25 March, 12.30-1.30pm, Group room 2, ground floor of the LRC at Ormskirk. Lunch is provided. All welcome.
Alison Gopnik’s “The philosophical baby”?
Chapter 3 “Escaping Plato’s Cave. How children, scientists and computers discover the truth”
Available from the library catalogue by performing a module code search for REA101.
It was published in 2009 so is quite new. It is about how scientists and philosophers are beginning to appreciate babies. “The last decade has witnessed a revolution in our understanding of infants and young children. Scientists used to believe that babies were irrational, and that their thinking and experience were limited. Recently, they have discovered that babies learn more, create more, care more, and experience more than we could ever have imagined… The new science holds answers to some of the oldest and deepest questions about what it means to be human.”
Proposer: Paula Beer
The academic reading group is for staff and research students who enjoy reading and who would like to share their thoughts with others. It is intended to encourage and support new thinking and writing for publication and research. People from all subjects and faculties are welcome, and nothing more will be expected than the pleasure of debating a text as a group. Last year saw our first series of meetings and it has proved to be especially helpful for becoming familiar with authors and theorists in a supportive group atmosphere.
One text is chosen for each meeting and it will usually be contemporary and relevant in some way; it will also be short, in the form of an excerpt, journal paper, chapter or short story. Hopefully people will be inspired to read further should they find the text useful or interesting. There is no requirement for all texts to be overtly ‘academic’, and some texts chosen for past sessions have been extracts from novels, web pages or graphic novels. Members of the group nominate the texts for future sessions.
Where the texts do not already exist in digital form through the electronic library collection, the LRC have helpfully agreed to digitise copies of the texts for you to download and read, and are usually available from the library catalogue by performing a module code search for REA101. Staff will have to log in with their library number and pin, whilst students log in with their student number and password.
Look forward to seeing you there.
Jeff Adams