that seemed much clearer this time around, and that made some of the relationships feel like they were developing more naturally. And, man, that final chapter, and the goosebumps it gives me...</li>
<li>Jones, Heather Rose, <i>The Mystic Marriage</i> (finished October 25, 2019): After having reread book 3, I had to go reread book 2. MM has never been my favorite of the Alpennia books, and there are still certain things about it that are stumbling blocks to my enjoyment. But everything else in it just seems to get better each time I read it. This time, I really appreciated the alchemical details. Jones makes alchemy seem entirely plausible, and yet still mystical.</li>
<li>Jones, Heather Rose, <i>Daughter of Mystery</i> (finished December 15, 2019): After having reread book 2, I had to go reread book 1. But I couldn't find book one!! I think I lent it to someone and haven't gotten it back yet. I'm okay with that, especially after a trip to York in early Dec. found me in an independent bookshop that had a copy of three of Jones's four books, so I bought myself a new copy of <i>DoM</i>. This is one of those books that gets better each time you read it. It was good the first time I read it; great the next couple of times; and this time, it was truly fabulous. I am in awe at Jones's ability to construct a story, not to mention the huge depth of world. And, oh, my heart, did I love rereading Barbara and Margerit before they were Barbara and Margerit.</li>
<li>Le Guin, Ursula K., <i>Four Ways to Forgiveness</i> (finished July 18, 2019): I sort of wonder where books like this were when I was growing up, why it was that I read the authors I did, and not authors like her. I found these four stories enormously more satisfying than I do her early Earthsea books, and reading them in such near succession to Russ's novel a very worthwhile, fruitful endeavor.</li>
<li>Lundoff, Catherine, ed., <i>Scourge of the Seas of Time (And Space)</i> (finished March 13, 2019): I reviewed this fun collection of pirate short stories over <a href="https://sffreviews.com/2019/03/03/review-scourge-of-the-seas-of-time-and-space-edited-by-catherine-lundoff/">at SFFReviews</a>. The highlight for me was Elliott Dunstan's "Andromache's War".</li>
<li>Montgomery, L. M., <i>Anne of Windy Poplars</i> (finished July 10, 2019): I was caught without a new book to read, so I reread an old favorite. This isn't my favorite of the Anne books (it might actually be my least favorite), but reading it through this time I was struck at how diverse Montgomery's characters are, and how I had not previously noticed this fully. The man with aphantasia, the woman who is either lesbian or ace, the diversity of appropriate lives that women could lead (okay, it's still curtailed, but there is a lot plenty of support for the idea that a woman needn't be married nor have children in order to have a fulfilled life). Montgomery continually goes up in my estimation as a writer, every time I reread something by her.</li>
<li>Moon, Elizabeth, <i>Speed of Darkness</i> (finished January 24, 2019): I really disliked this book. I think it is a book that actively contributes to ableism, problematic stereotypes, and a rigid "black/white" view of autism and 'normality'. I do not like the glorification of autism as something to be cured. I do not think she handled her characters sympathetically or realistically. <i>Flowers for Algernon</i> has already been written. This book did not need to be written.</li>
<li>Moore, Fiona, <i>Driving Ambition</i> (finished October 1, 2019): It's a book by a friend! Not the sort of book I usually go for, sort of a combination police thriller/mystery, but it kept me distracted through seasickness on the North Sea, which is saying a lot. At times I found the MC a bit mansplainy with his info-dumping, but it actually worked as a character feature (or flaw...) rather than being overwhelmingly infodumpy.</li>
<li>North, Sterling, <i>Rascal</i> (finished February 26, 2019): I loved this book as a child, and haven't read it in decades. I read it to G as bedtime stories over the course of about two months. Golly was it hard not to ugly cry while reading the final paragraphs out loud.</li>
<li>O'Dell, Claire, <i>Hound of Justice</i> (finished August 12, 2019): It took me a long time before I could write up my review of this book (usually I try to do these within a few days of finishing). Because this book hit me in the gut. Janet Watson is one of the realest, truest characters I have ever read, and the way in which O'Dell portrays her makes it so clear that Watson was written through first-hand knowledge. It's a hard read, as a result, sometimes, but it provides such a depth to the story. I don't really care about Sherlock Holmes retellings; but this was one of the best books I've read in 20109.</li>
<li>O'Dell, Claire, <i>A Jewel-Bright Sea</i> (finished early November 2019): What can I say? A new book by one of my favorite authors, set in the same universe as some of my favorite books? I loved it. I had the honor and pleasure of beta reading this book a few years back, and I was thrilled when it was picked up for publication -- and then disappointed to find out it was going to be ebook only! Thankfully, not for long! A few months after the ebook was published I was able to get a hard copy, which I devoured in like two nights. The story is beautifully paced and full of detail, and I love Anna and Andreas almost as much as I loved Ilse and Raul.</li>
<li>Osawa, Hirotaka, ed., <i>Intelligence: Artificial and Human</i> (finished December 28, 2019): This was a collection of eight short stories in translation by Japanese authors. I received a copy of this anthology in the hallway after a panel I was on at WorldCon in August, and it was a real delight to read <a href="http://sffreviews.com/2020/01/26/review-intelligence-artificial-and-human-eight-science-fiction-tales-by-japanese-authors-edited-by-hirotaka-osawa/">and review</a> the stories.</li>
<li>Parrish, Rhonda, ed., <i>Grimm, Grit, and Gasoline</i> (finished November 24, 2019): I reviewed this collection of dieselpunk short stories <a href="http://sffreviews.com/2019/11/27/grimm-grit-and-gasoline-edited-by-rhonda-parrish/">at SFFReviews</a>.</li>
<li>Pratchett, Terry, <i>The Truth</i> (finished November 14, 2019): In the wake of the UK election season gearing up, I had to reread this. It was sadly far too much like nonfiction than fiction this time around.</li>
<li>Queer Sci Fi, <i>Migration: Queer Sci Fi's 6th Annual Flash Fiction Contest</i> (finished October 31, 2019): I had a story in last year's collection, and while mine didn't get selected for this year's, a friend of mine got her first publication out of it! So I ordered it in support of her, and because I do rather like the quickness of so many 300 word stories. Good value. Will definitely submit to next year's contest again, and probably buy the volume even if I don't get in.</li>
<li>Russ, Joanna, <i>The Female Man</i> (finished June 30, 2019): I don't remember whom recommend this to me, but I'm glad they did. It is equal parts riveting and horrifying -- every single thing a man says in this book, I could imagine being said in a quote in a contemporary Guardian article. How far we have (not) come since the 60s.</li>
<li>Setterfield, Diane, <i>Once Upon a River</i> (finished March 29, 2019): I picked this up at the airport on March 27, because I <i>loved</i> Setterfield's <i>Thirteenth Tale</i>, and found <i>Bellman & Black</i> interesting. <i>OUaR</i> had the same slightly gothic horror feel that <i>TT</i> had, and I was particularly satisfied by the ending. The more short and long speculative fiction I read, the more I come to feel that happy endings are way harder to master than unhappy ones, so when they're done well, they're very satisfying.</li>
<li>Simmonds, Dan, <i>Drood</i> (finished May 3, 2019): I have <i>no idea</i> how I acquired this book (possibly mom gave it to me?). But the day I'd finished up my last airport book and was looking for the next thing to read, there it was, lying on the shelf. It was big and thick and written by an author whose other works I liked (and when it came to Simmonds' <i>Hyperion</i>, that was one of the best books I had read in a long time, when I read it a few years ago). <i>Drood</i> wasn't as good as <i>Hyperion</i>, but it was still very good, despite how ponderous it was. Three things stuck out for me: Reading this book was the first time that I actually thought "I want to read Dickens"; Simmonds did an <i>amazing</i> job at capturing 19th C sensibilities, which unfortunately means the racism and sexism in the book is often incredibly distastefully hard to read, because it is so overt and so unquestioned; and I kept having a suspicion that it was going to turn out to be an "unreliable narrator" story in its resolution, and now that I've finished it, I'm not sure if that was the case or not, and I sort of wish it had had a neater denoument. Still, a good book, and it kept me occupied for a few weeks rather than a few days!</li>
<li>Stephenson, Neil, <i>Anathem</i> (finished March 15, 2019): My mom got me this for Christmas (which was in mid-February, 2019). It's been quite awhile since I've read ponderous SFF by a white man, and the first few chapters were a bit too ponderous and a bit too white male, and I was uncertain how far I'd get. And then something changed -- not sure what, and not sure where or why -- and I realised that this book was basically written purely to satisfy the needs and desires and niche interests of people like me. It was astonishing, and fun, and honestly, the next time I teach Introduction to Philosophy I'm simply going to make my students read this and then find out which real-world philosopher is being represented by which fictional saunt.</li>
<li>Stevermer, Caroline, <i>A College of Magics</i> (finished February 4, 2019): My friend Irina recommended this book to me in summer 2017, but it took me this long to get my hands on a copy. It was well worth the wait. It's the sort of book you consume hungrily and greedily, and leaves you burning for more.</li>
<li>Suri, Tasha, <i>Empire of Sand</i> (finished December 9, 2019): Another WorldCon recommendation. Highly recommended. I loved the medieval Indian setting, I found the worldbuilding spectacular, I loved the characters, and I liked the somewhat didactic tone the book sometimes took. This was a real winner of a recommendation, and I'm putting book 2 onto my "want list".</li>
<li>Tákacs, Bogi, <i>The Trans Space Octopus Congregation Stories</i> (finished November 17, 2019): I reviewed this for <a href="https://sffreviews.com/2019/08/23/review-the-trans-space-octopus-congregation-stories-by-bogi-takacs/">SFFReviews</a>; it's a collection of short stories and some of them were <i>really good</i>.</li>
<li>Thomas, Angie, <i>On the Come Up</i> (finished April 5, 2019): Picked this up from the airport, scouting out the young adult section. This was just as good as <i>The Hate U Give</i>, and I finished it in a single day. Both of Thomas's books are so <i>different</i> from what I usually read, and reading them feels like an epistemic experience that I could not get in any other way. I'll repeat what I said in reviewing THUG: Every white person should read this book.</li>
<li>Townsend, Sue, <i>The Woman Who Went to Bed For a Year</i> (finished May 17, 2019): G's school library has a box of books that parents are encouraged to "borrow" (for 50p each, and we have to bring them back) so that kids see their parents reading. (Not an issue in our house.) I picked this book up from the basket because I saw the title and felt an immediate kinship. Unfortunately, the title was the only redeeming part of the book. Not a single character was realistic or sympathetic; most of the time, they read as if written by someone who'd never actually met people before, and <i>certainly</i> had never met university professors specialising in astronomy. The crass racism, sexism, and ableism that was rampant throughout the book was also extremely off-putting. I think I cracked a smile <i>once</i>, and the only moment of true pleasure it brought was when Calabi-Yau sequences were mentioned and I thought "I recognise that term, and I once knew what they are." Overall, do not recommend, and on the strength of this book I will probably never read anything else by this author.</li>
<li>Trelease, Gita, <i>Enchantée</i> (finished April 5, 2019): I bought this from the young adult section at the airport book store on the strength of the beautiful front cover and a moderately interesting back blurb, and expected it to be one a solid but not stellar book. I was pleasantly surprised! Revolutionary Paris was drawn richly and beautifully, the magical system was both central to the story and backgrounded in a way to make it seem ordinary and natural, I loved the diversity of the characters, and even more I loved the way it drew upon classic Cinderella story elements without ever being a straight-up retelling. I'd love to read more by Trelease.</li>
<li>van Rooyen, Suzanne, <i>Scardust</i> (finished October 8, 2019): Recommendation from the internet (can't remember who/where). This was a 2-night book; it would've been a 1-night book if I hadn't started it after having finished another book the same night, so I ran out of time. It was totally different from what I normally read; normally I specifically avoid stories where rape and/or abuse feature as important plot points, but the soul-sucking realism of the early part of this story struck me as being important to read: This is the reality for some people's lives, and it's not necessarily good for me to ignore or pretend that that's not the case. The characters were strongly crafted and gripping, and the very satisfying ending took me by surprise. Recommended, with caveats.</li>
<li>Wakes, Damon L., <i>Ten Little Astronauts</i> (finished December 4, 2019): I was offered a review copy of this collection of two novellas, and my review of it will show up on <a href="http://www.sffreviews.com">SFFReviews</a> in January.</li>
<li>Walsh, Jessica, <i>Little Creepers</i> (finished May 7, 2019): I reviewed this collection of short (mostly horror) stories at <a href="https://sffreviews.com/2019/04/23/review-little-creepers-by-jessica-walsh/">SFFReviews</a>.</li>
<li>Watterson, Bill, <i>Calvin & Hobbes: 10th Anniversary Edition</i> (finished November 2, 2019): G and I read through this one as bedtime stories. It was sort of a "greatest hits" collection, with certain story arcs featured. What I enjoyed was that some of them were introduced with a brief commentary by Watterson, and what I found interesting was that I was able to read that introduction silently to myself <i>at the same time</i> as I read aloud the comics to G -- a feat that I would not have imagined possible if you had suggested I try.</li>
</ol>
<h4>Non-fiction</h4>
<ol>
<li>Bydén, Börje and Christina Thomsen Thörnqvist, eds., <i>The Aristotelian Tradition: Aristotle's Works on Logic and Metaphysics and Their Reception in the Middle Ages</i> (finished June 11, 2019): I read this to review for <i>Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval</i>. Spoiler: It was good, but patchy in its coverage.</li>
<li>Hughes, John, ed., <i>The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, with a Particular Account of their Lives, Amours, and Misfortunes: Extracted Chiefly from Monsieur Bayle...To Which are Added Four Poems, by Mr. Pope and Other Hands</i> (finished February 6, 2019): I'll confess, I skipped the poems. And the rest...I hadn't expected as much stomach curdling misogyny and patriarchy as I found. Not recommended.</li>
<li>Ladd, Christine, "On the Algebra of Logic" (finished January 15, 2019): I'm counting this as a book, because of its length, and the fact it was a PhD thesis. This was another "started in 2018, finished in 2019" book, because I read it at a rate of 3-5 pages per day, only 1-2 days a week.</li>
<li>de Pisan, Christine, <i>The Treasure of the City of Ladies</i> (finished February 27 or 28, 2019): This was not nearly as rewarding as the letters of Abelard & Heloise; I ranted quite a bit on twitter about how Christine is not the feminist ancestress so many women are looking for (cf. especially <a href="https://twitter.com/SaraLUckelman/status/1100783024084582400">here</a>)</li>
<li>Wilson, Robin and Amirouche Moktefi, eds., <i>The Mathematical World of Charles L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll)</i> (finished July 11, 2019): I read this to review it for the <i>Lewis Carroll Review</i>. It was excellent. The reviews editor liked my review enough that she also put it up on the reviews section of the <a href="https://www.bsls.ac.uk/reviews/romantic-and-victorian/robin-wilson-and-amirouche-moktefi-eds-the-mathematical-world-of-charles-l-dodgson-lewis-carroll/">British Society for Literature and Science</a> website.</li>
</ol>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-55349332594494991212019-11-21T15:50:00.000+01:002019-11-21T15:50:18.913+01:00How do we (teach students to) ask questions?<i>Yesterday I gave a talk with this title at Nottingham Philosophy's departmental colloquium. The post below isn't a transcription of the talk but it's the notes I wrote up on the train down which I mostly followed when speaking. I'm reproducing the notes here unchanged, not because I didn't get loads of useful feedback from the Q&A, but because I don't have the time to amend/augment it now, and in any case I'm planning to take this and try to turn it into an actual journal paper.</i>
<hr/>
<p>I'd like to thank Matthew and the rest of you for the invitation to come give a talk, because it gives me an opportunity to explore some things that I spend a lot of time thinking about but which I feel like we (as a profession) spend very little time <i>talking</i> about – either with each other or with our students. I know from Matthew and Ian that Nottingham is a very open and pluralistic department, so I wanted to do something a little bit different. This is going to be more of an interactive exercise where I get you guys to think reflectively about a bunch of stuff and then share your thoughts with each other and with me. It's primarily selfish in nature: I want to get better at this, so I want to get as much different input as I can.</p>
<h4>What is philosophy?</h4>
<ol>
<li>Is it content?
<blockquote><p>Is it about who our predecessors are, and what they thought? Is it names, dates, influences, concepts, theories, questions, applications, problems, paradoxes? [If it is, what distinguishes philosophy from history of philosophy?] Is it about investigating <i>fundamental reality</i>?</p></blockquote></li>
<li>(2) Is it method?
<blockquote><p>Or is it method? Can <i>any</i> topic be philosophical so long as we apply certain kinds (the right kinds?) of methods to it?</p>
<blockquote><p>What are the methods? Formal logic; informal logic; concept analysis; phenomenology; thought experiments; etc.</p></blockquote>
</blockquote></li>
</ol>
<p>One needn't place themselves firmly in one camp or the other – it's possible to take any position on the spectrum between these two extremes, and probably most philosophers find themselves somewhere in the middle. But if hard pressed to come up with a means of excluding philosophy from non-philosophy, each of you will end up favoring one side or another.</p>
<p>Why is it important to know where you stand on this issue? It's because it relates to another topic, namely:</p>
<h4>What are we teaching when we teach undergraduates philosophy?</h4>
<ol start="3">
<li>Is it philosophy?</li>
<li>Is it how to be a philosopher?</li>
</ol>
<p>These are not quite the same question as the previous question, but if you say the answer is (3) then whether you take (1) or (2) will make a difference.</p>
<p>Think back to your own undergraduate career. What did you learn? What courses were you required to take? In the US, I had to do history of ancient and history of modern; I had to take at least one ethics course; I had to take at least one logic course. For the rest, I had choice, but the classes I took tended to focus on particular areas/subfields/figures in philosophy: Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein; philosophy of language; metaphysics; epistemology; philosophy of math. As I got higher up (and started taking grad classes) I got focused topics like compositionality and vagueness and logicism. But there was a very clear sense that we were learning who the important figures, themes, concepts, developments in philosophy were. In only one case did I get the feeling that my professor was teaching me what he was teaching me because he <i>thought it was right</i> (Terry Penner doing Plato was amazing.)</p>
<p>If there was an expectation that we would learn how to be philosophers, it was that this would fall out of reading and seeing how the great philosophers did philosophy. (This is, if you think about it, an interesting pedagogical assumption. Would we expect people to learn how to become engineers by reading/seeing how other engineers do engineering? Would we expect people to learn how to write fiction by reading/seeing how other authors write fiction? It's a pedagogical technique that seems more appropriate in some cases than in others, and not appropriate across the board: So we <i>must</i> ask the question, "Is it appropriate for philosophy?")</p>
<p>Does anyone else's experiences differ from mine?</p>
<p>Anyway, the takeaway I took from this, as a student, is that this is what I was supposed to teach my own (undergraduate) students – that there were certain figures, concepts, disputes, etc. that any student having gotten a philosophy degree should come away with some degree of knowledge/familiarity with. (Let me just say as an aside here that this is where questions of canon come in…questions I'm not going to talk about so much, but not because I don't think they're important.) So if I was teaching philosophy of language, I should teach people about Frege/Sense/Reference; Russell/Donnellan/Kaplan/definite descriptions; Kripke; possibly Geach. Maybe at a higher level I could teach semantics, and compositionality, and theories of truth.</p>
<p>That's what I should teach…but what I <i>really</i> wanted to teach was all the ways in which philosophy of language gets fiction wrong, and how to deal with lies, and what do we mean by "meaning" and "nonsense" and "meaningless", and the problems fanfiction causes. But if I did that, then I'd have to give up on giving them the broad foundation in the historical debates and developments – there simply isn't enough time.</p>
<p>But what if what we were really supposed to be doing was teaching students <i>how to do philosophy</i> or <i>how to be philosophers</i>?</p>
<p>Then all the things I wanted to be teaching them and talking to them about, I could. But if that's what our goal is, then I think for the most part, we don't do a very good job at it.</p>
<p>In my capacity as director of undergrad dissertations at Durham, the biggest thing concern I've seen over the years is that students don't really know how to come up with dissertation topics. They look at the grand topics they've covered in their classes – the problem of evil, why is there something rather than nothing, what are numbers, etc. – and worry (quite rightly) that (a) they can't come up with a grand topic like this; (b) if they do, they won't be able to come up with an original contribution; (c) if they do, they can't adequately discuss it in 12k. Or, they look at the sorts of essay topics they're given in their classes or exams, and try to come up with something that sounds like that, and invariably end up with something clunky, awkward, and not very much fun.</p>
<p>My first experience with teaching (UK) students how to come up with their own questions was a few years ago when I taught a 2nd year course on Language, Logic, and Reality. I talked with the other person running the module and we agreed on a plan. The course had one formative paper and two summative papers. The formative paper, we would give them one question – everyone had to write on it. (It tied back to the very first lecture when I wrote three quotes up on the board – one in medieval Welsh, one in Sindarin, and one in Linear B. We asked them whether the quote in Linear B was meaningful, and why/why not.) The second paper we had around 7 pre-set questions students could choose from. But their final paper, they had to come up with their own topic. We told them this at the very beginning of the year, and provided a lot of "and this would be an EXCELLENT topic for your final paper" during lectures and discussions. We also arranged for my students to talk to the other lecturer to get their questions vetted, and vice versa, so that no one ended up picking something unreasonable for 3000 words. These final papers were across the board a much higher quality than the other ones.</p>
<p>But I can't recall how many people I had in my office telling me things like "I didn't know that I could talk about X in philosophy" or "Is this <i>philosophical enough</i>?" (Those two words are the bane of my existence). The worry whether something is "philosophical enough" connects to a concern that philosophy is demarcated by its subject matter, rather than its method, and that if one wants to talk about something in a philosophical context one must relate it back and anchor it in that subject matter. Whereas if one things that philosophy is a matter of <i>method</i>, then anything can be <i>philosophical enough</i>. It was <i>working with students</i> that convinced them that method is the way forward, and that method is what we should be teaching them, and what we should be teaching them explicitly.</p>
<p>(Side note: As a graduate student in the US, I remember being utterly baffled how my compatriots wrote journal articles. How did one come up with an idea that was suited to an article? I didn't have much problem writing seminar papers, but journal articles seemed a very different thing, and not once did I get any explicit guidance as to what the difference is or how I should approach one vs. the other.)</p>
<p>So how do we teach students to ask questions? Well, here's how <i>I</i> teach them:</p>
<p>When students are in my office wondering what to write their dissertations on, I have a surefire method of finding them a topic that excites and interests them. First, I ask them what interests them <i>outside</i> of philosophy. What do they read, what do they listen to, what do they watch, what do they talk about with friends, what are their hobbies? [Only once did I have a student tell me he had no hobbies.] Then, I ask them what interests them <i>in</i> philosophy – is it ethics, is it metaphysics, is it epistemology, is it language/logic? That is…are they interested in what is right? What is? What we know? How we say true things about it/draw inferences about it? Finally, I ask them: What's in the intersection. There's your thesis topic.</p>
<p>But that just gets a topic. How does one know what to say about it? These are the questions I have them go through:</p>
<ul>
<li>What do you want to know?</li>
<li>What would count as an answer to this question? How are you going to discriminate between things that answer the question and things that don't?</li>
<li>What would count as a <i>good</i> answer to this question? How are you going to discriminate between competing answers? What are your foundational principles, the things that you cannot give up? What is the purpose of this answer (are you looking for something functional, moral, epistemological, etc.)? State these at <i>the beginning</i> of what you are writing, as part of your motivation.</li>
<li>Then, once you've answered the question…who cares? Why does it matter? What has changed as a result of having this answer? What must change as a result of having this answer? Does having this answer affect our behavior? Does it affect what philosophical position we must adopt to remain consistent? Does it change the philosophical landscape by either removing or adding possible positions? What difference does it make?</li>
</ul>
<p>These are, at the heart of it, the questions I think philosophers should be asking, whatever other questions they ask. Do not ask "Why is there something rather than nothing?" or "What is a fact?" unless you have some idea of what could possibly count as an answer, and some idea of what could possibly count as a <i>good</i> answer. And when it's boiled down to this, these are fairly straightforward things to teach students to ask.</p>
<p>Answering them, on the other hand… is another matter altogether.</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-1975097496455470942019-10-31T17:04:00.002+01:002019-10-31T17:04:15.956+01:00It shouldn't be like this<p>Yesterday afternoon I went down to Leeds to give a talk at the joint Mathematics/Philosophy Logic seminar.</p>
<p>It was, in almost all respects, a really lovely day. I know the Leeds campus quite well, having been going to the International Medieval Congress there quite regularly for the last 10+ years, and I realised on the train down that I think I've probably been to Leeds more often than any other university in the UK other than Durham. I got in a few hours early, and hung out in the Old Bar to finish up my slides. (It was very strange, being on the Old Bar and not having it overrun with medievalists. I didn't overhear <a href="https://twitter.com/SaraLUckelman/status/1146495915118800898">any conversations about transcribing codices</a>, or rants about sexuality in Arthurian lit.) While sitting there, a friend surprised me by finding me there, and we got to chat for half an hour or so before I headed over to the mathematics dept., where another friend was waiting to join the audience of the talk. There were also a number of other people that I'd met at the British Logic Colloquium in September, which when sprinkled throughout the rather large audience made me feel at ease. I then got to give one of my favorite talks to mathematical logicians -- in it, I try to convince them that they should care about medieval logic, and show them amusing and sometimes rude pictures from manuscripts (my slides are <a href="http://community.dur.ac.uk/s.l.uckelman/slides/">here</a>. There was a lot of enthusiastic nodding during the talk, and some excellent questions at the end. Afterwards, a third friend of mine turned up, and joined us for beers, and then the dept. took me out for dinner -- so, basically a really, really wonderful day out.</p>
<p>Except.</p>
<p>I was the only woman in the room.</p>
<p>We all know that philosophy has a gender problem, that math has a gender problem, and that logic, sitting in the uncomfortable intersection between math and philosophy, has inherited the worst of both worlds. There have been many contexts in which I've been one of only two or three women in a group of logicians, and when I was an undergrad and early grad student, this was so normalised, to be honest I hardly even noticed. (To also be honest, I rather <i>liked</i> the skewed ratio, because it gave YoungNerd!Sara members of the opposite gender she could actually talk to and who actually wanted to talk to her. Dear reader, I married one of them.) But this was the first time where I was the only one.</p>
<p>During dinner I pointed this out, and to their credit, the people I was having dinner with fully acknowledged that this was a problem, and also that it is not an accident that they have invited as many women to come speak as they have. The first step towards fixing a problem is recognising it.</p>
<p>But even so, I wonder when the last time one of them gave a talk to an audience that was only women. It's 2019. It shouldn't be like this.</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-72256741039172868732019-09-25T16:01:00.000+02:002019-09-25T16:22:18.059+02:00Stats and graphs and publishing fiction<p>I've now been writing and submitting short (and long!) stories moderately seriously for just over 5 years -- after a decade or more hiatus from writing fiction, I decided one day, August 26, 2014, to start writing again, and I did. Since then, I've written hundreds of thousands of words (literally -- since I started tracking my words via <a href="http://www.wordkeeperalpha.com/">WordKeeperAlpha</a> in September 2017, I have written more than 200,000 words of fiction!), and I've had a satisfying amount of <a href="http://community.dur.ac.uk/s.l.uckelman/fiction.html">my fiction published</a>. I was thinking the other day that publications don't ever really tell the whole story -- of the time between when a piece was first submitted and when it was finally published, or how many rejections there were between first submission and first publication. So I thought I'd do a post about this, doing some graphs and stats on the last five years. (Well, rather, the last two and a half, which is when I started using <a href="http://thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com/">the Submissions Grinder</a>; this won't affect the stats very much, as prior to that I had only one story that I had ever submitted, and it was accepted on the first go.)</p>
<p>Between 2017-05-04 and 2019-09-16, I've submitted 23 stories. 11 (=48%) of them have been accepted. (Some of those which have not (yet) been accepted were one-off things written for a specific venue and when they weren't successful there there wasn't any great pressure to try resubmitting them, so if I didn't count those "dead" stories that acceptance percentage would be even higher! I hadn't realised how high it was, this is quite rewarding.) The first two graphs focus just on the accepted stories, and the third graph will focus on ones not yet accepted. (If you click on a graph you'll get a larger, easier to read version.)</p>
<p>The first graph plots how many days there were between when a story was first submitted, and when it was finally accepted:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfPnYO0pYs-wpXsuHW_1dZ2gJiI7zEaeo3ptuzxf2TUEdVmHmOSjFGiV1HNc2jd_Ou2FeA2iU07Djsq8P3oZRZjP1bXW8yZkbcMGbd95VX9tOnUJVlwQE1m_kGWcDgfnObvgI-YThFVWHI/s1600/Screenshot+from+2019-09-25+14-58-44.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfPnYO0pYs-wpXsuHW_1dZ2gJiI7zEaeo3ptuzxf2TUEdVmHmOSjFGiV1HNc2jd_Ou2FeA2iU07Djsq8P3oZRZjP1bXW8yZkbcMGbd95VX9tOnUJVlwQE1m_kGWcDgfnObvgI-YThFVWHI/s320/Screenshot+from+2019-09-25+14-58-44.png" width="320" height="37" data-original-width="846" data-original-height="98" /></a></div>
<p>The second graph plots how many rejections each accepted story got before it was finally accepted:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu2mbV-6C8C7sl0mp_EWfLJu6BkL4Pjc3rs9yz5ea06XweNLf5sEzQ9QcND5SsHf7Va86ayk62csbNDiEkCCIwza6PN_WbdWyxqnXD3U7y0JgyRIwj2lJGY6rE-m5S1Y_5GH4inzk9f2N6/s1600/graph1.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu2mbV-6C8C7sl0mp_EWfLJu6BkL4Pjc3rs9yz5ea06XweNLf5sEzQ9QcND5SsHf7Va86ayk62csbNDiEkCCIwza6PN_WbdWyxqnXD3U7y0JgyRIwj2lJGY6rE-m5S1Y_5GH4inzk9f2N6/s320/graph1.png" width="320" height="213" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="800" /></a></div>
<p>And then final graph plots how many rejections stories that have not yet been accepted yet have accrued already:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQcA8NKMFh75TMiqevNHH5y2OhEb7ZoAUHF-Il_Viyo1a-0cuOJIaVI7gzYKpF_pTcthvoaPf4PlnIfGxKYUMaj7d5MCo5K97W293Bvve3vjlfnajFUwKSkfxd6ugmuJAH6Q_zPGd5MUf-/s1600/graph2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQcA8NKMFh75TMiqevNHH5y2OhEb7ZoAUHF-Il_Viyo1a-0cuOJIaVI7gzYKpF_pTcthvoaPf4PlnIfGxKYUMaj7d5MCo5K97W293Bvve3vjlfnajFUwKSkfxd6ugmuJAH6Q_zPGd5MUf-/s320/graph2.png" width="320" height="213" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="800" /></a></div>
<p>One thing that comes out of these numbers is that persistence pays off. This makes me feel a lot better about the stories that I keep submitting and submitting and submitting. They will eventually get there. Eventually.</p>
<p>Edited to add another graph: Plotting the number of rejections vs. the length of time between initial submission and first acceptance:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ylpgE0JmjPQBZahVAKHJAyQq6QEBBJj7nKJim9vJ1IaqZ1axuUDA8nfHb7mOsZ4IaEHYUWwrlQ2GoguGLP5Zo1k1lABKEsprNcFRzWOpcjbPHX8fr_Ksy1VmgxDgSbmHxfybHTyO5_Ti/s1600/graph3.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4ylpgE0JmjPQBZahVAKHJAyQq6QEBBJj7nKJim9vJ1IaqZ1axuUDA8nfHb7mOsZ4IaEHYUWwrlQ2GoguGLP5Zo1k1lABKEsprNcFRzWOpcjbPHX8fr_Ksy1VmgxDgSbmHxfybHTyO5_Ti/s320/graph3.png" width="320" height="282" data-original-width="510" data-original-height="450" /></a></div>
Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-48242314090855548982019-09-19T14:14:00.000+02:002019-09-19T14:14:17.519+02:00Story birthday! "On the Other Side of the Dark Entry Gate"<p>Yesterday my drabble "On the Other Side of the Dark Entry Gate" was published in Black Hare Press's anthology <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/BEYOND-Paranormal-Microfiction-Anthology-Drabbles-ebook/dp/B07V9XCN4L/"><i>Beyond</i></a>.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEgGsiitFE3Fe3TLrYkQIDVfNQC06-1R8EYOCAxZ5r4cajpisQpkNhAAVDJ5pez1VV0UcXWiImC5FbabE0w0a__nPdENx1TqGyx7nepC_ijX0jze2auAaaBjKA7C0tUnEs4zgNLzOx002h/s1600/beyond1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEgGsiitFE3Fe3TLrYkQIDVfNQC06-1R8EYOCAxZ5r4cajpisQpkNhAAVDJ5pez1VV0UcXWiImC5FbabE0w0a__nPdENx1TqGyx7nepC_ijX0jze2auAaaBjKA7C0tUnEs4zgNLzOx002h/s320/beyond1.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="720" data-original-height="960" /></a> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjknQU2k22QdCz9bi0ZErVOfMHzLZwlWuFzKXI-GtU8_mdYMJ6inZviaQMUYR3wwQRQDyg3szRH7bwvvQzWtoi05Q8udkljB9q-ZoXdzMKl3n-_tugQJTdVrxl5-VJjhyYk_jKW3Jp8uBid/s1600/beyond2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjknQU2k22QdCz9bi0ZErVOfMHzLZwlWuFzKXI-GtU8_mdYMJ6inZviaQMUYR3wwQRQDyg3szRH7bwvvQzWtoi05Q8udkljB9q-ZoXdzMKl3n-_tugQJTdVrxl5-VJjhyYk_jKW3Jp8uBid/s320/beyond2.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="720" data-original-height="960" /></a>
<br/> (Book selfies are hard, when they're of ebooks!)</div>
<p>The original idea for this story dates back to spring 2017, when one of the Marvel films was being filmed at Durham Cathedral. My daughter's school is right behind the cathedral, and during filming there was limited access. To inform us of this, we got an email from school, which contained this delightful line:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Dark Entry gate is locked; access will be via The Bailey.</p></blockquote>
<p>That was when I knew I needed to write the story of the Dark Entry Gate -- especially when in proximity to a cathedral, doesn't that sound like a euphemism for the entrance to the pit of hell?</p>
<p>The story itself had a number of false starts over the last two years, but when I saw the theme for this anthology, the perfect drabble came out in one go.</p>
<p>Here's a picture of the Dark Entry gate when it is open:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2eF78dxS4XRBNZyyPbLftFcv2UlBuEH1_SvhHM0UvKoFs0c8lgSbcgR1ETOiH1jDncgGhmR0z9_n9tA_vfNJpdS1e5u0qqcGmUWvc9monUr9nK_X8XgyA7Rlw4_skK0PFinYiZCd-IKCN/s1600/70288249_448677356002213_7977601980782608384_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2eF78dxS4XRBNZyyPbLftFcv2UlBuEH1_SvhHM0UvKoFs0c8lgSbcgR1ETOiH1jDncgGhmR0z9_n9tA_vfNJpdS1e5u0qqcGmUWvc9monUr9nK_X8XgyA7Rlw4_skK0PFinYiZCd-IKCN/s320/70288249_448677356002213_7977601980782608384_n.jpg" width="178" height="320" data-original-width="889" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-88550290477007558622019-09-16T12:48:00.001+02:002019-09-16T12:48:30.714+02:00How to write academic papers for fun and profit<p>Back in spring, I chatted briefly with a group of master's students about what I was looking for in their final papers, and how they could go about structuring them (this was in the context of encouraging them to think beyond the length of paper they'd been used to writing -- instead of 3k, 5-6k). It took about 15 minutes and some scribbling on the board, but afterwards one of them thanked me and said no one had ever taught them this before.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Today I took 15 min. to tell some 2nd year master's students what, exactly, should go into a philosophy/logic research paper.<br><br>Later, one of them told me that no one had ever told them that before.<br><br>We really are failing our students sometimes. :(</p>— Doctor Logic (@SaraLUckelman) <a href="https://twitter.com/SaraLUckelman/status/1116341834949758976?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 11, 2019</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
<p>Following up on that tweet, I wrote up what I could remember of the advice I'd given.</p>
<p>Then, last week, someone in an FB group for fiction writing that I'm in was struggling with writing a paper for one of her classes, unsure how to get started. This group has 17+k members, and I often end up putting on my "professional academic" hat and giving people advice on picking classes, applying to uni, talking to their profs, etc., and this post was no different. The topic was an argumentative paper on quality management in insurance companies with special regard for business customers -- a topic I know nothing about, but you know what? I know what sort of paper I'd want to read on this subject...and the structure it has turned out to be rather similar to what I'd given the philosophy students for their logic papers!</p>
<p>So I thought I'd compile this advice into a blog post. Note that this isn't the <i>only</i> way to write such papers, but it's <i>a</i> way, and it's a good one, and it's one that not only do I encourage my students and other students to use, but I use myself quite often, too.</p>
<h4>Advice from twitter:</h4>
<ul>
<li>Your intro should include what your problem/puzzle/issue is; what motivated your choice; and what tools you'll use to solve it.</li>
<li>You should say what other people have done that's relevant, and why it's inadequate (if it isn't inadequate, then you don't have a puzzle/problem to solve).</li>
<li>You should define all your technical apparatus. This can be done in two ways:
<ol>
<li>Either you introduce the technical apparatus and the motivating examples/material concurrently, in an interleaved fashion.</l>
<li>Or you present all the technical apparatus, and then apply it to your motivating examples/material.</li>
</ol>
It's REALLY HARD to know which route is best. I often end up starting with one method, finding it wholly inadequate, switching to the other, hating it, and then switching back.</li>
<li>After you've applied your technical appartus, say something about the consequences. What have you gained from doing this? What have you learned? What are the problems? What still needs to be done?</li>
<li>And all of that will segue into your conclusion/recap/future work section. I think that's about it.</li>
</ul>
<h4>Advice from FB:</h4>
<p>The first thing you need is what question you're trying to answer, and what your answer is: Everything else gets built around that. I often recommend to my students to work backwards: What do you want your reader to come away with at the end? Set up your entire paper to drive that point home:</p>
<ul>
<li>Motivate the question -- which is this a question worth answering? Why this question rather than another question?</li>
<li>Contextualise the question -- what has already been said to answer this question? Why are these previous answers inadequate? How will your answer differ?</li>
<li>Motivate the answer -- what will count as a good answer? How will you discriminate good answers from bad answers? (This will, of course, be connected to the previous, in that you want answers that do things that previous answers haven't done).</li>
<li>Answer the question.</li>
<li>Explain how your answer answers the question and why it is a good answer.</li>
<li>Remind your reader what the question and answer were, and conclude.</li>
</ul>
<p>Aim for 1000 words for the first two, maybe 1500 for the third, 2000 for the fourth, and another ~2.5k for the fifth and sixth -- that's 7000 words and should be about 20 pages.</p>
<p>There you go! Have fun. Oh, wait, you want to know how to make money from all of this? Ahahahahahahah....</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-30465094763182894832019-09-09T21:30:00.001+02:002019-09-09T21:30:57.872+02:00Story birthday! "The Simurgh's Daughter"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv_75f2eXxWUMF9ju4kp3bmzGSCmbVcPwWtb0h4AYUv2A1RetXBzrwbAKX_BQK0DvBZW8PDZQfkJ_AxYpIdHsb58JgoC8xOY_4ovjxQUXpuBkkk1PalyFwtyVbVdx2nUMeLLzLuAE3SytB/s1600/simurghs-daughter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv_75f2eXxWUMF9ju4kp3bmzGSCmbVcPwWtb0h4AYUv2A1RetXBzrwbAKX_BQK0DvBZW8PDZQfkJ_AxYpIdHsb58JgoC8xOY_4ovjxQUXpuBkkk1PalyFwtyVbVdx2nUMeLLzLuAE3SytB/s320/simurghs-daughter.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="720" data-original-height="960" /></a></div>
<p>About two weeks ago, my short story "The Simurgh's Daughter" was published in the anthology <i>Pioneers and Pathfinders</i> (<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pioneers-Pathfinders-Jessica-Augustsson/dp/1687355398/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">Amazon link</a>); my print copy arrived today!</p>
<p>This story was written over Christmas break 2017-2018. I'd seen a call for stories for an anthology on Asian bird themed SFF, and was interested in exploring this theme in an atypical way. G had recently come home with a children's version of the <i>Shahnameh</i> from the library, and while reading it, especially stories of the simurgh, I wanted to write a story that fit within that mythos while not being a retelling of it, and I wanted to write a story for her.</p>
<p>She was my first beta reader and my biggest champion for the story throughout. I read it to her, and she drew pictures of parts of the story -- those pictures were taped to my kitchen cupboard for a good year, reminding me that no matter what happens, <i>she</i> loves my stories and believes in them.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIbiq4scJJDZ9UYSymsa2uiOLyGxRfnKScM71ZT5f_IdTpbrlqL_7q2vdvcf4sXX5d3duEQ8V9Jcc8L_s4k_ere5Aweo8Ur_UAO3sZCpEmZespanEmXyaLCXJoawSPVk2-fh31ebLMD2iq/s1600/haomatree.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIbiq4scJJDZ9UYSymsa2uiOLyGxRfnKScM71ZT5f_IdTpbrlqL_7q2vdvcf4sXX5d3duEQ8V9Jcc8L_s4k_ere5Aweo8Ur_UAO3sZCpEmZespanEmXyaLCXJoawSPVk2-fh31ebLMD2iq/s320/haomatree.jpg" width="230" height="320" data-original-width="633" data-original-height="879" /></a> <br/>"A fragrant pliant golden green haoma tree which blooms in summer"</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwSg3Owx1aarEVdKHR1Oep5Q_ZrVPAUoXSGtoypR4kR2KJbnnpJWiFfjrTuV_v8vfP-qm62vcHsmxjf45uXLBtrfohIpnKwju6lYzhhbKyDPiN7wyur2RC6jbr6CGL4Wrzr3QTLQr8dlM6/s1600/vourukasha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwSg3Owx1aarEVdKHR1Oep5Q_ZrVPAUoXSGtoypR4kR2KJbnnpJWiFfjrTuV_v8vfP-qm62vcHsmxjf45uXLBtrfohIpnKwju6lYzhhbKyDPiN7wyur2RC6jbr6CGL4Wrzr3QTLQr8dlM6/s320/vourukasha.jpg" width="320" height="239" data-original-width="960" data-original-height="717" /></a> <br/> "Vourukasha the world sea"</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjncgpEP1Kdkuv6A-zHR2LzMLn9aFIt2JY0tO3GpaM22S63xu5dcsovcLeJVXfrnbfTQozR7R78bbwdWSSRh6QiHFtlnFuuk93-r8j0H-xM6gMr92mrGMF71POg48tCP46yKphtj5G4WduU/s1600/simurgh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjncgpEP1Kdkuv6A-zHR2LzMLn9aFIt2JY0tO3GpaM22S63xu5dcsovcLeJVXfrnbfTQozR7R78bbwdWSSRh6QiHFtlnFuuk93-r8j0H-xM6gMr92mrGMF71POg48tCP46yKphtj5G4WduU/s320/simurgh.jpg" width="244" height="320" data-original-width="687" data-original-height="900" /></a> <br/> "The simurgh is a wondrous bird with copper feathers and the tail of a peacock and the face of a beautiful woman"</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj54kOHDrQyl_0XB4A1ULoAL7vpOVUrjj_RtSAjon8k_TYHStIlztAyi7QaATFLUSh231bRa3uPB0ujnshSXIUJ-JWA0FgHzuP_2GIWnthAbypDg2swuPURqMRqEatafEzTHi0iTw-HOrtE/s1600/haraberezaiti.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj54kOHDrQyl_0XB4A1ULoAL7vpOVUrjj_RtSAjon8k_TYHStIlztAyi7QaATFLUSh231bRa3uPB0ujnshSXIUJ-JWA0FgHzuP_2GIWnthAbypDg2swuPURqMRqEatafEzTHi0iTw-HOrtE/s320/haraberezaiti.jpg" width="320" height="239" data-original-width="935" data-original-height="697" /></a> <br/> "She landed upon Harā Berezaitī the peak of the tallest mountain when a cry caught her ears"</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS8AQg2Lap2wIxODfF-BRyzgzWMmb3QYmQcMZKkv9-qLLrxPGC_ae8hRIAQDvW6XicMR8TpiJzwO9NWKbHJpTfkWJ_RA7po3m0SKrNzTwlA-lOG7xgWraktpgmFciJb4P_-0p6KHilYq9R/s1600/mountain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS8AQg2Lap2wIxODfF-BRyzgzWMmb3QYmQcMZKkv9-qLLrxPGC_ae8hRIAQDvW6XicMR8TpiJzwO9NWKbHJpTfkWJ_RA7po3m0SKrNzTwlA-lOG7xgWraktpgmFciJb4P_-0p6KHilYq9R/s320/mountain.jpg" width="228" height="320" data-original-width="676" data-original-height="948" /></a> <br/> "You were born upon the mountain Harā Berezaitī around which the stars and the moon resolve"</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjcWyEnuzmzNU3LZmJN5nBqDxw6MUEA2afzBhLgxdz5l-gr1RszWGHxAoVxcGRVc_1XEKnk6QltrhODkyHwYKnlXqxiVtIUhV36r-hqItj-PD3T1jLjcJ3jvjKLRd8Prj7HZGXiZ1jBzXD/s1600/amui.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjcWyEnuzmzNU3LZmJN5nBqDxw6MUEA2afzBhLgxdz5l-gr1RszWGHxAoVxcGRVc_1XEKnk6QltrhODkyHwYKnlXqxiVtIUhV36r-hqItj-PD3T1jLjcJ3jvjKLRd8Prj7HZGXiZ1jBzXD/s320/amui.jpg" width="320" height="241" data-original-width="923" data-original-height="695" /></a> <br/> "The city of Amui upon the shores of a great sea"</div>
<p>I have a pretty good track record of writing stories for specific themed anthologies and failing to place them in those anthologies, but placing the stories elsewhere. I'd shopped this one around for quite awhile before I decided to ask Jessica, who edited <i>Pioneers and Pathfinders</i> if she'd like to read it, even if the story wasn't an exact fit for the antho brief. She loved it as much as G did. :)</p>
<p>I loved reading up on Persian mythology and history while writing the story, reading about Ahura Mazda, about haoma trees, about the world-sea, looking at geography to choose where exactly I would set Harā Berezaitī and which city (modern-day <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amol">Amol</a>) I would set Simbar's adventures in. I also loved research Persian food, making myself hungry along the way! (One book I stumbled across was Jan Gonda, <a href="https://books.google.com.sg/books?id=GtEUAAAAIAAJ"><i>Rice and Barley Offerings in the Veda</i></a>). And finally, to the best of my knowledge, Simbar and Thriti are both <a href="http://www.avesta.org/znames.htm">plausible historical Persian feminine names</a>; Saena is a name used for the simurgh in the <i>Yashts</i>, a collection of Avestan hymns.</p>
<p>I'm super glad to see this story in print, and look forward to reading it to G for many years to come.</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-4959394981400522752019-07-26T19:47:00.000+02:002019-08-01T13:06:52.268+02:00Doctor Logic Goes to WorldCon!<p><b>Edit August 1: The final schedule is now up, and I can confirm that the below is all correct.</b></p>
<p>I am super excited to be going to my first <a href="http://dublin2019.com/">WorldCon</a>, in Dublin next month. It'll be an interesting adventure -- it's my not only my first WorldCon, but it's also my first SFF con of any type, and while there I'll be participating in events that feature many different facets of my life. I've got lodgings arranged with philosophy and NaNoWriMo friends; I'm giving a paper on onomastics in the academic track; I'm speaking in two panels on AI; and I'll be participating in the demos and display stalls for the <a href="http://insulaedraconis.org/">Society for Creative Anachronism</a>; and I've got a drink-beer-with-an-author session. All my academic, hobby, and authorial pursuits all coming together into one!</p>
<p>So, what, <i>exactly</i> am I do, and where can you find me? Here's the scoop!</p>
<h2>Thursday, August 15</h2>
<h3>11:30-12:50: Worlds (Academic Session)</h3>
<h4>Names: Form & Function in Worldbuilding & Conlangs</h4>
<blockquote><p>Significant interest has been generated in recent years in the robust development of conlangs (constructed languages) for fantasy and sci-fi purposes, with detailed handbooks now available for the amateur conlanger, providing instructions on how to develop grammar, phonology, etc. One area of linguistic development that many conlangers often overlook is personal and place name patterns and practices.</p>
<p>The influence of medieval European naming practices can be seen throughout contemporary fantasy naming practices. This influence can be traced back to the Father of Fantasy, J. R. R. Tolkien, as many of his names – such as Gandalf, Thorin, Frodo, Theodred, and Peregrine – are in fact genuine medieval names; and Tolkien himself was significantly influenced by the medieval-style romances of William Morris. However, unlike Tolkien and Morris, many modern authors developing ‘generic medieval European’ style fantasy worlds do not have a background in medieval history or linguistics, with the result that even dedicated conlangers approach names in an unsystematic or ungrounded way.</p>
<p>In this talk we argue for the importance of including personal names and place names in the development of fantasy worlds and languages, and highlight the distinctive aspects of the formation and function of personal and place names that conlangers and authors should be aware of when developing a world or a language. We also show how resources available to the amateur historian and linguist, such as the <a href="http://dmnes.org/names"><i>Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources</i></a>, can be used to develop consistent, grounded, systematic name pools and patterns of construction.</p></blockquote>
<h4>Date, Time, Location</h4>
<p>15 Aug 2019, Thursday 11:30 - 12:20, Odeon 6 (Academic) (Point Square Dublin)</p>
<h4>Speakers</h4>
<ol>
<li>Dr. Sara L. Uckelman – ‘Names: Form & Function in Worldbuilding & Conlangs’</li>
<li>Andrew Richardson – ‘Civilisation and Science Fiction’</li>
<li>Dr Kevin Koidl – ‘Trust and the Future of Social Media’</li>
</ol>
<h2>Friday, August 16</h2>
<h3>16:30-17:20: Is Hari Seldon’s project becoming achievable? (Panel)</h3>
<blockquote><p>People have long tried to predict future outcomes of nations or personal behaviour. Prediction is now enhanced by big data and machine learning. Panellists consider which events we already can predict with high probability. With stochasticity, which events will we never ‘get’? What mechanisms would prevent misuse (e.g. for advertising or influencing voting)? What would trigger a ‘Seldon Crisis’?</p></blockquote>
<h4>Date, Time, Location</h4>
<p>16 Aug 2019, Friday 16:30 - 17:20, Alhambra (Point Square Dublin)</p>
<h4>Panelists</h4>
<ol>
<li>Shmulik Shelach</li>
<li>Dr. Sara L. Uckelman (Durham University)</li>
<li>Tomasz Kozlowski (Atelier of Improvisation) (Moderator)</li>
<li>Marina Berlin</li>
</ol>
<h2>Saturday, August 17</h2>
<h3>15:30-16:20: Crafting your fandom (Panel)</h3>
<blockquote><p>From building a spaceship wardrobe to knitting the Doctor’s scarf, baking the Death Star, or putting their travel cards into wands, fans have ever more inventive ways to express their love, enthusiasm, and fandom through arts and crafts. Our panellists will share their love of fandom crafting from what they do to how they do, and discuss why we all do it.</p></blockquote>
<h4>Date, Time, Location</h4>
<p>17 Aug 2019, Saturday 15:30 - 16:20, Alhambra (Point Square Dublin)</p>
<h4>Panelists</h4>
<ol>
<li>Dr. Sara L. Uckelman (Durham University) (Moderator)</li>
<li>Todd Allis</li>
<li>Arwen Grune</li>
<li>Michelle Coleman (University of Nottingham)</li>
<li>Alicia Zaloga</li>
</ol>
<h2>Sunday, August 18</h2>
<h3>17:00-17:50: Society for Creative Anachronism (demo)</h3>
<h4>Date, Time, Location</h4>
<p>18 Aug 2019, Sunday 17:00 - 17:50, 4th floor foyer (CCD)</p>
<h3>21:00-21:50: Literary Beer with Dr Sara L. Uckelman</h3>
<blockquote><p>Come and keep me company and have a beer (or not) and talk about writing (or not) or academia (or not)!</p></blockquote>
<h4>Date, Time Location</h4>
<p>18 Aug 2019, Sunday 21:00 - 21:50, Liffey-A (Fan Bar) (CCD)</p>
<h2>Monday, August 19</h2>
<h3>10:30-11:30: AIs and the female image (Panel)</h3>
<blockquote><p>Whether in smart homes or wearing mechanical bodies, until recently many ‘female’ AIs emphasised beauty and sexuality. Now some portrayals emphasise strength and intelligence. Can we do both? How does the representation of ‘male’ AIs differ? Must we anthropomorphise AIs and assign them genders? Can we have non-binary AIs?</p></blockquote>
<h4>Date, Time, Location</h4>
<p>19 Aug 2019, Monday 10:30 - 11:30, Odeon 1 (Point Square Dublin)</p>
<h4>Panelists</h4>
<ol>
<li>Madeline Ashby</li>
<li>Charles Stross</li>
<li>Pat Cadigan</li>
<li>Dr V Anne Smith (University of St Andrews)</li>
<li>Dr. Sara L. Uckelman (Durham University)</li>
</ol>
<p>It may come as a surprise to some people that I am actually an introvert and sometimes can suffer from incapacity shyness and anxiety. I've spent a large part of my life thinking "Surely everyone has someone they would like to talk to more than talk to me". But if people come up and talk to me, I am positively delighted and often can pretend <i>very well</i> to be an extrovert. So look out for these shoes and introduce yourself to me if you see me! (And if there is someone else at WorldCon with these shoes...I want to meet you.)</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwseUT2JKZaKJVXFPNse6b0Cpuy025iuVlb4Zm1A26r6YFNTRbHu3IDaHEmzYRiIEMDYbHDXqSh930P45Kle8ATOF8BrxoJ1XexDlloiYGD6as-jmsz3vVeihpbjPP58rhCa19vyoAi4Vo/s1600/shoes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwseUT2JKZaKJVXFPNse6b0Cpuy025iuVlb4Zm1A26r6YFNTRbHu3IDaHEmzYRiIEMDYbHDXqSh930P45Kle8ATOF8BrxoJ1XexDlloiYGD6as-jmsz3vVeihpbjPP58rhCa19vyoAi4Vo/s320/shoes.jpg" width="320" height="320" data-original-width="400" data-original-height="400" /></a></div>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-64374081657102986742019-07-21T12:29:00.000+02:002019-07-21T12:29:05.420+02:00New publication announcement!<p>On Friday, my paper <a href="https://journals.tdl.org/jat/index.php/jat/article/view/271">"Contradictions, Impossibility, and Triviality: A Response to Jc Beall"</a> was published in <i>Journal of Analytic Theology</i>, as part of a symposium on Jc Beall's paper, also published in the same issue, <a href="https://journals.tdl.org/jat/index.php/jat/article/view/171">"Christ – A Contradiction: A Defense of Contradictory Christology"</a>. It was a pleasure to be invited by the editors of the journal to participate in this symposium, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading Beall's paper and responding to it. I look forward to reading all the other responses with the attention and care they are due.</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-9945620567962597952019-06-20T15:46:00.000+02:002019-06-20T15:46:18.202+02:00the "I forgot to wear trousers to lecture" dream<p>[Note: I originally posted this to my personal blog, which I don't share the link around to much, and kept wanting to share it with people because it's <i>so funny</i>, so I finally decided to copy the post over to this blog, so I can share this link.]</p>
<p>Last night [April 28, 2016] I dreamt it was my first introduction to logic tutorial, and as I was waiting for everyone to file in I realized there was a lot more people there than I was expecting -- instead of 10-12, or even max 20, it was more than three times that (as the people kept filing in, the room kept growing, but even so, it was a small room and it was full). And then someone else professorial showed up, expecting to teach there at the same time; his course was on the Swedish/Danish October 1844-1846 Revolt between the red coats and the green coats. But we compared notes, and realized that I was scheduled to teach there at 9:00am, which it was, and he was scheduled to teach there at 8:00am, and had thus missed his first lecture. Oops.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, the room was still awfully full, so I realized this must've been the first lecture, not the first tutorial, and adjusted my plan correspondingly and when the trickle slowed, I launched into my "What is logic?" with full vim.</p>
<p>Lots of vim, because right about then was when I realized that I was lecturing in my underwear. On the other hand, I also had my coronet on, so it all evened out, and I blithely Emperor's New Clothesed my way through the opening words until someone tentatively raised her hand and asked "Uhhh, what class is this supposed to be?"</p>
<p>"Introduction to Logic.",/p>
<p>"Not dance?"</p>
<p>"Uhhh, no. But what kind of dance? I can teach medieval and Renaissance dance, as well as tap, ballet, and jazz." [Note: This is true]</p>
<p>"Modern hip-hop."</p>
<p>"Sorry, no, not this room." And about twenty of the students filed out.</p>
<p>At that point I was poking my head out the door to see if there was anyone else planning to show up, and realized <i>there were people with pitchforks running through the halls!</i> -- the red coats and the green coats. A red coat, pursued by two green coats, saw my open door and dashed into the lecture hall, swooped me up, flung me over his shoulder, and ran down the stairs. I did have to ask him if he was one of the good guys or one of the bad guys, because, to be honest my knowledge of the October 1844-1846 Revolt was quite minimal -- the only thing I knew about it was that Joel has a wargame based on it, entitled "Bugles and Bubbles" -- and I didn't even remember who won in the end. I don't remember his answer, and things became a bit fuzzy for a bit, but eventually I escaped him, found some proper clothing to match my crown, snuck through various halls and into the cathedral where the funeral service for the king was happening, and somehow by the time I woke up, I ended up queen of Sweden.</p>
<p>So, you know, it wasn't all bad.</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-42708799489651382692019-05-10T22:59:00.000+02:002019-05-10T22:59:00.057+02:00Short story birthday: "An Orb of Ice-Blue Held Aloft in a Perfect Hand"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtyobtXliN56PXATHJL273afkNQ3OF7anzkoHKxKxsJOvChF1nc69-pd4jQbXmsh6ZmcU7QLvSTIVzJ2zsbCxzOw7hqZXoj_dzM9GHZZ4aSyjmgo1MYDth7z5Dm8-iU_YLlkPe6GkpGd1G/s1600/mermaidaudris.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtyobtXliN56PXATHJL273afkNQ3OF7anzkoHKxKxsJOvChF1nc69-pd4jQbXmsh6ZmcU7QLvSTIVzJ2zsbCxzOw7hqZXoj_dzM9GHZZ4aSyjmgo1MYDth7z5Dm8-iU_YLlkPe6GkpGd1G/s320/mermaidaudris.jpg" width="320" height="213" data-original-width="960" data-original-height="640" alt="Mermaid Audris by Phil Mac Fadden" /></a></div>
<p>Yesterday my short story "An Orb of Ice-Blue Held Aloft in a Perfect Hand" was published in Manawaker Studio's <a href="http://www.manawaker.com/podcast/ffp-an-orb-of-ice-blue-held-aloft-in-a-perfect-hand/">Flash Fiction Podcast</a>. (Go listen to it! It's only 10 minutes long!)</p>
<p>The story itself has quite a story behind it. Late February/early March last year, I was involved in the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_UK_higher_education_strike">longest-ever strike in UK higher-education history</a>. From long cold days on the picket lines in the snow, to the harshness of being able to do my job, it was a tough time (something I blogged about daily here, starting with <a href="http://diaryofdoctorlogic.blogspot.com/2018/02/today-i-am-on-strike.html">Day 1</a>). I was struggling with the disruption of my schedule, of my projects, of my identity. Then one of my friends posted the above photo on Facebook, and I commented "I wanna write that story."</p>
<p>So I did.</p>
<p>About a week later when the local branch of the Durham UCU held a "Solidarity Salon", I read my strike story out loud -- the first time I've ever read any of my fiction aloud to an audience other than my daughter. Writing that story provided me with an outlet and a solace amidst a very stressful time, and I am so pleased that I was able to capture such an amazingly beautiful photo (of my amazingly beautiful friend!) in a story. That someone else liked my story enough to publish it is just the cherry on the top!</p>
<p><b>Photo credit</b>: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mermaidaudris/">Mermaid Audris</a> by Phil Mc Fadden. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/MermaidAudris">@MermaidAudris</a> on twitter.</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5049700622778824559.post-46460626803246844802018-12-13T13:16:00.001+01:002018-12-13T13:16:30.477+01:00New publication announcement: "Computation in Medieval Western Europe".<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSJrqAs7LfQxf0NbPUGBw-YGwS-9JAt1dmghfZziEX_4tIH-h3PtJlKtqJ2vBBeTC0K1IC9y86uWSvM_Kgn9w1WLF7r2xRsThSg5fKEmaTOym4XEiCGBzbkQZE7IBYePsXmGFntPqBFbyH/s1600/techcompbookselfie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSJrqAs7LfQxf0NbPUGBw-YGwS-9JAt1dmghfZziEX_4tIH-h3PtJlKtqJ2vBBeTC0K1IC9y86uWSvM_Kgn9w1WLF7r2xRsThSg5fKEmaTOym4XEiCGBzbkQZE7IBYePsXmGFntPqBFbyH/s320/techcompbookselfie.jpg" width="240" height="320" data-original-width="720" data-original-height="960" /></a></div>
<p>I've got a new publication to announce! (It actually came out a week or two ago, but I only got my author's copy on Tuesday, so no author selfie before then.) It's a book chapter in Sven Ove Hansson, ed., <a href="https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319937786"><i>Technology and Mathematics: Philosophical and Historical Investigations</i></a>, on "Computation in Medieval Western Europe":</p>
<blockquote><p>Abstract:</p>
<p>Practices that fall under the broad umbrella of ‘computation’ in the western European Middle Ages tend to be goal-oriented and directed at specific purposes, such as the computation of the date of Easter, the calculation of velocities, and the combinatorics of syllogisms and other logical arguments. In spite of this practical bent, disparate computational practices were increasingly built upon theoretical foundations. In this chapter, we discuss the theoretical principles underlying three areas of computation: computistics and the algorithms employed in computistics, as well as algorithms more generally; arithmetic and mathematical calculation, including the calculation of physical facts and theorems; and (possible) physical implementations of computing mechanisms.</p></blockquote>
<p>It was an interesting paper chapter to write because it stretched the boundaries of my comfort zones -- I had to read up <i>a lot</i> on calendrical computation! (Which is super interesting.) But it's a fascinating exercise, to pick a modern concept, such as computation, and then see what, if anything, counts as its historical precursor.</p>Sara L. Uckelmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14716054827293611237noreply@blogger.com1