Sudbury River Looking North in Fog.
Morning Mist on Sudbury River, MA.

Scholarship

Definitions

Oxford Languages defines scholarship as “academic study or achievement,” part of which is research, which they define as “the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.”  When describing myself, I prefer the term scholarship because it’s more inclusive and more creative.   My work as a STEM scientist is clearly research with an emphasis on content.  My work as a scholar of environmental humanities is also about content, but with greater attention to how the content is presented.

Detail of Thoreau’s 1846 bathymetry of Walden Pond. Credit 133b Thoreau’s Surveys CFPL. Book frontispiece.

Scientific Research

Science – Field and Lab research, Scientific Societies, External Funding, Analytics. 

I rely heavily on three scientific methods:  

The default method is the default scientific method, the cognitive, stepwise algorithm of observation, generalization, question formation, hypothesis generation, testing, interpreting, communicating, and repeating.  These are the footsteps of science. The main question is: “True or false?”

My favorite, and equally important, method is systems thinking.  The back-and-forth breaking down of wholes into parts via deduction-analysis and the assembly of parts into wholes via induction-synthesis. The main question answered is” “How does it work?”

My third essential method is the thought experiment.  We must imagine what we cannot experience using metaphor and analogy. The main question is “What if?”

UConn Landill
HEAP, not HEEP. The heap of trash here is veiled by the spin of what’s called Hillside Environmental Education Park. In the process, the landfill (upper left), the largest built object on the UConn campus (roughly six times larger than the iconic basketball arena, Gampel Pavilion in lower right) is rendered invisible to the student body. This is a perfect example of how the science (contaminant chemistry) and the humanities (ethics, communication) are always engaged.

Humanities Scholarship 

Humanities – Archival research, Scholarly books, Book Chapters, Book Reviews, Societies. 

The main reason that I have emphasized this in the second half of my career is that humans respond to situations as humans, whose ancient, naturally evolved emotional behaviors trump more recently evolved cognitive thinking. Heart trumps head.  Mythology trumps reality.  Interesting misinformation trumps evidence. If we wish to employ science (evidence-based thinking) in politics, we must work around the instinctive emotional biases of humans, as reflected in the humanities, meaning art, music, and literature.  All scientists are humanists, but not all humanists are scientists.  The intellectual apartheid between these realms needs to be overcome.