The Emerging Scholars Blog

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

Annie Savoy: "...there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball." Except, of course, that there aren't 108 beads in a rosary.

1. Mary and the Modern University (First Things): In light of the false perception that religion has little to do with thought, R. R. Reno (Theology, Creighton) asks:

What, then, does Christianity add to academic life? What should make teachers and students at Catholic colleges and universities–and other Christian institutions of higher education–confident in the intellectual integrity of their enterprise?

Reno offers the surprising suggestion that we look to Mary’s response to the Annunciation:

When the Angel of the Lord comes to Mary, she is told a truth–the truth of human destiny–that she cannot understand. Her response: “Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

Good stuff. (HT: Kenny Benge)

Photo credit: B Tal via Flickr

2.  Vocational concerns in higher education. In addition to the material covered in The End of Philosophy? – check out the Sociology The Satisfaction Gap (Scott Jaschik. Inside Higher Ed.  8/17/2010). The article comes face-to-face with the question of how to prepare students for graduate school.  In particular, student formation along with appreciation of student (possibly faculty) fancies/interest doesn’t bring to the attention of students how much research stats comprise the work of Sociology.  Comment from Tom:  Maybe it also indicates some loss of direction of taking some the bigger picture into consideration when engaged in Sociological research and interpretation. I’ll survey my friends in Sociology. Feel free to also post your thoughts.

Lou Gehrig, international admissions, and Richard Mouw on praying in class after the jump.

Read the rest of this entry »

Michael Ruse’s Do We Need Philosophy? (Chronicle of Higher Education. 8/15/2010) masterfully weaves together reflections on the death of his colleague David Hull*, transitions in philosophy, the increasing costs of higher education, and lamplighting in philosophy.  A significant part of the piece focuses upon Mark Taylor’s** NY Times Op-Ed recommendation to consolidate philosophy departments at Columbia and NYU (Academic Bankruptcy. 8/14/2010).*** Ruse eloquently concludes:

I think that David’s life was truly worthwhile. But was he a bit like a lamplighter, someone who had a good career in his day but for which we no longer have need? Are we getting to the point where philosophy, if it is to be taught at all, could just be a subgroup within an English department? (Wouldn’t they just love that, with their obsession about Heidegger!) ****  And if philosophy goes, what about classics and more? What about departments of religion?!

Quite apart from the economic worries I expressed above, I cannot but feel that something will be lost if universities do just become glorified technical institutions, or business schools. Personally, I don’t think you can claim to be an educated person if you have never done any philosophy. With Socrates I agree that the unexamined life is not worth living, and unlike the average scientist or engineer in my experience (Richard Dawkins being at the top of my list), I don’t think you can do philosophy on your own after work in the pub. I think that knowing something of the great thinkers of the past is vital.

But then don’t forget that I am only five years younger than was David Hull, and, like him, I have had a full-time career as a philosopher. Maybe you are just hearing the sad lament of another lamplighter.

So, what do you think, “Do we need philosophy?”  Is the economic downturn (and/or shifts in our culture) leading toward the end of various specializations in philosophy?  Should the focus of philosophy be upon ensuring each student has a class (or 2) in living the examined life and/or informing the faculty of each class in how to incorporate reflections/musings upon living the examined life? Reflecting upon my studies at Grove City College, the core curriculum provided a glimpse of philosophers and worldviews in the context of following Christ.  I took logic as an elective.  All of these classes, and the others in the core curriculum, have been foundational in providing perspective for my daily work on campus and the blog.  In addition, the material in these classes (and my other classes in general) have been a “para-academy” gift to offer in many ministry contexts.  So, “yes, we need philosophy.”  Of course maybe, I’m actually arguing for a certain stream of philosophy founded upon Building a Christian Worldview (developed further in Revolutions in Worldview: Understanding the Flow of Western Thought. What do you think?

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*For more by Ruse visit Philosophy of Science Association.

**Mark Taylor is the chairman of the religion department at Columbia University.  In addition, he’s the author of the forthcoming Crisis on Campus: A Bold Plan for Reforming Our Colleges and Universities, click here to check out a Chronicle of Higher Ed Commentary (8/8/2010) adapted from the book.

***Related article of interest: Stop Admitting Ph.D. Students (Inside Higher Ed. 8/18/2010) by Monica J. Harris, professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky.

****Update (8/18/2010, 8:50 am): I just finished reading Okla Elliott’s Guest Review: Logic: The Question of Truth (Translated by Thomas Sheehan. Indiana University Press, 2010) for Inside Higher Ed (8/17/2010). Anyone have insights to share regarding the question of truth?

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

The future is almost here!

1.  The Future of Evangelicals in Academia. Who else to address this question than Mark Noll, historian and author of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. Lots of good material in this interview, including some of his impressions of James Davison Hunter’s To Change The World and Andy Crouch’s review of the book.   Note:  If you have thoughts to share regarding the ideas in Hunter’s book, then please comment at Micheal Hickerson’s ESN blog post Changing the World with James Davison Hunter.

The last question of the interview is “What are some of the most encouraging trends you see today in evangelical intellectual circles, be they projects or institutions or ministries?” He mentions several projects, institutions, and ministries including InterVarsity’s Graduate and Faculty Ministry. Thank-you for the encouragement. To God be the glory!

2. Philosophy and Faith (Gary Gutting. NY Times Opinion. 9/1/2010.)  Interested in studying philosophy at Notre Dame or tracking with some of the discussion which occurs on campus (and on-line) regarding material such as  Alvin Plantinga’s modal-logic formulation of St. Anselm’s ontological argument or William Rowe’s complex version of a probabilistic argument from evil, then visit this NY Times Opinion piece.

3.  Keeping up with the Amish? Just in case you haven’t seen one of the many articles on Amish growth, here’s a link to how it ran on NPR, APNewsBreak: Study Says Amish Expanding Westward (AP, 7/28/2010).   Thank-you to Donald Kraybill for his focused research, for more visit Elizabethtown College Amish Studies. Read the rest of this entry »

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1.  Simon Critchley (chair of philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York, and part-time professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands) kicks off The Stone, a NY Times forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless with the question, What Is a Philosopher? How would you answer this question?

2.  Scientists Fault U.S. Response in Assessing Gulf Oil Spill (Justin Gillis, NY Times, 5/19/2010).  “‘Our intention is to deploy every single thing we’ve got,’ Dr. Lubchenco [administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] said. ‘If it’s not in the region, we’re bringing it there.’”  But it has been difficult to access research material in order to develop an “understanding where the oil is and what its impact might be” and discern/model “what is happening in deeper water.”  Any suggestions regarding how business, environmental recovery, government, and scientific response can partner?  Sharing their gifts and resources to address the oil spill?  Or are we actually doing well, but have a blame game?

Note:  Scientists have long theorized that a shallow spill and a spill in the deep ocean — this one is a mile down — would behave quite differently. A 2003 report by the National Research Council predicted that the oil could break into fine droplets, forming plumes of oil mixed with water that would not quickly rise to the surface — Scientists Fault U.S. Response in Assessing Gulf Oil Spill (Justin Gillis, NY Times, 5/19/2010).

3. The King James Bible and Its Cultural Afterlife – Ohio State is hosting this conference in May 2011, focusing on the cultural and literary heritage of the King James Version of the Bible. Presenters already on the schedule already include Leland Ryken of Wheaton and Paul Gutjahr of Indiana U. If you are interested in presenting, statements of interest are due July 1. (HT: John Acker, who is also serving as research assistance for the conference)

4. ProfHacker’s Open Letter to New Tenure-Track Faculty – There’s some good stuff here. Just a taste:

Don’t be afraid to say no to service, even when you think you should take on the task. Pick your service load limit (using male colleagues as your standard, since they do less service and get more credit), and stick to that limit.

Make everything into research.

Get in the habit of writing regularly.

5. InterVarsity has a long history of culture making – including its own record label. The vinyl record blog recordo obscura picked up a 1969 InterVarsity record featuring Christian coffee house band Jonathan & Charles at a Cincinnati thrift store. It’s pretty groovy – if nothing else, take a few minutes to listen to “Jesus Was a Pretty Good Guy.”

Education for Human Flourishing, Cover

After rattling the reader’s cage by exploring Have you been properly educated?, Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis argue:

Most of the abilities that we associate with knowledge in the educational field turn out to be mostly a capacity to recite. … As humans we are constantly engaged in mental activities.  We constantly access and categorize everything around us.  We experience the world around us and we have beliefs about the world, some of which are true and some of which are false.  We justify our ideas through our rational capacities, by which we set up a system of understanding that arbitrates what can be constituted as knowledge, what is and is not an accurate depiction of reality.

To claim we know something implies we have sufficiently good reasons to say the things we believe are as we say they are.  Knowledge is justified true belief. Each of these categories — justification, truth and belief — plays a necessary but not sufficient role in determining knowledge, and each should be explained in order to see how belief, justification and truth form an integrated concept of knowledge. – Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective.* InterVarsity Press, 2009. p.103-4) .

Questions …

• Are Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis on track with their definition of knowledge?  Note:  earlier they distinguish three types of knowledge
  • technical knowledge or what is more commonly called know-how
  • propositional knowledge, which is knowledge of facts
  • knowledge of acquaintance, which is knowledge about something in direct awareness (78-80, 103).
• How do you define knowledge and describe it’s acquisition in general, in your discipline?
• What scholars/resources/books have you found most helpful in shaping your understanding of knowledge?

*Find the title appealing? Then check out the Preface & Precis of Book and Chapters.

Education for Human Flourishing, Cover

Educational standards are the foundation of the modern educational endeavor.  Statements about educational success imply standards.  Measuring whether or not students are being properly educated involves testing them in particular subjects with its prescribed set of grade-appropriate standards that they must meet or exceed (Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis. Education for Human Flourishing: A Christian Perspective.* InterVarsity Press, 2009. p.100).

The battery of standardized tests which Spears and Loomis go onto describe and critique in Chapter 3:  Who Knows?  Education and epistemology are not just applicable my fourth grade twin girls, as I hear a variety of students/educators in higher education discuss standardized tests with some frequency (particularly at PSU-Hershey Medical Center).   Here are the questions Spears and Loomis bring to our attention:

• What do such tests actually tell us about the student’s intelligence, ability, creativity, insightfulness or grasp of reality?
• Do current standards provide an accurate way to assess a genuine education?
• What does it mean to be educated?
• How do educators determine the success or failure of our educational project? (p. 100)

Any responses?  Do the “answers” vary depending on the level, sphere of education

• Fourth graders
• Medical students
• Undergraduate History major prepare to teach Secondary Education versus preparing for Graduate School
• Computer Science PhD student headed to Microsoft versus a Faculty position involving Research/Teaching
• Vo-Tech student

As you’re mulling these things over, here are the three types of knowledge the authors discuss in chapter 2 and remind the reader of in chapter 3:

• technical knowledge or what is more commonly called know-how
• propositional knowledge, which is knowledge of facts
• knowledge of acquaintance, which is knowledge about something in direct awareness (103).

More coming from Chapter 3.

*Find the title appealing?  Then check out the Preface & Precis of Book and Chapters.

Education for Human Flourishing, Cover

In Chapter 2 of Education for Human Flourishing:  A Christian Perspective* (InterVarsity Press, 2009), Paul D. Spears and Steven R. Loomis draw attention to the importance of foundational categories and philosophical thinkers for the development of educational theory.  Furthermore, they argue modern educational theory, influenced by modern philosophy, has led to some of the pitfalls of our prestigious institutions of higher education (p.71).  Spears and Loomis begin Chapter 2 with these comments:

Educators are inundated with myriads of competing educational theories, and these theories dictate the methods and goals that are actualized in the classroom on a daily basis.  These educational theories are a product of a commitment to a certain philosophical paradigm.  Teachers are overwhelmed, understandably, with the amount of work it takes to properly manage the classroom. … This doesn’t leave a teacher much time (if any at all) to reflect on educational theory — let alone the theories’ underlying philosophical commitments.  If teachers are going to be properly equipped for their task of education, they must begin to grapple with the historical development of educational purpose.

Broadly speaking, modern education lacks a unified purpose or goal to direct its curricular and pedagogical commitments.  This lack of unity exists because education has many competing allegiances to different educational methodologies, which are driven by a variety of diverse philosophical commitments.  Education is no longer understood in terms of training that enable us to pursue a true conception of reality.  Formerly, education was conceived as a tool by which we came to properly understand our humanity, ourselves and our right role within society.  Education was about pursuing and understanding objective value, as C.S. Lewis points out:  “the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and that others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.”  Today, education is not so much about truth or morality as it is about tolerance and contributing to the nation’s economic growth. — p.69-70.

Questions to ponder/discuss:

• Do you feel overwhelmed by competing educational theories, whether as a student, researcher, a professor, or an administrator?
• What do you consider the purpose/goal/end of education?
• What training in foundational categories/philosophy is necessary for followers of Christ to work out their faith in the complex market of educational theory/practice?

*Find the title appealing?  Then check out the Preface & Precis of Book and Chapters.

What are you reading, watching, thinking about over Thanksgiving break? Anything special with some time off or is there too much going on with the holiday?

As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them.  In addition, if you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1.  Tom’s supervisor passed along a helpful slide show on how slide shows work.  Time for some upgrades?  Do you agree with the psychologist?

2.  Take a moment to consider Adopted Objects: The Art of Kenneth Steinbach (James Romaine, Comment, November 20, 2009). Below’s a picture and quote to get you started.

#38 (lost glove 2)

Steinbach’s art is not immediately or evidently “Christian.” His drawings, such as Tape recorder, Paper bags, Lost Glove and Pistol, do not depict religious iconography, and he does not illustrate Bible stories. Steinbach’s art is a practice of faith realized in forms that materialize a transformed vision. His drawings are created by an unorthodox process of adoption and revision that parallels a life of faith.

3. Academic pledges to give away £1m – Toby Ord, a researcher with the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics (as opposed to impractical ethics?) has pledged to give away 10% of his income, plus any income over £20,000 (about $33,000) for the remainder of his academic career.

“I was living very happily as a student and worked out what I’d need to continue living like that through my life – or a little bit better, to allow some room for improvement – and then I worked out how much I could do with that amount of money.

“I could save thousands of people’s lives, and saving one person’s life is often thought to be an amazing kind of thing you can do over your whole career,” he said.

4. The APA and Christian Colleges – The American Philosophical Association is said to have decided on a new policy that will flag job listings from any college or university that doesn’t follow APA’s non-discrimination policy, which includes sexual orientation alongside race, religion, and gender. The Council for Christian Colleges & Universities objects to the policy, while Peter van Inwagen of Notre Dame has said that flagging job listings is preferable to the APA’s other desired course – banning those listings altogether.

5. There is no number five! Tom and Mike are heading out for Black Friday, so we encourage you to get shopping, too. Actually, that’s not true. Instead, take a look at this short film from Nathan Clarke about the prosperity gospel in Africa. I guess that is number five after all, isn’t it?

Longtime friend of ESN Jay Woodham shared this link on Facebook to an “opinionated play-by-play” of the dialogue between Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga and atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett at the recent American Philosophical Association meeting. It’s a very interesting read, both the blog post and the comments, about a discussion between two of the leading philosophers in academia today. The contributor admits his bias towards Plantinga, so read it for what it’s worth, though some of his judgments are countered by commenters. The bloggers does a good job, in my opinion, of putting Plantinga and Dennett in philosophical context for those of us (like myself) who are only familiar with them through the current debates about atheism and naturalism.

Also in the comments is a side conversation about whether or not open belief in God is a hazard to one’s career in philosophy. The commenters are split: some say that it’s not a problem at all, while others strongly recommend keeping your theism under your hat. (My bet is that it strongly depends on your particular department and the attitudes of its faculty.)

BTW, if you are interested in Plantinga, his book Warranted Christian Belief is available for free from the always excellent Christian Classics Ethereal Library.

There’s a very interesting article today at the Chronicle of Higher Education, How to Be Happy in Academe ($) by Gregory Pence, professor of philosophy at Alabama-Birmingham. He’s writing about how career expectations can become defeaters, leading you to feel depressed about perfectly fine academic work. He shares his own tangled path from New York City to Birmingham, and how much more rewarding his “Plan B” has become than he ever expected.

Compare Pence’s article to two recent articles published on InterVarsity websites – Christian Professors Flourishing? by Terry Morrison and Loving the Academic Life by Dorothy Boorse. All three get at the issue of fulfilling one’s academic calling, but all from different perspectives.

Any stories to share of unexpected rewards of working at “second-tier” schools? Feel free to change names to protect the innocent.