Category Archives: Generalist’s Work

Helpful Hints for Skeptics

Posted on May 21, 2017 by Timothy Burke

I suppose I knew in some way that there were people whose primary self-identification was “skeptic”, and even that there were people who saw themselves as part of the “skeptic community”. But it’s been interesting to encounter the kinds of … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Generalist's Work, Oath for Experts | 5 Comments

Home to Roost

Posted on April 17, 2017 by Timothy Burke

Formal argument in the classic style has real limits. Sometimes when we try to rule some sentiment or response in an argument or dialogue as “out of bounds” by classing it as a logical fallacy or as some other form … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Generalist's Work, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics | 12 Comments

Is There a Desert or a Garden Underneath the Kudzu of Nuance?

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Timothy Burke

I like this essay by Kieran Healy a lot, even though I am probably the kind of person who habitually calls for nuance. What this helps me to understand is what I am doing when I make that nearly instinctive … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Generalist's Work, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System | 1 Comment

Playing the Odds

Posted on July 25, 2014 by Timothy Burke

The idea that higher education makes you a better person in some respect has long been its soft underbelly. The proposition makes most current faculty and administrators uncomfortable, especially at the smaller teaching-centered colleges that are prone to invoke tropes … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Defining "Liberal Arts", Generalist's Work, Swarthmore | 10 Comments

Fighting Words

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Timothy Burke

Days pass, and issues go by, and increasingly by the time I’ve thought something through for myself, the online conversation, if that’s the right word for it, has moved on. One exchange that keeps sticking with me is about the … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Generalist's Work | 4 Comments

Frame(d)

Posted on March 14, 2014 by Timothy Burke

High Anxiety In modernity, dread only takes a holiday once in a while. Right now Mr. Dread is hard at work all around the world, and he’s not just sticking to the big geopolitical dramas or some single-issue fear. He’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Generalist's Work, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Politics, Swarthmore | 8 Comments

Teleology and the Fermi Paradox

Posted on July 25, 2013 by Timothy Burke

I sometimes joke to my students that “teleology” is one of those things like “functionalism” that humanist intellectuals now instinctively recoil from or hiss at without even bothering to explain any longer to a witness who is less in-the-know what … Continue reading →

Posted in Defining "Liberal Arts", Generalist's Work, Sheer Raw Geekery | 5 Comments

A Different Diversity

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Timothy Burke

Following on Carl Edgar Blake II’s description of his abilities, let’s go back to the question of whether faculty in higher education ought to have doctorates, whether doctoral study in some form roughly resembling its present structure is the best … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Defining "Liberal Arts", Generalist's Work, Swarthmore | 2 Comments

Particularism as a Big Idea

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Timothy Burke

One of the interesting points about Jared Diamond’s books that has come up recently at Savage Minds is that cultural anthropologists don’t write “big books” much any longer, that the disciplinary vision of cultural and social anthropology is now so … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Books, Generalist's Work, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System | 10 Comments

More on Menand

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Timothy Burke

Almost back to feeling normal, so I thought I’d return to my somewhat fever-delirious notes on the Menand talk last week at Swarthmore and see what I could pull out of them. Menand’s talk, following some of his recent writing, … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Digital Humanities, Generalist's Work, Swarthmore | 2 Comments