Spring Break

I’m glad to have made it to the end of March. It has been a painful month – literally. About 4.5 weeks ago, I somehow strained my lower back, and managed to compound the problem over the course of a week by overcompensating. Then I started to get shooting pains and muscle spasms, resulting in overcompensating in the other direction with extreme carefulness and inactivity causing stiffening and loss of flexibility. Two weeks of doctor-prescribed muscle relaxants, three weeks of occasional doses of acetaminophen, moist heat treatment, one deep muscle massage, and one visit to the physical therapist, and I’m almost back to normal. There is still occasional low-level pain but I no longer need painkillers and flexibility has improved significantly.

It’s also the middle of Spring Break, which came late this year. A week earlier and it would have coincided with the American Chemical Society national conference in Denver, Colorado. I did not go this time around, but several of my colleagues did, and they brought their students with them. Going to a national conference is a highlight for the students – they attend some excellent seminars (and some poor ones too) and they have the opportunity to present a research poster and answer questions about their work. Our undergraduates have, over the years, handled these sessions very well and I’m proud of them! Those of us that did not go to the conference were helping to cover our colleagues’ classes. I actually enjoyed guest lecturing and interacting with students who were not my own. It was actually fun!

I’m still going into work this week, taking the mornings to do research, reading and some administrative work. The afternoon is devoted to thinking about classes and teaching. It’s quieter without most of the students around. (Some are still doing research, but the students in my lab are away from the week so I get a break too!) I’ve passed probably the hardest part of my job as chair – faculty and staff annual evaluations. (That was this past month and possibly a source of stress that contributed to my back problems. I’ll never know.) It’s also the season of student awards – this is always a pleasure, recognizing our strong students! Some are awards internal to the college, and some are awards external to the institution, the latter being particularly celebratory especially when they come with funding for students to do summer research. Registration for the Fall starts when we get back from Spring Break so things will start to get crazy again. So I’m taking full advantage of enjoying my week of peace and quiet!

Magic and Functional Ontology

I’m working my way through The Lost World of Genesis One by John Walton. The subtitle of the book is “Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate”. The book lays out a series of 17 propositions. I’m less than halfway through so I don’t know what the final punchline is yet. Proposition 2 however is quite interesting: “Ancient Cosmology is Function Oriented”. Prof. Walton opens the chapter by asking the question “What does it mean for something to exist?”

The discussion surrounds the question of ontology. The author defines this as: “The ontology of X is what it means for X to exist.” He then asks the question: “What is the principle quality of existence?” Two examples are used to contrast two types of ontology. The first example is a chair. Most of us would think of the chair’s existence in terms of its material or physical properties. This is labeled a material ontology. The second example is a company/corporation. The author argues that the ontology that we commonly associate with such an entity is a functional ontology, i.e., the company or corporation exists when it conducts its business, whatever that may be.

The author then discusses what it means to create given different associated ontologies. Creating a chair has to do with bringing its material properties into existence, while creating a company is associated with bringing its functional properties into existence. Some further examples used include creating a committee, creating a curriculum, creating havoc, and creating a masterpiece. As someone who has experienced in-depth involvement with creating a curriculum, I recall many discussions about the function of the curriculum, and less having to do with the physical material of the curriculum. (We did discuss physical books though, but more in terms of their intellectual or pedagogical content rather than the quality of the printed paper or binding.) Prof. Walton’s argument is that the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible should be read with functional ontology, rather than material ontology, in mind because this is what you see comparatively across literature of the time dealing with ancient cosmology. While this in itself is an interesting topic that I might pick up in a later blog, my thoughts today have to do with the world of Harry Potter and the nature of magic.

In my earlier blog posts on magic, my analysis automatically assumed a material ontology. Maybe that’s the mindset of someone trained and immersed in the natural sciences. I considered how magic interferes with electricity or electromagnetic radiation. I discussed my thoughts about magic’s mode of operation in the realm of how energy can be manipulated in the electromagnetic (“light”) regime and how this interacts with the material (“matter”) regime proper. In thinking about boggarts or dementors, I again automatically analyzed these magical creatures in how they relate to physical matter – i.e., employing a material ontology. In thinking about how magical ability is acquired or inherited, I thought about symbionts such as the midichlorians that mediate the Force in the Star Wars series.

But maybe the material ontology approach is less satisfactory than a functional ontology approach. What if I thought about magic primarily in terms of its function? There seem to be two important characteristics in casting a spell: the use of a wand and the incantation. Of the two, the wand seems to be mainly used as a channel, while the incantation is what differentiates one spell from another. Yes, sometimes the wand movements matter to direct the spell, but it’s the incantation that’s key. In the first five Harry Potter books, spell incantations are verbally audible for the most part. Speaking the incantation brings the spell’s function into existence. Interestingly, there is an analogy here with Genesis in the Bible where creation is spoken into being.

In Book 6 (which I just finished re-reading, and it was superb!), the sixth year students are introduced to non-verbal spells. So the actual verbal incantation is not fundamental, but the key seems to be the thought of the incantation or the focus of the mind on the incantation. By focusing the mind or the will (and it is unclear how you would separate the two), the function of the spell is brought into being. The material properties simply follow along where necessary to complete the function. Is this what happens when we speak or think? The function or meaning is more important (to us) then the physical things that happen allowing speech or thought be they waves, vibrations of vocal chords, or chemo-electrical neural transmission.

Can material rules be “broken”, or perhaps act subserviently, to the functional aspect of speech or thought if indeed the speaker or thinker was “powerful” enough, whatever that looks like? In a sense the Matrix world in the series of Matrix movies operates in this way. There are physical rules and interactions (upheld by computer programming) but they can be bent or broken through force of thought interacting with the bits and bytes in the Matrix. Is our world like this? Are there “gods” or beings that functionally operate in a way that can supercede our “physical laws”. Now, that’s an interesting question to ponder.

Exam Excitement

Yesterday I proctored the local section of the Chemistry Olympiad screening exam. Top students from local high schools show up for a 110-minute exam with 60 multiple-choice questions. This year everyone in my group came prepared with their pencils, erasers and non-programmable calculators. The classroom in which I was proctoring the exam is one that I have used often over the years when I teach first-year college-level General Chemistry and also Chemistry for non-majors. The students looked a tad younger than my college students, but not by much. So the environment felt familiar to me with one big exception.

There was an air of excitement and enthusiasm in the air. I could feel the energy of the students who were looking forward to being there to take the exam. This is not the atmosphere in my college classes on exam day. (It’s more a feeling of trepidation on the part of the students who seem less than happy that they are being tested.) Of course the circumstances are very different. For my college students, the exam impacts their grade (and many of them are grade-conscious), and feels like a burden to bear or a hoop they have to jump through. They wish they did not have to take it. The high school students that came for the Olympiad screening were there because they were recommended by their teachers. It was an honor to be chosen and they recognized it as such. They wanted to be there to show off what they learned!

I’m not sure why it hit me this time around that this was part of the excitement: to show what they had learned and how capable they were! If only that were true in my classes where students seem to think of exams as a drag. This is despite my explaining the usefulness of exams in the process of learning. My students don’t seem to feel that they are getting an opportunity to show off their knowledge – rather my impression is that they think my exams are to show up their ignorance. Maybe it’s a bit of both.

I freely admit that I actually enjoy grading exams. I start grading right after the exam is over and if possible I finish grading that same day. (Sometimes it spills over to the next day.) I’m actually curious and perhaps even excited to see how much my students have learned. I am both rewarded and disappointed given the range of students in my classes. Some are very strong academically and ace the exam. Others perform miserably. The other reason why I grade as soon as possible is because it is crucial for students to receive feedback as soon as possible. Therefore my rule is that exams should be returned to the students by the next class period.

In my first year of college teaching, an older and wiser colleague said that exams should be given back to student at the end of class (rather than at the beginning, which I had planned to do) and that students should wait at least 24 hours before stopping by to ask questions. (I provide an answer key when I return the exam.) This has worked very well. Handing back the exams at the beginning would have distracted a subset of the students in an unhelpful way and they would probably not participate as fully in the class. Having the waiting time of 24 hours allows the student to reflect on their errors in the exam, and more often than not, when they come to my office, the conversation is very productive and surrounds study skills rather than “why did I get this wrong?”

I will not be grading the Olympiad screening exam. The Scantron cards will go through a machine that will provide the student’s score. The top students will be invited back for a second, more extensive exam that involves practical lab skills and the ability to design one’s own experiment. The students in the meantime are probably eagerly waiting to hear whether they have been selected into the next round. It’s been a long time since I was their age and since I wasn’t the strongest student back then (at least from my teachers’ perspective), I didn’t have a chance to experience the excitement they did yesterday. But I did share in that buzz of excitement with the students yesterday! I was even tempted to take the exam just for fun and submit my Scantron, but instead I spent the 110 minutes watching the students like a hawk to make sure no cheating took place. I am pleased to report that they were well-behaved and everything went smoothly.

On my way home after the screening exam, I mused about whether as professors we could experience that same buzz. Maybe it comes when a journal accepts our paper, or we are invited to give a lecture, or if we receive an award. Or maybe we get our buzz in a different way. I find that I share the excitement of my students who have gotten into graduate school or medical school, or earned an honor. (This is the season when such things are happening.) There is this sense of pleasure to see their adolescent excitement as they get ready to embark on their next stage of life. I must say – I’m looking forward to graduation day!

Mid-Semester Evaluations

Now that I’m in Week 7.5, or halfway through the semester, it’s perhaps appropriate to reflect on how my class has been going. It’s been a while since I blogged about my class. First, my time spent on the class has been steadily decreasing to something more manageable. In the month of February I averaged 17.5 hours per week, including class time. Not quite my target 15 hours a week, but certainly better than January. In March so far, I’m so far averaging close to 15, but only half the month has gone by. (In a typical course my time spent is 10 hours per week, which incidentally is also what I expect of my students.)

My seventh homework set was asking the students a set of questions to find out how the class is going for them so far. Many of the students seem to be more settled with the new routine. There’s usually a 5-minute quiz at the beginning of class, followed by 15-20 minutes of lecturing/discussion, then 20 minutes of working in groups using an in-class worksheet, and 10 minutes of wrap-up and conclusion. A subset of the students still felt that they would prefer more lecture and less of the in-class worksheets. The most common argument was that they “learned better” through lecture, or at least they felt they did.

Students felt the quizzes were too rushed. I’ve therefore adjusted by giving an additional minute or so (which is 20% more time) and I think this is working well now. They also felt there were too many quizzes. I decided not to reduce the number and explained why having a low-stakes quiz at the beginning of class is actually a powerful learning tool. Not sure whether they bought the argument, but since I have veto power as the instructor I’m keeping things the same. Quizzes count for 10% of the total grade. I plan to give 25-30 quizzes over the semester and I will count the top 20.

The biggest change I made was to scrap the final project and presentation. I felt that this would simply add more stress at the end of the semester. The students had also felt rather stressed with the new format (they had to do more work outside of class then they were accustomed to) in the beginning of the semester, but things have settled down. I had done informal queries to find out how many hours students were spending outside of class and it wasn’t onerous. In fact, it was close to the 10 hours I was expecting per week (class time included), and may have been slightly under. Students aren’t the best at estimating out-of-class time unless they keep a log (which most don’t). Over the years, I have encouraged my first-year advisees to keep a log for a week and see how that changes their behavior.

Without the final project and presentation, I was now able to spread out the material a bit more (with an extra 2.5 weeks). I decided to have in-class exams and final, as opposed to the planned take-home exams. The vast majority of students (except for two) thought this was a great idea. I asked them before making the decision. Another reason why I chose to do this is that I felt the blogs were actually accomplishing some of the things I wanted students to learn as part of the final project. Some students were actually doing research on things that caught their interest. I think this was helped by several high quality blog posts, which slowly resulted in the elevation of quality across the board. Many of the students who were initially skeptical about the utility of the blog posts, found themselves pleasantly surprised that they enjoyed it. A sizable minority (25-33%) however still did not like the blog post requirements and some thought the exercise was rather pointless. I did explain several times why the blog posts would be useful as part of their long-term learning.  Anyway, I’ve decided to keep them but reduced the requirements slightly by allowing students to “miss” two weeks of not posting without penalty.

All in all, I’m happy with the class so far. There are still many areas that could be improved. Although I have managed to reduce my workload, I feel the quality of my worksheets and my facilitating of the in-class discussion has started to suffer in quality compared to earlier in the semester when I was putting in more hours. If only there were more hours in the day, or I didn’t tire out so quickly.

The second midterm exam is coming up next week. Students, on average, did well on the first exam, and now they know what my exams look like, so the next exam should not be as stressful. I moved the final project/paper grades (20%) to the remaining two midterms and the final. Students supported this idea. We’ll see where things stand after I’ve graded the next set of exams.

Happy Pi Day!

This year’s Pi Day is a little more significant than the rest because we can also capture the year in accordance with the digits of pi if you write out the date American-style: 3/14/15. This isn’t as good as back in 1592, a hundred years after Colombus sailed the ocean blue. It rhymes better than 1593, which should be more significant if you take into account significant figures. So next year should be more significant than this year. Hah! I can’t believe how much I packed into this first paragraph. I’m on muscle relaxants because of a bad back so it might be making me a little loopier than usual. (You might have noticed that I’ve blogged a little less the past couple of weeks. This was to avoid sitting in front of my computer because of my back problems, however I’m getting better!)

Given that it’s Pi Day, it seems appropriate for me to excerpt Jordan Ellenberg’s How Not to Be Wrong. I finished this book a couple of weeks ago, and wrote about the first chapter in an earlier post.

Chapter 5 is titled “More Pie than Plate”. Ellenberg provides several examples to illustrate a slogan to live by: “Don’t talk about percentages of numbers when the numbers might be negative.” If you do so, you might find that you could draw some ridiculous conclusions. Here’s an excerpt of one of his examples. You should read his book on some of the more relevant (and longer) examples that made actual news, and have a much more serious impact.

“For example, say I run a coffee shop. People, sad to say, are not buying my coffee; last month I lost $500 on that part of my business. Fortunately, I had the prescience to install a pastry case and a CD rack, and those two operations made a $750 profit each. In all, I made $1000 this month, and 75% of that amount came from my pastry case. Which sounds like the pastry case is what’s really moving my business right now; almost all my profit is croissant-driven. Except that it’s just as correct to say that 75% of my profits came from the CD rack. And imagine, if I’d lost $1000 more on coffee – then my total profits would be zero, infinity percent of which would be coming from pastry! Seventy-five percent sounds like it means ‘almost all’, but when you’re dealing with numbers that could be either positive or negative, like profits, it might mean something different.”

One of my favorite parts of Ellenberg’s book is his introduction titled “When am I going to use this?” This is a perennial favorite question of students in math and science classes. Ellenberg first quotes what might be a standard response: “I know this seems dull to you, but remember, you don’t know what career you’ll choose – you may not see the relevance now, but you might go into a field where it’ll be really important that you know how to ...”

Hmm… this makes me think of the catchphrases we use to promote a liberal arts education. “We prepare you for the careers of the future. No one knows what they’ll be at the speed at which things are progressing. Today’s jobs that you might train narrowly for will be gone tomorrow. So you must be prepared for the future, and the training you get from a liberal arts curriculum will get you there!” I’m a strong proponent of a liberal arts education but sometimes this rings hollow to students (and possibly parents who might be footing the bill).

Ellenberg suggests a different response. I’m going to excerpt his response below but replace “mathematics” with “science” or “chemistry”.

“[Science] is not just a sequence of [steps] to be carried out by rote until your patience or stamina runs out – although it might seem that way from what you’ve been taught in [such courses]. Those [chemistry problems I’ve assigned] are to [science] as weight training or calisthenics are to soccer. If you want to play soccer – I mean, really play, […] you’ve got to do a lot of boring, repetitive, apparently pointless drills. Do professional players ever use those drills? Well, you won’t see anybody on the field curling a weight or zigzagging between traffic cones. But you do see players using the strength, speed, insight, and flexibility they built up by doing those drills, week after tedious weeks. Learning those drills is part of soccer.”

“[Chemistry] is pretty much the same. You may not be aiming for a career [in chemistry]. That’s fine – most people aren’t. But you can still [learn how to think scientifically]. You probably already are [thinking scientifically], even if you don’t call it that. [Science] is woven into the way we reason [about the natural world] And [chemistry] makes you better at things. Knowing [chemistry] is like wearing a pair of X-ray specs that reveal hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of the world. With the tools of [chemistry] in hand, you can understand the world in a deeper, sounder and more meaningful way.”

That’s what I would like to say in my introductory chemistry classes, particularly the non-majors class. (I get to teach one this coming Fall and I’m excited about it!) Now it turns out that there are quite a number of real-world examples where I can illustrate the usefulness of knowing some chemistry. So my job is probably easier than Ellenberg’s at least at the introductory level of chemistry. However, where things start to be more similar is when I teach the dreaded Physical Chemistry sequence. (The students dread “P-Chem”. I don’t dread teaching it, although it is more time-consuming than any other class I’ve taught because office hours are always full of students.) Quantum Chemistry has a lot of math and computing integrals (Ellenberg’s original example) is something the students have to do. So I do find myself having to “defend” mathematics and its importance.

Ellenberg concludes his story: “Even if I did give my student the full inspirational speech, she might – if she is really sharp – remain unconvinced. ‘That sounds good, Professor,’ she’ll say. ‘But it’s pretty abstract. You say that with mathematics at your disposal you can get things right you’d otherwise get wrong. But what kind of things? Give me an actual example.’ And at that point I would tell her the story of Abraham Wald and the missing bullet holes.”

Get a copy of Ellenberg’s book if you want to know the story!

Teacher Training

This week I’ve been thinking about how teachers are trained. Before becoming a full-time college professor, at one point I almost became a full-time high school science teacher. (I still might one day – it’s hard to predict the future.) To teach high school you need certification that “qualifies” you to be a teacher. Depending on what state or country you’re from, this may be a degree, a diploma or a certificate of some sort that specifically has to do with teaching. To be a college professor on the other hand, does not require any such certification. You just need a graduate degree (preferably in your field although sometimes a related field is okay). The majority of college professors in the majority of institutions spend the majority of their time teaching. But yet they don’t require any background in pedagogy. What does this say about the philosophy behind tertiary education? We’ll get to that in a bit, but first let’s see what sorts of teachers Harry Potter gets.

Hogwarts seems to be an interesting example in that the age of the students is 11-18 or secondary school. However, there is no teacher-training college that we know of, and many of the teacher appointments are not made solely on “teaching ability”. The teachers are called “professors” which typically happens at the tertiary level in our world, although that’s simply a title in this case. Having recently finished Book 5, it seems appropriate to discuss teacher qualifications. Umbridge certainly thinks it is important. How was she chosen? Well, she was foisted upon Hogwarts for political reasons. It is unclear she had any teaching background and her methods seem very dated. For much of mankind’s history, knowledge was scarce. Books were precious and rare (as was the ability to read). The invention of the printing press started to open up opportunities, but until books became cheap and widespread, reading in class (which Umbridge directs the students to do) was probably a reasonable approach. In our age of the Internet, we are in an era of knowledge abundance, and we should be evaluating our teaching and pedagogy in light of this. I’ve a bit more to say about this, but first let’s look at some of the other Hogwarts professors.

We learn in Book 5 that Trelawney was chosen mainly for her own protection, and not on her ability to teach, nor her subject matter. Dumbledore, in fact, was thinking of discontinuing the subject of Divination. Towards the end of the book, Firenze is invited, because he has nowhere to go and it is for his protection. He doesn’t think humans can learn anything from reading the signs in any case. Dumbledore takes on Hagrid, who has nowhere else to turn, first as Gamekeeper but then eventually as a professor. Hagrid did not even finish his education at Hogwarts although it is quite clear that he knows his subject material very well. This might be equivalent to professionals in our world who may not have the appropriate graduate degree, but whose work experience qualifies them to teach as adjunct professors. While Hagrid is away, a part-time replacement (adjunct professor of another sort) Grubbly-Plank substitutes for his class. No mention is made of her qualifications. Flitwick, Sprout, McGonagall and Snape have been at Hogwarts for a while and are clearly very capable in their subject matter. Did they get trained? How did they learn to teach? How did they know they wanted to teach?

In Book 6, Slughorn is pulled out of retirement, mainly for his own protection. There is a revolving door of professors teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts – some terribly unqualified, others quite capable. Dumbledore himself provides an interesting case – he chooses teaching specifically over other “power” positions, although the reasons are complex involving both the personal and the professional. The most interesting case, I think, is Tom Riddle. When he comes back after traveling far and wide, he asks Dumbledore for a position and Hogwarts. He gives reasons I would give if I was interviewing for a position as a college professor. He has something to offer from both experience and ability (he is very capable in magic – and it is a school of witchcraft and wizardry). He also seeks the opportunity to learn more at Hogwarts, to delve more into the hidden secrets of the universe. Sounds like scholarship and research to me! (Now we do know that he has other motives, and Dumbledore denies him the position he seeks.)

Is a Magical education (such as provided by Hogwarts) a situation of knowledge scarcity or abundance? Or is it neither? In terms of books, the situation seems to be that standard textbooks and printed materials are plentiful, but the market for more advanced knowledge seems to be much smaller. You’d have to go to the Restricted Section of the Library, and you would need permission to check out the more “dangerous” books. There is no operational Internet or the use of computers or other electronic devices because it interferes with magic. The purpose of the “using magic” related classes is to learn how to channel and control magic. Using magic is prohibited outside of school and in the hallways, although students are allowed to practice some things as part of homework. In that sense, maybe Hogwarts more closely resembles vocational training schools, the vocation in this case is “magic user”. Are there graduate schools? We don’t know. But certainly further training is needed for some careers as Harry finds out when he gets advice about becoming an Auror.

The choice of “capable” Hogwarts professors seems to be their strengths in particular areas of the magical world. Snape seems to be a master potion brewer, and apparently did his own research while in school. McGonagall, being a registered Animagus, seems appropriate as the Transfiguration teacher. Hagrid is particularly knowledgeable about magical creatures of all sorts, and Sprout seems clearly the magical botany expert. Is there a research component to their teaching? The advancement of magical knowledge perhaps? We get hints that this might be the case. That seems to be how we hire professors in tertiary institutions. Do you have the knowledge (demonstrated by the appropriate graduate degree)? Can you do research and advance knowledge (if that is part of the institution’s mandate)? At more teaching-focused institutions, evidence of some teaching is often required. (See a previous post for an example on how hiring works at a SLAC in the sciences.)

The vast majority of candidates for tertiary education positions have no training in pedagogy (unlike those being certified to teach at the secondary level). Is the knowledge enough? Certainly in an era of knowledge scarcity, having the knowledge to impart would clearly be the highest priority. But we are now in an era of knowledge abundance. The skill set we need to teach our students is how to be discerners of knowledge. Speaking for myself, the process of getting a Ph.D. in the natural sciences requires delving through past knowledge and discerning which parts are useful for the furthering of knowledge. We are now seeing that getting undergraduates involved in research is a “high impact practice” in the jargon of higher education. Are there better and worse ways of guiding students through that process? I’m sure there are, although many of us college professors probably learned our craft of teaching through trial and error and much experimentation (the same way some of us got our graduate degrees). The practice of teaching and learning pedagogy was not a priority then, although universities are recognizing this importance and creating “pedagogy centers” to help instructors “improve” their teaching.

Elizabeth Green writes about “Building a Better Teacher” (briefly mentioned here). Can we Build a Better Professor?

When Peer Review Works

One of the many functions of the university is to be a producer of new knowledge. Therefore as professors, one of our responsibilities is to contribute new knowledge to our fields of study. We mainly do this in two ways: through presentations at conferences or other institutions (posters or seminars), and through publishing our work. Peer review is the standard by which many journals decide whether or not to publish the work. When I submit a manuscript to the journal, the editor sends it to anonymous reviewers who are knowledgeable in the field to critique the paper and determine if it should be published. The reviewers send their comments to the editor who then decides what happens to the paper. It can be accepted outright, it may have promise but require revisions, or it may be rejected.

Different journals have different aims and guidelines. An article that is suitable for one journal may not be suitable for another. It is also typically more difficult to get articles published in more prestigious journals. Some journals have a more elaborate peer-review process. Some journals are known to go through the process quickly, and others can be very slow. Some journals are expensive to publish in, and others cost the author nothing. My favorite go-to journal has efficient editors, well-suited content-wise to the majority of my projects, and doesn’t charge me (the author). Most of my articles are sent there.

I recently had an article accepted that exemplified when the process worked well. (It doesn’t always.) After preparing my manuscript, I sent it to the journal editor. Within a day, I receive a notice that my article has been assigned to an appropriate associate editor (there are many for journals with a larger readership). A month later, I received the reviews. In this particular case the reviewers understood my paper, provided critical comments, raised issues that needed to be addressed, and classified it in the “publishable, but requires revision” category. The issues raised were important, and I was able to make the necessary modifications and clarifications to address them, which in my opinion led to a much better paper. I sent these back to the editor, who sent it back to the reviewers. About 3 weeks later, the editor sends me the second round reviewer comments. (They were happy with the changes made and thought I sufficiently addressed the concerns raised.) The paper was accepted. I received the proofs in less than a week, and was able to turn things back to the journal in a day or two. All told, a roughly 9-week process.

It doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes it takes a while to hear back from reviewers (and hence the editor). I’ve had things take 6-9 months in the worst cases. Sometimes the reviewer completely misunderstands the article and “trashes” the work out of ignorance. Sometimes you don’t get much response because the reviewer didn’t do much work. Instead you get short comments such as “this paper was great” (unclear if it was actually read, and I don’t think my papers are that great) and “this paper is poor work” (with no accompanying explanation or justification). Sometimes you get both in the same review cycle, i.e., different readers came to very different conclusions. You’d think that knowledgeable scientists could generally agree on whether an article was good or poor, if it’s not controversial. (My work uses straightforward methods to solve interesting but relatively straightforward problems. The assumptions and approximations made are all very clearly stated too.) Most of the time, I don’t run into problems getting an article published, but every now and then I do for strange, possibly even capricious reasons.

This time around, the reviewers were particularly lucid and helpful, the editors were quick and fair, and my faith in the peer review process was renewed. For my undergraduate student researchers, this is often their first paper so it’s very exciting. (It usually takes 1-4 years of work to get enough results to publish, so not many undergraduates are co-authors on more than one paper.) I forward my correspondence with the editor to the students so they see and understand how the process works. Their excitement is one of the things that keeps me going, because it takes quite a bit of work to get one’s research into a form that will make it through the peer review process of a decent journal.

It’s nice when things work the way they should!

Alchemy and the Liberal Arts

I’ve finally finished reading Lawrence Principe’s The Secrets of Alchemy. Previous posts on this book are found here and here. Reading this book made me think about the liberal arts, interdisciplinary education, and how the specialization of knowledge (especially in the natural sciences) has led to its fragmentation.

I think there is something we can learn from the alchemists. Principe writes: “Early modern chymistry embraces many topics that are usually regarded today as separate disciplines – chemistry, medicine, theology, philosophy, literature and the arts.” Therefore to study the history of alchemy requires a multi-pronged approach because of the “strikingly multivalent character of the subject”. (As a chemist, I like how Principe uses the word multivalent!)

In the final chapter of his book, Principe discusses Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (Atalanta fleeing) based on the classical tale of Atalanta and Hippomenes. I haven’t read the manuscript myself but apparently, as Principe describes it, each of the fifty chapters of the book “consists of five parts: a motto, an emblematic image, a six-line epigram (in both Latin and German), two pages of prose narrative, and most innovatively, a piece of music arranged for three voices.” The emblematic images and epigrams in these types of texts were like puzzles, and apparently were popular in the 16-17^th centuries in a way that crosswords and Sudoku puzzles are popular today. To enjoy such texts, the reader needed to have a keen knowledge of “classical literature and history, mythology, mathematics, poetry, astronomy, music, theology, and of course chymistry”. In fact, the more the reader was versed in this, dare I say it, liberal arts education, the “greater his understanding [and] the greater his delight.”

I learned that the phrase donum dei (“gift of God”), applied to alchemy among other things, is actually a technical phrase, and that there was a precept that “knowledge is the gift of God, therefor it cannot be sold”. Apparently, this precept emerged from arguments about whether teachers can require payment from their students. Wow! If we followed this precept today, I would be out of a job. In fact, I haven’t worried for a long time about whether I could “support myself” because in today’s society, there is always a market for education. And those with the means are willing to pay more to get their children ahead. Kings and nobles in times past would do this for their children via the patronage system.

The section that I found most interesting in Principe’s book is his discussion of The Mirror of the Whole of Nature and the Image of Art. (Here’s a link to the Chemical Heritage Foundation site, which Principe cites in his book. The image below is taken from the CHF website.) The ape represents human work as the imitation (aping) of nature’s work. It covers four concentric circles, the first of which is “art correcting nature in the mineral realm”. That’s where the alchemists are located and there are various symbols representing their activities. The ape is chained to a female figure representing nature spanning both the terrestrial and the celestial world. The first circle of the terrestrial world, before Minerals, Vegetables and Animals, is the Liberal Arts! The celestial world has the standard seven circles for the seven orbiting bodies known at the time. Nature is chained to what looks like a cloud beyond the physical universe that has emblems pointing to the divine realm. Everything is connected, “a cosmos in the true sense of the word”.

It’s really fascinating to learn about these older manuscripts and artworks that often aimed at representing wholeness, in contrast to the disciplinary fragmentation we see today. Perhaps that is why I am a supporter of (w)holistic education in the liberal arts – although one that is designed for the 21^st century student. Who knows? I’m certainly hoping that one day I’ll be able to teach a class that combines chemistry, art, literature, history and theology. The problem is that I’m only knowledgeable about one of these things. But perhaps that’s not truly a deficiency if our notion of education changes and we are able to break our disciplinary silos. In any case, thanks to people like Principe who are breaking those boundaries, I can at least indulge in pondering a great many mysteries.