Advanced English for Scholarly Writing

Introduction to the Class and Subject

The Nature of the Class: This course is designed to improve the skills of students in writing academic works using the English language. All aspects of the writing and publishing of scholarly works are covered. In addition, a great deal of time is spent in discussing important, common pitfalls in scholarly writing and thinking, including shortcomings in logic, banalities, plagiarism, style, statistical reasoning, fallacies, and rhetoric. The course is divided evenly between such things as

The Nature of the Class: This course is designed to improve the skills of students in writing academic works using the English language. All aspects of the writing and publishing of scholarly works are covered. In addition, a great deal of time is spent in discussing important, common pitfalls in scholarly writing and thinking, including shortcomings in logic, banalities, plagiarism, style, statistical reasoning, fallacies, and rhetoric. The course is divided evenly between such things as (i)good English usage, the appropriate outlining of papers, footnoting, graphs, resources, use of the internet, statistical presentations, as well as other elements of style,

The Nature of the Class: This course is designed to improve the skills of students in writing academic works using the English language. All aspects of the writing and publishing of scholarly works are covered. In addition, a great deal of time is spent in discussing important, common pitfalls in scholarly writing and thinking, including shortcomings in logic, banalities, plagiarism, style, statistical reasoning, fallacies, and rhetoric. The course is divided evenly between such things as (i)good English usage, the appropriate outlining of papers, footnoting, graphs, resources, use of the internet, statistical presentations, as well as other elements of style, and (ii)proper reasoning, the limits of research, poor scholarship, scientific methodology, and examples of outstanding research, etc.

Beyond the requirement of a written midterm exam and numerous class discussions, students must produce a final paper that incorporates many of the things learned in the class on a topic of interest to themselves and the instructor. The topic, which must be scholarly in nature, must receive approval by the instructor and must be the student's own work. The final paper is to be written in English (roughly 15 pages in length) including an abstract, and reference page.

The Nature of the Subject: To best understand the subject one must first ask why scholarly research exists at all. What is the purpose of producing scholarly works? What makes an article in the American Economic Review different from an editorial in the New York Times? These questions make us probe the theory of knowledge and whether it makes sense to talk about ultimate truth and the role of consensus in academia. It forces us to confront the question of what is the appropriate methodology in academic studies.

How do we convince our peers that what we are saying is true? Even an objective subject such as physics was found in the 1920s to have a foundation (i.e. quantum electrodynamics) which was beyond our ability to explain in simple turns using common sense. Einstein showed at the beginning of the 20 th century that our basic notions of space and time which Newton and Kant both felt were absolutely rock solid and intuitive were in fact an illusion. Are we likely to fare any better in the wildly changing world of social science? Is history and political science any simpler than physics and chemistry?

Is our goal to describe reality truthfully and faithfully? Is that even possible? Or, are we to develop models of the world that help us to predict phenomena well, but which have assumptions that are patently false? Do statistics help us to understand reality, or is reality changing so quickly that past statistics are useless in helping us to understand the world today? How can we analyze society, if it is constantly changing like the clouds in the sky?

Richard Feynman had some pretty harsh things to say about social science. Here is one video of him talking about how that social science is really only a pseudo-science.

Feynman was someone who looked at the world – saw complexity – and was amazed and excited by it. It is the spirit of all scholars in all disciplines. It is the spirit we need to nurture in ourselves. Here he is again talking about the peculiar nature of light.

Is Feynman too pessimistic about social science. Is he misunderstanding the nature of social science and its methodology. Consider two pieces written by Keynes during the 1920s and 1930s. How can we use these to answer the criticism of someone like Feynman?