Integration vs Unbundling

The future of liberal arts colleges and universities, if they don’t want to go the way of the dodo, is integration. That’s the thesis of Chris Gallagher’s recent book, College Made Whole. 

The opposite of integration is unbundling. Gallagher’s two foils are Kevin Carey’s The End of College and Ryan Craig’s College Disrupted: The Great Unbundling of Education, both published in 2015. There is no dispute that many ‘traditional’ colleges and universities in the U.S. do many things within each institution, some seemingly disparate from each other, which led Clark Kerr to famously coin the phrase ‘multiversity’ to describe the modern university. Carey and Craig think the status quo should be disrupted by unbundling. Gallagher thinks colleges should move in the opposite direction, by increasing integration.

Examples throughout the book are drawn mainly from Gallagher’s experience at Northeastern University. (The vision of its president Joseph Aoun to ‘robot-proof’ students is lauded repeatedly.) In particular, the distinctive co-op program is highlighted. It certainly provides good anecdotal examples for how purposeful and thoughtful integration can enhance the holistic education of college students. Showcase stories are always in this vein, and every institution leverages its own success stories as much as possible. Whether such successful experiences are widespread throughout the university is less clear.

I’m not trying to knock Gallagher’s thesis. I’m a strong proponent of holistic education, so in my case he’s preaching to the choir. He makes the very important point that integration is multifaceted and can take many forms. I was glad to see him clearly distinguish integration from interdisciplinarity. Both are important but they are different. Integration, he argues, should be happening everywhere in the student’s education; while it can certainly be exhibited through an interdisciplinary course as a collaboration between departments, it can also span across the co-curriculum and the extra-curriculum, or even take place within a single department or major. The point is to help students tie together the different threads of their college experience in a meaningful and thoughtful way.

It reminded me (while I’m away on sabbatical) of how faculty in my department regularly discuss how different parts of our curriculum and the student experience fit with each other. We are constantly arranging and rearranging things so that students see how different parts within chemistry fit together, how the natural sciences have a unity and diversity, and how student learning meshes with their life goals and aspirations. That’s a huge task! There is no simple answer or silver bullet. The times change. Students change. It’s not surprising that we will continue to have such discussions for years to come (if our version of college doesn’t go the way of the dodo).

Gallagher acknowledges the external pressures and the winds of change buffeting colleges and universities. As intense as it might feel to some of us, this is not new. The generation before Carey and Craig, and the generation before them, railed against the seeming inefficiency and bloat of the university. The prophets have been predicting the university’s demise for a long time. Instead, universities and colleges have evolved, changing with the times, but also acting as an agent to change the times. They will continue to do so. I suspect that in the years ahead, things won’t be easy. I expect more closures among small colleges due to financial exigency. And unfortunately, I think there will be a larger divide between the haves and have-nots, especially with the vision being pushed by the unbundlers.

Gallagher decries the unbundling approach and seeing the signs of the times, issues his clarion call to integration: “This is the opportunity that colleges and universities have in the years ahead.  Only they have the assembled disciplinary and pedagogical expertise to pull it off. Only they have the necessary learning infrastructure. Only they have teaching and learning as their bottom line mission… What ails US higher education is not too much bundling but too little integration: the public good is severed from private goods; courses and disciplines are separated from each other; classes and campuses are set apart from the ‘real world’; liberal learning and professional learning are treated as distinct endeavors; faculty roles are increasingly disaggregated; and degrees for traditional students are segregated from lifelong learning opportunities for nontraditional students…”

I think the challenge will be immense. A veritable strength of the university, to critically argue complex issues, requires stamina and discipline to increase integration. There will be many competing ideas as to how to do this best; there will be no one-size-fits-all solution. There will be turf wars and stepping on toes. It’s easier to be siloed and disintegrate. Do universities truly have the will, not to mention the resources, to innovate themselves into a stronger position as robots take on a larger slice of jobs? I think so. But I also think it will be painful. Perhaps we can learn a lesson from ourselves as living creatures – we’ve been amazingly innovative in transforming our lives and our environment in (geologically) a very short span of time. Systems integration by human beings is a veritable feat. It will be interesting to see how the story of higher education plays out over the next decade.

Revisiting Prydain

I recently finished re-reading the Prydain Chronicles, a five-book series by Lloyd Alexander, written in the 1960s. It’s my second time reading through the series. The first time was 30-40 years ago, so I’d forgotten almost the entire storyline and most of the characters. (Thus, I could enjoy it anew!) I did remember the main protagonist is Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper, and one of his adventure companions went by Fflewddur Fflam, a Welsh-sounding name. The author admits that the legends of Wales inspired his book. Not unlike Jasper Fforde, and it was thanks to Fflam that I immediately recognized Fforde’s Welsh roots!

Of the five books, the most famous is likely the second book, The Black Cauldron, which earned a Newberry honor and was also adapted into a Disney animation in the 1980s. The final book, The High King, is a Newberry medalist. The fourth book, Taran Wanderer, is very different from the others. I vaguely recall finding it the least interesting in my first reading (as a teenager), but this second time around it’s the one that struck me the most as I’ve looked back and thought about adulthood, and as I interact with college students mostly aged 18-22 in their journeys to adulthood. In the book, Taran wanders the land learning different crafts to find out what suits him, and learning who he is as a person. It made me think about the craft of teaching!

Each book is quite short, the adventure is brisk, and I enjoyed the quirks of the main characters, particularly Taran’s three main companions. Fflewddur is enthusiastic but prone to stretching the truth, and whenever he does, strings on his (magical) harp break and he has to constantly make repairs. Eilonwy comes up with the funniest analogies for any situation. Gurgi’s loyalty is unmatched and many of his sentences end in a rhyming couplet – he has a voracious appetite and is constantly looking for ‘munchings and crunchings’.

I can see how Tolkien’s world may have influenced some of Alexander’s writing. There is magic in the world but it’s of the more subtle Tolkien-esque variety rather than the more overt role in, say, the Harry Potter series or Feist’s Magician series. I enjoy the descriptiveness of the landscape scenes, the interesting character development, and that the author doesn’t have to use big words to convey a deep theme about growing up and the struggle between good and evil. It’s more challenging, in my opinion, to write tighter and shorter stories, rather than have a sprawling series with too many characters, too many twists, and gets burdened down by its own backstory (think Jordan’s Wheel of Time or Martin’s Game of Thrones). When you’re writing for kids or teenagers, you need to do a much better job, and Alexander certainly succeeds.

Revisiting Prydain made me look for other books by Lloyd Alexander. I just started on Time Cat, about a boy and his magical cat who can time-travel, thus allowing the pair to pop into different eras of history and meet some famous characters (before they were famous). It’s a little like Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, except no historical characters are collected and stolen from their own timelines. Rather the boy and his cat help nudge things along in history. My choice was likely subtly influenced by playing Chrononauts this past weekend and enjoying being a time-traveler!

Missing a Graduation

Finals are over. I have no grading because I’m away on sabbatical. I would have been back if not for Covid-19 and the postponement of graduation ceremonies. Besides the ceremony proper, there are typically many small meetings honoring and celebrating different groups of students. But none of it is happening this spring, at least physically. (My department did put together a “graduation video” and there are online gatherings for celebration.)

Is missing a graduation significant? I don’t know. I honestly don’t remember much of my own undergraduate ceremony. (I had never attended a graduation ceremony before, having grown up in a country where such things did not happen in primary and secondary schools.) I do remember that we were able to hold the ceremony outdoors because it wasn’t raining, but that the ground was slightly muddy from recent precipitation. There are pictures of me in my robes, but I couldn’t tell you anything about the ceremony or what it felt like. (Probably anticlimactic.) Maybe it was too long ago.

I was planning on skipping my PhD graduation. My spouse and I had already moved to a different city for our postdocs, but her parents really wanted to attend, so off we went. Thankfully it was only a two-hour drive away. All I remember is that it was a really, really hot day (over 100 Fahrenheit) and we were sweltering in the black robes. The graduation speech by Gordon Moore was humorous and mercifully short. After being hooded, I felt even hotter and more uncomfortable around the neck area. The moment the ceremony was over, the majority of us tore off our robes and rushed for shade and a cold drink.

On the other hand, I’ve very much enjoyed seeing my beaming students and their families on graduation weekend. There is lots of hand-shaking and congratulating and words of appreciation. We might still have that experience. My university has moved the physical ceremony proper to a weekend during the fall semester; I am looking forward to seeing the graduating/graduated seniors in person then. In the meantime, all I can offer remotely is the photo of a graduation llama I took in a store early this year before the impact of Covid-19 was felt significantly.

What's My Craft?

I’ve been pondering the medieval practice of craftsmen (& craftswomen!) and apprenticeship. In a mostly agrarian society, if you weren’t tending the fields or the flocks for a living, you might be sent off to learn a trade. Blacksmith comes to mind when I think about medieval craftsmen, but you could just as well be apprenticed to an embroiderer or a potter. But let’s use the blacksmith example for now.

My un-researched impression is that medieval craftsmen did not regularly take on multiple apprentices. If you currently had one, you’d be loath to take on a second. It’s not like you have several forges and extra equipment to run a blacksmithing class. You’d want to see if your potential apprentice had what it takes before taking on this person for a long commitment. Assuming no glaring problems, you’d then spend however many years it took with one-on-one instruction. The skills you have acquired as an expert blacksmith took many years of practice, and to maintain your reputation, your apprentice had better learn well.

Today’s classroom of one teacher to tens or maybe hundreds of students is a rather modern invention. Did it arise as population density increased, and there just needed to be a place to plop these youngsters? I don’t know, but I’m sure someone has written a history. In any case, as a society we somehow decided that everyone needed to know some “basics” – reading, writing, arithmetic, and eventually more. As knowledge in different areas grew and became increasingly diversified, more was piled into the curriculum. Craftsmen of the medieval slant disappeared, replaced by industrial machines. Cogs and the conveyor belt moved things along in a factory. The modern educational-industrial complex seems to have imbibed some of the same flavor.

The medieval craftsman had a physical product. For the blacksmith, these could be hoes, horseshoes, or hand-axes. The embroiderer and the potter would similarly have a product to display or sell. Were there craftsmen who did not craft a physical product? Perhaps a bard or a storyteller could make a living by providing a service; ephemeral it may be but there were those willing to pay for these services. Tutors for one’s children were not far behind, at least for the few who were wealthy. So perhaps teaching could be thought of as a service-craft. It does not produce a physical object as a product. It’s end-product, an “educated” individual is not so easy to classify.

I’d like to think of myself as a craftsman of sorts. Teaching is my craft. Over years of experience I’ve honed it well, or at least well-suited to the ethos of a classroom of the liberal arts college. My ballast of knowledge is chemistry, i.e., I’m at my best when teaching chemistry, and would probably do poorly teaching in areas where I had little subject knowledge. Part of my life mirrors the medieval craftsman – when I take on research students. They work with me one-on-one learning how to do research in computational chemistry, and how to think like a chemist. I’d like to think the experience is somewhat helpful for the students, even though it’s nowhere as intensive or extensive as a medieval apprentice would be getting. My students learn some, but honestly, not all that much in the short timeframe.

It’s a challenge to evaluate the “product” of my craftsmanship. Yes, one can count the number of papers I’ve published, research students I’ve mentored, grants I’ve written that were funded, etc. And yes, these are counted, because there’s not much else that can be easily counted and evaluated. I’d like to think that I have personally contributed to the “education” of many an individual, but it’s hard to evaluate this. (And yes, I do read all the comments in my end-of-semester teaching evaluations.) Sometimes a former student tells me years later how something I said or did helped them greatly, but those are few and far between, and typically I’d spent one-on-one time in my office chatting with said student on multiple occasions. But for the other one to two thousand students that have passed through my “class”, I can say little to how much I’ve impacted them. Perhaps little.

How did we come up with “mass” education? I’ve scoped out a few books to read this summer to learn more about the history. I think it will be important to gain some historical perspective as we stand on the brink of a new kind of mass-education, one driven by technology, especially thanks to the current Covid-19 pandemic. Technology can both aid or confound teaching, when used well or badly, but technology shouldn’t drive education. Witnessing the rise in “edupreneurship” driven by tech-entrepreneurs, many of whom have little to no teaching experience or expertise is scary. They might say I’m a relic. Outmoded. Like the medieval craftsman who is no more. I don’t harken to living in medieval times, but perhaps there’s something we can learn from thinking about education as a craft, one that requires time and care, and that industrial efficiency isn’t the most important thing in the world.

Bios Megafauna Session Report

I’m finally getting around to writing up a session of Bios Megafauna, 2^nd edition. A review of the game can be found here. For a similar “replay the tape” session report on Bios Genesis, see here. I apologize for my poor photo-taking skills. And now without further ado…

Turn 1: We’re in the Orvodician. All is calm. O₂ at 7%, albedo at 0.4, Edenic temperature.

An oziphyta develop odontotes (dermal teeth) and filial cannibalism as they colonize Baltica. A hydroskeletal invertebrate disperses its yolky eggs as it spreads across Laurentia. An exoskeletal arthropod in Siberia evolves a courtship dance leading to more offspring. An endoskeletal vertebrate living in Gondwana grows a tail spine.

Turn 2: Tectonic movements along the Ring of Fire lead to volcanoes in East Laurentia, as Baltica crashes in Laurentia. Stagnant hydrologic circulation leads to global loss of algal blooms. O₂ at 7%, albedo at 0.5, Edenic temperature.

Oziphyta evolve mandibles, while the invertebrate develops denticles. Both grow in size and spread. The arthropod evolves intercostal muscles as it increases in size, while the endoskeletal vertebrate develops cardiac muscles as they prepare for competition. This seems to be the era of teeth and muscles!

Turn 3: Large amounts of methane are released from the Tunguska coal beds. Tectonic movement leads to Siberia crashing into Gondwana and a rise in ocean levels.

The vertebrates develop a magnetic sense, the invertebrates now have tooth enamel and grooming habits. The plant-like organisms get bigger as they develop pharyngeal glands. As the arthropods evolve echolocation, they speciate into burrowers with infrared sensors out in eastern Siberia.

Turn 4: Huge flood basalt volcanoes erupt in Baltica as large forests spread across the southern hemisphere. O₂ levels jump to 13%. Rain leads to widespread erosion. Albedo at 0.5, Edenic temperature.

A new shovel-tusker appears in Laurentia. Its toothy ancestor evolves scimitar incisors as it curiously explores its surroundings. The vertebrates seem happy with more food as they evolve intestinal peristalsis; and with seasonal migration they begin to invade Siberia over the mountains. New flying arthropods are spotted as they have evolved aerobic muscles in the diaphragm allowing them to spread far and wide, crossing the seas, following the winds. Meanwhile the green plants have developed windborne seeds.

[Laurentia-Baltica with oziphyta (green domes), shovel tuskers (orange snails), and winged insects (black flyers)]

[Siberia-Gondwana with arthropods (black) and vertebrates (white).]

[Player tableaus]

Turn 5: A major bolide impact in the Pacific Ocean leads to widespread mutagenic radiation. Oziphyta lose their windborne seeds and mandibles; arthropods lose sperm competition; and the vertebrates decrease in size. O₂ at 12%, albedo at 0.6, global temperature cools.

A new vertebrate with an armored spike tail spreads out and challenges the arthropods in Siberia, which develop defensive repugnatorial glands, but in vain. Meanwhile the shovel-tusker develops a prehensile trunk, grows, and spreads, outcompeting the herbivorous oziphyta which have developed ways to absorb more nutrients from food and from the soil.

Turn 6: The Louisville hotspot lip leads to equatorial forests growing at an alarming rate. Acid rain deforestation follows. O₂ rises to 18%, albedo increases to 0.7, global temperatures remain cool.

Arthropod burrowers speciate into swimmers with a lunate tail and grasping limbs allowing them to disperse into the southern seas and swamps of Siberia. The armored vertebrate develops a hepatic caecum and continues its dominant spread, as the Paleozoic Era comes to an end.

[Siberia-Gondwana with vertebrate dominance driving the arthropods to the seas and swamps.]

[Shovel-tuskers continue dominate Laurentia-Baltica as the oziphytes are reduced to a small footprint in the east.]

[Paleozoic Events]

Turn #7: As another bolide hits the Pacific, in the beginning of the Mesozoic Era, Siberia-Gondwana drifts north. Silicate weathering takes place and mutagens cause oziphyta and arthropod insects to go extinct. O₂ rises to 23%, albedo at 0.8, cool temperatures.

Vertebrates develop clawed toes, and a new burrowing species with digging claws arises! The armored creatures develop abdominal appendages as they swim to Baltica. A new marine oziphyta arises in the Baltica seas. Meanwhile the arthropod swimmers in Siberia develop oral discs. The shovel-tusker develops olfactory organs and continues to grow in size.

Turn #8: A huge pyroclastic volcanic eruption in Laurentia coupled with Azollas carpeting the Arctic plunges the planet into an icehouse. O₂ at 23%, albedo at 0.8.

Vertebrates develop proprioreceptors, and their burrowing species develop a pallial lung. Siberian arthropod swimmers evolve whorl-shaped teeth, a syrinx, and can now call to each other in song! The hydroskeletal invertebrates develop amniotic eggs.

Turn #9: Large scale continental extension creates aborted rifts. The southern forests turn arid. A glacial-induced clathrate gun releases tons of ocean methane leading to dramatic global warming. O₂ drops to 12%, albedo at 0.6, warm temperatures.

The arthropod swimmers speciate into an armored creature with a carapace in the swamps of Siberia. Meanwhile, the vertebrate armored creatures evolve a liver and continue to grow in size. The shovel-tuskers develop wrists, ankles, and a nose to smell. Armored creatures rule the Mesozoic, as the marine oziphyta quickly evolve a bone marrow, a venomous stinger, and horned male contests.

Turn #10: The central Atlantic magmatic province becomes very active. Siberia-Gondwana drifts south as forests reappear and thrive in the south. A lignin crisis leads to algal blooms in Siberia. O₂ levels jump back up to 23%, albedo rises to 0.8, warm temperatures.

The oziphyta join the armored ranks by speciating a new horned shield snail. Meanwhile a vertebrate burrower develops gills in Gondwana and spreads into the seas. The shovel-tusker evolves knuckle walking as its hydroskeletal ancestor shrinks into a vermiform shape.

Turn #11: A supernova in Orion leads to a massive influx of cosmic radiation, causing organ failure and losses to beneficial mutations. The two large continents collide to create Pangaea. O₂ at 23%, clouds completely cover the surface, warm temperatures.

Vertebrates continue to dominate as they grow in size into two-tonne beasts! The armored arthropods develop arboreal tendrils while their huge swimmers evolve sweat glands. New hydroskeletal burrowers with peristalsis appear on the scene, amidst their huge shovel-tusker cousins. Marine oziphyta become fiercer as they develop parental protection and mimicry.

[Final player tableaus]

[Poorly angled shot of Pangaea at game-end]

[Mesozoic events; I guess the supernova was bright!]

Final Scores: Green (9), Orange (25), Black (17), White (25).

Consulting with Clients

I don’t think of my students as customers. Yes, they pay tuition to my university, which in turn pays my salary. I’m not selling a product – “an education in chemistry” – although marketing departments in tertiary institutions sound like they’re selling something, an experience of some sort. Am I selling expertise? I do know much more about chemistry than the average person. And thanks to many years of teaching, I have some expertise being a seasoned instructor of chemistry.

Perhaps I should think of my students as clients. In this case, I might be a consultant. That’s the suggestion made by Robert Talbert in a blog post I recently discovered. He portrays the consultant-client relationship as a cooperative effort towards a shared goal. He writes: “It implies a close and productive working relationship with students, one where I am working with students rather than against them, treating them not necessarily as equals but as expected partners.” In contrast, “a customer is participating in a transaction in which something of value (money) is being exchanged for a finished product.”

I certainly can’t download chemistry knowledge into my students’ minds Matrix-style. Nor can I guarantee that if the students do the reading, pay attention in class, take good notes, ask questions, answer questions, study, revise, visit office hours, that they will necessarily do well – although if they do all those things, their chances of doing well are much greater. There is no guaranteed product in exchange for money. Or time. Learning is a funny process, and the “product” not so easy to measure. Yes, there are skills learned and honed in practice, and perhaps ‘thinking’ is a similar muscle to be flexed and exercised.

I’m wary about being considered a consultant. That’s likely due to my bias (healthy in my opinion) against the purported usefulness of management-consultancy and their fads. I have not honestly met many truly knowledgeable management-consultants from storied firms, but perhaps it’s because I’ve not met many to begin with and our orbits typically do not intersect. I should be clear that I’m strongly in favor of consulting with experts, and I would call them consultants, but these folks are typically working directly in their fields of expertise, and have many years of experience. They are in sharp contrast to the coterie of young, fresh, flashy, jargon-speaking, data-toting, stereotypes, that I have met from brand-name companies. There’s usually one old hand in the group, to assuage the client-administrators, but once the “slick presentation” begins (you’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve sat through these), my skepticism returns in full force.

As both a professor and a consultant, Talbert summarizes (in his blog post) six steps in his process of helping out clients. I particularly like #5. “During the workshop, I work actively with the client (group) and make sure everything runs as planned. Which it never does, because people do not know what they truly want when they first talk to me… So, I kiss my plans goodbye and improvise on the spot with the goal of helping them want the things they truly need.” This describes what sometimes happens in class. Perhaps not often enough. Maybe I stick through my vaunted plan-for-the-day a little too closely, and sometimes don’t quite meet the students where they are. They think they know what they want to get out of the class. I sometimes forget that we have different ideas of what an education in chemistry means. I’m thankful to Talbert for the reminder, and I might be a little closer to embracing my role as a consultant-professor.

Improving Reasoning

As discussed in the previous post, Mercier and Sperber in their book The Enigma of Reason, posit that when we produce our own reasons, we are usually biased and lazy. This is not a bad thing per se, and the authors make an evolutionary argument for why this is efficient in the “hypersocial niche” of human beings. On the other hand, we exert quality control when listening to the reasoning of others, especially when they disagree with us. Thus, having an interlocutor is an efficient process for the short, quick, back-and-forth, refining of one’s reasons. (Contrast this with a written treatise where the writer needs to generate a sufficiently strong one-way argument to convince the unknown reader.)

Perhaps that’s why those of us who have been teaching for a long time constantly ask questions of our students. Then based on their answers, we ask follow-up questions. This is how we help our students refine and improve their reasoning ability in our subject area. I remember overhearing (while teaching lab) a student telling another student why she didn’t like asking me questions – it was because I kept asking questions back. Since then, I’ve tried early in the semester to explain why I’m always asking questions and why I think it helps them learn.

With the ongoing pandemic, and the looming possibility of asynchronous, less interactive back-and-forth teaching in the coming semester, I’ve been thinking about how technology might help students to improve their reasoning as they study. In distance learning, students rely more on the textbook (or other source material) to learn. To check if they’ve done the reading, or comprehended some of the basic material, an online self-quiz or assigning online homework problems, helps both instructor and student assess the student’s understanding. Chemistry textbook publishers have extensive and increasingly fancy platforms allowing for this.

But are the students improving their reasoning ability? Getting the answer “correct” in an online quiz or homework problem might not reflect an improvement in reasoning ability. That’s why my exam questions often include an “explain your reasoning” part, and I try to model this in class and give the students practice when we’re together as a group. Even listening to your classmate reasoning something out is good practice, because that’s when you’re more likely to exert the aforementioned quality control.

One thing that the online homework/quiz systems lack (in my limited experience) is to really push the students to generate and evaluate reasons. So I’m outlining a strategy to improve this area for student learning:

(1) Ask a multiple-choice question (MCQ).

(2) Then ask the student to type in a reason for the answer.

(3) Next, provide a menu of answers (based on the student’s MCQ answer) and ask the students to choose which one comes closest to their stated reason.

(4) Finally, ask the student if any of the other reasons seemed better, and if they would like to change their reason, or change their initial answer to the MCQ (thus repeating Steps 2-4).

This could be a lot of work to design. And it goes beyond the standard two-part approach where a student answers the MCQ (Step 1) and then selects a reason from a menu (akin to Step 3 except the student doesn’t initially generate a reason and simply evaluates the “reasons” provided). Since I’d like to improve both reason-generating ability and reason-refining ability, I have proposed Steps 2 and 4. Where should I start? Perhaps identifying some key concepts that students use repeatedly, and not always correctly, when reasoning about chemistry. Electronegativity comes to mind. But perhaps I should start with something more elementary such as ionization energy. I already have some data based on student responses that can be expanded upon, and there are all sorts of interesting things to probe related to trends in the periodic table. I might even find an undergraduate interested in chemical education to work on this as a research project!

The Enigma of Reason

I’ve just finished reading The Enigma of Reason by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber. They posit that reasoning abilities evolved in human beings in concert with widespread use of language and the need for cooperation in social settings, both intensive and extensive. Their interactionist approach is contrasted to the present intellectualist approach – that reason is a “means to improve individual cognition and arrive on one’s own at better beliefs and decisions”. Mercier and Sperber argue that we come up with reasons for “social consumption… an adaptation for the hypersocial niche humans have built for themselves.”

Cognitive psychologists have been fascinated with the seemingly odd reasoning errors that humans make. We should know better (according to the intellectualist view) but again and again, we make the same errors in judgment. One possible explanation is that two systems are at work; a faster intuitive System 1 that uses heuristics, shortcuts, works mainly at the subconscious level; a slower deliberative System 2 does the hard work of conscious thinking through reasons. Mercier and Sperber upend this view with the claim that reasoning functions similarly to other information-gathering inference modules, vision being a prime example. Optical illusions are, in a sense, neighbors to seemingly blatant ‘failures’ in reasoning.

The practical thrust of their argument is two-fold. First, they explain how and why our ‘first instinct’ reasoning is both biased and lazy. Generally, on our own, we come to a conclusion intuitively and then come up with reasons to justify our conclusion. This seems backwards – don’t you want to come up with reasons that then lead you to the conclusion? – but makes good sense of the data from cognitive psychology experiments. I sometimes wonder how and why students come up with the flimsiest explanations when answering my questions even though we’ve covered a topic (in my opinion) extensively and carefully. Mercier and Sperber’s framework makes sense in this context. I’ve even started to notice how, on my own in my own little head, I can dream up all manner of weak reasoning with regard to an action I’m about to take or have already taken. It takes more work for me to challenge my initial intuitions.

This brings us to the second part of the authors’ argument, that while we might be poor at recognizing our own biased and lazy reasoning, we are actually circumspect when we listen to the arguments of others, especially when their conclusions seem to disagree with our own. This provides an opportunity to sharpen our ideas and possibly to counter our own biases and laziness. How do we improve? By arguing. Why are we biased and lazy to begin with? It’s actually more efficient, and in many cases over millennia this has served humankind well. However, the speed in which we have reshaped our environment into our complex interconnected urban life has made things much more difficult – we now call these ‘wicked’ problems. We are caught in a vast technological system, and finding one’s way out of the morass is unclear.

The Enigma of Reason thus provides reasons for why reason can sometimes seem so flawed. It also explains why seemingly rational people can entertain conspiracy theories, and come up with all sorts of reasons to support their views. Groupthink, polarization, the poor efficacy of group brainstorming, failures of predictive power even among experts, have an underlying evolutionary mechanism according to the authors. But their view is not bleak. There are many examples of how interactions, productive arguments, group work, and even one’s ego in not wanting to look like an idiot, can all play positive roles in improving reasoning skills and abilities. This might partially explain why think-pair-share strategies (where you pair up students with different answers), team-based-learning, and related approaches, work under the right circumstances.

As an educator, I found this book challenging in a good food-for-thought way. It certainly strengthens my view (perhaps my bias) that teaching and learning is a relational activity, with back-and-forth questions and answers – arguing, if you will. A key classroom activity is modeling, but also having students practice, how to argue one’s way through solving a problem. The argument might not involve raised voices, but focuses rather on scaffolding a structure for students to think through in problem-solving. How does one get better at this? By providing many examples. You get better at thinking like a chemist by working on more chemistry-related problems using facts, principles, theories, and arguments, you’ve been learning in chemistry class. Mercier and Sperber’s theory also provides an explanation of why the fad of generalized ‘critical thinking’ approaches show poor results; and why transferring critical skills across domains remains challenging.

Reading the book made me wonder if I don’t argue enough with my colleagues, friends, and family. If arguing (in a positive and constructive manner, of course!) is critical in improving one’s reasoning abilities, to guard against lazy and biased self-reasoning, I should be doing it more often – we should be like iron sharpening iron! But there are other factors at play in a complex, social environment. The authors acknowledge these complications, and as social creatures, many of us are intuitively cognizant in these situations, and try not to be blunderbusses. I suppose one quieter way to learn reasoning skills is also to read widely, digesting and arguing for and against the views of different authors. It’s also a reminder for me to pause and be more thoughtful if I’m on the verge of getting into an argument.

500th Post

When I started Potions for Muggles, I was not sure how long I would keep at it. Five-and-a-half years later, I’m writing my five hundredth post. I’ve surprised myself, especially this year, by resuming my average of two blog posts per week. I might have Covid-19 to thank for that. Last year, I thought I would progressively reduce writing blog posts. I had reached my milepost of a hundred blog posts in a single year in 2018, and after that I felt I was running out of steam. Also adjusting for a big move far from home for my sabbatical dominated my headspace for several months.

The lessons I’ve learned from keeping a blog haven’t changed substantially from my reflections six months into the process. I think my writing and editing has improved, possibly with diminishing returns over time. I did re-read the Harry Potter books again, in a more compressed timeframe throughout the month of January while on holiday. However, in recent years I have not thought as much about the connection between science and magic. The blog has mainly focused on teaching, some research, and on things I find interesting in books I’ve read.

While my keyword labels are not necessarily the best way to categorize my posts, I thought it would be interesting to see what I think I wrote about. Posts may have multiple labels; a few have none.

·      I was surprised that book reviews topped at 43%. I do read a lot, maybe 40-50 books per year. 214 of my 500 posts prompted me to write some thoughts related to my reading.

·      Teaching was at 36% and specific things related to my classes 17%. This is not surprising. I think about teaching a lot. Many of my posts that don’t carry the ‘teaching’ label often have a few sentences related to teaching.

·      Research was at 8% and the origin-of-life specifically at 10%.

·      Higher education at 11% and the liberal arts at 6% are significant categories. (One might call this the ‘administration’ category.)

·      Magic still featured in 12% of my posts.

·      Games (board and card) make up slightly over 5%, while future tech is slightly under 5%. These all tend to be science-related.

Because I primarily write for myself, and not an external audience, I haven’t bothered to check which of my posts get lots of clicks, or which categories are of interest to others. The blog functions as a cyborgian appendage – I offload thoughts and ideas to the blog, and when I want a reminder, the search function helps me find what I wanted to recall. Occasionally a conversation reminds me of something relevant, and I send a link to someone else who I think might find a particular post interesting. Blogging is a memory bank and memory aid of sorts.

I don’t have a specific label for chemistry, although I do have one for alchemy. I’m sure the subject of chemistry permeates my posts and gets mentioned all over the place. I’m always thinking about it, I suppose.

Well, I don’t know what the rest of 2020 holds, at least where my blogging is concerned. It’s been an interesting year thus far. I’m happy I made it to Post #500.