Lecture Notes and Questions
Introduction and Orientation
Getting acquainted. We introduce ourselves, establish some benchmarks, provide a schematic overview of the territory to be explored.
Who are we?
Where do we come from?
Where are we heading?
What do you know?
How do you know it?
How do you feel?
Why study affect?
What are the affective aspects of human systems?
Who knows?
Who is to say?
On what grounds?
Says who?
What are the available approaches to understanding?
After a short break, during which people not (yet) ready, willing and able to commit themselves to participating in 9.68 as "serious students" will be encouraged to leave, we will hopefully be left with at least a few people remaining. To them, the instructors pledge a good faith effort to do what we can to make 9.68/02 into the best possible learning experience for everyone concerned. Toward that end, we next randomly organize the class into a number of study groups and continue our line of inquiry by defining the "systems approach" to be taken and by describing some related evolutionary, experiential, neuropsychological, psychodynamic, literary, dramaturgical and sociological approaches to the subject historically associated with the names (among others) of Hippocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Charles Darwin, William James, Walter B. Cannon and Sigmund Freud.
MFA Field-Trip Follow-up
Artistic qualities in cross-cultural context: This class meeting will focus on our search for quality at the MFA.
Based on the MFA reaction forms handed in at the end of the fieldtrip, we will prepare a series of slides to be shown and discussed in class. What will we be able to learn about "quality" by looking together at images of the objects that you singled out for attention during the three hours, more or less, spent exploring the MFA and its contents? What is your position on the question of where beauty "resides"? Is it localizable? If so, where? In "things of beauty?" In "beholders' eyes? "Does your experience admit of any alternative formulation?
"What is Quality in Education?
Particularly in its latter parts, "ZAAMM... " has rather a lot to say about this question.
How is the question relevant to our inquiry into values? Presumably everyone here has had his/her own unique educational experiences. At the same time everyone here can equipotentially legitimately lay claim to comparably trustworthy first hand experience as an MIT undergraduate student. Taking the proverbial "step back," we will endeavor to bring into focus some of the key cognitive affective and expressive characteristics of an educational community with which we are all more or less familiar and thus conceptually and materially in a position to "unpack." For example, is it possible for you -- given both your own diversity and commonalities of backgrounds including the (limited) commonality of your experiences as so many different MIT undergraduate students enable you to come up with at least a few cogent consensually valid observations regarding, say, the "MIT value system" or "the beliefs, values and practices that are betokened by the Institute's motto: "Mens et Manus"? In class, we will make some time available to discuss "quality" as it relates to such concepts as "academic and professional training" (e.g. in courses of study in Science, Technology, Engineering, Architecture (and Planning), and Management at MIT), "pedagogical soundness" and "educational excellence." Do you see any problem in this use by us in this context of what is, after all, merely "anecdotal evidence"?
The Neuropsychology of Affect. The Emotional Brain.
We note some contributions from the Ancient Egyptian embalmers, Ancient Greek physicians (Hippocrates and Alcmaeon), philosophers, (Plato and Aristotle) through the renaissance (Descartes and Pascal); and into modern times: Franz Josef Gall, John Harlow (the case of Phineas Gage), William James, Walter B. Cannon, Heinrich Kluver, John C. Fulton, Paul MacLean, etc.
Episodic Dyscontrol Syndrome: The Science of Violence and Vice Versa?
Environmental Values: Muddy River Fieldtrip
Images of a sustainablt future.
The value of "home." The meaning and power of an idea.
The human/ecological importance of "place" as a context in Time and Space:
Why "Humanecological Sustainability."
What is so important about water and watersheds?
What is your opinion of this assertion? Write a reaction paper addressing this question in relation to one or more of the substantive issues raised 9.68 thus far. Note, this assignment may be done individually or collaboratively.
Is "A New Way of Thinking" Humanly Possible?
Is an Alternative Scientific Paradigm Conceivable? Necessary? Desireable?
What is Quality in Science, Technology, Engineering, Architecture (and Planning), and Management? And What About "Creativity?"