Saturday, January 27, 2007

First Post

Ha! I am the first one to suck up. Here's my thoughts so far on the readings:

1. Teaching Philosophy and HPS to Science Students

Does anyone feel slightly insulted by this article? I consider myself a "science student," and have no problem keeping up with the reading and writing in humanities and social sciences classes. Sometimes I enjoy it and I've taken humanities classes for fun. I think Cantor is taking a few students (Cornell engineers) and generalizing for all science majors.

2. On Search for a Root Cause....

This was my favorite reading. I enjoyed reading about the debates within in the environmental movement instead of the usual fights between environmentalist vs. developers. I think I find myself more on Commoner's side, saying technology is more to blame than population growth (Who wants to start a debate?), but population is still a contributing factor.

3. Whose Nature?

I did not like this reading. I found Proctor to be uncourageous in that he won't take a side himself. The whole reading seemed to be "the loggers/owl-savers are right, but they also aren't right." By the end of the reading, Proctor does not come up with a better solution to the problem. Sometimes, instead of sitting on the sidelines, complaining about both teams, you have to pick a side.

4. Ambigous Role of Science and Tech

This article was slightly boring. I don't know what to think about his view that the humanities need to step it up in the environmental field ("But the avoidance of the aesthetic, religious, or metaphysical motives... do not figure in the work of scientists and engineers, but are among the potent resources in mobilizing popular support for environmental action.") I feel like I'm always reading stuff (especially so for this class) about environmental philosophy, environmental history, etc. What I thought was interesting in the article was Pastorlism and Thomas Jefferson's veiws.

5. Pan's Travail

I'm reading it now. What's with the suggestive photo on the front cover?


Steve Zelno
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4 comments:

Erik Roneker said...

teaching philosophy to science students: of course we can read, but there is certainly a difference in technique and style for science vs. humanities. i think the author is trying to point out that it's important to be well rounded in both.

January 28, 2007 at 5:05 PM
Bridgette Rivers said...

I agree with you on the spotted owl article, I was disappointed at the end. And I also found myself sleeping during the Science and Tech one as well. I can see where Cantor is coming from with his article but I do think it makes science students sound incapable of writing and reading, which I also don't think is true. It was a wayyy over simplistic view of the "two types of students".

January 28, 2007 at 8:48 PM
Sha said...

In reference to the 1st article (Teaching Philosophy...blah..blah..), as Steve, I do somewhat take offense to this article. I don’t know about all “science students” collectively (which is a very broad categorization of people in the 1st place), but I do know about myself—if anything, I believe learning the humanities mentally strengthens me as a scientist. It teaches me a new way of thinking and learning how to find common ground between differing viewpoints. The fact that he outright analyzed the attitudes and behaviors of all science students (or the majority thereof) to be negative toward the humanities was very offensive.

Concerning, On the Search for a Root Cause…I love that essay! Very engaging! Well, I only have one thing to say about this article- I agree with the author. “The challenge … is to continue this exploration, not with the intention of determining some essential root cause but with the goal of providing a fuller assessment of the related, complex, and MULTIPLE ORIGINS of the diverse environmental problems that we face.” –Ellis pg. 268

Lastly, Proctor’s essay: “Whose Nature?” (Truthfully, I cannot give a complete opinion because I did phase out on a several parts of this article.  Nevertheless, to my understanding….) I agree with Steve and Bridgette about the fact that the author did kind of leave you hanging. On the other hand, I disagree because I believe that you cannot always take sides! Sometimes, it is good to have “moral aphasia” about certain things…it can be the best mindset to find common ground. Taking sides and consistently arguing about “how to solve a problem” only serves as a deterrent to actually finding the solution. As Ellis also says, “Instead of arguing …about who is most right,…consider the insights each perspective has generated and work toward a more comprehensive rather than a confrontational understanding of problems…” p.267

I am going to stop now, because this is long! Haha :D

January 29, 2007 at 12:46 AM
emilyk said...

I think this class might actually be influencing the way I think, at least only on a very trivial and subconscious level, but still, in the other natural resources class I am taking we started to have a discussion of nature and where humans fit in it and I could not help but bring up the point that nature is really just too ambiguous of a term for us really to use to define a module to place ourselves in, everyone's ideas of what exactly nature is were far too different.

February 5, 2007 at 10:01 PM

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