First Year Seminar 190
The Mind: Brain, language, and evolution in Hartford

 

Fall 2007

Current as of December 6, 2007

 

Instructor

William M. Mace
Office: Life Sciences 212A
Office Hours: Monday     1:45 pm — 3 pm
Wednesday 1:45 pm — 3 pm
Friday          1:15 pm — 2:30 pm
and by Appointment
Extension: X2343
E-Mail: william.mace@trincoll.edu

Mentor

Caleb Wasser
Residence: 94 Vernon St. [Pike House]
Cell: 203 417-4505
E-Mail: caleb.wasser@trincoll.edu

Required Reading

• From Bookstore
• • Lahiri, Jhumpa The Namesake
  • Carroll, John B. Language, Thought & Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf
  • Hilts, Philip J. Memory’s Ghost
  • Johanson, D. & Edey, M. Lucy

Assignments, Expectations and Grading

You will have a variety of kinds of assignments — article summaries, critical evaluations of articles, and research papers. As you can see, the course is divided into 4 parts, corresponding to the 4 people selected to study. In each part, we will have small exercises along the way. At the end of each section, there will be an integrative essay assignment, and for the end of the course, there will be a longer paper, bringing together all of the topics will be assigned.

What do I emphasize in judging your papers? (1) First and foremost, your use of EVIDENCE and example. (2) Recognizing what you do not understand. What I mean is showing specific things that puzzle you or that you do not understand, in the context of evidence that you are trying. To say “I don’t understand this article” does not count! Identifying points that need explanation or clarification is a sign of effort and comprehension.

Revising Papers

— You may revise papers along the way. The sooner you turn in any revision, the better, but all revisions must be turned in by December 10. A “complete” revision would look like a fairly new paper from you, albeit on the same topic. A “minimal” revision would make specific changes at places that I have marked, and nothing else. You could expect a grade change for a complete revision and very little grade change for a “minimal” revision. For most of you, the most appropriate revision would be something in between these two extremes.

For your continuing edification, there is an article about revising by the author, Nora Ephron, in the Course Documents on Blackboard.

Written Usage in this course

Here I will keep a list of uses and misuses of words that I’d like you to be sensitive to.

1. The word “impact” as a verb. Please don’t use it. “As a teacher, I want to impact your thinking.” No, please. Say, “I want to have an impact on your thinking.” In most cases, the verb “affect” is the correct word.
2. Mass and Count nouns — chairs, tables and people are examples of things that can be counted. Water and iron, for example, are not. They refer to mass quantities. One can ask for “some water or “some iron,” but not “some chair” or “some table” in the same way. You can ask for “some tables,” but that is a different meaning. The common misuse is with the word “amount” among others. We now hear people say things like “what amount of minutes do you expect to play in the basketball game?” Correct would be “How many minutes do you expect to play in the basketball game?” Minutes are countable, time is not. On Sept. 10, I heard a radio ad that mentioned a “large amount of rewards.” Bad. In general, the word “amount” gets overused and the word “number” underused.Is the failure to appreciate this a Whorfian point? Is it the thinking of the language that people are missing?
3. “Exact same.” If things are the same, then they are the same. If you want to refer to gradations, then you use the word “similar” combined with other words. So far as I’m concerned, “exact same” is redundant and you do not need “exact.”
4. “homogeneous” is the word, not “homogenous” — the correct word rhymes with “genius”
5. Proof — Evidence and argument in science provides SUPPORT or fails to provide support for some proposition, theory, or hypothesis. Proof, per se, is not possible in empirical science. Nothing is ever “proven” or “confirmed.” Support for an idea may be so strong that there is no good competition. There is proof in mathematics. You can prove theorems in mathematics. That comes from logic where the rigorous idea of proof lives.
6. Asterisk — the end of this word is “risk.” I’m sure you can all say “risk.” The end of the word is NOT “ricks.”
7. Refute — to refute an argument or a claim is to successfully show that it is wrong. When students use the word “refute,” I think that what they usually intend is “dispute.” That is, if I want to say that a claim or argument is wrong, and I stand up and say, “Sir, you are wrong!” That is todispute the claim. It is only refuted if actually shown to be wrong with argument or evidence. “Refute” is an example of a “success” word.

Resources

• PsychINFO and PsychARTICLES. Connect to these through the Library. PsychINFO is your best gateway to sources broadly related to psychology. You can find a great deal here. The way the links work, this is your most efficient access to references related to psychology. In many cases, direct links to the actual articles are there. Sometimes electronic versions of articles are available to you, but PsychINFO doesn’t immediately reveal that. Then it’s worth a search of the Trinity library. PsychARTICLES gives you direct access to electronic versisons of ALL articles ever written in a scientific journal belonging to the American Psychological Association. Because you won’t know which ones, of hundreds of journals related to psychology, belong to the APA, you are better off starting with PsychINFO. The journals that are in PsychARTICLES will be directly linked for you through PsychINFO. That’s why it is more efficient to begin with PsychINFO.Do you know what the word “journal” means to people in the scholarly world? You might think of them as magazines, but publications that report research results in various disciplines are usually referred to as “journals.”
• Science and Nature are ambiguous. They publish important research and are journals in that sense, but they were called “magazines” in their titles and printed in styles that look like magazines. Scientific American is a magazine, pure and simple. It is never referred to as a journal.
• The important scientific journal, Nature, is originally a British journal, but it serves a wide range of disciplines and covers the world. Many think of it as the most prestigious scientific publication in the world. The electronic versions that we have access to go back to 1997. The print versions go back to the very beginning of its publication. Our library has them all. If I ask you to find something in Nature that is earlier than 1997, you will have to find the hard copy in the library. Electronically, through our library, we connect to it directly, not through something else like PsychINFO.
• The most important scientific journal published in the U.S. is called Science. The entire publication history of Science is available electronically. Like Nature, you connect to it directly. For the past few years, the older volumes of Science were in a great electronic archive called JSTOR (which Trinity links to). Science is changing that. They want to pull out of JSTOR and have all the archives themselves. We’ll have to stay tuned for that change.
• Tricks — sometimes you will find a reference to a scientific article in a journal that Trinity does not have access to. Many scientists keep archives of their own papers linked to their personal web sites. If you know the institution (college, university, government lab, etc.) and the Department of the author of an article, with the help of Google, you can track down the person’s personal web site. Then hunt for papers there. This does not always yield what you are after, but it succeeds often enough to try.
• Wikipedia — Wikipedia CAN be very useful, but must be used with GREAT CAUTION. Because anyone can edit articles in Wikipedia, all kinds of things can creep in that are not very helpful. When possible, Wikipedia makes explicit notations, like in — this one. The best use ofWikipedia is to get an overview of a topic and some references to check out. When you cite references in a research paper, you should rarely use a Wikipedia article as a main source, and never without an ok from your instructor or someone who knows the relevant field. Many Wikipediaarticles really are good sources and I would recommend them, but you must never assume it.

Web Sites

• Proper Names as the best example of a “referring expression” studied in philosophic logic. Local note — One of the most famous people in modern logic was Stephen Kleene. You can Google him. Kleene’s father taught Economics here at Trinity in the early 1900’s. It is possible, therefore, that Stephen Kleene once lived on Vernon St. where some faculty members lived.
• Lovely links to language and linguistics papers
• “H.M.” . See what else is connected to this page.
• NPR interview — “H.M.”
• A Johanson web site
• Lucy in Houston. Many articles are around.

Course Work

Schedule of Classes
CLASS #	DAY OF WEEK	MONTH	DATE	READING FOR CLASS	TOPIC DESCRIPTION
1	Friday	August	31 [9 am]		Introduction to Course Sign up for library tour (BROKEN LINK) The Namesake at Cinestudio Monday and Tuesday. Having the whole Cinestudio website is a good resource.
2	Tuesday	September	4	Read: The Namesake Gogol What else? Whimsical uses of names [this set could go on forever, of course. I list an arbitrary few here. The Wikipedia references are ok because I know the stories from other sources first and know that they can be elaborated using authoritative sources.]Physics paper fun Texas fun More Texana Look at the web site list before the daily schedule. Look over the article about proper names.	Thinking about names, culture, and language.
Benjamin Lee Whorf
3	Thursday	September	6	Read: Carroll, Introduction Carroll (Whorf), Chapter 5, “An American Indian Model of the Universe Carroll (Whorf), Chapter 6, “A linguistic consideration of thinking in primitive communities.”	We did not get to the discussion of The Namesake, so we’ll do that today. Saturday, Sept. 8, is “Do it Day.” The basic story of the relevant parts of Whorf’s career. As part of the background, take note of the Hartford Insurance Company, Whorf’s walk to work, his Wethersfield address, the Hartford Atheneum, and the Watkinson library. Exercise — Using Google maps or whatever your favorite program is to get maps and directions, make a map of Whorf’s walk to the Atheneum. This will require you to find Whorf’s address in Wethersfield and the address of the Atheneum. Writing Assignment — Students whose last names begin with A through H summarize Chapter 5. K-S do Chapter 6 Do your own work. Bring a hard copy of your summary to class and submit an electronic copy before 6 pm today. Summaries should be no more than 300 words. You should include Whorf’s main points as well as examples to illustrate his reasons for his position. Extra credit for specific bits that you do not understand.
4	Tuesday	September	11	Read: Brown, R. & Lenneberg, E. (1954). A study in language and cognition. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 49, 454-462. classic attempt to test Whorf’s idea. Find the electronic copy through PsychINFO. I will pick someone in the class to demonstrate on the computer, in class, how you found the article.	Add/Drop Period ends for full-term and first quarter classes. Last day to select the Pass/Low Pass/Fail option for a course.
5	Thursday	September	13	Read:	Whorf Discussion; Brown & Lenneberg — Munsell Colors
6	Tuesday	September	18	Read: Broderick book, Chapters 1, 3, and 5Helpful paper added late: Nice summary of grammar by Paul Bohan Broderick [we have two different Brodericks here]	Finish Brown & Lenneberg discussion Chomsky and modern linguistics. Generative grammar with emphasis on syntax. Writing: Rewrite your summary of a Whorf chapter, building around Whorf’s examples. I will remove the length restriction, although I don’t expect much over 300 words. AFTER your summary, include an Appendix A. In this Appendix, you are to list what you take to be 5 of the key sentences that most effectively capture what Whorf is trying to say. Appendix B — In Appendix B, list 3 sentences of Whorf’s that say something hard for you to understand. Try to say, as best you can, where the difficulty is for you.
7	Thursday	September	20	As mentioned last time : Nice summary of grammar	Syntax — Generative grammar
8	Tuesday	September	25	Read: Last Whorf chapter in Carroll, “Language, Thought, and Reality.” The Interpreter Disappearing languages Short NY Times note of Sept. 23	The Brazilian people with the challenging language.
Roger Wolcott Sperry
9	Thursday	September	27	Read:Sperry’s Nobel Prize Autobio Sperry description on The Brain Connection. Papers by Horder and Trevarthen — available in “Course Documents” on Blackboard. Video of split brain patient	Writing Assignment for Whorf Section Introduction to Sperry’s life and career. Family Weekend upon us Tomorrow (Sept. 28) is last day to withdraw from a course for a W instead of an F.
10	Tuesday	October	2		Elaboration of writing assignment — go back to last class and click on the assignment announcement. It is linked to what was in the email to you. Sperry discussion — consciousness, language, and the split brain. What about computers?
11	Thursday	October	4	Continue Sperry	Whorf writing assignment due
	Tuesday	October	9	Trinity Days
12	Thursday	October	11		Watkinson Library visit
13	Tuesday	October	16	Reading — The full Roger Sperry website is here. See Paper #275 under “Publications.” Gazzaniga 2005 — Find this paper in Course Documents on Blackboard. It is a nice review of later developments in split brain research.	Discussion of split brains, consciousness, language, with an emphasis on getting more specific.
William Beecher Scoville and “H.M.” [with a little more on split brains too]
14	Thursday	October	18	Reading: Begin Memory’s Ghost. Scoville Obit Another Scoville Obit The NPR broadcast of H.M.	Monday, Oct. 22 is MidTerm Listen to the H.M. NPR Recording Watch video of Suzanne Corkin lecture at Trinity.
15	Tuesday	October	23	Reading: Continue Memory’s Ghost	Sperry related assignment for next Tuesday Evening — Memento film with Caleb
16	Thursday	October	25	Read: The New Yorker article about Clive Wearing by Oliver Sacks. It is at the New Yorker link that I sent you by email.	Advising week begins Monday (Oct. 29) Half the class goes to NYC for Oliver Sacks talk
17	Tuesday	October	30	Read: 1. Puccetti target article — found on Blackboard 2. Sperry, Zaidel & Zaidel — Paper #210 in the collection on the Sperry web site linked at Oct. 16 above.	Class presentations and discussion of assigned portions of Puccetti. Sperry writing topic assigned
18	Thursday	November	1	Read: Memory’s Ghost, Parts I-IV	Registration week is Nov. 5 – 12 Class — Last presentations on Puccetti commentary
19	Tuesday	November	6	Read: Complete Memory’s Ghost	Topics:Sperry writing assignment due
20	Thursday	November	8	Read: Corkin summary of research up to 2002. Available in Course Documents section of Blackboard. More H.M. papers now on Blackboard. (1) Hartford Courant article about Scoville and H. M. from 2002. (2) Reprint of original Scoville & Milner (1957).	Look for H.M Writing assignment no later than Tuesday, but hopefully before. [Class devoted to registration issues]
21	Tuesday	November	13	Read: Corkin (2002) Also available — National Geographic article	Corkin (2002) discussion HM Writing Assignment
Donald Johanson and “Lucy”
22	Thursday	November	15	Read: Beginning Lucy. Chapters 1 – 4. Is the word “I” used in the narrative? Who is the “I?” Who wrote the book? Is there something odd going on? What is the most likely explanation? Johanson’s Becoming Human website Johanson’s Arizona State Institute of Human Origins	Reviewing the basic story and identifying questions to be alert for, both in terms of how the disciplines work that identify bones and in terms of our particular course. NAMING — p. 70 “Eventually it became almost universally recognized that there were only two types of early hominid in South Africa, not five. “What to name them?”
23	Tuesday	November	20	Read: Lucy. Chapters 5 – 9.	Thanksgiving break begins AFTER class H. M. Writing Assignment Due
24	Tuesday	November	27	Read: Lucy. Chapters 10 – 12
25	Thursday	November	29	Read: (1) Lucy. Chapters 13 – 15 (2) pages from the 2006 book, From Lucy to Language — sent to you as attached file. (3) Courant article about Johanson 1981 visit to Hartford — on the Blackboard site.	Add/Drop for Spring term begins MondayProf. Schneider from biology will visit to talk about the science of classification, i.e. taxonomy. Lucy Writing assignment
26	Tuesday	December	4	Read: Lucy. Chapters 16 – End
27	Thursday	December	6		FINAL ASSIGNMENT Lucy Writing Assignment due (unless you have made an alternate arrangement)
Revisions Due December 10
Final Paper Due December 20