Literature and Cognitive Science
Some time ago, Chris at Mixing Memory posted an entry, in reference to another blog, on cognition and literary criticism. The discussion beneath the post is quite interesting and provides some good links and citations.
For my own reference, I’m linking here to
Alan Richardson’s Annotated Bibliography on Literature, Cognition, and the Brain and Bill Benzon’s Valve post For the Historical Record: Cog Sci and Lit Theory, A Chronology.
Free Online Textbook: The Process of Research Writing
Having decided to part ways with his publisher and not wanting to rework it for another one, Steve Krause has decided to make his textbook The Process of Research Writing available for free online under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. There’s good stuff here to use in full or in part. Thanks, Steve! [Read Steve's announcement.]
I’m Thinking, Too
Donna’s tagged me/awarded me with a Thinking Blogger award, and I want to pass on the favor. The hard part is to limit this to five blogs. While these aren’t necessarily the blogs I most enjoy or the bloggers I want to read as soon as I see something has been posted (though some are), they are five blogs that consistently make me think, consistently teach me something, even if that something is about blogging itself. They are:
While I’m not surprised by the eclectic nature of this list, it became clear to me quickly that this list would look quite different if I were listing my favorite blogs, the blogs I most want to read, the blogs I most want to be in dialogue with, the blogs I most enjoy, or the blogs I don’t want to do with out. While there is overlap, each of those six lists would include different blogs, and only one of the blogs listed above might make it on all six lists. And realizing this has got me thinking….
Archeology and Science Roundup
Neolithic houses with the same floor plan as Skara Brae found near Stonehenge. [BBC World News]
New Homo floresiensis (aka hobbit) news: Another study finds that Homo floresiensis are a new species rather than microcephalics (BBC News), and Mike Morwood, one of the Homo floresiensis discoverers believes they may have originated on the island of Sulawesi and is planning a research expedition there (Sidney Morning Herald).
Imagining the Tenth Dimension, a Flash tutorial. I first came across back in August (via Johndan) and have been meaning to link to it ever since.
An interactive map of the History of Influences in the Development of Intelligence Theory and Testing. [Via Neurophilosopher]
Video lecture: “The Origin of the Human Mind: Insights from Brain Imaging and Evolution,” presented by Martin Sereno. [Via Neurophilosopher]
“Human Brain Region Functions Like Digital Computer” (Science Daily, Oct. 6, 2006). [Via CogNews]
To Read
Nyíri, J.C. “Wittgenstein as a Philosopher of Secondary Orality.”
“The thesis I will here put forward is that the genesis and the direction of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is not independent of the emergence of secondary orality. The thesis as such is not new. I first propounded it in my essay “Wittgenstein and the Problem of Machine Consciousness”. And Toulmin in his Cosmopolis, in the section “The Return to the Oral”, pointed out that the later Wittgenstein “was moving away from the expression of beliefs in written propositions to their transient, contextual expression in language games, speech acts, and utterances generally”. Now in order to render this thesis plausible – to show how natural it is to view Wittgenstein’s later philosophy from the perspective of the orality/literacy chasm – I shall introduce my main argument via a three-stage detour. In the third stage of that detour I will draw attention to the importance Plato had for Wittgenstein in the early 1930s; in the second, I will briefly refer to Havelock’s interpretation of Plato as the philosopher, of literacy triumphant, in Greece – a paradoxical and contested interpretation; and in order to prepare us for that paradoxical interpretation I will begin, in the first stage, by recalling some lecture notes made by José Ortega y Gasset made for a seminar he was to hold on Plato in 1946 – notes in which the orality/literacy distinction plays the central role.” [Found via Electronic Culture.]
Boettcher, Judith V. “Ten Core Principles for Designing Effective Learning Environments: Insights from Brain Research and Pedagogical Theory.” Innovate: Journal of Online Education 3.3 (2007).
“In this article, Judith V. Boettcher provides ten core learning principles that can guide technology-enhanced teaching as well as more traditional forms of instruction. Drawn from both traditional pedagogical theory as well as current research about how people learn, the ten principles integrate these findings in a helpful set of guidelines that give emphasis to issues of instructional design. Boettcher first presents a fourfold framework that delineates the respective roles of the learner, the faculty-mentor, the knowledge and content of instruction, and the environment in which learning occurs. Subsequent principles then provide more focused treatment of these four elements while highlighting further pedagogical concepts that should inform course design, teaching practice, and assessment measures. In discussing these principles, Boettcher suggests ways in which online technology can help educators create learning environments that respect the individual needs of students, foster collaboration, and promote deeper, sustained levels of engagement with the course content.”
Link Round Up
From a email sent to ANSAXNET and ONN comes this link to really cool images from the Kongelige Bibliotek’s Ny kgl. S. 1867 4º, also known as the Sæmundar og Snorra Edda. The images are at BibliOdyssey, a site that blogs about books, illustrations, science, history, visual materia obscura, and eclectic bookart. From BibliOdyssey I found Modern Mechanix (“Yesterday’s Tomorrow Today”). Be sure to check out the zipper gas mask made for babies (ca. 1934), the hat brim mounted compas (ca. 1936), and the locomotive that ran on milk (ca. 1938). Also thanks to BibliOdyssey, I stumbled upon wood s lot, where the Dec. 16 entry provided links to an upcoming Jacket article on Edward Dorn by Stephen Fredman (I took two creative writing courses from Dorn during my senior year at CU-Boulder), and a Guardian article on Simon Armitage’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Not so long ago there was a thread on TechRhet about digital audio sources and the following where suggested: SoundTransit, Haptic Soundscapes, Freesound Project, podOmatic, Odeo Studio, Ourmedia.org.
Making the rounds on various cognitive science blogs were discussions of a studies linking “taboo words” to improved memory. See, for example, Cognitive Daily’s post on “Memory and Swearing” and Mixing Memory’s “If You Want Someone to Remember What You Said, Cuss.” Not much different from what the author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium told us some 2,000 years ago.
Not So Random Coolness
Interspecies Cooperative Hunting
In PLoS Biology, Bshary et al report on cooperative hunting between the grouper fish, Plectropomus pessuliferus, and the giant moray eel, Gymnothorax javanicus, which they examined during field observations in the coral reefs of the Red Sea. They also show that this behaviour is initiated by a visual signal produced by the grouper. This is, therefore, the first known example of communicative, cooperative hunting between two different species. [Via The Neurophilosopher's weblog. Read the whole entry.]
Medieval Philosophy of Mind
Readers of this blog might find some other papers by King more interesting, though. He’s written pretty extensively on medieval philosophy of mind and language. Since we’ve already mentioned Anselm, you can start with his paper “Anselm’s Philosophy of Language.” After that, you should check out “Between Logic and Psychology: Jean Buridan on Mental Language,” Duns Scotus On Mental Content,” “Rethinking Representation in the Middle Ages,” “Scholastisism and the Philosophy of Mind: The Failure of Aristotelian Psychology,” and finally, Why Isn’t The Mind Body Problem Medieval?.” [Lifted from Mixing Memory.]
Virtual Reality and Memory
According to a study by Anne Schlosser, a professor at the University of Washington’s Department of Marketing and International Business, virtual reality not only enhances the recall of recently learnt materials, it also creates virtual memories. [Read more at The Neurophilosopher's weblog.]
Links
NPR’s Morning Edition ran two stories on Hinglish, a hybrid language mixing Hindi and English. They’re both worth listening to. And does anyone know what to call languages like Hinglish? It seems a bit late in the game for Hinglish to be a pidgin, and it can’t be a creole unless unless Hinglish was a pidgin. Ah. According to David Crystal’s An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Language and Languages, Hinglish is an example of code mixing, and Wikipedia has an entry for mixed languages. A mixed language differs from a pidgin in that its speakers are fluent in the parent languages, whereas a pidgin emerges to allow communication between people fluent in different languages. Here’s the stories: “Indians Learn to Speak Two Languages at Once” and “Practicing ‘The Queen’s Hinglish’ in Central England.”
While not of much use for those of us on this side of the pond, the UK’s SkyOne will be broadcasting Hogfather later this month. Hogfather, for those of you who don’t know, is one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novels, and it happens to be my favorite of the lot. I taught the novel last year in an Introduction to Literary Studies course, and in this post I discuss the novel in the context of Tolkien’s “On Fairy Stories,” John Niles Homo Narrans, Kevin Bradt’s Story as a Way of Knowing, and what T.A. Shippey calls “the Grimmian Revolution.” There’s a trailer for the show on YouTube if you’re interested.
And over at The Neurophilosopher’s Blog are some cool pictures of the glasswing butterfly.
Editing, The Shire in Oregon, CCCC, and the Auction of a Lifetime
I finished editing my set of essays for Constructing Nations, Reconstructing Myth: Essays in Honour of T. A. Shippey, which is an exploration of what Shippey calls “the Grimmian Revolution,” the results of comparative philology in the 19th and 20th centuries. Some more work has to be done, but the manuscript should be in the hands of the publisher by Oct. 1, which is our deadline.
As Shippey has a number of personal and academic connections to Tolkien, it should come as no surprise that a couple of the essays are Tolkienian. While taking a break after a final run-through of one of the Tolkien essays, I came across Neil Gaiman’s link to The Shire of Bend, Oregon. Gaiman’s assessment is, I think apt: He titles the post “From the department of that nice Mr. Tolkien revolving in his grave.” I’ve got a bit of a car wreak thing going on here. I’m sure I would be horrified, and yet I want to see the place. You can either buy a stand alone “cottage” or a townhome. The townhomes are located in an “Old World” village supposed to resemble the village of Bree as represented in The Lord of the Rings movies. Wanting to keep the rustic feel of a Middle-Earth village while at the same time allowing for the orcish automobile, the designers have decided to ring the village with access roads leading to garages on the second floor of the townhomes [townhome front view and back view]. Here’s a map so that you can see how it all fits together. Ah, I see The Shire at Bend, Oregon even has Hobbit dwellings.
Speaking of Gaiman’s blog, there are two other items I’ve been meaning to mention. The First Amendment Project has organized a “Your Name in an Upcoming Book” auction. Fourteen authors have donated the naming rights to a person or object in their upcoming books. (What does this have to do with Gaiman, you ask? Gaiman suggested the idea to the FAP after successfully auctioning off the rights to name a ship in Anansi Boys to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Also, while a bit of not-so-new news, DC Comics has made Issue #1 of Gaiman’s Sandman available for free download.
Finally, I’ll add my voice to those announcing their acceptance letters for CCCC 2007. I got two. Both my panel “25 Years of Reading and Misreading Orality and Literacy” and Kathie Gossett‘s “The Forgotten Canon” roundtable on memory, for which I’m a panelist, were accepted. Now that I know the CCCC Ong session’s a go, I’ll get the Orality and Literacy 25th anniversary web site up with abstracts and everything. I’ll probably post the names and titles for both sessions here before the page is up.
Cognitive Roundup: Brain Rewiring, Neuron Survival, and Memory
Posted for me, but, obviously, for your enjoyment too.
Mammalian Brain Rewiring, via Cognews
A new discovery from the Brain Mind Institute of the EPFL (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) shows that the brain rewires itself following an experience. The research further shows that this process of creation, testing, and reconfiguring of brain circuits takes place on a scale of just hours, suggesting that the brain is evolving considerably even during the course of a single day. [Read more.]
Young Neuron Survival, via Cognews
Whether newborn nerve cells in adult brains live or die depends on whether they can muscle their way into networks occupied by mature neurons. Neuroscientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies pin-pointed the molecular survival gear required for a young neuron to successfully jump into the fray and hook up with other cells. [Read more.]
Memory and the New, via Cognews
Exposure to new experiences improves memory, according to research by UCL (University College London) psychologists and medical doctors that could hold major implications for the treatment of memory problems. The study, published in ‘Neuron’ on 3 August, concludes that introducing completely new facts when learning, significantly improves memory performance. [Read more.]
Twitter Feed- "Never try to out stubborn a cat." -- *The Notebooks of Lazarus Long*
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- Four separate sets of plans canceled on me this weekend. With few friends in this state, that's an epic failure.
