A blog, of sorts, intended as a place to experiment, struggle, question, and play with whatever research I am currently working on. The themes will thus change over time as my projects change, and the entries may be quotations that strike my fancy, attempts to puzzle through hairy problems, notes on sources, experiments, musings, dead ends, odd angles of looking at things. It is a voice to my frustrations, discoveries, curiosities, and confusions. It is thinking out loud. ...More 
context, history, learning, methodology, writing —
26 Mar 2009
I've just started digging into Inventing Temperature by Hasok Chang. I previously read this after my last visit to U Chicago a couple years ago, but I'm rereading it. What a fucking badass book. I love this book. Did I mention I love this book?
Putting aside the actual arguments presented in the book (which are also badass), I have to jot down some notes on the methodology and presentation. Chang starts out with historical story time about the intellectual battles and scientific difficulties involved in even figuring out how to calculate the temperature of something in the first place. What does 98° mean, and why is it 98° and not 52°? What does 98° mean in comparison to 12°? Once the story's dispatched he moves on to analysis.
And who gives a shit about the story behind it? Ah, now, this is why I love this stuff. It reminds me of Errol Morris' 'Which Came First' article on the photograph of the canonballs. I'll probably never forget this article as long as I live. I don't give a shit about canonballs. I don't give a shit about the Crimean War. I do sort of give a shit on the implications of photographers tarting up their photos for entertainment's sake. And yet, in spite of my overall disinterest about his subject, I will not actually ever forget the article because it was a damn good story. It was exciting. It made sense. And, most of all, it gave everything he was discussing a context that I could latch onto and, thus, remember. It matched with things I know from my own life, created a picture, fell into place. Whistles whistled and wheels turned and parts clicked.
And I'll be damned if I can ever find academic writing that does this. Why, Lord? Why? Civilizations have been sharing stories since the dawn of time. Some civilizations have even thrived and grown while seeing fit to favor storytelling for sense-making over traditional Western logic, and, goddammit, it's served them just fine. People relate to people, to things they recognize from their own lives, things that move them. And behind all of those reactions there are stories. So what possible sense could it make to throw that out the door completely? It works fer cryin' out loud. Chang's book works because he gives a context for his analysis. He describes what happened in a memorable way that readers can latch on to, and then when he moves to his analysis, regardless of whether or not you agree with it, you can appreciate what he's talking about and why. He creates context, in other words, so that all the readers can come in on the same page and, god forbid, draw their own conclusions and make their own evaluation of the subject.
Ach, jesus. I want to say that again, because it is filling my mouth with joy to turn those words over...sabroso. Storytelling—historical context, for the academically minded—lets readers draw their own conclusions. Given that, it has the potential to undermine one's own ability to hammer home a point, but what a fucking fantastic gift to those with whom you are conversing. What honor and respect to give them insight into how you drew your own conclusions and to give them that same opportunity.
Comments (2)
books, design, internet, reading, writing —
19 Jun 2008
I'm absolutely fascinated by the structure of older books. Books written before typewriters and computers. I'm looking at my copy of Democracy in America right now, for instance. The table of contents for Chapter 15 looks like this:
254 _ Unlimited Power of the Majority in the United States, and Its Consequences
257 _ How the omnipotence of the majority increases, in America, the instability of legislation and administration inherent in democracy
258 _ Tyranny of the majority
262 _ Effects of the omnipotence of the majority upon the arbitrary authority of American public officers
263 _ Power exercised by the majority in America upon opinion
265 _ Effects of the tyranny of the majority upon the national character of the Americans. - The courtier spirit in the United States
268 _ The greatest dangers of the American republics proceed from the omnipotence of the majority
The amount of information contained in each headline here is boggling to me, used, as I am, to terse and non-helpful subsections (if they exist at all) in modern book-length works. In essence, the table of contents here is what we now consider an outline - something to be done in prewriting stages but never actually shown to the reader in the completed work. And yet as shown here it makes the structure of the document, its theses and points and major themes, immediately obvious to the reader. As a designer...as a reader...as an impatient bitch...I fucking love this with every fiber of my tiny being.
It also breaks the text up into tiny, digestible chunks (notice how none of these subsections is more than a few pages at most...some not even a full page) - if I turn to any of these pages in the book, each subsection actually begins with the headline given above and is set so as to obviously indicate the start of a new section. And this makes me think of a recent discussion on the AoIR listserv in which several participants cited an Atlantic Monthly article lamenting the death of reading (yes, yet another of those goddamned 'reading is dead' articles). The gist of the article this time was that the Internet has changed reading for the worse - instead of digging into a long, windy, excessive book with loving OCD, the author now finds himself impatient with verbose crap and just wants to get to the heart of things already.*
Now - assuming for a moment that people are, in fact, expressing more impatience with what they read - could it not be because what people read is being more poorly written? Not that people are becoming more impatient or changing "how" they read? I look at the outline form used above, and it seems to me that it actually makes reading longer works of nonfiction seem significantly speedier. The design of the work means that you are getting slapped upside the head with the point. There's no hunting, wondering, head scratching, or going back to re-read. It's written linearly (something rare in modern works), the main points are immediately obvious and accessible (again - rare in modern works), and it's broken into smaller chunks that are more easily digestible.
In other words....older books are an awful lot like what is supposedly so terrible about reading on the web.
* Note: I adore reading and yet I have never enjoyed reading long winded bitches who fail to get to the point. It's one thing to read a novel that circumnavigates the globe ten times, but I have never, ever had the patience to read a work of nonfiction that does that. Has this author actually enjoyed reading long nonfiction in the past? Or are they confusing reading novels for pleasure with reading reference for pleasure? Seriously. I've just gotta ask. Did this dude really enjoy that once upon a time when he walked uphill to school in the snow both ways? 'Cause that would be really....'interesting.'
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