Promoting Rationality: The Montana Tech Regional Science Fair

Like any science & technology studies scholar, I can be very critical of positivism--defined as blind faith in the Truth and progress of science. Still, I support science as a form of rationality that gives us some understanding about the nature of nature. Without that sort of knowledge, it's difficult to set policy regarding issues such as global warming. Just ask the Bush administration, whose anti-science, conservative, radical-right wing dogmatism has been such a disaster for the environment.

As a way of promoting rationality, I act as "Head Judge" for the senior (9th through 12th grade) science fair hosted each year by the Technical Outreach program at Montana Tech.

This year, the senior fair hosted 68 students from 9 high schools. Senior fair students won 22 medals and 68 special awards. Grand award winners receive an all expense paid trip to compete at the International Science Fair in Atlanta, Georgia.

It takes a village of volunteers. Here is some of the staff at the check-in table:

And here are some students set up and ready to go with their projects:


In the first round, individual judges interview each student. Judges then discuss their rankings and award White, Red, and Blue Ribbons. Everyone receives a T-shirt:

The Blue Ribbon winners go on to second round, where teams of judges interview each student, discuss their rankings, and award Bronze, Silver, and Gold Medals. Here's a team of second round judges at work:

In the third and final round, a team of judges deliberates which students receive the top awards. It's a difficult process, trying to decide the relative quality of very diverse projects in fields such as Computer Science, Biochemistry, Engineering, and Human Behavior. Arguments for and against various projects can be animated and even heated. Here are the judges hard at work in those final moments:

And the Grand Award winners are:
- Amanda Lockwood from Hellgate High School for her project, Molecular Analysis of Heme Uptake Promoter Region of Bartonella Quintana;
- Morielle Stroethoff from Hellgate High School for her project, The Application of the Ranque-Hilsch Vortex Tube in the Separation of Fluids; and
- The team from Hellgate High School of Matt Parker and Max Egenhoff for their project, A GIS Analyses of Land Use in Comparison to the Quantity of Baling Twine in Osprey Nests

Congratulations to the students, teachers, parents, and mentors that make science fair happen. In a nation where many citizens believe the world was created just a few thousand years ago and that global warming is a leftist conspiracy, we need more people who base their beliefs on reason instead of faith.

Montana's Cheshire Cat: The Anaconda Company

What has become of the era when college presidents were scholars that set a high bar for their faculty? How did we get to the point where college presidents are far more likely to -- at best -- be glad handing fundraisers or -- at worst -- meddlesome micro-managers?

As president-scholars, I'm thinking of Frank H. T. Rhodes, president of Cornell Univeristy from 1977 to 1995. While president, he authored the classic "Golden Guide" series book Geology (1972), edited another big seller Language of the Earth (1981), and technical monographs such as Conodent Paleozoology (1973). Hell, as a grad candidate at Cornell I thought "Dusty" (?) was a historian, given that he would occasionally wander the hallways, visit my Doktorvater L. Pearce Williams, and engage in an intelligent conversation about European history or the history of science. Here's a nice pic of Rhodes in China:

And I'm thinking about Michael P. Malone, president of Montana State University from 1991 until his untimely death in 1999. While president, he completed the standard work on Montana history, Montana: A History of Two Centuries (1991) and several new works such as Montana: A Contemporary Profile (1996) and the biography James J. Hill: Empire Builder of the Northwest (1997). Here's a Malone book near and dear to my heart:

For years, I have been puzzled about the origins of a historical metaphor comparing the Anaconda Copper Mining Company with the Cheshire Cat. The ACM's influence on Montana lingered long after the company disappeared. I thought this metaphor came from University of Montana-Missoula historian Joseph Kinsey Howard or his successor K. Ross Toole. And maybe Howard or Toole did originate the phrase. Here's the Cheshire Cat with Alice in an illustration from Carroll (1865):

Nonetheless, I recently found it used in a brief historical commentary, "The Close of the Copper Century" (1985) by Malone. Paradoxically enough, Malone argues in this essay that we should not regard Montana history as unique or a case of exceptionalism. Instead, Montana (and its black heart, Butte) was typical of the Amerian era of robber barons, western states as economic colonies of capitalism, and rapacious anti-environment mining. Likewise, Montana (and the Anaconda Company) fell victim to the rise of third-world nations such as Chile, thanks to cheap labor and no environmental protections, in exporting raw materials to the United States.

In this sense, I suppose, the Cheshire Cat is a paradigmatic cat, a cat-signifier that can represent the ACM as well as Standard Oil, United States Steel, or General Motors.

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Images

Frank H. T. Rhodes at a graduation ceremony in mainland China with the country's vice minister of education Wu Qidi, www.asu.edu/ .

Malone, Battle for Butte (1981), www.his.state.mt.us/ .

Cheshire Cat and Alice, from the original John Tenniel illustration in Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) , thewhiterabbit.net .

Dominant Culture as a Guide to Philosophy?

I spent a day in Montana's capital city of Helena, working with other philosophy faculty to solve the "transferability problem" faced by students as they move from one college to another. The group consisted of me, three other old white guys (I think I was the youngest, though!), two younger women (one a Montana native, that is, Blackfoot), and a younger Filipino-American guy.

It's a noble effort. Bring together philosophy profs from the various units of the Montana University System. They then develop a list of universal course outcomes and come up with standard course names & numbers. The idea is to help students that transfer from one college to another in their quest for an undergraduate degree. General education requirements always contain some sort of philosophy courses such as "Introduction to Philosophy" and "Introduction to Ethics." Allegedly, when students transfer schools, they frequently lose credit for courses they have already completed, and then have to take (and pay for) additional courses that are substantially the same as what they've already taken...

It's a a noble effort, yes. Something like the search for a universal or world language.

Remember Esperanto? You know, the universal language that was to foster international peace & understanding. Esperanto was truly universal--that is, if your universe consisted of western culture. And if your ideal for a "real" language was based on experience with French, German, Polish, and Russian. Never mind those non-western languages. Forget Chinese. Forget Arabic. Siksika'? Forget it.

And that is, in part, how the first session of the Montana Philosopher Kings transpired. "Philosopher King?" As in Plato's Republic? That's the problem: dominant culture provides us a ready answer to what is "universal:" white, male, and western.

Suprisingly, we made remarkable progress in developing common course outcomes for "Introduction to Ethics."

For some reason, however, we tumbled like the Tower of Babel when it came to "Introduction to Philosophy."

Turns out "Introduction to Philosophy" means (to some, anyway) "Introduction to Western Philosophy." If the course is not about the specific philosophical problems and if it does not provide some historical overview of Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, etc. then it does not count as an Intro Philosophy course. By this measure, an introductory course called "Blackfeet Philosophy" certainly does not qualify.

This, it seems to me, is very wrong. Philosophy, even in its most narrow western definition as the Greek "love of wisdom" seems to be a universal phenomenon among human cultures.

The epistemological, ontological, and other problems raised by western philosophy are certainly interesting. But does western philosophy have a lock on these things? I cannot answer that question in a definitive, comprehensive way, since my knowledge of non-western philosophy is very limited. Sure, I have your educated person's token knowledge of Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and so forth. But from what I do know, any of these approaches would raise all the important questions and provide a basis for all the fruitful discussion that I believe is central to an "Introduction to Philosophy" course.

I recall my own Introduction to Philosophy course with the amazing Professor Martha Montgomery at Drexel University. Plato's Socratic Dialogues was our text. Socrates lived through that class, and so far as we students were concerned, Martha had sat with the old man on his deathbed when he drank the hemlock. There was little mention of Descartes or Hume or Quine, or of traditional names for philosophical "problems" such as Moore's disbelief, a priori knowledge, or mind-body dualism. Guided by Martha's talent for elenchus, however, the course left its mark on me and was instrumental in shifting my career away from engineering.

More recently, Thomas Nagel has taken a similar approach with his little book, What Does It All Mean?" Like Martha Montgomery, Nagel leads us through the process of philosophical inquiry without making it a lesson in the history of western philosophy or a laundry list of technical terms.

As a course fulfilling the general education requirement for "Introduction to Philosophy," I believe that "Blackfeet Philosophy" would serve perfectly well.

My College & Late Onset Realism

A midwinter fable:

I blame it all on Martha Montgomery, my beautiful, charismatic, and brilliant philosophy professor. In a sophomore-level ethics course, she turned me on to Immanuel Kant's Metaphysics of Morals. From there I turned to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason--first with the old English translation by Mueller, then on to N.K Smith's translation and commentary, and finally (as a PhD candidate) auf Deutsch. It was a dirty, rotten, Enlightenment trick: the idea that we might shape a new world of reality based on the transcendental application of pure concepts.

So here I am, a broken post-Kantian in a decidely un-Kantian world. Hell, most allegedly college educated people don't even know who the fuck Kant was; let alone do they care what Kant said, or what the hopes of the Enlightenment were. At least I've finally admitted my Don Quixotean tilting at windmills, and resolved to stop it. My wife calls it "late onset realism."

The roots of this conversion lie in my 17 years as a professor with the little college known as My College. When I hired on, I fell in with a like-minded (i.e. delusional) bunch of faculty that actually thought we could change our college for the better. By "change for the better," I don't mean realistic notions such as increasing enrollment or making it easier for students to take a degree.

Though we were a dedicated bunch, we had very limited and narrow experience. Dave had been a liuetenant in the jungles of Vietnam, taken a couple of psychology degrees from diverse Californian universities, and worked as a statistician for the Forest Service. Bill had ruined himself with unrealistic expectations through his time at various high-powered colleges in California, Hawaii, and Colorado. In my case, there had been engineering & humanities (that should have tipped everyone off!) at Drexel, a MS in Science, Technology & Values (huh?) with the Human Dimensions Center (oh, pulleeeze!) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, five years running a lab with a million dollar budget at an oil refinery (well, at least that was promising), and then a PhD in the History & Philosophy of Science & Technology (yikes! who hired this guy?) at Cornell.

In retrospect, I should have been much happier (and successful, which after all equals happiness, right?) had I started teaching with the MS and then, if necessary, picked up a Dr.Ed. Ah, but we can't go back, can we?

Well, anyway, back to the story: there we were at My College--a bunch of individuals who thought they were just too smart, a bunch of individuals with a very narrow view of the world, a bunch of individuals with unrealistic expectations.

I should have listened when my Dean and Department Head, dear dear Tommy, told me: "No, you really don't need to be doing any research and publishing. In fact, I think it will harm your teaching. You can't serve two masters." Tommy was a homeboy. He grew up on the mean streets of Butte at a time when Butte really was a tough town. Tommy had played sports, taught K-12, and went on to become a college professor, dean, and department head. He never published anything, either. Smart guy. Happy guy.

As the expression goes, "No man is a prophet in his own land." That is true. But lots of non-prophets do just fine. If Thomas Wolfe hadn't got all caught up in all that fancy-schmancy literature and tried to be a prophet, he could have went home again and done just fine. Disney had it right, folks: Hakuna Matata,--don't worry, be happy... Remember, George Bush (The First) using the song in his 1988 campaign? Happy guy. Kindler, gentler. It's a vision thing. Puppies. A scintillating kind of fellow. A man who steps out of the shower to take a pee. Best president we ever had.

Well, anyway, back to the story: there we were, and just because we wanted to change things and make things better and all that crap we started a new program--an MS in Technical Communication. The idea had been kicked around for years, but the old guard in the old Humanities & Social Sciences Department would have none of it. The college president didn't like the idea either--it would be just another program that might accelerate the mission drift of the insitution away from its identify as The School of Mines. Foolishly, we sought allies at the mother ship--the University of Their College down the river at Missoula. Oh yeah, we won a lot of friends with that move. Nothing like going over your colleagues and your boss's head to get what you want. Won the battle. Lost the war.

And then came the creation of a new undergraduate program in Technical Communication, along with the formation of a new department as an act of seccession. Oh boy. More friends won. As a department born of a long agonistic process, we not only made enemies: we also inscribed our identity. Yes, we were the progressives, embodying metamorphosis, leading My College to a new, bright future. Maybe not. Maybe we were mere changelings, caught up in some self delusion of "progress" and "enlightenment."

Agonistic identity. It has not worked, and it has made us unhappy. It is not fun to be perceived as "negative" by your colleagues and by management. Never mind that in this Age of DisEnlightenment no one distinguishes between "critical" (oh, my dear Kant) and "negative." Yes, perception is reality. It's time to shed that identity, and to embrace something happier, something more realistic. Pretty simple: shut up and be a team-player; otherwise, you're negative.

When I first hired on at My College, I thought it remarkable that so many department heads and other management-types were homeboys. And when I think of the three most recently selected department heads (that I know of), they too are homies. There is good reason for this, primarily because it works. People who are locally embedded, share cultural markers, and "speak the same language" can network together effectively. In the local culture, Montana Tech is IT. There need be no silly comparisons with how things are done at other colleges. That which is foreign makes no sense, is not possible, has no intelligenge--like the bar-bar sounds of Persian language to the classic Greek ear. WE are the world. Whatever happens "away" is irrelevant. Autopoiesis.

Because I did not take any of my degrees at My College, I cannot really be native. But I have been here long enough as a sort of cultural anthropologist to figure things out. Here's a simple example: I cross country ski. But cross country skiing is not a Butte thing. As I traverse the trails of The Moulton, I meet Paul from Vermont, the Stierles from California, the guy from Austria, the Stickneys from Missoula, the Smiths from Texas, Rossi from California/Oregon, sundry young folks from Bozeman or Helena... You get the picture. I can recall meeting only one Butte native on the ski trails--and he has largely given up the sport. Cross country skiing, though it lends itself marvelously to the geography of the place, marks you as someone from "away." To the Butte ear, it is like the bar-bar nonsense to the Greek ear. Best you don't talk about it too much.

Well, when in Rome... Or Athens... Or Butte... Those who are from "away" can work at My College, but generally it is very difficult to become truly part of the institution in a way that allows you to change it. Unlike many other colleges where one rarely meets a homie, at My College it is a general rule. That is the reality. A small group of agonistic faculty is not going to change that.

With a new Vice Chancellor and, soon (according to the rumor mill--which at My College is an authoritative source), a new Chancellor, agonistic faculty who base their identify on how things are done elsewhere and who expect My College to conform to their model should wise up. There is a new slate, and a new opportunity. Embrace the force. Go with the flow. Don't worry, be happy...