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The Shape of likelihood: Relevance and the university
Book by Loren Eiseley, Detlev W. Bronk
87 pages, Hardcover
First published December 1, 1976
About the author
Loren Eiseley
50 books315 followersLoren Corey Eiseley (September 3, 1907 – July 9, 1977) was a highly respected anthropologist, science writer, ecologist, and poet. He published books of essays, biography, and general science in the 1950s through the 1970s.
Eiseley is best known for the poetic essay style, called the "concealed essay". He used this to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, to the general public. He is also known for his writings about humanity's relationship with the natural world; these writings helped inspire the modern environmental movement.
Eiseley is best known for the poetic essay style, called the "concealed essay". He used this to explain complex scientific ideas, such as human evolution, to the general public. He is also known for his writings about humanity's relationship with the natural world; these writings helped inspire the modern environmental movement.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 13, 2017
378.01 Sha
Complete Title: Shape of Likelihood: Relevance and the University (The Franklin lectures in the sciences and humanities), published in 1976
Contents
---Preface by Taylor Littleton
---Introduction by Loren Eisely 3
---The Nature of Science and its humane values by Detlev W. Bronk 21
---Protest and Prospect by Jacob Bronowski 43
---Scholarship and Relevance by Howard Mumford Jones 65
Summary: the book contain 3 lectures given by the famous scientists regarding very broad topic on science, humanity, education. The book is categorized in education. That why I read them. The lectures are often too terse, without background, it is very hard to fully understand them, so it is my reading, not fully understand the gist of these lectures.
Introduction by Loren Eisely
--Eiseley’s reputation was established primarily through his books, including The Immense Journey (1957), Darwin's Century (1958), The Unexpected Universe (1969), The Night Country (1971), and his memoir, All the Strange Hours (1975). He was a “scholar and writer of imagination and grace,” Publishers Weekly referred to him as "the modern Thoreau." - from wikipedia
The Great Frontier by Walter Prescott Webb
=====================================
The Nature of Science and its humane values by Detlev W. Bronk
p22 I have pondered the causes of this growing disdain of science. I have f9udn three that are prevalent and deeply rooted: lack of understanding of the nature science, loss of individual identity in the creative use of science, the misuse of science and technology.
p24 the basic mission of science is the quest for the order and beauty and deep understanding.
p29 Because of the restrictive needs of the specialist, much of education, much of communication through mass media, and most books on science deal with facts and data more than with meaning and significance of facts and data; there is more emphasis on accumulation of facts than on the ability to comprehend them..... Intellectual leaders and managers of our social systems have become so specialized that they rely on groups of other specialists assembled in "Think Tanks"; there is a widening pattern of government and corporate management by committees.
p29 Scholars, and Universities too, are overwhelmed by the vast volume of scientific knowledge. Educators choose the easy way of the specialist rather than meet the exacting demands of a widely ranging, deeply questing scholar. The minds of students are molded by lectures that are usually dictations of winnowed facts; too seldom are students are encouraged to learn by reading and by provocative discussions between students and teacher.
p30 And it is true that there are many competent scientists and scholars whose interests and knowledge are specialized and restricted within narrow boundaries; they have been enabled to develop their competence by concentration. The pioneer is otherwise. I know of no scientists who are considered first rate who do not have broad interests which they satisfy by wide reading; they are exceptions who lead specialists into new realms of knowledge and understanding.
It is true that the circumscribed lives of most people in our modern industrial society provide narrowly restricted opportunities for use of a board range of knowledge. But when the responsibilities are considered, the need for general knowledge is very great indeed.
p40
Our terrors and our darkness of
mind
Must be dispelled . . .
. . . by insight into nature, and by
a scheme
of systematic contemplation. -- from Lucretius
Technopolis: social control of the uses of science by Nigel Calder
=====================================
Protest and Prospect by Jacob Bronowski
--Jacob Bronowski (1908 – 22 1974). He is best remembered as the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man, and the accompanying book.
p44 whenever we say some historic pioneer that he was original , we imply that he was at odds with the traditional outlook of his day, and that he ultimately persuaded others to his view of things by voicing his dissent.
p45 For the crucial feature of democracy is not simply that majority rules, but the minority is free to persuade people to come over to its side and make a new majority. Of course the minority is abused at first.... But the strength of democracy is that the dissent minority is not silenced; on the contrary, it is the business of the minority to convert the majority; and this is how a democratic society invigorates and renews itself in change as no totalitarian society can.
-- my words: originality means dissent, minority.
p46 It is natural that all through history the protesters have belonged to younger generation, and the defenders of tradition have been the older men. This is on reason why dissent has usually come from the centers of learning, and has often begun as an intellectual movement before becoming a popular one.
Special and contemporary feature of present protest
1. No doctrinal. No ideology, such as suffrage movement, national socialism in the past, instead a rejection norms by (elders) lives.
2. p48 The generation gap is a moral chasm, across which the young stare at their elders with distrust, convinced that the values that make for success are fake.
p49 ...politics is a career for actors rather than principals.
p50 the sons no longer believe that the standards by which their elders judge them are genuine; on the contrary, they strike them for the most part as bold hypocrisy. .. But most students today are convinced that their parents and teachers deceive themselves and profess a traditional set of principles without even being aware that they do not live by them. In the eyes of the children, the generation gap now is a hypocrisy gap.
p56 So for thirty years now no philosopher has commanded, or has aspired to, that combination of intellectual and moral respect which made Bertrand Russel a giant in his generation.
p57 .. (The great experiment in education )... I think there should be 3 parts: science, anthropology , and literature... I prefer it (anthropology) to other branches of social study because I think students should not be preoccupied only with the forms of social institutions ( including government) but should unravel the underlying beliefs and values which those express. Anthropology is the best discipline for the study of values, not as arbitrary social norms but as expressions of human aims.
=====================================
Scholarship and Relevance by Howard Mumford Jones
p65 Universities exist, or so it seems to me, as citadels of rationality, centers of intellectual order, places where the dispassionate examination of human life and human culture may be carried on with as little interference as possible from outside propagandists. Such at least is the concept towards which the American university struggled until after World War II, and hitherto this ideas has been acceptable to thoughtful citizen of all ages.
p6 But the proper concept of a university is now attached by a variety of forces - the intrusion of government into research; an alliance, sometimes beneficial,sometimes not, between the university and heavy industry; and impatient demand that our universities should immediately solve the complex social, political, and economic problems of our day; and a powerful, if hazy, rebellion among many students against the faculty, the rules, the courses, the grade system, the requirement, and administration of these institution.
p72 Cardianl Newman once distinguished between notional assent and real assent. Notional assent is the acceptance we yield to the proposition that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other sides. This is true, but nobody has gone to barricades to defend it. Real assent, however, is deep, unswerving emotional allegiance... the Communist Party or Jehovah's witness... yield to tenets that seem to them so extremely true they admit of neither argument nor contradiction.
p74 At one period the poet was a member of the priestly caste.... In a later phase he was a combination of historian and bard......
p81 Once we get out from under the passions of our time and look at our problem in a context that cannot create prejudice, we see that contemporary writers then and contemporary writers now mirror only so much of life as interests them, and even that mirror is a distorting mirror.
Complete Title: Shape of Likelihood: Relevance and the University (The Franklin lectures in the sciences and humanities), published in 1976
Contents
---Preface by Taylor Littleton
---Introduction by Loren Eisely 3
---The Nature of Science and its humane values by Detlev W. Bronk 21
---Protest and Prospect by Jacob Bronowski 43
---Scholarship and Relevance by Howard Mumford Jones 65
Summary: the book contain 3 lectures given by the famous scientists regarding very broad topic on science, humanity, education. The book is categorized in education. That why I read them. The lectures are often too terse, without background, it is very hard to fully understand them, so it is my reading, not fully understand the gist of these lectures.
Introduction by Loren Eisely
--Eiseley’s reputation was established primarily through his books, including The Immense Journey (1957), Darwin's Century (1958), The Unexpected Universe (1969), The Night Country (1971), and his memoir, All the Strange Hours (1975). He was a “scholar and writer of imagination and grace,” Publishers Weekly referred to him as "the modern Thoreau." - from wikipedia
The Great Frontier by Walter Prescott Webb
=====================================
The Nature of Science and its humane values by Detlev W. Bronk
p22 I have pondered the causes of this growing disdain of science. I have f9udn three that are prevalent and deeply rooted: lack of understanding of the nature science, loss of individual identity in the creative use of science, the misuse of science and technology.
p24 the basic mission of science is the quest for the order and beauty and deep understanding.
p29 Because of the restrictive needs of the specialist, much of education, much of communication through mass media, and most books on science deal with facts and data more than with meaning and significance of facts and data; there is more emphasis on accumulation of facts than on the ability to comprehend them..... Intellectual leaders and managers of our social systems have become so specialized that they rely on groups of other specialists assembled in "Think Tanks"; there is a widening pattern of government and corporate management by committees.
p29 Scholars, and Universities too, are overwhelmed by the vast volume of scientific knowledge. Educators choose the easy way of the specialist rather than meet the exacting demands of a widely ranging, deeply questing scholar. The minds of students are molded by lectures that are usually dictations of winnowed facts; too seldom are students are encouraged to learn by reading and by provocative discussions between students and teacher.
p30 And it is true that there are many competent scientists and scholars whose interests and knowledge are specialized and restricted within narrow boundaries; they have been enabled to develop their competence by concentration. The pioneer is otherwise. I know of no scientists who are considered first rate who do not have broad interests which they satisfy by wide reading; they are exceptions who lead specialists into new realms of knowledge and understanding.
It is true that the circumscribed lives of most people in our modern industrial society provide narrowly restricted opportunities for use of a board range of knowledge. But when the responsibilities are considered, the need for general knowledge is very great indeed.
p40
Our terrors and our darkness of
mind
Must be dispelled . . .
. . . by insight into nature, and by
a scheme
of systematic contemplation. -- from Lucretius
Technopolis: social control of the uses of science by Nigel Calder
=====================================
Protest and Prospect by Jacob Bronowski
--Jacob Bronowski (1908 – 22 1974). He is best remembered as the presenter and writer of the 1973 BBC television documentary series, The Ascent of Man, and the accompanying book.
p44 whenever we say some historic pioneer that he was original , we imply that he was at odds with the traditional outlook of his day, and that he ultimately persuaded others to his view of things by voicing his dissent.
p45 For the crucial feature of democracy is not simply that majority rules, but the minority is free to persuade people to come over to its side and make a new majority. Of course the minority is abused at first.... But the strength of democracy is that the dissent minority is not silenced; on the contrary, it is the business of the minority to convert the majority; and this is how a democratic society invigorates and renews itself in change as no totalitarian society can.
-- my words: originality means dissent, minority.
p46 It is natural that all through history the protesters have belonged to younger generation, and the defenders of tradition have been the older men. This is on reason why dissent has usually come from the centers of learning, and has often begun as an intellectual movement before becoming a popular one.
Special and contemporary feature of present protest
1. No doctrinal. No ideology, such as suffrage movement, national socialism in the past, instead a rejection norms by (elders) lives.
2. p48 The generation gap is a moral chasm, across which the young stare at their elders with distrust, convinced that the values that make for success are fake.
p49 ...politics is a career for actors rather than principals.
p50 the sons no longer believe that the standards by which their elders judge them are genuine; on the contrary, they strike them for the most part as bold hypocrisy. .. But most students today are convinced that their parents and teachers deceive themselves and profess a traditional set of principles without even being aware that they do not live by them. In the eyes of the children, the generation gap now is a hypocrisy gap.
p56 So for thirty years now no philosopher has commanded, or has aspired to, that combination of intellectual and moral respect which made Bertrand Russel a giant in his generation.
p57 .. (The great experiment in education )... I think there should be 3 parts: science, anthropology , and literature... I prefer it (anthropology) to other branches of social study because I think students should not be preoccupied only with the forms of social institutions ( including government) but should unravel the underlying beliefs and values which those express. Anthropology is the best discipline for the study of values, not as arbitrary social norms but as expressions of human aims.
=====================================
Scholarship and Relevance by Howard Mumford Jones
p65 Universities exist, or so it seems to me, as citadels of rationality, centers of intellectual order, places where the dispassionate examination of human life and human culture may be carried on with as little interference as possible from outside propagandists. Such at least is the concept towards which the American university struggled until after World War II, and hitherto this ideas has been acceptable to thoughtful citizen of all ages.
p6 But the proper concept of a university is now attached by a variety of forces - the intrusion of government into research; an alliance, sometimes beneficial,sometimes not, between the university and heavy industry; and impatient demand that our universities should immediately solve the complex social, political, and economic problems of our day; and a powerful, if hazy, rebellion among many students against the faculty, the rules, the courses, the grade system, the requirement, and administration of these institution.
p72 Cardianl Newman once distinguished between notional assent and real assent. Notional assent is the acceptance we yield to the proposition that the square on the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares on the other sides. This is true, but nobody has gone to barricades to defend it. Real assent, however, is deep, unswerving emotional allegiance... the Communist Party or Jehovah's witness... yield to tenets that seem to them so extremely true they admit of neither argument nor contradiction.
p74 At one period the poet was a member of the priestly caste.... In a later phase he was a combination of historian and bard......
p81 Once we get out from under the passions of our time and look at our problem in a context that cannot create prejudice, we see that contemporary writers then and contemporary writers now mirror only so much of life as interests them, and even that mirror is a distorting mirror.
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