Blog #12 Some Assembly Required

Science, culture, rhetoric, pseudoscience, confirmation bias, framing, agenda setting, marketing, digital communication platforms, economics, politics, medicine, the environment, social media...
Yikes!! That's a whole lot of stuff to disseminate, disassemble and then attempt to reassemble into some semblance of a functional, rational whole. How did we, as a class manage to do it?!!
Well, first off Robin and Brendan constructed a course and created an environment that challenged each of us individually and collectively to examine and analyze topics in a number of disciplines and from a wide range of points of view. We drilled deep and spread out wide. They also made everyone in class feel completely safe and comfortable expressing their views and sharing knowledge from their specific domain.
As I look back, I notice that all of the work; the blog posts, debates, background reports and poster presentations built upon each other and helped fuel and further develop our in-class discussions. What resulted was an illuminating and inspiring, free exchange of ideas. I found myself considering opinions on issues that I had not previously considered or in some cases, ever been exposed to. This is a good thing. This is what proponents of a liberal arts curriculum promote as being a central tenet of liberal education.
As we have learned, social media and its architecture and algorhythms make it incredibly easy to surround ones self with like-minded people. This can and does create dangerous echo-chamber environments and fosters reified realities. This is all incredibly ironic considering that we are living currently in the supposed "Information Age."
Instead, we seem to, in many cases have create a digital world of "The Daily Me."
Further stoking the fire is the fact that we live in an American society that operates under what is essentially a two-party system of government. As a consequence, we tend to structure our debates and discussions more like aggressive confrontations between left vs right, black vs white, science vs religion creating one big culture war filled with "he said, she said" rhetoric.
In class, our debates were structured so that we were able to examine issues deeply and from various points of view, backed up with the requisite research. The result was that we shed much needed research-backed "light" on issues and created far less rhetorical "heat."
The course helped us sharpen our individual and collective critical thinking skills. It also caused us to explore the nature of our own identity and beliefs and how they in turn shape each other.
Bruno Latour lamented that he, as a writer that studied science may be partly to blame for the current state of rhetorical affairs. He admits that the language of science often has a hard time standing up to the hyperbolic, sensationalized, cocksure inflammatory rhetoric of conspiracy theorists and their like.
I personally believe that this makes it all the more important that we have courses like this one that tackle interdisciplinary issues.
Our scientists do need to have a better grasp of persuasive speaking techniques and rhetorical devices and, our non-science professionals need to have a better understanding of science, including the scientific method of hypothesis testing.
Finally, I would like to congragulate Robin on 51 highly successful years in higher education! Wow!
This is my final class at the U of M; my last post; my last project. I graduate next week.
I am extremely happy and thankful that we all got to spend this time together and, that we had such wonderful facilitators in Robin and Brendan.
Have a wonderful Summer and best of luck in all of your future endeavors!!