Saturday, 7 Jul (forgot an evening one)

Harris, Roy. The Language Myth. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981.

Read chapter 1, “Idols of the Market.”

Sunday, 8 Jul

Harris, chap. 2-3, “A Science of Language” and “The Grammarians’ Legacy.”

From chap. 2, “A Science of Language”:

It is part of the romantic amour-propre of science to present itself, wherever possible, as providing long-awaited solutions to problems which mankind has forever been trying to solve without success. Often, in sober fact, just the opposite may be the case. The problem allegedly solved may be one which science itself only recently discovered. Previous ages had not been waiting with bated breath for its solution; for previous ages had been quite unaware of its existence. Sometimes it may even happen that we do not hear mention of a ‘science’ at all, until fortuitous discovery makes available the key to an investigation which no one had ever seriously proposed. Science is, in this respect, a form of intellectual endeavour in which questions may well be preceded by their answers[1].

[1. Both this and Say's law in economics ('Supply creates it own demand') may be regarded as special cases of the more general principle known as Sevareid's law ('The chief cause of problems is solutions').] (38).

Hehe. I think philosophy often falls under this description, too.

From chap. 3, “The Grammarian’s Legacy”:

Near the end of a scathing disembowlment of Chomsky’s supposedly grammatical but nonetheless nonsensical Colourless green ideas sleep furiously we get:

Analogously, someone who is speculatively inclined can, if he so wishes, ask whether, if to utter the words green ideas were to talk nonsense, it would none the less be in conformity with the grammatical rules for English nonsense. But it is difficult to see who decides the grammatical rules for English nonsense, or indeed what point there is in having any. Being able to encode and decode many different pieces of English nonsense is not one of the tests by which we recognise a fluent speaker of English, any more than knowing many possible ways of getting sums wrong is one of the tests by which we recognise a competent mathematician (82).

“… would none the less be in conformity with the grammatical rules for English nonsense.” Harris literally cracks me up. I love this guy! Sometimes (often?) I’m unsure of when he’s actually trying to be funny, but despite the transatlantic gap in humor I find him amazingly funny. Oh, how I wish I could write like this.

Malone, Cheryl Knott, Hermina G. B Anghelescu, and John Mark Tucker, eds. Libraries & Culture: Historical Essays Honoring the Legacy of Donald G. Davis Jr. Washington, D.C: Library of Congress, Center for the Book, 2006. [TOC]

Read all introductory matter and the following essays in the section titled “Library History Education & Research”:

Pawley, Christine. “History in the Library and Information Science Curriculum: Outline of a Debate.” 1-16.

Goedeken, Edward A. “Assessing What We Wrote: A Review of the Libraries & Culture Literature Reviews, 1967-2002.” 29-44.

From the section on “International Perspectives” read:

Cole, John Y. “The Library of Congress Becomes a World Library, 1815-2005.” 163-176.

Monday, 8 Jul

See immediately above; from the section titled “Libraries, Books, & Culture.”

Wiegand, Wayne. “Collecting Contested Titles: The Experience of Five Small Public Libraries in the Rural Midwest, 1893-1956.” 146-162.

Tuesday, 9 Jul

Harris, Roy. The Language Myth. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981.

Read chapter 4, “Form and Meaning.”

Wednesday – Thursday, 10-11 Jul

Harris, Roy. The Language Myth. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981.

Read chapter 5, “Language and Thought.” This was an especially excellent chapter.

Harris so cracks me up:

The other popular line of attack on linguistic relativity is to claim that it makes theoretical mountains out of practical molehills. Curiously, this is a line of attack which seems to appeal to philosophers, even though academic philosophy is a subject which might strike the non-philosopher as a surprisingly vulnerable glass house from which to hurl stones of that kind (146).

Thursday, 12 Jul

Harris, Roy. The Language Myth. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981.

Read chapter 6, “Linguistics Demythologised?.” Finished the book. Another quite good one from Harris. I will have to try and pick these up used somewhere. I can imagine myself spending quite a bit of time with these ideas. I am really wondering about all the implications for our use(s) of language in LIS.

Another favorite paragraph:

Epistemological scepticism is beyond remedy. But it applies across the board. It is as much an indictment of our eyesight, our hearing, our credulity and our scientific methods as it is of our language. If the human condition is such that we can never be sure that anything is quite what it seems to be, then the human race is simply in no position to have a language which is referentially determinate in the sense of guaranteeing our words permanent job-security. A language with job-secure words presupposes omniscience (175).

Friday the 13th of July

Piccinini, Gualtiero and Sam Scott. “Splitting Concepts.” Philosophy of Science 73 (4), October 2006: 390-409.

Machery, Edouard. “How to Split Concepts: A Reply to Piccinini and Scott.” Philosophy of Science 73 (4), October 2006: 410-418.

A reply and another reply. The 1st article is in response to this one: Machery, Edouard. “Concepts Are Not a Natural Kind.” Philosophy of Science 72 (3), July 2005: 444-467. Read 23 March 2007 and re-read 10-11 May 2007. Fairly interesting exchange and, for now, my money is on Machery. I see he has a book forthcoming from Oxford UP, Doing Without Concepts. Looks interesting.

And, yes. PoS has a little problem with their production schedule since I just got this issue in the mail 2 days ago.

Saturday, 14 Jul

Nhat Hanh, Thich. Peace is every step : the path of mindfulness in everyday life. New York N.Y.: Bantam Books, 1991.

Began on this book.