A Letter of the Floating World

I owe you an apology.  It's been far too long since I posted a poem.  Mea culpa.  Here we are examining knowledge and I have sorely neglected your need for close reading practice.  Fear not, noble knowers!  Here, via our old friend 3 Quarks Daily, is a powerful, subtle, and complicated verse for your perusal.  Please think and write about the effects of the point of view and voice(s), the allusive assumptions the author makes (research as needed), and of course the impacts of metaphor on you.  Conclude with a statement of meaning (authorial intent) for the poem.  Do this, please, for Monday 6 August and I will do the same from Michigan's Thumb.

Your Green Sounds a Little Flat

This week, please watch and listen as artist Neil Harbisson describes how he listens to color.  In responding (which please do for Friday at local noon), please consider two questions: to what extent can one sensory way of knowing be substituted for another?  Which of your ways of knowing does this lecture employ or trigger, and how and why?

Please Extend an Invitation to Know

As we reach midsummer, share with one another, please, a moment of knowledge from your Extended Essay work and the unexpected way you have connected it to another area of your life.  In order, then: what interesting, challenging, surprising, frustrating instance of intellectual inquiry are you sharing? By what process or path have you grappled with same? How did it resonate elsewhere in your life?  What is the knowledge question that connects these moments?  Also, check this out (sit down first).

The Same But Different

We are all familiar with metaphors--their uses, their forms, their power--and so I wonder if they offer a familiar way to effectively master the Knowledge Question.  Please begin by considering Dr. Wheeler's definition of metaphor, paying particular attention to the quote from Aristotle. Next, please revisit this excellent explanation of how to extract knowledge issues, especially germane given the recent boson news.  Select a metaphor from your surroundings (summer reading? Extended Essay? Anyone?) and consider the ways in which it leads you to extract and transpose your knowledge.  Your post should reflect your careful reflection on all of the above.

Take a Stab at Color

This week, let's keep thinking about perspective in such a way as to reconnect with our neuroscience past, considering the interplay of mind and physics.  Listen, please, to this Radiolab podcast.  Consider the ways you the knower are also you the seer.  What is the relationship between your two roles?  Write about this.  Also, please extract a knowledge issue from the podcast and transpose it to a moment of knowledge in your own life (not an imagined one).  Remember, this does not mean a moment in which you also investigate color: drop the content.