Links
In science studies, the number of citations made to an article is often used as a measure of the article's scholarly impact. It is sometimes even used as a proxy for the article's quality. Citation counts give social scientists a quantifiable handle on ineffable factors. Sometimes, the same measures are used by administrators to assess the productivity of scholars and departments - again because it gives an objective procedure for assessing such things.
As far as I know, nobody uses such measures to gauge the quality of philosophical work.** It is a good thing, too. Citation patterns vary widely across the field, with some specialties cluttering articles with clouds of citations and others providing a few exemplary citations. There is little difference in substance between a footnote that cites 20 articles without comment and one that cites a recent survey article or anthology.
Considering my two most cited papers, neither of them are straight-up philosophy: The first was only a conference presentation. Anyone who has read it found it on the internet - either on my website or the SUNY digital archive. It has been cited mostly by people thinking about IT issues. The second was published in Social Studies of Science, an interdisciplinary journal.
Suppose these two examples are typical and imagine what would follow if citation counts were used as a measure of scholarly productivity for philosophers. Insofar as scholars in other disciplines cite more, one would want to write papers that pique the interest of those guys. One would want to publish outside the mainstay philosophy journals. In short, one would do more interdisciplinary work.
I do not know whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing. In the long run, though, philosophers would probably just start citing each other more in uninformative, cloud-of-reference footnotes.
* Admittedly, Google Scholar's database is somewhat quirky. It has the virtue of being readily available.
** Some time ago, I discussed an attempt to measure the impact of philosophy journals.
[ 1 comment ] ( 6657 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink
I uploaded the first new version of forall x in over a year. There are plenty of corrections, but no substantive changes. For uninteresting reasons, this new version is 1.27 - three increments later than the previous version 1.24.
[ add comment ] ( 5225 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink
I wrote forall x primarily for use in my own logic course, to fit my syllabus in a way that was affordable for students. I made it available under a Creative Commons license primarily in hopes that other instructors might adopt it.
I get occasional e-mails from people who are using forall x to teach themselves logic, and that's cool too. Since it's designed to be accompany lectures and office hours, it's not perfect for self-directed study - but people say they find it useful.
Dave Morris at the University of Lethbridge was one of the first people to adopt it up as a course text. He was teaching abstract math, rather than philosophical logic, so it wasn't a perfect fit. Later, the CC license allowed Morris to use it as a starting point in writing his own textbook. He and his wife have written an abstract mathematics textbook called Proofs and Concepts which incorporates a lot of material from my book. They acknowledge this and provide a full citation in the front matter of their book.
This is not something that I had really thought through when I released forall x, but it is one of the great features of CC licenses. Once I have made something available, people find uses for it that I hadn't anticipated.
[ add comment ] ( 5649 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink
I was at Cornell last weekend for the Berkeley Bonanza, organized by Andrew Chignell and Melissa Frankel. I have worked on Reid and taught Berkeley, but I was surprised at the extent to which I had things to say about Berkeley once I was in a room full of Berkeley scholars.
I was invited to comment on a paper by Alex Klein addressing the concept of empiricism, the relation between psychology and philosophy, and Berkeley's account of abstract ideas. I accepted knowing that I would at least have things to say about the first two of these. In preparing my comments, however, I had as much to say about how we should read Berkeley.
(The above picture is a composite I made from two photos that I took with the cheap camera in my cellphone. There was, in the actual room, a door in the middle of the far wall. It wasn't in either photograph, so it doesn't appear.)
[ 1 comment ] ( 4220 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink
This is the third part of William Leue's history of the UAlbany Philosophy Department. For context, see part I and part II.
Leue mentions offhand that the philosopher of science John Winnie got his undergrad degree from UAlbany. For some reason, I like this bit of trivia.
In this installment, Leue provides a poem from Old Bill - a pseudonymous poet who wrote in an underground student newspaper. The poem describes UAlbany's move from its original downtown campus to the then-new uptown campus as Cinderella's change from drudge to belle of the ball. Leue had already used the metaphor when he suggested that we might, in thinking about the history of the department, come across "shreds of pumpkin" (in part I).
Leue includes further poems by Old Bill in later installments. Although it took me several readings to catch on, it is obvious that Old Bill is Leue himself. He was William, after all, and an older contributor than the students who (one presumes) were running the paper.
This installment is from Phib v 1 (1972-1973), n 14, pp 58-60.
Read More...
[ add comment ] ( 7640 views ) | [ 0 trackbacks ] | permalink
<<First <Back | 51 | 52 | 53 | 54 | 55 | 56 | 57 | 58 | 59 | 60 | Next> Last>>