Archive for September, 2009

I constantly tell my students that human knowledge is always subject to emendation. That’s the beauty and curse of living in a rationalized, post-Enlightenment age. Our greater understanding of the world has, perhaps paradoxically, left us with fewer reliable facts.

Like most things in life, this existential conundrum is perhaps best explained via a cow. Back in the Middle Ages, long generations before Darwin, the question of how, say, the local milk-cow came to be wasn’t a difficult one to answer. From the village idiot to the aristocrat holding the feudal cards, everyone knew without doubt or hesitation that the cow was created, fully formed in its grass-munching state, by the voice of God. Indeed, they knew that this had occurred only a few thousand years earlier, probably somewhere in the East. In the medieval world, this was fact.

While there are still those among us who are determined that the Judaeo-Christian story of fully formed Creation remains operative fact, it’s no longer the only game in town. It’s probably not even the leading game in town at this point: We now have the theory of evolution, which may not directly address the question of the existence or non-existence of God (a common misconception) but certainly has quite a lot to say about why that cow has hooves and a four-part stomach:

Many people will harp on the word “theory” when it comes to evolution, but I’m afraid they don’t really understand the word: a theory isn’t smaller than facts, it’s bigger than them. A theory attempts to explain facts.

At any rate, for the evolutionist, true “facts” are few and far between. The cow is a fact, of course, but that fully-formed-at-the-moment-of-creation “fact” has gone the way of the dodo. In its place is a long series of propositions about development that are constantly being tweaked as new knowledge comes to light. This is the primary reason, by the way, that evolution remains a “theory”: not because it isn’t operatively true — far from it, the mechanics of evolution is undeniably operative in the world — but because it is not yet fully understood and probably never will be.

And, when it comes down to it, the same is true of any branch of human knowledge. Yesterday we got an announcement from researchers that they’d unlocked another piece in the daunting puzzle of quantum physics. On the same day, water was found on the moon. These are new “facts,” I suppose, but they bring with them new questions and new unknowns. And the same is true — thank goodness — in the humanities, as well. Our knowledge of our own history, for instance, which we like to think of as static given its completed state, is constantly being adjusted as new discoveries come to light. In my mythology class yesterday we talked about many of our unanswered questions when it comes to even something as well known as Classical Greece (like, for instance, the historicity of the Dorian Invasion). I mentioned, again and again, that everything we think we know about the past could be up-ended, at any moment, by some new discovery stumbled upon by someone stumbling through the sticks.

Today, as if on cue, comes word of what appears to be the most significant find of Anglo-Saxon materials since Sutton Hoo: a treasure hoard found not by a professional archaeologist but by a fellow walking around Shropshire with a metal detector. We don’t know yet what will we learn from the over 1300 items that were found, but there’s the chance it could significantly change what we know about medieval England — even if it doesn’t address the milk-cow.

And that certain uncertainty, my friends, is why I love what I do.

I’m teaching mythology for the first time here. It’s a lot of fun, but it is a lot of work. This is especially true because I’ve been making fancy-pants PowerPoint presentations to cover the material in class. I’m still quite new to the software — I know, don’t laugh — but I’m really enjoying the results even if it takes me a long time to get it all put together.

In fact, I’ve grown so used to them in the course that today, when I didn’t have a PowerPoint due to all the grading I had this past weekend, I felt sort of lost.

So I’m spending the evening making slides for Greek Mythology. Yee-haw!

I’d say something about having two stacks of papers on my desk waiting to be graded, but that would be inaccurate. I have an inbox full of two batches of digital documents waiting to be graded.

I’m still not sure how I feel about this whole digital papers, digital grading thing — and I can tell you that the execution of it still leaves much to be desired from a technological end — but I’m giving it my best shot. After all, it does save trees.

For any cadets stumbling around and finding this site, this news is just in:

208: Special Topics (Tolkien) – Livingston

Yep. That’s a class on J.R.R. Tolkien being offered for your attending and learning pleasure this spring, here at The Citadel. And with that 200 number almost everyone can take it.

So tell your friends, kids. Seriously. I want to break triple digits on this one.

I got a little package in the mail on Friday from the Netherlands, which is not something that happens every day.  I did, however, have several theories about what it might be when I finally whipped out my knife to open it up.  Material from one of the overseas contributors to my current book project on the Battle of Brunanburh, perhaps.  Or something from one of the Dutch scholars I worked with for the terrific Middle English Texts Series edition of Everyman and its Dutch original, Enckerlijc. Or maybe something from some of the good folks I met when I lived for a semester at Kasteel Vaeshartelt in Maastricht.

Nope, nope, and nope.  Instead, it turned out to be two copies of the latest volume of The Wellsian, The Journal of the H.G. Wells Society.  My article, “The Tripods of Vulcan and Mars: Homer, Darwin, and the Fighting Machines of H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds,” appears on pages 54-60.

Pretty cool stuff to see, especially since it has been so long since I learned of its acceptance. In the meantime I’d sort of pushed it from my mind, making its appearance in my hands a real treat of a surprise.