Old Email Archive

digest 1997-02-28 #002


11:27 PM 2/27/97 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest 2/2
> >may be why I felt it necessary to write this.
>
> As a rhetorician, I am studying how citations are used to give
authority to
> claims.  There's a large literature about this topic that extends
through
> citation analysis (from Eugene Garfield and Derek de Solla Price)
through
> sociology of scientific knowledge (from Nigel Gilbert to Blaise
Cronin to
> Susan Cozzens to Bruno Latour) and over to rhetoric of
inquiry/genre
> studies/composition studies (from Charles Bazerman to Carol
Berkenkotter).
> Bill is right: citations are cultural in that readers from one
discipline will
> give authority to a claim made by a writer if the readers recognize
the
> citation as credible.
>
> From where I sit (in rhetoric and composition by way of English
lit.), an
> e-mail message does not need to be "reliable" or
"valid" but may be a claim
> that I may use to advance my argument.  The 4th edition of the MLA
stylebook
> (our citation "Bible") has a style for e-mail messages
for works cited pages.
>
> E-mail is often indexed into files for those folks who like to
check out
> previous months of listservs, for instance.  And in my
discipline(s) an e-mail
> would be citable just as would a letter to the author.  I'm
curious: do some
> of the many disciplines represented on this listserv disallow
citations to
> e-mail in journal articles?
>
> Dave Leight
> Lehigh University and Lafayette College<
I think I see a distinction between an email message and discussion
over a listserve.  The latter begins to approach something like a
refereed forum: it's more "public" than personal
correspondence, and
thus others can correct and cajole.
- -------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Merrill
Dept. of English, UCLA
310-825-6326
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 Feb 1997 11:56:50 -0800
From: Michelle Kendrick 
Subject: Re: Omni article
Hi,
I'm looking into the access problem.  Did anyone out there get into the
article?
Carol -- if I can't solve this on the web, I'll send it as an email
attachment. I would like to see it in the newsletter.
Michelle
_______________________________________________________________
Michelle R. Kendrick
Assistant Professor of English
Washington State University
14204 NE Salmon Creek Avenue
Vancouver, Washington 98686
(360)546-9645
On Thu, 27 Feb 1997, Carol Colatrella wrote:
>
> Michelle,
>   I just tried to look up your www address for the article and
could not
> get in to see it.  The message for me was that the file is write
protected.
> I'm still interested in publishing it in DECODINGS based on your
> description.
>   Carol
>
>
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 Feb 1997 12:18:20 -0800
From: CERVETTI@mail.avila.edu (CERVETTI, NANCY)
Subject: Re: Omni article
Michelle,
I was able to download the Omni article this morning.
Nancy
cervettin@avila.mail.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 Feb 1997 12:55:59 -0800
From: Joseph Duemer 
Subject: Re: Omni article
I got in to read the Omni article last night, just by clicking the url
in my email. (I use netscape mail) --jd
- --
- --
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315-262-2466
"Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial,
but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to
mistake it for a universal one."
-- Hannah Arendt
"People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so
pleased with bad."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 Feb 1997 14:40:06 -0800
From: jal@cco.caltech.edu
Subject: Re: Omni article and L&S
I'll shoot for efficiency here and answer two postings at once:
1) Michelle and Carol: yes, I was able to get to the Omni article page
with
no trouble from Netscape 3.0.  Although, when I clicked on the one link
in
that article (marked "return" at the end, which I assume
should have taken
me back to the top?) I got the write-protected message
2) Joe: science *is* too important to be left to the scientists, and
"stepping back" is a crucial form of exercise, but why should
one think
scientists are *unable* to do it, any more than anyone in any field? 
If
you say they don't do it often enough, I wouldn't argue, but surely not
because they can't.
Jay
Jay A. Labinger
Beckman Institute
California Institute of Technology
139-74
Pasadena, CA 91125
tel: 818-395-6520
fax: 818-449-4159
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 Feb 1997 14:52:03 -0800
From: noelg@deakin.edu.au (Noel Gough)
Subject: Re: Omni article
At 11:50 AM 27/2/97, Michelle Kendrick wrote:
>I'm looking into the access problem.  Did anyone out there get into
the
>article?
Michelle
I had no trouble accessing (and downloading) the article from here...
thanks for alerting us to it - we'll be using it here with some of our
science teacher ed students....
Noel Gough
Associate Professor
Deakin Centre for Education and Change
Deakin University
221 Burwood Highway
Burwood Victoria 3125
Australia
+61 (0)3 9244 3854 (office)
+61 (0)3 9244 6461 (messages)
+61 (0)3 9244 6752 (fax)
+61 (0)3 9836 8241 (home)
noelg@deakin.edu.au
http://www2.deakin.edu.au/e&c/dcec/members/Gough.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 Feb 1997 16:02:54 -0800
From: Joseph Duemer 
Subject: Re: Omni article and L&S
Especially to Jay Labinger, Tom Weissart, Ted Underwood & Joe Amato
(all
of whom I have come this afternoon to consider as colleagues--distant,
but valuable--colleagues), but to other SLSers (sizzlers?) as well:
First, Jay asks about my suggestion that scientists are "uniquely
unqualified" to consider the truth-claims of science critically. I
may
have over-stated the case, but let me tentatively advance the following
line of thought: Because of the way science as cultural institution
dominates questions of epistemological verity, it may tend to believe
its own claims more than other cultural institutions. (An analogy to
religion in the Middle Ages might be in order here, but I'm not
qualified to take it very far. At different points in history, though,
it seems clear that one or another institution has assumed the right of
deciding cliams about truth, reality, God, etc.)
The arts, as Joe Amato suggests, are more tentative, allowing as how
their claims are provisional. Poetry, since the beginnings of the rise
of science, has had to justify its own procedures. Romanticism--esp
Blake and Wordsworth, both of whom were fascinated by science--can be
read as a reaction to scientific epistemology. Joe is also quite right,
I think, that literary and culture studies also could use some of the
critical "stepping back" I suggested for science and
scientists. Even
though poets and critics are sometimes housed in the same academic
departments, and sometimes manage to remain good humored in each
others'
presence, they are likely to have different ideas about the ontology of
literary texts, for instance. Hell, I feel this shift in my own
consciousness when I move from the Creative Writing classroom to the
Literature classroom. ("I contradict myself? Very well, I
contradict
myself. I am large. I contain multitudes." --W. Whitman) Note:
Wordsworth once refused to drink a toast, offered by Keats, to the
confusion of science because, Keats said, "it has unwoven the
rainbow."
So, to answer Jay's question directly: It probably isn't impossible for
scientists to "step back," but it may be more difficult for
them than
for others. Which may be why the litcritters, to adopt Joe's term, so
often seem so very angry. They're jealous of the power of science.
Second, Joe's distinction between the arts types and the litcritters
strikes me as useful and important, and it connects up for me with Ted
Underwood's detailed reply to my use of Kuhn's paradigms as an
analytical tool. I think lit crit probably IS too incohate to be
directed by paradigms, and the culture at large certainly is. Chalk my
suggestion up to on-line conjecture & "thinking out loud"
(one of the
benefits of this medium, I think.) But consider this perhaps
unimportant
case: Individual arts--poetry, painting, music--seem sometimes to agree
about what questions are important even while they have screaming fests
about the correct answers. In poetry, recently, there have been, in my
reading, three large groups: language poets, new formalists, and
modernist-traditionalists. The questions all these groups ask are: What
is the relationship of poetry to culture? What is the relationship of
poetic language to reality? They are able to argue so passionately
because they--often unconsciously--share major assumptions. The best
lit
crit btw peels back the differences and demonstrates the common
assumptions.
Finally, Tom Weissart is right to point out the institutional
differences between scientists at SLS and the rest of us. It should
make
those of us who are funded grateful for scientists' participation.
Sorry for going on so long.   --jd
- --
- --
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315-262-2466
"Poets are the only people to whom love is not only a crucial,
but an indispensable experience, which entitles them to
mistake it for a universal one."
-- Hannah Arendt
"People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so
pleased with bad."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 Feb 1997 16:04:13 -0800
From: Ann Weinstone 
Subject: Re: Literature and Science?
Dear All,
I should be grading papers, but Jay made a comment that jiggles or
jibes
with what I've been thinking about since I wrote my first posting.
Jay wrote:
> I note Joe Duemer's comment: "It might be argued, in fact,
following
>Kuhn, that scientists are uniquely unqualified to describe their
work-->sort of a sociological uncertainty principle."  I'm sure
this was
not >offered as a universal claim, and I understand the point being
made
>(although I doubt whether it does follow from Kuhn, who was after
all a
>scientist!), but it isn't hard to imagine a scientist just beginning
to
get >interested in SLS, reading that ("uniquely
unqualified"?) and getting
>turned off.
What I've been thinking is this:
I'm a member of several TOGs (Traditionally Oppressed Groups). I've
also
been quite politically active throughout my life. This admonition not
to
"turn off"  the other fellow is a familiar one.
"Being so strident, out, straightforward, angry, etc. etc. etc.,
won't get
you anywhere. It's a turn off."
Then, Jay writes:
>If the "science-by-real-scientist panels" are your
favorites, why do you
>think it's not your (or anybody's?) job to try to attract more
scientists?  >Who is going to give those panels?
The attraction work I feel I've been asked to do in the many meetings
I've
attended where culture wars were discussed, seems to be based on this
feeling that a wrong has been done to scientists by folks doing science
studies, and on the assumption that I/we are supposed to redress that
wrong. Whether or not I agree with it, Joe's proposition that perhaps
scientists might not be the best folks to describe their own work
*does*
aim directly at what hurts.  Simply, if knowledge were a dinner table at
a
private club, it seems to me that the message from scientists, or
better,
the general message of the culture wars, is "Give us our private
banquet
back!"
Then Jay writes:
Shouldn't we be looking for positive actions we can take?
I agree with this. But I want to take actions that have been
consciously
grounded outside of this private club scene and its current
discontents.
An example.
At Atlanta, I had the following informal conversation with a scientist:
Ann: I'm disturbed by the implication that "scientists" are
"out there"
when so many of the current members of SLS are both scientists and lit
scholars, or have serious science backgrounds. Perhaps we should convene
a
roundtable discussion next year and figure out who we are--maybe we
don't
have to look so far to find scientists.
Scientist: A roundtable? That's more talk. I'm tired of talk. I want to
*make* things.
Ann:  But this is a conference. Our product *is* talk.
Scientist: [frustrated tongue clicking and cynico-sarcastic
eye-rolling.]
As I see it, the "work" I was supposed to here was to admit
that all I do
is talk, and that science makes real things in the real world and thus
is
better, more valuable, etc.
I'd *love* to see more science panels. How can we accomplish this,
while
at the same time, refusing to seek such participation within the
confines
of the (what I see as) retributional terms of the culture wars?
And how can we create and maintain a respectful, kind, and collegial
atmosphere that leaves room for the expression of anger?  Frankly, when
dismissive comments get made about "postmodernism," or
"theory," or
"cultural studies," by folks who seem to have much less
understanding of
the above than I have of basic science, I have to assume that open
dialogue and a more welcoming attitude are slippery terms indeed.
In regards to the "high handedness" of "some
critics," I heard a
compassionate and impassioned talk by Sharon Traweek recently. It's
clear
that jobs are being affected by the atmosphere created by G&L and
co. I
think that within SLS those of us who are able should send out
soothing,
collegial "vibes" to all participants. But we also have to
recognize that
people are being hurt.  And I think they have a right to say so, even
if
it's not always couched in the most comfortable rhetoric.
I guess what I'm saying is, let's be positive and step along, but let's
not answer to the terms as defined by those who do not, ultimately,
have
the building of community knowledge as their goal.
warmly,
Ann Weinstone
Stanford University
Modern Thought and Literature
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 27 Feb 1997 20:38:48 -0800
From: jal@cco.caltech.edu
Subject: Re: Literature and Science?
Ann Weinstone wrote:
>The attraction work I feel I've been asked to do in the many
meetings I've
>attended where culture wars were discussed, seems to be based on
this
>feeling that a wrong has been done to scientists by folks doing
science
>studies, and on the assumption that I/we are supposed to redress
that
>wrong.
That's not the attraction work I'm looking for--heaven forbid I should
ask
anyone to try to convince Gross & Levitt that science studies are
really OK
after all!  (I exchanged a couple of messages with Norm Levitt, at his
instigation after he read my review of Higher Superstition, and see no
propsects whatsoever for any meeting of minds.)
No--talk first to the scientists you already know who are sympathetic,
or
even who just like to read--and try to interest them in what SLS does. 
I'm
fully aware of the logistical problems that Tom Weissert pointed out,
and
eliciting active participation will be rare--but even an occasional
newcomer would be a significant percentage increase in the ranks, and
lining up a few passive sympathizers now may well pay off in the
future.
I've met a number (not a huge number) of fellow scientists who are very
intrigued by SLS when I tell them about it.  The vast majority, of
course,
have never heard about it--but then again, the vast majority have never
heard of Gross & Levitt or the whole Science Wars business either. 
(I was
invited, to my eternal surprise, to speak on these matters to a
conference
on inorganic chemistry last year.  For a reality check, I asked the
audience how many had read "Higher Superstition"--one, out of
100.  I asked
how many had at least heard about it-- only the same one.)
Jay
Jay A. Labinger
Beckman Institute
California Institute of Technology
139-74
Pasadena, CA 91125
tel: 818-395-6520
fax: 818-449-4159