Humanities: April 2008 Archive Page

My ten-year-old has wanted to be a scientist since he was four, but he's bored by math. Paul Lockhart (PDF) helps me understand why. But what do I do now?

The difference between math and the other arts, such as music and painting, is that our culture does not recognize it as such. Everyone understands that poets, painters, and musicians create works of art, and are expressing themselves in word, image, and sound. In fact, our society is rather generous when it comes to creative expression; architects, chefs, and even television directors are considered to be working artists. So why not mathematicians?

Part of the problem is that nobody has the faintest idea what it is that mathematicians do. The common perception seems to be that mathematicians are somehow connected with science-- perhaps they help the scientists with their formulas, or feed big numbers into computers for some reason or other. There is no question that if the world had to be divided into the "poetic dreamers" and the "rational thinkers" most people would place mathematicians in the latter category.

Nevertheless, the fact is that there is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depend heavily on properties of the physical universe). Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood.

My Intro to Literary Study students read Lynn Truss's Eats, Shoots and Leaves while I was away at a conference for most of last week. They really seem to enjoy this book. Early on this term, I noticed a critical mass of students who try to make their blog a place to practice writing for a real audience, rather than simply a place to "do their homework."  I'm also seeing a lot of deliberately playful use of language, dancing around and sometimes pushing beyond the boundaries of academic writing.

I can't even believe how interesting a book on punctuation can be. I'm learning - AND HAVING FUN TOO! Look at that, I'm having so much fun that I caps-locked. --Jessie

Alright here it goes... I, STEPAHNIE MARIE WYTOVICH, ADMIT TO LIKING THIS BOOK. Gah.  Ok I guess I feel a little better now.  -- Stephanie

I won't deny it, I'm afraid of the exclamation mark.  I have been going to therapy and I've made improvements, but I'm still a little!-phobic.  Exclamation marks are so strong! -- Erica

I have to say I like ellipsis because, the other reason they are used is to trail off in an intriguing manner.... -- Tiffany

I use italics way too much. -- Lauren

The Conference on College Composition and Communication is the big annual meeting of college writing instructors. One often encounters technical writing instructors, social scientists, ethnographers, and new media innovators (we had Larry Lessig give a featured address a few years ago), as well as traditional essayists and grammar mavens. It's the kind of place where someone can say, "That reminds me of Aristotle's five canons of rhetoric... inventio, dispositio, elocutio, actio, and... uh.. .what's the other one?"  and it's likely that the others will get the joke.

While walking around the city after the conference was over, I had a vision of a future 4Cs conference that made me giddy. I'll tell you about it in a little bit. First, let me talk about the conference.