Author: Huenemann

I have been researching the history of encyclopedias. Producing an encyclopedia involves a number of obstacles, one of which is the decision of what to include: you want the encyclopedia to cover everything, but obviously it can’t, so you have to choose what is important enough to merit inclusion. (The Encyclopedia Brittanica, for instance, has an entry for DARWIN, CHARLES, but it doesn’t include Darwin’s shoe size or what he ate for breakfast on his 42nd birthday, etc.) But now, with Wikipedia, there is no shortage of space, and there can be articles on pretty much everything, though editors still make calls about what merits inclusion and what doesn’t. (There isn’t an article on me, for example {sniff}.) Still, there are plenty of articles on smaller or more trivial matters that one wouldn’t expect to find in a traditional encyclopedia. So, for example, check out this lengthy article on SHOE SIZE.

I’ll bet that you can find other surprising entries – so here’s my plea for some crowd-sourcing: What is the most trivial entry you can find on Wikipedia? Just leave it as a comment to this post.

For instance, while no one can doubt the genius of Copernicus and his heliocentric model of the solar system in heralding the age of modern astronomy, it is not commonly known that he relied on work carried out by Arab astronomers many centuries earlier. Many of his diagrams and calculations were taken from manuscripts of the 14th-century Syrian astronomer Ibn al-Shatir. Why is he never mentioned in our textbooks? Likewise, we are taught that English physician William Harvey was the first to correctly describe blood circulation in 1616. He was not. The first to give the correct description was the 13th-century Andalucian physician Ibn al-Nafees.

Full (2008!) article here.

Here you go.

A number of you may be interested in attending some of the events this week celebrating the career of Len Rosenband, who is retiring this year from USU. I will copy the schedule below; for further information, click here.

Wednesday, March 18, 2015
7:00 p.m.	Welcome Dean John Allen, College of Humanities and Social Sciences Keynote:  Blogging, Now and Then (250 Years Ago) Dr. Robert Darnton, Harvard University
8:00 p.m.	Reception
Thursday, March 19, 2015
8:30 a.m.	Continental Breakfast
9:00 a.m.	Welcome
9:15 a.m.	Roundtable I: Work and Economy Moderator: Andre Wakefield, Pitzer College Chris Hodson, Brigham Young University Jeff Horn, Manhattan College Tom Safley, University of Pennsylvania Charlie Huenemann, Utah State University
10:45 a.m.	Break
11:00 a.m.	A Tribute to Len by Brad Gregory
11:30 a.m.	Lunch
12:00 p.m.	Roundtable II: Family and Community Moderator:  Daniel Vickers, Univ. of British Columbia Emily Fisher Gray, Norwich University Susan Cogan, Utah State University Britt Petersen Boehm, Art Institute of Chicago
1:30 p.m.	The Industrious Revolution (Exact Title TBD) Dr. Léonard Rosenband, Utah State University
3:00 p.m.	Reception & Phi Alpha Theta Induction Ceremony Special Collections Exhibit (Brad Cole)

Martha Nussbaum reviews a collection of Bernard Williams’ essays, published posthumously. I have not read a lot of Williams; this review tells me I’m missing something!

Above all, philosophy offers reflective analysis of our concepts, and, through these and a study of their history, insight into who “we” are.  If philosophy is to contribute anything distinctive, however, all this must be carried out with clarity and rigor, and the aim of “getting it right” must “be in place.”  (Here he offers a devastating critique of Richard Rorty’s model of philosophy as a “conversation.”)  But he then cautions that there is more than one way of embodying clarity and precision: philosophy must not be fooled into supposing that the only form in which these virtues can be delivered is that of natural science.   In natural science, it may well be that style is merely decorative. (He tells here of a pseudo-scientific analytic philosopher who said to his co-author, “’Let’s get it right first and you can put the style in afterwards.’”)