Recently I posted an inspired message to friends and colleagues on Facebook, shortly after finishing a session of (voluntary) summer teaching at UC San Diego. The post went something like this: “A few years ago I decided that I didn’t want to lecture anymore. So, I retired my lecture-based class, and created a new class … Continue reading
t About 10 years ago – June 29, 2007 – Apple released the first version of their revolutionary iPhone line. By then, practically everyone of my generation – except me, that is – already had a mobile device of some kind, and so for most the iPhone was a natural extension of this relatively new … Continue reading
A review of what happened, why we support Open Access, and a proposal for shifting all journals to Open Access with a single, free, tweak to editorial policy. Contributed by David Barner, Roger Levy, and Jesse Snedeker Summary We review our recent effort to encourage the adoption of Open Access at Cognition, how the Editorial … Continue reading
Contributed by David Barner and Jesse Snedeker, in consultation with Johan Rooryck Here are some briefs replies to Frequently Asked Questions we’ve encountered in response to our previous post, “Fair Open Access at Cognition.” We thank those of you who asked these questions, and encourage you to continue to ask them, so we can collectively understand … Continue reading
Dear Friends of Cognition (International Journal of Cognitive Science), Recently the editorial team of the journal Lingua, led by Johan Rooryck, petitioned Elsevier to support a transition to a Fair Open Access model of publishing (as described below). When Elsevier rejected this proposal, the 6 Editors of Lingua resigned en masse, and created a new … Continue reading
Contributed by David Barner (with Katherine Wagner & Katharine Tillman) Humans can think and talk about many things that we can’t directly see or touch. Neutrinos. Infinity. Justice. The nature of time. But humans are not natural-born physicists or mathematicians. Somehow, we learn these abstract concepts. But how could we learn about things that we … Continue reading
Contributed by Mike Frank & David Barner (see this post also on Babies Learning Language). The first calculating machines invented by humans – stone tablets with grooves that contained counting stones or “calculi” – are no match for contemporary computers in terms of computational power. But they and their descendants, in the form of the modern Soroban abacus, may have … Continue reading
Recently I wrote about the dirty little secret in academia: That the majority of PhD students do not end up in faculty positions, but instead work in government, for NGOs, or elsewhere in industry. In that piece, I argued that (1) this situation isn’t entirely new, (2) interpreting it as a type of failure makes assumptions about … Continue reading
Contributed by David Barner The origins of human mathematical practices extend back in history to the earliest moments of human culture. Early cuneiform writing systems not only arose in large part for the purposes of accounting and trade, but the presence of numerical symbols in these systems has sometimes been the wedge that allowed historians to crack their … Continue reading
Contributed by David Barner Which currently active scientist has had the biggest impact on your life? This is a difficult question, and one that hinges upon what we mean by “impact” in the first place. You might think that the most impactful researcher works on cancer. Or perhaps physics. And if you guessed physics – … Continue reading
MeaningSeeds 