Incitements to the Study of Nature

Here's the link to the digital version of Alexander von Humboldt's Cosmos (1849). This is the same edition as the physical copies we worked with last class in the Rare Book and Manuscript section of Olin Library.

Week 3. Whether Weather [Hw]

I. Assignment

This week your homework assignment is to find, explain, and connect four different quotations. These must be drawn from four different texts, one of which should not be an assigned reading. For this exercise, I ask that you choose a non-academic source for the fourth quotation and treat it as a historical artifact or clue about X. In this case, X will be an original argument about the relationship between the model of climatic causality à la Hippocrates or Montesquieu and current public discussion on the relationship between suicide, weather, nature and the sublime at Cornell.  

To be clear, the goal of this exercise is not to answer the question, 'Do climatic differences explain cultural differences?'. I'm not asking you to tell me if you agree or disagree that culture is best understood as an epiphenomenon of weather, or if you think variations in geography are the ultimate secret to understanding human depression. Instead, what I want you to do is to develop an original argument that ties together the historical formulation of a particular model of causality (in this case, we might agree to call it 'climate determinism') and more recent examples of public thinking on the topic. 

II. Rationale

Part of learning to become an effective academic writer is learning how to make non-obvious connections between different ideas and types of evidence. Behind the curtain of knowledge production, one discovers nothing more than the art of juxtaposing and interpreting connections with the aim of threading some larger point or analytical concept with the cloth of recorded evidence and one's own commentary and departure from the received wisdom on the subject or phenomenon in question. Therefore, in order to select quotations or determine what evidence is significant, you will have to have some inkling of why and to what end you shall be marshaling the quotation as evidence. In this way, finding the right quotation ends up being only half the job; the more important task remains of adequately unpacking and analyzing a quotation in a way that encourages your reader to agree with the non-obvious claim you have proposed.  

In college there is an additional burden of expectation: a thesis argument (and the chain of references through which it is quilted) must be at once concrete (quoted directly rather than paraphrased), original (or what amounts to surprising and amusing), and nuanced (attending to complexity and possible objections). In anthropology, this often takes the form of what is sometimes called 'contrarianism' --a strategy of argumentation that sounds a lot like, 'Everything you know about X is wrong'. 

Anthropological critique, however, should not be confused with naive skepticism, or more pejoratively, and in the context of climate discussions, with so-called "denialism". Thus, to be clear, in this course I will not be asking you to prove whether or not X exists. Our goal will be different, albeit no less ambitious: to deploy evidence in a way that raises questions and locates thought around points of paradox and ambiguity of X that are otherwise shielded from collective speculation. 

III. Additional Readings

To reiterate the instructions; you will need to use quotations from at least three assigned readings (and one from below or elsewhere) in order to assess how the act of suicide and more generally the riddle of student psychology is framed via an appeal to some causal relationship between climate and human culture. 

Some additional sources, among others not named, that you may draw upon include:

- Ginsburg v. City of Ithaca et al (Everyone should at least skim this!)

- News articles about suicide at Cornell (see, among others, 'The Urge to End it All'; 'Trial Against Cornell, Ithaca Over 2010 Suicide Postponed'; 'Do Cornell's Gorges Make Kids Commit Suicide?'; 'One in four students face 'Winter Blues'; 'Another Fatal Plunge Has Cornell Asking Whether Its Gorges Inspire Student Suicides'; 'Cornell Community Reacts To Student Deaths')

- Gannet's definition of Winter (blues); 'Means Restriction Resources' (many interesting links here)

- Student blog entries or discussion board comments (for example, No Sunshine; 'A Few Thoughts on the recent Cornell Suicides')

- Radio shows on the theme (see, 'Cure Winter Blues with Light Therapy')

Week 3. Whether Weather [Rd]

 








9/9

• Hippocrates, 'Airs, Waters, Places'. 
• Montesquieu (1748) Book XIV. Of Laws in Relation to the Nature of the Climate
• Siegel, James. 1981. ‘Academic Work: The View from Cornell. Diacritics, Vol. 11, No. 1: 58-83

9/11

• Ingold, Tim. 2007. Earth, Sky, Wind, and Weather. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 13, Wind, Life, Health: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives (2007), pp. S19-S38

Class will meet to-day in the Library Room# 2B-48

Alexander von in seiner Bibliothek. Chromolithograph copy of watercolor drawing by Eduard Hildebrant, 1856 (Berlin: Storch & Kramer)

Campus Events

It's never too early to start thinking about possible informants for the 'climate witness report' due later in the semester. To encourage you, I have added to the Calendar links to upcoming events on campus related to sustainability and climate change. 

Consider these events as opportunities not only to meet respected climate experts and encounter new ideas, but as a chance to observe and participate in the practice of thinking climate change here at Cornell. 

Tuesday, September 2, 4:00pm to 5:00pm

(Food Science Seminar Series)

Transportation, Emissions, and Supply Chain from Transportation to Air Pollution and Public Health

Presented by Dr. H. Oliver Gao

Stocking Hall, PepsiCo Auditorium (Room 146)

Wed, September 3, 3:30pm – 4:30pm

(EAS Fall Seminars)

The Deglaciation of the Ithaca Area: An outrageous New Model Based on Recent Field Data

Presented by Prof Dan Karig, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Department, Cornell University

Refreshements will be served at 3:00 p.m., in the Snee Hall Atrium

presto climate manifesto

A spectre is haunting Weather, the spectre of Climate Change. All the powers of old Earth have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Exxon and the UN, DiCaprio and Obama, Green Radicals and German wind turbine-makers.

Do yourself a favor and listen to the rest of the Communist Manifesto, here. 

Remember, there's a significant difference between using an academic text as a point of initial inspiration, and pulling "crap" off the internet to pass as your own thoughts. It's the scholar's presumption that the former is good, while the later is evil smelling.

Visualizing Sloterdijk [Chapter 3. Return to Earth]

#1. 

"Beginning with the Benhaim Globe from Nuremburg made in 1492 -- the oldest surviving example of its kind -- and continuing up until NASA's photograms of the earth and pictures taken from the space station Mir, the cosmological process of modernity is characterized by the changes of shape and refinements in the earth's image in its diverse technical media. At no time, however -- not even in the age of space travel -- could the project of visualizing the earth deny its semi-metaphysical quality. Anyone who wished to attempt a portrait of the whole earth following the downfall of heaven stood, knowingly or not, in the tradition of sublime cosmography." (p.21)   

Figure 1. Benhaim Globe, Nuremburg, 1492

Figure 2. Earth from ISS

#2.

"Like all globe-makers and cosmographers since Benhaim, Schoner, Waldseenmuller, Apian and Mercator senior and junior, he [Humboldt] imposes the view of their planet on them from without, refusing to admit that the outer spaces are merely extensions of a regionally confined, herd-like, domestic and socio-uterine imagination." (p.23)

Figure 3. Peter Apian, Cosmographia, 1524

Figure 4. Peter Apian, Cosmographia, 1524

#3.

"This opening up into the infinite heightens the risk of modern localizations. Humans know, albeit in a confused and indirect fashion at first, that they are contained or lost -- which now amounts to virtually the same thing -- somewhere in the boundless. They understand that they can no longer rely on anything except the indifference of the homogenous infinite space. The outside expands, ignoring the postulate of proximity in the humane spheres, as a foreign entity in its own rights; its first and only principle seems to be its lack of interest in humanity. The delusions of mortals that they must seek something outside -- recall the space travel ideologies of the Americans and Russians -- necessarily remain very unstable, shakeable, auto-hypnotic projects against a background of futility. What is certainly true is that the externalized, neutralized and homogenized space is the primal condition of the modern natural sciences. The principle of the primacy of the outside provides the axiom for the human sciences." (p. 23) 

Figure 5. Earth and Sun

Figure 6. Earth and Moon

#4. 

"The natural scientist is also confronted with a concept of the earth with a discreet philosophical shading: it is now the transcendental star that comes into play as the locational condition for all self-reflections. It is the exemplary hybrid in which the empirical is unified with the transcendental -- on the one hand, an ordinary object of ordinary research, and on the other hand, the singular carrier of human intelligences. As the star on which the theory of stars appeared, the earth shines with self-generated phosphorescence. When its strange, knowing inhabitants cast their thoughts into the homogenous emptiness, it is not least to return to their place from far outside." (p.25) 

Figure 2. 'Earthrise', William Anders, 1968

Week 2. Humans of Climate Change [Rd]

Week 2

• Liao, S. Matthew, Anders Sandberg, and Rebecca Roache. "Human engineering and climate change." Ethics, Policy & Environment 15.2 (2012): 206-221.
• Ferguson, Frances. 2014. ‘Climate Change and Us’. Diacritics, Vol. 41, No. 3: 33-37

Suggested Readings:

• Velasquez-Manoff, Moises. 2014. 'Should You Fear the Pizzly Bear?'. The New York Times: August 14, 2014
• Ingold, Tim. 1995. 'People Like Us: The Concept of the Anatomically Modern Human'. Cultural Dynamics 7:187

Week 2. Humans of Climate Change [Hw]

Do you agree that 'human engineering' --what Liao, Sandberg, and Roache define as, "the biomedical modification of humans to make them better at mitigating climate change"(p.207)-- is a strategy that needs to be taken seriously? 

i. Begin your 'Comment' with a concise summary of the authors' general argument and claims in support of human engineering. If you agree, explain why. If you disagree, explain why. Either way, ground your evaluation in specific points of the text that you find especially persuasive, or alternatively, troubling. 

ii. Try, as the authors' suggest, to come up with your own example (or counter-example) to think through. What does such an example add to the discussion?

______________________

POST Homework below as 'comments'

Note: In order to post on the website, you will need to create a profile through Disqus. If you have the time to upload a photo in place of the default avatar, please do. This will make it a lot easier to match names, comments, and faces. 

Homework Directions:(reproduced from syllabus)

Each week’s readings will be guided by an exercise that will be posted on the course website. Each week, you will submit both the completed assignment in the “Comments” section of the online post, and reply to a peer’s comment. Your original posting will be due on Tuesday before class (i.e. before 8:40 AM), and your replies to your peers will be due Thursday at the same time. Homework submissions will thus follow a regular ebb and flow.

Visualizing Sloterdijk [Chapter 2. The Wandering Star]

#1 

"In the Aristotelian-Catholic plan of the spheres, the earth, being most distant from the encompassing firmament, had the humblest status. Its placement at the centre of the cosmos thus entailed, as paradoxical as it may sound, a relegation to the lower extreme of the cosmic hierarchy." (p.16)

#2

"The ancients were so impressed by the contrast between form and mortality that they had to separate off a deathless world on high from the death-affect depths." (p.17)

#3

 "That is why in ancient times, to think always meant to think from the position of the sky, as if one could get away from earth with the aid of logic. In the old days, a thinker was someone who transcended and looked down --as Dante illustrated on his ascent to paradise." (p.17)

#4

"As far as the history of aesthetics is concerned, the modern experience of art is tied to the attempt to open the eye, numbed for two long by geometrical simplifications, to the perceptual charms of the irregular." (p.20)

CLIMATE MANIFESTO

Essay #1

Due: September 5, 2014

(3 pages)

One of the central aims of this course is to help you develop the ability to produce writing that is clear, well organized, and grammatically sound. At the most basic level, this means learning how to compose coherent sentences and paragraphs, and to deploy other mechanical elements of writing with confidence and relevant stylistic conventions. That said, without an original argument, no amount of handsome sentences will save you.

So, say goodbye to the five-paragraph essay. Time is short, and the only way forward is a ‘salto mortale’ —a flying leap into the abyss—into the world of writing beyond summary. In your first assignment, this leap will take the shape of a brief manifesto on the topic of global warming.

What is a manifesto?

A manifesto is a declaration of a particular policy, theory, or cause. A manifesto does more than just declare, it also offers an explanation and justification of its terms, claims, and provocations.

What makes a successful manifesto?

Keep it brief. The too-long manifesto is a genuinely frightening textual object (see, here). And while all great manifestos are punchy and brief, a successful manifesto will look very different depending on what’s being declared and the person declaring it.

For example, you might choose to include:

1. A list of numbered tenets or provocations
2. A story or parable
3. A diagram or timeline

Or, you might be convinced that numbers and lists, as far as meaningful climate action is concerned, are just the sort of obstacle we must learn to give up. For example, you might insist that current climate politics are already too focused on numerical outcomes (e.g. "We have a 50% chance of achieving the goal of 2° degrees additional warming by 2030"). Instead of occult divination by numbers, you might call for an approach centered on qualitative changes in how we think and act. This could be the abolishment of ‘garbage’, or the transformation of existing fossil fuel reserves into ‘stranded assets,’ or...

Lastly, a word about tone and voice. Despite their many shapes and sizes, all manifestos are written to challenge and provoke. Your manifesto should reflect this long argumentative tradition. This might call for spare and somber language, or an inner dialogue of paranoid questioning and answering. Or if you think there’s simply nothing left to be done --that climate change is fait accompli on this 'gloomy' orb-- perhaps, then a voice of parodied bravado will be better suited to the task. 

Whatever you decide, declare it boldly.  

How to download readings

If you havent already figured it out, you will need to use your Cornell cmail (NetID) credentials to access the Sloterdijk chapters.  

Week 1. The Objects of Analysis [Rd]

Week 1

• Miller, Sarah. 'Prestige TV in the time of ClimateChange'. The New Yorker: June 25,2014 

• “weird, v.” Oxford English Dictionary. Online Edition.*

• Sloterdijk, Peter. 2013. ‘The Wandering Star’, ‘Return to Earth’, 'Globe Time, World Picture Time'. In the World Interior of Capital. Polity Press:  pp. 15-32

*To access the Oxford English Dictionary, go to the Cornell Library website and type 'OED' into the main search box and follow the link. The OED is the place for the word on words. And their slogan does't mince them: "The definitive record of the English language". What is so unique about the OED is that each entry includes information about the terms etymological origins, published quotations of its earliest usage, subsequent changes in its usage, timelines of usage frequency, and other fascinating details. If you need to cite a definition in a paper, the OED is your best bet. 

Nomenclature

All writing assignments will either be assigned verbally in class or posted here on the course website. To make your life easier I have created a simple nomenclature of short-hand signs.

If you see,

...the attached post will include links to required readings







If you see,

...the the attached post will explain an upcoming homework assignment. It will also be the place where you post completed homework and comment on the work of your peers.





If you see,

...the attached post will explain an upcoming writing assignment.