Paths to Knowledge Spring 2004

Colin Cairns William Lewis

218 Cline Hall 128 Howard Hall

271-3032 271-2194

colin.cairns@drake.edu william.lewis@drake.edu

This course does not presume to organize all ways of knowing, but it does provide careful discussion of basic problems of understanding and judgment with regard to important concepts, claims, and perspectives in the natural and human sciences. Part I of the course addresses some fundamental practices of representation and interpretation. Students consider how to describe places, other people, actions, and texts, how all description has to be addressed to an audience, and how describing nature requires modifying habitual practices and conventions of representation. Part II focuses on the more extensive task of explicating a complex event. To do so, the course considers how to analyze discourses (legal, scientific, bureaucratic, vernacular, etc.) that recognize (and constitute) distinctive objects, produce different forms of knowledge, and both guide judgment and require comparative adjudication. Part III then moves to the next level of reflection, which is to understand how knowers work in cultures of learning that have distinctive practices, traditions, and processes of innovation. Throughout the course, there should be plenty of opportunities for students and faculty to identify varied criteria and norms of knowledge, and to develop a stronger understanding of whatever path they might choose.

Policies and Procedures

Course Format: The course will function as an extended seminar. That means that

it will be devoted to intensive discussion of course texts, presentations by students, collaborative research projects, and writing with regard to the culture created through these activities.

Class Schedule: The class meets each Tuesday and Thursday from 12:30-1:45 p.m. In addition,

there will be “lab” sessions on some Wednesdays from 9:00-9:50 p.m. that will be used for

supplemental discussions and group work. Attendance and active participation are expected for

all classes and lab sessions.

Writing: Students will write papers according to the following assignments.

1. Exercises: These are 1-2 pp. responses to tasks that are described in part I of the syllabus. They are to be a medium for working with the readings assigned for the day they are due.

2. Reading reports: These are 1-2 pp. synopses of individual readings in parts II

and III of the course. You may chose any readings except the main texts of I, Pierre Rivière … and The Two Cultures, and are to complete three of the papers at your discretion during the semester.

3. Two-part synthesis: This is a 3-4 pp. discussion of any two readings in the

course. You might compare them, apply one to the other, use both to explicate a common problem, etc. The paper is due at any time during the semester.

4. Final project: This is a collaborative learning project that involves an individual paper and a group presentation. The project is to be an anatomy of an event; the format should be similar in structure to I, Pierre Rivière …. Thus, the group will explicate the discourses enveloping a specific event—a kidnapping, an oil spill, the Superbowl, etc.—in order to identify significant practices and problems of representation, knowledge, power, and judgment. The group presentation will consist of description of the event, presentation of pertinent documents, and assessments from a range of perspectives. The individual papers will be devoted to assessment, and the distribution of topics or theses will be coordinated by the group. The individual paper is to be about 10 pages in length.

All papers should reflect disciplined use of the course texts, and should be carefully focused, well-argued, well-organized, and well-written. Formatting should include double-spacing with a standard font (Times New Roman is recommended) and either endnote or parenthetical citation. Page limits are not intended to force you to extend or to cut short your thinking; they are meant to give some guidelines and to encourage revision.

The papers will be another basis for conversation in the class. You should expect that we will talk about each other's papers in the class, sometimes after they have been submitted, sometimes before they are due.

Grading: Grades will be based on the papers, class discussion, and participation in group projects. Incompletes are possible only if a student suffers a medical or familial emergency and agrees to a plan for completing the course. Because this is a seminar, we do not use a fixed calculus for determining the final course grade. A student who wrote sterling papers but never spoke in class would not be likely to receive an "A". A student who wrote strong papers and often provided insightful comments and spirited arguments in class but wrote a weak because overly ambitious final paper could receive an "A" even if the numerical calculation was in the high "B" range. Generally, we expect that the grading will follow this distribution:

Exercises (together) = 15 % of the course grade

Reports (together) = 20 % of the course grade

Synthesis paper = 15 % of the course grade

Final paper = 30 % of the course grade

Discussion = 20 % of the course grade

A Note on Academic Honesty: Plagiarism is presenting someone else's words or ideas or material as your original work. It is a fundamental violation of the core values of this educational institution. Please be sure that you understand this rule. You can take information and even verbatim information from other sources and use them in your work, but if and when you do so (and you of course will), you must name the author/s and the source documents and provide specific citations of quoted or closely paraphrased materials.

If you don't credit the people/organizations from which you obtained the material, it undermines the identity and mission of the university. Academic work involves both communicating what others have written and producing original work. Plagiarism violates and undermines all of that, and it makes a mockery of the hard work that students and teachers do for the purpose of learning. The penalty for confirmed plagiarism will be, at the least, an F for the class, and it may include expulsion from the University. If you have questions about academic honesty, you might consult http://www.drake.edu/dc/plagiarism2.html, and you always can ask us for guidance.

Course Texts

•Michel Foucault, ed., I, Pierre Rivière, having slaughtered my mother, my sister, and my brother . . . : A Case of Parricide in the 19^th Century, trans. Frank Jellinek (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1975)

•C.P. Snow, The Two Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)

•Packet of additional readings

Course Schedule

I. Making Sense: the art of description

T Jan. 13 Introduction; Exercise: Name one thing you have learned at Drake

Th Jan. 15 Facts and Social Facts; Exercise: Describe the room

Ezra Pound, from ABC of Reading; Bertrand Russell, “Fact, Belief, Truth, and Knowledge,” from Human Knowledge; Ch. Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, “Facts and Truths,” from The New Rhetoric; Ludwig Wittgenstein, from Philosophical Investigations, 3^rd ed.; Emile Durkheim, “Social Facts” (from The Rules for Sociological Method)

T Jan. 20 Character and Narrative; Exercise: Describe your roommate

Aristotle, from The Poetics ; Bill Johnson, “Creating Dramatic Characters” (http://www.hollywoodnet.com/Johnson/wchar.htm); Erving Goffman, from “Where the Action Is,” in Interaction Ritual; J. Hillis Miller, “Narrative” from Critical Terms for Literary Study

Th Jan. 22 Action and Meaning; Exercise: Describe taking a test

Donald Davidson, “Actions, Reasons, and Causes” (Journal of Philosophy); Kenneth Burke, from A Grammar of Motives; Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus” from The Myth of Sisyphus; Laura Bohannon, “Shakespeare in the Bush,” from Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology; Craig Raine, “A Martian Sends a Postcard Home”

T Jan. 27 Signs, Texts, and Social Texts; Exercise: Describe a text (poem, speech, memo, recipe, letter, etc.)

Daniel Chandler, Signs,” and “Denotation, Connotation, and Myth” from Semiotics for Beginners (http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/semiotic.html); Stanley Fish, “Is There a Text in this Class?” from Is There a Text in this Class?; M.M. Bakhtin, from Speech Genres and Other Late Essays; Wendell Berry, “Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms,” from Standing by Words; Clifford Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight” from The Interpretation of Cultures;

Th Jan. 29 Audiences and Performance; Exercise: Describe your personality to your best friend, to your parents, and to this class

“Decorum,” from the Oxford Encyclopedia of Rhetoric; “Performance,” from the International Encyclopedia of Communications; Erving Goffman, “The Lecture,” from Forms of Talk

T Feb. 3 Nature; Exercise: Describe a natural phenomenon (ice, wind, an elm tree, the heart, friction, etc.)

Ernest Nagel, “Science and Common Sense,” from The Structure of Science; Richard Feynman, “The Law of Gravitation” from The Character of Physical Law; Feynman, “Minority Report to the Space Shuttle Challenger Inquiry Committee” from The Pleasure of Finding Out

Th Feb. 5 Review

II. Sorting Things Out: the art of analysis

T Feb. 10 I, Pierre, . . .

Lab: Murder in popular culture

Th Feb. 12 I, Pierre, . . .

T Feb. 17 Preliminary documents

Lab: Investigative teams

Th Feb. 19 Trial and punishment documents

T Feb. 24 Commentary 1, 2, 3, 4

Lab: Investigative teams

Th Feb. 26 Commentary 5, 6, 7

T Mar. 2 Discourses; Foucault, from The Archaeology of Knowledge

Lab: Discourse on Foucault

Th Mar. 4 Knowledge and Power; Foucault, “Two Lectures,” from Power/Knowledge

T Mar. 9 Forensic Science: Amicus Brief by the Committee of Concerned Social Scientists defending the status of polygraph testing (http://truth.boisestate.edu/amicus/brief.html)’; Susan McCarthy, “The truth about the polygraph” (http://dir.salon.com/health/feature/2000/03/02/polygraph/index.html)

Lab: Trial of theTest

Th Mar. 11 Review

III. Learning Cultures: knowledge as a social process

T Mar. 16 The Two Cultures

Th Mar. 18 The Two Cultures

Spring Break

T Mar, 30 Practices; Charles Bazerman, “What Written Knowledge Does: Three Examples of Academic Discourse,” from Shaping Written Knowledge

Lab: Projects

Th April 1 Practices; Kenneth J. Gergen, “Truth in Trouble,” from The Saturated Self

T April 6 Traditions; Thomas M. Lessl, “The Galileo Legend as Scientific Folklore” (Quarterly Journal of Speech)

Lab: Projects

Th April 8 Traditions; Katha Pollitt, “Why Do We Read?”

T April 13 Revolutions; Thomas Kuhn, from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 2^nd ed.

Lab: Projects

Th April 15 Revolutions; James H. Kavanagh, “Ideology,” from Critical Terms for Literary Study