Robbins Library Notes

The taste for Zen in the West is in part a healthy reaction of people exasperated with the heritage of four centuries of Cartesianism: the reification of concepts, idolization of the reflexive consciousness, flight from being into verbalism, mathematics, and rationalization.  Descartes made a fetish out of the mirror in which the self finds itself.  Zen shatters it.

– Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, 285.

Comments?  Thoughts?  Is Merton correct?

Good morning, and happy Friday, readers!

Longtime readers know that one of the things that I stress when teaching people how to conduct research is to use search engines intelligently, as I wrote about in a post last year.

Many, if not most people, probably use Google as their default search engine for every search that they do on the Internet.  There’s nothing wrong with doing so.  Google probably suffices for most of the Web searches that one will perform.

However, searchers might want to try more specialized, niche search engines for some searches.  Why?  Well, for one thing, no one search engine covers the entire Internet. For another, when you begin to consider your search question, strategy, and sources, it might be a good idea to consider alternative search engines, which, being more focused, may uncover the information for which you’re looking.

In last week’s installment of “American Libraries Direct,” there was a link to this article, “100 Useful Niche Search Engines You’ve Never Heard Of.”  The author of the article, Laura Milligan, writes:

Though the general Google site is often touted as the number one search engine online, college students sometimes need more specific tools to help them uncover quality information on the Web that they can use for class projects, research papers, and even job and apartment searches. This list features a huge variety of search engines that can be useful to students, including tools that find photos, sound effects, summer internships, health and medical information, reference guides, and a lot more.

I agree — and argue that more than college students will find these engines of potential use.

I’d recommend bookmarking this page and saving it for future use.

Do you know of any other niche search engines that might be useful?

Good afternoon, readers!

As announced last week, the database, Synergy, will no longer be available after tomorrow, 27 June 2008.  All content will be moved over to Wiley Interscience, and will be again available on 1 July 2008. You should be able to access the electronic versions of the relevant journals via HOLLIS then.

Please plan your research accordingly!

Good morning, readers! While browsing through Bookforum.com yesterday, I found the following: Manuel Bremer (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Germany) reviews Timothy Williamson’s book, The Philosophy of Philosophy.

Of the book, Bremer notes:

In fact Williamson argues from a very specific position within current analytic philosophy, and makes use of a couple of claims controversial within analytic philosophy (like theories of direct reference and de re modalities, having a rigid actuality operator, how to understand tacit knowledge and so forth). Williamson often refers to his own work and results (e.g. in the theory of vagueness), and accordingly sometimes (e.g. discussing vagueness or probabilistic reasoning) the discussion seem to be too engaged in setting out one theory on a topic than reflecting on ways to develop philosophical theories. So Philosophy of Philosophy could also be titled One Way to Do Analytic Philosophy. Williamson acknowledges that his book ‘makes no claim to comprehensiveness. … it explores some interrelated issues that strike me as interesting and not well understood’ (8).

Philosophy of Philosophy also makes in some chapters use of the formal devices of analytic philosophy. Although the formalisms are elementary they presuppose some background in modal logic and the theory of counterfactuals (as two formal appendices are provided as well).

The book, therefore, aims neither at the layman or the general philosopher, but is of interest to analytic philosophers who reflect on their way of doing analytic philosophy. It is especially worthwhile for those analytic philosophers who rather disagree with Williamson’s sub-branch of analytic philosophy, as the book invites them to compare their methodological self-understanding to Williamson’s and defend it in the light of his criticisms.

I have not read the book yet, though I am most interested in doing so in the near future.  We do have the book here in Robbins, though it is not yet cataloged.  I expect to have it cataloged within the next six weeks or so, depending on when I get the materials off to the catalogers.

Have any of my readers read this book?  And, if so, what did they think of it?

Good Wednesday morning, readers!  Where shall we go from here?  I’m not quite sure where to go next with my posts.  Would you like me to return to outlining questions and search strategies, in the manner of previous “Questions of the Week?”  Would you like me to review or revisit databases?  Are there questions on philosophical topics that you’d like me to address?  Speak up, and let me know. 

Via Bookforum.com, here are two blog posts to get you thinking this morning:

• Stephen Dubner asks: Who is the Greatest Modern-Day Thinker?
• The Philosopher’s Magazine asks: Has philosophy responded adequately to big events?

What do you think, readers?  Who gets your vote for the greatest modern thinker?  And has philosophy responded adequately to big events? Does philosophy even have to do so?  Feel free to leave your responses in the comment box.

Last year, I wrote a post about the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), along with one about the Philosophy Research Network. These are great places to find current research, papers, and works-in-progress in a variety of fields, including philosophy, and I have found these sites to be very useful.

Readers who are curious about the SSRN might find this article by Noam Cohen from the New York Times about the SSRN to be of interest. Here is the introduction:

FIRST came the Amazon book rankings, and word leaked out that perhaps some vaunted writers spent more time than you would think checking how popular they were, hour by hour. Then newspapers started tracking the most popular articles on their sites and journalists, it was said, spent more time than you would think watching their rankings, hour by hour.

But would you believe that academics could become caught up in such petty, vain competition? Of course, you say. Still, short of hanging out in the stacks at the library and peeking over shoulders, the pursuit of that particular vanity had to wait for the Internet, and the creation of the Social Science Research Network, an increasingly influential site that now offers nearly 150,000 full-text documents for downloading.

Not surprisingly, there are some big questions raised by the SSRN about quality control and the worth of the materials posted therein:

The research network raises the same big questions about what is lost and what is gained by removing the barriers to being heard in the public square. Is music distributed on MySpace, without benefit of a record label’s guiding hand, better or worse? Is journalism helped by the wide reach of bloggers, or hurt as professionalism disappears? Is it good that research that has not been reviewed by peers can be found so easily and looks just the same as gold-star approved work?

Do readers have an opinion on this subject? What do they think of the quality of the materials on the SSRN?
A hat-tip to Bookforum.com for this article.

At right: St. Thomas Aquinas, from the Demidoff Altarpiece by Carlo Crivelli.

Your Moment of Zen:

On the contrary, The Philosopher [Ethic. ii, 7; iv, 8] reckons the lack of mirth to be a vice.

I answer that, In human affairs whatever is against reason is a sin. Now it is against reason for a man to be burdensome to others, by offering no pleasure to others, and by hindering their enjoyment. Wherefore Seneca [Martin of Braga, Formula Vitae Honestae: cap. De Continentia] says (De Quat. Virt., cap. De Continentia): “Let your conduct be guided by wisdom so that no one will think you rude, or despise you as a cad.” Now a man who is without mirth , not only is lacking in playful speech, but is also burdensome to others, since he is deaf to the moderate mirth of others. Consequently they are vicious, and are said to be boorish or rude, as the Philosopher states (Ethic. iv, 8).

St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, Q. 168, a. 4

Good morning, readers!I’ve just received word that Blackwell’s Synergy database will no longer be available after 30 June 2008:

As part of the merger of Blackwell Publishing with John Wiley and Sons, we will combine all Wiley-Blackwell’s online products onto a single online platform.  From the Wiley-Blackwell site:

As a first step, we will be moving all Blackwell Synergy journal content and access rights onto Wiley InterScience as of June 30, 2008, at which point Synergy will cease to be available. As a second step, we will be launching a next-generation online service in 2009 that will include the best features of both Blackwell Synergy and Wiley InterScience and which will introduce innovative new functionality and capabilities.

From the e-mail I received this morning:

As of Monday, June 30th 2008, all Blackwell journal content—including all full-text HTML and PDF versions of articles from current issues, backfiles, and issues published online before print—will be incorporated into Wiley InterScience.

We plan to close Blackwell Synergy at the end of business (Pacific Standard Time) on Friday June 27th and we anticipate that the migration will be completed by Monday June 30th. Over the weekend of June 28th and 29th, there will be a period when both Blackwell Synergy and Wiley InterScience will be unavailable while we transition and re-index data.

We will still have access to all of the journals — the only change is that they will be on a different platform with a different interface.  Once the move has been made, I will review the new platform and write a post about it.

In the interim, please let me know if you have any questions.

Via Bookforum.com:

The John Templeton Foundation asked a number of prominent figures the question, “Does science make belief in God obsolete?” The responses are fascinating, and worth reading in their entirety and variety.

What I find particularly refreshing are the generally nuanced and thoughtful responses that most of the respondents provide. These responses are unlike the screeds, cheap ad hominem attacks, and straw person fallacies that I find are so often hurled by both the religious and the atheist camps at each other when the topic of science comes up for discussion.

Readers are encouraged to peruse each of the essays and to make up their own minds as to how they think the question should be answered.