{"id":37,"date":"2008-04-10T13:56:03","date_gmt":"2008-04-10T18:56:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/?p=37"},"modified":"2011-01-27T13:35:24","modified_gmt":"2011-01-27T18:35:24","slug":"the-times-they-are-achangin-villanova-included","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/?p=37","title":{"rendered":"The times, they are a’changin (Villanova included)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is excerpted from an email I sent recently:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m officially in the Psychology Department, but sometimes feel like I could be scattered various places among departments.\u00a0 I got into the human senses\u00a0area by taking all the basic science courses Tufts offered, plus some philosophy and engineering.\u00a0 So my area of interest came naturally, because when I talk about vision for example, I\u00a0describe the information transfer\u00a0starting with the physical energy source and how some energy passes through the eye (more physics) and then absorption and transduction from photons to electrochemical activity of the rods and cones (my chemistry) and next the neural transmission and further processing (lots of biology) followed by some traditional psychology (lots of behavioral measures to indicate what information the human has received) and even some introspection regarding the experience (for philosophy and in deference to a past colleague who taught the same entitled course “Perception” in a philosophy department).\u00a0 I don’t know what to do with the year of Geology (it was fun; we got to climb rocks — still do,\u00a0see www.photos.sheldontimes.com\/<\/a> ). The electronics and engineering\u00a0were good for the years when folks still made their own equipment (still have my amateur radio license and now find that I specialize in antique gear).\u00a0 Nowadays the psychology of perception seems relegated mostly to what you can put on the computer screen because of\u00a0its simplicity and ease for doing experiments (I’m actually specialized\u00a0in touch and hearing, which don’t do well there).\u00a0 And right now I’m doing exploratory tickle research with a graduate student — talk about taking on obscure and futureless topics.\u00a0 But it’s interesting.<\/p>\n

I’m in an atypical\u00a0position by today\u2019s standards.\u00a0 By the time I got my Ph.D. (Princeton, age 23), one of the things I had learned (sort of an epiphany) was that I did\u00a0not want to be a clone of my mentors.\u00a0 Very bright people, tops in their field — but for various reasons (another story) not me.\u00a0 My research record is unsurprisingly minor.\u00a0 Villanova back then (1966) was an excellent local college, without dreams of grandeur or national\/international reputation,\u00a0and\u00a0I intentionally\u00a0“downsized” (so to speak) in choosing to come here.\u00a0 The world is always changing, and Villanova now seems intent on copying Harvard in everything (well, that\u2019s still copying).\u00a0 And in many ways that\u2019s understandable in today’s world. My sense is that present-day academia is not the place for anyone interested in\u00a0being a\u00a0Renaissance scholar or polymath or public intellectual (what quaint\u00a0ideas).\u00a0 My neuroscientist\/biochemist post-doc daughter does what I\u00a0didn’t have\u00a0to do — goes to the lab seven days a week, and I believe that she will make significant contributions in her day.\u00a0 But this\u00a0lessens time available for making contributions in other ways. And how much time does that leave for a family life or life in general? I\u00a0hope to retire to an adjunct position before long and want that to be an opportunity to get my life back to\u00a0my own\u00a0set of priorities (Villanova now\u00a0works to rule my life more than should be the case).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is excerpted from an email I sent recently:\u00a0 I’m officially in the Psychology Department, but sometimes feel like I could be scattered various places among departments.\u00a0 I got into the human senses\u00a0area by taking all the basic science courses Tufts offered, plus some philosophy and engineering.\u00a0 So my area of interest came naturally, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":373,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.peacefulways.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}